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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Chief: Balancing Brand and Inclusivity in Leadership
Communities are at the heart of success — building the right one can fuel your business, but when community is lacking, your organization will feel its absence.
According to Lindsay Kaplan, Co-founder Chief, there are two wildly different types of communities: one made of brand advocates and followers, and another more formally official where individuals opt-in to participate. With the latter, an organization can soar, building an incredibly powerful brand. But communities aren’t always intuitive. Building them takes intentionality, inclusive leadership and active investment.
Join us as we discuss:
- How to actively invest in inclusivity and belonging to avoid lip service, build relationships and champion diversity
- The vital role of internal champions in driving DEI initiatives
- Staying true with a mission-driven focus for genuine impact and organic growth
00:00:06 Speaker 1
You are listening to building brand gravity, attracting people into your orbit. GNS Business Communications podcast.
00:00:15 Speaker 1
This is a.
00:00:15 Speaker 1
Show for communications pros across industries looking to.
00:00:19 Speaker 1
Gain an insight.
00:00:20 Speaker 1
You into industry influence, you’re about to hear a conversation with leading industry professionals talking about the importance of building business impact through sound brand strategy. Let’s get into the show.
00:00:36 Speaker 3
Welcome to building brand gravity. I’m Kyle Turner, digital growth and analytics director here at GNS Business Communications.
00:00:44 Speaker 3
And I’m actually really excited to welcome here a personal friend of mine and also the co-founder and Chief brand officer of the Chief executive network, Lindsey Kaplan. How you doing, Lindsey?
00:00:56 Speaker 2
Hey, Kyle. Thank you so much for inviting me here today.
00:01:00 Speaker 3
It was a pleasure. I really wanted to talk to you about community building.
00:01:07 Speaker 3
And honestly, the the herd of the challenges and successes that are kind of inherent with building a community of that is an ally for a group while still being inclusive to a much broader cohort. You and I have known each other for 20 years. So you know first and foremost is just kind of.
00:01:27 Speaker 3
Crazy to see like how much you’ve done when it comes to building communities in your career. I mean, you were like employee, what number four at Casper. So you like?
00:01:36 Speaker 2
I was employee number one at Casper.
00:01:40 Speaker 3
Which is nuts to me, you know? So you you actually have quite a bit of experience building a community, whether it be for a brand or you know for for allyship. So I guess my first question to you is really why did building an executive community appeal to?
00:01:58 Speaker 2
Well, I I actually I think it’s so interesting that you mentioned Casper, just to go back a step because we talked a lot about community in past jobs. I’ve had running brand running, you know or organic marketing community always comes up whether it’s the community of your followers.
00:02:17 Speaker 2
Community of your brand advocates.
00:02:19 Speaker 2
So there’s there’s almost like little C community.
00:02:22 Speaker 2
And then there’s big.
00:02:23 Speaker 2
C like I am opting in formally officially to a A community like I’m paying money, I’m putting it on my, you know, I have a badge and everything and they’re they’re wildly different beasts. And if you can channel that, that big community.
00:02:39 Speaker 2
To behind a powerful brand that’s like a 2 + 2 = 20 situation, so I knew.
00:02:48 Speaker 2
When I started chief that I wanted to both build a business that was, you know, based around a community. But I also wanted to build a really powerful brand as well and and managing those two has been a really interesting parallel because they are, they’re they take very different.
00:03:08 Speaker 2
They have different needs, different.
00:03:09 Speaker 2
Months, and they’re sometimes in conflict. So to go back to your original question of why I started, chief and why I wanted to build this executive network for women, it came from a super personal place. As you mentioned. I was at Casper. I had been the first employee. There was a lot of guys at Casper and they were good guys, progressive guys.
00:03:30 Speaker 2
But when you’re a VP and you are surrounded by mostly dudes, you know the expression. It’s lonely at the top. Well, it gets a lot lonelier. Faster when you’re a woman. And so all of a sudden, I felt this pressure to both be really good at my job, to be making great executive.
00:03:48 Speaker 2
Regions all of my you know, all the work mattered more than ever, but I also had this pressure that that I loved, but I.
00:03:59
Felt like I.
00:04:00 Speaker 2
Was representing a lot of women who worked at Casper. That I was, you know, going out for those lunches and asked to be a mentor. And speaking on panels about being a woman and.
00:04:13 Speaker 2
And so managing both that executive pressure plus this idea of being a model woman in business, I felt really lonely. And I felt like I wanted to be around other women who are managing those same issues and needing something beyond the networks that I saw. I saw a lot of incredible.
00:04:32 Speaker 2
Networks for just for women in general, which were great. But then I kind of became the de facto mentor there. I found really great networks for women in marketing, but I kind of also felt like I’m networking with my competitors who were maybe, you know, looking for the same jobs and partnerships and and it didn’t feel like I could be.
00:04:54 Speaker 2
Fully vulnerable around those people and so.
00:04:57 Speaker 2
This concept of building a network specifically for executives felt really important for people who again had all that stress and pressure and no outlet and no community where they could show up and be their.
00:05:11 Speaker 2
Real, authentic selves.
00:05:13 Speaker 3
I love everything you said there. I think kind of turning that kind of personal struggles, a bit of a strong word here, but it certainly was a personal hurdle, personal professional hurdle into action. I think it’s awesome. I do.
00:05:29 Speaker 2
Under low low grade like low grade. Very minor. Yeah, not. It’s not the struggle, you know. Nobody should be feeling like it’s a struggle, but definitely feeling like.
00:05:41 Speaker 2
Maybe the guys around me had a little bit easier, like maybe feeling like they all had this kind of networking mentality. And so yeah, I don’t think it would. I agree. I don’t think it was a struggle, but it definitely felt like I didn’t have that leg up and I felt really just kind of vulnerable and this would be a great time for me to actually have.
00:06:01 Speaker 2
More wind in my back.
00:06:03 Speaker 3
You. You’re you’re talking about kind of a?
00:06:08 Speaker 3
A disadvantageous position. You know what I mean? And I and I and I’m trying to word it that way because I think that you.
00:06:16 Speaker 3
You represent certainly a cohort that has advantages for sure, but I think for most women in corporate America, I think this is true across the.
00:06:24 Speaker 3
Board. There’s always going to be a level of a level of of advantage that you’re denied. That isn’t always, I guess.
00:06:35 Speaker 3
Readily visible if you’re not, like actively paying attention the way you were at Casper.
00:06:40 Speaker 3
I I guess knowing that and it’s these are kind of like unspoken things or at least unspoken outside of, you know, very small groups. What was your approach to building this executive leadership network for women and like, how did you, I guess, how did you and Carolyn kind of get connected in order to make this happen?
00:07:00 Speaker 2
So I was feeling that way. I knew Carolyn, my co-founder.
00:07:04 Speaker 2
Kind of vaguely knew of each other. Startups in New York is there’s not that many women executives in the startup scene. So yeah, so there was enough. We we met actually at a really crappy networking event. If you ever go to one of those events where you’re kind of like trapped at a table and you’re stuck talking to the two people.
00:07:12 Speaker 3
And imagine.
00:07:25 Speaker 2
Next to you.
00:07:26 Speaker 2
And then there’s like, like you don’t actually need everybody. And I met her at the coat check, funnily enough. And we kind of both rolled her eyes like that was a waste of two hours, stayed in touch. And so when Caroline actually had the concept of chief, she was thinking about a Co founder.
00:07:45 Speaker 2
And when we we actually went out for like, a cofounder date and and when she kind of talked about this concept, it resonated with me so deeply. I was like, I have to join you. I have to I we have to do this together.
00:08:00 Speaker 2
Because I don’t think I know I needed it, I was again feeling this loneliness and feeling someone burned out and stressed all the time. Loving the idea of community but not actually having one. So it when she shared kind of like the broad strokes of what she was thinking about for the business, wanted to join.
00:08:20 Speaker 2
And one of the first things we talked about was the I actually said to her, I was like, I just, I want to be your co-founder, but.
00:08:29 Speaker 2
I was like, I don’t know if it makes sense for two white women to start this business like I’m a mom and I’m Jewish. But when we look at the cross section of women in business, we see that, yes, like women are at a disadvantage. But but women of color at at are at a significant disadvantage.
00:08:50 Speaker 2
Right. So we know that when you look at VP through C-Suite in America, only 18% of those positions are held by women of color who identify as non white. So one of the first things we did when we started chief was say, all right, let’s make sure we are surrounding ourselves.
00:09:11 Speaker 2
By with with diverse leader.
00:09:12 Speaker 2
There’s and, and let’s start with not just representation, but accountability for us and an integration of inclusivity within this network. So for us, that meant first of all, setting a a goal before we even launched, of making sure that we had representation within the community.
00:09:33 Speaker 2
So we set that goal to to double that number. We saw 18%. We said our goal at 36 today. I believe we are at.
00:09:43 Speaker 2
I I think we are at 33%, which is again 15 points higher than you know that number in America which we’re really proud of. But I’m you know, we’re not quite at our goal. So that’s something that we are working on and integrating inclusivity and belonging.
00:10:02 Speaker 2
Into that core DNA of.
00:10:04 Speaker 2
Our business was essential for us.
00:10:06 Speaker 2
So that meant making sure that you know our workshops were always thoughtful about how are we bringing in speakers who are, who are representing different people, how are we?
00:10:18 Speaker 2
Knowing that we have a powerful cohort of women, how do we make sure that at a minimum we are doing monthly workshops around DI? Because these women shouldn’t just join the network, but our real mission is that they can.
00:10:33 Speaker 2
Pave the way.
00:10:33 Speaker 2
For others so they can go back into their organizations feeling stronger and implement change.
00:10:38 Speaker 2
And make sure that they feel strong enough that they a stay. They don’t drop out of the workforce and that they are supporting and promoting other women and women of color to join them in the ranks of lead.
00:10:51 Speaker 2
Worship. And so we also forged identity groups to make sure that even within chief that there were subsets of communities to make sure that again, the problems and challenges of black women of indigenous women within chief, that they could come together with a facilitator and have sub communities.
00:11:12 Speaker 2
That were private, that.
00:11:15 Speaker 2
And secure for them to talk through. So it was definitely the foundation of.
00:11:19 Speaker 2
Of what we.
00:11:20 Speaker 2
Built and I think a lot about.
00:11:23 Speaker 2
I think a.
00:11:23 Speaker 2
Lot about making a cake like you can’t make a cake without eggs and smear the eggs on later. It had it. It has.
00:11:31 Speaker 2
He mixed in at the very beginning, so that was really important for us when we thought about what this Community would be. And I remember I have an acquaintance comeback who was working on a book called White Feminism, which I hadn’t even known the term. I didn’t know what white feminist.
00:11:48 Speaker 2
And wants and I’m. I’m so glad that COA, prior to her book being published, walked me through kind of again the like the concept of what it is when women are only looking out for white women and not thinking through, you know, the the intersectionality that comes with being a woman.
00:12:08 Speaker 2
Specifically, a woman for us at an executive level in business.
00:12:12 Speaker 3
You touched on a few points there that I want to kind of double click on, specifically the point you make about being 2 white women starting a.
00:12:24 Speaker 3
A network that seeks to be as inclusive as possible. Where did your biases seep in? You know, because you mentioned white feminism, I think. I think it’s a really, it’s obviously a really smart book. I’ve I’ve heard much about it. My mother in.
00:12:37 Speaker 3
Law has actually read it.
00:12:40 Speaker 3
But I think these are things that people don’t readily think about if they don’t have to. So I’m curious, as you were building chief at the beginning, like where, where were your biases creeping in? What kind of strategies did you have to employ in order to ensure that you weren’t kind of?
00:12:58 Speaker 3
Floating through some of those, ignoring them in the worst case, and actually integrating them into your strategy for building chip.
00:13:07 Speaker 2
I’ll give you a a.
00:13:09 Speaker 2
Good example. I think of some of my bias, which is I came in to chief thinking if I build a great experience for, for chief, for women who joined Chief I’ve.
00:13:20 Speaker 2
On my job, and when the experience isn’t that great, I’ll fix it and I think what I what I know what I didn’t think about is what an experience is not great if there’s something wrong or or if somebody doesn’t have a you know a good meeting or or you know like it’s a year long membership.
00:13:41 Speaker 2
We’re not perfect, but hopefully like net net, every the experience is you know pound for pound.
00:13:49 Speaker 2
Worth it? I don’t think I realized when someone doesn’t have a good experience.
00:13:55 Speaker 2
And they are a woman of color. That bad experience is magnified because you’re not just thinking about. I didn’t like it. You’re thinking about. I didn’t like it. And and was that about me? Was there. Was there more here than meets the eye? So as a white woman, sometimes if I don’t like a conversation or if I feel.
00:14:15 Speaker 2
The women in the conversation aren’t giving me what I need. I just think wasn’t a great conversation. But what I didn’t pay attention to is if you are the only person in the room, if you are the only, you know, Asian woman in the room and you feel like it wasn’t a great conversation, then then you’re also feeling a sense of disenfranchisement.
00:14:35 Speaker 2
A feeling like it only a feeling like maybe that conversation wasn’t good because I don’t belong here and so not thinking through that lens was.
00:14:46 Speaker 2
Was real bias from again, as a white woman, that I didn’t think of that. I just thought, you know, I gotta build a good experience and and make it, you know, feel like everybody should belong. But what does it actually mean to build something that is thinking through the filters of all of that again like that intersectional?
00:15:05 Speaker 2
Experience that I don’t have as a white woman, that I need to make sure is at the forefront of building different experiences throughout chief to really make sure we are nailing belong, belonging, nailing, inclusivity and knowing that if the experience fails somebody.
00:15:23 Speaker 2
Oh, then I failed somebody. Then chief has failed you. Then we need to go back and make sure that we are doing a better job and learning lessons on.
00:15:30 Speaker 2
How to make that better?
00:15:32 Speaker 3
I think there’s so much that comes to fore when you’re talking about leadership, community building, whether it’s at a place like chief or whether it’s at an agency like the one I work at, GNS.
00:15:50 Speaker 3
It’s difficult, I think at times to kind of consciously make those choices because it requires effort. It requires kind of a a forceful, intentional action based approach to seeing those noticing them and not deciding.
00:16:05 Speaker 3
That they are too big, too weighty to tackle, and they’re therefore letting ignoring them, letting them fester, etc.
00:16:13 Speaker 3
So I guess.
00:16:14 Speaker 3
Kind of knowing that and as you’re.
00:16:17 Speaker 3
As you’ve seen, such exponential growth over the last three years, you know, you guys started chief in 2019. We’re now four years, 3 1/2 years into that into this great experiment.
00:16:29 Speaker 3
What’s been, I guess, the prevailing lesson that you’ve learned about building again a A community that seeks to create allyship among.
00:16:41 Speaker 3
A diverse subset of women, but women, but also kind of remaining inclusive within that, that community, such that you don’t turn people away and to your point that you don’t feel like chief has failed anyone.
00:16:59 Speaker 2
Yeah. So I think what’s interesting about Chief is that you do have to apply that. It is specifically for.
00:17:08 Speaker 2
Women who are meet our criteria as executive leaders, and we do that specifically because again, there are a lot of incredible organizations for women who are, you know, solopreneurs who are not yet at an executive level.
00:17:28 Speaker 2
And if I go back to that experience of feeling like as an executive, then I end up becoming the mentor that I can’t necessarily feel vulnerable and go through my own kind of business challenges with people who don’t, for lack of a better phrase, get it, get the experience that I’m going through.
00:17:48 Speaker 2
So Chief is specifically for that woman from there? Yes, we absolutely then center belonging and inclusivity at the forefront of what we do because we’re building a community.
00:18:03 Speaker 2
For those people, and I think what we’ve learned is if our mission is to change the face of leadership, then we are starting with Chief. But we are not ending with Chief. We know that there is pent up demand for other cohorts of of individuals who want what chief represents which is this combination of.
00:18:23 Speaker 2
Community group learning peer mentorship allyship.
00:18:30 Speaker 2
We we know that that is resonated with. I mean I we’ve 20,000 members so far. And so I think for us the real learning is we can’t stop here and we need to think through how we can democratize what we do for more groups for more cohorts, because I think it’s it’s really.
00:18:50 Speaker 2
Special we know our Members love what they get from chief, and so our goal is to extend that eventually to reach more people.
00:18:59 Speaker 3
How do you prevent that from becoming lip?
00:19:03 Speaker 2
It’s it’s pretty simple, you just have to you have to. You can’t just talk the talk. You have to walk the walk, right? So what does it mean to say? And and I’ll give you another example when we say that we believe in representation and that we want to hit that goal of of doubling women of color.
00:19:23 Speaker 2
And leadership within our chief organization, that means that last year we gave out over $5 million of grants.
00:19:30 Speaker 2
That means that we do outreach, so we’re not just waiting for applications that we outbound women to make sure that people have heard about chief, that we’d like them to join Chief. It means that we publish articles all about what it is to to be a progressive leader in the workplace, how intersectionality.
00:19:51 Speaker 2
Shows up in the workplace and when I speak about intersectionality, it it, you know, I think there’s there’s multiple interpretations of that thinking beyond just women of color and the intersection of.
00:20:03 Speaker 2
Being a black woman in business, but also what does it mean to identify ageism, neurodiversity, socioeconomic class? We want to cover all of that. So again, it’s putting our money where our mouth is literally like putting $5,000,000 behind that knowing that.
00:20:22 Speaker 2
Every year we’ve committed $1,000,000 to.
