Laura Braden, a veteran in marketing and strategic communications with 20 years of experience, joins the MKTNG 10 Year Podcast to discuss the evolution of the PR and marketing landscape. She shares insights from her extensive career, including her roles as Director of Communications for the Campaign on Trauma Informed Policy and Practice, Senior Director of Communications for the Sacramento Kings, and Deputy Communications Director for Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Laura also founded Girls on the Grid, a prominent Sacramento social scene hub. The conversation covers significant shifts in communication practices, the principles of effective communication, challenges and opportunities in infrastructure project communications, and unique considerations for trauma-informed organizations. The episode concludes with a discussion on the impact of AI and the decentralization of media on the future of strategic communications.
Key Topics:
- MKTNG’s 10th Anniversary
- Evolution of PR and Marketing
- Early Social Media Adoption
- Principles of Effective Communication
- Infrastructure Project Communications
- Trauma-Informed Communication
- Impact of AI on Strategic Communications
- Decentralization of Media
- Future of Communications
- Ethical Considerations of AI
Transcript:
Scott: All right. Welcome to a special episode of our podcast and MKTNG10, marking our ten year anniversary of MKTNG. Our marketing and PR agency that’s been crafting strategies for brands that care for over a decade. Today, I’m excited to chat with Laura Braden, a valuable team member at MKTNG, and a long time friend whose 20 years of expertise in marketing and strategic communications has made a huge impact in our field. Laura’s career is full of incredible highlights here in in Sacramento and beyond. She currently serves as the Director of Communications for the Campaign on Trauma Informed Policy and Practice. Well, that aligns very closely with our mission here at MKTNG to drive meaningful change through strategic communications. Laura has also left her mark on some pretty defining chapters and the Sacramento region. She served as senior Director of communications for the Sacramento Kings, where she steered all the PR and media for business operations. She also served as deputy communications director for Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, crafting state, national and international campaigns on economics, infrastructure, energy, agricultural policies. You know that she also founded girls on the grid, once the preeminent hub for Sacramento social scene. Laura has worked for fortune ten companies, political campaigns, state agencies like California medical associations, nonprofits. And she remains a go to consultant for organizations and individuals, often in a time of crisis. I first connected with Laura through my role as president of the Social Media Club a long time ago here in Sacramento. This was when Laura was helping to organize a grassroots effort to keep the Kings here in Sacramento. We’ve remained friends since, and Laura has always remained a source of sharp insights with thoughtful and impactful intentions, which I’ve always valued. Today we’re diving into how marketing and PR well, the landscape has evolved over the past decade and the trends that are shaping our work now and what we see on the horizon. Laura, it’s great to have you here. So let’s jump in.
Laura: Thanks for having me. Lovely intro. Yeah. Well, thanks.
Scott: All right. So, uh, how are you doing today?
Laura: Good. Good. Really ready to dive into some of the things that you and I have been chatting on offline about for a couple of years now. So. Yeah, let’s do it.
Scott: Yeah, absolutely. So this is, uh, you know, uh, ten, ten and ten year anniversary for MKTNG, which is, uh, just recently passed. So we’re we’re kind of looking back, right? We want to talk about what’s happened in ten years. And because kind of our careers in general. Right. You both go back a ways. Um, and I wanted to we’ll get to sort of some new tools, right, that are shaping communications. But what’s something, uh, like what’s a relic of your past? Like, what’s a tool you remember using back when, when you were first, uh, starting in public relations?
