Building Brand Gravity Podcast

Building Brand Gravity – Loren King
Loren: [00:00:00] I've been thinking a lot about a quote. Essentially it says every system is perfectly designed to output what it outputs. However, a system is made whenever you're getting out of the system, that's what it's designed to do. So if you want to change what's made you need to change the design. I'm not sure that AI fully fits that mold because you could be as accurate as you want, and there is still technically the potential for something to come out that was unexpected.
Anne: Hello and welcome to Building Brand Gravity. I'm Anne Green, I'm CEO and a principal at G&S Integrated Marketing Communications Group.
Steve: And I'm Steve Halsey, uh, one of the principals and chief growth officers of that same group. And welcome you to our latest episode of Building Brand Gravity. Anne, you want to let everybody know what's in store?
Anne: Yeah, we're doing a little two part series here, a mini series, if you will. The first, um. One was focused on AI research and sort of the evolution of where it's at in our industry right now, and [00:01:00] that that industry is not just communications, it's really across marketing. And then for today, we're gonna be speaking with one of our own in the group who I'll talk about in just a moment.
Discussing about how we go from AI exploration really to enablement, especially in the context of some of our largest sectors. So I'm excited to, to build on the conversation we had last time, Steve.
Steve: It should, it should be great. And, and, and Greg is always a, um, always a great interview, great, great friend of the pod, as I like to joke.
And, and my conversation with Greg Galant, who's the co-founder and CEO of MuckRack was really on, on. For those of you, I hope you all listen to it, but if you have it, you can. After you're done with this, you can go right over and click it, but it was really on the results of their latest research on the state of ai.
Basically, AI is the new normal in pr, and there were some really interesting facts that we covered there. 75% of PR pros are now using generative ai. That's up from [00:02:00] 28% just 18 months ago. Of those who are using it, 93% say it speeds up their work and 78% say it improves the quality of their work. Does that sound about right?
Anne: I think it's adoption is growing fast. That feels very right to me. You know, as I talk to leaders across the industry, as I talk to practitioners and, and again. There's comms, there's, you know, paid media, there's adv, there's creative, um, digital. All of our teams, the teams that I know at other agencies, um, adoption is growing fast.
Some of it is because AI is being baked into so many tools we use. MuckRack is one of those, Adobe Firefly, et cetera, but others are people being very. Intentional and agencies and client side being more aggressive about saying, we need to weave this into our workflows. We need to disrupt our own workflows, and we need to bring, um, this technology in, in all kinds of ways to augment what we're doing.
So I, I think those stats are. Powerful and right. And I think it's only gonna grow. Right.
Steve: And there and there [00:03:00] were, there were two more stats in there that I thought was, was really interesting. At a, at a recent award ceremony I ran into, uh, Kim sample of the PR Council. And, and for those of you who don't know it, Ann's on the ethics committee and she's really worked to really help put together a lot of AI guidelines and guidance for, for agencies.
But there was, there, there were two stats that I found fascinating in, uh, in muck rack's research. Only 38% of PR PROS report having company guidelines. And only 43% of AI pros report access to AI training and even a smaller percentage, um, always disclose that the number I'm just looking at, only 20% of agency pros say they always disclose when they, when they use ai.
And, you know, we're, we're seeing right now. Some interesting dilemma of we all see the power, you know, uh, [00:04:00] 75% are using it on the client side. I'm hearing that a lot of brands wanna use it, but there are two things that are causing some challenges. Our favorite. Legal and procurement. So I'm interested to get your take on that.
Before we get into Lauren's interview, I guess in, in my mind, I jotted down a list of, there's three essential things for us to think about when we're talking about how we use AI for media relations, content creation, or analytics. And, and I'd love to get your reaction to 'em. Number one is defining the acceptable use and boundaries upfront, where we specify how generative AI may be used for drafts research, media list enhancement, sentiment analysis, things like that.
Number two, making sure you align on the data privacy, IP and confidentiality protection, so you're very, very clear that you're. Only going to use AI tools and not train them on any data other than what you agree to. And then the third one is to [00:05:00] really codify that governance, that disclosure, that risk mitigation share our AI usage policy, all of those due diligence.
So those are my top three. Define the boundaries, align on privacy, and really codify your governance. I. How does that, how does that tie into what you're hearing?
Anne: I, I like those a lot. It's an interesting moment for sure. And I appreciate, you know, the work with the PR council and it's so funny, you know, obviously the name PR council, all the agencies that are our peers that we're highly integrated.
So there's marketing, advertising, creative project management, you know, all the pieces that reflect who we are today. So it's pretty multi-layered, but looking at it from a communication standpoint in the toolkit. I have enjoyed being, you know, one of the heads of that ethics task force relative to how do we use AI in the best way with the smart guard rails because.
As I say many times, you know, I'm out there talking about this a lot. There's two sides to every coin. There's the amazing power of it and then there's the with power comes great responsibility and [00:06:00] there's the challenge of it too. The deep fakes, the, you know, the AI slop at scale and, and things like that, right?
So what's interesting about our colleagues and procurement and legal, so being on the agency side obviously, and working so closely with clients, tho those are their peers in house, these are our. Partners and peers, you know, across that partnership relationship. Um, there, it's coming at them fast and the problem is there is a lot of challenge with these tools.
There's, um, protection of intellectual property. There's hallucination. Hallucinations have been reduced, but not entirely. There's the question of the transparency of usage. There's a question of, I think there's gonna be an essential question of like, what are we paying for, you know, the machine, the human, what is the nature of this relationship?
So one of the watch outs we're seeing is that as these, you know, respected groups, um, they play a really important function in our client organizations, obviously. They are trying to catch up to something that's just a [00:07:00] horse is running out of the barn. It's like a whole fleet of horses. It's just a stampede flying out of the barn and they're trying to catch up to put it in language and legal documentation and questionnaires to be like, how are you using this?
So in some cases we're seeing organizations that are very large come back with AI addendums that are. Huge, long and overly restrictive because the fact is AI is baked into everything. I mean, I got my little phone right here, it's everywhere, and it's baked into the tools and it's being baked in in ways.
Greg would say those words changing every day. So those overly detailed and restrictive and kind of saying, well, you almost can't use AI at all. It's just not feasible. And I think those groups know that others are trying to do, I think what you said, Steve, which is. How do we make sure we're talking about use cases to begin with?
How do we make sure there's a transparent discussion? Like I would like my own people, you know, our people at G&S to be transparent about, Hey, I got this. I'm using generative to get me going on a draft, [00:08:00] but. I'm also, um, using my brains and my expertise to edit it and make it better. So I think that we're seeing the normal sort of churn in this fast moving landscape, but I, I don't envy our legal and procurement colleagues.
This is challenging.
Steve: It's definitely challenging for them and, and definitely people on the brand side too with their teams, um, to work. Through. So I guess what I would say is, you know, we're, we're all in this together, so you know, if you're a agency listener, let's work with our friends at the PRC and really help kind of educate.
If you're on the client side, you know, just really think about even leaning in and reaching out to. The PRC yourself, even though you're not an agency for best use guidelines, so that we can help you kinda work within your system with procurement, with legal, to really put together something that makes sense for everybody.
Anne: I agree. 'cause ultimately it's our partnership together that's gonna find out where the value in our work will be long-term, where we. Automate wrote tasks and get faster to the [00:09:00] value that matters. And we're only gonna figure this out, agencies and clients together, you know, really in concert. And that, that's actually a good transition to our guest for today.
Our guest is Lauren King. He is a senior digital marketing specialist at one of our two agencies, Morgan Myers, a G&S Agency. He is actually, um, just about, he's celebrating his third anniversary at Morgan Myers, but he has a lot of digital experience prior to that. And he is part of our AI exploration and enablement team, so he's very, very knowledgeable.
We have some super users across our two agencies, across the group. Um. Every specialist group, every, you know, sector and discipline that we offer. And that group's been such an amazing brain trust as we move, you know, from more explanation, exploration to rubber on the road and putting all the tools in people's hands, doing all the training and starting, you know, a deeper transformation process.
So. What I wanted to talk with Lauren about, Greg gave us that 10,000 or a hundred thousand foot view [00:10:00] of how adoption is changing. And I think that conversation, you guys had, had so many cool aspects to it. He's got a really great bird's eye view. Lauren is in the ground, especially literally on the ground with our clients and ag and our clients and food.
He is a real specialist, excuse me, in many aspects of ag and um, technology as adoption. So what he and I are gonna talk about, and I'm excited for folks to hear. What are we seeing on the ground in terms of tools and approaches and use cases, and also driving more engagement. Um, how is he an advocate for that self-education and upskilling that we all need to do both as companies but as individuals?
And the third view he has is it's really hard to just say, well, what can AI do? 'cause the answer is everything. It's more about what problems can we solve? So. Let's listen to the conversation with Lauren and Steve. I'm sure we'll have stuff to talk about afterwards.
Steve: I can't wait.
Anne: So here on Building Brand Gravity, we are [00:11:00] interested like everyone else in the world, in the evolution of ai, especially in the marketing and communication space in which we work across many, many sectors.
And I'm excited to have a conversation with a colleague of mine, a fairly new colleague of mine who came to the G&S family through our acquisition of Morgan Meyers, an amazing agency. That focuses on agriculture and food, and that person is Lauren King. Hey Lauren, how are you
Loren: doing? Pretty good, myself.
Anne: Excellent, excellent. So just a little background, Lauren is a senior digital marketing specialist at Morgan Myers working on many different agriculture and food, um, clients. But I love Lauren that you have such a background that's really rooted in that space. Literally, you know, a farming family. You were growing up in Southwest side of Michigan and now you live in the southeast side and you and I were kind of spiritual neighbors 'cause I was born in Toledo and I've got a lot of family there right down I 75 from you guys and educated at Michigan State University.
And I think what's really [00:12:00] interesting for this conversation is not only I. Is Lauren a specialist in digital and all those pieces, you know, very much an integrated set of capabilities, um, as many of us work in today. But also doing things like chairing the American Farm Bureau Technology Advisory Committee and working with Agriculture Future of America Alumni Advisory Committee, um, speaking at, you know, um, different types of venues that are digging into ai.
So, um. Just to get us started, Lauren, so tell us where you're coming from today and, and what you know, what home is like for you in that part of Michigan.
Loren: Yeah, like you hinted at, I'm in southeast Michigan, which is between basically Toledo on one side and Ann Arbor on the other. That's the easiest reference for many people right now.
I look up my window. I can see at least one, uh, tractor and planter combination. I think they're planting soybeans, but the fields by me are a mix of soybeans, pumpkins, corn. We did have peppers last year. We'll see if that happens again. So we're [00:13:00] very, very diverse, very agriculturally diverse. I'm 10 minutes from the nearest town, which is a small main street and that's it.
I'm 20 minutes from the nearest Walmart and that's largely my experience growing up. But thankfully we have great internet.
Anne: Yeah, which is very important, especially for today. When you and I are meeting you, you are in Michigan, I'm in New York City and we are totally connected and live, which is great. I love that.
So, um. You're working heavily in digital, but when I first met you, we bonded over many things, many different points of interest, but especially the evolution of technology today in ai. So first I'd like to hear a little bit about how you describe your digital role at Morgan Myers as part of the G&S group.
And then after that I, I have a follow up question, but why don't you talk about the kinds of work you're doing now in the digital space.
Loren: So I'm part of our digital team at Morgan Myers, which means that we touch a lot of different clients. I don't have one specific client that I work with day to day, [00:14:00] although Merck Animal Health Cattle would probably be my primary.
And my role specifically ties a lot into systems management, whether that's the backend of digital ads, our social listening capabilities, so tracking trends in real time. Deploying AI when possible. That's been a big part of what I've done the last six months to a year or so, and websites. Really anything that a system within digital touches is where I tend to specialize.
So that can take the form of pushing out an ad campaign one day, the next day. It's understanding how a client's product is viewed online, and then the day after that, having a conversation like this, focusing on how we can use AI tools. In different ways within Morgan wires.
Anne: I love the agency context and especially the kind of role you play.
'cause it is so diverse and it's also naturally. Keeps you, um, as a learner, you have to continuously learn and grow. So talking about learning and this conversation you and I are having as part of a small series we're doing on AI as part of building brand Gravity, [00:15:00] we've been having ongoing conversations is something I'm obviously very interested in as you know.
I wanna go way back in time. 'cause it was so interesting talking to you about this and preparing for this conversation. When did you start your AI journey? What was the thing that, um, alerted you to this coming wave?
Loren: So, you know, as a kid we always had stories with robots and even Star Wars and examples like that.
But when it really hit me that AI could be something that could be used, was. Around 2013, and a lot of people don't know that Google basically pioneered a lot of the innovations that make tools like Chat, GPT, and Copilot accessible and available today. So they were doing some work. There was blogs coming out, kind of explaining the underpinnings of how this one works, and this is far beyond what I could understand at the time, but it got enough.
Pre, uh, enough press and, and buzz that I was able to take a look, start hearing words like LLM or large language model for the first time. And when I, uh, I looked at it, of course, even though it was ill language, I didn't really speak, which is [00:16:00] algorithms and, and data science. I was, I. My interest was peaked because I didn't realize that you could actually do anything with artificial intelligence.
To that point, I thought it was something held in Asimov novels in the future of Star Trek.
Anne: I love that. I mean, that was 12 years ago and. Clearly there's many folks out there may be some of our listeners that understand that AI has been out there developing for quite a long time. Not just theoretically, but practically.
But I love the idea that your journey has been so long and that you started to try to get hands on right away because, um, you and I have a little bit of an age difference. I'm gonna assume you're quite young, you know, 12 years ago, but I,
Loren: 27, I would've been 15.
Anne: Okay. Yeah, exactly. See, that's what I, I was kind of guessing.
Um, I had started hearing about it as well, and I think it's interesting to. Think back to that moment, as you said, like what did you think it was? So when you first heard terms like large language models or you first heard terms about the idea of ai, I don't know if generative AI was used in that context.
Sense of ai. [00:17:00] I
Loren: have it in common.
Anne: Yeah. I, I feel like that has been. Especially chat, GPT. One of the biggest innovations, the common nomenclature of generative AI is something different from maybe predictive or, but when you first heard of large language models in AI over, you know, overall back, you know, when you were a teenager still, what did you think it would be and what you could do with it versus how you're seeing it and using it today?
What's that delta between the two?
Loren: Yeah, so when I was hearing about it, it was very much. Within the of academia that it was being considered and deployed and where I was thinking it would be used. So I'm picturing, you know, giant Excel files with millions and millions of lines, letting some type of machine learning tool loose to analyze it and find some trends or.
Maybe being able to go back and review what has already existed or apply government statistical analysis to data coming outta the USDA, those types of intense situations, you know, not something that the everyday person would probably run into very much [00:18:00] almost I. Validating, uh, existing data more than creating.
I do think that I read a little bit about creating images to the point of they thought it wouldn't really ever work because there was no way to make the hallucinations coming out of an AI tool. I. Cohesive in a way that somebody would actually get what they want. You could make it make something, but it didn't actually make any sense.
Kind of like the early days of Dali, I'm sure if you experimented with it, you got some really interesting stuff. I've got some saved down on my phone, but for me it just seemed like it would be stuck in the realm of academia and statistical research. And it wouldn't ever be something that I could truly see myself using my dad using on the farm, uh, or deploying in a business context.
I was very,
Anne: I think my version of that is, um. You know, in the sectors I've worked in, which are many, including agriculture now, which I, I love, um, engaging in and you have so much step there. But I would see it in terms of health and medical, um, innovation. So [00:19:00] things like high throughput screening, which is critical to the drug D discovery process.
You know, things like, um, other types of, like the way that alpha fold is working on protein folding. And so I was thinking about it more in the scientific context too. And it's very interesting now to see it leap into a space that is really transforming everything we touch. I, I think the other piece for me that made a lot of sense is there was such a buzz.
Even almost that far back about big data. Uh, you know, if you might remember, that was such the buzzword. There's always a buzzword, but big data was a thing, and I think what the issue was was big data was there, but what do you do with it and how do you deal with it? Especially when the big data is big, like you said, the USDA stats or data points.
So, you know, I, I really resonate with that. So there's been so much going on. The evolution is so fast. Like you said, if you, you know, created pictures in Dali a few years ago, they are quite amusing compared to what it can do today, which is, there are some
Loren: interesting ones.
Anne: Yes. And, and all the weirdness with [00:20:00] human form and human hands and all the, all the stuff we know, right?
It's, it feels like so long ago, but it was only like a year and a half ago. But when you see everything that's evolving, and you and I talk about this a lot and our AI enablement team across both GS, business communications and Morgan Myers talks about this, what are two, some of the most notable. And important evolutions that you've been tracking that you think are really material to the work you do and that we do?
Loren: Well, we actually have one that's new as of today or within the last 24 hours, which is, uh, OpenAI Focusing Chat, GPT as an Everything app. Uh, going beyond search and creation into, I'm not sure if you've seen their shopping edition, uh, that they have. So they're integrating with Shopify and they're gonna be recommending products based on very specific search terms.
Uh, no ads only going off of the metadata of the product and your personal preferences from your prior time using the tool. So that'll primarily apply to paid accounts. But if I have been doing a lot of. Researching for a trip to [00:21:00] Italy, it'll incorporate my preferences when I then ask it to recommend a bath towel that fits for a beach and can go into luggage.
It's a, a big change and it's a reason to not leave the app. It's a reason to have better SEO uh, if you're working from a marketing perspective, because that's gonna be really, really important and it changes the way that consumers are gonna interact. But it's also changing how I'm going to interact, uh, with.
A tool like Chat, GPT or copilot will have it before too long. Everybody else will as well coming out of that. Oh, please go ahead. I was gonna say, coming out of that, another one that comes to mind is integrating with other apps. We're still on the edge of what that looks like. I, you know, I can't log into my Facebook account through Chat GPT yet.
I can't log into my United Airlines account through Chat GPT or copilot yet. But once you can, that's when eventually you get to age Agentic tools, which I'm sure we'll touch on a little bit more, but. You know, making my digital life more cohesive and having an assistant. [00:22:00] So taking the shopping side and becoming everything.
App is one. Connecting to all your other apps is the other. Those are the two that I've been paying the most attention to.
Anne: I think those are so material to our work and to, and to our lives as humans. I mean, that's the thing. This is gonna be woven in absolutely everywhere. And the way we talk about AI today.
And, and by the way, one of the things, you know, Lauren, that really bugs me is when we're not precise, when we talk about ai, we just use this big old acronym when, you know, are we talking about something that's more predictive, cognitive, generative? But the fact is, is that it will be that, um, inside everything and sort of the web that connects us in a way.
And it, it is interesting. You talked about SEO, there's been so much discussion recently about. Is this the end, the, the death of search engine optimization? I tend to be very skeptical when anyone says something is dead because it's usually alive somehow. Um, my, you know, my agency life would've been gone a long time ago if I listened to all of those things 'cause we're still here.
But this idea of, um, AI optimization, [00:23:00] you know, how are you optimizing for the large language models and how they're crawling the web in a very different way and how they're ingesting information. And so. I love that you're thinking about that from a digital perspective. 'cause our clients absolutely have to think about that, right?
Loren: Absolutely. And not just SEO, but how SEO and your imagery work together. It's a little bit of a unique experience, but we've been developing a chat bot for a client that connects to food and one thing that emerged as we were working the chat bot is that it was scanning, not just. The recipes that we had, but it was scanning the images associated with the recipes as well, and it would recommend something different.
So for example, if you were to search for like red, white, and blue or 4th of July, all of a sudden you're getting, you know, foods that aren't connected to 4th of July, even though they have some in this website, but show cherries or blueberries and then like a whitish looking dough in the meal it's, or in the, uh, baked good itself and.
It understood. Like the tool understood that. And so even your imagery becomes an extension of your SEO, uh, in a sense if you're [00:24:00] trying to predict what people are looking for.
Anne: Yeah. It's kind of like a supercharging of what Google has tried to do with Google image search and um, and, and obviously Google is working hard the way it's incorporated Gemini at the top of the search page, not to lose, you know, its brand and the dominance it's had, but I think it's gonna be really, really hard at this point for Google to maintain a choke hold on that we're already seeing.
So much use of chat GBT, just as one example through the app and from a business development perspective, you know, more and more we're hearing, oh, we found your agency through chat GBT, which has not to surprise me at all when we see the kind of search volume that's growing around it.
Loren: A billion searches last week according to Sam Altman.
Yeah.
Anne: Yeah. So, so much change. So, um. Thinking about the ground level of this and that's why I was so excited to speak to you. You know, like many firms and especially on the agency side, 'cause I talked to folks on the corporate side, agency side, many of our clients, um, we don't have a lot of restrictions on the agency side about how we experiment.
We have very [00:25:00] specific guidelines. As you know, Lauren, I'm very focused on ethics. We've been part of the PR council's work and ethical use of AI for communications. Um. Respect intellectual property. We're very careful about, um, IP protection and also the ownership of creatives. You know, how things are being used, right?
So we take that really seriously. But in terms of experimenting on the upside, there's very little to hold us back. So what I wanted to talk to you about today was really that ground level. How do digital and marketing and comms professionals, how are we benefiting from use of a AI in our day-to-day work?
How are we exploring and what are we hoping. Our colleagues do say at G&S and Morgan Meyers and other places, and you know, I, I see it as there's the working smarter, not harder. They're solving persistent problems and pain points. There's knocking out those rote tasks where you're like, this is taking way too much time.
You know, I need an assistant to do this, or my favorite, which is enhancing our strategic value. So when you think about your workflows and those of your peers. [00:26:00] What are some of the either tools or platforms or workflows enabled by AI that have really changed your workday?
Loren: The easiest is something that a lot of people probably wouldn't consider, but really has been a game changer for me, which is automating a very repetitive task of receipt analysis.
We have a lot of receipts come through social media that need to be split out. For those not familiar with an agency structure, you're often going to split them out on a receipt between different jobs or outlines, uh, each with their own. Budgets, if you will. And because social media platforms don't have the ability to easily update how a receipt comes to you, you're kind of getting everything at once.