00:20:25 Speaker 2
To support nonprofits and organizations that align with our mission that we don’t necessarily specialize in. So for us, we believe if women need to get to the top, we can’t do that. If our reproductive rights are in jeopardy. So you know, this past year, we’ve donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to organizations.
00:20:45 Speaker 2
Got support, women’s reproductive rights and Women’s Health specifically looking at organizations that focus on underserved and underrepresented minorities because they need more access than white women. So we we try to go really deep and make sure we are. Yes, we are for.
00:21:04 Speaker 2
For women, yes, we are an executive network, but we don’t just want to give lip service. We truly want to make sure that we are as much as we can, driving impact and backing up what we want to do.
00:21:19 Speaker 3
Are you talking about investment? I yeah, often tell my clients that if you actually want to.
00:21:27 Speaker 3
Create a relationship with the.
00:21:31 Speaker 3
The demographic you seek to speak to, like you’ve got to invest there, you got to invest and you got to keep investing there. You got to make it such such a common thing that it ceases to even register.
00:21:44 Speaker 3
Any kind of notice because it’s it’s happening so so commonly.
00:21:48 Speaker 2
And that’s that’s interesting though, because I think we had been doing this for years, but we didn’t talk about it. And so I think what we failed to do was communicate what we were doing, what our, what, what our DI commitment was. We had like bare bones on our website.
00:22:05 Speaker 2
Right. If you go to chief.com.
00:22:08 Speaker 2
If you went a.
00:22:08 Speaker 2
Few months ago there wasn’t much there and so it it was a failure on our part to really successfully communicate what we do and I think.
00:22:17 Speaker 2
You know, I look back and I’m like, man, I wish we were more communicative about it. I wish we had talked to our Members more about what we were doing.
00:22:25 Speaker 2
And got feedback because I say all of this not in a way that I feel.
00:22:30 Speaker 2
Like I’m there’s so much more we can do and there’s so much more we can evolve to do. So our job is to listen, to get really clear on what we do and to communicate. And I think we could have done a.
00:22:42 Speaker 2
Better job listening, getting really clear and communicating with our community. But I I think this is a conversation that like every company should be having.
00:22:52 Speaker 2
Every company should be talking like on a regular basis, you know quarterly at minimum around EI. We’ve seen now in 2023 with the you know economic landscape, people are pulling funding now from DI program.
00:23:09 Speaker 2
I remember speaking with Ken Chenault, 6, who’s the former CEO and Chairman of American Express. We’re so lucky to have him on our board, and I asked Ken, you know, if you were to grade corporate America and DI, what would you, what would you give them? And he’s he said, incomplete, right, like people.
00:23:28 Speaker 2
Made big promises in 2020, walked it back and in 2023 we see people defunding DDI, so I think this conversation needs to be consistent and and have champions within an organization to make sure it it persists.
00:23:47 Speaker 2
Beyond what we had promised and continues to evolve.
00:23:51 Speaker 3
Ohh yeah, the I think the champion aspect is is really important. Do you think it mattered more that you didn’t or did or didn’t whether whether or not you did or didn’t is?
00:24:02 Speaker 3
Immaterial, but do you think it matters more to communicate those kinds of strides, internally or externally? Because obviously to your point?
00:24:11 Speaker 3
There’s quite a bit of literature. There’s quite a bit of content on your DE and I page now looking at the page months ago wasn’t the case, and you’re obviously kind of committed to changing that, but is is it?
00:24:26 Speaker 3
Is it worth it to communicate those kinds of things outwardly? Yeah. Such that they be scrutinized constantly? Or is it better to just kind of gauge the temperature of your community, kind of continue to to communicate to them, but just kind of move in silence, you know, like, real? Geez.
00:24:44 Speaker 2
Yeah, well, I.
00:24:45 Speaker 2
Think it’s better to to to share it? I think I learned the lesson, which is we were doing things in a vacuum and when you.
00:24:54 Speaker 2
Are when you’re feeling like, oh, we’re doing all this good, but you’re not getting feedback from the community. You’re not letting the community in. That’s a failure. So I think my.
00:25:06 Speaker 2
My original approach, which was we’re just going to do it, we’re not going to shine a light on it was was a huge miss and there’s a difference between, you know, communicating and.
00:25:20 Speaker 2
Like doing it in a performative way and I think I personally was afraid of it looking performative like I just wanted to do the work. But if you’re doing the work and not sharing it.
00:25:31 Speaker 2
So you’re not getting feedback. You’re not like you’re not letting the community in. So it was a huge mess. And to answer your other question about is it your team or is it the community? I believe team comes first. So if you think about a community, the little ring inside is your team.
00:25:52 Speaker 2
You know, like the bigger ring outside is the community as a whole. And you know the the team is the the core part of our community. So if they’re not bought in, your community is not gonna be bought in at all.
00:26:04 Speaker 3
I want to zoom out a little bit.
00:26:07 Speaker 3
So you worked at Casper, you were employee number one at Casper. So you’re you’re kind of building small C community there. What? What lessons did you take from your time there and kind of what?
00:26:24 Speaker 3
What things did?
00:26:24 Speaker 3
Do you want to repeat? From your experience there, and what things were you running like hell to avoid?
00:26:31 Speaker 2
Oh, that’s such a good question, Kyle.
00:26:35 Speaker 2
Well, what I loved about working there is I had permission to do weird stuff. So as a marketer, I I Casper, really valued creativity. We had one of our brand values was called Zing, like it had to have Zing and Zing meant just like.
00:26:54 Speaker 2
A little wacky and a little like off beat. And so oh man, I did. I did some just weird marketing brand activations. I have. My team will laugh at me if if they hear me say this, but I always say never bring a kazoo to a parade. Meaning like, don’t.
00:27:14 Speaker 2
Don’t be quiet and little and and do a little brand campaign and think that anybody’s going to care like you have to be. If you can’t afford a float, don’t show up to the parade like, do something else. Do do something weird and different and and I think I took that with me to chief when we launch.
00:27:33 Speaker 2
We had, you know, when we raised money, everybody said no, we were so lucky to have some amazing early investors who supported us when we had like, a essentially like a deck that had an idea and no real business yet. No proof of concept. And when I started.
00:27:54 Speaker 2
Chief, I was like how?
00:27:55 Speaker 2
How how do I make this weird and different so the website was basically empty? There was nothing on it and we were sending out cold emails to people who were like, what is this what?
00:28:05 Speaker 2
Is this women?
00:28:05 Speaker 2
‘S network and they’d show up. I blew all my budget on on a space in Tribeca. So imagine you’re this very powerful, influential.
00:28:16 Speaker 2
Come in and you get this e-mail to join this like secret society network and you show up to Tribeca and you walk up a staircase and what looks like some, like, bougie apartment building. And there’s, like, this tiny little Speakeasy looking lounge. I want that, like, I wanted to be a part of that. And so did they. So we had.
00:28:36 Speaker 2
Pretty spectacular product marketing fit a product market fit, but I think that.
00:28:42 Speaker 2
There were a lot of women’s networks and so again from Casper, I took this like how do I make us stand out?
00:28:49 Speaker 2
And and and.
00:28:51 Speaker 2
This kind of goes back to this.
00:28:54 Speaker 2
This tension between community and brand because what we built chief on which was this.
00:28:59 Speaker 2
Like secretive, what is?
00:29:00 Speaker 2
That is, is this like a secret Society of of Whisper network of powerful women that worked for the first year that does not scale into an inclusive community of 20,000 women? You cannot be a secret society. You cannot do things that are, like, weird and offbeat.
00:29:23 Speaker 2
That, but also think through like the feelings of 20,000 people. So I think balancing brands with community has been a challenge that I didn’t.
00:29:33 Speaker 2
Have to face at Casper.
00:29:35 Speaker 3
I love that. I think.
00:29:37 Speaker 3
Because like what you, you are kind of not just co-founder, Chief Brand Officer, part of the C-Suite of that, that small circle within the concentric one that you were talking about earlier, the team.
00:29:51 Speaker 3
But you’re technically also kind of managing again, you know, your your membership base is 2030 thousand people strong if not more. I think you’ve got what another 6050 sixty on waiting was trying to get in.
00:30:04 Speaker 3
What is the balance between leadership like small leadership within your circle?
00:30:09 Speaker 3
And the kind of inclusive leadership that you just described, what does it actually tangibly look like in action to be an inclusive leader?
00:30:17 Speaker 2
I think I’m.
00:30:19 Speaker 2
Learning how to be a better, inclusive leader every day.
00:30:24 Speaker 2
So I think that I would be.
00:30:27 Speaker 2
Full of **** if.
00:30:29 Speaker 2
I could, you know, sit here and.
00:30:30 Speaker 2
Tell you like.
00:30:31 Speaker 2
I am an award-winning inclusive leader because I’m I’m still learning what it is to be a good, inclusive leader.
00:30:41 Speaker 2
But but I think it means just like really.
00:30:44 Speaker 2
Again, understanding your weaknesses, understanding your own biases, bringing an open mind to the table and really listening. And if if I learned anything over the last six months is.
00:30:59 Speaker 2
I have a really strong gut and I have a very.
00:31:05 Speaker 2
Like deep, deep feeling around what I believe chief is to be. But I I think being an inclusive leader is about stepping back and really listening with an open mind. And there’s listening and there’s listening and hearing and interpreting and like digesting what people are sharing.
00:31:26 Speaker 2
With you about how they feel, their expectations, their disappoint.
00:31:34 Speaker 2
And that’s inclusive leadership. It is putting your ego away and letting all of that flood over you and knowing that all of that matters and your job is to show up and make sure you are representing everything you hear. All of that feedback, all of that hope, fear, disappointment.
00:31:55 Speaker 2
Love all of that. As a leader, you need to represent and your job is to help both implement what it takes to to build on that.
00:32:07 Speaker 2
And create an environment that feels safe enough for people to continue to share.
00:32:12 Speaker 3
You know, I’m glad you mentioned the last six months, because anybody who’s kind of read the news and kind of is in these executive spaces, you guys know about the controversy. I think that there’s been enough ink spilled on it that I won’t have to get into too much detail here. But basically Chief was levied complain about.
00:32:32 Speaker 3
Kind of prioritizing white feminism, which is something that you kind of brought up in pro in pros earlier.
00:32:42 Speaker 3
Knowing that the last six months have represented, I think probably one of the first like I guess public trials for you and for for chief and again for you as a leader.
00:32:55 Speaker 3
What was the weakness that you thought that was highlighted about yourself as a leader that you then took?
00:33:06 Speaker 3
Adjust to change over the last six months.
00:33:10 Speaker 3
And kind of moving forward over the.
00:33:11 Speaker 3
Next 5 of this year.
00:33:13 Speaker 2
Yeah, I think it is.
00:33:15 Speaker 2
Being really intentional about listening.
00:33:19 Speaker 2
So I have so many relationships with chief members. I read all the feedback, good and bad, but we, my cofounder Carol and I did a listening tour. We did 38 hour long sessions.
00:33:35 Speaker 2
4 chief members and I think being again really intentional about hearing about feeling about getting all of that vulnerability.
00:33:46 Speaker 3
And you thought this was a blind spot for you prior to this?
00:33:49 Speaker 2
I think I don’t. I I think I was listening, but I don’t think I had set aside time to intentionally listen.
00:33:57 Speaker 2
And I think that, you know, listen, every mission driven company has detractors. There’s heightened expectations when you have a mission behind you, when you have those heightened expectations that that sets somebody up for disappointment. And so really again, like putting time to listening to where?
00:34:17 Speaker 2
We disappointed people, was really important and it hits different than you know, reading comments and and reading emails. You know it hits different than one hour feedback session compared to like 38 because things rise to.
00:34:32 Speaker 2
Top you start hearing themes, you start hearing certain words that that you know if you did.
00:34:39 Speaker 2
Your own like.
00:34:40 Speaker 2
Word cloud you’d be like, Oh my God. Like.
00:34:42 Speaker 2
It’s a much more significant dedication to that intentional listening for me than passive listening. I would refer to what I had.
00:34:52 Speaker 2
Been doing prior.
00:34:54 Speaker 3
I think that’s fair and I also don’t think that’s uncommon for most people, let alone leaders.
00:35:00 Speaker 3
I think that we all have to like actively make a decision to not just listen to respond, but you know, listen to absorb and to change and to.
00:35:11 Speaker 3
Kind of empower.
00:35:13 Speaker 3
Your cohort, whether that’s your children, whether that’s your membership base, whether that’s your team.
00:35:21 Speaker 3
So I mean, I think I think you guys have kind of weathered this storm fairly well, all things considered. But I think moving forward, I’m I’m kind of curious like.
00:35:31 Speaker 3
Now that you’ve.
00:35:33 Speaker 3
Maybe hit the other side of this tumult.
00:35:38 Speaker 3
Where do you see chief kind of expanding? How do you see Chief, chief expanding? What is the future of this kind of executive leadership group kind of look like to you with all the things that you’ve learned in the 3 1/2 years that that it’s been around?
00:35:55 Speaker 2
Well, I don’t know if we’re on. I I don’t know if this was like a, you know, a storm that passed. I think that feedback and what happened publicly imprinted on us, I believe things imprint on you as people and as businesses. And so I don’t think there’s like, you know, it wasn’t something we we we didn’t get sick and then recover.
00:36:16 Speaker 2
You know, like all of that was important for us to go back and again make sure that we were communicating what we were doing a lot more. We weren’t being clear. We weren’t communicating, setting up that that intentional.
00:36:29 Speaker 2
Listening and being really focused and intentional about our mission and impact that we that we want to achieve.
00:36:36 Speaker 2
I think this is a conversation every company should be having. I think a lot of organizations are probably not listening and so my hope is that, you know the the the changes we’ve made are not one off changes that we will continue listening and evolving chief services evolving the community as as we continue to listen to the Community.
00:36:57 Speaker 2
Large and again I go back to a place of.
00:37:02 Speaker 2
A lot of the feedback was about you are serving this executive woman. What about everybody else? And so we’ve we’ve been thinking about that for for a while. We want to make sure that we make chief as a model again. Like I I want chief to the services. Everything we do for our Members.
00:37:22 Speaker 2
To come first today, but I think tomorrow, once we feel like that is.
00:37:28 Speaker 2
I don’t know perfected, but that our Members are absolutely loving every part of chief that we can then take this concept and say how do we extend it, how do we reach more cohorts, how do we develop other communities that we can serve that have gotten the benefit that you’ve.
00:37:46 Speaker 2
Members have gotten.
00:37:49 Speaker 3
You said at Tech Crunch disrupt last year that you guys don’t believe in the term girl boss. I agree it’s a relatively stupid term.
00:37:58 Speaker 3
And I do think that there are. There are times when we know I’m not. I’m just a boss, ma’am. And I think that that is exactly how you guys kind of framed it too. It’s just kind of leadership. Do you feel like there’s a space for cheap?
00:38:01 Speaker 2
Kyle. Kyle, are you a boy boss?
00:38:16 Speaker 3
To create not just a network for current executives, but a network for versioning ones as well, yes.
00:38:25 Speaker 2
Absolutely. I I don’t think we can achieve our mission of changing the face of leadership with just Chief. But you know we heard loud and clear that our our Members want more and that we needed to evolve some of our offerings or services the way that we bring the Community together. So we’re focused.
00:38:45 Speaker 2
Today they’re first, but in the future absolutely. Absolutely there is. There’s so much for us to do. There’s so many. There’s so many different people that we want to make sure we can engage with. So I’m.
00:38:59 Speaker 2
Excited about the?
00:39:00 Speaker 2
Manager, I am a time traveler and so I cannot wait for us to to open more doors and serve more communities.
00:39:13 Speaker 3
I’m going to leave you with this question, Lindsey, and it’s kind of a.
00:39:15 Speaker 3
Ridiculous one, so bear with like.
00:39:17 Speaker 2
Ridiculous questions.
00:39:20 Speaker 3
So we’ve known each other for about 20 years now. We both went to Brandeis University.
00:39:24 Speaker 3
I knew you back then. You haven’t really changed from a personality perspective very much. Maybe you’re a little bit more serious, but that’s about it.
00:39:36 Speaker 3
If you’re, if you’re going back 20 years, being the Trump time traveler that you are, what are you? What are you saying to yourself? What? What? What advice are you imparting on yourself 20 years ago?
00:39:50 Speaker 2
Weird question gets a weird answer.
00:39:53 Speaker 2
Absolutely nothing, absolutely nothing, because I’m so proud of the community that I’ve built of the team that works at.
00:40:03 Speaker 2
If you know a few stock tips, sure. But like again, like the lessons that you learn in print and so hearing me from the future. Tell me something.
00:40:16 Speaker 2
I I don’t know if I would believe it. Come on, you remember 20.
00:40:19 Speaker 3
Year old Lindsey do remember I remember 20 year Kyle.
00:40:22 Speaker 2
She was. I mean, she was smoking cigarettes. I was wearing aviator glasses.
00:40:26 Speaker 2
To like parties.
00:40:28 Speaker 2
That night, I don’t know what I was thinking.
00:40:31 Speaker 3
Lindsey, I am. I’m really excited to see what the future of chief looks like and what the future of of you looks like. And I’m really, really thankful that you made the time to kind of talk to me about this. And I think inclusive leadership empowerment is something that’s probably not going away and organizations like yours, I do think.
00:40:51 Speaker 3
Help to push that agenda because it is an agenda and it is necessary to call it that forward. So again thank you for, for, for the time and for sure continued success.
00:41:02
Thanks Kyle.