Laura: Well, as you were so kind to say, I am. Yes, almost. I’m approaching my 25th anniversary of being in this world, which is just. Well, that’s an entire lifetime that I’ve been doing this now. So that’s pretty surreal. So as you can imagine, you know, back in, gosh, 2000, 2001 when I got started, one of my favorite things to highlight for folks, especially the younger folks who, you know, don’t really use fax machines and that sort of thing. But, uh, one major thing that has changed is the way that we even distribute press releases and all that. So way back in the day, early 2000, we would fax press releases to newsrooms one by one. We would, um, we would take this was sort of before the internet was ubiquitous. Um, and it was really hard for newspapers, didn’t quite know what the others were covering necessarily. So you could take one off then and we would pitch it at the same time to the Boston Globe, The Washington Post, The New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, all the bigs. And then we would wait for our service to send us in the mail a three ring binder, uh, that op ed placement, as well as any other, uh, you know, media placements for the client. Um, And it would be the actual hard copy from the newspaper cut out posted. And then we would take that three ring binder and make copies of it, and then find it again, and then get it to the client. So as you can imagine, I mean, that’s a lot of jobs, a lot of cottage, you know, little small businesses that it’s supporting because there were probably like four different vendors in that process. But it would take weeks, would take forever. And nowadays, you know, you can’t get away with that. Everybody wants their own unique content exclusivity, especially when it comes to things like op eds. And now, you know, it’s instantaneous. You know, when it’s live and you’ve got that link and you can give it to the client, you can make it look pretty as a PDF or just shoot it to them through like it’s just the the time from start to finish has become so much more efficient for for getting out, you know, your different messages and then delivering those wins to the client. It’s wild. Oh my gosh. What like and not just, you know whatever.
Scott: You’ve been in the game for a minute but not like that long. Like. Yeah like how many years were you at that before? Like, you know, when like the 24 hour news cycle.
Laura: Like, yeah, it feels like it’s been forever, but it’s really is the last 20 years, right? Yeah, I would say probably in the last 15 or so. There’s probably a better research out there that can tell you the day it happened. Right. I would say probably like 12 to 15 years ago, it all started to speed up a little bit. And also in conjunction with the technologies that were coming online, it all started to speed up a little bit. And now we’re, you know, we’re beyond a 24 year cycle now. It just feels like everything is breaking news and it’s happening all the time and it’s impossible to keep up with. I would say the next sort of big leap was social media. I remember being in meetings. This is really going to date me in 2006, 2007, and the job was to convince clients why they needed to be on social media. Right. Right. Like, that seems kind of hard to fathom now, but we would have to. The PowerPoint presentation was to convince them of the utility of social media and what it could do for them. So I was lucky enough. I was part of the team that launched Mayor Kevin Johnson’s first social media profiles and managed those. Same goes for Governor Schwarzenegger. I did his, um. So for him, it was a little bit different because he’s such a big, larger than life politician person, but at that time politician and elected official statesman. And so he had sort of a campaign feed which was called Join Arnold. And then he had his official governor feet, and that has actually continued on. Um, Gavin Newsom has the California office of the governor, but then he also has his Gavin Newsom feed. And so, um, I was part of the team of Schwarzenegger putting that on. But even, you know, he, in my opinion, is one of the smartest marketing genius brains on the planet. And I remember even with him, it was sort of like, is this worth the time? How public do I have to be? Like, is this really? Is it worth the time? Because we were already working on so many big things with him, like videos and, um, well, I can get into what his newsroom operation was like because it kind of happened around that same time. I worked for him in 2006 through 2009, and that was a big, heavy time of transition. So even just the way he organized his press office, which, if you’re interested, I can break that down, was very different. And also looking back now feels totally bulky because what we did at that time, you can now do with half the staff and half of the vendors and half of the it’s just way more efficient now.
Scott: Do you ever. I do this every once in a while, but it’s been on a different level. But do you ever feel like like this? Just the account structure. You you, uh, you described where there’s like, well, there’s the personal Arnold Schwarzenegger, and then there’s the professional, like there’s the Office of. Right. And you had to invent that, right?