So if I'm running two different campaiG&S, they're both gonna show up on the same receipt. Well, as a result, somebody needs to go through that and figure out how much money goes where, and then note it for processing from our financial side. It sounds very boring and it can be very boring, especially, but it can also be a lot because we have campaiG&S where we'll launch.
You know, all of a sudden [00:27:00] $20,000 or a hundred thousand dollars in a month, and when we're limited in the size of the receipt, that's a hundred receipts we have to process. So we have a. Custom GPT that's trained to analyze receipts and provide a naming structure and the math that we need, uh, only for us.
So it's, it's trained in the style that we're trying to go for. It uses the structure we want. It's trained on our examples. It does not connect to the internet in the traditional sense, only through, uh, A GBT interface and. Although it's only 10 receipts at a time, it's a game changer for me. My personal estimation is a 30 to 40% increase in processing speed more if there's only a couple, uh, different jobs at any given time.
But we have receipts that can go up to seven jobs. And so I've shifted from having to do all of the math myself to double checking what's coming out. And so far. There's been one inaccuracy on the AI's part and five inaccuracies on my part that I messed up on the receipt structure beforehand, [00:28:00] and a 98% success rate, I would say, without really any changes needed at all.
It's hard to overestimate
Anne: that. Yeah, I love that example because. It, it, that's an example of a persistent problem. It, it's kind of shocking to me. I mean, no shade to the social media companies, but the way the billing structure and the receipts come, well, I meant I am throwing a little bit of shade. It's just, it's
Loren: okay.
Throw the shade
Anne: crazy from a business perspective that this is still how the billing is done. And for any paid media teams, we have the Morgan Myers team doing paid media. We have the Gs. On G&S business communications team doing paid media, it really is a burden. So I think you've hit those buckets of knocking out road tasks and solving for persistent pain points.
The other thing this brings up for me is the idea of AI as an agent that assists you. And I think, you know, we've thought in terms, so we, first we had to learn to think about the internet as an entity, then we had to think about. Kind of that social internet. Then we thought about apps. We got trained to think about things from an app perspective, not just through mobile.
It came through mobile, but now [00:29:00] it's like even apps. You think about it even in a desktop perspective in a way. So now we're being trained to think about agents. Right. So how would you define for our listeners, you know, hopefully people are following this, but. How do you think about that word, either app or agent in the context of some of the things that you're starting to build and use?
Loren: So for me, an agent I would consider as something that can persistently make its own decisions, whether that's allowing it to go operate off of its own schedule, control a specific piece of software. There's a little bit of nebulousness when it comes to what is an agent, and I think that's okay because this is all still so new that we're not gonna have like exact definitions, but it helps even in the name itself, anybody largely understand what it is.
Think of an intern who you trust enough to do a specific task. For me, I'm exploring a lot of ways that we can set up agents either for creating projects, building out things ahead of time. Or, uh, on our social listening side, which I help with that a lot, that could be competitive analysis. So repeat competitive analysis, just updating me on key [00:30:00] trends ahead of my chance to actually review the results that are coming in.
So it's almost priming. From a almost real time perspective, my work as I go in to understand a competitor and what our clients need to know on them. So still looking at the structures for those. Yeah.
Anne: Definition a way of thinking about it. And you're right, I think we're reaching toward that and we're hearing what the promise of that will be.
It kind of hearkens back to what your trends were regarding connection and connectivity of the major LLMs with other parts of our lives like. The shopping piece or. Social media, airline booking. You know, one thing that's funny about those connection points is, I actually ran into this this week, is with the note taking apps like Otter and Reed AI and how you give you like open the door a tiny bit and they're in there connecting to everything and suddenly you have.
Read AI Reader showing up to your team's meeting before you get there and I'm like, I did [00:31:00] not intend this my friend, but thank you so much for being so aggressive.
Loren: Yep. Getting emails saying, oh, here's your recap of a meeting. Not even realizing that the assistant was plugged in there, which double edged, but so far has been beneficial.
Anne: No, it's very funny and it, and obviously in our environment using Microsoft 365 and. Enabling copilot for all staff where we, and starting to build out apps, you know, I think they're almost pre agents, but building out tools, um, in every part of our business, from the client side to operations, to everything IT support, et cetera, et cetera.
Using it to work smarter, not harder. It kind of points us in that direction. I read an interesting article, and I'm CEO at our, at our group about how, you know, this generation of CEOs will be the last to only have human. Um, employees, they'll also be agent employees and I, that, that to me was one of those moments like you describing, Hey, this is how I understand agents, that they have some agency.
I had to stop for a minute and be like, that's really interesting. 'cause I feel like I've been managing technology [00:32:00] as a strategic asset for a very long time. Understanding without anthropomorphizing understanding, like agents will be part of that workforce, I find. I mean, does that, what do you think about that?
How does that sit for you? Do you feel like that's the future we're heading towards?
Loren: I do think that's the future, and I've been thinking a lot about a quote, I'm not gonna get it quite right, but essentially it says, you know, the output, every system is perfectly designed to output what it outputs. It's like however a system is made, whatever you're getting outta the system, that's what it's designed to do.
So if you wanna change what's made, you need to change the design. I'm not sure that AI fully fits that mold because you could be as accurate as you want and there is still technically the potential for something to come out that was unexpected because we don't truly have a grasp on how the backend technology works.
That's like a human I. You know, I, I've been there myself, I've been an intern. I can be trusted with the best possible, uh, instructions and go horribly wrong or go the wrong direction with it. So there is a bit of a management approach. It's, it's reflecting, it's responding, encouraging, [00:33:00] asking maybe for a redo on things.
So is there skill sets that people probably didn't expect and certainly not ones you'd apply to? Technology in many cases, you know, when it departments started to exist, people might have managed computers, but they probably expected the computer to. To be accurate all the time and while AI is getting more and more accurate over time.
There's still gonna be that element, whether it's coming from the fact that we're using natural language conversations, that could be part of it. 'cause language is tricky. Things mean different things, uh, different people. Or if it's just gonna be an inbuilt piece of the tech as a whole, my guess is, and.
Like what you were reading and like others have reported on management skills are gonna be very, very common all the way down, uh, to really anybody in an organization that touches a computer.
Anne: That's a really great point. I like that a lot. Um, you've made a point in our AI team meetings and, and we've actually been trying to advocate for this across our organization and also our clients, which is.[00:34:00]
To get over the overwhelming nature of AI because not everybody is feeling like immediately super technical or hands on like some people have been. Exploring it for a very long time, as you have others are coming to it in the course of their job, and if there's a big self-education process. But one of the ways we framed it is how do you start with a need or a problem to solve and think of that first versus what can AI do or what should I do with ai?
Why do you think that's an important way of thinking about this? Uh, especially as practitioners in our space.
Loren: I think it's the easiest way to start understanding the capabilities of a tool like ai. And we can have a thousand use cases. We can have a prompt library that does anything you can imagine. And yet tomorrow we're gonna find out, oh, all of a sudden you can shop in chat GPT.
Now. Like there is no predicting what this tool can do and there doesn't at the moment appear to be an upper limit. 'cause if there's anything digital related, it probably can, but as a person. You know what your challenges are. You understand better than anybody else, not only what is needed in your role, but [00:35:00] also what is sometimes wrong.
I think a good way to position this is, you know, you're still an expert in what you do. So if you're using a tool like artificial intelligence, you can spot when the output doesn't align, uh, with what's right. And so if you start thinking about ways that you can, uh, solve something that's really annoying for me, that was receipts.
It can open up a whole world. I mean, eventually I was getting recommendations for how to code like hard code in analysis tools and connect back to cloud APIs and all that stuff. That's not in my wheelhouse, although I feel a lot more confident now because I got to go through that, uh, exploratory journey.
Thankfully, I found that Chat two was able to do it on its own, uh, using existing systems with the custom GPT framework, but. That opened my eyes in a way that trying to read every study, uh, never could. Now when I go and I come across a new problem, the way I even phrase it or coach it to an AI tool is gonna be different because I have a better understanding [00:36:00] of how the technology works, which I think is really important.
A lot of people don't get the chance to really know like how. If something is generated back to you. So that's number one. But then also how it solves all my existing pain points in ways that I didn't expect. I didn't, the outcome wasn't necessarily what I expected when I started using the tool to solve a pain point.
Anne: I think it's gonna be transformative for us as we continue. Bringing all of our colleagues along in this journey and everybody has so much to bring to the table. I'm seeing such creative, smart, but also, you know, appropriate uses across our agencies. Like, and it's, and it's really gaining momentum obviously.
But um, I don't take that for granted 'cause it has to be super intentional. And what I love is the idea that we have folks around Morgan Myers and G&S business communications and on our client side too, as partners, different people who are. More into this or have skill sets, or they have more experience where they can say, Hey, you considered this.
And it's really more of a [00:37:00] consultative mode. It's like the way we, which we work with clients, which is come to me, um, and, and ask me your questions. Ask me what you're trying to solve for. And I bet you we can find. A use case because you're right, just listing use cases will make you insane. 'cause there's so many of them.
Loren: And a big piece of this that people often don't consider is that you can fully out a project and then use AI to figure out what you missed. That's another way to consider it because you can almost do a negative parameter. Like say I'm planning and events and you know, I've kind of got a location down.
I've got a lot of themes wr written out. I have an idea of the weather. I can upload a version of that event to chat GPT and say, this is what I already know. What have I missed? It sounds simple, but you might be surprised at what comes out to fill in the gaps you might not be aware of. So that's another spot that we've been exploring.
I know that our SEO experts have been looking at websites and they're starting to say, Hey, you know, what is missing from this FAQ that should be here [00:38:00] that would support our SEO efforts, just for example.
Anne: That's a great example. One of the concepts I came across. I think it was on Freakonomics, it was on one of the Freakonomics podcasts with Steven Dubner and they had a, had an expert on, it was a series he did on failure and he had an expert on talking about the idea of, um, kind of projecting forward, I guess you're starting a project to sort of stand at the end and say, imagine we failed, what went wrong?
And I think that that to me is a trick of the human brain to get you out of the box. Like the metaphorical I'm in the box, like how do you get outta the box? Which is a real pat thing, but. There's a real reality to that, which is I need to get like physically, mentally, in another space. And I love that idea of using chat GPT to do that very experience.
You know, either what am I missing or what will, this is the plan, what might have failed? What if we fail? What will have gone wrong? And it's another way. And that's really, again, augmented intelligence that's pushing us to think about things differently with a partner,
Loren: which is the way to think about it.
[00:39:00] You're unlikely to still get a result from AI that can really compete with an expert in a field. It, it can occur it, it's possible. But if you want re repeated excellence, you're better off training your expert to use an AI tool to augment what they do. And then your results are gonna be much stronger. I mean, you've read co intelligence, you know that the data backs that up as well.
Human plus AI is much better than human or AI on their own.
Anne: And you know, speaking of that, as we start to wrap up agriculture. Food, but, but both have a lot of specialization, especially agriculture. You know, you look at image generation. Is the corn that's gonna be generated is looking right? Is it the correct height?
Is it, you know, it's just those things that those of you've worked in that field for years or grew up in that space would know intuitively. It's hard for systems to know. So when you think about your, your peers and colleagues out there, especially in the ag space or the food space from a digital side, what are some tips for those really committed to engagement and self-education and?
Getting [00:40:00] started. How would you counsel folks to think about this or dive in?
Loren: I think there's a good three step process that I'd first recommend, and number one is just simply start prompting, start asking questions. When chat, GPT was released, my initial approach, which I'm not gonna say is correct for now, but what worked then was to do a different prompt every day for a month, whatever I could think of.
The most unusual things. Act as though you're this famous person. What do you think about this historical event? Outline the recent news. How can you help me write some code? Really anything you can imagine, uh, usually even connected back to your personal life. Start up deploying that in a way, uh, that you get a sense of how the tool thinks and how it works.
And really any artificial intelligence option will work for this co-pilot chat, GPT, uh, Google, Gemini, they all should be open for that. But as you're doing that, you're gonna naturally learn how to prompt better. 'cause you're not gonna like the responses. You know, an AI might learn from you, but you're gonna learn from it at the same time.
So as you're doing that process, [00:41:00] explore prompt recommendations. We've got some really good frameworks, uh, internally, there's frameworks out there that you can use. One of my favorites is to make sure that the tool, you tell it how you want to think. So, act as though you're the CEO of a large marketing firm.
How would you respond to the strategic plan? What did I miss? Those are the kinds of things you would do. Don't be afraid of using natural language. My first reaction was to maybe go with the Google search approach of this is really an index that I need to specify, and I kind of understand how it works, so I'm gonna avoid sounding like a human.
I'm just gonna search. Query doesn't work as well. Natural language is totally fine to use, uh, because the tool adapts to it. So once you've done those two things where you've started prompting and then you started understanding how to change your prompts, then you're largely set to go into the broader area of ai, whatever that is.
Whether that's backend technical analysis for you, image generation, or strategy. I think that those are the initial. [00:42:00] Things that I would do, and I, they sound basic, but really you need to have 10 hours or more into these tools before you start to do it right and start to really like your results. My first AI generated images were horrible.
Something between a peacock and a John Deere tractor came out. I don't really know what happened there, but. But it, yeah, not as cool as I thought, or not as cool as maybe as described as. But uh, nowadays I'm a lot more comfortable with it. I understand the parameters, uh, and how the technology works, and so not that I always get everything I, I wish for, but I'm, I.
Able to get closer, uh, to my ideal. So using those as the frame, as the approaches is what I would do. And once you've got that, I know it sounds odd to like leave the technical learning and the framework till after you've experimented, but I really do think experimenting is more valuable and then you can go back and say, okay, here's this.
System I learned online called Craft, which is one of our internal frameworks that we deploy. How can I think back on what I've done before in a way that would make it [00:43:00] better had I used this? So you need to grow at the same time that the tool's learning about you.
Anne: Yeah. That makes, I love that. Uh, and and part of it is really just getting hands on with it because one of the things I talk about a lot, you've heard me talk about this, is that when there's something that's truly very new and you've grown up in a different time, a different set of tools, I.
Um, interrupting your own workflow like intentionally is hard because your brain doesn't naturally find like, oh yeah, I have all these uses for ai because it didn't exist before in that way for you, for most people. So I love that, and I think the idea, and you mention COT Intelligence, a book by Ethan Molik of Stanford.
For anyone who hasn't read it, it's a good. I mean it's, it feels like, again, it was published a long time ago 'cause everything's moving so fast. But he is really looking at it from a very human, but also a business leader, not a technologist. Like he, his academic study is business. And so I think he's thinking about it in a great way and to put in 10 hours to get [00:44:00] familiars a lot easier than 10,000, which is the old mastery, you know, level.
So getting hands on is great. So there's always one final question here on building brand gravity, which is what has you and its gravity these days. What, what are you into? What are you reading? What are you thinking about, Lauren?
Loren: Uh, there's two that come to mind for me. First off is the book Dune.
Obviously we've had some good dune movies come out, but there's a very interesting approach to artificial intelligence in that series that is informative. It's often not really considered, but if you like, uh, to approach big ideas through the vein of fiction. That's a good way to do it. Another one, and I'm really showing my nerd card here, but, uh, and or the Star Wars TV show has just released its second season and.
Unlike many, there isn't a lot of this technological deployment. It's made like a traditional movie. There's a lot more real sets, there's a lot less, you know, CGI backgrounds, which I'm drawn to as I get more into using tools like ai. I also, on the opposite side, like to go more towards fully human created things [00:45:00] for my entertainment.
So I don't know why that is. That's just kind of the way my subconscious has been going recently, but I've been drawn into both.
Anne: I love it. Those are great recommendations. And I think the re continuing relevance of fiction like Dune, you know, as we come into these more and more modern societies, you know, sometimes it ends up like very dystopic, but I think also it's really interesting, like you mentioned Asimov early on, like how do we.
As humans think about living side by side with machines. The good, the scary, the bad, and let's try to create the world we wanna live in. But, um, Lauren King, again, thank you so much for being a guest today on Building Brand Gravity. I really always appreciate our conversations.
Loren: Absolutely. Wow.
Steve: I mean, that's really what makes Lauren's perspective just so valuable.
And, and what I really liked about that discussion, Anne, is you know, he wasn't just reflecting on the present state of technology and brand. He was really pushing us to reimagine the role humanity should play [00:46:00] in the continued evolution of AI and technology. And I guess my takeaway when I, when I heard that was that if you're a leading.
Brand or a team right now. My big takeaway from that is don't just react to technology. Design with intention, right? Use narrative, use imagination. And I like how we encourage us to even consider fiction, you know, as a, as a tool to help you shape a strategy. And maybe most importantly, and I know you say this all the time, you can put technology at the center, but you.
Cannot lose that human thread. So I really like that idea of let's try and create the world we wanna live in. Yeah. Powerful stuff.
Anne: I, I think it's great. And the thing that's wonderful about Lauren too is his enthusiasm and his deep, deep driving curiosity. When we get on the call, I mean, we could have chatted about 7 billion things, um, aside from our work as practitioners and our sectors that were specialized in the technology.
But I think it's [00:47:00] that, um, that is an example of what we all need to bring to this, the enthusia to the enthusiasm, the curiosity, the excitement, um, and the ability to connect the dots. And also what I love, I'm seeing this a lot more, not just in our firm, but you know, as I circulate around. A lot of sense of, um, shared.
Responsibility to be counselors to one another. So how do we help our peers and colleagues come up to speed solve for problems? There are gonna always be earlier adopters. There's going to be technology coming like it always has, and there's people who, it just is like breathing air. It totally makes sense.
I mean, if you remember that story Lauren told he first was engaging with AI years ago when he was so much younger as a teenager and, and. So this has been a long journey for him, despite him being a bit younger than you and I. So I think that idea of helping your peers, those of us who are natural adopters on certain aspects of it, [00:48:00] looking to say, Hey, come to me with a problem to solve because this is a whole new world.
And that is what makes me excited about the pivot to come, I think.
Steve: Well, and, and it, it also struck me as I was just hearing you talk right now, you know, you, you had made a comment, we, we do every year an employee survey and a road show. And, and Anne made a comment that, that she said, you know, we are going to be the first generation who is not just gonna manage humans.
We are gonna be, we are gonna be managing AI agents, you know, and just kind of that bifurcation. So as we're trying to create that world we wanna live in, you know, that's, that's something that's out there. And it, it kinda struck me, you know, we always like to end this thinking about what's in our gravity and this conversation of that.
Just really reminded me of a, of a article I saw in the Wall Street Journal recently by Isabella Basque, and the title was Walmart is preparing to welcome its next customer, the AI [00:49:00] Shopping Agent, and I. It was just fascinating to think about that build from what we were talking about and, and pardon me, I was just gonna read a little bit of this, but said Walmart is preparing for sweeping changes in the way customers shop, investigating how to make products appealing, not just to human consumers.
But also to the AI agents that will one day shop on their behalf. At some point in the future, shoppers will deploy an agent and tell it that they wanna restock on groceries or buy a new flat screen tv. The operator will then scan the internet and service relevance products based on what it knows about the user's preference, and ultimately the agents may even be able to complete the purchase, including.
Payment. So, wow. Talk about the marrying of the, of the human and the ai. Talk about reimagining a world or thinking ahead. I, I think that's like a perfect blend of your conversation with Lauren and, uh, [00:50:00] just the change we're seeing as we try and create this new world.
Anne: It's like we're all be celebrities with personal assistance, except there'll be AI agents.
There's a great little clip that's been going around in social about a month or two ago. I, I think it's real, but you know, you have to ask yourself questions about it. But it sort of showed the interaction between like one AI agent trying to book a hotel and that the hotel had its own AI agent. And when they both realized they, I'm, I'm anthropomorphizing them.
They're like, oh, let's communicate in more computer code. Like, you know, like bloop bleeps, you know, ones and zeros than, than human language. And so they start to, I I think it might be legit. Others may have seen it if it's fake. I, I totally own that. But I think it's a real, real metaphor, which is there's going to be so much of that AI agent to AI agent interaction.
And, and the question of what really, and Lauren said it too in the call, what really is agentic ai? Where are agents like. They're gonna be coming and I think it's gonna be both fast and organic at the same time. [00:51:00] It's funny because one of the things that I was in my gravity when we were reflecting, you know, building brand gravity, was this point about two stats I've heard, or two comments I've heard recently.
One was yours about the fact that even entry level, I think it was the CEO of Jasper AI, said this in a Fortune CEO, um, newsletter that Diane Brady does. He said. For entry level folks, we're going to have to be thinking about their management skills because they'll be managing AI agents as if they're like an intern or they're a a colleague.
The other quote I'd heard is that this generation of CEOs will be the last to only manage human employees, that there will be agents as well. And I've always thought of technology as a strategic asset, but now I have to think about it almost as. Workers. And I think that's a big psychological shift that we need to make.
Um, the other more fun thing I have in my gravity is many people are listening to this 'cause it's already shooting to the top of the podcast list. But Amy PO's new [00:52:00] podcast, good hang, is a joy bomb. It's a bomb of joy. It's fun. Jack Black, Tina Faye, she just had Michelle Obama on. Uh, it's very interesting to see more of these types of figures enter the podcast game.
And as we have a podcast too, in our own little world, I'm always looking for, um, you know, what are they doing and how are they doing it? So I definitely recommend that to others.
Steve: Yeah, I'll have to check that out. That sounds exciting.
Anne: Well, we're coming to the end of another episode. Thank you for those who listen to both parts of the AI mini series.
As Steve said, if you didn't listen to the one with Greg. Go back and check it out. And as always, find us wherever you find your podcast and on YouTube and we really thank you for listening.
Steve: Have a great day. Tune in soon. We'll be back with more exciting conversations on how we can build brand gravity.