00:41:04 Speaker 1
You’re listening to building brand gravity, attracting people into your orbit. A GNS Business Communications podcast keep connected with us by subscribing to the show in your favorite podcast player. If you like what you’ve heard, please rate the show. That helps us to keep delivering the latest in industry influence.
00:41:24 Speaker 1
Thanks for listening until next time.
Ethics and GenAI in Communications
In this episode, Anne interviews Kim Sample and Mark McClennan about the ethical implications of the use of AI in communications and beyond. This conversation delves into the experiences and insights of Kim, as President of the PR Council and Mark, General Manager at C + C, Host of the Ethical Voices podcast, and one of today’s top voices in ethics in PR and communications.
With the growing exploration of generative AI in all industries, including communications, there is a need for intentional ethical consideration across all contexts — Kim, Mark and Anne dive in and discuss:
- The transformative potential of generative AI as a technology and societal shift
- Overall role and importance of ethics in communications, and the pressing need to apply an ethical lens to uses of generative AI
- Importance of and opportunities to lean into ethical decision-making training in the context of AI
- How core tenets of the PR Council Code of Ethics & Principles – such as transparency, disclosure, sourcing and promoting truth/accuracy – are hugely relevant to the generative AI evolution
00:00:06 Speaker 1
You are listening to building brand gravity, attracting people into your orbit. GNS Business Communications Podcast This is a show for communications pros across industries looking to gain an inside view into industry influence. You’re about to hear a conversation with leading industry professionals talking about the importance of building business.
00:00:29 Speaker 1
Impact through sound brand strategy. Let’s get into the show.
00:00:35 Speaker 2
Welcome to building brand gravity. I’m Anne green. I’m a principal and managing director here at GNS Business Communications, and I Love my 2 guests. I’m very psyched about them today. So first, we’ve got Kim sample. She’s president of the PR Council, which if you don’t know, is the US industry association that represents more than 100, well more than 100.
00:00:56 Speaker 2
PR integrated marketing, Communications and Kim, you made me laugh when I asked for your bio and you described yourself as a 100% agency animal, which I am as well. So she’s worked in big firms, small firms. She built a firm from $0.00 to $35 million, which I am very, very impressed by.
00:01:16 Speaker 2
And she’s just been an incredible leader of our profession as President of the PR Council. And then we have Mark McLennan, who I’ve known, I think, Mark almost 20 years now. Probably he’s worked in tech and fintech comms for 20 plus year.
00:01:30 Speaker 2
Years again, small firms mid size, big holding company agencies and he’s now a general manager in the Boston office of C + C, which is a purpose driven agency. But for the conversation today, I think what’s really notable is Mark’s been a big voice on ethics in our industry. So he’s hostedethicalvoices.com the podcast since 2019.
00:01:51 Speaker 2
100 plus episodes. Check it out and also author to book Ethical Voices practicing public Relations With Integrity which hit #1 on Amazon in its categories in 2022. Good job mark. I love that and he was 2016 national chair of PSA. So thank you both for joining me today.
00:02:09 Speaker 3
Awesome. Great to be here.
00:02:11 Speaker 4
My pleasure.
00:02:12 Speaker 2
So we’re here today to talk about what is a hot topic generative AI. I’m sure everybody is thrilled for more content on this, but frankly, we got to talk about it. And the reason that specifically we’re talking today is because the PRC.
00:02:27 Speaker 2
Worked together with Mark and I in the task force to create new guidelines on the ethical use of generative AI in the communications industry, and this is truly I mean, you both know a hot topic everywhere, not just in the news but every industry association meeting we go to. I know Mark, you said you just came back from Counselors Academy for PR.
00:02:47 Speaker 2
Say I’m sure it was talked about there, but I guess let me set the stage by asking Kim why these guidelines and why now? What was the genesis of this project?
00:02:58 Speaker 3
Yeah, we had made the decision. It’s our 25th anniversary and we felt like an important piece of work to launch as part of the 25th anniversary was a focus on ethics and standards for our industry because so much is evolving. Our work is so fully integrated. We just wanted to.
00:03:19 Speaker 3
Put a dedicated focus on making sure that we were being as ethical as Poss.
00:03:24 Speaker 3
People and really meeting the demands of a changing society and it just so happened as soon as we launched that work and I was able to attract these two amazing leaders to lead that work. Generative AI became the hot topic in our agencies.
00:03:45 Speaker 3
That everybody was talking about it, everybody was hand wringing about it or Fast forward on it, and it just felt like a huge public service if we could bring together the brightest minds in public relations focused on ethics.
00:04:05 Speaker 3
DEI technology. Corporate reputation. All of these different areas. If we could bring everybody together and come up with guidelines, it would be a huge assist, not only for our member firms but across the industry and we just felt like.
00:04:18 Speaker 3
There was so much at stake.
00:04:20 Speaker 3
For the industry in not approaching this in a really smart.
00:04:24 Speaker 2
Way Mark, what was your feeling about the urgency of it or why you said yes when Kim approached us about taking this on, what was what was your first thought about this as the right time to try to put guidelines together?
00:04:36 Speaker 4
I was so happy. I mean this is.
00:04:39 Speaker 4
One of the most significant issues and transformative opportunities for PR agencies, and I thought there was a lack of clear, actionable guidance. Others have looked at it. There’s been some folks that have definitely given some great advice, but I thought there was a void that needed to be filled and I was so happy to see PR council stepping up to fill it.
00:05:01 Speaker 2
Yeah, you know, and what’s interesting about these guidelines, right, because there’s again, I mean, we all know the news cycle, right? We know how the hype cycle like something is off your radar and then maybe your first mover and you start to see it cooking and then suddenly boom, it’s everywhere. And then then the the the flow changes, it goes up and down. Right.
00:05:20 Speaker 2
But there’s so much discussion going on, we’ll get into some of the big trends as we get into this conversation, but I wanna center this the start of this conversation on the fact that these guidelines are focused around ethical use of generative AI, which is an interesting and critical to me. I agree, mark, like right in the wheelhouse of stuff I think about.
00:05:40 Speaker 2
But let’s go to you, Mark, you’ve been a.
00:05:42 Speaker 2
Voice a very.
00:05:44 Speaker 2
Powerful, thoughtful, and insistent voice around centering ethics in our industry for years and years since the early days when I’ve known you. Why talk about generative AI in that context? And why was that important? That that’s how our guidelines.
00:06:00 Speaker 2
Are shaped around.
00:06:02 Speaker 4
Ethics is central to the human condition.
00:06:05 Speaker 4
It has been the key pivot point. As long as there’s been humanity without ethical guidance, we have murder, mayhem and Machiavelli maneuvering, and I think this is a case where when people understand it, there’s laws that are evolving. You know, there’s going to be a lot of evolving legal issues when it comes to the use of generative AI. But the good part about.
00:06:25 Speaker 4
Ethics is the fundamental ethical guidelines and rules are universal and stand the test of time. So by using that to center the discussion is a great framework to build a discussion for agencies on what you should and shouldn’t do with generative AI.
00:06:42 Speaker 2
Yeah, Kim, I I love that answer and I love the alliteration. Nice job there. That’s I. I agree. We would it. It’s kind of chaos if that sense of an ethical framework, ethical decision making. What is the ethical mind? How does that come into us as individuals, us as into our organizations. But I’ll ask you the same question, Kim. We are talking about these guidelines.
00:07:03 Speaker 2
Than the PR Council, with technologists, with the leaders in our agencies that are digitally driven with overall leadership, organizational leaders why for you, was it important or did you see the deep connection to let’s look at this through with an ethical lens and the PR Council code of ethics?
00:07:20 Speaker 3
Yeah, it just made perfect sense. And I think I was spurred on by the realization that I don’t think our agencies are talking enough about ethics. I think we get so busy. We’re so in service of client.
00:07:40 Speaker 3
Needs and wants, but it was like an important reminder that this is central to what we do. This is the backbone.
00:07:48 Speaker 3
And we need to be having constant conversations. And I I feel so lucky that the two of you were willing to take leadership of this effort because you so firmly believe that and model that.
00:08:02 Speaker 2
Yeah, I mean, I’ll build off on and riff on that and then I have a follow up question for Mark that I know is in your wheelhouse. I do very, very much believe that ethics is not necessarily thought of not just in our firms but by individuals and also our society in a.
00:08:21 Speaker 2
Way that I.
00:08:22 Speaker 2
I think makes sense to how it actually operates. It’s sort of what you said, Margaret. It’s a central.
00:08:26 Speaker 2
Imagine a central lens that we can deploy, and this question of I mean Kim, you’ve heard me say this and I think, Mark, you may have too. When I do ethics training.
00:08:38 Speaker 2
In my own firm, and I’ve very been very happy over the years that the PR Council has taken programs from some of the larger agencies and white labeled them and made it available, and I would very I was a big consumer of those take it. I’m a very big proponent of in person or small group training, role-playing, etc.
00:08:58 Speaker 2
Because what I often say is.
00:09:00 Speaker 2
That ethics is not the villain with the, you know, with the Black Hat standing in the corner twirling his mustache saying haha, I’m going to do evil. Now what it often is and it’s actually really tragic to see it. It’s death by 1000 paper cuts. It’s a lot of small, bad decisions and often huge.
00:09:20 Speaker 2
Failure and leadership.
00:09:23 Speaker 2
We’ve seen a lot of examples out there of where there was pressure from the top of an organization and the pressure wasn’t saying I want you to break the rules or I want you to act unethically. But the message was basically results at any cost and therefore it drove a culture of permissiveness and and blind eye.
00:09:42 Speaker 2
Turning to this, so I think that for me, I agree, I was really excited about this because it was a chance to again recenter ethics and the fact that it’s woven into everything. I mean, mark, tell me you and I’ve talked about this that for a lot of organizations, ethics can be kind of like a once the year check the box.
00:10:00 Speaker 2
Box what? What is the challenge with that for you and what what would you rather see in organizations today?
00:10:07 Speaker 4
To my mind, because once you’re training is effective, go to going to the gym once a year or taking your vitamins once a year, it is not going to make you fit and healthy people do it, they check it and they go back and it shows frankly.
00:10:22 Speaker 4
That you’re looking at ethics as a check to box compliant initiative, and you’re telling your folks that you don’t have significant weight on it. And my dream when it comes to ethical training and I talk about this a lot is people need to train their ethical.
00:10:37 Speaker 4
Because there’s studies that show biologically, our initial instinct is to be selfish, it is only when we give a deliberative thought that we tend to elevate and I don’t know about you, but there’s fewer things that are less controlled chaos than a PR persons day. And so by having these discussions.
00:10:57 Speaker 4
It’s like a golfer, homes. They’re swinging about our homes.
00:11:00 Speaker 4
Or swing, you get ready to make these decisions. And what I’d love to have people.
00:11:04 Speaker 4
Do is both talk.
00:11:04 Speaker 4
About it, have senior management bring it up and make it a part of your regular meetings at least twice a month. Share relevant ethical issues. Did you see this? Have other staff bring in ethical issues? Discuss it, debate the pros and cons. Look at applied scenarios that you may.
00:11:21 Speaker 4
Dealing with and really, that gets your entire staff to understand that you’re putting ethics first. I’d say it shouldn’t be with your staff. You should share it with your clients, because frankly, one it lets your clients know the importance you put on ethics and also may alert your client issues they may have, because if your client has ethical failings that may come and blow back on you as well.
00:11:42 Speaker 4
And so you really just want to have this discussion.
00:11:45 Speaker 4
And the final point I’ll say about that is as a senior leader, you shouldn’t be the one giving your opinion. First, you need to wait, otherwise you’re going to stifle the bait and don’t ever worry about running out of topics. I teach PR ethics at Boston University and the first half an hour of every class is what were the PR ethics issues this week.
00:12:05 Speaker 4
And they have never had a lack of anybody having an issue to bring.
00:12:11 Speaker 2
Somehow that does not surprise me. In our society today, but to to pick on something you said, it’s at training your mind and it’s very important, I think for people to understand that that moment of intentional thought, whether it’s looking at through an ethical framework, it can also be trying to interrupt your own.
00:12:31 Speaker 2
Bias, which is something we talk about a lot with DE and I, it can be stopping and asking.
00:12:36 Speaker 2
Yourself. What is?
00:12:37 Speaker 2
The implications of the decision I’m making is there someone else I should bring into this and this does bring us back to generative AI because there is so much power being unfurled and it is so transformative and it’s.
00:12:48 Speaker 2
It’s kind of, you know, the first time you encounter these large language models, especially with the release of the various platforms of ChatGPT over the past few months, it feels like a magic trick. It feels amazing. It’s sort of blows you away, but you start to unpeel what are the implications of this? What is the positive?
00:13:08 Speaker 2
Power the negative power and and one thing I’d love you guys to reflect on because it’s really a personal thing as well as a business.
00:13:15 Speaker 2
Question. We’re hearing now a lot of discussions either this is amazing, it’s going to be totally amazing. The utopian kind of view which always comes with tech, which is I think a very important energy. But there’s also the destroyer narrative, which is are we about to be in the matrix, right. And it’s interesting to see people like Jeffrey Hinton, one of The Pioneers of AI.
00:13:36 Speaker 2
Just left Google so that he can be a very open voice of hey, this is moving faster than we realize and there may be bad implications.
00:13:44 Speaker 2
As we get caught up as leaders and as people in this hype zone where it’s like Utopia destroyer Utopia destroyer.
00:13:52 Speaker 2
How are each of?
00:13:53 Speaker 2
You modulating that, especially in our field, I mean.
00:13:56 Speaker 2
Kim, how are?
00:13:57 Speaker 2
You weighing these two polls of discussion?
00:14:00 Speaker 3
Yeah. I mean, I think it’s very interesting. And I would say that the extremes are moderating a little bit. And I feel that.
00:14:12 Speaker 3
People in our industry are getting a bit more in the middle and I use as evidence we had a digital community meeting yesterday and we were all talking about how we’re using generative AI and our agencies and.
00:14:25 Speaker 3
To a person you know they are not using it for client work. They are encouraging experimentation and they’re encouraging it’s use. You know, if there’s a roadblock, you know, you could use generative AI, play around with it, see if it helps you open up your roadblock.
00:14:44 Speaker 3
So I think.
00:14:46 Speaker 3
We’re getting to a good place which we can take credit that you know, for really pushing people to have these ethical conversations. But I think it’s so important for our industry like that doom and gloom message was so strong for a while.
00:15:06 Speaker 3
That our industry is going to be most affected.
00:15:09 Speaker 3
And I don’t see that. And I think it’s important for people to understand like this is this is an opportunity. You know, you have a responsibility as a communications professional to learn, maybe to safely experiment. But to understand that really the value that we’re.
00:15:28 Speaker 3
Offering to clients is still there. It’s going to be even more so there.
00:15:35 Speaker 3
But maybe there’s a way that AI can be used to eliminate some of the more you know, wrote aspects of our job that frankly nobody enjoys. So if there’s an opportunity to create more exciting jobs, we’re all in, right?
00:15:50 Speaker 2
Shout out to all the people of a certain age who used to cut clips out of newspapers and measure them.
00:15:57 Speaker 2
To see what the advertising equivalency would be, and if you didn’t understand any of those words, then you’re younger and can.
00:16:03 Speaker 4
Back when the debate was do you tape the clips or do you paste the clips and you?
00:16:07 Speaker 4
Had people on either side.
00:16:09 Speaker 2
I really enjoyed a glue stick market.
00:16:11 Speaker 4
That was a tape guy, but the one point I want to build on Kim’s, though, and this is it’s an interesting concern I have. I think we’re talking a lot about agency and agency operations. And I go back and forth, I am more utopian over where I’m seeing some of the technology going. But I am also in some very specific cases being extremely dystopian.
00:16:30 Speaker 4
Deep fakes scare the heck out of me, and the technology is getting better and the more I learn about that, the more concerned I am. And as I was talking as a number of colleagues recently, if you do not have deep fakes as part of your crisis plan and you’re not looking and thinking about how to respond to them, you are not doing your clients a good service and you need to learn how to do it.
00:16:50 Speaker 4
How you can counter them and really, really how you can incorporate that. So in some cases the dystopian I think is still on the rise and.
00:16:58 Speaker 4
I think it’s going to rise for quite a while.
00:17:01 Speaker 2
Yeah, I think that’s really fair. I was going to ask you guys where the things that give you the most pause. I do think that.
00:17:09 Speaker 2
You know, I remember, and I’ve talked to both of you about this back when social media really first came to the fore, and I’m really thinking about blogging. We forget how revolutionary Typepad and WordPress were when you could suddenly write to the web without any coding experience whatsoever. And that was amazing. And in those early days of social media kind of talking to.
00:17:31 Speaker 2
Clients about it talking to colleagues about it, you know, we’ve been on this journey about what are the net positives, what are the net negatives?
00:17:38 Speaker 2
And I think that for me, you know, we’re living in a world where we’ve really had to reflect very long and hard about the impact on individuals and Society of algorithmic manipulation. And none of us are innocent from this. You know, we’re all we are in the business of shaping, perception. And so we’re always under.
00:17:58 Speaker 2
Suspicion from the outside, I would allege though, and I would say, and I feel very strongly about this, that.
00:18:03 Speaker 2
To Mark’s earlier point, our industry actually thinks more about ethics and more about what are the implications of what we’re communicating because we represent others. We have contractual obligations, etc. But it does give me great pause. We’ve seen now the level of manipulation of the human brain, the behaviors that can come of it radicalization.
