Building Brand Gravity Podcast
Dive into the world of industry influence and discover how to attract more people into your brand’s orbit. Our original podcast features latest insights from leading communications professionals across industries and learn how to launch your brand into the future.
Prepare Your Brand for Liftoff
In each episode of Building Brand Gravity, we speak with chief communications officers, senior communications executives and leading academics to glean direct insights on the challenges facing B2B and B2C brands, as well as discuss opportunities to attract more customers to your brand.
With a sound strategy and the right road map, you too can build brand gravity that generates real business impact. Listen in on your favorite podcast player and follow Building Brand Gravity to keep up with the latest in business influence.
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Lessons in Leadership: Culture, Values and Client Service
The role that business plays in society is vastly different than it was 10 to 20 years ago and integrated marketing communications agencies have had to adapt…fast. A 2022 survey found that 82% of consumers want brands to align with their values. Younger demographics, including Millennials and Gen-Z, are at the forefront of this evolution.
Luke Lambert is the outgoing President and CEO of G&S Communications. As he prepares to move on from this post, he recounts his career beginnings in PR and journalism and his natural pivot into management. Anne Green, co-host of Building Brand Gravity (and Luke’s successor as G&S CEO) invites him for a chat on agency leadership, cultivating culture, championing DE&I in the communications industry and leading with values.
Hear our conversation with Luke Lambert, President & CEO at G&S Communications, where we discuss:
- Natural transitions into leadership roles and the importance of being grounded in the business
- Cultivating trust in yourself and in your team
- How to deliver on clients’ needs today while still investing in innovation for tomorrow
- Creating and staying true to your brand’s voice in a more volatile social and political landscape
- The importance to DE&I to organizations and how to authentically champion progress
ANNE 0:04
Hello and welcome to building brand gravity. This is Anne green. I’m a principal and managing director at GNS business communications. And for this episode, I’m delighted to be interviewing a friend and colleague, Luke Lambert, who is the CEO, President and CEO of GE and s currently, and will soon be retiring. So Luke, welcome to the show. Thanks for joining us today.
LUKE 0:27
Thanks, Sam. It’s great to be talking to the soon to be CEO at GNS.
ANNE 0:33
That’s right. We’re gonna do a little trading places here. We knew this year was gonna 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 GNS 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 UEs, which is tell us about, you know, the years that you’ve been president and CEO of GNS, how long has it been now that you’ve been in the CEO role in particular?
LUKE 1:03
I’ve been in the CEO role 11 years now and at GNS for 27. Yeah,
ANNE 1:12
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 you start to move into organizational leadership within an agency in addition to the client work that you were doing for so many years? Yeah,
LUKE 1:32
great, great question. You know, I was, 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 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. And then, you know, opportunities just present themselves and you find yourself able to jump in to Phil and account leadership position or 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 are really kind of defined my desire to look for and aspire to leadership roles throughout my career outside of the agency world to and, and and I think you could ask you the same question. I don’t think you’re 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 internal support, and external support. It could be your peers, your colleagues, your clients, people who encourage you, you know, show trust in you and, and count on you. And I think that’s when you know, you know, leadership’s for you. And that’s where a lot of confidence is gained,
ANNE 3:05
I think. Yeah, it’s 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 allowed to evolve over time. But you’re right, you have opportunities, and you keep taking them and you get excited about it, 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, you can see a hole than a hole that you cannot see the big picture. So if you think about that stage of your life, when you are starting to take on more organizational leadership, wherever in your trajectory, you you want to reflect on what what do you know, now that you wish you had understood better earlier?
LUKE 4:08
Yeah, point, 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, I was a PR journalism major. So it’s not something you you 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 and 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 wonderful CFOs and CEOs who provide me with data and trends and counsel. And I think more important than all of that, honestly, is this prospective to critical decision making. So I know, 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 GNS.
ANNE 5:23
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. 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, Seth, 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. 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, you don’t have to be everything to all people, right. Leadership
LUKE 6:38
is a team sport. And you learn that. Yeah,
ANNE 6:41
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, they’re more of an agent in it. What are some of those aspects of agency business of running an agency that you think are really important for them to reflect on?
LUKE 7:15
Yeah, you know, I think 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 10 years, I’m not making it sound like it was just in the past, you know, this has been happening for a while. But 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, and that we’re living today, data analytics, digital marketing, Creative Media. And then and you know, way better than may, because I’ve seen you tackle this topic AI, you know, what are the opportunities, short term opportunities? What are 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 to your question, you know, what’s my takeaway for aspiring leaders? Think we have a lot of leaders that are forward looking. And that’s wonderful. But I think forward leap forward looking leaders also really need to understand and I can say this, based on my own experience, 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. So if if you swing too far in one direction, and this business, it can be really easy to lose focus on what’s our number one priority in the agency world, its compliance, so you can lose focus on servicing their needs. It’s important to do both service the needs and innovate at the same time. Really,
ANNE 9:07
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 analogue 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. 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 longtime 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, is it tomorrow? I mean, the world as a whole the geopolitical issues, you know, change changes 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’d love to hear first before we talk about notable changes, like, situate us in like, when you started working in comms you came out of college, what year was it? Where were you working? Yeah, it
LUKE 10:26
was, it was 1986. And, and I joined a firm a little smaller than they are now GNS. And that was a lot of people don’t know that I was with GNS 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, 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, the consulting side at a at a multi regional accounting and consulting firm. And so I’ve seen change happen in multiple industries, whether it be consolidation or technology. And it’s been the breadth of experience. So I’m very thankful for.
ANNE 11:23
That’s amazing. And I think I’ve been agency the whole time. I remember Kim sample of the PR Council, one’s 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 its spokes off the hub of the wheel that have been most striking to you, as you look back?
LUKE 11:56
Yeah, that you hit on some of it. And and it’s the whole enchilada, I think, and because I’m gonna 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. And this year in particular. So I know I can safely say, because we talk about this in our industry, that our clients are CEOs and MCC O ‘s have more on their plates than ever. And you put that against the backdrop of distrust in government is trust in 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. So this is not a new dynamic. If you and I’ve talked about this, the industry’s probably the most significant dynamic we’ve been talking about as industry leaders for some time now. But it just gets more and more complicated. Think about just the past year. Now businesses, you know, have to face criticism there on the receiving end of it from our own political parties, both on the right and the left, just in case we needed more pressure. As business leaders, it’s pretty fascinating.
ANNE 13:49
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 very few times that the moles are all under under there are popping up popping up, you know, you don’t have stasis very often. But for our clients and was ourselves. There do seem to be a broader portfolio of things that can pop up out of the blue, and really changed the game in many ways and force you to truly reevaluate and make some hard pivots or make our clients make some hard pivot. So I would agree with you, you 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, 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 in the business world and the world have changed? Things that feel very consistent to you and what we do?
LUKE 14:57
Yes, something else I’ve been reflecting on lot I was in Chicago last week and asked this question. And it’s, it’s really an easier question. I think. And in that that’s client service, the client service business itself. The formula for success, I think, is remarkably similar from from when I started in 1986. It’s so simple, that I don’t even think we talk about it very often. 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, and, 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, you know, you know, getting there today, because of everything we’ve talked about is more complicated. 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’d agree.
ANNE 16:13
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. And it’s that beautiful cycle, you know, that four 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. So that question of our most precious asset, which is our own people, and the culture that we build around them, I think that is we would all agree, the heart of any entity like ours, you know, of 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, but to you if you think about the component parts of culture, at an agency like GNS that really cares about our people, not to say others don’t, but we’re 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?
LUKE 17:45
Great question. I, I think first I’d say our our, our mid size 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 live and breathe it every day. But the key components, good point, I think it starts with important values, like building trust, for us, embracing inclusion, winning together, having fun, while you’re doing all that, that that is what creates a culture and I think that helped that has helped define our culture. And over the past six months since I’ve announced my departure, I’ve I’ve been really fortunate to hear from former colleagues existing colleagues about our caring culture and and how much it’s had an impact on on current employees, but more importantly, former colleagues who have gone on to other careers and leadership positions, 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 and 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 on really an annual basis. And you’ve opened my eyes to that and you and or Chief People Officer K through it’s more than more than others in terms of just how important it is. You can build a culture over time, but you can, you can hurt it in a short period of time if you don’t pay attention to
ANNE 19:37
- 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 may we often talk about brand equity. This is a common metaphor in this area. Trust is currency. I think these are very apt metaphor. 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 that many employees look at management is trust, but verify, you know, you they, 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 investment 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? Don’t you know what we’re doing? It’s like, more like, well, it trust but verify. And let us keep proving it to you every day. And it’s, it’s not easy, but I think it’s important, you know,
LUKE 20:50
you’ve helped me on that. Well,
ANNE 20:54
yeah, vice versa. Yeah, I mean, this is something really remarkable. But when someone reaches a milestone where they’re going to retire a 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. And that’s, 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?
LUKE 21:48
Oh, it is 100% of it’s just, but it’s part of part of who I am. It’s just connecting with people on an individual level and, and showing your you care, showing them, you’re in the trenches with them, because we all have been through many moments over the course of our career, where you are in the trenches, and it’s all hands on deck. 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
ANNE 22:33
could not agree more. And it isn’t that the heart of client service to 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. 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 Zers. 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, what feels consistent to you in terms of how everyone is showing up for the work we do?
LUKE 23:32
And why I love your observation on the generations be 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. And, and yet, as you just asked me a minute ago, the premise that I’ve subscribed 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 gained their respect by by building relationships, especially without barrier to you know, your role or, or title. And I think when you approach leadership that way, with employees, they’re all in with you. And and it it’s amazing how hard people work that join GNS. I mean, it’s 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, it’s just amazing to me to watch
ANNE 25:09
this great bar, ya know, and we’ll miss you being a part of it. This actually you talking about all the individuals that make up this company and all they’re 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 deep, much deeper, 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. 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 and very negative experience for many of the people in our society 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 does what’s your DNI efforts mean to you in an agency context like ours?
LUKE 26:22
Well, it’s a, it’s a really good question. You know, I’ve always started and you know, this sand from day one, I can remember, you know, when our when our our initiatives started in 2015. I’ve always started with, with the business premise, that, and this. So this is what it means to me. I mean, we are running a business, and I’ve never, I never lose sight of that. I’m an agency or I’m a 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, why it get right to the why, and because diversity of thought diversity of experiences of our workforce, what does it do, it makes us more creative, it makes us more competitive. And if if we are, we’re probably going to win more as a result. And, and I think, for me, and this is why it takes so much out of it personally to it will help us better understand the world around us, which we could all use a helping hand there right now. And so it’s when you sum it up in a from a business premise is it’s pretty powerful. And it’s hard to not sign up for that.