Laura: Nobody knew quite how that was going to work out. And it turns out that the way that you did it is still how it’s done. So do you ever look back on stuff like that? You’re like, okay, I guess we gotta write, like 20 years later, that’s still how they’re doing it. So I guess we had sort of the right idea. Yeah. And some of that was sort of dictated by, you know, laws and legal requirements for disclaiming certain things and what messages you were allowed to push on which channels. And I don’t I don’t even know if necessarily we invented it. But I do think, um, it was certainly on the cutting edge of what was happening. And I think it did set pace car for a lot of ways that politicians and elected officials communicate. Um, you know, and he’s even kept up his own personal channel quite well. Right. And has sort of evolved with the times. And, you know, we’ll post amazing, hilarious videos with his pet donkey or with, you know, Hummer that runs on whatever green clean fuel that runs on. Um, at one point it was hydrogen. I don’t know what it is these days, but so he he has I think he has also mastered post office. How to keep that curtain peeled back a little bit to help keep you connected to who he is as a person, which then as he has books or movies or initiatives or policies or positions he wants to take, he’s already got a very clear channel to communicate that and get folks engaged. Yeah. And it feels like he and whatever, you know, I’m assuming still has people. Right. Uh. Is, and a lot of them are. And a lot of them have been with him for decades.
Scott: Yes, he definitely has. He’s had a good job. And as you’re describing the playback, because it’s funny how you know, his messages find the audience they’re supposed to find, but then all of us see the donkey videos, right?
Laura: Yeah. Yeah, it’s pretty funny. Um, yeah. And that goes to, I think, just a general strategy of social media. It’s like it doesn’t matter who the client is, the project is, or what the social media feed is about. We found this with girls on the grid, so I’ll go micro and macro with it. He does that at the macro level. At the micro level, just a local blog that did nothing but cheerlead Sacramento and provide a platform for women to talk about anything they wanted to talk about. We made it one level. When you make it one level bigger than yourself, you’re just expanding your reach and your audience engagement. And, um, and then you’ve got them captured so that when you need them to buy tickets to something, or you’re promoting new blog content that you want to drive traffic to you, you’ve your audience is bigger. And so we did I think we did a really good job of promoting different blogs, promoting, right, like promoting other people who were doing similar things to us. It wasn’t just about us, and we really did become, I think, one of the primary spaces that was Cheerleading Sacramento, because even at the time, the Sacramento Bee. I mean, this is this is also quaint because I think that then they had, I don’t know, 3 or 4 staff writers who did nothing but restaurant openings and entertainment. Now, I think it might be one person, and they’re probably also wearing three different hats. Right? Um, but they couldn’t do all of them. But we could. So like, we covered every restaurant opening, we covered every non-profit event. We covered it all because it was a blog. And and for this beautiful decade, Two Girls on the ground ran from 2009 to 2019. Um, it was a really, really. And it was a fun project and great way, um, to promote the city that we loved so much. But we were able to do that because our strategy made it bigger than just us and the blogs and the content we were putting out.
Scott: Right. You know, it’s great because that touches on something I wanted to talk to you about. And that was like, what are what are some things thinking back, you know, to the early days to now, what are some of the principles of effective communication that remain like absolutely consistent, regardless of the technology or sectors? When I was governor, NBA team or no. Yeah. See tab or client what’s what are some of the things that have remained the same.