00:00:01:14 - 00:00:29:15
Steve
Welcome to building brand gravity. I'm your host, Steve Halsey. I'm excited today to talk about the global state of confidence in business. According to the latest Paige Harris Poll research, only 26% of people globally are very confident that companies can make a positive impact on the issues that matter most. Even fewer, just 20%, say they see companies providing both action and context.

00:00:29:17 - 00:00:51:16
Steve
With me today to discuss how we bridge the gap in confidence in business, why brand should care, and what chief communications officers should do about it are my friends of the pond, Elliot Mizrahi, VP, strategy and content for page, and Rob Yankovic, who is the managing director of Harris Poll. Gentlemen, welcome back to the show.

00:00:51:18 - 00:00:53:01
Eliot
Thanks for having us.

00:00:53:03 - 00:00:54:15
Rob
Great to be here, Steve.

00:00:54:17 - 00:01:29:00
Steve
So so let's start with some of the top line findings from this year's global research. You guys put together, research that tracks 16 key issues across 14 global markets. You also interviewed 40 chief communications officers from around the world to really create a pretty comprehensive view of what publics are thinking, where business is at. I mean, Rob, maybe you can kick us off by helping us unpack what you found to be the top six issues the public expects business to act on in 2025.

00:01:29:02 - 00:01:45:00
Rob
Thanks for the set up, Steve. Yeah. So when you when you go across 14 countries and those 16 issues, there are six pieces that really bubble up. We'll talk a little bit. I think, in, in a little bit about some of the differences by, by market. But there are six issues that kind of what we'll call essential.

00:01:45:02 - 00:02:14:05
Rob
Right. It's a it's a blend of different things. So it's a pretty dynamic landscape. But the top three, around economic stability and growth, around job creation and workforce skills development, and corruption. Right. Corruption's a definitely an interesting one for conversation, especially since in a number of markets, it's actually number one. So the and the next three that fill out the whole kind of essentials gap are, an environmental issues research and technological innovation, and mental health issues.

00:02:14:07 - 00:02:25:18
Rob
Right. Each. All six of those are seen as very important for leading companies to make an impact on, in aggregate, across all those markets. Majority of the population says that.

00:02:25:19 - 00:02:37:08
Steve
So, Rob, when you guys put together that full list of, the 16 key issues, were you surprised in the top three, the top six?

00:02:37:10 - 00:03:12:15
Rob
The one, the the one that's always I think drives a lot of intrigue is, is the one around corruption. So and right now I would just use that, especially in communications, corporate affairs parlance as a, as a very strong proxy for reputational risk. Right. So the word corruption can be everything from I think my fees are to high the this company is acting in a corrupt fashion to, this is a senator or a representative who's been indicted on 23 counts of malfeasance, intersecting with foreign actors and, accruing a lot of personal wealth.

00:03:12:17 - 00:03:33:13
Rob
Right? So it's it's a very large spectrum. And for that reason, just as with reputational risk, sometimes there's a there's a 3% kernel of truth that gets turned into a much bigger story. So I think it's a it's a really important one. I think mental health is also really intriguing, primarily because it overindex is so heavily on, on younger generations, across the board.