ANNE 27:55
I think that’s so important to reroute it in 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 DNI it’s really how it weaves into everything makes us better business people, makes us better managers, makes us more trusting lets us fly ticks, friction out of the system, improves our communities gives new opportunity fires us up, gets us out of our silos of our own experience. 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 stay connected to it. And I think that why really helps, but in terms of your insight, so as we’ve worked to sort of move this along 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? Yeah,
LUKE 29:00
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
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 for more recently Carmela Glover you and and Kate are chief people officer. And, and I remember Rochelle telling me that you need to start by truly understood before you embark on an issue around diversity, equity inclusion, start by understanding your current culture. Because if you don’t do that homework, it’s going to it’s going to be impossible to create a welcoming and productive place where I opened a dialogue about the ENI resonates from from within the organization. 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 too 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, oh, from an culture standpoint, but from a DNI perspective, as well. So those are just two insights that come to mind. First and foremost,
ANNE 30:48
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 is it mean to create a space that people want to stay and feel seen? And how do you build trust, and again, I strongly feel that means we just become better managers and better at ppl integration overall, no matter what your intersections of identity are, but that’s why I’m excited we’ll be embarking on a real push around inclusive leadership driven by Maurice Johnny Williams, as you know, our VP of GE and I and Kate three wits, our partner and head of HR and our task force has been involved in it. And I just, I think it’s going to build on so much of what you’ve envisioned for this loop. And in 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 so we will keep you informed as
LUKE 31:54
I can’t, I can’t repeat and kudos to you. And I think about when we started this effort in 2015. And, you know, we made some headway. And I was so proud of that, and was, you know, really learned early on that that’s low hanging fruit. But today, as I leave the organization, we’re in such a fortunate position. You know, with a seven pillar, agency Task Force, 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 is stalling. That happens. And we hear a lot about and or I despise the word fatigue. Yeah, it just can’t happen. And, and the beauty of the program that we’ve developed and that you drive is that if you fall short on a metric there, 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. No,
ANNE 33:18
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? So, I hate to acknowledge it, but you’re departing GNS soon. 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 the industry as a whole as as you move on to whatever the next exciting thing you’re going to be doing?
LUKE 33:54
Well, thanks, and you’ve been too kind this year. But I in you, you know, this, I think the you and I’ve talked a lot about this over the last six months. But to my GNS colleagues, I think that there’s a reminder that this leadership transition, meet 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. And I think the team, the whole team needs to capitalize on it so that it can benefit all employees. It can can create and store growth. And I think that’s what this that’s what this is all about. And I think this is something I know you’re gonna agree with this. It’s sometimes lost in industry. And I want to say just our industry but industry in general, where executive turnover over often feels really abrupt. And where perhaps communications is less focused on immediate opportunities that that the change provides and I think we’ve got a great opportunity to focus on on those things and what new things will will stir. And then for the industry, 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’ve provided such a deep reservoir for me of knowledge, ideas, and friendships. But I guess if I, if I had to, humbly, give some advice, I’d say from a 10,000 foot foot view, I’d say, remind all my colleagues to continue to rise above the divide, and the conflict that the fight defines really so much narrative out there today. And remember that each of us are in really unique positions in 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. And I think that’s pretty lofty. Right. But I don’t think we should understand underestimate the power of that. And, and just yesterday, I, I saw something a colleague, you know, and I’ve known for many, many years, Bob 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’s called the Dialogue Project, which is, you know, pretty simple purpose is to explore what role business can play to reduce polarization in our country today. And, and Bob, Bob says this, and I know we all agree that today, this is a pretty acute issue, and that we’re 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, I didn’t know this, I’m probably a little behind the ball on this one. But he’s taken this the dialogue project to the Fuqua 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 dialogue where, where divide doesn’t have to turn into third rail issues. And I think that just underscores that what I’m talking about, about how much promise there is in our industry and what our leaders can do.
ANNE 37:44
That’s amazing. And I couldn’t agree more. I 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 have kind of been doing the seesaw, you know, as you get ready to retire. 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 and outside our agency find it interesting, and I will certainly be staying in touch with you over time.
LUKE 38:23
I look forward to it. Thank Thanks, Dan. And glad we get to do this. All right. Thank
ANNE 38:29
you, Luke. Thank you
Inclusive Innovation: Can AI Narrow the Digital Divide?
There is no “average user” of digital experiences in our world today. If we can grasp that there is significant nuance beyond current understandings of “ability” and “disability,” can generative AI help us narrow a digital divide that is far greater than most individuals and organizations perceive?
Howard Pyle is a leading voice in the mission to advance inclusivity in digital experiences as the founder of Experience Futures (XF). After an enlightening encounter with Howard at the Page Spring Seminar, Anne Green, host and G&S Principal, asked him to join her on the podcast.
Listen in as Howard and Anne discuss:
- Today’s limited conceptions of “”ability”” versus “”disability”” and why our approach to accessibility in digital spaces needs a significant paradigm shift
- The importance of human guidance and ethical considerations in employing AI as a tool to advance inclusivity and accessibility
- Sorting through the hype and potential of AI in bridging the digital divide and transforming accessibility
Speaker 1 0:05
Hello, everyone, and welcome to building brand gravity. I’m Anne green. I am a principal and managing director here at GNS business communications. And I’m so excited today to welcome a guest who I first heard speak at an event earlier this year and it 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 and the rest is history. And here we are. Howard Pyle. Welcome to building brand gravity.
Unknown Speaker 0:34
Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 0:37
So Howard, tell us a little bit about I’m gonna let you tell your own bio, your career trajectory, because you’ve had a really interesting arc to bring you to the organization you found today, which is experienced futures.org, which has many arms to it. But tell me a little bit about so our listeners understand your career path.
Speaker 2 0:57
Sure, yeah, 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 makes 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 been in at the intersection of digital product design development platform, brands, communications, for over 20 years, and I started my career as actually an engineer. And I was a developer in a design collective, in wok, Washington, DC, a long, long, long time ago, very early digital shop. And, and then I was I went on to be a dev lead and a communications agency, early digital shop and a CTO at a at a [email protected]. And then went on from there and ran startups, I ran a mobile startup for a little while, and we got bought out by an agency network. 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 10s of 1000s of people. And, and then working on IBM, which was, of course, a monster, and I had no experience working with giant organizations, um, I was at 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, I ultimately transitioned in 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 like comms, but for brand 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. And so I had this kind of 10 years in startups and 10 years at big, giant, ginormous companies. And the thing that I found was 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 is a disconnect between the mission and purpose of a company and their business impact in digital spaces, to see that there’s a big disconnect there and also seeing the second thing is that automation and AI, we’re going to hit the front end experience layer that we’re going to hit 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. 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.
Speaker 1 4:58
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. 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 brands landscape that also deeply involves technology and the experience of the customers. It’s so intertwined, right? I mean, what an incredible intersection of different perspectives.
Speaker 2 5:54
Yeah, well, we can say that now. 10 years ago, we’ve been like, Wait, you’re doing what now? What do you tell you’re 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, I think it’s really about, it’s funny, because there was this brief moment where I really believe the term customer experience was going to be a great kind of rallying cry for how all these things come together in a company. And 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. 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. And that that, that is a collection of activities. And I think that to me been the interesting throughlines thing that was fascinating about going to MetLife. And the thing I was so excited about about taking that role was they specifically wanted me to focus on and lead the rebranding of a company. And I had not I had done brand work at IBM and at Ogilvy, but I had never led a brand and never led a global never led a
Unknown Speaker 7:37
rebranding the big mandate.
Speaker 2 7:39
Yeah, I know, I know, I shouldn’t, I shouldn’t even say that out loud. They’ll come see me in retrospect. But the but but it was the thing that was that was really amazing about it was coming at that from a digital and a scalability perspective, which I think is part of why they wanted me to do it is to think about how it participated in the company’s digital evolution. So but all of that is related to the, to the role that a company plays in, in your life, right. And to me, you could actually call that brand you could say brand is the relationship that you have with a company. Or you could say, the customer experience, which is every touchpoint every interaction, the sum of all those is your relationship with the company. And more and more of 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 I think,
Speaker 1 8:40
yeah, and it’s, it’s interesting, I’ve been in this area in the agency side for 30 years. So a little bit more of a straight through line than yours. But that constant desire and evolution of our language to try to is it UX? Is it customer experience omni channel? Are we talking about the channels we’re using? Are we talking about the experience of the humans is a different with consumers to business to enterprise, and I think you’re hitting on something here that there’s a there there in the middle. And it is multifaceted. You know, I talk about data sometimes like as we try to do analytics today. The different kinds of data that we may use in our fields don’t sit together pretty on a spreadsheet. They’re apples and oranges and kumquats and pears and how do we do things that are different from each other into communication with each other. So we understand the bigger ecosystem and the impacts and I think that kind of matrix to mindset, even at an agency like ours, thinking and hearing your perspective and how you had to keep adjusting the lens in your career. It just gives me more insight to share to my own teams who may be working in digital or paid or creative or market communicators like how do we continue to think in that really intersectional way because I think it’s needed, but to get to the heart of it. 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 experienced futures.org. 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 so that you can share with our listeners, what does that mean to you? And what is the urgency of that today?
Speaker 2 10:30
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? 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. 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 unstructured reading very, very long documents, 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 is very strange to me, that I wound up in the positions that I wound up 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. Right. And, and that is, I’m 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, where I’ve 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. And I think that the, you know, it’s funny, because I think that there’s 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, the tools that did allow me to dictate, you know, I’ve experimented with every flavor of voice dictation, going back to, you know, the 90s. 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, it’s very, can be very challenging. And that got me really became, I think, over the years, I’ve 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? Why is it so I have a computer, you have a computer, you have more access than I do to the tools and services? What does that call? What do we even describe that as and I think there’s different terminology you could apply to it. But what we’ve what we found through the research that we did, is that it’s actually another layer of the digital divide. And the first layer of the digital divide is this idea of having access to a computer having access to internet access. And
Speaker 1 14:49
where I think a lot of people I think that first layer is where a lot of people stop. Am I right about that? That’s right. Okay. That’s right.
Speaker 2 14:55
And that’s and that’s and that’s a very, it’s natural, because that’s the only In 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. 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, and, 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. 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, there aren’t easy to navigate. And yes, even not accessible from an ADEA perspective for people with disabilities, 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. So the digital the second layer of the digital divide is really the experience layer?
Speaker 1 16:50
Well, and it’s, um, my brain is always running, you know, as I talk to you, and the times we’ve talked, because there’s just so many things come to mind. It sort of cracks open a whole new world to you. 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. Yeah, 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 are the frig? Is 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 now, the vaccine one, when you share that anecdote, and I’d love you to reshare, that quote that you shared with me when you were at the page spring seminar earlier this year, because that literally hit me like a lightning bolt in terms of a truth bomb. But these other things are less important, but they’re still important to functioning. But share that vaccine analogy again.
Speaker 2 18:09
Yeah, yeah, that was 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 these 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. 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. There was this kind of touching moment that happened where when the vaccine sites came out, people on Facebook and on Reddit 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 firms were older at risk, right living living in nursing homes. But they literally couldn’t navigate the websites. So it’s kind of touching people were like, well, if you know someone that needs help navigating this website, you know, we’ll help them and older person. But it’s a statement of failure. It’s a statement of absolute failure of a public service and a system that’s meant to be accessible by certain audience, and didn’t work. So there was this quote, writing about that situation. It 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. Yeah. And and that’s, 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 in startups that I work with, the idea of accessibility often means are you going to get in trouble for ADA compliance or not? Yes, ADA compliant. 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 the lever is, does it work for people that have a certain type of disability, and that use a certain type of assistive technologies. And the only punishment is public lawsuits. So there’s people who go around and just sue companies for ADA, you know, Ada violations. So it’s seen organizational 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 only funding for accessibility is at the very end if there’s a problem, right? It’s never meant to be something that you so these vaccines 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 not just ADA accessibility, it’s people that are older people from lower socioeconomic households that maybe are mobile only users. And those sites only worked on desktop computers. 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 in our position is that inclusivity is bigger than accessibility. And we find accessibility in the design community to be a labyrinth of confusion. Yeah, I think this is a big challenge.