00:18:24 Speaker 2
You know, polarization. And then when you get down to the pure, deep fakes, it’s it’s scary. And I I think you’re right, Kim. I think one of the pieces I’ve been reflecting on is.
00:18:36 Speaker 2
How this opens up more and more space for what we do best, which is to be counselors, what is the nature of how the media landscape is changing? How do you deal with things where there’s no perfect or right answer? What do you, you know, what is that mix of art and science in a crisis that helps you understand how to deal with this? But I think you’re right, Mark.
00:18:56 Speaker 2
If companies aren’t thinking about the implications here, it’s it’s pretty heavy for sure, yeah.
00:19:01 Speaker 3
There is an interesting thing you just brought to mind for me that I’ve been sort of pondering is.
00:19:09 Speaker 3
How will we train counselors when AI is doing a lot of the rote work? So, for example, when we stood at the copy machine and taped or pasted, we read those clips. It was our job to read every one of those clips.
00:19:29 Speaker 3
And new ideas.
00:19:31 Speaker 3
Came from that so.
00:19:34 Speaker 3
A machine can do that to some degree. I don’t know. It’s like if we’re eliminating some of those rote tasks that trained your brain and let you search for patterns.
00:19:46 Speaker 3
How will we develop those analytical and counseling abilities in our young talent?
00:19:53 Speaker 3
I think that’s a big TBD.
00:19:55 Speaker 2
It’s a really good question. I mean, it makes me wonder, you know, sometimes I’ve been the kind of person who I was very literary focused growing up of, like, oh, we’re not reading in this way anymore. We’re not writing anymore in this way or et cetera. And and just new technology and how it changes the brain and how you communicate. And there’s a school of thought that, you know, folks adapt and they bring it in and they find new ways of expressing that.
00:20:18 Speaker 2
Our folks today are pulling articles they’re using already tools, but they’re still ingesting it. Maybe the AI helps them do an analysis if they find that to be accurate. But yeah, I don’t know. Mark, do.
00:20:30 Speaker 2
You have any thoughts on that?
00:20:31 Speaker 4
No, I think it comes down frankly to individual ages.
00:20:34 Speaker 4
Cease making their own discussion and the specific point I want to highlight because we had a very robust debate at C + C over list is on meeting notes and action items that you know there are tools out there right now that can absolutely do meeting notes and action items, automate the process and turn them up very quickly. And so the time is 1.
00:20:56 Speaker 4
Does that let you save some billable hours and not bring a junior person to the meeting? Let people be more present in the meeting, but the the corollary to that is, you know, if they’re if you don’t have somebody, the way you would learn how to pick up these key ideas and do the action items is by doing the meeting.
00:21:11 Speaker 4
And so we need to decide, do you want to use AI to save time or do you want to make sure you still have somebody there and give them that training opportunity? And I think you can make the argument either way and that’s why it’s up to the.
00:21:22 Speaker 4
Agency to decide what to do. In our case, we’ve decided we want to make sure we have somebody because we want to train their critical thinking and train their ability to find those key messages. As Kim talked about.
00:21:32 Speaker 4
So we’re not using it.
00:21:32 Speaker 4
Right now for that purpose.
00:21:35 Speaker 2
I think it might be also a magnificent way to to engage all generations within an organizational environment to say, hey, what is a value to you? There’s obviously the judgment we can bring as more senior leaders because we have seen professional development and sort of see the nuances of how that might shift from person to person.
00:21:55 Speaker 2
Learning style, but also to ask younger people what are the places where you feel you really need to be at the table and how does this bring the value for?
00:22:04 Speaker 2
Too, etc. Etc. I mean, there’s so much great stuff here I think about this very much as an organizational leader, even thinking beyond the agency context, but also as a practitioner and as a person. I mean, I think we on this kind of issue, I think we have to be considering and reflecting on this on multiple levels at all times because of the 360 nature.
00:22:25 Speaker 2
So let’s talk.
00:22:26 Speaker 2
About the guidelines for a bit and I’ve got them up here on my other screen.
00:22:29 Speaker 2
There’s a lot of great things in here in terms of we, it’s it’s and it’s aligned and mark, you really were a proponent of this aligning the view of generative AI and the use of it in an ethical context with the PR Council’s code of ethics that is signed by all agencies. These guidelines are not mandatory, but the Code of ethics is. So there’s a lot of good stuff in here.
00:22:50 Speaker 2
Protecting the integrity of client information. Our role in society’s accuracy, transparency. But for each of you, I don’t know. I’ll start with you. Kim, what are some of the key themes or areas of focus or topic in there or maybe one of the guidelines that most resonates with you or that you would love to highlight?
00:23:08 Speaker 3
First, I just have to praise Mark for the brilliance and you know, just using the Code of Ethics.
00:23:17 Speaker 3
As the format, it just works so beautifully. I think one of the sections that I really valued and I also enjoyed the discussion on an input from a number of people was the UM.
00:23:31 Speaker 3
Preventing bias, particularly around diversity, I I thought we were able to do a really good job of.
00:23:39 Speaker 3
Creating questions for folks to ask and for me it was so important because our industry lacks diversity, so we have to.
00:23:51 Speaker 3
You know, overcompensate for the fact that we don’t have diverse teams typically and really.
00:24:00 Speaker 3
We all sort of teach ourselves to watch for that bias.
00:24:06 Speaker 3
I think we did a good pass at that.
00:24:10 Speaker 2
Yeah. And shout out to the individuals and the diversity community, the CDO’s, the chief diversity officers who corresponded with you, Kim, and took a look at that, cuz they added a lot to it. And for those who haven’t looked at the guidelines yet, not only are there the guidelines themselves, but relative.
00:24:28 Speaker 2
To that issue.
00:24:30 Speaker 2
There’s a whole series of questions that are part of this document that one can ask to interrupt bias or recognize bias in the process of engaging with generative AI, and I would argue that the questions are just good in general for putting yourself on the spot, stepping back from your normal mode and saying what is actually happening here. But.
00:24:51 Speaker 2
Mark, the question goes to you, what was a theme or a piece of the guidelines that really?
00:24:56 Speaker 2
Read it.
00:24:56 Speaker 2
To you.
00:24:57 Speaker 4
There are a lot of them, but I mean, we’ll talk about training. I think I’ve mentioned already. So I want to highlight something else that I think is important and that was something I hadn’t quite realized. The full implications of was dealing with protecting the integrity of client information and really looking at all the different ways we could potentially be compromising ethically and legally.
00:25:16 Speaker 4
Our responsibilities when it comes to what we may use generative AI to enhance, and it’s really important to understand the difference between close and open generative AI.
00:25:28 Speaker 4
Which is something and frankly, we we were laughing. We were always worried as we developing these guidelines where they become outdated, how quickly and the good news about tying it to ethics. It doesn’t where they get outdated and it may need to be modified and updated. But the current principles stay the same. But the day of the webinar we had announcing this, there were some new developments when it came to close day I and so that’s why people need to constantly learn as well but it’s.
00:25:50 Speaker 4
Understanding that in any open AI system.
00:25:54 Speaker 4
Any information you put in there can eventually be incorporated into a large language model, and so it’s things like are you then liable? Are you then putting your clients data at risk? There’s a whole bunch of elements and I think that’s something where you gotta really look at what can and what should you not put into generative AI platforms.
00:26:14 Speaker 2
I think that’s such a great one and that and that’s one where.
00:26:18 Speaker 2
It was really interesting. Some of the discussions we had around it because the space is so fast.
00:26:25 Speaker 2
And I think there’s also maybe a sense and and no one said this explicitly like in our task force or in some of the reactions that we got from industry and conversations I’ve had. But I do wonder too with the large public models like chat shift, like the public version, if there if people don’t have an assumption, it’s sort of like the school of fish theory. Oh, there’s so many fish.
00:26:45 Speaker 2
Like I’m just like, it’ll never pop up like it’s just so much stuff.
00:26:49 Speaker 2
In there, but I think it’s really important to be rigorous about that and say you don’t know that it won’t. You don’t know that it won’t. It’s that’s the power of these models. My, my favorite part. I mean, I really loved every part of this conversation because the frustrated academic in me really enjoys this kind of thing, like, very deeply and profoundly. But the thing I enjoyed a lot.
00:27:10 Speaker 2
Was having a chance to reflect as a group with different points of view on what does transparency and disclosure mean in this context? So there were a lot of different threads of that conversation. One was.
00:27:24 Speaker 2
And and I have great respect for the folks that brought this up and I understand the context of why, although I will dispute it right now, you know this sense of disclosure. Well, hey, we’re already using Grammarly. I’m already using this AI is embedded like all through wherever my phone is all through that. I feel that is a little bit.
00:27:44 Speaker 2
I think it I think it’s a a misguided conflation of what is sort of the evolution of not even AI tools as they exist today and what is coming. So this question of disclosure, I don’t feel that that can be used as an excuse. And again, I don’t think people were proffering it as an excuse but it’s.
00:28:03 Speaker 2
More like but this.
00:28:05 Speaker 2
So I think that was one big thing I had to really reflect on. And then this question of transparency, it’s like.
00:28:12 Speaker 2
If it walks and quacks like a duck, is it a duck? So if if we created something and X percentage of it was contributed to by gender, gender of AI, where is the authorship? Does it have to be 51% with the human? Does it have to be 60 percent, 70%, and there’s a? There’s a thought leader in this space and I can’t remember his name right now we can put it in the.
00:28:34 Speaker 2
In the show notes who one of my colleagues, Kyle Turner in our digital group, who’s amazing, shared with me and this guy was talking about the release of Facebook’s Llama, which is open source.
00:28:47 Speaker 2
A A whole nother level of this thing. He calls it the next Pebble.
00:28:50 Speaker 2
In the avalanche.
00:28:51 Speaker 2
And he at the beginning of his video, said this. Here’s my disclosure, this was 95% human driven. There’s 5% where generative AI has created images for me. And I thought that was really, really interesting.
00:29:07 Speaker 2
My my colleague Steve Halsey, who some of you know, said to me he was having discussion at page about.
00:29:12 Speaker 2
But what if you had a generative AI spokesperson that was generated video and they if there was a crisis with a company that, that program could be set to communicate in, you know 50-60 seventy languages simultaneously around the world, how would we feel about that? So what do you guys think about that?
00:29:33 Speaker 2
That use case that is really interesting to me.
00:29:37 Speaker 3
It’s frightening to me.
00:29:41 Speaker 2
I mean, let’s let’s let’s imagine in this thought experiment that it is the company doing it and they want to be able to communicate quickly and they’re using AI and it’s an avatar, and they’re saying it’s them. But it still feels weird a bit.
00:29:55 Speaker 2
Does go ahead, Kim?
00:29:56 Speaker 3
It does. It just feels like such a thin line between good and evil. On that use case, right? Like.
00:30:07 Speaker 3
I don’t know. It’s super scary. And then?
00:30:13 Speaker 3
If the information is wrong or dangerous or illegal, then.
00:30:22 Speaker 3
Is it the company you know? I don’t know. It just feels fraught with peril.
00:30:28 Speaker 2
What’s your take on that, Mark? This one really. I was like, wow, that’s so interesting.
00:30:31 Speaker 4
Yeah, it’s interesting. I mean, I think in the end, people would be more reassured right now, at least today.
00:30:36 Speaker 4
Hearing from a live person and making the statements, and they’re real human because they want to hear from the CEO or the VP of Marketing. I almost bifurcated in two ways. It’s one around the image and the text and or are we creating as the AI creating it and then two, as you said 50 or 70 different languages.
00:30:53 Speaker 4
And yes, it’s kind of really interesting to use with the translation automatic because there’s tools that.
00:30:57 Speaker 4
Do that, but one of the things we understand is translation is in trans creation, and no matter how good the translation tools are right now, they do not get the cultural nuances, which is why I tend to involve, you know, human people from the cultures that can understand and use the right terminology. Otherwise you’re going to have something which some people assume.
00:31:18 Speaker 4
Means one thing and everybody’s talking about pop. And you know that it’s your father. Well, other people think it’s a soda and, you know, it’s a. It’s another thing that you got to make sure you deal with those cultural nuances appropriately.
00:31:30 Speaker 2
Yeah, I’m originally from Ohio, so I was in the pop scene, but yeah, no, I I think I wanted to hit you guys with this sort of without warning with this use case because it just came to me. Steve came into my office yesterday and said, listen to this. And I said, what an interesting thought experiment because it does trigger so many questions.
00:31:32 Speaker 4
Not soda or bubble looker. If you want. Right? I mean, hey, bubble the water fountain.
00:31:50 Speaker 2
That I think are the right questions. Again, going back to that ethical mind, the ethical decision making framework of.
00:31:57 Speaker 2
What does it mean to have a non person avatar saying this versus how will it be received and for different cultures different societies at different times and sort of what you’re implying in your answer, mark is right now for many cultures and societies, probably a a real person would be the more relevant.
00:32:17 Speaker 2
Thing will we adapt later on to where that will feel differently and then the question of is that translation?
00:32:23 Speaker 2
And good enough. You know, it’s amazing to have live time translation tools, but where does that become a net negative if we don’t really understand that? There’s just, I think it’s gonna be very cool. And we talked about this Kim to sort of create a repository of use cases or interesting questions or hey, this is what’s emerging. So as an industry.
00:32:44 Speaker 2
We can start to look at. OK, here’s some obvious uses already, but here’s some ones that we maybe haven’t thought about yet, and that that’s something I want to keep on my radar. It’s hard to do that at scale, but.
00:32:55 Speaker 2
Maybe that’s as.
00:32:57 Speaker 2
As this project, the guidelines of all of that could be something we look at.
00:33:01 Speaker 3
I agree. I think that’s the power of having this task force. You know, you couldn’t do this within your own firm. Most firms don’t have the kind of expertise we were able to bring, you know, just even the person power to get this work done. One thing I wanted to mention on that use case is how long will it be before we can’t tell.
00:33:24 Speaker 3
Avatar or human? I mean, I don’t think that’s.
00:33:26 Speaker 2
Probably now maybe.
00:33:27 Speaker 3
That far off.
00:33:28 Speaker 2
Yeah, and that that gets back to the deepfake question and and another piece that interested me, which is sort of the strands disclosure, transparency, authenticity, you know, there’s been folks in our society that have been yearning for the singularity for decades, which is the whatever one.
00:33:49 Speaker 2
Judges to be the merger of man and machine you.
00:33:52 Speaker 2
And and that’s a very kind of visionary tech utopian to me that feels this topic I just read just a lot of dystopic fiction growing up, so I’m like, but the idea of what is an authentic human expression, this is going to really challenge that, especially when it’s taught.
00:34:12 Speaker 2
To talk like us, you know it. It comes out in a way that sounds human. I find it. It’s going to cause a lot of emotions, which it already is. Clearly, yeah.
00:34:21 Speaker 3
I think another interesting conversation that I’ve been having is.
00:34:25 Speaker 3
AI and art.
00:34:29 Speaker 3
And I have felt worried for artists, musicians, visual artists, writers. But you know, in speaking with some friends, they’re pointing out that, you know, technologies have been playing a role in the creation of art for so long, and artists are.
00:34:51 Speaker 3
So maybe it isn’t a threat, it’s a, you know, aid.
00:34:57 Speaker 3
To creating art, I don’t know.
00:34:59 Speaker 2
Mark, I think I’d love to hear your because I think this goes back to questions too about being really intentional about ownership and.
00:35:04 Speaker 4
Copyright no, I think so. And I think the one point I want to really emphasize and it’s something we had discussed earlier, is you need to make sure you get multiple opinions.
00:35:13 Speaker 4
Because otherwise you’re going to have your bias and I’ll tell you right now, I’ve been a PR guy and a digital PR guy for 25 years. That’s where I think at C + C when we formed Rai Task Force, we made sure we had somebody from research, somebody from creative digital multicultural and the folks from creative that we’re doing all the.
00:35:32 Speaker 4
Artwork and all the other issues we’re bringing up ideas that I never would have considered. I mean. And so I think we’ve, we evolve some of our guidelines to deal with a lot of that creative area, which is not something we’ve necessarily talked about specifically on these because and that’s the point there is you need to look at as you’re doing business in multiple areas.
00:35:50 Speaker 4
What are some of the guidelines you’re going to have? It may be different and you need to keep that in mind.
00:35:55 Speaker 2
I love the idea of bringing multiple points of view and perspectives to the table and that kind of gets to the earlier thing we talked about is sort of wrestling with the dynamic tension of everything humans create can be amazing or a garbage fire like we we have demonstrated ability to have both at once with everything that we create and some things are more potentially destructive.
00:36:17 Speaker 2
And others. But I love the idea that.
00:36:19 Speaker 2
Because you know Mark and and tying back to something you said.
00:36:22 Speaker 2
That’s a complete.
00:36:24 Speaker 2
Parallel with the question of ethics, which is more, voices are better. If you have a feeling something’s wrong, get to others, talk about it, get perspectives. Same thing with bias. If you feel like am I gaslighting this person, am I? Am I seeing this in a way that am I? Is this performance evaluation of doing?
00:36:44 Speaker 2
Come and warped because of the systems of race that surround me in the society. Like what is happening here and getting out of your hole and talking to multiple people. I love that advice, Mark. I think it’s so important.
00:36:54 Speaker 2
So guys, what comes next in this process? We have these guidelines, they’re going to be a living document. You know, what do you think will be the journey for this kind of project and what are you watching most closely? I mean, obviously, we’re not gonna be updating them every week. We might look quarterly and say what’s happened. But Kim, what’s on your mind?