Laura: So many, because I think that there is a science and an art to storytelling that is ancient. One of my favorite quotes by Robert McKee is, oh, don’t get it wrong. Stories are the currency of human contact. Right. So before. Before we could even write, we gathered around a fire at trade junctions. Right. You just got back from Turkey. That was a big one, right? Or the market or, you know, what have you. And we shared stories about our lives to inform, hopefully, and help people be a little bit more evolved and wiser. Right. We all learn from each other’s mistakes, hopefully through that storytelling. And even when you look at storytelling like through the Joseph Campbell, you know, hero journey archetypes, right? Like there’s clearly patterns. And even if you look at. So one of the fun things about Jesus is he only told stories. He didn’t say, do this and do that. And A, B, and C, he told parables and he told stories. And there’s a great Irish monk that talks a lot about how he was. He did a lot of mission work in Kenya. And so connecting with the tribal leaders there, they they connected and saw each other’s humanity through parables. And he had this whole theory that if everyone just shared their parables, their stories, um, it would be way more connective and way more helpful than, again, instructive or directive. Right. And so I think those sorts of elements are they still ring true today. There’s also just sort of some psychological stuff that still rings true. So they say, um, they say, uh, you know, with communications, it’s really about message messenger and delivery. And all three have to be right to the specific scenario for the message to actually resonate with people. Right? Something similar to that is like the whole quote of, um, people won’t remember what you tell them to do. They’ll remember how you made them feel. And so with things like op eds or even fact sheets, it’s you’ve got to provide that human connectivity component to your writing and then back it up with facts and stats. I think that still is a great formula. The third one, I would say, is meeting people where they’re at, really getting to know your audience. Because in today’s environment, yes, you still have the bigs, whether that’s CNN or The New York Times, but everyone’s becoming way more focused and hyper segmented, right? You can find a Reddit feed on just about any topic. You can find Facebook groups and just about any topic. And so whatever you’re whoever you’re targeted audiences are, I think taking the extra time to really get to know them, what motivates them, where they live online, and then develop your messaging and tactics specifically to those audiences. I don’t think you can overdo that, right? Like, I think the more that you do that and stay on top of it because things do change and shift. Uh, I think that’s another sort of principle that regardless of technology and AI and everything else that’s coming online will always ring true.
Scott: Oh, yeah. Right. Well, these are great insights for, uh. So let’s. Bring it to the present. One of the things you’ve, uh, you know, uh, one of the feathers in your calf, I don’t know, from from your career was, you know, doing comms around, trying to develop this massive, you know, sports arena in a city center like Sacramento. Right. For for the Kings. Um, so that’s been also a few years ago, but for infrastructure projects, uh, like what we work on, um, which are often complex and faced a lot of public scrutiny. What are some of the biggest communication challenges and opportunities you’re seeing right now? Think about stakeholder engagement and building trust and, you know, technical information being communicated. What are some of the big challenges and opportunities you see for organizations like that?
Laura: So I think where folks run into issues when it comes to large scale construction, real estate development infrastructure is um. They think too much about once the project is open, and not enough about the lead up to that. Um, so, you know, in some cases, they might know that the project they’re proposing is going to be controversial. And so then they get a little bit more proactive. But even there, it’s usually, um, limited in scope and not as expensive as it can be. And so the way that I sort of think about it is, yes, you need PR. Yes, you need to figure out the marketing piece. Yes. You need to figure out the operations side of things once it’s open. But the earlier that you can create a hub for the project and that’s usually through a website is sort of the foundational piece of that. Right. And then at some point in the timeline you also launch corresponding, you know, social media profiles that you can push that message out to, um, but, you know, phase one for me is always sort of like, okay, what are the community benefits of the project? Right? Who are the local vendors and content subcontractors that we’re going to be hiring? What’s the jobs impact? What’s the payroll look like? What’s the tax revenue going to look like? How many local um, establishments are going to be brought into the project? Right. And so the things that that look like local art, that look