00:03:33:15 - 00:03:55:12
Steve
So, so, Elliot, when you when you think about what Rob was talking about in terms of reputational risk and just, just the broader set of, things that rose to the top, how does that match up with the one on one conversations you were having with CEOs around the globe and, and any different perspectives you got from those who may be based in the States versus elsewhere in the world.

00:03:55:14 - 00:04:17:00
Eliot
Yeah. So, actually, just to back up a moment, the impetus for this study was Page's interest in having more of a presence at events like Davos. And so we partnered with Robin Harris to develop a piece of research that would underscore the role of the Co as a real business leader and would focus on some of the challenges that they're facing.

00:04:17:00 - 00:04:48:01
Eliot
One of the main ones being how do we contend with this range of societal issues where the expectation of us in our organizations to address those, and what what's the impact of that? And I think for a lot of CSOs, you know, if you flash back, you know, four years ago, five years ago, a lot of these issues, particularly around Dei and ESG, they were really front and center and companies were really aggressive in their actions in pursuing those, policy politics, as it often does, you know, sort of moves over time.

00:04:48:03 - 00:05:20:22
Eliot
And I think there were a couple of instances where companies, were, chastened for some of the action that they took because of some negative reaction, which caused some companies to think maybe a little bit more critically and judiciously about the issues that they ought to tackle. And so the idea behind this research was, let's shed some light on what types of issues should really matter to organizations and importantly, what action on those issues might produce in terms of confidence in business and confidence in their ability to have impact on those issues?

00:05:21:00 - 00:05:28:15
Eliot
What I think is interesting, which was kind of the point of doing this globally, is that those answers are really different across geographies.

00:05:28:17 - 00:05:49:07
Steve
Yeah, that'll be that'll be I want to get into that in a, in a little bit talking about what you're seeing across the globe. But Rob, I thought it was interesting you looked at the issues that, that in terms of importance and in terms of confidence. Can you can you talk a little bit about about what you found when you look at it through those two dimensions?

00:05:49:09 - 00:06:05:11
Rob
Sure. I, I've actually one of the points I just wanted to build on what Elliot said, we made sure. And this is an it just makes sense that we have all the components of issues such as ESG. And I included, we just don't use the terms ESG or Dei. Nor would we suggest that anyone use those, right?

00:06:05:11 - 00:06:23:12
Rob
I mean, again, unless you've you've been invested in that acronym for a very, very long time. And the acronym is kind of part of your culture. It's probably best to kind of focus in on the specific issues underlying it, right? Where again, there's I think there's a tremendous amount of work to be done, and there's very little reason why many companies should, should back away from a lot of the underpinning ideas.

00:06:23:13 - 00:06:43:17
Rob
But we'll get to that. Right. So when you're, when you're looking at the, across all the, especially the, the six essentials, they're the one that's the standout in terms of highest confidence, although it's still pretty low is around R&D and innovation. Right. So that's the one that connects most easily and more most intuitively with with the with with the public.

00:06:43:19 - 00:07:04:06
Rob
And that's where confidence is highest, although still reasonably low. Also just when we're, we're talking about confidence being low, we're also we're not saying that the negatives are high. It's just the ambivalence is high. Right. So like it's basically the a low, confidence in business indicates a lack of perspective, which again, in today's reality that's a big risk, right?

00:07:04:06 - 00:07:27:20
Rob
Because it's you know, as you look at the overall geopolitical landscape, there's increasingly many more populist voices, populist leaders who can have might pick on companies as kind of the reason for why things are going well or not going so well. Right. So that's the the big piece around a lack of confidence is really a lack of definition.

00:07:27:22 - 00:07:55:19
Rob
So again, high definition on research and technological innovation, lowest confidence on, on corruption. Right. So again, speaks to the the fact that we're not just talking about individual company actions. In many cases, it's that intersection with kind of politics, government, etc.. Right. And across, many, many governments. Right. You can see that like, especially in, like parliamentary, regimes, if you will, like very often when regime is in for a long time and then changes because of a corruption scandal.

00:07:55:19 - 00:08:00:23
Rob
And that's kind of that's not like something that's happening now. That's like a decades long trend that you see pretty consistently.

00:08:01:01 - 00:08:36:19
Steve
Yeah. That was that that was a fascinating one. And when we get into a little bit of slice of the data by, by generations, it's really interesting looking at that corruption viewpoint as well. So, so, Elliot, you know, as we get started in this conversation and we think about the importance and we think about the confidence, how does that start shaping as we go through this discussions, how Cos agency leaders, other senior comms professionals need to think about how do you start taking data like this, what you're hearing, in your organization and start thinking about how those come together.

00:08:36:21 - 00:09:01:00
Eliot
Yeah. So my first thought on that question, actually, is an emphasis on what Rob just said about the choice not to talk about ESG and the I, you know, those are terms that are popular in the corporate vernacular, but are not the way that everyday people think about those issues. And I think that's one of the lessons for scholars is, you know, make that distinction.

00:09:01:01 - 00:09:24:20
Eliot
Think about what type of initiatives, programs, decisions you need to make at the corporate level in order to fulfill your mission, your values, all that stuff. But then also, and I think part of what this research does is, meet consumers, meet stakeholders where they are on those issues, speak to them in terms that relate to, how that issue shows up in their life.

00:09:24:22 - 00:09:58:09
Eliot
And so we deliberately chose not to focus on those terms. And we've actually done some separate research, not as part of the Harris poll. That looks at, what is the terminology that companies should be using when engaging on these issues? And, you know, terms like, you know, we're we're making choices that that allow us to be a responsible business, that is far less polarizing than using terms like ESG and Dei, which, in many respects, you know, they're acronyms without meaning, that have been given meaning by a variety of different political actors.

00:09:58:09 - 00:10:06:07
Eliot
And so I think being aware of the political environment is a big part of it, but also understanding stakeholders and what their expectations of the business are is really important.

00:10:06:07 - 00:10:28:10
Steve
Yeah, Elliot, that's really important when you when you ask people and kind of how you did in the research, when you're asking about gender equality or income, inequality or racial or minority, equality, there are different ways that you could set that framing up that most people generally are going to say, yes, I agree with. However, the acronyms really got politicized.

00:10:28:10 - 00:11:03:10
Steve
And I think that's going to be another point to kind of put a pin in, to come back as to how do you communicate in a, hyper polarized environment, knowing when and where to, to engage. But I also thought, Rob, going back to just the sheer global nature of this, I thought it was fascinating looking at some of the regions that had extremely, high confidence vis-a-vis the other ones, like Saudi Arabia and India versus like, the UK, Japan and Italy and the United States and Canada and Mexico were kind of kind of middling.

00:11:03:10 - 00:11:16:07
Steve
So what what type of things did you think was interesting from, geographic standpoint? And what are some things that schools need to think about that?

00:11:16:09 - 00:11:38:16
Rob
Sure. So you certainly do have some differences. So although overall confidence is relatively low, the US is actually very close to the average, just under the average. Right. But you did have some markets especially like well established markets such as the ones you name that, that are a lot lower on confidence. And you had a lot of, a lot of other markets, you could call them emerging, I think in a lot are now established.

00:11:38:16 - 00:12:05:15
Rob
But like if you're looking at Saudi Arabia, UAE, India, Brazil for confidence was higher. Right now, I think the the there's a couple different things. So the first is when you look at some of the those let's call them emerging markets. Right. You still that the role of companies is can be very, very substantial where you see a very direct intersection between large scale infrastructure development and things like that, right, where you can make a very substantive, very noteworthy and very tangible impact on kind of the economy.

00:12:05:17 - 00:12:26:11
Rob
And in many cases, there's a closer intersection with, with government because of the size and nature of a lot of those projects. Right? So again, I don't I don't know if that's the saying that's the formula for success. It's more so saying that that is the reality on the ground right now in many of those markets, many of the kind of, established markets are also and if there's a lot more companies doing a lot more things.

00:12:26:11 - 00:12:45:07
Rob
So it's harder to do to, for individual companies to, to break through. They're also noisy these days on, on, on many different fronts. But when you look across markets, there's also a difference in expectations, right? The, you know, the most consistent trend. And this one I think is pretty obvious when you play it out in terms of consumers lives, is around kind of economic growth.

00:12:45:12 - 00:13:13:14
Rob
Right. So like economic impact, economic growth are really good translation of that is also like prices and inflation. Right. So like the your economic narrative is fundamentally important across every market. But from there you have, you have quite a bit of like difference there. You know, there are some markets where we mentioned, you know, corruption is like the number one item, like in places like China and in the United Kingdom, that is the number one that, that consumers are saying they expect companies to make a big impact on, which is that's interesting.

00:13:13:16 - 00:13:36:21
Rob
Right. You have other markets where where you have issues, such as, you know, negative impacts of AI and regulation of AI that are much higher that are into the into the essential set where, you know, there's that that's not the case. Right? So, again, AI is at play in certain markets like the UK is an example where, regulation of AI is a much higher expectation versus many other markets.

00:13:36:23 - 00:13:41:13
Steve
Those are really fascinating points. Rob Elliot, any thoughts on that?

00:13:41:15 - 00:14:10:12
Eliot
Yeah. So on this notion that the economic issues are the ones that that stakeholder seem to have the greatest expectations on, that's intuitive, right? Like the business of business is business. And so that's where the focus ought to be. But even on some of these other societal issues, the research that I referenced earlier, one of the things that we found was that, you know, connecting it to the interests of the business, to the profitability motive, those are things that make them seem more relevant to the business.

00:14:10:14 - 00:14:34:06
Eliot
And where you get in trouble is where it seems like companies are virtual signaling or making decisions based on a set of moral values that are being imposed on others. Whereas in many cases, the truth is that they're doing that because there is an interest in the business in, in pursuing those issues. And so I think one of the lessons here is be thoughtful about the issues that you decide to engage on and think about them.

00:14:34:06 - 00:14:38:19
Eliot
And think about communicating them in ways that relate to the success of the business.

00:14:38:21 - 00:15:05:02
Steve
Yeah, that that makes a lot of sense. And I guess I throw this one out a little bit as a as a jump ball. Then, you know, Rob, you covered that. The top three issues most consistently across economic stability and growth, job creation and workforce skills development and corruption tended to be fairly, fairly consistent. But then some of the other, things that are being grappled on, by region change pretty wildly.

00:15:05:04 - 00:15:24:06
Steve
So how can how can a senior communicator use this kind of as a, as a blueprint to think about what are the things that I need to play up in, in different geographies? What are the things what part of my narratives need to be consistent globally and and so how do you how do you use those findings?

00:15:24:07 - 00:15:41:18
Rob
I mean the of the top three, right. The first two are very proactive. Right. So job creation and economic impact are very proactive ones too. And I mean, I think those are important because sometimes people like think they're it's like Captain Obvious, but it actually isn't what you're leading with. And it's not even part of your overall frame.

00:15:41:20 - 00:15:57:22
Rob
Right. So I think it's a good reminder. The corruption one is more, as we talked about. It's more of like an indicator of risk. So it's like something you need to be prepared for and like it's really good for kind of like wild card question prep for your CEO. Right. And it's definitely a lot more on kind of rethinking materiality of risks.

00:15:58:00 - 00:16:21:03
Rob
But even some of the issues like environmental issues are quite consistent across most markets. But they they overindex in certain places, like environmental issues. Number two in Japan, number two in Mexico, number two in Brazil, but essential in the majority of the markets that we looked at, the racial minority equality also an essential issue in, in the US, versus not as much in and in many other markets.

00:16:21:05 - 00:16:39:13
Rob
I think it's really, really important just to be judicious about those things. And again, like, I think one of the most interesting ones is mental health, where again, you see both a generational divide and you see a country divide, right? Where again, it's if you're there's many of these issues that if you just don't say anything, it's it's basically like a relevance kluge.

00:16:39:13 - 00:16:58:02
Rob
Right. Like you're you're basically you're creating an impediment for, for people to be able to listen to you. So if you're if you're talking to a younger generation about how relevant your company is and why, why it's actually meaningful and important and, you know, especially if you're looking at career opportunities and you don't allude to things like mental health is just a huge mess, like you're just going to be off the radar, that kind of thing.

00:16:58:04 - 00:17:31:03
Steve
So, so let's, let's, let's shift a little bit and, let's talk about the generations in the workforce. So generally accepted we've got four generations in the workforce. Genji, millennials, Gen X, boomers. Depending upon your type of business, you may have an additional, generation coming in, working the counter at your store, things like that. I mean, Elliot, how how has the calculus changed in terms of just thinking how you need to communicate across generations internally within the organization?

00:17:31:05 - 00:17:38:17
Steve
Depending upon brand externally, what what what are some of the Broadlands things that, schools need to think about?

00:17:38:18 - 00:18:06:18
Eliot
You know, I am sure that there are all sorts of generational issues that are under consideration for external communication and how you engage those different audiences. But honestly, most of what I hear from calls these days has to do with internal, with the idea that you have different generations, with different understandings and expectations of the nature of work and their relationship with their employer, different work styles, grew up with different familiarity with technology.

00:18:06:20 - 00:18:27:03
Eliot
And so I think with that breadth of generational difference in the workforce all at once, the idea of building, you know, singular and cohesive culture becomes more difficult because you have people with very different worldviews, their mindsets. And so what I hear kids talk very often about is how do we bridge those divides internally across the employee base?

00:18:27:05 - 00:18:49:13
Eliot
And so I think that's a really important factor, especially as technology starts to disrupt so much of the work that we do and how we do it. And that doesn't assume that older generations wouldn't be able to keep up. In fact, you know, a lot of people from older than generations are quicker adoption adopters than younger people are, and they have more of a perspective to be thoughtful about the implications of these kinds of things.

00:18:49:13 - 00:18:59:05
Eliot
So I think trying to understand internally how you engage the entire workforce across generations is a really important issue for kids today.

00:18:59:07 - 00:19:16:23
Steve
So, Rob, what is what does the research say? I mean, when I saw you present this first I was was really struck by the differences that you saw, particularly between Gen Z and boomers. But but what are some of the top takeaways when you start slicing it by, generational lens?

00:19:17:01 - 00:19:45:12
Rob
Yeah. I mean, I think the reason why right now, that generational divide, between Gen Z and boomers is so important is that in more and more markets, you're seeing kind of an equilibrium for those two groups in the workforce, right? So in like not all countries yet, but in many countries in the US and a bunch of Western European countries, you have somewhere around a quarter of the of the active work workforce is now Gen Z, which is that's kind of like a new trend as of the last six months.

00:19:45:14 - 00:20:02:11
Rob
So that makes it very noteworthy. Right? Because before it would have been just a couple voices saying, hey, I expect this and this. And people like, well, it's kind of like there's not very many people now. It's now it's a really substantial part of the, of the population, right. Where it's you're, you're probably at something like, you know, 25% is Gen Z, 25% is Boomer.

00:20:02:13 - 00:20:23:02
Rob
Right. And there's a big divide there. So there's, you know, as, as an example like three of the big issues when you're when you're looking at the younger generation are as we said, mental health is number two really high expectation. It's also number three with millennials. So younger trend. But then with Gen Z you also have gender equality and racial minority equality globally right across the 14 countries that that pop.

00:20:23:02 - 00:20:41:14
Rob
It's just a it's a different kind of issue spectrum. That's relevant to them. Versus if you're looking at boomers, they really, really narrow in on those top three issues. Right? So again, economics jobs and skills and corruption. Right. There are the big three that are that are real kind of like standards.