Speaker 1 22:17
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. 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, and having discussions with people that are much more dynamic about what is ethics? Where is it 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 CI and s with our own DNI taskforce is, how do we understand where we’re limiting or putting ourselves in a box about what inclusion means? 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 you 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, but what tools you need. But I think that cracks open a whole new world for us, of understanding what inclusion can be. 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 claim to determine maybe this is a good way to connect the dots here. With experience futures, 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 what’s the language for this? Yeah, that’s
Speaker 2 24:29
a good point. That’s a great point. And so we did a we did a really, I think, a great piece of work with Estee Lauder. And they came to us with a set of challenges around strategy for inclusive technology, as well as this objective to build a center of excellence around what they described as human experience. And, and so to give to give credit where credit’s due We actually we actually pick up that term from from working with them, they had this objective around human experience. And what we did is built a first of all, did a series of workshops around inclusive technology that began to identify what the potential business value, what the product sets what the competition was doing, but also what the user needs might be to create a strategy for products and services that were intentionally inclusive, not generically, but specific to their business and specific to who their, their users were. And their their audiences were that was joined with are kind of related to that we developed a center of excellence strategy for human experience with them. And it was really meant to be a collection of looking at the customer experience, looking at the employee experience, and using human centered design principles to link them together. So when you think about, I think, oftentimes, what we see is that, you know, I’ve been more on the customer side, and I’ve seen so many like internal employee facing digital experiences, kind of getting the scraps of the design work or the technical resources. And, you know, we feel pretty strongly that the idea that employees need to be empowered in the same way that consumers do is a is a cultural revolution, as well as a business imperative. So linking experience for customers and experienced employees to work together as a, as a clear idea. But the idea that you’re going to use inclusion and human centered design together to build for the individual became a really big part of the strategy that that we developed for Estee Lauder. And then we’ve kind of picked that up and begin writing about it and publishing about that as well. I think human experience is the right way to talk about it. Gartner has started talking about total experience, which sounds a little bit more, I don’t know, technical. And I think I think in the end, the thing that we lose is the humanity we do we lose the humanity. So how do you make that not squishy? How do you make that not a feel good thing. And so designing for the individual, as you’re saying is the is the obvious outcome. So for Estee Lauder, we developed a, you know, a playbook and training guides and a roadmap and strategy for building out the Center of Excellence internally and how they would work and how they would function and staffing they would need it. But but that’s complicated, and it’s expensive. And we did something similar at IBM in the design studios, we built out these agile teams that were, you know, dedicated, co located cross functional teams. And it really helped the integration and building iteratively around the individuals. at MetLife, we systematized it, we created these design systems, we built them in code, we built them as building blocks. So agencies, different markets, different teams could reuse them. But all of these interventions are actually really complicated. And they’re they’re they’re quite expensive. And it’s a luxury for any organization to be able to take an invest and grow them over time. And this is part of the insight. This is actually the segue into where does automation. And where does AI come into the picture?
Speaker 1 28:29
Oh, that’s great that because my next question, so yes, please. Yeah.
Speaker 2 28:33
Well, so so so I think that 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 they’re a 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 on and then from that, building one experience, it’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. That’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 collaborative spaces, although it can be very powerful from a relationship development and 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. 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. And 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 designing 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. 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 AI 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. And so as an organization, our goal is we’re kind of like the the nonprofit side of what we do. We’re kind of a b2b nonprofit, we help organizations and we have a goal of working with organizations that serve healthcare, finance, education, government legal for older users, for users living with disabilities, neurodiversity socio economic challenges, do you think about the top players in each of those spaces? And we can, if we can use AI to help transform the inclusion of 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. And that’s, so that’s what we’re deeply focused on. So So where does AI come into it? Well, AI comes into it, because it’s too much to design for, you know, five different use cases. For individual needs for one, digital products, say, a website or a mobile app, most teams, most companies just can’t afford to do it. They don’t have the resources, they don’t have the time. They don’t have the engineering capacity. They don’t have the designers, they don’t have the digital 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. Yeah, absolutely. 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 fun thing, 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. And, 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 get on top of in order to stay current. 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 actually don’t think there’s such a thing as ethical AI. 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?
Speaker 1 34:27
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. But the fact is, is that all of this is human generated, you know in till we have truly self generative AI that becomes truly intelligent, whatever way we want to define that, you know, and whatever that is in the future. You know, we humans are involved and so AI can be reached toward utopian or it can be the garbage fire that other things are too. 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 apply AI to this challenge of mass personalization, which has been talked about for so long, but it’s, as you said, functionally, structurally, realistically, has felt impossible to achieve. So where I mean, there’s a lot of shiny object syndrome around generative AI right now. And obviously, the large language models feel like a magic trick sometimes and so much talked about it. But where are you trying to help aside from that overall lens of how do we understand intentional ethical use? Where would you like to see the conversation around AI today shift to what to you is more productive?
Speaker 2 36:41
Yeah, that’s a really good question. And you know, actually, it’s it’s interesting that you mentioned Jaron Linney 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. And in the community that I’m a part of the technologists and the engineers that I work with, there’s a, there is a dialog that yes, we’re calling it AI, it’s a label, but it’s not actually intelligent. It’s not intelligence, what we’re interacting with is incredibly large volumes of data with very sophisticated statistical algorithms finding patterns. So when you type in something to chat GPT, it’s not actually thinking and responding to you it is you’re 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 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. And the key point was the most important thing for a board member for 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. So what are we trying to solve? What is the business problem we’re trying to solve? What is the what is the use case we’re envisioning? And then in addition to that, you have a set of responsibilities. 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. Yep. 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 consequences that might arise from using this tool? 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? There’s more and I think that but the idea is that there’s 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 with 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 are we trying to solve? What impact does it have on the organization or our goals? What impact does it have on the people? And does it align with our social impact goals, our mission, or values, or ethics, or dei strategies and policies, our beliefs about our customers, the impact we want to have on the world? Those are the things that need to be asked and addressed. And those are very, they’re not the glitzy things, but they’re things that everybody can participate in. And I think that’s where, for me, I get into this idea of intention and the intentional use of technology. And I think even intention, because Because to me, ethics is an interesting thing. Ethics is a word when I when I first launched experience futures, I ran into a guy that used to be on my team, and I told them what I was doing. And I use the word ethics, I said, we’re gonna be focusing on ethics and AI and experience. And he looked at me and was very concerned, he was like, but you don’t have you don’t have an advanced degree in ethics. And I’m like, Yeah, I’m not a philosopher. You don’t need an advanced degree in ethics to be an ethical person. But I think what it says is it that bird is like that word is like, it’s, it’s, it’s enforced that, yeah,
Speaker 1 41:39
it makes people feel overwhelmed that there’s a larger rubric or it’s in a box, or it somehow makes it feel it’s all about wrongdoing. You know, I always joke that ethics is not about the villain and the coroner twirling his mustache. It’s often about death by 1000 paper cuts because of lack of intentionality. So, but I think what, 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 forefront ting before we get caught up in the shiny object? But I mean, there, there’s so much here. And I, you know, I’m gonna really encourage people to listen to this conversation, because I think it’s helping me clarify some pieces too. 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 the gravity to certain things could be music, art, I know that you’re, you know, a better musician, very engaged in that world over the years. But what are the things that you’re excited about right now that you’d like to share?
Speaker 2 42:44
Well, I mean, I’m excited about I’m excited about this moment of transformation. Yeah. 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 will every other animal on the planet is our use of technology. So therefore, it is fundamentally human. The thing that I’m excited about is that we’re accelerating fast. And I think that there’s 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, forget whether AI is AI or not, you 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, two 3000 new AI companies have launched in the past six months. I mean, it’s unbelievable tough time to be an AI company business. But the but but I think that the the what that means to me is that it is 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. And I think that’s, I think that’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’m intentionally I’m what I would say is I’m aggressively optimistic, meaning I’m going to be optimistic. God dammit, you know, I’m not gonna make it. 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 happened. So I’m excited about that.
Speaker 1 44:49
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 highfalutin, but I also talk about the folks in our own agency. 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 and part of being counselors is to understand both sides of these points that you humans are coming up with. And I do love the discussion about it’s not really AI. 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. 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. Thanks so much for having me as a pleasure.
Balancing Tradition and Technology in Agriculture Marketing
The advancements in digital marketing from just 5 or 6 years ago to now are staggering – even in industries that tend to be overlooked as purveyors of the space. Agriculture has had a complete makeover post-pandemic, and therefore so has the marketing around it.
Rosalyn Moore is the Marketing Insights and Innovation Manager at Syngenta, a farming technology company on a mission to safely provide more food to more people across the globe. Rosalyn’s unconventional career journey – with beginnings in electrical engineering – saw her transition to psychology in undergrad, ultimately leading her to digital marketing. Having worked together over the years, host Kyle A. Turner invited Rosalyn for a conversation on the podcast.
Listen in as Kyle and Rosalyn discuss:
- Misnomers and misunderstandings about technological advancement in agriculture today
- The ubiquity of digital marketing and what it looks like in agriculture
- The importance of identifying your audience, and meeting them where they are across digital platforms
- How recent evolutions in the ag industry are driving changes to the marketing around it
- The power and potential of AI tools on the digital marketing landscape
Kyle 0:01
Turner digital growth and analytics director. Yeah. Okay, I got you. I got you. I was so Okay. Welcome to another episode of building brand gravity. I’m Kyle Turner digital growth and analytics Director here at GNS business communications. And I’m very very excited to warmly welcome the marketing insights and innovation manager for Syngenta, US Rosalind Moore he spent about 20 years at Syngenta Rosalind
Rosalyn 0:32
was the start it when I was a baby?
Kyle 0:36
Rosalind um, you know, you and I have had conversations we partnered a few times in the past, you’ve obviously partnered with the agency GNS 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. I’ve been thinking myself about what you know, digital marketing means to kind of what digital is like, does it even make sense to refer to it as 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. You know, obviously, agriculture runs through the fabric of everything that kind of happens in this country. And 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. You know, you started. For those who don’t know, rods, a story started as a electrical engineer, which is nuts. 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 your how your story started and how you found yourself where you are now.