like local restaurants and bar brands being incorporated, that look like, you know, hiring local designers and hiring local, local concrete layer pours and, you know, all that stuff. But those are all stories to tell. And I’ll stick with the canes. Um, because then there’s also sort of the human element of it. So there were a lot of people at the Kings that had been working there since day one, since like when it was Arco in the very beginning. Right. And we have this really cool, um, janitor who just everybody, um, we had a janitor and an usher story and both characters, you know, big personalities. Everybody knew them and loved them. They were just well known entities. And so, you know, one of the ideas we had was like, well, we need to tell their story too, right? So we sat down with them and it was actually a beautiful piece, because these are folks that don’t always get a lot of external public recognition. Right? Um, they’re the backbone of keeping that building running and operational. And so, you know, we sat down and did a mix of like, uh, pictures and sort of them in action and then like video interviews and which got turned into blogs and then a bunch of social media posts. And then we took all that and we pitched it to media and, um, a couple of them. I kept blinking now, but I want to say somebody got back featured in the Sacramento Bee and somebody’s got a local teenage story. Right? And so it’s thinking about those elements. And then you want to think about the building, the structure of the project itself. So what is that going to do for the community. Um, again tax roll are going to be payroll tax revenues, that sort of thing. But also how is it making the city a better place to live and work and play? How is what problems is it solving, particularly if it comes to infrastructure. And then there’s just the construction milestones themselves. Right. So you’ve got topping off ceremonies and groundbreaking ceremonies. And every time you bring on, you know. Plumbers aren’t there the whole time. They only come in and do their piece and then they leave. So every time you bring in new staff, new crews, that’s a whole new media moment, if nothing else, creating a little bit of content that they can put on their website and their social media to brag about the fact that they’re involved in this project, then you’re getting their audience right. And a huge piece of why we do this, a couple of reasons. A, you want to get ahead. You know, the best defense is a proactive offense, right? No, wait. The best offense is a proactive flip. The best defense is a proactive offense. And so if you can get first to market and we’ll talk about the Koons sculptures, the reason we saw this play out in real time, you know, if you can get the information to people before they have a chance to be upset about it, right? You can shut down a lot of opposition, a lot of NIMBYism in your in your backyard. It also can help provide political cover for electeds and policymakers that you’re working at, whether that’s the local chamber, the mayor or the state legislator who’s ever who’s ever the the audience there. And then also, from just a more tactical marketing side, you’re gathering emails and personal data from your future customers that you can write so that you have those lists on the back end of your CRM already built out, so that when the building opens and you’re offering promotions and different events and on and on and on, you’ve already got a decent list to work with, right? Um, so going back to the Koons thing for a second and then I’ll take a breath. Um, that was something that we saw play out in real time. So we had the Kings had basically a set budget. I don’t remember the numbers. It was something like 4 or 5 million. I might be off, but there’s a lot of money.
Scott: Oh yeah. Right.
Laura: And it was part of the agreement we had to it was specifically set aside to be spent on art. Great. So part of what we wanted to do, we, my gosh, so much local art, so much local art, like 80% of that money went to local art, while not 80% of the money. 80% of the art presented went to local artists. Some of that got set aside to get a nice, beautiful, you know, flashy, Instagrammable, global piece of art from a guy named Jeff Koons and who is just like a world renowned, very well known on his art is in a lot of different public places as well as private homes. I mean, he’s he’s at the sort of top tier if you’ve ever seen a balloon animal piece of art, that’s. Yeah, his art is literally the kind of art that like, if you’re in town in Sacramento and you’re a Jeff Koons fan, you’re going to go down to the arena specifically to see that piece of art. Right? So we were excited. We thought like, great, this is elevating the city. Yes. We, you know, we’re providing for all the local. And also here’s like a little cherry on top. And people did not agree there were there was a very small vocal minority that felt like every single dollar would have gone, should have gone to local art, and that, frankly, would have been impossible to spend. I’ll just say the quiet part out loud. That would have been almost impossible to spend that amount of