00:20:41:16 - 00:21:06:04
Eliot
So well I might just add there's the you know, it sort of goes to the point about the economy like value that business creates that. And this is just me kind of speculating based on the result. Older generations, you know, their relationship with work is maybe more economic in nature. I provide economic value to this organization, and it provides economic value to me in the in the form of compensation.

00:21:06:06 - 00:21:38:10
Eliot
Younger generations view their relationship with work more like a third place. You know that this is a place where I belong, where, you know, I'm I'm working towards creating an inclusive environment. Issues like mental health and well-being are more germane to the work experience for for those people than they might be for older generations. So I think Rob's point is really well-taken that the even in in the similarities across generation, there are some lessons, about how those generations think differently.

00:21:38:12 - 00:22:10:10
Steve
So with all those generations in the workforce that you're trying to keep happy and productive, I mean, what what are some tips? I mean, you know, different generations want different messages based on what we're seeing. Different generations want that message to be delivered in a different way. What are what are what are some tips or takeaways or or what have you heard from CEOs that that have been fairly successful in helping build a fairly cohesive, culture across the generations?

00:22:10:12 - 00:22:37:17
Eliot
A few things come to mind. One is, I think that this kind of goes to the building of an inclusive culture. I think open form formats for communication are really employment opportunities for employees not only to express their ideas or concerns or beliefs to management, but also for employees to hear that from each other and foster a greater understanding across generations, I think is really important.

00:22:37:19 - 00:23:04:01
Eliot
And that's true not just of generational issues. I think that's true. True more broadly. I think another thing would be, we have more of an ability now through technology and com tech to, customized, tailored messages. And while I'm absolutely not saying that companies ought to be saying one thing to one group and another thing to another group, I think you have to be saying the same thing.

00:23:04:03 - 00:23:33:21
Eliot
Your message should be the same. But you might frame it or express it in different ways for different organizations, or emphasize different elements of it in ways that again, meet those people where they are. And so I think segmentation targeting, optimization through iteration, those kinds of things are all tools in the toolbox to understand those different stakeholder groups, understand what their beliefs and behaviors might be, and to tailor messaging to them accordingly so that it feels as relevant to them as possible.

00:23:33:23 - 00:23:45:00
Steve
Rob, anything else in the data as we think about kind of the, cross generational engagement that, that's going to be important for our listeners to understand.

00:23:45:02 - 00:24:03:07
Rob
I mean, I'll just pull on some additional threads that that we pretty consistently see, just building on what Elliot was saying, I think right now, trying to, not trying to like humanizing your company and really humanizing your leadership is more important than ever, because it's really it's very easy to get stuck into like, kind of like pure channels and technology and things like that.

00:24:03:07 - 00:24:25:13
Rob
Right? Where it do in terms of the humanization, need to use the technology a lot better to, to, to be clear. But, I think one of the especially as, as you're looking at internal audiences, being able to relate these issues to things like culture and really into kind of understanding, driving both strategy and kind of career development is is essentially important, right?

00:24:25:13 - 00:24:42:09
Rob
And really being able to meet people where they are. Right? I mean, there's, you know, there's every company we work for has such a diversity of different talent, right? If you're if you're working for like an airline or if you're working in auto or if you're working in manufacturing, right. You have a lot of different people that play different roles in different settings, right?

00:24:42:09 - 00:24:59:04
Rob
So you have to really figure out how to how to bring that to life the right way. And I don't know if it's it's not like saying different things to different people. Like our it's not like trying to hide something. It's saying, you know, really relating to a the culture of the company, the values of the company, but bringing it to life through kind of strategy, jobs to get done.

00:24:59:06 - 00:25:19:02
Rob
I mean, I think right now a lot of people's heads are very, very practical as well. Right. Like there and we we see this very consistently. People see like home lives, like people are quote unquote more conservative. But that's because they're financially feeling insecure. Right? So like people aren't feeling like politically more conservative. They're feeling that, you know, again, they're feeling very practical.

00:25:19:03 - 00:25:35:04
Rob
I have to make decisions for for myself, for my family. Like if I'm doing a job, I want to understand why I'm doing this job. But frame it in a way that's, like meaningful and impactful to me. Right. But, you know, we're in practical times versus kind of like, you know, esoteric, aspirational times. I would say.

00:25:35:06 - 00:25:54:12
Steve
Yeah, I think, I think, I think everything you guys are saying is, is key because it really hits the idea that one size can't fit all. But to your point, Elliot, you still need to be telling the same story, the same narrative, which which leads to where I kind of like to pivot a little bit. Okay. So we've identified we've identified there's a there's a lot of commonalities.

00:25:54:12 - 00:26:20:15
Steve
We've identified. There's a lot of gaps. And one of the things Rob, I thought was really interesting when I first saw you present this information, was really kind of talking about the confidence curve and just the difference that you have in terms of impact that you're able to make by the ability to put together action and context. Can you can you talk about that a little bit and, and set that up for us?

00:26:20:17 - 00:26:40:21
Rob
Yeah, I think the you know, we're hoping that the confidence curve is a very useful tool for communicators. Right. So again we're looking at 14 countries. We're looking at 16 issues. One of the things we also asked about is how and what. To what degree are you hearing from leading companies on each one of these things? When you and there's four kind of four tiers, if you will.

00:26:40:21 - 00:26:57:12
Rob
The first is I'm not hearing much from the company. I don't really know what they're doing. The second is I'm seeing company action, but I'm not really, really I don't really understand what or why they're doing. You know, I'm hearing company perspectives, but I don't really see any action. And the third is I'm seeing both action and clear explanation for clear context.

00:26:57:14 - 00:27:29:21
Rob
Right. And those for when you combine them with the level of confidence in aggregate across all markets, across all those issues. What you very quickly see is that if people don't see any action or any perspective, like confidence is going to be abysmally low, much lower than that, than the global average, it gets ever so modestly higher, but very niche impact if you're seeing action very similar, if you're only seeing perspectives, right, people just talking about an issue, versus once you actually get both of those combined together confidence across issues.

00:27:29:21 - 00:27:48:08
Rob
And it's a 1 to 1 on every issue. Right. Springs to like majority impact. Right. So you're moving from confidence being in the 1520 range to over 50%. Right. So you're moving to majority confidence. And it's pretty intuitive if you're working in communications that that should be true. It's just that is not the reality that most people are seeing.

00:27:48:10 - 00:28:07:06
Rob
Right. Like so the it's action plus context equals confidence. Right. And think of confidence as a good kind of short to medium term goal versus just things like trust and reputation. Right. What I'm trying to do is establish confidence on this very specific thing, versus saying that we are the leader in some sort of a grandiose, aspirational fashion.

00:28:07:06 - 00:28:30:21
Rob
We're just trying to move the needle a little bit forward. And again, we'll get to the implications. Right. But you really need to be able to narrow your focus in order to do that. Right? Like a press release or a social post is not going to be your winning ticket here, right? You really need to reprioritize and think about, like, how do I really tell the story in a dynamic omnichannel fashion, and how do I reinforce it right?

00:28:31:03 - 00:28:39:06
Rob
And how do I ensure there are very clear examples and actions that we are taking that are backing up whatever we're saying?

00:28:39:08 - 00:29:00:15
Steve
So. So, Elliot, when you think about the role of the CTO and how that's evolved, you know, we've always traditionally tried to create the context, tell the story. What is it about what what is what is going on? How should you think about it? How should you frame it? How can the CTO then really help drive that companion part of action?

00:29:00:15 - 00:29:09:06
Steve
What do they need to do with their fellow C-suite, officers to really be able to marry those two together?

00:29:09:07 - 00:29:43:07
Eliot
Yeah. I'm glad that you acknowledged that. This is familiar territory for communicators. You know, there's explaining the confidence and the context as a means of explaining the action is something that communicators are adept at. And I think certainly one of the things that schools ought to be doing is making the case for that. But to your point, one of the things that we're seeing in co leadership is that the Co, role is diversifying in some cases is expanding to include areas like public affairs brand marketing sustainability.

00:29:43:09 - 00:30:16:18
Eliot
But even in instances where the remit isn't growing the sphere of influence is. And what that requires is schools who are working cross-functional to enact the mission, the vision, the purpose, and oftentimes, you know, decisions on the issues that that robust research tests are guided to some extent on purpose and values and, yes, materiality. You know, whether there's, you know, the business has a material relationship to the issue or whether the issue has a mature relationship to the business.

00:30:16:19 - 00:30:47:18
Eliot
And so I think a big part of co leadership on these issues is, unearthing that materiality and working cross-functionally to make sure that the organizations actions, whether they decide to take one or not, are consistent with values, purpose. The CCL, more than anybody in the C-suite, has that broad purview. It's one of the reasons why we see CEOs increasingly taking on responsibilities that benefit from a broader stakeholder lens.

00:30:47:23 - 00:31:20:05
Eliot
Right. More CEOs involved in HR because employees are important stakeholder group, more in ESG and sustainability. So I think critically important is for Coes to identify the the partnerships and the coalitions within the C-suite that they need to build in order to make sure that the action matches the context, because ultimately, the what the confidence curve shows is if if there's connectivity between what you're doing and how you're describing it, that instills confidence.

00:31:20:07 - 00:31:23:16
Eliot
And if there's not, that's where you get into trouble.

00:31:23:18 - 00:31:50:06
Steve
Yeah. And I thought it was interesting. You know, the formula seems like it should be pretty simple. Action in context means you're going to be up over 50%. But when you look at the data globally, I mean, what did it net out to about 2,020%. So it seems like there's there's a lot of opportunity. What what do you think are the are the barriers to that to the to the confidence gap that we're really talking about.

00:31:50:08 - 00:32:06:23
Rob
Prioritization and consistency. So that's like the a prioritization like being able to say these are these are the these are the core pillars of what we're going to focus on like and spend whatever it is 75% of your time. Like, yeah, there's a lot of other stuff you need to do. But that should take like 20 to 20% of your time, right?

00:32:06:23 - 00:32:26:15
Rob
So prioritization and getting buy in from your leadership team on prioritization is essentially important. And then consistency. Right. It's kind of like, you know, again, I mean I think everybody knows this when I say it out loud, but if you're doing something on social, it has gone like this. Right? So social is one of the most relevant high impact sets of channels.

00:32:26:17 - 00:32:42:17
Rob
But at the same time, like that's not going to be your silver bullet. Doing three posts on social is not going to get it's not going to break through. Like just putting up a landing page is not going to get through. Just building it into your into a one like executive speaking engagement is not going to break through, just building it into kind of one piece of paid content or advertising.

00:32:42:17 - 00:32:48:20
Rob
It's not going to break through. You really need to think in a much more holistic fashion, and you need to have like a consistent drumbeat.

00:32:48:22 - 00:33:09:08
Steve
So, so, Elliot, with all this great data. And so when you when you think about all the research that you guys did, all the conversation, what's your advice to close agency leaders, senior comms. How do they use this research. What are they what what should they what should they do next.

00:33:09:10 - 00:33:34:23
Eliot
Well, one of the things they should do next is something that I know many CSOs are doing now, which is develop a methodology or a framework for determining whether and how to engage on the issues that are relevant to the organization and the approaches that I seek is taking can range from, really simple, you know, just a series of very basic questions.

00:33:35:00 - 00:34:01:02
Eliot
How does this issue relate to our values? What is our history on this issue? What do employees think about this issue, to the very sophisticated where companies are collecting data, you know, doing essentially internal and external research in order to inform choices about issues where there's an opportunity for the organization to have a positive impact and where that would be welcomed and issues where maybe it's wiser not to.

00:34:01:04 - 00:34:26:10
Eliot
And that's not to say that there are issues where companies can't or won't have a positive benefit. But to Rob's point, prioritization is really important, which are the issues that matter most to your organization, and how are you going to marshal the resources, the attention, the commitment that it requires to have a real, meaningful impact? You know, if you're spread too thin across issues, it can't help but feel superficial.

00:34:26:12 - 00:34:46:02
Eliot
But when there are specific issues that as an organization, you've determined these are things that are material to our business, they're material to our stakeholders, and there's an opportunity for us to have a positive impact. And by the way, have an impact that that contributes to our ability to be a stronger, more vibrant business. I think those that's a really compelling argument.

00:34:46:04 - 00:35:06:06
Steve
Yeah. And I think I think we've really seen kind of a mature maturation within, the comms profession of how do you address that dilemma of action and context for, for a little bit, it felt like a pinball machine, like we all have to respond to everything or have opinions on everything everywhere and try and put it in context.

00:35:06:06 - 00:35:32:21
Steve
But I think that's the point where you started with Elliot, where you were saying it comes across a little bit disingenuous if it's not really what is that core focus that we want? What gives us that license to have that conversation, I think is, is really, really important, particularly as easy as it is to be seen as taking sides and, and with, with, with different framework going on with politics.

00:35:32:21 - 00:35:55:07
Steve
And, you know, one of the things that I thought was a really interesting statement at, the page Spring seminar a few weeks ago was when we were talking about engagement one of the speakers made the comment said, add light, not heat, which I thought was, was it was a really interesting, comment because again, when you think about light, add heat as add context.

00:35:55:07 - 00:36:19:19
Steve
Sure. What we're doing from action wise, but that also means don't get caught up in like the tit for tat or some of those, those other things. I mean, I wasn't sure. Did you guys have any kind of, either here with, with your CSO interviews or any recent discussions, anything really stand out for you guys that somebody said in context of the research or the current, landscape that we're at?

00:36:20:00 - 00:36:43:09
Rob
I mean, one of my favorites in terms of application of a lot of this, right, is, talking with Co who's also, a CMO. She works in the semiconductor space, and she's, she's had both those roles in different kind of variations for, for a long time. And one of the things she kind of emphasized, which I think it makes, a lot of sense and how it's applied makes a ton of sense, right?

00:36:43:09 - 00:37:01:15
Rob
Is focus on things like brand at more of like a macro regional or global level, and then really focus your comms at much more of a localized level. Right. I think that's like so it's, you know, you want to have consistency in priorities. Like if you, if you if you're responsible for brand, you want to have some big ticket items that roll up together.

00:37:01:17 - 00:37:17:21
Rob
But as you're bringing it to life on the ground, especially for a global company like your communications dynamic is the essential thing for for for bringing it to life, right? That's where, again, what you want to have is like big global examples, right? And but you also want to bring it to life in a very, very local context.

00:37:17:21 - 00:37:35:01
Rob
So I really like that because there's I think I've seen a lot of companies try and do the brand thing, like on the ground, and it looks a little bit crazy, right? It's basically just kind of like, you know, a lot of activity and not very clear as to why it's happening. And it's kind of all this like funny language and positioning and things like this.

00:37:35:03 - 00:37:53:17
Rob
Right. Versus being able to kind of pause and stop for a second and say, no, these are kind of our big fundamentals. We're just going to focus those assets there. And then on for the communication side, really bring you being able to kind of bring much more context and much more specific action on the ground. So acting off both a lot of consistency, but bringing it to that local level.

00:37:53:17 - 00:38:07:12
Rob
And I think communications is very well suited to do that in a lot of kind of the assets and channels that that are typically communications are much, much better attuned to it. Right? It's much more organic in nature versus kind of like paid and promotional in nature, if you will.

00:38:07:14 - 00:38:12:13
Steve
Right? Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Eliot, how about you?

00:38:12:15 - 00:38:33:19
Eliot
Well, I, I love the light, not heat one. I think there's there's so much richness in that lesson. Another one that stuck out to me was, focus on policy, not politics. And just as it relates to this conversation, I think it's fair to acknowledge that neutrality is a position like no position is a position today.

00:38:33:21 - 00:39:03:04
Eliot
And even where there are issues where organizations might choose not to engage on a particular issue, there will be stakeholders of one shape or another who are disappointed by that. And so I think even providing the context, the explanation as to why the organization has chosen not to engage on a particular issue is important. And one of the ways that that you can sort of steer clear, I mean, there's all these culture war issues, and companies understandably don't want to get caught up in any of that.