Rosalyn 2:21
Yeah, so again, like you said, my name is Rosalyn Moore. And I like where you started at cow, you took it back to my undergrad. Electrical Engineering is where I got my start. And it’s the funny story, because actually, it’s the same time I was introduced to the Ag space. And that’s because my now husband, then high school sweetheart, actually was going to college. His major was agricultural business. And I gotta tell you, as soon as he told me, that was his major, I don’t know if people remember move or old shows like Little House on the Prairie. But it was one of these shows where you saw farmers struggling to just make it and all the uncertainties in their world. And I’m like the likelihood that we are getting married has just decreased when I heard what he what he was trying to do. And so it’s funny, fast forward. Yes, I started off in electrical engineering, but he was already working for one of Syngenta as legacy companies. And when the mergers happened, we found ourselves in Greensboro, North Carolina, and I went back to school for a marketing degree Fast forward some more. And I didn’t necessarily choose the ag 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. 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? 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. Sure. And it’s not at all. When you’re talking about the ag 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. From a marketing perspective. You might see some differences based on the target audience you’re trying to reach. But we look at the level of technology and innovation that has happened In this space, it’s actually quite amazing. And because of all the technology now you might hear somebody say, tech or, or digital, and in a room, they could be talking about the traits that go on our seats, they could be talking about the AI is the back the chemicals that are going to into the products that that we’re making, they could be talking about digital ag the advances in different tools and technology that have come into this space to advance it. And so where I had this thought of, you know, Little House on the Prairie, and someone out there, you know, with the animal, pull in the, you know, pull it pull in something behind it to really get out there and clean the fields. That’s, that’s not where we are anymore. So as you watch the advancement, and all that technological advancement around, it’s offered more opportunity for us, from a marketing perspective, your digital marketers, to get in front of the growers to get in front of the farmers. 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. 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 and even push buttons didn’t make it any different stations. Are you lucky now? Yeah, yeah, that probably predates you everyday ship. But you you look now, and that was 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 protect you from going into one lane or the other lane, this same type of advancements been happening in the ag industry. And so now, you know, when, you know, they’re out in the field, and they’re in there their equipment. Before that meant you can’t talk to him and my market research days, it’s like, oh, well, it’s it’s harvest time, you know, we were not going to be able to have any interviews. Well, now it’s like, ah, that’s another screen, the mobile phones created so much opportunity for us to still then be able to reach them. So again, when you talk about digital marketing and digital, you have to be very specific about what we’re talking about when you are in the ag industry. And so, yes, typically, you wouldn’t be doing I mean, I look at my kids, I’ve got teenagers, and 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, are you? Are you on thread? Now? You know, Twitter’s the new Twitter, the new, they’re adopting all those different things at a different rate, right. But if I’m trying to reach isn’t there, then I don’t need to be there either. Right? That’s what I’m doing. So 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 get a little bit of a peek to this isn’t an amazing, innovative space. 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. So how do we do that? Knowing that you’re going to have less lane? 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 in keeps me in the industry, but by no means that I say agriculture. That’s the spot for me.
Kyle 9:42
So you mentioned something actually kind of interesting that I wanted to hook on to things really. You noticed that people kind of assume certain things about this audience, farmers growers, retailers even about How digitally savvy they may be. And you mentioned that that’s kind of a little bit of a misnomer. You kind of highlighted a few examples where growers, farmers in general, are way more connected than they’ve ever been before. I guess we’re 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?
Rosalyn 10:38
Yeah, so it’s different than it, I would say, the marketing trails, 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
Kyle 11:02
marketing is not like the like, they’re not driving the change, but rather, the change within the industry is driving the marketing.
Rosalyn 11:07
I think that’s how, obviously things like the pandemic has helped. I mean, you think about it. And again, it’s always going to depend where you sit in the industry. So somebody else could come on 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 us, you know, Syngenta, everybody knows probably, that we, we really work through and with our channel, in service of the growers, 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, what does that mean? Sometimes your internet connectivity isn’t going to be there sometimes. And again, this is where phones at help. But there have been areas that I’ve gone in that your phone 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 isn’t in that one space where you get where you don’t have connectivity, 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 got to be have a presence on social media. 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 were your parents on social media, when you first got on social media, they weren’t. You gotta look at the age gap right there. The average age right now I think is like 67, or something. 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. Season not Oh, but season two, yes. Yes. Season, not Oh, 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. 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. 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 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 on Facebook, they may be there but it had nothing to do with business. 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 info ation, and how did they receive that? And did they like to receive that in that forum, or was that a missed, and sometimes it was too soon, 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. 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 marking a lot the same way from a paid media perspective from, you know, a little bit different organic, 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
Kyle 16:33
for sure. 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 really charismatic microcosm for what b2b marketing is like, in general, especially in digital space. It’s a way more discerning, often a lot smaller group of people that you have to show and prove usefulness or effectiveness to, that goes for how you articulate your brand, promise and your brand value to them, but also how you articulate the value of the tactics you’re using to talk to those people to your internal stakeholders. 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’ve often been curious, having kind of worked with you on some digital marketing strategies before 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 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? Like, how are you tracking that articulating that value? How are you showing that value?
Rosalyn 18:24
Yeah, that’s that’s, it’s tough, right? I mean, it’s, it’s tough period as marketers to sometimes show. Here’s that value. You know, here’s what I did, quantifying. Sometimes that was a very difficult that we’ve tried them. What is it that marketing mediate mix models? We’ve tried, we’ve tried all types of things to to help. Say, here’s what the value has been digital marketing, here’s, here’s, if we didn’t do this, you know, maybe you didn’t get that sale, maybe or maybe I did, you know, ag industry like many others is, is very much a relationship industry. And like I like to tell people, when I’m out in in with our commercial units and talking to our reps, those that are directly face to face, interfacing with be at our retailers, our or our farmers when they’re doing that. I cannot say that any of those touch points, 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 rep 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 say 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, 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 all of a sudden, you know, your 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, and it’s easier to prove? We raise that awareness when you then 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. But 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’s still effective, we don’t want to move too quick, right? You want to still be doing what’s effective. But then try new things. 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 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, I give you some proof points, we get out there and we test it out in some areas. So the thing I love about digital marketing is you can measure it right. And then I can look to see, did we get engagement? Did we did? Did people open the email? Did people click on the link? Did they spend some time looking at the information, 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 won’t 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. 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 right, or the relationship, even with the agency witness wouldn’t be right.
Kyle 23:05
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. Yeah, the the simple fact is that we have probably more access than we’ve ever had before, on ways to effectively show the value of any program we do. 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 sort tend to service where you can find a lot of stronger relationships with digital teams, digital agencies, what have you, is in the measurement of some of these tactics, like seeing where any objects and search volume, any upticks in conversation volume any objects in Website Traffic website engagement, etc. are whether or not those are being connected to some of those some of those seconds you know, so to that end, rise out like a posit to you where where are you seeing the best opportunity and, and maybe even though 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?
Rosalyn 24:52
Yeah, okay, so I 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 I mean, you know, you start with something like, chat GBT, right and looking at way man, I can create content. I can, I can now create images, I can speak to something and create the image that I need it to put in. And I can, you know, I can stay together. Oh, my gosh, when I tell you it has been in for me, Kyle, I, I have to see it right when I first started getting invited to some of the different you know, your conferences, or your meetings, or companies wanting to come in talking about what they can do. I’ve seen a lot of our tools that we have via data and analytics, or even you know, we are marketing cloud users, you look at the market, Einstein Salesforce brought up and it’s like, okay, first go round at some of that. And I’m like, not as insightful as I was looking for, like, matter of fact, is when helpful at 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, to our audience? When are people really engaging? 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 in 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 advancement? 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. 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 act on that. I mean, sky’s the limit, 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, Roz really knows me. I mean, to do that, it’s almost a cliche, right? We want to show up at the right time, right place with the right content, all those things. Yeah, we want to try that. But you start looking and this stuff’s achievable, you know, in so it is it does excite me, I’m excited about it. And I feel like that’s going to be the thing, everybody’s 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. And so just as we’re getting to that point, you now then have to balance that, rightfully so, with people respecting people’s boundaries. But I it maybe it’s just because I’m a marketer, I enjoy when I, whether it’s an email 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’ve 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 I want, whatever that is, that’s a good thing to me. I don’t want you spying on everything about my life, but where you can help facilitate that in a very respectful way. I just think the artificial intelligence space is going to be changed so much in every aspect. It’s not just digital marketing. It’s, and it’s definitely not just the ag industry this is going to be
Kyle 30:08
for sure. 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 probably several, 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. And, uh, 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 began to data, I think if you start talking about data, and you start talking about AI, there’s some interesting things that are happening within AI, both those spaces connected are certainly things that we’re experimenting with here, we’re using AI to help us get to data, to insights from data a lot faster, to get us help us get to impact a lot faster, so that we can start to look at what kinds of outcomes we should expect, what kinds of impact some of the things that we jump from a confident,
Rosalyn 31:33
right, that we exactly internally to be exactly, yes, continue
Kyle 31:38
to see it. And 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 like growers, retailers, etc, are looking for. You know, I I love some of the work that our analysts are doing in this space. And I like, I know that Syngenta employs a host of analysts, analytics experts in there, is there anything that is kind of sparking your interest from a Syngenta perspective? Internally, anything that your competitive set 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, as far as
Rosalyn 32:33
I can say, from an interest peeking the starting lift, 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? 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 chat GTT I was I was not prepared for being able to speak and have pictures, images. I wasn’t, I said
Kyle 33:47
prepared. Like what do you mean by that? Like talk talk about it
Rosalyn 33:50
or 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 in eating up, you probably could say, I bet that’s where this is going. I bet we’ll be able to do more over here. I bet we did not see that. That That wasn’t where I thought the next move was. And so why you see me get so excited is because it’s I start wondering now, where else is it? And where else is it? And how else is this going to real life application help me now? You know,
Kyle 34:29
it’s open. Yes. Yeah. And
Rosalyn 34:31
so I mean, I think everybody goes to the Big Bang, what’s going to be the big thing that happens? I’m now looking at even some of the smaller things how does how we interact with the Microsoft products now change? How has my kid you know, writing essays now check how our governmental policies going to have to change in rules in school, because you now have this you know, it’s it’s So, 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 will look back and be like, Wow, that we’re not just taking a step, right, we’re about to leap. And so that I don’t know if it’s any one thing that gets me excited. 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. Yeah, 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. And to your point earlier of how do you get people internally? How do you prove? When you don’t have you know, hard measurements sometimes? How do you prove that we should be working in this space? How do you prove it, you show some of the 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 that 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. And adoption is happening at a much faster rate than it has in years past. And so you can make those parallels right and get people to at least say, Yeah, let’s give a try to some of that, let’s, let’s get our toes wet in some of that. And so, it is it’s a 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, I don’t know some six, seven years ago, even you know, it’s a, it’s a little bit different. You talk about challenges, just a little different conversation, you know?
Kyle 36:57
Actually, that kind of brings me to another question that I had, like, Are you noticing kind of a sea change as far as digital adoption within Syngenta? Have you feel like it’s happening at a different clip than it was before?
Rosalyn 37:11
I do I do. I feel like you know, people are trying more I feel like I mean, I see all around that 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 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 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 a technology company. And here’s some of the same thing.
Kyle 38:09
Yeah, I don’t disagree. I want to circle back real quick because when we started the conversation, and I kind of tick this 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 it was how has you how have you seen your own career growth like ascend and blossom since you’ve been at Syngenta?
Rosalyn 38:45
So it’s really interesting because I started my career in Syngenta in procurement. And what I saw with Syngenta as they were willing to try some stuff. And so when I came into procurement, I was on the indirect side goods and services side. And I was brought in I was hired, that was what I was going to do. But immediately when I came in, 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? I didn’t quite get that before.
Kyle 39:26
And yeah, so big you are Yep.