money on just local art. Unless, I mean, I don’t even know how we would have done that. And there was strategy involved. Good strategy, in my opinion, of bringing in a global piece to sort of anchor all the other cool installations and murals and things that were happening. Um, so we very quickly had to scramble and figure out like, oh my gosh, like we just didn’t anticipate it. We weren’t ready. So we had certain fact sheets and things, but it was bigger than that. So part of what we did is we went out and we found, um, and it was easy to find because we had a lot of public support as well. Like I said, it was a very vocal minority. And, um, first thing we did was identify local artists that were supportive and actually were like thrilled that a piece that scale of Koons was coming to Sacramento. And so we got them briefed on what was happening. We had them write letters to city Council. A lot of them came up and showed up to city council and testified. Um, there was also just a lot of misinformation on how the piece was being paid for and why this was even happening, and so we had to put out a lot of very quickly, overnight fact sheets, myth facts, all sorts of talking points, just to try to correct the record. Um, what was different about this is you’re talking about let’s see, what was this 2014 2013? So social media is completely online. And that was half of the that was probably 80% of our response, because the media aren’t going to report stuff that isn’t true. They still have to call someone like me or someone who worked for me, confirm the details, and then they run their story. But on social media, the comments were going crazy, right? And just so much misinformation was being spread. Um, but it’s not as insane as it can feel today because like, that just can take off like wildfire today. Back then, it was still sort of you had to log in to, you know, people weren’t on Facebook all day. So it took longer for these things to spread. So, um, it kind of became kind of became hand-to-hand combat. And thank God we had so many local voices who were supportive because we didn’t have to. They were doing it on their own. They were responding to comments. And frankly, that was way better than than the official Kings trying to say like, no, no, no, that’s not true. That’s not true. All we did was apply the talking points to everybody and keep everybody posted on what was happening and let them help us correct the record. And it went really well. And it passed, I believe, unanimously, if not almost unanimously. And it’s a cool it’s a cool thing in Sacramento. It looks really good now. It’s a piece of the skyline, you know. Now you would tell that story like why why would I with that being here. But that’s just a good example of how these little things on these big, large scale construction projects can flare up. And if you’re not prepared and ready to pivot, and if you haven’t done any of that legwork that I mentioned, right. If you don’t have a website, if you don’t have social media, if you haven’t done any sort of community engagement ground game already, you’re you’re going to be scrambling and you might not be able to keep up. Um, so yeah, I would say that’s probably the biggest thing is just getting these companies to understand the need for communications and marketing from the get go. Sometimes, frankly, even before you get approval for the project.
Scott: Right. So, well, the thing is, a is a fantastic, uh, case study. And, uh, it is a beautiful piece. And, uh, I’m sure the architects, designers, the fact that it just sort of like, sits there right in front of the the grand entrance into the cold one center. And. Yeah. You know, less than 100 yards away, you’ve got the great sort of deconstructed dartboard. I don’t know how it has a name, but yeah. Gail Art Gallery, Gail Hart, beautiful piece right down there. Um, on L Street. And then, uh, on on the entrance on that side. He’s got the the glass balls. Brian. Venezuela, uh, designed and and installed, uh, which is so cool because that’s actually not is his medium of choice.
Laura: Uh, he’s, you know, typically a painter, and I, I love I love his work there, but, uh, and then inside, inside, we stuffed that building with local art because Sacramento has a killer local art scene for sure. Right. And so, like, there was no shortage of talent to work with. Um, that was really the fun part was sort of. Okay. And I’m not actually sure how that process went, but I think essentially it was like they match made spaces to the artists and then just sort of, you know, they had guardrails, but they were essentially allowed to do whatever they wanted. I think what helped, uh, you know, this is, you know, you work at these people, but you had people here and the investors, the owners, um, some of them are are some of Sacramento’s largest art patrons. Um, and so they had they had relationships. Yeah. They wanted to create a stage for the artists. Uh, to be able to show them off. And it just was a strategy, I think, to your point was articulated in advance. Uh, and so it did catch some people off guard. Uh, but, uh, kind of broadly, you know, step back in on a, on a meta level.