00:39:03:06 - 00:39:29:09
Eliot
But their focus is on policy and not politics, right? It is about the choices that the business is making and how those choices have an impact on society. And so I think whatever companies can do to explain, to reinforce the idea that what we're interested in is policy that works and not the politics. And the more you steer, you know, your message and your position into politics, the more risk there is.

00:39:29:11 - 00:39:51:23
Steve
Yeah, that I think that's that's really good advice. And and you know, as I think about all the research that you guys did, speaking of richness, a lot of richness in here. And I could I could talk for hours and go deep on all this, but, but we're getting near the end. So I wanted to ask each of you, just any final thoughts or advice that you have?

00:39:52:04 - 00:40:09:04
Steve
For the CEOs, the senior agency leaders and even even, younger professionals that are listening to this, either based on the research or just in general. Any final thoughts you have about the global state of confidence in business?

00:40:09:06 - 00:40:29:21
Rob
So as as with all things, right, the whole idea, whenever you're doing research with external constituencies or external stakeholders, you need to match it with like an internal reality. Right? So, we're really proud of this work with, with page. And I think our favorite part of it is the fact that it's turning into a lot of page conversations, like market by market, because that's where the real kind of rubber hits the road, if you will.

00:40:29:22 - 00:40:50:14
Rob
Right? So if anything, the research kind of beckons. It kind of challenges you to think about certain priorities and context of your business. And, and it it kind of behooves us to kind of think about those questions and how they fit into our strategy. Right? So I think that's the like this is a good starting point for a conversation versus saying, this is this is the answer of what you need to do tomorrow.

00:40:50:14 - 00:41:11:04
Rob
I think there's a lot of key principles that are baked in here. But it's a it's a really good starting point. I think the most important part of it is, it's a it's a great kind of, you know, page global conversation, which I, you know, I really enjoy. There's so many dynamic people across the globe. So whether you're talking about the Middle East or Asia Pacific or Europe or Latin America or the US or Canada, right.

00:41:11:04 - 00:41:13:15
Rob
So.

00:41:13:17 - 00:41:51:18
Eliot
I think what I would add to that, which covers mostly everything I was thinking is, I think there would be there is an understandable tendency of organizations today to want some retreat from some issues for fear of the risk of engaging on them. I would I would counsel prudence over disengagement. There is still, and I think the research shows this, you know, even though they weren't top ranked issues, there are significant groups of people who care about a variety of issues that businesses have an opportunity to impact.

00:41:51:20 - 00:42:16:12
Eliot
And while I, I think it's probably a poor choice for organizations to try to be all things on all issues to all people, I do think that the issues on which organizations decide to engage and the manner of engagement and the level of commitment that they demonstrate to that issue over the long term, right. Not wavering. I think those things do serve to build trust.

00:42:16:14 - 00:42:49:08
Eliot
And I would argue they build trust even among those who disagree with the organization. You know, you hear from time to time there's a boycott over this or a boycott over that. And those things Peter, out over time. And I think it's because, you know, as human beings, we can we're still capable of disagreeing without disengaging. And so I would argue that prudence and following research like what what Harris has done with page here, I think helps to form a, you know, a stronger opinion about which issues are the ones that we can really have a positive impact on, which ones are going to affect confidence.

00:42:49:10 - 00:42:55:20
Eliot
And as a CCL, how am I going to counsel R.C. Sweden? Which opportunities are the ones we should pursue and which ones aren't.

00:42:55:22 - 00:42:56:11
Rob
Yeah.

00:42:56:13 - 00:43:17:00
Steve
Yeah. And and you know, as I think about a lot and a lot of this and just all the change that that we're dealing with and it's easy to get caught up. I say day to day hour to our second to second pretty much. But you know, it really is coming down to a lot of those core principles of having a clear strategy, knowing what you stand for, when and where you want to engage.

00:43:17:02 - 00:43:45:13
Steve
And then really demonstrate what that action in context is. And I think the research is really, really rich looking at the perspectives across, different geographies, looking across different generations. So I would encourage all of our listeners to go check that out. If you go to page.org to the blog section, you will find, the latest research, building Public Confidence six Essential issues for business leadership.

00:43:45:13 - 00:44:08:19
Steve
It's, really exciting stuff. I'd recommend you share it with your team and with your C-suite. So, Rob Elliot, thank you, as always, for being, friends of the pod. Excited to have you back and honored to have you back again this year, sharing your research after you, unveiled it at Davos. And I'd like to invite everybody listening to make sure you follow Elliot and Rob.

00:44:08:21 - 00:44:26:03
Steve
We'll put their LinkedIn information and the trailer here. So they're full of deep thoughts, insights on, on the industry. So guys, thank you so much for for joining us today. And for our listeners, thank you so much for joining, building brand gravity. Check back soon for our next issue.

00:00:02:14 - 00:00:15:07
Anne Green
Hello and welcome back to building brand Gravity. I'm Anne Green. I'm principal and CEO of the G&S Integrated Marketing Communications Group, and I'm so delighted today to be joined by Ethan McCarty. Hi. Ethan, how are you?

00:00:15:12 - 00:00:19:16
Ethan McCarty
Good morning. I'm doing great. Thanks so much for having me. And it's really a pleasure.

00:00:19:18 - 00:00:35:19
Anne Green
So, Ethan, just for background, for, our listeners that don't know him, he and I've gotten to know each other the last few years through the Page Society, which has been wonderful. But Ethan has a really interesting background. 13 years at IBM and all kinds of I mean, this is just a short list of your whole life.

00:00:35:19 - 00:00:38:00
Anne Green
I'm not going to go through everything that right. But.

00:00:38:02 - 00:00:39:21
Ethan McCarty
Ethan McCarty, this is your life.

00:00:40:01 - 00:01:01:07
Anne Green
This is your life. I mean, bring on some surprise guests. It'll be exciting. Amazing. But at IBM and really, during, I think, some golden years at IBM, although IBM continues to be such a thriving organization. But corporate comms content, internal comms, digital and social strategy. You were at Bloomberg as head of employee and innovation Communications, so that was really cool.

00:01:01:09 - 00:01:26:13
Anne Green
But then most notably, you founded your own shop in 2018, Integral, that focuses on employee activation, employee experience, employee engagement. So there are a lot of things I want to talk to you about today. As you know, because it is a crazy world for organizations and alike. And I, I think just to set up the conversation, it's it is a challenging landscape for both people, individuals and organizations.

00:01:26:15 - 00:01:55:12
Anne Green
There's a lot to experience and navigate right now, and it's quite symbiotic. And I think as two organizational leaders, we're both client counselors and we're both organizational leaders, and we're both very worried about internal and external comms. I just love to start riffing on the big picture that like the macro impact both individuals and organizations under these pressures, in what ways do you think are similar individual versus organization, and what ways do you think they're distinct is and how people are experiencing this?

00:01:55:14 - 00:02:19:13
Ethan McCarty
Wow. I mean, we all operate in the context of our society and the sort of group identities that we're affiliated with. You know, whether you think of yourself as an American or a European or, you know, a northern hemisphere and or, you know, or smaller communities like, you know, I feel like I'm part of my family or, you know, my faith or whatever.

00:02:19:14 - 00:02:43:18
Ethan McCarty
And, you know, there's so much change happening at those sort of macro levels that we then have to integrate as individuals. And so, you know, when you have, you know, the level of, you know, not just a frequency of changes that are happening in very significant ways, but the, the, the, you know, the, the level of those changes.

00:02:43:20 - 00:03:06:19
Ethan McCarty
So the significance of frequent change, it's not just like, you know, the color of houses is changing or something like literally the fabric of our society is changing. It seems like on a daily basis. And so organizations need to accommodate those and so do individuals. And it gets down, I think, to a very sort of existential level where we're thinking about our identities as individuals.

00:03:06:19 - 00:03:34:19
Ethan McCarty
You know, what does this mean for me as a dad or as, you know, as somebody who lives in Brooklyn versus what does this mean for, you know, an organization like my company? And so I think, you know, you're set up at the beginning and is very on point, you know, where, you know, the two of us are, you know, constantly navigating the space in between those sort of brand identities for our clients and for our own companies and then our individual identities and how we relate to the people we care about.

00:03:34:21 - 00:03:43:08
Ethan McCarty
So I think, you know, that that VUCA thing, which, by the way, every time I hear VUCA, I think of Veruca Salt from a Willy Wonka. But I.

00:03:43:10 - 00:03:50:03
Anne Green
I think of Vulcans from the 70s, Star Trek row. So says Vulcan to me. But I think you're closer with love, that.

00:03:50:03 - 00:04:01:15
Ethan McCarty
Is for sure. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, they both had to experience a lot of change, right? That's true. Yeah. I mean, what do you what do you think that, you know, that that sort of tension between the, the, you know, what's happening on Mars and what's happening for us as individuals?

00:04:01:21 - 00:04:30:16
Anne Green
Yeah, I think tensions are a way to describe it. And I don't want to get into that in a moment because I want to dig into what you're saying. I think it's very much related to the idea of identity, and I want to get to that question of values, which to me is an essential tension. But, you know, even before we get there, it makes me think about that whole nomenclature of employee experience, where you, as you say on your website, employee activation or you know, you've been dealing with and that interplay between the organization and the person.

00:04:30:16 - 00:04:46:07
Anne Green
Right. And I've, I've had folks on the podcast before talking about it. I find it like a really rich, you know, vein to mine. But in all the years in the arc of your career we talked about earlier, how do you understand those concepts? And then let's get back into what you were talking about a moment ago.

00:04:46:09 - 00:05:06:15
Ethan McCarty
Well, you know, I think if you Google the phrase change management is dead. You'll find many, many articles, going back for a long time. Same thing with knowledge management, by the way. But, I think it's particular I mean, you know, at this point having, you know, so I've been working for nearly 30 years, I believe that more now than ever.

00:05:06:15 - 00:05:31:08
Ethan McCarty
I mean, like people have always been saying, I mean, since I've been in the workforce in the late 90s, people have been saying like, you know, change is the new constant. But my sense of it right now is that this idea that there's periods of stasis that are prolonged, interrupted by these sort of, you know, episodes of significant change that need to be then, you know, managed and then there's sort of a beginning, middle and end to that change.

00:05:31:08 - 00:05:50:06
Ethan McCarty
And then we're back to this period of stasis and stability that's going to last a long time. I, I do think that's kind of done. I mean, you have it in, you know, sort of in, you know, layers within an organization like, okay. So these things may be constant for a while. And then we're going to have a big change like, okay, we've deployed a big enterprise right.

00:05:50:09 - 00:06:22:15
Ethan McCarty
Pardon me enterprise resource planning system. And we're probably not going to do that for another few years. Okay. Sure. You probably need you probably need some traditional change management, change communication around that. But the, the VUCA of it all is happening constantly. So, you know, even those periods of stasis, they're kind of one dimensional. And, you know, what you're having is, you know, relative stability in one dimension of your life or your organization or your business strategy.

00:06:22:17 - 00:06:39:08
Ethan McCarty
Meanwhile, everything else is changing. And so, I, you know, I, I liken it to spinning plates. I always think about that, you know, it's like you're spinning plates and, you know, you've kind of got these broomsticks or whatever, and you're spinning plates on top of them. And there's probably a couple of them that you can turn your back on, but maybe just for a minute.

00:06:39:10 - 00:06:56:20
Ethan McCarty
And I think that's where I mean, frankly, it's, it's there's never been a better time to be in the communications profession because it's ever more strategic. I mean, I was actually just talking with a friend of mine who I was in, future leaders experience with like 15 years ago. She's now our chief communications officer of a major telecom company.

00:06:56:20 - 00:07:22:19
Ethan McCarty
And she was like, oh, my God. You know, when we were in the Future Leaders program, which is our pages I.T program, you know, you know, I thought, you know, you'd be a, you know, chief communications officer mostly like handle PR, you know, and for the CEO. And now I'm like, I'm doing, you know, government relations investor relations, you know, the employees, the communities that we're in suddenly, you know, they're like, they're a company that's really mostly operating in the United States.

00:07:22:19 - 00:07:49:17
Ethan McCarty
She's doing international relations. I mean, it's just such a different role and level of complexity that people in our profession are contending with. It's really exciting. It's very interesting. The opportunity landscape is really, really rich. It's also super stressful. It's super high risk. And it's really I mean, frankly, it's scary and it's complex and there's all these, you know, layers of change.

00:07:49:17 - 00:07:56:22
Ethan McCarty
So even if you get that one plate spinning and you're feeling good about that, chances are there's another one that's, you know, next to hitting the floor.

00:07:57:00 - 00:08:18:01
Anne Green
I love the plate spinning analogy. My analogy is the old carnival game whack a mole. So, you know, the moles pop up and you hit them with the big rubber hammer. And I was choked. I've joked for decades because, like you, I've been in doing this since like 92, 93. So it's been over 30 years now in agency side, all agency side, large agency.

00:08:18:01 - 00:08:38:14
Anne Green
And then building an agency over decades and now CEO again at a at a mid-sized, larger firm. I've always felt that whack a mole was a good analogy because there's always something popping up, right? Trial clients, the world and the. And the moles are not hiding out down there. They're not sleeping. And it's constant. And you never know where they're going to pop up.

00:08:38:14 - 00:09:12:05
Anne Green
And I think these metaphors are helpful. But I do think that even though I've thought of it that way for a long time, the intensity is ratcheted up so much. And you're right, it's very, very interesting, almost too interesting at times. So that's part of, I've spent a lot of time recently contemplating sort of the organizational level of that as a person like yourself that's responsible for people, that's responsible for brand ourselves, and then is also responsible for our clients and thinking deeply about their business and not just them as an entity, but they're people and all those levels.

00:09:12:05 - 00:09:32:04
Anne Green
And remember, back in the day is and how external and internal communications is like, never the twain shall meet and all external matters. So it's like the people internally doing internal comms. I've been saying for years also, that's like the drop in the pond where the rings radiate out. The first ring is your own people, right? And it's a very it's very symbiotic.

00:09:32:04 - 00:09:52:16
Anne Green
It flows through. So I think we understand that more now and that that's a good transition to sort of the heart of the conversation. It goes back to what you're saying before, which is I see a very pervasive and common tension or surprise when it comes to the values of an organization relative to the values of the individual staff members.

00:09:52:18 - 00:10:08:14
Anne Green
And I think that feels to me more salient than ever right now. And I think we're going to have a chance to unpack that. But I do find it persistently hard to unpack. I find this dynamic tension to never feel resolved. I mean, first of all, do you agree with that assertion? Does that resonate with you?

00:10:08:17 - 00:10:32:18
Ethan McCarty
Oh, 100%? I mean, I in fact, even the name of my company, integral, you know, the, the, the sort of root of it was I was having a conversation with, with my old colleague Ben Edwards, who was for a time at, at IBM and at The economist and PayPal. And we were we were this is actually this is almost ten years before I started the company.

00:10:32:20 - 00:10:53:18
Ethan McCarty
And we were just talking about this idea of, you know, individual identity and the brand. And, you know, because I was running social media for IBM at the time, and, you know, I had this notion that, you know, individuals could confer a sense of, authenticity to a brand and brands could, you know, confer a sense of authority to an individual.

00:10:53:18 - 00:11:20:09
Ethan McCarty
And there was like this value exchange that was happening, you know, in, in social media for big companies and, you know, getting employees to be enlisted as advocates for their, for their brand. But one of the things that, you know, was to me, very apparent was that one's identity, it has to be like there's a sense of integrity to one's identity, like wholeness, not integrity, like, you know, following the rules or, you know, ethical behavior or what have you.