Rosalyn 39:29
Is the big right. And so, you know, you think about it, and they told me all it’d be like 20% of your time. I’m 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 that 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, I got, I’ve got a requestors that hit every area of the business, all of our, you know, even in our plants, you know, they I get calls because the stuff when 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 are not able to come in is your tool hasn’t spit out a purchase order. 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. 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, says, I know I’ve said since I was in seventh grade, I was going to be an electrical engineer. Sorry, Mom, I was terrific. I shouldn’t have said that. I know that every summer camp you’ve put me in and all those years was so that I could do well as an electrical engineer. But I’m sorry. This isn’t it. This is I realized I did it because somebody said I couldn’t. And I wanted to show them that I could says you don’t 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, 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 and are willing to take chances 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 raw material side of the business, understand how everything comes together to make our products. But then they took a shot on me a market research, I didn’t know market research, but it’s where I want it to go. And that’s the that’s the way that I was able to really tap into this other side, the psychology side of me, right. And so, again, when you look at how my career began, 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, right? You had challenges, but she had a lot of people along the way that were helping to get you there that said, 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, back to 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 of me 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. But I’ve been at other companies where they want it to do that, but they just weren’t big enough right? To make that type of investment. So I can say that we did love about Syngenta first the other people I’ve some of my best friends now, you know, are the people I’ve worked with? I mean we’re we call each other on the weekends you know not because of work. So it’s the people has been amazing. Even through tough experiences that people are just we’ve got some good people at Syngenta but the fact that Syngenta will invest in you is is huge. 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 yeah, but now when I take a look back, I can even see within Syngenta the things that I can tell and say this is great. 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 come coming out of school to Syngenta. It’s a different experience than what I had. That’s like, I’m looking at that like, wow, you know, we’ve got some great things. They offer great vacation packages. Great. I mean, just it. We’ve come a long way. And I feel like again Syngenta. It was the right company. And I mean, well, obviously I’ve been there for years. But it’s not because I have to, right. And so when I say I didn’t choose ag I didn’t, I chose Syngenta and I didn’t once I got there, it really wasn’t even until think you guys might have had me do. It’s like an ag career, I was talking about my career on some video for something we were doing, and I was being asked, you know, that didn’t You didn’t come from a farm? And, you know, what’s your belief? You know, what’s, what’s your passion? And I mean, I’m thinking, Oh, my god, I almost been in tears trying to explain to this guy like, 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 the people in the future that we can feed the growing population, but not just them. We try to give back in our community, to the people today that don’t eat in. So yes, just that type of impact is, is major for me, you know, you can’t join any industry, and have solved those types of problems that have that widespread impact. And so when you say, No, I didn’t grow up on a farm. And I do still laugh at when I think back to the Little House on the Prairie, 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, someone has to be here to ensure that for the land you got left, we’re making the most out of that 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 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 and so that’s where, again, when we say things like, you know, we technologically may be behind? It’s like no no, no, that don’t apply. That’s 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 is not gonna go away.
Kyle 48:06
Right? No two things you just kind of alluded to one explicitly one tacitly everything you’re saying, tacitly peak speaks to purpose. You know, Ross, because it sounds like you sound like a person that has found a great and noble purpose and what it is you’re doing with Syngenta? Even as Listen, no company is perfect. Every company has its own fair share of challenges and hurdles it has to navigate. But I think you finding the purpose in what you’re doing there as Syngenta I think is not only notable, but it’s 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 count on one hand, the amount of people like brown people that were kind of working in the same room, 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 ad but in digital marketing on the whole. And whether or not you’ve seen kind of more people who look like you rise like your black woman who have kind of made their way made their bones made. They’re starting to carve out a legacy for themselves and both agriculture and digital marketing.
Rosalyn 49:31
Yep, I will. I will preface it by saying major growth but not enough, right? You want to 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. And I get to the areas and you know, I can look around at it. It’s not just not seeing any African Americans, it may not be any women, it wasn’t, you know, it’s the different rooms. It’s like, oh, well, where are we? And then when you tell me, it’s not gonna work either, like what? 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 grower, you know, that’s like less than two 2%. Of 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 different areas, different types of technology that are coming into the space that’s bringing, you know, that’s bringing that as well. But I can say when I started, even in Syngenta, you know, I was always happy to see that. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I can 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 look like me, I could tell you the names I could tell you. And now I’m sometimes walk in, you know, I’m on the phone, I’m getting into the office, and it’s like
any, 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 and things like associations like manners, that are that are there to not just help once you reach the industry, but starting with the students even in high school, in college, and helping to attract more to the ag industry, there are people that don’t know what that would that is because they did not grow up on a farm. But there’s so much opportunity here. So 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 help them alone. Right? No, you’re not alone. And so I think our industry 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, that you start seeing it at all levels. More more diversity.
Kyle 53:09
I’m with you there. I’m gonna I’m gonna leave you with this final question. And it’s kind of a coalescence of everything we spoke about. As we noted at the top agriculture and digital marketing in the 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 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 mate that may not be traditionally associated with digital marketing or digital transformation? What lessons what key lessons do you think you’ve taken from the way that you’ve been able to navigate your own journey through there?
Rosalyn 54:07
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. 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 they value, what are they looking for what? 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, say, a young lady came to me and said, Hey, this is early on in my career still in procurement, you know, we’re looking to form a mentorship group for African American women, you know? Okay. Good luck with that, you know, like, I don’t think I’m good. And it is actually two women and and I looked at both of their careers. And I instantly look to say, well, I don’t want to be you. And I don’t want to be you. But it was very short sighted. And thankfully, they didn’t take my first reaction as a Okay, well, not her, you know, they went on 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 then equipped with what I needed to understand myself, understand my strengths, understand how to navigate understand how to be a leader. And so while Syngenta offered a lot of great development opportunities, and 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. 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. So get 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, this is at every level. But then what are you deliver? Where’s where’s What’s your work ethic? What are you bringing to the table, make sure you show up at the table, you’ve done your homework, you add value, when you open your mouth, you bring that do that. And then all these other doors can start opening for you, you’ll have people wanting to help push you versus looking like, oh, well wait a minute that have you? Have you sold anything yet, have you? So rarely, you know, just a little bit of humility, you know, come in knowing your worth. You got to 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 ensure that you’re you can humbly ask the questions of people who probably know more than you or be have been in the space more than you. So when someone comes and says, Kyle, I think there’s a great mentorship opportunity for you to do don’t look at them like you listed right, you know, so that not that that would ever be your problem, Kyle, but But yes, that that would be my advice.
Kyle 58:29
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 is to not fall victim to the fallacy of expertise. You know, not assuming that you being really, really knowledgeable about something meet doesn’t mean that there was nothing left for you to learn in that space. And there’s no room.
Rosalyn 59:01
And that’s right. Well said.
Kyle 59:02
Well said yeah. Roz. Listen, this was fantastic. And I loved having you here. Your energy is absolutely infectious. Really. Thank you. You’ve been super generous with your time and this is an awesome conversation. So thank you for joining us on building brand gravity. And you guys. Of course, of course. We will catch you guys in the next episode. Thank you for joining us and we’re done.
Branding 117 Years of “Home”: Coldwell Banker CMO David Marine
Branding is a long game requiring continuous attention and reinvention, all pointed back to the core values of the business. With strategic intention, marketers can help to build something as valuable as Marvel or Nike— cultivating meaning and relevance that spans audience demographics and decades. Yet marketing executed without an understanding of a brand’s true “north star” can just as easily result in indifference, erosion of market share, or memeable attention of the wrong kind.
After spending 22-years contributing to the marketing of a brand that is 117-years old, David Marine, Chief Marketing Officer at Coldwell Banker, knows a little something about playing the long game. He joins G&S Principal Anne Green to share insights on two decades of experience at Coldwell Banker, thoughts on the concept and evolution of branding, and smart advice for those looking to build a career in marketing.
David underscores the significance of staying grounded in the essence of your message, despite shifting priorities, technologies and tactics. This is especially critical when guiding a well-known brand that is over a century old while continuing to innovate.
Listen in as David and Anne discuss:
- How to continuously advance and innovate while remaining true to core brand values
- The roles of compelling storytelling and cultural relevance in brand longevity
- Lessons from the evolution of iconic brands like Nike and Marvel – and how David translates these learnings for into selling the American Dream of home
Speaker 1 0:04
Welcome to building brand gravity. I’m angry and I’m a principal and managing director here at GNS business communications. And I am super psyched to have my friend David Marine. Join me today. He is Chief Marketing Officer of Coldwell Banker. Hi, David.
Unknown Speaker 0:19
Hello, Anne. It’s great to be with you.
Speaker 1 0:22
I’m psyched to you did this. Thank you so much. You and I met in 2007 When we first started working with a brand. And I have to say I was going to make a joke about it was a really intense time to be working in real estate. But I feel like every year is an intense time to be working in real estate. Do you relate to that state?
Speaker 2 0:41
It always is doesn’t matter if it’s a high or a low or what the market conditions are. It’s always a bit crazy in real estate, but that’s what’s made it interesting.
Speaker 1 0:50
Yeah. So tell talk a little bit about your role. Now you know how the Chief Marketing Officer functions for Coldwell Banker today because obviously it’s a title everyone knows but it’s a little different company to company.
Speaker 2 1:01
Yeah, so I oversee all the marketing efforts not just for the coal banker brand, but three other if you want to call them facets of it. So one being the core brand, the other being our global luxury program, a more tailored toward an affluent audience, and luxury homes Coldwell Banker Commercial, which is our commercial division as the name would imply. And then I also oversee marketing for Coldwell Banker Realty which is the company owned side of the franchise organization. So four different assets within the Cole banker umbrella, all with our own unique little aspects to them and a great team behind each of them as well.
Speaker 1 1:43
Yeah, and it’s interesting even how each of them function the relationship with each other obviously Coldwell Banker as the brand is that anchor between them. But even you know, negotiating that relationship between how they live in the world, how they manifest the audiences, that’s that’s an interesting portfolio of assets.
Speaker 2 1:59
It’s, it’s neat in the fact that Coldwell Banker, as a brand itself automatically commands, awareness, it’s connected to real estate, but then each facet of the business has its own elements to it, as well. So we’re tailoring more towards luxury audience with global luxury, and what are the different offerings that we have there? What’s our messaging, how’s that tweak the audience targeting obviously, very different. commercial side, it’s almost an entirely different worlds than residential real estate where on the residential side, we’re very much focused on the home the emotional aspects, commercial, it’s all about the business, the deals getting done, the connections and the relationships through those professionals, zero fluff involved. And then on the realty side, a coping Realty, the print company own side. It’s very much nuts and bolts getting down to getting deals done and how do we support those agents who have boots on the ground on a regular basis through awareness through giving them the tools in order to get things done so all with our own unique things, but it’s it’s good to have a overarching umbrella with Cole banker, and what that messaging what that brand stands for to be part of it.
Speaker 1 3:06
So when I first met you in 2007, geven, remember what was your role in title then because you have had an incredible trajectory and I like to call it growing up Coldwell Banker.