00:37:15 Speaker 2
About where does this go from?
00:37:16 Speaker 3
Here I I love the idea of regularly convening and you know, now I’m obsessing about we need creatives. We need to get creative.
00:37:28 Speaker 3
Pulled together and have this conversation, but I think the more time we can make to talk about this, even if we’re not issuing changes to our guidelines, but quarterly just having these conversations I think is going to sharpen our thinking and it says a lot about the thoughtfulness of our industry. One thing I wanted to share, which is just the tiniest.
00:37:49 Speaker 3
The tangent. But we did a bunch of research on early career professionals in other industries, you know, with the idea.
00:37:57 Speaker 3
Of how do we?
00:37:58 Speaker 3
Attract people with really valuable skill.
00:38:00 Speaker 3
Bills into our agencies. So law. Yeah. Yes. Advertising educators. We do so much education. We need educators. So we went through all of these different professions and we asked them, do they think public relations is ethical? And I’ll be honest, I thought that there was not going to be a really positive.
00:38:21 Speaker 3
Response to that just because of the impact of pop culture, you know, because of the way our industry is portrayed and it was amazing, like almost two a person, they’re like well.
00:38:33 Speaker 3
They have to be, don’t they? I mean, how can you be a public relations professional and not be focused on ethics? Well, we know you can, but I thought that that was really terrific to hear from young potential talent. And it made me want to do.
00:38:54 Speaker 3
An even better job and have these conversations and get them out into the public a bit more so people know.
00:39:01 Speaker 3
We are doing this work.
00:39:04 Speaker 3
Very thoughtfully.
00:39:06 Speaker 2
Yeah, Mark, what are you think? What are you looking at as next steps or things that you’re keeping your eye on as we go?
00:39:12 Speaker 2
Forward in this space.
00:39:12 Speaker 4
Well, I think two things that I want to circle back to one thing Kim just talked about about how PR is ethical. And I mean, I think one of the things that really heartens me, if you haven’t looked at the atmosphere studies, you know when people are talking about it, we say it being ethical is good for business. There is an ethics premium they have found usually 10 to 13 percent or higher performance by ethical companies, by the world’s most ethical companies, so.
00:39:33 Speaker 4
You know, paying attention to these things is not just morally the right thing to do. It’s the right thing to do when it comes to business.
00:39:39 Speaker 4
As well.
00:39:40 Speaker 4
But in terms of what I am looking at and I’ve kind of gone down another rabbit hole right now, but I think it’s absolutely fascinating and we’re focusing on generative AI. But when you look at what autonomous agents are going to be able to do in the coming years, that is something that is it changes it even more. We got to see how effective it’s going to be.
00:40:01 Speaker 4
But I I think over time the looking at the ethics of autonomous agents and what we’re looking allowed to do, which is kind of taking Geneva out of the next level, is going to be a bigger deal.
00:40:12 Speaker 2
That’s a really great point. There’s a lot of and I think we’ve been around long enough to see these convergence of technology. I remember working in tech and including wireless and healthcare and financial services and watching them all converge. Mark, you and I both did that in the industries and I think we’re going to see a lot of conversions of these things.
00:40:32 Speaker 2
I think for me I am really interested in how.
00:40:36 Speaker 2
And I think Facebook did it to kind of catch up with the others. But the release of an open source and it’s not a full interface, it’s not a a fully baked platform, it’s really non commercial open source software that gives other people the keys to a full you know, a large language model that they can then fine tune for their own uses. And as I’ve dug into this more.
00:40:57 Speaker 2
The technologists listening to this would be like no duh, but there’s just huge amounts of smaller platforms now cascading off.
00:41:06 Speaker 2
Of that release.
00:41:07 Speaker 2
And how is it that our clients start to use AI internally and private models, so it’s kind of like the private public cloud. There’s a hybrid cloud strategy, hybrid AI strategies. I mean, I really feel like I want to keep digging into the tech side of it, but that’s only because I always feel I always joke that as someone who’s not a technologist first and foremost.
00:41:27 Speaker 2
I the technology train continues barreling down the track. I need to stay on at least the last car. I’d like to be farther up on the train if I can, but I.
00:41:36 Speaker 2
Have to at.
00:41:36 Speaker 2
Least hold on to the back of it so I do feel.
00:41:40 Speaker 2
Like a real responsibility to try to read as much as I can and stay updated on how these technologies are morphing and evolving in real time. So the open source thing to me is really interesting and and it may be something that, you know eventually some of these things shell together later in the year we bring the task force back together and shout out to all the agency.
00:42:01 Speaker 2
Leaders on our ethics task.
00:42:03 Speaker 2
For us and we talk about what everyone’s seeing, and I love him. By the by the way, the idea of maybe the PR Council convening specialized roundtables, let’s have another one with technologists. Let’s have another one with people who identify as creatives. You know, there might be another one with the paid media professionals in our agencies, the DE and I professionals in our agencies.
00:42:24 Speaker 2
And that way we can keep all those voices going.
00:42:28 Speaker 3
Yeah, I think that’s a great path forward. You know, I just want to put a.
00:42:31 Speaker 3
Sharp point on what both of.
00:42:34 Speaker 3
You have just said and.
00:42:36 Speaker 3
That is the need for public relations professionals to constantly be educating themselves in this area, particularly in the area of technology. I really think it’s a mistake if.
00:42:53 Speaker 3
People at all levels are not seeing themselves as students and.
00:43:00 Speaker 3
It’s going to be a.
00:43:01 Speaker 3
Big mess for your career if you don’t.
00:43:03 Speaker 2
And isn’t that?
00:43:04 Speaker 2
The fun of being in this industry, constant learning it literally is the number one thing about especially being on an agency side. So Mark, any final thoughts from you?
00:43:12 Speaker 4
You know, I think just on Kim’s point is a phrase I’ve heard used a lot. I’m gonna change it a little bit. AI is not going to cost PR professionals their jobs, but PR people that know how to operationalize AI.
00:43:12 Speaker 2
Before we close that.
00:43:25 Speaker 4
They’re the ones going to cost you your jobs or cost.
00:43:27 Speaker 4
Your agency, your clients.
00:43:29 Speaker 2
Well said with that, I think that’s the end. But Kim sample Mark McLennan, always a pleasure. It’s been such a pleasure to do this work together and we’re going to continue. And thank you for being on building brand, brand gravity and I’ll talk to you all.
00:43:45 Speaker 3
Thank you, Anne. Thank you.
00:43:50 Speaker 1
You’re listening to building brand gravity, attracting people into your orbit. A GNS Business Communications podcast keep connected with us by subscribing to the show in your favorite podcast player. If you like what you’ve heard, please rate the show. That helps us to keep delivering the latest in industry influence.
00:44:09 Speaker 1
Thanks for listening until next time.
Cultivating & Empowering Black Talent in Marcomms & Advertising: A Conversation with Dr. Osei Appiah
Welcome back to Building Brand Gravity.
In this episode, Anne interviews Dr. Osei Appiah, a renowned communication and race scholar who serves as a Professor in the School of Communication at The Ohio State University. Dr. Appiah explores critical questions on building meaningful diversity across the fields of marketing, communications and advertising – and supporting Black talent in particular. This includes:
- The importance of race in the field of communication
- Intentional approaches to cultivating and empowering Black professionals
- Historic barriers to building and sustaining a strong talent pipeline
- The roles of industry and academia in making change and building belonging
Dr. Appiah shares his thoughts on the progress of diversity in the advertising and marcomms industry and provides insight into how we can work together to increase representation and empower Black talent by highlighting BASCA – the Black Advertising and Strategic Communications Association. Dr. Appiah Founded BASCA as a partnership between students, faculty, and professionals to develop and prepare Black students for careers in advertising, communications, marketing and more.
00:00:06 Speaker 1
You are listening to building brand gravity, attracting people into your orbit. GNS Business Communications Podcast This is a show for communications pros across industries looking to gain an inside view into industry influence. You’re about to hear a conversation with leading industry professionals.
00:00:26 Speaker 1
Talking about the importance of building business impact through sound brand strategy, let’s get into the show.
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Hello, I’m Anne Green, and welcome to building brand gravity. I’m a principal here at G&S Business Communications and I’m so pleased to welcome my guest today to the podcast Doctor Assay Apia, who is a professor of communication at the Ohio State University.
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Are a renowned communication and race scholar who’s written and lectured on the impact of strategic communication messages and media on ethnic.
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Minorities and the role that stereotypes play on intergroup interaction. And boy, that’s so timely in our culture today. I think so much so. And you Co edited the book advertising and persuasion in a diverse world and published in tons of academic journals. Journal of Communication, Human communications research. Many more and what was really interesting to me about your bio and maybe you can comment on this is.
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It talked about helping to demonstrate to mainstream journal editors and reviewers and readers about the importance of race and why race matters in the field of communication, and I’m not sure if you just want to comment on that briefly because I do.
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Think that for.
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Fronting that question is so important, especially in.
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The field that.
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We are both in in our own ways.
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That’s a great question. Thanks for the introduction. And I also want to thank you for having the opportunity to have a conversation with you today on this podcast. It’s an honor to be here and I’m extremely excited and and happy.
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Gonna be.
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When I look at my research.
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My research centers on interracial interaction, identity stereotypes, and the effects of strategic communication messages on ethnic minorities and ethnic majorities in my field. There have been times where I felt as though.
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Race didn’t always, Matt.
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I would submit research papers to journals and editors or reviewers. For example, I would when I submitted research papers to journals. Oftentimes, the population that I talked about in those research papers were specific to blacks.
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And which I thought is particularly important, but I would oftentimes give reviewers who would comment and say, hey, your research is interesting, but can you provide a comparison group? Can you include white populations in your research because audiences?
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Are particularly would be particularly interested to know how whites compare with blacks and.
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To me it somewhat.
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Dilutes the importance of looking specifically at the black community in order to publish my research, I was often often felt like I had to incorporate whites into that research in order for it to be seen as significant and important.
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Today, for example, we’re talking primarily about kind of the impact, the empowering and cultivating black talent.
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And it’s not necessarily that we have in this conversation. We have to talk about white talent alongside of black talent, but I feel in my research, in order for me to demonstrate the importance of my work, I had to often times use a a white comparison group. So that makes it particularly challenging.
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Published in mainstream journals where you have.
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Readers who are overwhelmingly white. So how do you make race important interesting to audiences who are primarily part of a racial out group which are white? So how do I make talking about blacks important to white mainstream?
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Audiences. So that was the challenge.
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It’s really helpful and it it could. Such good context from the very beginning of this conversation about these moments of centering whiteness that are not even on the radar of many people. You know that we talk.
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About dominant identities, marginalized identities, and a lot of times those are acting in ways that are subconscious for folks, I think. And what you’re saying is really like, well, we have to center whiteness in this. Otherwise, how will it be relevant?
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So I agree. Let’s recenter this conversation on black professionals in this industry. And let’s let’s be really intentional about that and.
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One of the things we’re going to talk about today.
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And I’ll get to in a minute. I have. I have another lead in because there’s there’s some stats I want to share with you that are going to be very familiar to you. And I’d love to get your take on them to set the stage, but we are going to be talking about a group that you also formed at the Ohio State University called Bosco, the black advertising and Strategic Communications Association. And I’m so excited because in a follow up teaser.
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So this podcast I’m going to get to talk to the boscus some of the Bosch study.
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But to back up a little bit, you wrote a paper in 2016 that was published in the Journal of Advertising Education, and the title is fun. Some may recognize the reference here advertising industry diversity. We’ve kind of come a long way, baby, but larger pipeline and more intentional action from industry.
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And educators.
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Needed and in that in the very beginning you quoted from the Madison Ave. project some stats. This is from 2011 that at that time black individuals represented 13% of the US population, but made-up only 5% of the advertising profession. So our amazing digital team here at GNS helped me out.
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And did some research and found the Association of National advertisers shout out to my former client and the Alliance for Inclusive and Multicultural Marketing just published a study last November, and their stats were that black individuals make up 12.1% of the US population, so versus 13.
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But now our 7.2% of job rules in advertising. So a couple of things. We’ve gone from 5% to 7.2% between 2011 and 2022.
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Progress but small and the other thing I I would like to say is I recognize that’s looking primarily at advertising. My field is a little bit broader lens of marketing communications, but I feel it’s very, very comparable. I would feel the numbers are quite we’ve been a member of the PR Council and I think that’d be very similar.
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What’s just to start off, I assume these numbers are not surprising to you. I mean, what is your take on this progress evolution, slow, fast. I mean, what what? What’s your reaction to hearing those two book ended together?
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Well, a number of things come to mind.
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First, there’s a a pressing need. Part of the reason that we’re here, you and I are speaking is that there’s a pressing need for companies and partnership with academic institutions to rectify the under representation of blacks at marketing communication firms.
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And although society has become increasingly more ethnically diverse.
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The marketing communication industry, in my opinion, has willfully trailed behind in their efforts to diversify the workplace, advertising agencies and other market communication firms have, in my opinion, have made little progress in hiring blacks. This is.
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Particularly troubling to me, given that as I kind of alluded to in some of that research from my 2016 paper, that this problem was really identified.
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By you know about 40 years ago by the New York Human Rights Commission, who actually threatened to force executives at leading ad agencies to to testify about their dismal record of hiring ethnic minorities to really come up and and explain, hey, why is this the case? What’s the problem? How has this?
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How has this occurred? So given the historical and current dearth of blacks and marketing communication agencies, there was a dire need to create.
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A program that could help to address this problem. Maybe shift it a little bit in terms of.
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Kind of why I started the black advertising Strategic Communication Association.
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Because of this long history of underrepresentation of blacks in the marketing communication field, if you will. So I know that agencies seek talent with strong educational backgrounds they want.
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Young people to have relevant professional experience and a broad understanding of the industry and in many ways, that’s what we’re trying to do with Bosch. I created the black advertising Strategic Communication Association.
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About well, it wasn’t about. It was 10 years ago. In fact, we just recently celebrated our 10th year.
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Happy anniversary. That’s amazing. It’s a big milestone.
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Thank you very much. I appreciate.
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And what boska aims to do is to lead more black students to aspire to and attain careers in advertising, PR, marketing and other strategic communication related occupations.
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Vasca also provides students with access to professional mentors create opportunities for students to gain professional experience through internships. Despite our limited funding, we’ve been able to, over the last 10 years, take bosca.
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Take our basket members.
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Roughly over 100 of them on annual professional development and career networking trips to major cities like New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Washington, DC to meet industry professionals. And at these organizations and we’ve gone not only to.
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All these cities we visited, a number of companies, such as on our on the way, Coca-Cola, the NFL, CNN Headline News, Ketchum, Edelman.
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BBDO Ogilvy and May there Chicago Tribune Leo Burnet.
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For rail communications and places like Spotify, Showtime and of course, one of our favorite places was GNS Communications. So while we were in New York, we were at the good fortune to come to your company and and visit. We had a a remarkable time. I should also mention.
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If you if I may, that we’ve also made an imprint here locally.
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Busch has been able to build relationships with industry leaders here in the greater Columbus area, and many of the industry leaders at companies in the Greater Columbus area has helped bosca to engage in engage our Members in.
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Internship opportunities, resume workshops, life skills.
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In in addition to that, we have meetings every twice a month and we bring in executives from all over the area here, bosca, in my opinion, has helped black students acquire knowledge.
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Necessary skills.
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And experience, thereby generating a pool of top graduates from which local and national agencies can choose. And in that paper that 2016 paper.
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I discuss some of the for lack of better word, excuses that companies have used to explain the under representation of ethnic minorities, in particular blacks at the company at these companies, and what we hear is that although agencies express that they want to hire more ethnic minorities.
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Any claim they cannot find diverse cannons.
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Oh yes, that’s been a long time trope that I’ve heard over the years.
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And my argument is, well, now they can’t. Is helping to add to that that.
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You know the pipeline piece and I want to talk about the pipeline because you’ve helped me deepen my thoughts about it in reading your work and talking with you because it’s something I reflected on for a very long time. You know my background as an undergrad, as liberal arts person. So I didn’t come out of a communications background. So I’m sort of an accidental.
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Business person, accidental communications executive. But I did encounter in the late 80s, early 90s when I was a English major in a women’s studies minor and I think I mentioned to.
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This to you when we spoke that.
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That was the first time that I realized, as a woman studies person, who really was committed to the concept of feminism.
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I really ran right up against an immediate and necessary and just life changing critique by authors like Audrey Lord and Bell Hooks, who made it very clear to me that feminism centered on whiteness could be a social justice movement that was also oppressive and replicating racism and systemic.
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To get back to the pipeline, you know I’ve I’ve had a lot of angst as an executive in this field and I should about this this whole claim of we can’t find the talent. Where is the talent and that sort of sense of throwing your hands up in.
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Helplessness, and I think I’d I’d love to hear your thoughts on that and obviously Bosco is 1 answer.
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But the other side of it that you brought up to me in your paper is the Academy and the education side and what it is educational institutions need to do. Do you want to talk about either of those to mention those two sides of the coin?
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I think it’s a partnership.
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And what I.
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Mean by partnership. I think it’s a partnership between academic institutions and industry that we need to work together to develop and nurture, as you mentioned, cultivate and empower black talent.
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The Academy has a responsibility on their side to increase the interest and the number of majors and strategic communication related areas. What that means is active recruiting.
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And retaining students in those strategic communication related majors.
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It also means providing a atmosphere and environment that is conducive for those students to succeed, to have a sense of belonging.
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And certain things specific things that we can do is you can, there should be student organizations within the Academy, let’s say, at the School of Communications should have student organizations.