00:11:20:09 - 00:11:55:12
Ethan McCarty
But that integrity, like, it's able to hold together. And when you have to sort of traverse this space between, you know, the brand like, oh, I'm an IBM or versus like, oh, I'm, I'm Ethan. You know, the larger that space is, the more that you're going to be sort of, you know, spending your day with this sense of cognitive dissonance where you have to believe to opposing ideas like, I'm like this, this whole set of values that IBM purports to hold versus the, you know, the set of values that I know myself to hold.

00:11:55:14 - 00:12:23:01
Ethan McCarty
If those are not aligned, I'm going to feel a lot of stress. And cognitive dissonance really is like crazy making it causes a lot of stress. It causes people to behave in erratic ways, anti-social ways. I mean, you know, things that you would, you know, that you would say, like, you don't want those kind of behaviors. And so, many years later, you know, when I did start this company and yes, you know, the idea of that integrity is in the name of, you know, my business.

00:12:23:03 - 00:12:44:11
Ethan McCarty
But we started do some research around this, and, we do this research every year at the Harris poll where we look at. And then one of the things that we ask people is, well, do you know what the company's values are? Are they exhibited, you know, at the company? Do you see those, you know, like that's actually real or is it just poster sort of fodder for the walls, you know?

00:12:44:13 - 00:13:29:06
Ethan McCarty
And then how much do those track with your own sense of values? And one of the things that we found is that the more those correlated, the more that people. And it's again and again, now this we're going into our fifth year of doing this research. And, you know, again and again, we see that when people feel high alignment between their company's stated values and their personal values, their like two times like 200% more likely to do things like, you know, volunteer, go the extra mile for a colleague, you know, participate in mentorship programs, do extra to satisfy a client or customer's needs, even by the company's stock.

00:13:29:06 - 00:13:58:01
Ethan McCarty
I mean, like all these, what I would call pro-social behaviors go up by an enormous and it just categorically different level of that kind of behavior. And then likewise, the behaviors that people, the behaviors that people are likely to exhibit in the workplace that are negative things, like ignoring safety protocols or, or protesting against a company, you know, warning a candidate away or posting something negative about the company online.

00:13:58:03 - 00:14:29:12
Ethan McCarty
Those go through the roof equally, and even 17% of people, around 17, 18% of people who have that low values alignment say they would outright sabotage the company, which is I mean, to me, that's just like mind blowing. I mean, we put that in almost as a lark, like, oh, I wonder if, like anybody would say they'd sabotage the company or say a colleague would sabotage the company and, and fully 17% in the first, you know, the first year that we did that study and that's where, you know, when you see things online, you know, when you see these videos of people, you know, like Chuck in a box or, you know, putting something

00:14:29:12 - 00:14:51:16
Ethan McCarty
weird in somebody's food or, you know, you hear about somebody doing something like horrible in health care or, you know, whatever those, those behaviors, it didn't come out of nowhere. They didn't come. That's not like a bad seed necessarily. There's probably some really big disconnect in between what's going on inside that person's mind and that person's life and what's going inside that person's employer like that company.

00:14:51:18 - 00:15:09:07
Anne Green
It's interesting to think about this, and I love that research. That's one of the reasons why I reached out to I want to speak to you because you were doing some interesting posts on LinkedIn about some dimensions of this, which we're going to get into in a minute, where that values alignment or dis alignment is in great tension, I think.

00:15:09:09 - 00:15:30:10
Anne Green
Yeah, as much tension as ever right now. Right. But you're reminding me of how we represent corporate life and culture. So for example, on the more benign side, there's the cartoon Dilbert, for those who don't know Google, but it's Dilbert. To me, the whole vibe of Dilbert is in management. You know, it's like poor Dilbert is, powerless.

00:15:30:10 - 00:15:57:13
Anne Green
And in the, you know, the more of, you know, dumb managers, there's also office space and there's the office. And then if you go up the chain to stuff that's a bit more intense, there's severance now, which is a very literal metaphorical representation, literal and metaphorical representation of the inside and outside person, that person that is in cognitive dissonance between their organizational self and their private self.

00:15:57:15 - 00:16:18:02
Anne Green
And so, you know, one of my first questions to I think I personally feel this is probably irresolvable like you're never going to get complete alignment because it's just there's people have many dimensions to them. You know, a company is not going to be all things. And I don't personally believe in the bring your whole self to work as something that can be fully fulfilled.

00:16:18:02 - 00:16:38:14
Anne Green
Nor should it be to me. But, how do you see what are the practices that companies start to and act to assess that they have a values gap between themselves and their staff, and then start to figure out how they bring that Venn diagram, those two circles into closer alignment so they don't have those terrible outcomes that you're talking about.

00:16:38:16 - 00:16:57:06
Ethan McCarty
Yeah. Well, I mean, I love the examples and I'm kind of obsessed with severance. I think it's, I think it's an amazing social critique because it does it basically is asserting that it's irreconcilable, you know, this this difference between, like, my internal self and like, who I have to be in order to be a successful professional.

00:16:57:10 - 00:17:06:15
Ethan McCarty
And the only way that we could possibly navigate that would be, you know, like separating the hemispheres of our brains or something like really radical, you know, like a super.

00:17:06:17 - 00:17:10:05
Anne Green
I neither of us believe it to that degree. But it is a interesting concept.

00:17:10:05 - 00:17:35:13
Ethan McCarty
It's I mean, it's totally fascinating. And I tend to agree with you like the idea of having total overlap, you know, the like the opposite of severance, like having total confluence or whatever the opposite would be, would be that would be equally nightmarish. You know, it's like you don't want I don't think I mean, I certainly don't want my employees to submit their entire personalities to the integral brand.

00:17:35:16 - 00:17:54:00
Ethan McCarty
And, you know, and I'm a found I mean, like, it's like, really intense for a founder, you know, I mean, like, this whole thing, like, the name of the company came to me in a dream. I mean, like this. It's like, very personal for me, you know? And even so, like, when I leave work, like, I really want to spend time with my kids and put the phone away and, you know, like, I have a very separate life outside of work.

00:17:54:00 - 00:18:26:13
Ethan McCarty
And I think that that should be cherished and honored. I think where most companies sort of miss the opportunity to at least tighten up that Venn diagram a bit on around the most important issues is to gain an understanding of what those issues are to the employees who work in your organization. And so I mean, like very, very early, my point of view of this is, is highly, highly shaped by Mike Wing and John, a lot of IBM who were my, you know, my leaders when I was early in my career.

00:18:26:13 - 00:18:46:22
Ethan McCarty
And we did this whole practice called the Values Jam. And we were doing these sort of like giant online dialogs. There's a great HBR piece. I think it's under it's authored by the CEO at the time, Sam Palmisano, that describes what happened in values jam. But essentially we said, all right, there's about 400,000 of us here.

00:18:47:00 - 00:19:07:08
Ethan McCarty
What do we believe in? And we had this I mean, it was very, very early. So the technology was like really wonky concept. But we had this massive online conversation and then distilled that down into a new set of values that endure to this day. And the preceding set were articulated by the founders of the company, by the Watson family.

00:19:07:08 - 00:19:30:03
Ethan McCarty
You know, 100 years earlier. So it was time to check in with a contemporary workforce on what a contemporary set of values would look like for, you know, like if we wanted that company to last another hundred years. And even though that was I think that's like 20 years ago now at this point. But I think that at the heart of it, what's so correct about that is listening first.

00:19:30:05 - 00:20:05:02
Ethan McCarty
And so if you're able to do that, and I'm not saying I mean leaders should lead. Right. But leaders should lead the, the people that are following them with some real high, you know, emotional sensitivity, intellectual curiosity and compassion for the folks that they're leading. And how can you possibly do that if you haven't gained through really intentional, large scale, frequent check ins, listening and not the, you know, once every other year employee engagement survey, you know, I mean, those have their place.

00:20:05:02 - 00:20:23:20
Ethan McCarty
Those are good and also not enough. And so I mean, like if you think about any relationship that you have in your life, if that, that's meaningful to you, if that person only checked in with you once every two years, like, what would you think of that relationship? You would not feel valued, right? And so be very hard to share values with that person.

00:20:23:20 - 00:20:42:01
Ethan McCarty
Well, same thing goes here. And so I mean this is this is again it's not some like back 20 years ago for IBM. It was enormously expensive to kind of pull that kind of thing off. I mean, you can swipe a credit card and do that, like with some SAS software tomorrow at pretty much any company. So that's a that's really the point of departure.

00:20:42:01 - 00:21:05:04
Ethan McCarty
If you can understand what the sensibilities are. And then ultimately you may need to shift those. And that may become, as you articulate, a set of values that inform your culture, your business strategy. You know, how you show up as a company, how those individual employees show up to each other? That's that may end up being a passive filter.

00:21:05:04 - 00:21:22:05
Ethan McCarty
Like there may be a lot of people who are like, yeah, actually, that's not for me. And that's okay. That's cool. There's probably a great place for them to go work. And that has, you know, some values that are more concomitant with their own and harmonious with their own worldview and so on. And that's great. That's probably going to be a good thing.

00:21:22:05 - 00:21:40:01
Ethan McCarty
And then it's going to be an attractor for people who see those values in action in your everything from your marketing and your website to how you actually show up to your customers, what kind of products you produce and so on. And that's I mean, that's I think the opportunity, which is enormous.

00:21:40:03 - 00:22:02:16
Anne Green
I love this conversation about rerouting ourselves and this practice of listening, compassion, being open to dialog and then leaders leading to I had to learn some hard lessons, people who worked with me when I was a CEO and a CEO of the first time watch me sort of learn in lifetime the difference between creating consensus and deciding when it's time to lead.

00:22:02:16 - 00:22:22:17
Anne Green
Where do we figure out, and how do we figure out as leaders, but both as individual contributors, employees, you know, how we define our own values. What is value based living for us? That's something I've learned in therapy. What's the value based approach to my life? How do I look at that as a leader? How do we understand where we come together and where we are apart?

00:22:22:17 - 00:22:29:16
Anne Green
And you're right. How is that? Individuals make a choice to say, this is not my set of values. I want to move on. I say leave with love.

00:22:29:16 - 00:22:49:16
Ethan McCarty
At that point, leaders need to respect that too, and not, you know, see that as, worthy of punishment. You know, that's a that's a great choice. And you should support people and, you know, and like and ensure that I love that idea of leave with love and, you know, separate with some dignity there and it will speak well like there's nothing you can do better.

00:22:49:16 - 00:23:07:01
Ethan McCarty
I think there's nothing you could do to attract great talent. Then be respectful in all phases of it with your current talent, you know? And so if people see like, oh, okay, that person has had like a great tenure there. And then they went on to go do something else. That's awesome. You know, that's probably going to be a real big attractor for talent.

00:23:07:03 - 00:23:33:00
Anne Green
I think it's interesting what you're saying. Ethan and I've reflected on this a lot in terms of the grace with which folks leave an organization, whether they're making that choice or whether they're not, which is even harder, something I've experienced many times as a leader, having to make that kind of decision. But I do feel that dynamic tension between the organization and the individual is often on display in very negative ways with leaders, when they treat folks that are leaving as if they've been personally affronted.

00:23:33:02 - 00:23:41:07
Anne Green
And it's just, such a bad situation. So I think you're right. That whole life cycle of the relationship is so critical.

00:23:41:07 - 00:24:08:12
Ethan McCarty
For while I ran IBM's alumni program. And what was kind of interesting about the choice that my, my boss made was like, you're going to run the intranet and you're going to run the alumni program at the same time, which I which was fascinating because, you know, here we have two networks of people who have a lot in common having, you know, especially, you know, with IBM, which is a brand that does such important in printing, you know, like the identity in the culture.

00:24:08:12 - 00:24:26:01
Ethan McCarty
It's like so heavy, you know, like you when you're in IBM or it's like that's a thing, you know, it's like that's a that's it's almost like, invention of IBM. It's like this identity of the IBM or and, you know, when you leave IBM and IBM is, you know, somebody who's left IBM. We were trying to choose a language.

00:24:26:03 - 00:25:02:13
Ethan McCarty
They're not an IBM or they're an IBM alumni. And, because there were so there's such a positive, you know, sort of rotating door there where people would go out of IBM, gain some industry experience and new contacts, and then come back or also or just become clients of IBM customers. And, you know, and so I think if you think about the, you know, like in terms of the identity vector here, like you have come and identify especially, you know, in North America, I mean, it's not the same for everyone, but, you know, in North America, there's a high association with your profession and your identity.

00:25:02:13 - 00:25:26:13
Ethan McCarty
You know, you have somebody what they do in North America, and chances are they're going to tell you what they do for a living. They're not going to say like, oh, I'm like, I make candles. And you know, I like to go jogging. They're probably going to lead with their profession. And, you know, and so if you honor that, that, that level that where people really integrate a brand into their personal identity, that can be very powerful just in terms of the meaning of their work and their lives.

00:25:26:13 - 00:25:57:13
Ethan McCarty
And also it's incredibly strategically valuable for organization to maintain that kind of bond with people. And, you know, as you were saying earlier about these kind of like tops down, you know, command and control, you know, that kind of management system really has its place. Like that is a very valuable that's not like a dumb management system. It just doesn't tend to it doesn't tend to build those kind of deep hooks into people's souls in a way, and people's, you know, individual identities.

00:25:57:15 - 00:26:24:02
Ethan McCarty
And it also doesn't scale very well. It's really, really hard to do that kind of command and control thing at scale. And so, like what I see happening in government right now is almost like a scaling that's happening. Whereas if you can I mean, I just remember you know, thinking about the values. And I ended up when I was at the New School for Social Research, I ended up writing my master's thesis about this idea of values and culture as a management system.

00:26:24:04 - 00:26:50:07
Ethan McCarty
And, you know, because I had experienced it firsthand at IBM and I and I think that, you know, if you can set up those right, you know, values and sort of cultural assumptions that people will make, you know, in the day to day work that is going to free leaders to do so much more. You don't have to be there checking everything because you know that on principle, the decisions will be made in a way that aligns with your strategy, how you would do it.

00:26:50:08 - 00:27:21:01
Ethan McCarty
You know the why is understood by everybody, and so values and culture are to me, they're not a nice to have, you know, foosball tables and whatever. It's that's a strategic asset that should be cultivated and managed and I think the savvy CEOs who really want to scale, who really want to do something big and empower people who want to come and do something big, you know, like that's going to be that's the way to get there, as opposed to come work at this job that's super well defined.

00:27:21:01 - 00:27:30:05
Ethan McCarty
Do x, y, z in that order, because that's what I've said. And then if you haven't done it right, they'll, you know, there's a punitive sort of consequence.

00:27:30:07 - 00:27:49:10
Anne Green
Yeah. I couldn't agree more. I think that for many organizations, the values equation, you're talking about is more effective. I agree with you. The command and control, I mean obviously military operations and things like that need that chain of command, and they function very well. And if they didn't have it, that would have dire consequences. So I think that's a really good point.

00:27:49:12 - 00:28:06:13
Anne Green
You know, in terms of this discussion again about organizational values, personal values, the delta, the distance of the delta between them, I just want to talk about a few things that are going on to sort of real time test of this. You maybe it's like not a speed round, but we'll go through a couple. One of them is politics in the workplace.

00:28:06:15 - 00:28:25:20
Anne Green
And I wrote in my notes, yikes. This one is tough. True. Indirectly over the past year, but certainly today. So the conventional wisdom and this is something we talk about in the circles we run in all the time, there's a conventional wisdom not to bring or allow politics in the workplace, but to me that's really not helpful nor realistic.