Speaker 2 3:18
That’s a good name for it. Maybe that’s a in my autobiography. It’s
Speaker 1 3:21
That’s right, your memoir, David, I’ve given you the title. So I can I can think of a subtitle for you to at some point,
Speaker 2 3:28
I will tell you now, if I ever write a memoir, you get to be the foreword on the chapter. And yeah, what was I back then probably,
Unknown Speaker 3:38
you’re on the marketing team.
Speaker 2 3:40
I was on the marketing team, and may have been overseeing some of the media assets at the time, like senior manager of consumer engagement or some fancy title like that. But yes, I’ve been with the brand for 22 years, they joined in 2002 as the electronic product manager, and have held every pretty much every role within the marketing department since then, and over time, made my way through the organization to now be in charge of all the marketing.
Speaker 1 4:09
How’s that? I mean, it seems obvious how it would help it from your perspective, what have you gained? Or what did you learn by playing so many different roles as you rose up to the organization and ultimately had a chance to shape it the way you wanted to shape it?
Speaker 2 4:24
Yeah, what was weird is when I was younger, I was very interested in advertising at an early age like 910 years old, I would memorize commercials there jingles on stuff. I almost obsessive about it. And I told my parents at an early age that I wanted to be in advertising someday. I don’t like you know, monitor set your goals a little bit higher or don’t you want to be something more than that? It’s like no, I want to make TV commercials when I grow up. And I majored in marketing in college and one of those rare people who went to college four years, graduated with what they started off in and real I had this mindset that this is what I wanted to do someday. But what I didn’t realize was that we don’t just get to make television commercials and massive campaigns right out of school, like you don’t graduate, they’re like, hey, here you go. Coke wants this by next Friday. No, it was this journey. And so then there’s the like, Hey, I just need to get a job, I want to be in this field of marketing, let me get started there, and started off with a small agency. And then those eventually came to Coldwell and just found different facets of the marketing business that I probably as even as a college kid didn’t even realize existed, like product development, and the digital side of things was just sort of coming into fruition at that point in time. And so with this end goal of wanting to be in advertising and eventually wanting to be a CMO, someday, I saw these different areas of the marketing spectrum that I knew I needed to get better at. So while I started in the product development side, I remember early on maybe two years in with Coldwell that someone from the digital team left, and they went to get another job somewhere else. And I was like, You know what, I don’t really have any of that experience. At this scale with a brand, I think I need to be better than that. I think that’s something I need to go for. And at the time, the role that was open was a lower entitle than my current role. But I went into my boss’s office one day and said, Listen, I’d really love to get some more exposure on the digital side of things, I’m willing to take a demotion in title, if I can fill that role and be able to get that experience. And so one of the great things about coal banker has kept me here for all these years is they continue to open doors for people to grow. And a couple of days later, my boss calls me and he says, no, no demotion and title. We’re gonna move you over there, because you’re interested in this. And so then throughout my career, I found these different areas and pockets of like, oh, well, I need to get better in buying media side of things before I can get into the creative side of things need to understand that world? So how do I get exposed to that, and just I’ve been very fortunate through my career, that there have been doors that have been opened, I’ve had the right people in place to help me along the way to kind of round out that holistic marketing view of things that is really I think, helped me in my current role being CMO.
Speaker 1 7:17
I was laughing at the value judgment implicit in what your parents were saying, like, don’t go into advertising, you can aim higher. No, I mean, that’s, that’s just fundamentally true. Yeah, they’re like, really seriously. I mean, it’s, it’s actually it’s such an exciting area, but what you just said, and that’s what I love, talking to people I’ve known for a while like this, I never knew that story about you sort of advocating, say, Look, I’ll take a demotion, if I can go over here. And then what an incredible outcome, which is kind of what knowing the organization and knowing you, I’m not surprised to hear, they’re like, Hey, I love this initiative. Let’s just bring you over laterally, which is a fantastic response to somebody who truly wants to learn and grow.
Speaker 2 8:02
Yeah, and I’ve been fortunate to talk to some college, universities in their business schools, about career growth and stuff. And I love relaying that story, not for the idea of looking at what I did, yeah, but the idea of taking initiative and taking control of your own career, this is something you want, put yourself out there and go do it. Don’t wait for it to be handed to you. Another example is, I knew that I wanted to obviously be in charge of advertising at some point. But there was someone who was already in that role when I was with the company. But I felt like hey, maybe peripherally, I can get some exposure. So on my own, I would start reading articles, I would subscribe to media post, even though I was on the digital side of things at the time, and just start asking questions with the person who’s in charge bit with the SVP of marketing at the time, and showing that interest. And then when there was like, Hey, you guys are working on this campaign, maybe I can be involved with it, and in my own role, from a digital aspect, and then it can get me that exposure. But showing that genuine interest and going above and beyond like this isn’t really my job, but I’m expressing interest in in it, I think is what has opened a lot of doors for me, just being willing to have curiosity and put yourself out there. And it also helps to have the right people ahead of you. And that’s been one thing that coal banker has in spades is there leadership, throughout my 20 years career continues to be people that not only want to do a good job not only want to have success, but also care about the people and making sure that the right opportunities are given to them.
Speaker 1 9:43
Now that’s so powerful, and it just brings that goodwill but also even if people move on, that network is still out there in the world and can come back and I do think to what you’re reminding me of, you know, the market and communications landscape, whether it’s advertising I email journeys, you know, digital stakeholder relationships. It’s very integrated. It’s really overlapping. And that idea of cross training, how do you make sure and self education to? Because when I think about you starting in 2002, me meeting you in 2007, TypePad, and WordPress, the idea of writing to the web instantly. That was like 2003 2004, when it was becoming popularized. And people forget, you know, that that was the day is I believe that it was still often being called New Media. You know, what? Oh, no. Yeah, exactly. Web one than web two. So I think this idea of opening the lens on what these rules are, and how do you engage with them is really, really powerful. That leads me to a question actually another sort of evolution. What does the word brand mean to you today versus what brands? I mean, that’s such a catch all term, there’s so much encoded in it. And yet it also has formal definition. So what do you see it as today? And how has that evolved for you over time?
Speaker 2 11:04
Yeah, brand, probably early in my career was, hey, that’s something a multinational corporation and the fortune 500 is, it’s this huge, massive entity that immediately commands universal acceptance and recognition. And that I think, with the changes in the digital landscape, from everything from social and new media and beyond, has completely changed, and that it’s no longer available just to those who can fund a television campaign. Brand today is basically any person or organization, whether large or small, that represents something. And they’re the ones we’re trying to determine what they represent, while the consumer is also coming to that same conclusion. And the change in branding as a whole, from being a sophisticated organization to basically an individual, is been one of the biggest changes I’ve seen. And you just have to look at like the NBA for an example. For the NBA was a brand itself, it was the Chicago Bulls, the New York Knicks. And Michael Jordan was was one like, that’s those were the big brands. Now it’s you’ve got so many players who are taking control of their own brand, and making it into so they’re monetizing it you see with the NFL with college athletes today, this idea of branding and controlling your message has now become so critical to everybody. And I think even for the average business person today, what is your brand stands for when you’re going into an interview? What is it telling? What is your resume saying? What are you as a person saying what is your work product representing and what you want that to be? It’s now up to the receiver of that information to say like, Yeah, I agree with that or not. And it’s because for, for Cole banker as a whole or for David Marina as an individual.
Speaker 1 13:05
Yeah, it’s such a two way street, right, as you said that the entity whether it’s a person or an organization has to figure out what to we I stand for? How am I going to manifest that in the world through every touchpoint. But then the receivers on the other side have to decide how it lands for them to. And, you know, this whole time period we’re talking about the feedback loop was so much more, so many more levels of feedback and engagement and coming at us positives, negatives, etc, that that understanding of that brand personality and where it’s rooted, is constantly pushed, has to be constantly re established, constantly revisited. I mean, let’s you’re working for a brand. That’s what 117 years old now are we did that? Yeah. 1906. That’s a long heritage. And it’s and it’s interesting, too, because what a brand means in each decade for a brand that’s over 100 years old means something different. How do you how do you think about Coldwell Banker relative to that incredible arc of history? And how is it that you honor the deep roots which are something that are so precious like so few companies have that versus making it fresh and real and relevant today?
Speaker 2 14:19
Yeah, what is what I’ve very fortunate in having as in being charge of the Coldwell Banker brand as a whole is it has represented something for those 117 years it hasn’t really changed from its core. So there’s some brands that hey, did you know they started as they used to make jugs and now they make headphones right? For Cole banker, it’s always been about real estate and this idea of doing what is best for the customer. And I talked about our founding story all the time. And it’s it’s basically is a script for a film, where it’s a college dorm About comes back home, finds the city in total disarray after the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco and decides to start a real estate business that puts the consumer first because he saw shady real estate deals but going on from the competitors like that’s not real, that’s a made up made for TV movie or something. Nobody does that. But that’s that’s literally what happened with the guy, Cobra Coldwell 20, something years old started this company 117 years later, they still exist. And this idea of home, and the financial and emotional aspects of it has been something that’s been core for the better part of that 117 years as well. And so while the idea and the shape and the cost and value of home is different over time, the emotional value of it hasn’t, it’s still this place that we want to call our own, where memories are made, it’s literally the only investment that you can hang things on, and you can physically enjoy. So that gives a very wide spectrum for a marketer to be able to play with, and continue to develop over time and how home changes and what it means today versus 20 years ago, what it meant during the pandemic, and even greater value of it as a place of safety and refuge, then then it would be in a different time, time that we’ve existed. So having that at its core, really makes the brands stand the test of time. And we’re able to just change the volume of it, and the messaging of it slightly. But so keep to the core of who we are as a brand.
Speaker 1 16:36
Yeah, it’s almost like in music, where’s that resonance, vibrating at what frequency is vibrating, what note on the scale, but the scale is still that core sense of being rooted in home. And it is interesting to think about, you know, I’ve worked with brands that are brand new, you know, startups many of them since I started my career in the early 90s. And other brands like Coldwell Banker or carrier or others that are 100 some years old Otis elevators, Schindler, you know, wonderful brands that have huge, huge history. I think that it makes me wonder whether having that history, you can really, it can maybe be an anchor for some people in a bad way, like pull you down. But when you allow it to root you in a set of values and really re interrogate those values, decade to decade, year to year context to context, it gives you a really rich palette to work from, you know, I think,
Speaker 2 17:30
oh, it certainly does. And, again, going back to we’re not just selling a shoe, something that’s more than that gives you a greater purpose behind your brand. And it may sound lofty and froofy marketing guy talking about it, but it’s a higher calling, if you will, like our workforce of agents, they’re not selling an object, they’re selling the American dream. And the idea of homeownership is something that while there’s headlines about, hey, no one wants to own a home anymore. And this is the rental economy. And I’ve heard all that. Yet 700,000 homes were bought or sold in the past 12 to 16 months. So it’s still something that goes on every day, and people are moving for emotional reasons as well. It’s not just because like, hey, home prices are up. So I’m going to sell and therefore I’m going to bank on this. It’s no I want someplace that is going to be closer to where family is or I want a better place for my family. And what I love is when you big sports guys, when you read about these athletes who come from crazy backgrounds and hard times, and then they they get into the NBA or major league baseball, and then what’s the first thing they want to buy? I know for their mom, that’s right. And because that’s not just like, Hey, Mom, it’s an amazing investment. It’s going to increase over time. It’s like no, this is a place that I want to be a safety for you a refuge, I want to I want to put it to be a place that I can go to. And we can spend time and enjoy it together. And to me like that speaks to the value of what the Coldwell Banker brand really stands for.