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That are geared towards ethnic minorities and other affinity groups, if you will, but in this case we’re talking specifically about blacks that have a black student organization.
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That deals primarily with issues related to the industry or I should say that is focused on professional development like.
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Other things that can be done is having a diversity or dei committee within the School of communication. Because the DRI committee or some kind of chief diversity officer within the school within the department who can have as their job.
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To embrace diversity, to focus on issues of retention, recruitment and and also whose responsibility it is to.
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Engage in connecting with with students so student organizations DI Committee.
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It is also important for, I believe, for in academic institutions to reach out to high schools and a lot of students. When I was growing up, I didn’t know anything.
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About advertising and I didn’t know anything about public relations as a kid growing up in Long Beach.
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California in a very.
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You know, indigent poverty stricken, gang infested environment.
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What I focused on primarily was sports in, in playing basketball.
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Academics was very important in my household. My mom and dad valued academics.
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But because we had no money, the way in which I felt I needed to.
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Get out of that.
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Environment and go to college was through sports. So I played basketball, got a scholarship to play basketball at Santa Clara University. I apologize. I didn’t really go over my my educational background, but.
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It wasn’t until I got to college. In fact, the Graduate School, when I was working on my PhD, that I really learned anything about advertising. I was getting my PhD at Stanford University and I saw that there were some Flyers across campus that talked about.
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A chairman and CEO from an advertising agency was coming to speak at Stanford.
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In fact, he his name is Joe Muse. He was the chairman and CEO of Muse with at the time was Muse, Cardero and Chin that ultimately turned into Muse Communications.
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And again, I’m a PC student. I’m probably, I don’t know, 20.
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By 26 years old.
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And I went to go.
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Watch him. I went to go listen to his presentation.
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And he talked about his business. He talked about why he started music, video and Chan or Muse Communications, which was a racially which was a multicultural advertising agency. And there weren’t a whole lot of them when we had barrel communications, which has.
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Than the standard historically, but there weren’t many of those. And as I listened to him and heard him talk about how much joy, how much passion he had for advertising in the industry, and as he talked about what?
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It was, and what it did it fascinated me, so this was really the first time I was able to hear about advertising, and this was coming from a black man.
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Chairman, CEO of an ad agency and he was black. So at 25 this is kind of my first introduction to advertising outside of watching television.
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I’m looking at a guy who worked in the industry. I immediately said, you know what?
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This is an area that is open.
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Reliable and accessible to me because I see someone who looks like me, who’s doing it. So I see that in the context of.
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When you go to high schools.
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The Academy or industry professionals and you talk to kids?
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About what you do, it informs them not only about the industry, but they. Not only do they get to know about it, they can start aspiring to careers, occupations that are that they hear about, that they see people who look like them. So I think it’s important for industry professionals.
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And the Academy to go into high schools and talk about advertising to get.
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Young people informed about it and to start aspiring to those careers.
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I think it’s particularly important to have scholarships within these schools that are specific to diverse groups.
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And not only.
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Specific to diverse groups rewarding and acknowledging.
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50 minorities, in particular blacks who are excelling academically in those areas.
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And that’s particularly important to acknowledge and to provide.
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A sense of.
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Accomplishment. A sense of reward for those students who are doing well because it lets them know that.
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They can continue on in that field and it’s a rewarding 1. So and the last thing. And I’m sorry to be so long winded, it’s important to provide.
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Mentors for young people to work with academic institutions as industry professionals to work with young people who are aspiring to get into Markham areas and mentor them help to advise them on the right.
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Have the right journey. Let them know what pitfalls they may face and various challenges, but also help them understand.
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The benefits of getting into those fields and that.
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The field is welcoming. It embraces diversity.
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I mean, I would say people talk about a journey and I think will be a big theme of mine and other leadership this year is trying to kind of erase 0 sum thinking and what I mean by that is that multiple things can be true at one time.
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Time we can, as GNS be making and have made real progress, and we can also be not there yet, and also not be great in other areas. You know, there can still be microaggressions or cultural issues, or or things that we need to work out together. So I really believe that. And one of the areas and and I want to talk about this.
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Question of representation. You know, one of the things that we know we need to work on overtime is representation at the highest levels of our agency, the owner group, the senior leadership and we’re really trying.
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To take steps to do.
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That, but there’s always that phrase representation matters, and I think in the dialogue out in the world today, there’s other counterpoints to that or they’re not even counterpoints, but they’re other threads. Like diversity isn’t enough. We need to get to equity. We need to get to belonging. We need to get to a real sense of inclusion. We need to get to justice.
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Or, you know, we don’t want to be in the early days and this is where all of these debates around affirmative action come in, which get very ugly and are very timely right now. But you know, what is it about numbers? But what you’re saying? And I’d love you to reflect on it more is that I do feel representation does matter to see yourself in leadership to see that it’s possible.
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You know when you talk to your students, how do you think they reflect on seeing pathways through other human beings that share their experience or look like them or part of a shared identity? How does that affect them, do you think?
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Let me elaborate on some things that companies can do, but we think about kind of representation how we give representation first and foremost.
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We or industries partners need to hire more people of color, in particular blacks. That starts off first and foremost with.
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Hiring folks who have experience, oftentimes no one’s going to get get hired unless they have some experience. How do you get experience? You can’t get experience unless you get hired. That happens with internships and I know that.
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Internships for students are particularly valuable so that they can gain that experience and hopefully gain a a job within a company. But so let’s.
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Think about some things in terms of what companies can do. One, they can offer mentorship programs, which is something that I talked about before because mentorship and guidance can help students go down the right path and develop experience.
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Knowledge that’s particularly important to be marketable.
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Two companies can advocate for diverse candidates, and I think you and I have had conversations before such that if there are people of color who work at the company, especially Blacks, it’s important to not only have mentorship, but to have folks in the company.
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Who advocate.
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For folks of color, oftentimes I think.
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This is unfortunate, but in many cases it’s important to have as a black person to have allies who don’t look like you, who can advocate for you because in many cases their comments.
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Their advocacy, in many ways matters more. It holds more credibility among white mainstream employees and and managers.
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And so that that’s very important to have advocates who look like you and who don’t look like you also is important to create a workplace that embraces diversity. I mentioned some of the things that GNS is doing in terms of things like having affinity groups having.
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EI committee and I think you have Janice has.
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Both of those.
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This is an important one and maybe somewhat controversial in some circles, but promotions.
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Should impart be tied to the development of diverse.
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Talent. We speak a lot about. OK. Oh, we have a committee that’s doing this. Or we had a workshop on this and we’ve we’ve spoken to our.
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Black professionals in our company.
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But how are we holding each other accountable? If we really embrace diversity? If it’s really important, then maybe part of our as as managers, as supervisors, maybe part of our promotions, our our raises should be tied again in part to how we’re developing.
00:27:42 Speaker 3
Talent. How are we leading? So I think that’s particularly important.
00:27:46 Speaker 2
I love just to jump on that really quickly, not to take you off track, but I think it’s so important because it is that question of accountability and that’s what’s been missing. Now again, the the New York City Human Rights Commission tried to create some years ago, but this question of how do you embed it in your values? But then how do you make that real and what are the KPI’s or the key performance indicators for each person?
00:28:07 Speaker 2
10 as they go and we do have our task force and we’re actually even examining like should we still call it a task force, is it and how do we look at an ongoing body we we haven’t formed formal affinity groups yet, but many other methods of conversation. But I think that question of how do we and we’re in our performance review cycle right now.
00:28:27 Speaker 2
As I talked to you today, it’s like, how do we lean into helping managers at all levels?
00:28:32 Speaker 2
Understand what it actually means to incorporate the lens of diversity, equity and inclusion as a champion as advocate, because one of the observations that I have, but it’s like not surprising. I mean it’s something we’ve talked about is that bringing talented individuals in for marginalized communities, especially from the black community because of the.
00:28:52 Speaker 2
Unique history of the United States and the unique challenges that we face in this area, to say the least, so deep in the DNA of this country, it’s one thing to bring folks in, but it’s another to help them feel.
00:29:08 Speaker 2
That they want to stay, you know? And that’s that’s to me, even I can’t. You know what? I can’t prioritize one or the other. They’re both so important because we haven’t.
00:29:18 Speaker 2
We’re making progress in recruiting. I’m just talking about us as the example. I know the best. I don’t want to speak for others, but I certainly know.
00:29:24 Speaker 2
A lot about what’s going.
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On other companies, but how? How my colleagues who are here, who identify as black in America today, whether they.
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You know African American come. You know from that history or Caribbean or Africa, you know, wherever blackness is centered in their lives. Like, how do they feel good about being here, that that, that I think is something that I didn’t know if we would get to this level of conversation in the corporate world to tell you the truth 30 years ago. But I feel like we’re starting to have it now.
00:29:53 Speaker 2
I mean, are you seeing that more too in terms of retention and?
00:29:58 Speaker 2
It may not be the thing that you’re engaged in all the time I’m.
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Just curious of your thoughts.
00:30:02 Speaker 3
You know, in society in general, and I’ll probably talk a little bit about.
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My research what we’re seeing.
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In society where they’re watching the news.
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Especially when we look at the news media.
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Much of the.
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Popular press and even some academic literature point to a bleak picture for the future of race relations. We see so much divisiveness out in the world, at least as this communicated to us.
00:30:34 Speaker 3
Through media, but in my.
00:30:41 Speaker 3
I think the negativity, the divisiveness.
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The racial tension that we hear is in many ways overstated.
00:30:52 Speaker 3
The reason I say it’s overstated and we have a tendency to focus on negativity, at least from a media standpoint. I I’m encouraged because I see.
00:31:04 Speaker 3
Young people who have interracial friendships, I see middle school kids in high school, kids who are interacting with other diverse groups on a regular basis. When I walk across campus, I see black students and white students.
00:31:24 Speaker 3
Sitting down, having lunch together, talking about exams and homework, I see much more inter.
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Racial interaction.
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And I although we it’s the.
00:31:40 Speaker 3
Bosca is the black advertising Strategic Communication Association there.
00:31:45 Speaker 3
Are a number of.
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Diverse students who are part of our organization, whether they’re black, white, Hispanic. So I I guess what I’m saying here is that.
00:31:58 Speaker 3
I’m encouraged because there’s.
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A lot more focus one from academics and many industry folks and being intentional.
00:32:11 Speaker 3
About creating environments that are conducive for people of color to succeed in, I mean encouraged because young people.
00:32:24 Speaker 3
Are much more progressive in their thinking, and it’s much more commonplace for them to interact with one another, and they’re much more open minded and less close minded. They don’t see in many cases and my research kind of points to this.
00:32:44 Speaker 3
They know the right.
00:32:46 Speaker 3
Doesn’t necessarily among young people don’t necessarily see blacks as out groups. They often see blacks as in Group members because we we look at race and we want to say that, oh, because someone is white and someone’s black, they’re out groups. But whites, for example, don’t always.
00:33:06 Speaker 3
Use race as a way of determining similarity or commonality. They oftentimes use things like social class cues or occupational cues to determine if one is similar to another.
00:33:22 Speaker 3
The reason that out group and in Group aspects are important because when you start looking at someone as being different, someone who is being who is an out group.
00:33:32 Speaker 3
You engage in biases and prejudices, so.
00:33:38 Speaker 3
There’s something that I call the the Abcs of understanding key communication processes.
00:33:47 Speaker 3
And this is particularly important, I think, for corporate America, the ABC’s are there needs to be awareness and what not being by awareness is be aware of the psychological mechanism.
00:34:00 Speaker 3
That impact our thoughts about interactions with one another.
00:34:06 Speaker 3
What that means is when we come across someone, we tend to immediately make similarity judgements. We make similarity judgments based on how people look. You know they’re superficial. But if I’m a white person, I see another white person. That person is similar to me. I begin to think that that person is part of my age group when I.
00:34:25 Speaker 3
See someone who doesn’t look like me. I kind of see them as an outcry.
00:34:30 Speaker 3
And that can be manifested in biases, even though it may not be. It, even though may be implicit, there can be biases that causes you to not interact with someone who is different. So we need to be intentional about looking and interacting. Having conversations with people who.
00:34:49 Speaker 3
Look different from us outside of our first impressions of making these kind of surface and long lasting impressions that oftentimes based on superficiality.
00:35:04 Speaker 3
So there’s a awareness, there’s B. We need to banish bias. And what I mean by that is minimize or banish cross crew bias. That means how do we do that we engage in perspective taking?
00:35:19 Speaker 3
Of someone who is different from us, we engage in intergroup contact. That means literally going. And as I said before, having communication, having conversations with someone who was different. You know what’s interesting is people generally overestimate.
00:35:38 Speaker 3
The existence of differences between their own group and those of other groups even rival out groups, so we tend to overestimate, you know, differences, for example, that blacks have whites or whites have with blacks. So we have to be intentional about banishing bias. Be aware of our implicit biases and try our hardest.
00:35:59 Speaker 3
To be aware of that and to respond to it and the last thing.
00:36:05 Speaker 3
Which is C create connections recognize the power to make positive and meaningful connections between groups. Take more time to make meaningful connections. We need more intentionality. Look beyond as I kind of alluded to before, look beyond the surface.
00:36:25 Speaker 3
Characteristics of others, so a awareness B vanish the bias and three create connections.
00:36:32 Speaker 2
This is an amazing way. I mean, first of all.
00:36:34 Speaker 2
Well, I am so heartened by your very research and databased view of as well as qualitative of being encouraged because I do feel that way as well. And I and I think my big message for everyone is that.
00:36:49 Speaker 2
Embrace, you know, and really with an open heart, the fact that you can be making progress and also not be there yet and that’s OK and that’s really our industry has been as a whole very defensive.
00:37:02 Speaker 2
And sometimes I hear this thing of we’re doing everything we can. It’s like, no, let’s just, let’s hold it more loosely. And let’s be open hearted about we’re making progress. Look at it. But it’s not good enough yet. OK, great. But I love ending with the ABC’s. And just before we sign off today. And thank you for all your time. I mean, I just, I love every time we talk.
00:37:23 Speaker 2
Is there any particular book or reference or website that you might want our listeners to check out? Just that that you think could be helpful to them.
00:37:32 Speaker 3
Ohh man.
00:37:36 Speaker 2
I mean some of them, I know that we’ve read as a group is the some of us, which was really helpful to understand sort of the underlying currents of American Society also biased by Jennifer Eberhart. I know that was one that was helpful to me.
00:37:48 Speaker 3
You know, I think I was thinking to that same book that the first one that comes to mind, because I think.
00:37:51
Ohh OK.
00:37:55 Speaker 3
We need to.
00:37:56 Speaker 3
Be aware of the implicit biases that we.
00:38:00 Speaker 3
Have in how that can manifest itself in our attitudes and behaviors, so that actually was going?
00:38:06 Speaker 3
To be the.
00:38:06 Speaker 3
Book I would recommend both because it gives us real understanding of this implicit biases. It gives us real research and provides US research.
00:38:19 Speaker 3
Evidence of how.
00:38:22 Speaker 3
These things really happen that it isn’t just in in the imagination that people have biases. Everyone has them. I have them. You have them. But it’s important to be aware of those. So that would be a book that would be the book that comes to mind.
00:38:35 Speaker 2
Yeah. So that’s biased. Everybody can Google it. But Doctor Asai, Apia, Ohio State University, the Ohio State University. Thank you again so much for being with us today and everyone can look for the follow up episode where I get to talk to three of the students from the Executive Board of OSCA. Thank you so much. Have a great day.
00:38:57 Speaker 1
We are GNS business communications. We are a team of media strategists, storytellers and engagement experts who meet you at the intersection of business and communications. To learn more, visit gscommunications.com. You’re listening to building.
00:39:16 Speaker 1
Brand gravity attracting people into your orbit. A GNS business communications pod.
00:39:21 Speaker 1
Cast keep connected with us by subscribing to the show in your favorite podcast player. If you like what you’ve heard, please rate the show that helps us to keep delivering the latest in industry influence. Thanks for listening.
00:39:35 Speaker 1
Until next time.
Journey to a Career in Marketing Communications: Insights from Young Black Professionals
This episode is a follow up to Anne Green’s conversation with Dr. Osei Appiah, Ph.D Professor, School Of Communication at The Ohio State University.
In this episode, Anne interviews three aspiring marketing communications professionals, Rikki Lee Joiner, Michaela Matheney, and Keilah Thompson, who are all students at The Ohio State University (OSU) and members of the Black Advertising and Strategic Communications Association (BASCA). They discuss their personal journeys to majors – and ultimately careers – in marketing communications, the specific areas of work that excite them, and their experiences with BASCA and its impact on their professional development.
These students share their excitement and concerns about entering the industry, as well as their thoughts on previous work and internship experiences. They also touch on the issue of bias, the challenges of being the “only one” in a room and in opening doors for others in the Black community, and offer advice for marketing organizations looking to support young Black professionals.
Join Anne and her guests as they provide valuable insights into the marketing communications industry and share their thoughts on what it takes to help professionals from traditionally marginalized communities build a successful career in these fields.
00:00:06 Speaker 1
You are listening to building brand gravity, attracting people into your orbit. GNS Business Communications Podcast This is a show for communications pros across industries looking to gain an inside view into industry influence. You’re about to hear a conversation with leading industry professionals.
00:00:26 Speaker 1
Talking about the importance of building business impact through sound brand strategy, let’s get into the show.