Scott: Uh, what I hear you saying, though, and just in terms of communication, is, uh, a lot of organizations, they think, oh, we will communicate about our project when it starts. And what you’re saying is, you know, no, uh, start in advance and and be proactive. And so I think a lot of companies make the mistake of thinking, here’s how we will play defense. Um, and so by the time they start communicating, they’re already on their heels. There’s, there’s already a there’s already an offense. Um, and, um, and, and I think your point about storytelling is also is, is remarkable and, and well articulated that that’s what people care about. And, and it’s, it’s almost, it’s almost a shame because I love the way you’re talking about like, a janitor and other people, you know, working for the Kings because they are it is a storied franchise for Sacramento. Um. I’m trying to remember this. Uh, gosh, I need to give him credit. But there was there’s a documentary that’s available on YouTube. That’s a small market, big car. Um, uh, and so anybody can look that up. Uh, it’s fantastic documentary. And it just really tells the story about, uh, the people who wanted to bring. What’s that? Yeah. Kenny. I think it was Kenny Johnston or Kenny Johnston, something like that. But yeah, if you Google it, it’ll come right up. Um, I know Kenny, I don’t know if he was involved in that. Um, there was, uh, anyway, I can’t. Yeah, I, I’ve met this filmmaker. He’s he’s great guy. Um, I can’t think of his wife, I can’t think. Anyhow, so, um, so. But, yeah, storytelling, uh, is so critically important. And what I was saying is it’s a it’s a missed opportunity, in fact, that often we come upon these great ideas as, as you had about telling these stories of, uh, uh, custodian or, and other sort of people who wouldn’t necessarily get the spotlight. We it’s too bad we often think of those in need of, uh, storytelling for a project. And, uh, oftentimes they make, you know, great opportunities to tell stories when we’re not building buildings. Uh, just just as part of the life of an organization. Hey, here’s someone who’s been working for us for 20 years, you know, and three of those stories are really great opportunities to demonstrate your culture and your ethos and your mission and your vision.
Laura: Right. So through stories, through storytelling of employees and people affiliated with your organization, you’re technically showing off and displaying what that culture is. So yeah, I think it’s probably if I had to break it down, it would be like. Proactive as possible, especially with the infrastructure. Create the website, get the fact sheets, go in as early as possible. Then it’s full community engagement so that when things happen, you’ve already got an army of people who love the project and are ready to step up and defend it. Right. And then I think it’s, um, mining the project as much as you can from as many angles as you can for those good storytellers. And then I think the last piece would just be sitting down and thinking about all the potential landmines in your community. And those are always going to be case by case. So one example, real quick of what we were prepared for, uh, there is a stage in the project where you have to spray water and it’s meant to minimize dust. And remember, this is downtown, right? And one of us, I don’t know if it was me, I can’t remember. But I do remember very vividly in the meeting, somebody was like, people are going to freak out. It’s Sacramento, you know, we’re a green town. We’re a drought town, a green in terms of like people are very eco friendly and eco minded, environmentally minded. And then we’re also like, this is a drought town, right in a drought state, and you’re going to be spraying water like downtown when people are walking by. Like people are not going to understand that. And we knew that. So ahead of time, we literally like put out a press release to the media, right? Because we knew they would see something on social media. We had, that vendor. I can’t remember who it was. Charter construction was one of the big vendors. We had somebody prepped and primed in case there were media stories. Right. And we had social media posts ready to go. We had talking points ready to go. And sure enough, in the day that we sprayed water, people started to lose their minds. But we were ready to go and we were able to educate everybody of like, this is sanctioned, we have to do this like, and there’s a good reason for it, right? And then it became nothing for the media. I think we got a few, but not a nothing burger. I should say. We leveraged it for actually positive stories. Right? So instead of it being like, what’s happening? And this is awful and we’re wasting water, the stories we got out of it, the social media post we got out of it were more educational. And here’s why. And that also sort of demonstrated, again, good community stewardship of for educating people proactively, which, you know, saves your project, but also is just a good way to operate in the community. So.
Scott: Right. Yeah. Oh, bravo. Yeah. So changing lanes just a little bit. We’ve been talking about, you know, infrastructure projects. So let’s let’s talk a little bit about nonprofits and community service organizations, um, particularly those that we work with that have a trauma informed approach to offering their services. Uh, how they communicate is, like, super sensitive. So what are the unique communications challenges that these organizations face today? Like building trust and ensuring their messages are empowering and not retraumatizing, you know, to the people that they’re trying to communicate with. Uh, let’s let’s talk about some of those challenges.