Speaker 1 19:09
It’s an interesting thing to do branding in this environment, especially the real estate sector, because it is such a core economic indicator. It’s always in the news up down sideways. There’s always speculation about whether it’s new home starts or existing home sales. It’s very tied to other macroeconomic indicators like interest rates, the movements of the Fed move real estate. But the other thing about shepherding a brand through the environment and doing all of the kinds of marketing advertising etc, that a brand like this does. It’s a highly multi stakeholder environment. And it’s very much of that B to B to C. You have your broker owners the companies out there who franchise you have the the staff that works at the company owned locations you have the agents themselves who have a layer relationship. They’re part of the brands, but they also can do what they want. They’re very independent as well. And then you have buyers and sellers, how have you grappled with that kind of dynamic sort of Venn diagram of a stakeholder ecosystem over the years? Because everybody needs to see and hear themselves in the messages that you’re sharing?
Speaker 2 20:20
Yeah, sometimes I think it would be Wow, it must be much simpler to be mountain to 15 year old boys, this is what I need to target. X Games. Simple. Just slap that logo on stuff, get it out there in front of them and be good scape, what you’re right. Not only do we have the buyers and sellers, which is kind of like the hay, because those are the people who are dealing with houses, but we have our network of 100,000 agents across the globe. And then we have our 3500 plus offices and companies that are these franchisees. So there’s this multi layer audience. And anytime I go into a marketing workshop, or with the Association of national advertisers, or you’re filling out a creative brief, it’s like, who’s your target audience like, well, here’s the message we need for this audience. But here’s how we need to approach it for another. And it’s a challenge. But it also what makes it interesting. And so one of the approaches that I’ve tried to take was, whatever messaging we are providing to the end consumer, the buyer or the seller, I want it to be so compelling, that our network of agents and brokers look at it and say, I can’t help but use that because I know that this will work. And sometimes we hit homeruns, sometimes we’re swinging a miss on that. But that’s the idea of, hey, if we can talk to them directly, the buyer or seller, and our brokers and our agents across the globe are saying I want to use that messaging to that is the most powerful marketing, that’s they’re taking national messaging, allowing them to use a hyperlocal level to make those connections. And it just acts as an echo chamber as well, to be able to be for other people to be able to hear that same messaging time and time again.
Speaker 1 22:06
Yeah, and you’re reminding me of one thing I was thinking about earlier, which is there, there is the message or messages, and then there are all the channels, and I think sometimes, especially in the kind of environment, the b2b side of it, there’s a focus on rightly so well, what are the tools? And then the tech or the channels? And what’s the what, what’s the thing you’re giving us? But even deeper than that, is the message that’s going to resonate? What are those messages? What’s the values of the brand? What is the ultimate purpose? It’s serving for those end users? Who are the buyers and sellers? How do you help? The constituencies that you’re serving sort of balanced between the centrality of that message and getting it right, and also helping them use it and feel it like down to their bones and how it can be expressed? Versus here’s the channels you can put it through? Does that make sense?
Speaker 2 23:01
Yeah, I think goes back to the idea of the power of a good story. And then how is that story being relayed over time? So it’s one thing if I tell it to you, but it’s so much greater if I tell you, and then you tell five others about it. And so that’s the approach with our her constituents, is giving them the ability to tell that story of whatever it is, and maybe about a specific product or maybe about a specific campaign we’re rolling out or could be even about what is going on in the luxury space? equipping them with not the verbatim. Here’s what you’re going to recite. But the idea of Yes, I understand that we are trying to attract sellers, and to increase the listing inventory in our market. And I can do that by talking about the power of of dreaming today, which is one of our current campaigns. It’s out there and saying like, well, if you could live anywhere, where would it be? And 99% of the time when you ask someone that they don’t save the place where they’re currently living? That is probably true. Yes. So it’s some someplace extravagant, sometimes it’s Oh, eventually, maybe
Speaker 1 24:05
it’s returning to an earlier home, it could be exactly their roots, which is so powerful.
Speaker 2 24:10
So putting that in their minds is Oh, okay. Now I understand why we’re doing this and I can connect with the fact that this is true. So now how am I going to express that locally as an agent or a local Coldwell Banker franchisee? Okay, now, here are the tools in which you can do that, whether it be custom social media campaigns or videos or a tool like our move meter, or CVS MC gives them the ability to then take that talk track and that concept that they get behind and then activate it at a local level.
Speaker 1 24:44
Well, I think this is an important conversation too, because there’s wheat and there’s chaff or cart and horse, right. And sometimes it can be hard, like in a very dynamic environment that we’ve been in, especially from a digital perspective, different platforms. new ones launching, you know, obviously there is a change from Twitter to x. Now there’s threads now there’s that whole battle royale going on. But I think that in the Marcomms, landscape advertising, marketing, communications, branding, there is an anxiety stay on top of that technology, the platforming the evolution of the space, but how you stay rooted in the why of it, and the who have it, and the what is going to move the needle not you know what I mean, don’t get caught up in the tools but and forget the core of what you’re actually trying to communicate.
Speaker 2 25:33
Yeah, this is a bizarre example. But we talk about the the best stories that are out there that can stand the test of time. So there have been 100 iterations of Superman. Yeah, from black and white cartoons, comic books, Smallville, Man of Steel, Adventures of Lois and Clark, it’s all out there. And they all have their different iterations of it, some work, some don’t. But the core of that story is still the same. It’s about this alien who comes to earth, makes his home here, wants to save the world falls in love with this with Lois Lane. And the different aspects of that can change over time. But the core of it about truth, justice, the American way, helping out trying to find success in this world by helping others, that’s always been the same throughout throughout it. So it doesn’t matter if the vehicle of that story has changed over time. And even the characters playing that has changed, and they look differently now. But at its core, it’s still the same story. And it always works. So finding a way as a marketer to say, hey, you know, this core is what we stand for, and what we want to do and what we want to communicate. And now let’s think about what are the different ways that we can compel people to engage with that story. That’s really powerful. And the hard part is not a lot of brands today, and a lot of not a lot of marketers have that core story that will stand the test of time, it’s very much trying to grab things at a specific moment in time, and that’s fine. But realizing that, hey, you know, this is gonna work for this point in time, and then we’re gonna have to come up with something else later on. That’s a realization you have to come to. But when you can find something that you know, stands the test of time, and truly, it’s following the methodology of a great story, then it doesn’t matter. When you’re trying to express it, you’re able to adjust it to the time at hand.
Speaker 1 27:26
Yeah, I appreciate the kind of culture jacking news jacking brand jacking nimbleness where you know, somebody comes out with that amazing tweet or facebook post right in the moment that’s so pithy. But you’re kind of zooming out to the bigger picture. I think the Superman one you and I are both comic book people way back is super relevant Oh, Superman, because it shows that those brands, the comic brands and Marvel, but DC, I give them a lot of credit to. They have, by their nature, the comic books over the decades, there’s a reboot of the stories that’s built into it. There’s always a reinvention. And yet, how do they play with those core values? I think that’s a really interesting way of looking at it. And frankly, a lot of organizations today, and I’ve been an organizational leader for a long time. One of the pressures on a lot of leaders today, is the fact that there is so much feedback now. And that’s that two way street, which I really embrace. It’s much I like it much better than the early days of command and control that I encountered when I first came into the industry, which like the early 90s, I was joke was basically the late 70s, it was still the same. But today, that feedback loop, yeah, that feedback loop can be tough, because not everybody’s going to feel the same about the values of the brand. Not everyone’s going to feel the same about the partnerships you do. The way in which you may speak up on certain things. It’s these are big audiences. Right. And so one thing I see a lot of executives struggling with and we even as counselors, we have to think about this, because there’s no right out to answer sometimes, which is how would you pull back and reroute yourself in the values of the brand and what that means not just for external audiences, but also your own employees and what you stand for, at times where there may be different voices that are saying I don’t like this or I don’t like you mean, is that? How do you think about that? Because you and I have worked through some of those issues in the past.
Speaker 2 29:21
Yes, the feedback loop. Here’s the great thing, being in marketing is that every person is marketing expert. Yeah, I live with marketing experts who are quick to tell me what is good and what isn’t. So the feedback loop is universal. The trick is listening to the right feedback, which is true in anything, regardless of marketing, your own advice given to you whether you’re from a career for parents, marriage, whatever, there’s always that advice. The key is picking the right stuff to listen to. And so not worrying about what everyone is saying But who are the people that you most Want to hear from what are they saying? And how do you adjust to that? Let’s jump back to the comic book example real quick because we brought Marvel and DC. I think that is an example within DC Universe. So like, for example, my boys and I were were rewatching Smallville, I remember that’s the show, wow. Yes, my wife and I were first married, like, we watched that, however many seasons or whatever. And so now this summer as a family where it’s like, what’s the safe show you can watch these days, it’s very hard to find one, from an age group from a fifth grader to a sophomore in college. So we started that, and everybody enjoys it. And then the like storyline, like why is that still compelling today? Well, the storyline is good. It develops the characters. It’s interesting. And at the core, the message still resonates. So my 10 year old asked me, I like Smallville, but why do all the DC movies stick? Why are they good? Good. Question. Yeah. And the reason is, is because I think it and I can’t speak for DC. But my assumption would be that they thought, well, people love these characters, so we’re just going to throw them in a movie, and people will eat it up, when instead of focusing on developing that storyline for today, to attract that audience versus like, Hey, we’re just gonna come out with Aquaman is gonna have an amazing special effects, people are gonna go see it, and we’ll rake in the money. On the flip side, Marvel took the time of laying out all these different phases. And here’s how we’re gonna develop the story. And five, 710 years from now, it’s going to culminate in this invention, Avengers Infinity War and end game. And that’s going to be a capstone on this, and then we’ll be able to reset again, it’s a different approach two different approaches, both with this basically the same assets at hand, great stories, great character is known, but approached differently. One is seen immense success from it, and one is just trying to now reboot yet again, with DC bringing on James Gunn, to kind of run their storyline.
Speaker 1 32:03
That’s such a powerful example. And it blows my mind to think about, and there are some, you know, individuals and visionaries within that. But that ability of Marvel to hold to that arc for Marvel to say we have, we’re going to create a long arc of story. And we’re going to have to have wins along the way. And they did obviously have some big wins. And there’s some reasons in terms of the talent they brought into me we can, I’m sure they owe a giant debt to Robert Downey Jr. But it still, it still takes a lot. And I think it’s a metaphor for the kinds of dedication and will and also courage, but also foresight that one has to have in shepherding a brand over the long haul. And I think your role is so interesting, David, because we’ve all you know, we all read the stats and adage over the years. And you know, the AMA is my former client, very friends with the folks over there. And, you know, we know how short 10 years can be for marketers in different organizations. And now, you’ve been cmo for a certain amount of time, but your trajectory goes much farther back. So just the ability for you to have thought for so long about this brand, have been a part of how it has operationally evolved me it’s not just the external it’s operationally how it works. Like that’s, that’s a pretty rare thing. And the Marvel thing though, reminds me of another question I had for you because you are a very culturally savvy guy, like you said into sports and Marvel Entertainment and, and just really literate on that front. And we are seeing the side for Marvel’s some just absolutely powerhouse brand moves this year. You mentioned Jordan, so the movie air and the kind of reigniting of the Air Jordan origin story and where the brand sat. And then of course, there is the B word Barbie, which has been also, by the way reached a billion. So there’s another be so Greta Gerwig. Now the biggest, you know, female selling director ever, but what is your observation about sort of where brands play in the cultural conversation? The relevance that they can have when they hit it, right. And it really resonates to use that earlier metaphor versus when it rings false. What are some of your observations and and how do you judge that when you’re making deals, that puts your brands out in the cultural conversation?