00:00:37 Speaker 2
Welcome to building brand gravity. I’m Anne green. I’m a principal here at GNS business Communications and I’m so excited to have a number of students from the Ohio State University, the Ohio State University, from an organization named Bosca. And I’m going to ask them to talk about that quite a bit today. Ricky Lee Joyner.
00:00:57 Speaker 2
You are a senior at OSU pursuing a degree in business marketing and Ricky Lee serves as a Vice president of the Bosco Executive Board.
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She’s an OSU moral scholar and active with a lot of organizations on campus Rickley, which is very cool, lots of internship experience, and you’ve launched your own digital marketing marketing firm, the Ricky Lee Agency. So welcome. Then we have Michaela Metheny. She’s a junior at OU pursuing a degree in marketing. You’ve served on the Executive board of Bosca and a member of the Undergraduate Society of Black Leader.
00:01:28 Speaker 2
Others, in addition to your work experience with organizations like Urban Accelerator X and the Columbus Urban League, you’ve also launched you guys are entrepreneurial, a digital marketing agency named Idea Enterprises. And finally, Kayla Thompson is a senior at OHSU pursuing a degree in strategic communications.
00:01:48 Speaker 2
And you’re on.
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The Bosco Executive Board, as a director of membership experience and also the Director of Diversity and Inclusion for the the Ohio State PRS, a chapter which is a really important organization and communications. You’ve launched your own lifestyle brand named Universal Expressions.
00:02:06 Speaker 2
To spread self healing to young adults. Very cool and you’ve done a number of.
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Internships as well.
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Who wants to jump in and define what is bosca? Give us the name of the acronym and tell us a little bit about that organization and how brought you guys together.
00:02:23 Speaker 3
Bosca is the black advertising Strategic Communication association.
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I started getting a part of the organization my freshman year. I was actually approached by the then President, Makayla Davis, who now?
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Works for cricket.
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But she just let me know about the organization she saw the work that I was doing with my digital marketing agency and let me know that this was the perfect opportunity for me to connect with other students that were interested in strategic comms.
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And marketing and advertising and that every week they would have a different working professional within the industry coming to speak to students about their experience and the all of the.
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Plethora of wonderful opportunities that can be afforded to us because I think there is a.
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That generally between, you know, these sort of opportunities and students of colors and you know.
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Bosca our whole entire mission is to equitize opportunities for students that are minorities looking to enter this space. So yeah, it’s pretty.
00:03:19 Speaker 3
Much a little bit about Bosca.
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I love that.
00:03:21 Speaker 2
I love that. Kayla. How did you get involved with Bosco originally?
00:03:24 Speaker 4
Yeah. Umm, last year I think the first semester of last year, I was told by a professor about Bosca and then I’m like, wow, the black advertising Strategic Communication Association, the name just screamed to me. I’m like, this is where I need to be, especially as a Stratcom major. And then I went to the first meeting and.
00:03:42 Speaker 5
I just felt.
00:03:43 Speaker 4
So welcome. It’s very family oriented, but you are around like minded peers. So it’s like, you know, it’s interesting to be around and I’ll be on the E board and really see how like we’re all like we’re all college students but you know, we know how to turn our professional gear on and I love like seeing each other.
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Speak and express it, express ourselves and be entrepreneurial and be business minded, but also be friends.
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With these people.
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That’s amazing. How about you, Michaela?
00:04:13 Speaker 5
Oh man, I think my journey to Bosquez is a little bit more interesting. I think I interviewed for an executive board position for bosca Ricky and another one of our leaders reached out to me was like, hey, we think you’d be really great for this position. I’ve been doing a lot of work with marketing and advertising and the local Columbus area.
00:04:34 Speaker 5
So they reached out and was.
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Like hey, we think.
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You’d be really great for this position and ever.
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Since we’ve been together.
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We’ve been doing Bosco.
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I love the idea of Equitize thing, opportunity and just a little shout out that the prior podcast conversation I had the honor of doing was with Doctor Essay Apia, who is the founder of Bosca. He’s a professor in the School of Communications at the Ohio State University, a really renowned scholar on race relative to communication.
00:05:02 Speaker 2
And lots of interesting research and a lot of passion for this idea of what is opportunity for.
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Especially black students, but also diversity in general across marketing, communications and and the whole industry and that’s the industry I’ve worked in for almost 30 years. You know, I was a liberal arts person. I wasn’t as much on the track as you guys are already, but I’m interested, you know, for your stories what true you each to either marketing or business marketing or.
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Communications each of you is on a journey relative to.
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That, and as we said in your BIOS and as you just said, Michaela, like you’ve already been, really like leaning into this even beyond just your studies.
00:05:42 Speaker 5
Absolutely. That’s a really great question. Growing up in the Deep South and growing up in a really, really small town. The thing that always was so interesting to me was how I would go to bigger cities or visit family and meet people and just understand that.
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These people have so many stories and they exist in areas and pockets and communities that nobody would ever know.
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Out and I tell people all the time before I was ever a marketer or a strategist or a consultant, I was always a writer, and I always had the drive to tell the stories of people and communities in areas that I felt like really deserved that platform. So I kind of leaned into that a lot. And as I got older, I had a really, really.
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Big interest in entrepreneurship.
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And I was lost because at the time, I don’t think entrepreneurship was really a degree or something you could major in. So I fell in the business. But then as I went along in my journey, I realized that the combination of business and entrepreneurship and storytelling becomes marketing.
00:06:39 Speaker 2
Yeah. Does that resonate for you, Ricky Lee, in terms of where, where you kind of came into it and that entrepreneurial spirit?
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Yeah, I mean, I come from a family of entrepreneurs, lots of very ambitious women. I I like to say I come from a matriarchy. Like, there’s so many women in my family. And so just seeing them go after a lot of their dreams and seeing that the sky was never really the limit for me opened my mind. But similar to her.
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Coming from the background that I was in, I was always the only one in the room representing and so.
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So me coming into the digital marketing space and PR and things of that nature, I always wanted to be able to not only tell our story, but tell it right because I can come from a place of empathy and understanding of the reason why we do the things that we do. The reason why we have the style and.
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We give off the.
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Fragrance that we do in a lot of different capacities. And so I went on a mission trip with the nonprofit that I was actually working with in high.
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School and I met a young girl and I was.
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Taking a picture of her.
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And she was like, really intrigued by my photography, and she wanted me to show her how to take a picture. And I actually did a whole presentation for this, for a business pitch competition. But in that moment, that really solidified for me that this was the line of work in the field that I wanted to work in because.
00:08:07 Speaker 3
Is being able to tell our story on our behalf and get it right and be able to impact people and get people to understand why we are the way that we are, I think is the most important because oftentimes you.
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Go on social.
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Media, you see reality TV and we’re depicted in a way that’s inauthentic and so to be able to.
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Come into this.
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Space and really.
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Be able to take up space and do.
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It right feels good, so yeah.
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That’s awesome.
00:08:33 Speaker 2
Can I let the strategic communications area what attracted you that? How did you first learn about it?
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Yeah, it’s really interesting. I share a similar story with Ricky and Michaela knowing what I want to do at a very young age and just being driven towards it.
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In high school.
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I was really involved like I was in the national NBA Association and National Honor Society.
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And then eventually I became class president, and throughout all of my experiences, I realized it’s just the commonality of this love for leadership and this desire to influence. And I just became fascinated by this idea. And then I started researching. And I.
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Was looking for.
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For careers that combine that strategy, that public speaking, that creativity and public relations is end up coming about. So I will say that I wasn’t exposed to it and that’s one of those. One of the things that I did want to mention, like I wasn’t outwardly exposed to public relations and then.
00:09:31 Speaker 4
You know, publicists are behind the scenes and so black publicists are even more invisible because, you know, it’s already a behind.
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The scenes industry.
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And so I will say like that that it got a little off track, but I will say that.
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That was my journey towards knowing what I wanted to do with public relations and I’m still struggling with finding like role models in that area. But I’m still like steadfast on the path.
00:09:59 Speaker 2
I think you’re right on track. I mean, I loved what you were talking about and I want to, I want to ask you all to reflect on something this question you talked about being.
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It’s things being invisible, you know.
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And there are certain aspects of these fields that are more obvious in culture, like advertising has always been more visible just in general. Like if we talk about the field versus public relations is a bit more behind the scenes for a lot of people. But that’s not exactly what we’re talking about right now. We’re talking about what is visible or invisible to specific communities in our society.
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And what does it mean to you all? And this may go back to that equitized opportunity that you talked about, Ricky Lee and what Bosque is trying to do, what does it mean to you all?
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To to increase the idea of knowing about something, increasing the idea of seeing something and also seeing others doing it that you feel that representation is there and anyone can jump in on that.
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I would like to say that that.
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Is my whole.
00:11:01 Speaker 3
Brand and life mission growing up and I’m sure we all can share the same sentiment.
00:11:07 Speaker 3
Turning on the television, looking to social media platforms and a variety of different things, you’re constantly looking for that one person to be your role model or to be that living blueprint for what it is that you would like to do, and to visualize and idolize, being able to.
00:11:28 Speaker 3
Occupy a space that someone is currently occupying is amazing.
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And I think a lot of times there are many things that I thought I wanted to do because I saw someone else do it first. Like, you know, Rachel Ray, having a cooking show or Oprah Winfrey having a talk show and all of these different spaces, I’m like, oh, my gosh, I can do that because they were brave enough to do it before me. And so.
00:11:52 Speaker 3
That’s why it’s so important for me to be a part of organizations like Vasca and the Undergraduate Society of Black leaders, because it is an opportunity for us to not only see people that are taking up space and having a seat.
00:12:06 Speaker 3
At these tables.
00:12:07 Speaker 3
But also being able to intimately interact with them and ask them.
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The very important questions of like what is it like in this field? How do you feel about your work? Is it impactful? How does it make you feel about yourself at the end of the day and when you have those intimate conversations with people, it can really make or break whether or not you actually see yourself occupying that space and so?
00:12:31 Speaker 3
Even before I was a part of Oscar, I always was a very curious individual and I if I was not exposed to something, made sure to go out and seek it out myself. You know, asking.
00:12:44 Speaker 2
It’s so true. Ricky Lee, I so agree with that. Michaela, what’s your reaction to that? This idea of seeing of knowing about something, of creating a space where even to everything Ricky was talking about being able to envision it. Talk.
00:12:55 Speaker 5
Absolutely, absolutely no. I will say that in the black community, we talk a lot.
00:13:02 Speaker 5
About this proverb and the proverb is you cannot be what you cannot see. So understanding that when you create that representation or you see that representation, you empower other people to become the things that they once.
00:13:16 Speaker 5
See and that’s super important to me because when we talk about role models and figures and media and even behind the scenes, it can be super difficult to pull back the curtains on an industry or a career or a role that’s already somewhat underground, right? And I relate a lot to Ricky and.
00:13:37 Speaker 5
Setting myself up to be the person where there can be another person that comes behind me and sees that.
00:13:43 Speaker 5
Hey, like Michaela. Did this like, she’s a great marketer. She’s a great advertiser. She’s a great publicist. I can do those things, too. So my role models were like Oprah Winfrey, like seeing her on TV. I took a lot of inspiration from the real and loving the fact that they cultivate a community of strong black women or strong women in general.
00:14:04 Speaker 5
Who were able to take up this space on daytime TV, which is one of the biggest things to just do.
00:14:10 Speaker 5
So I think it’s super important to understand that when you’re in Bosco or organizations like Bosca, you are truly creating pathways that not only are you navigating, but you’re creating the pathway to allow other people to follow behind you, which also another thing we do in the black community like with as we.
00:14:28 Speaker 5
Climb mentality so.
00:14:29 Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah, that’s so important. But what? What’s your? What’s your reaction to this conversation?
00:14:34 Speaker 4
Yeah, like soon as soon as you said that, I was just thinking about.
00:14:38 Speaker 4
The other end of things and how being in this position of trailblazing the visibility of our culture comes with a great deal of accountability and responsibility, because we all know that when it comes to marketing and communications and public relations, what’s always in the air is ethics and transparency. And even more when you are representing.
00:14:58 Speaker 4
Minority, especially the black minority, you have to be very mindful of what messages you are sharing, what what clients are you representing, what companies are you involving yourself in because.
00:15:12 Speaker 4
It can be not as a positive influence as you would want it to be, and so that has been at the forefront of my mind when pursuing my career path. Like really being mindful of the spaces I’m taking up and and and very, very mindful of the messages that I’m sharing that are going to impact my community.
00:15:32 Speaker 2
That’s so important. And you know, you’re reminding me of a.
00:15:35 Speaker 2
Bigger picture question, I’d love to hear all of your thoughts and it cause you all think so deeply about these things. And by the way, when the Bosca student team came to visit us last fall, I’ve met with a lot of student groups over the years. There was some of the best questions I’ve ever gotten from you all. I mean, really savvy and also I.
00:15:53 Speaker 2
Was like how do you?
00:15:54 Speaker 2
Even know about the new business?
00:15:56 Speaker 2
Process. I mean it just it it indicated that you all were paying remarkable attention and already leaning in to the work by yourself on your own. Aside from Bosca and listening very carefully and making the most of those opportunities. But one of the big picture questions that we see in marketing communications field.
00:16:14 Speaker 2
Today is how is it that companies, corporations who are made-up of people, but they are also entities? It’s a strange thing. They’re entities in, in, in and of themselves, but they’re also made-up of people. How and when they show their values, how do they speak out on issues in society? You know, how do they balance multiple stakeholders?
00:16:34 Speaker 2
And and and how it is that especially younger generations view them and want to hear their voices on certain things.
00:16:43 Speaker 5
I think that’s a super interesting question. I think something that we all understand as marketers it is in this suite in general is social listening and being able to tap into your audience. And I think with our generation, particularly Gen. Z.
00:16:56 Speaker 5
And the rise of social media, we are so interconnected with so many different types of people and so many different types of communities that it’s almost hard to not listen to the noise.
00:17:10 Speaker 5
And I think sometimes with these entities or with these companies.
00:17:14 Speaker 5
They’re not as engaged with their customers on their platforms. They’re not really listening. And sometimes too, that means you have to go out and actively experience the world for what it is you have to meet people. You have to talk to people. So I think it ultimately boils down to understanding how to connect and are you really and honestly truly connecting with people.
00:17:35 Speaker 5
Because again, the rule of marketing is about storytelling. So are you connecting with these people enough intimately? Enough, deeply enough to understand how to tell their story?
00:17:46 Speaker 2
That’s awesome.
00:17:48 Speaker 3
I think it’s also a matter of wanting to have people come alongside you to make sure that you’re doing it correctly, and that’s not in just the capacity just to get the one off story. But that’s in the capacity of having individuals in the fabric of your company that look like.
00:18:06 Speaker 3
The communities that you’re trying to impact, especially in upper, you know leadership roles and things of that nature, because I can really shape the way in which you speak to people and you speak about people when you have people who aren’t tone deaf to what’s happening specifically in a lot of communities. And I think as marketers.
00:18:25 Speaker 3
Users as advertisers, publicists and whatnot. It like you said, Kayla, there is a lot of responsibility and accountability that has to come with that. And me, I’m always tapping in and, like listening to companies, not only what they say, but what they also don’t say.
00:18:44 Speaker 3
And I think that that speaks volumes about, you know.
00:18:47 Speaker 3
Your ethics, your.
00:18:48 Speaker 3
Morals, and who really cares and how much you really care. And so I think it’s it’s not enough to just.
00:18:57 Speaker 3
Put together a curated list during Black History Month. It’s a matter of having really deep, thoughtful conversations every single day of the year. When it comes to what’s happening in different communities.
00:19:12 Speaker 4
I love that Ricky and I just want to piggyback on what you’re saying because I’m assisting Dr. Pia with research on culture.
00:19:21 Speaker 4
And I’m then I’m very excited because I’m having so much like respect and inspiration for Gen.
00:19:27 Speaker 4
Z I’m I’m.
00:19:28 Speaker 4
Jazzier and I love Genzi because we’re reshaping what publicity looks like, especially for those with major influence. I’m saying with major influence because I want to do entertainment publicity like for actors.
00:19:40 Speaker 4
Party musician so popular culture and I’m seeing and I’m relating it back to what I want to do with my career path and social media is creating this.
00:19:51 Speaker 4
Platform that is very candid, very transparent and really it’s unavoidable to have these conversations. And what I’m learning with research on cultural voyeurism, we’re gaining perspective. So someone in another race who’s not minority can gain perspective on.
00:20:11 Speaker 4
Black people and their experiences through social.
00:20:15 Speaker 4
By being a ****** and looking at conversations that are being had and hearing their perspective, this is very different because you know, 20-30 years ago we weren’t able to have these kind of conversations and and it became taboo when these came up. So I’m really enjoying how social media is shaping.
00:20:34 Speaker 4
The way publicity is going to be in the.
00:20:36 Speaker 2
Future and you’re all speaking to that question of, like you said, Michaela, how connected is an organization really with their stakeholders? How do they understand how to?
00:20:46 Speaker 2
And what’s authentic about how they’re showing, how they care? And you are all raising a really important point that we debate a lot here at our agency, which is we want to mark these milestone months, women’s History Month, Black History Month pride. But at the same time, we have to hold space for the fact that that is also problematic.
00:21:07 Speaker 2
In its own way that this has to be 365. So celebrating those moments where we stop and we say there’s a history here that has to be honored and there’s a present that has to be honored. But there’s also.
00:21:18 Speaker 2
So what’s the ongoing action? And?