00:28:25:22 - 00:28:39:16
Anne Green
And you posted a great short commentary on this on LinkedIn, which is literally, well, it was like, I have to reach out to Ethan to talk about this. Give me your take on this. And I know you have some data on it too, but what's your take on that question? Which is real profound right now?

00:28:39:18 - 00:28:59:23
Ethan McCarty
Yeah, I think I mean, like we found in our research that pretty consistently about half of the employed, population would like to be able to speak about politics and social issues in the workplace. They feel like they should be able to do that. About half, believe that they're, that they have the right to do it.

00:28:59:23 - 00:29:27:08
Ethan McCarty
And they, you know, they're empowered to do that. However, it gets kind of more interesting when you look at both positionally and generationally. It will probably not surprise anybody that, that rather, millennial roles, are way higher. They're pulling that number, that 50% number way up. And boomers are bringing it down to, you know, to some degree, as our, Gen Xers, Gen Z, also tends to be a little bit lower.

00:29:27:08 - 00:29:52:03
Ethan McCarty
We think that's positional. We think that's like because they might be in more junior positions, they might feel a little bit less empowered in the workplace just because of where they are in the organization. But the, the sort of tldr is get ready for a workforce. That is much more, interested in talking about social and political issues at work and feel that they have the right to do so.

00:29:52:05 - 00:30:18:16
Ethan McCarty
And so that is coming. That's already here. It's already here, but it's also it's coming more and then also the, and so, so before I go on to another sort of dimension that I would say the approach needs to be is depending on what kinds of spaces that you operate in, you know, like a retail, you know, a retail organization is going to be different from one that's manufacturing or a pharmaceutical organization.

00:30:18:16 - 00:30:38:09
Ethan McCarty
And even within those, like, you're going to have an itinerant sales force and you're going to have people who are manufacturing, you know, so there's a wide variety of sort of spaces, whether they're digital spaces like a chat room or physical spaces like a break room or a town hall meeting with whatever. Those spaces are where people gather in your organization.

00:30:38:11 - 00:30:57:07
Ethan McCarty
You just need to be very, very prescriptive about what the rules of the road are. And I think that's a really good a really good way to start is just like, even if you just say you know, look, we are not going to, we're not going to use any language that is, you know, hostile or denigrating, you know, like, that's a great start.

00:30:57:07 - 00:31:17:06
Ethan McCarty
And most organizations have those kind of things in place already. But you need to signal that again and again and again. So if you have a slack channel that says, you know, I always I find it so funny, you know, like when you go by slack or deploy slack, the it comes preloaded with this general, you know, less category where it's like just general, like anybody can talk about anything.

00:31:17:08 - 00:31:37:12
Ethan McCarty
The first thing you should do is rename that and put somebody in there. It's like general, but also you're not racist or like, but also not about, you know, your political affiliation or, you know, like put something in there that helps people understand, like, okay. Yeah, we actually we're interested we this is a place where we can talk, but we're also like, here's what we think.

00:31:37:14 - 00:31:57:09
Ethan McCarty
You know, the appropriate kind of discourse is in this venue. So being really clear about the rules of the road, I think is, is the first step. And then and then also, you know, the other thing is, is to really reward and lionize people who do it. Well, there were there are people who are going to be natural conveners and community leaders.

00:31:57:11 - 00:32:16:04
Ethan McCarty
And if those people if you can lionize that behavior, if you can, like, make those folks the star of the show, give them some mechanism for convening people I know, like $50 budget to buy donuts and coffee. I mean, like, that can be that can be huge because they're doing it in a way that is really pro-social and that could be around.

00:32:16:04 - 00:32:45:17
Ethan McCarty
Okay, well, you know, this issue, I'm going to make this up. This issue of homelessness is really important in a particular area. Great. We want to talk about that. Let's fund the ability for that team who really cares about it to go do a volunteer project. And they can talk about homelessness all the time there because they're really engaged in doing some solution around it as opposed to, sort of getting into the political sphere and talking about policy issues, which the company may not have any, you know, like impact on at all.

00:32:45:19 - 00:33:07:20
Anne Green
Yeah, it's interesting too, because another piece of this is what do companies speak out about or not speak out about? And I think these are also very symbiotic. And, you know, one of the things I've been trying to reflect on as a CEO is what is the foundational context or the lens? I can offer stuff that I've been thinking about that we can share a language and also share a set of values about how we engage.

00:33:07:20 - 00:33:26:06
Anne Green
Right? So a value of engagement and a value of connection and communication, but also values of respect. One of the things I tried to do last year was reflect on what does it mean to be in a pluralistic society, what does it mean to stay in community and tough conversations? What does it mean to hold someone's humanity even when you're very upset about something?

00:33:26:06 - 00:33:49:05
Anne Green
What does it mean to grapple with the idea that someone's vote may land differently for them than for you? And also to say to folks you may not understand your vote feel is annihilating to another person. So how do we stand community in those moments, and how do we create those guardrails? And how do I gently or my other leaders step in to say, hey, we're moving into an area that's less productive?

00:33:49:07 - 00:34:12:16
Anne Green
And also, how do we counsel our clients on these pieces knowing that staffs are not a monolith? People have different views. And that issues of recharge and the media landscape, which we all are deeply engaged in, is highly polarized. So I think you're bringing up some of the things I've been concerned about, especially when people say, oh, well, companies just stick with your values, speak out in your values.

00:34:12:16 - 00:34:35:13
Anne Green
And like, I think it's a lot more complicated than that in this context right now. But I do think this idea of the values, meaning how do we how are we with each other? How are we with our clients, how are we in the world and in community to reflect on that openly, for leadership to articulate that and then allow other leaders to bring that to life in their spaces.

00:34:35:13 - 00:34:41:14
Anne Green
And who are those positive, optimistic, caring conveners? I like a lot of what you're saying there.

00:34:41:16 - 00:35:06:10
Ethan McCarty
You know, I think one of the things as well is to really look, not just where your organization or your organization's leaders are speaking out, but where your organization and your organization's leaders are having impact. And, you know, I think there's a lot of hand-wringing around what statements should we make. And, you know, and all that. And, and that's not nothing.

00:35:06:10 - 00:35:41:00
Ethan McCarty
I mean, it is important. And it is also very risky, particularly in a political environment where you're seeing, you know, retribution happening for things that people said, you know, and that is scary and it's real. And also at the end of the day, you know, I mean, like, you can reflect on your own experience. And I will also reflect on the research that we do that, you know, we ask, you know, we give this sort of pick list of 28 different issues, everything from Israel and Palestine to, you know, handgun ownership to homelessness, pay equity, you know, all these, you know, a whole range of topics.

00:35:41:02 - 00:36:13:11
Ethan McCarty
And we ask people to pick five that they think their company should make a difference on, make an impact on like actually, you know, through policies or giving through product design and so on. And very, very, very, very consistently, we've seen the top five dominated by my health and well-being, job security and job creation, equitable pay, and diverse, you know, issues related to diversity and fairness and, data privacy as well.

00:36:13:11 - 00:36:38:03
Ethan McCarty
And, those top five dominate. And if you think about those, those are all things that most companies are already doing stuff about. And you can you can look at the policies, you can make sure that those are really, really people first policies and that you are really correct to your employer these desires on those and, you know, and just really sort of drive those on even with something like job stability.

00:36:38:03 - 00:37:00:21
Ethan McCarty
Yeah. You know, you might need to lay off people. That is real. And you can still have policies that support those with whom you've parted ways, you know, and do that, as you said, leaving with love. And, you know, like doing that, you know, doing that kind of action with some dignity. But what's interesting as well is that when you look at that, again, generationally, the top five issues change significantly.

00:37:00:23 - 00:37:25:22
Ethan McCarty
And, gen Z and millennials are much more, much more likely to rank, LGBTQ plus. And, you know, right, you know, basically trans and you know, like, you know, these, these populations rights and privileges and, you know, ability to operate, they're much more likely to, rank, gun control, higher up. They're much more likely to rank education higher up.

00:37:26:00 - 00:37:53:03
Ethan McCarty
And so these things are and it may be about like, just stage in life, where people are, you know, who they're surrounded by, what they're seeing in the media. And it's also true that the leaders of organizations need to think of employee populations not as, like, monolithic, but rather as a group of individuals who have agency in their life, who are making choices, who can either choose you or they can choose someone else.

00:37:53:05 - 00:38:18:03
Ethan McCarty
They could choose to do something great with and for you, or they can choose to do something great with and for someone else. And, and the negative is true too. They can choose to do something mean and nasty to you and mean and assessable. So all those things are in play. And again, it's like the more we can recognize that, you know, this individuation of experience is, you know, in is like really forgiving you integral to your work experience.

00:38:18:05 - 00:38:29:16
Ethan McCarty
That is, you know, that is going to be a key lever. And what you do through policy is going to be have so much more impact. And what you say through a press release.

00:38:29:18 - 00:38:53:10
Anne Green
Yeah, actually, I know my colleague Steve Halsey is going to be doing a upcoming podcast to talk with Rob, at Harris Poll about some of the recent research they did and this idea of words or context have some trust building, characteristics, actual impact has more trust building characteristics, but combining context and impact is the real hockey stick up to build trust in.

00:38:53:12 - 00:39:20:09
Anne Green
You know, as we as we wrap up our conversation, because there's a million more things we could talk about. But one of the things you're making me think of is in terms of going back to that question of how to help organizations and people that work for them understand where their values align or where they don't. One of the things I think is extraordinarily important now, especially, say, in a client service contexts like ours, but I think all organizations, is for leadership to really transparently narrate where they're facing their own dynamic tensions.

00:39:20:11 - 00:39:51:02
Anne Green
So where is it that, and where is it the we're very clear on what we believe. So, for example, when I can ladder things up to the level to the 100,000ft level of basic human rights, respect for people in their different celebration of difference, what it means to have a free press, what it means, what our what our democratic ideals, aside from these ways that we're fighting with each other about, you know, what does it mean to have free flowing business but also have compassion in that?

00:39:51:02 - 00:40:13:22
Anne Green
Right. So, you know, but also being very clear of, hey, this is an environment where it's going to be hard for our clients to speak out on certain things. They need to lay a little bit more low here, but see how they're still practicing and creating impact here. If I feel, if I can narrate that for my own stakeholders and also for my clients stakeholders, then we can understand that the values alignment is not so off.

00:40:13:22 - 00:40:32:09
Anne Green
Because without that narration or without that context of like why we are speaking or not speaking, doing or not doing, why a client may be doing this, but not saying that it's very hard to, to translate, it's not legible, you know, and that's one of the things I'm thinking about a lot too.

00:40:32:11 - 00:40:58:04
Ethan McCarty
Yeah. I mean, I think at the end of the day, we're talking about, you know, translating these ideas and principles into action. And does everybody understand what that translation process is? You know, so if you have a business strategy and you just put the deck out there and you're like, okay, here's our business strategy, and then, you know, 37 layers deeper in your organization or in the remote office or whatever.

00:40:58:10 - 00:41:20:17
Ethan McCarty
You ask people what the business strategies are not going to understand that, you know, they have to, you know, like people have to like, learn things and, you know, and internalize things in ways in multiple ways and be able to experience it, in order to actually then go and do those things. And there's some great theory on this, like, Bloom's Taxonomy, Bloom's taxonomy.

00:41:20:17 - 00:41:50:02
Ethan McCarty
It's like this hierarchy of how people learn things. It's very interesting and how you do course design. And that kind of stuff. But, integral we have this kind of employee experience formula that is it's very high level, but it can be really helpful tool. You know, if you're trying to trans, if you're trying to create an employee experience that then ultimately drive some business value or some business outcome or societal value or societal outcome, there is just a few components.

00:41:50:02 - 00:42:12:22
Ethan McCarty
And the, you know, the first one is listening, you know, big surprise like, how are you do how are you? Quantitatively and qualitatively understanding what the actual drivers are for perceptions and behaviors amongst this population. You know, whether you have 20 employees or, you know, 200,000 employees, you know, can you get as nuanced and understanding of that population as possible?

00:42:13:00 - 00:42:43:21
Ethan McCarty
And then you introduce things like content, and, you know, like content might be something as pithy as your, you know, and high level as your values or something is, you know, sort of, you know, salt of the earth as like help text on a, you know, on a H.R. Website or something like that. You have all these interactions, which again, it could be something as sort of day to day as like the stand up that you have in the dispatch center before you head off to your shift or, you know, the board meeting or the town hall with the CEO.

00:42:43:23 - 00:43:31:10
Ethan McCarty
And that's all driven by, you know, whatever the strategic intentions are, that, you know, it's a, you know, is it a cultural intention, is a business expansion intention, is it a talent acquisition or intention? So you put those things together listening, strategic intention, content interactions that if you bring your real thoughtful, you know, like very, very strategic self into, interrogating the level of commitment you've made to those elements, you will be able to produce an employee experience that is, you know, potentially incredibly scalable because people understand what's going on and they can make decisions independently and operate independently and also incredibly durable because it's going to be sort of like self-correcting by, you know,

00:43:31:10 - 00:43:58:00
Ethan McCarty
by this constant listening adjusts iterating, you know, you can that is achievable, and it may be achievable at the whole enterprise level. I think that would be very audacious and ambitious. And I'm sure there are companies out there that are close. But I think, you know, starting at a smaller level, like, okay, well, can we do this in one business unit, or can we do this in one team, or can we do this for one topic, a whole area like how we're managing customer experience.

00:43:58:06 - 00:44:16:02
Ethan McCarty
You might be able to create an employee experience that then radiates like that, that that employee experience is reified in the customer experience and the products that you make in your corporate reputation, like the best brands are just totally built from the inside out. And you see that again and again and again.

00:44:16:04 - 00:44:31:16
Anne Green
Well, I think that's an amazing place to end is and I love it. I love that rubric. And this podcast is called Building Brand Gravity. So, I always like to ask what has you in its gravity today. An idea, a book, a podcast, something in the culture.

00:44:31:18 - 00:45:01:21
Ethan McCarty
Yeah. You know, I've, recently been going into back issues of The New Yorker and yeah, I've really enjoyed it. I, I've read some pieces by and about James Baldwin and, like, the ferocity of his intellect and his courage has really inspired me. And, honestly, I mean, maybe this is just, you know, growing up in the Midwest in the 80s, but I didn't really encounter much of his writing.

00:45:01:23 - 00:45:19:15
Ethan McCarty
You know, and so now I'm kind of getting into it now, and, it led me to go watch a debate that he held in, at Oxford. You know, you can it's on YouTube. But anyway, just looking into James Baldwin has been amazing and inspiring. It was so, ironic, I think about this morning. I knew you're going to ask this question.

00:45:19:15 - 00:45:38:11
Ethan McCarty
You were kind enough to tell me, and I as I was, coming in on the subway with my dog, I looked down to pet her, and this guy's got a backpack on, and it's got this big button of a profile of James Baldwin. And I was like, oh my God. Okay, so this is there's like, I know, kismet or karma or synergy or I don't know, cosmic vibes are happening.

00:45:38:11 - 00:45:43:10
Ethan McCarty
But anyway, I highly recommend dipping into what James Baldwin had to say.

00:45:43:12 - 00:45:51:22
Anne Green
That's a magnificent recommendation. I cosign that so much. And Ethan, thank you for your time today. It's been a joy to receive privilege.

00:45:51:23 - 00:45:53:17
Ethan McCarty
Thank you very much for inviting me on.

00:45:53:19 - 00:46:01:16
Anne Green
Everybody. There's more building brand gravity wherever you get your podcasts, and we always appreciate your feedback. Thanks for joining us today.

00:46:01:18 - 00:46:02:06
Ethan McCarty
Thank you.