Speaker 2 34:27
Yeah, brands today. can tread lightly in knowing that you are either going to create a brand that’s going to be amazingly compelling and talked about through books and television series and movies, or warning you’re going to be a brand that’s going to be talked about in movies, television and stories? Depending upon where you end up that double edged sword? Oh, think of we work. So Mike, one of the best series I’ve watched on Apple TV was Jared Leto just running around the office yelling masa. That’s part of the we crashed to the story. Yeah, so real, real story, a highly compelling and disruptive brand that just kind of exploded, or self imploded, I should say, versus Nike, and you’re talking about air, which is likely going to be up for some Academy Awards, I would expect just a fantastic story about a brand that’s been around for a while everybody’s kind of known that story. But putting it all together with some powerhouse talent behind it, too. It also puts it in a new light. And as a father of four boys, I can tell you right now that they’re my 15 year old and 12 year old, both wanted Air Jordans as a basketball shoes. And those were the shoes that I wanted 25 years ago when I was in high school in junior high, and to be able to say, like, a guy who hasn’t played, you know, 25 years or so is compelling, in that that’s a brand that stands the test of time. And so that’s one that I personally enjoy near and dear to my heart. But as a marketer, you’re marveled at the way that they’re able to say, it was around a guy, one player, Michael Jordan, who he was he’s the greatest player ever, and basketball in my opinion. But when he’s no longer playing, how do you get 12 and 13 year olds to still be engaged with that identity. And they’ve done a good job of not only from making the shoes appealing and a fashion icon, but then also finding a way to like, okay, whether it’s Jason Tatum or Luca Don church, they’re going to be able to find that next generation of talent to also wear that brands. It doesn’t hurt that every university of Michigan team also has the emblem have their jerseys, engaging the youth of today.
Speaker 1 36:53
Well, it’s a long game, you know, it has to be kit continually reinvented. And it does require that attention to the core values of that brands and also the core values that Nike has shown about being aligned with athletes, and really raising them up celebrating the effort behind it, as well as the amazing prowess, you know, on the field or on the court. Last time I saw you, I did show you a picture of my brand new Air Jordans, high tops, so even even the 52 year old women are also interested in this brand. Now, it took a long time. It’s hilarious. So but it was one of those things where I’m like, I’ve always wanted to want a pair of those, I think I’ll go get a
Speaker 2 37:33
pair. It is it is a moment when you can go out like you know what, I need a pair a new pair of Jordans. That to me is one of my wife jokes with the boys all the time, with like, well choose the one thing that Daddy will spend money on a new pair,
Speaker 1 37:49
get him get it? Well, you know, it’s something he supports. Well, in the Barbie thing was interesting to me. Have you seen the movie?
Speaker 2 37:57
I have not. Although my wife has said we need to go at some point in time. I say that it’s scheduled. Yeah, I would
Speaker 1 38:04
say that it works on many levels. And as a marketer, you definitely need to go and the reason is, is that the portrayal of Mattel and I’ve been in communications, as you know, for 30 years, and I’ve advised a lot of brands and I understand what feels comfortable or what does not feel comfortable for different companies based on you know, where they’re putting themselves out there. And we do know that brands that authentically and that’s a very charged word, but brands that authentically are able to embrace either humor, or not being so serious or poking fun at themselves, or looking clearly at the hard issues and their history. That’s really powerful. And I think what’s interesting about Mattel and we’ll have to talk about this not on this podcast, but after you’ve seen it is is that there’s so much tongue in cheek but there’s also serious critique of what Barbie has meant in society as well as good stuff, and a lot of silliness and a lot of madcap insanity, that the Mattel leadership and advertising post must have like swallowed hard and been like, Oh my God, but they went for it. And it was really amazing when you can see a brand that is both humble enough and has sense of humor enough like a person to be able to kind of be like, yeah, we’re complicated, too. Does that make sense with you? I mean, it’s it’s really hard to modulate along those lines.
Speaker 2 39:26
Oh, it does. I’ve been impressed. One with the sheer volume of Barbie partnerships. Yeah, different ways they’ve found to like make connections within the film. But also Barbie as a whole as a brand on its own is incredible. That has stood the test of time. Yes, the thing about 1950s doll that was created and it’s still being bought today and now a billion dollar feature film around it. That’s that’s something in and of itself to talk about, hey, this is something that’s still resonates with people today in a number of different ways. And I bet there’s different people who react negatively to Barbie. But it doesn’t matter because they’ve still been able to showcase like, hey, there’s noise that these people don’t like us. But guess what? We’re still this entity. And we’ve been able to last for 50 plus years. And now, I’ve been impressed with the film. There’s a lot of hype behind it initially. And there was a question of like, Well, is it really going to pan out? A lot of pink? Are we ready for that? I’m not sure. But clearly, the evidence is in that the artists are coming out and it’s become a cultural moment, which is one thing that as a brand, you would want to have in a positive way, and they’ve certainly done
Speaker 1 40:46
that. Yeah, lightning in a bottle. Once you see it, you can see if you agree with me that Ryan Gosling deserves a new category of Academy Award for fully and completely committing. So just put a pin in that in your mind. So it’s truly amazing. So as we wrap up today, what are you know, this is called building brand gravity. And that’s very intentional. It’s sort of the idea of the weight and the poll of brands. What brands have you in their orbit right now? I mean, I know you so I know some of the brands you’ve loved for a long time. But what are the ones that are top of mind for you right now.
Speaker 2 41:20
We’ve already touched on Air Jordan are still very much in my world, a brand looking at maybe the non traditional big brands that have really just entered my realm in the last five or even 10 years one is Ben, dude, perfect. Do you know who Dude Perfect is?
Unknown Speaker 41:39
No,
Speaker 2 41:40
you do not. So they are like the number two most subscribed YouTube channel. Like worlds, they put out a video and in 20 minutes, it’s got like 30 million views. For guys, podcast, five guys who started filming trick shots like in their backyard, and have overtime become this phenomenon. So again, having four boys interested in sports,
Speaker 1 42:06
you can see my demographic at home is different than us. But I like to be educated. Thank you.
Speaker 2 42:11
But what’s great about them is they’ve stuck to they know who they are. And they’re not afraid like in the poke fun of themselves in that, like, how many shots can we possibly do? So they found ways to expand and now they posted their own little like, many talk show called overtime, which is the 20 minute YouTube segment. And they do different things. They’ve created fake characters that they each play, and they create not only video series, but now they’ve expanded into apparel. And they’ve got, they’ve got a show that’s touring around in there selling out football stadiums or basketball stadiums and whatever. Wow, you’re like, these are five guys who just started throwing basketballs through hoops off their roof. But it’s really interesting to see how, like, they can’t possibly be lasting this long. And they even talk about how they were going to break up a couple of years ago or whatever. And it just found new ways to reinvent themselves. So that’s that’s one that’s definitely in my orbit and, and compelling. The other on the opposite side is that Trump is a Meadowlark media. So I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there’s a lot of people who are leaving ESPN news. Yes, absolutely. And a lot of changes, obviously, in the journalism spectrum. Like, that’s a whole nother realm. And we could spend hours on that podcast in and of itself, that’s for sure. Exactly. So I’m a big fan of Dan Leba. tarde and Strogatz, who did a show on ESPN radio and on ESPN for a number of years. And fortunate enough to happen that a coal banker Jim blue event in Miami when you’re interview him, I just really enjoyed the kind of irreverent style they they love to joke around. They don’t treat sports seriously. And they decided to leave ESPN about two years ago, a year and a half ago. And they decided like, we want to ensure that the people that we know and love who have worked on our show are going to have a place and going to be employed. What sparked it is one of their like assistant producers got fired. For me. It’s been during one of these cutbacks, and the unlimited said I will pay for his salary out of my own pocket if you let him continue to work here. And through that all they just decided we’re going to leave. And so being able to see like, wow, that is saying this is what’s important to us. And we want to help these creative minds who we believe in succeed. So they started their own media company mental art via podcast series, YouTube channels, and all that kind of stuff. And it’s a lot of people from ESPN, Pablo Toure, who was the host of ESPN daily podcast for a number of years has now joined them as well. So they’re starting to see that anti establishment media, if you will, trying to find their own footing and I find that really compelling just to see where that creativity And what restrictions might have been on them being part of ESPN, and how that expands out into being able to do something on their own.
Speaker 1 45:08
I love that example. Because there can be such pessimism about new media launches in that way. And, you know, we’ve seen some come and go in the past 10 years. And there, there have been a lot of sad and hard stories about properties that had a lot of promise. Very journalist driven not making it. But the other side is there’s still the ability to launch new things like this, and to try new things. And I think it’s really good to highlight like the optimistic view of, let’s keep that energy going. And it kind of goes back to that earlier piece about what’s really at the heart of your brands, within even a bigger brands, and how do you bring that to life? And maybe sometimes it’s your own thing?
Speaker 2 45:50
Yeah, sometimes it has to be and you need to step out there and take a chance. It’s something that you truly believe in as well as a marketer. To that point, one of the best pieces of advice that I got when I was talking to people about becoming CMO is they said, always do something that makes you feel slightly uncomfortable, not totally uncomfortable. That’s not a good place to be but slightly uncomfortable. That’s when you know, you’re continuing to push things. That’s where you explore new territories and that’s where you learn. So I think that’s, that’s very true here. Well, that
Speaker 1 46:23
is an awesome place to end David Murray and CMO of Coldwell Banker real estate. It’s been so awesome having you here today. Thank you again, and this is Anne green with building brand gravity. Thanks for joining us. My pleasure.
Meet the Hosts
Anne Green
Anne brings 30 years of experience in integrated marketing communications to her role as CEO of G&S. She is responsible for ensuring excellence across all areas of agency performance and operations. Anne counsels clients across a wide range of sectors including healthcare, professional services and financial services, and is an accomplished media trainer and speaking coach.
Steve Halsey
In his role as Chief Growth Officer at G&S Business Communications, Steve has spent more than 25 years spearheading the development of the agency’s proprietary messaging and brand strategy services, as well as helping lead the creation and build-out of G&S’ digital, social and insights teams. Steve’s teams have won multiple top national and international awards for corporate and product branding.
Kyle Turner
As Digital Growth Director at G&S Business Communications, Kyle Turner has quickly become a pivotal figure in shaping the agency’s digital strategy and innovation trajectory. He has steered the agency toward new heights in analytics and integrated marcomms. His previous roles include Director of Digital Omnichannel Strategy and Sr. Director of Digital Strategy at United Entertainment Group, where he excelled in media strategy and influencer marketing.