00:21:21 Speaker 2
As you go out and meet all these different executives and people at different companies, like how is that important for you? How is that helpful to you versus just the kind of internships you may have locally?
00:21:32
Yeah, I I.
00:21:33 Speaker 4
Really would say it expands my worldview and the opportunities for me, especially with me pursuing entertainment, publicity is very limited in Columbus. OH, and so being able to go to New York was amazing for me and being able to visit different media and music labels, that was mind blowing.
00:21:53 Speaker 4
And it showed me where I could really be because I didn’t make, I thought.
00:21:56 Speaker 4
I was gonna have to.
00:21:58 Speaker 4
Pursue my career and be an agency until I was ready to create my own agency. But now I know. You know I can be in house somewhere. I can do something else. So I will say it’s just expanding my worldview. Another thing has been really learning about company culture and learning how important that is because you know you can go to the flashiest.
00:22:19 Speaker 4
Place in the flashiest company, but it might not be the best fit for you. Caught your eyes.
00:22:26 Speaker 2
That’s really important. Any thoughts from you? Michaela, on on that and that that power of sort of seeing people getting out in the world and meeting more people that way.
00:22:35 Speaker 5
Yeah, I definitely.
00:22:37 Speaker 5
It definitely resonated with me when Kayla mentioned company culture and I think like she mentioned before, the beautiful thing about genc is that we are not afraid of having the hard conversation. So we’re not afraid about asking what are your views and perspectives on things that are important to me and my culture or how do you handle one particular things happen in the workplace.
00:22:58 Speaker 5
Or are you aware of your own biases or the way that you may micro regress towards other people? Or does things of that nature so?
00:23:07 Speaker 5
When we’re able to talk to these, you.
00:23:09 Speaker 5
Know upper management executives and managers, things like that.
00:23:14 Speaker 5
It’s so important to get that FaceTime with them, to ask them those questions because I think we live in a world where, especially in, when you’re working agent side where things can be super tailored or in general when you’re on a job interview, they have time to think about things and tailor them the sound a particular way. But when you’re sitting with them face to face.
00:23:34 Speaker 5
At a table and you’re asking they don’t.
00:23:36 Speaker 5
Have time to think as much.
00:23:38 Speaker 5
They have to be honest. You know that they have to be honest, but you’re more likely to be an honest answer when you’re having that FaceTime with them. So just being able to get the real raw perspective of what the industry is like and what the company is like is more than monumental to what my journey looks like, especially starting my own marketing agency.
00:23:58 Speaker 2
You talked to?
00:23:59 Speaker 2
Earlier, rickley about moments when you’ve been the only.
00:24:02 Speaker 2
One in the room, and that’s a common refrain.
00:24:04 Speaker 2
And you know, for me, I am again for our listeners, a white woman in my early 50s. When I started in my career, I’ve experienced a lot of what is the classic sexism that one might experience, especially sometimes centered in whiteness, but much, much broader than that. As we know in our culture and very intersectional.
00:24:25 Speaker 2
Well, although I come from a lot of privilege and I own that very openly, but I knew a little bit of what that was like, you know, and I’ve watched some big changes in our industry and I’ve grown as a leader and I knew the women who trailblazed in front of me, almost all of them white. Also by the way, you know, because of our.
00:24:43 Speaker 2
Industry has that history.
00:24:45 Speaker 2
What do you think about?
00:24:48 Speaker 2
Getting beyond that, only person in the room and building more of that talent and seeing more.
00:24:54 Speaker 2
Yourselves. What? What are the things that you, as young black professionals are nervous about? About the things that you’re concerned about as you hope to enter this field. Like, let’s talk about the things you’re worried about and then that we talk about the things you’re excited about. But what are some things that concern you?
00:25:10 Speaker 2
Kayla, go ahead.
00:25:11 Speaker 4
Yeah. I just want to say that.
00:25:16 Speaker 4
Being the only face of representation and always being the advocate is it can be very exhausting and I know I’m concerned because I know eventually I will be in those spaces where I am the only black woman or the only only minority. And when you’re not a minority, you don’t have to have to think about certain things.
00:25:34 Speaker 4
Things like how certain language could be offensive and I would just say I would love if people who did not identify as a minority would be more on the pause of race relations so that they could better be of assistance when it comes to the responsibility of creating inclusive spaces.
00:25:51 Speaker 2
Yeah, that’s a great point.
00:25:53 Speaker 5
Absolutely. This I’ve thought about this so.
00:25:58 Speaker 5
Much and I.
00:26:00 Speaker 5
I think as us, as black women or just minorities in general, this is something that we experience. So you imagine a crowd full of people and someone’s on a stage and they’re saying things that you don’t agree with and you’re the only person that stands up and you’re like, no, I don’t think that’s right. And you look around and nobody else is cosigning you. No one else is standing.
00:26:20 Speaker 5
Up for you.
00:26:21 Speaker 5
You know.
00:26:23 Speaker 5
Being in this field as a black woman can’t be very lonely and something that I touch on a lot is imposter syndrome. When you look around the room, you don’t see anyone else that looks like you and the people ahead of you don’t look anything like you or share the same experiences as you. So in light of being the only one, sometimes you wonder if you really belong in that space.
00:26:44 Speaker 5
You know, that’s one of my biggest fears and it’s one of my biggest challenges as an entrepreneur in this space is understanding that just because I feel as if I am the only one in a particular space does not necessarily mean that I don’t belong.
00:26:58 Speaker 2
So, Ricky Lee, what would you say?
00:27:02 Speaker 3
I would say I don’t actually have too many worries. I think worry for myself is just the longevity within the the industry just because I’m already burnt out and I’m.
00:27:14 Speaker 3
On the phone, me.
00:27:15 Speaker 3
For two years, and I mean I’m, I’m beyond the execution phase, I think I’ve moved up the ladder and I’m like, OK.
00:27:22 Speaker 3
Strategy, but I think the future is bright.
00:27:28 Speaker 3
Just because there are so many young women who are on fire for creating inclusive spaces and thinking outside of the box and really giving immersive experiences for the culture, you know, and I think that gives me a lot of pride and a lot of joy.
00:27:48 Speaker 3
Because it once didn’t look like that before, so I’m actually very optimistic for the future because my motto is always take up space, but not only take up space, but also make room for other people that look like you to be able to, you know, have a seat at the table and.
00:28:03 Speaker 3
Add you know.
00:28:06 Speaker 2
Yeah, we talked.
00:28:08 Speaker 2
In some of the trainings we do here, you know, there’s the idea of calling people out, but we also talked about calling people in, you know, how do you invite people into that conversation?
00:28:15 Speaker 2
But I’d love to build on what is encouraging. When I talked to Doctor Apia, so doctor essay Apia, who is the founder? As we mentioned before, Abasta and a professor.
00:28:26 Speaker 2
Of communication at the Ohio State University when he and I ended our podcast conversation, he talked about actually being also encouraged and for him he was looking at it in terms of intergroup relationships as part of his research, and he talked about how he’s seen.
00:28:43 Speaker 2
Thing just so much diversity and intersectionality among younger people and so many different friend groups and different kinds of levels of acceptance. And as as I think, Michaela I’ve heard, actually, I forget which one of you because all of you been talking about said earlier the diversity within social media. I think, Kayla, you were talking about that voyeurism.
00:29:03 Speaker 2
To be able to see, you know, groups that you may not be a part of but you can participate in them from the outside in a way and become familiar. So Ricky Lee talked about a couple of things she’s excited about Kayla. What are the things that excite you about embarking on this career?
00:29:20 Speaker 4
Like I said, going back to Gen. Z, I’m literally a genz cheerleader. I’m really excited for social media and these new media landscapes and, you know, public relations is all about the media landscape. And our industry involves with the media landscape and with social media becoming very transformational and how people.
00:29:39 Speaker 4
Communicate and how they engage with each other. I am excited to see how that changes the way people interact, the way they view, the way they empathize. I’m really excited on more empathy building, going on and really putting yourself in another person.
00:29:56 Speaker 4
Used. I’m also excited for like the human connection aspect improving. I feel like especially in America we can be very disconnected from each other from each other’s perspectives, lifestyles from each other’s challenges and social media. It’s that it’s that gateway to building human connection and for me that is what.
00:30:17 Speaker 4
Publicity and public relations and being a being a professional and public relations is really about human connection. It’s all about human connection, because without that human connection, it’s a facade.
00:30:29 Speaker 4
And honestly, I want PR to be very real and I think social media is creating it to be something realer than ever.
00:30:37 Speaker 2
Yeah, absolutely. Michaela, what are your thoughts? And this what excites you about either the field or the how you’re engaging with it?
00:30:45 Speaker 5
I just wanna say Kayla.
00:30:46 Speaker 5
That was a beautiful answer that was beautiful.
00:30:50 Speaker 5
So for the record, so one of the things that I’m really interested in is philanthropy and part of philanthropy is advocating for human well.
00:30:58 Speaker 5
Fair and in this field, you realize when you’re hearing these stories or when you’re exploring these things, that it will actually give you so much hope for people and humanity and just the way that things go. Cause sometimes the world is really dark. We see horrible things on social media, horrible things publicized. But then as you go along.
00:31:20 Speaker 5
You see these very beautiful things, these very inspiring things that almost motivates you outside of the screen or in your own day-to-day life. You know, I think I’m just super excited to see.
00:31:35 Speaker 5
You know.
00:31:36 Speaker 5
With the transformation of social media, how people will empathize with people like Yala mentioned, just because being able to have access to people to hear those beautiful stories as much as the bad ones, it almost.
00:31:50 Speaker 1
It’s the power of 1.
00:31:52 Speaker 5
You tell one good story to one good person and they will go out and tell it to.
00:31:56 Speaker 5
Someone else and that.
00:31:57 Speaker 5
Will carry on so.
00:31:58 Speaker 2
You know, it’s funny. There’s a good friend of mine from high school, way back in the 80s, and she’s a an environmental scientist who works at a university up in Montreal. And I remember catching up with her and seeing her in years. And we were talking about a research, and she was talking about.
00:32:13 Speaker 2
The the crushing amount of negative stories about climate change and how it’s so disempowering and overwhelming she was working on a project with researchers around the world to collect stories of local communities becoming more sustainable on their own and making small but critical changes locally in order to.
00:32:33 Speaker 2
To sustain in the future and to fight climate change on a on a micro level. And it’s very much what you were saying, Michaela, that that power.
00:32:41 Speaker 2
Of the the sense of we’re seeing the story and that tells us that we can do something in the face of something that feels intractable, that feels like very aligned with the conversation we’re having today. As we wrap up today, you know, I’m an organizational leader. There’s a lot of folks that you meet through Bosco and other places who are leading organizations, as you said.
00:33:02 Speaker 2
As leadership changes, you know, hopefully more and more people in those leadership roles will represent more and more of the population, right. But for the leaders that exist now in these fields and agencies, in companies, leading, marketing, leading communications, what are some of the advice that you give them to really cultivate and empower?
00:33:23 Speaker 2
Young, talented black professionals and those from other historically marginalized communities. What kind of advice do you want them to really take away as they think about their workforce? I don’t know. Ricky Lee, do you? I’ll put you on the spot. What?
00:33:36 Speaker 2
Do you think?
00:33:36 Speaker 2
It’s a big question.
00:33:37 Speaker 3
I would say just continue taking up space and be willing to be unapologetically you. I think the best piece of advice I got this past summer during my internship was that.
00:33:51 Speaker 3
Bringing all of you to the table is the best thing that you can ever do, because every experience is experience and.
00:34:00 Speaker 3
The world needs more of you. You know, we’ve got a lot of everything else and I think with social media and just with human nature, we like to have commonalities. We we like to be able to assimilate into groups and sort of in in a in hopes of feeling like.
00:34:21 Speaker 3
We’ve got.
00:34:23 Speaker 3
Home or something like that. But there’s something powerful about individuality and bringing your own experiences to the forefront, because that can shape or reshape the way in which things are currently done. And I think if we want as part of a future that all of us are kind of depicting now and like.
00:34:43 Speaker 3
Everything that we’re enthusiastic about, we have to continue staying on Pulse with not only the culture, but with the way in which things make us feel.
00:34:51 Speaker 3
Pay attention to the things that you love, because there’s ways in which you can emulate that and bring that from this space and take it into that one. And I think that’s really what’s beautiful about some of the best leaders in the world is their willingness to be daring, their willingness to be bold and just continue to do things the way that.
00:35:12 Speaker 3
They know feels right, even when.
00:35:14 Speaker 3
The world says it’s wrong.
00:35:15 Speaker 2
Yeah, I think that’s such it for the leaders out there. How is it that you really allow your staff to bring themselves to work in that way and embrace that? Michaela, what’s your, what’s your take or your advice for leaders out there that may be listening to this?
00:35:32 Speaker 5
One of the things I always think about is.
00:35:36 Speaker 5
Being proactive and not performative. So like Ricky mentioned, there is such a beauty in bringing all of yourself in your truth and your authenticity to work with you. Because when you’re in upper management you almost set the tone for everybody else beneath you. And there is such a responsibility.
00:35:56 Speaker 5
Not even just to cultivate.
00:35:58 Speaker 5
And respect that company culture, but to also be sure that the ways that you are contributing to it is impactful for everyone in your organization. So when you are willing to check in on that one person or you’re willing to have that one tough conversation or.
00:36:15 Speaker 5
Ask the daring questions. It empowers the people around you to think deeper on themselves and the ways that they interact with people in the company around you. I feel that a lot of people don’t understand.
00:36:29 Speaker 5
How great that can be to such a collective of people. Because when you’re truly and honestly doing the work of marketing and you’re trying to tell the stories of other people, sometimes the first story that people don’t understand is themselves.
00:36:43 Speaker 5
And when you can’t tell your own story or be your own biggest advocate, it can be incredibly difficult to take on that role and responsibility for an entirely.
00:36:52 Speaker 5
Different group of people.
00:36:53 Speaker 2
Yeah, and being vulnerable as a leader is hard for a lot of people, but it really is.
00:36:59 Speaker 2
To me, a critical part of what a leader can do, and it’s not, I don’t know. I don’t even like the word weak because I think it’s. I think it’s very gendered in a weird way. You know, I I really feel being vulnerable is being very, very strong actually, you know, and being very open. But Kayla, what would you what would be advice you would give or things that are on your mind?
00:37:19 Speaker 2
For organizations to keep in mind.
00:37:22 Speaker 4
Yeah, I would definitely piggyback on what you said and just contain it in two words, be human. And I also want to say instead of assuming we should look up, as you know, entry level workers meet us halfway and really find value in our insights, because we are the people spending hours on social media. We are the people consuming all this media, so we know.
00:37:42 Speaker 4
We know how things are changing and we know the direction it’s going in. We know what’s going to work and we know what’s going to fly. And so I would say to the any of the leaders welcoming.
00:37:52 Speaker 4
Young professionals, especially young black professionals, find value in us and meet us halfway.
00:37:57 Speaker 2
That’s awesome. So as we wrap up today, maybe Ricky Lee. I’ll, I’ll end with you because I began with you give give your pitch for future Ohio State University students to join Bosco. Why? Why should they get involved and support this organization?
00:38:13 Speaker 3
Yeah, for anyone that’s listening, I would say that Boska is home. I feel like as a student on a campus with over 60,000 students, it’s amazing to be able to rest and be assured that I have not only just my E board members, but actual members of the organization.
00:38:34 Speaker 3
That I can foam and have intimate conversations and you know, just feel loved with not only that, but you’re able to call them friends and go out and acquire amazing internship opportunities going professional development.
00:38:49 Speaker 3
Trips and meet amazing professionals and have intimate conversations with them about what is it really like to work at places like Showtime and Spotify and Warner Music and ABC and Good Morning America? Like, that’s just to name a few and.
00:39:05 Speaker 3
Furthermore, I feel like it’s very important to.
00:39:08 Speaker 3
Stay on pulse.
00:39:09 Speaker 3
With, you know, professional development and we provide a lot of work.
00:39:13 Speaker 3
Stops and resources for students to take to stay on Pulse with what the industry is requiring of students, and so you can come and you can make friends. You can network, eat good food, and you have the potential to make lifelong friends and potential even business partners.
00:39:32 Speaker 2
That’s amazing. Anything that Rickley missed Michaela or Kayla.
00:39:36 Speaker 5
I think that’s pretty solid. I mean, we’re family.
00:39:38 Speaker 5
At Boska there is, like Ricky said.
00:39:41 Speaker 5
We’re family. We actually talked to each other. We’re not just some student organization that you join.
00:39:47 Speaker 5
You know, you come to the meetings and then you leave, then you never see each other again. Like now at Bosco we have game nights. We have food together. We go out together with salsa is really about being able to build that community with other people that look like you and have the same interest. Because I’ve been today, we’re all trying to make a way. So.
00:40:05 Speaker 2
That’s right.
00:40:07 Speaker 5
We should go together.
00:40:08 Speaker 2
That’s right.
00:40:09 Speaker 2
That’s right. Well, Ricky Lee Joyner, Michaela Messini and Kayla Thompson, you guys are amazing. Super inspiring. Really. Really. An honor to convene this group and have a conversation tonight. And I’m excited to share this with others. So thank you again for joining me. I really appreciate your time.
00:40:30 Speaker 4
Thank you so much for having us.
00:40:36 Speaker 1
We are GNS business communications. We are a team of media strategists, storytellers and engagement experts who meet you at the intersection of business and communications. To learn more, visit gscommunications.com. You’re listening to building.
00:40:54 Speaker 1
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00:41:01 Speaker 1
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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.