Laura: Sure. And I think for this, let me focus on organizations that represent patients, clients, community populations who are likely to have experienced trauma in their lives. So taking a step back, it’s like the numbers are insane. It’s like 70% of all us adults are walking around with, you know, at least one traumatic experience under their belt. And part of it we can get woo woo and religious right. But it’s like suffering does seem to be baked into the equation of being a human. And, um, but not everybody is given the right support and resources to navigate whatever adversity comes their way, whether it’s a natural disaster or abuse or poverty or what have you. Right. So if you think of an organization like we’ve. Right, um, that provides a lot of the domestic violence and things affiliated with that, homelessness, all sorts of things, right? In our county, in Sacramento County. Um, the population, the people that they work with and the people that they serve are very likely to have encountered something traumatic, otherwise they wouldn’t be there. Right. And so that really, um, behooves the organization to communicate in a very different way than, say, like Nike or Coca-Cola would be able to. Although next, I can sort of extrapolate why companies like that should also be following this, right? Um, but so that really comes into play in a couple of different ways. One of the most obvious is for organizations like that, you know, storytelling of, uh, demonstrating case studies, testimonials, people that they’ve helped, people who have come through their programs. Right. Like, that’s a really big piece to securing grants and media coverage and donations and funders and that sort of thing. And there’s an entire literature book. You know, here’s the deadline. But if you need more time, please take it right. Um, and if you don’t like it, if you want to reshoot it, like, again, just giving them total sort of ownership over it and then um, and then it’s just keeping in touch with them. So once the content gets published, I usually send that person a note saying, hey, it’s live. Here’s the link. Uh, we can make certain edits. Obviously, like Twitter, you can’t edit, um, unless you’ve got the profile, you know, like, let’s just break down the different options even there. And then I even tell folks, I don’t matter if it’s a decade later. If you want to read, let’s say you had that as part of a donation campaign, but you’re like, oh, I want this now to live on my website. And it’s been two months, two years. You still need to contact that person and say, hey, we would now like to use your story this way. Here’s where it’ll live. Blink, blink. Are you okay with it? Right. So I think that’s probably like the number one two and three three thing I always tell people is, as you’re sharing these stories, um, really making sure that the people that with lived experience aren’t feeling like they’re being exploited and you’re not setting it up so that they feel trauma retraumatized from the experience itself. Um, then I think the second thing would be the framing of the stories is also really important. And this can this can cascade out into the objects that you use with your videos and social media. So you never want to communicate from a place of fear or scarcity, right? So in a newsletter, you don’t want to ever say, you know, um, vets are killing themselves every 10s. And so like, if we don’t do something, this is going to happen, right? Like you don’t you want to operate from a hey. This is happening in our community and here’s how you can help, right? You always wanted to put it in a strengths based framing versus fundraising. And this shows up most in fundraising. Right. But you don’t you never want to invest in a place of scarcity or fear. I’ve seen oh gosh, I’ve had people send me videos, um, trying to get folks to sign up for a child advocacy piece and the imagery they’re using in the videos of, like, hurt kids, you know, hunched over kids crying on their pillow. And it’s like, no, no, no, no, no, no. You want to show the world that you wish to create through the action that you’re asking of people, right? So use ideal imagery, use hopeful imagery, use action oriented imagery. Um, I think that would be the biggest second piece. And then the third one again, really knowing your audience and really knowing your community, because even among the unhoused, maybe you only work with women and children, and that’s going to look very different than if you’re working with more immigrant groups, right? So you just need to be sort of very aware of the populations that you serve. And I even go so far, you know, it’s a tactic that works with a lot of organizations where they’ll create almost like an informal advisory council. Um, I did this with the foster youth group because, you know, those kids, they age out at what, age 18? And once they’re out of the system, the stats don’t look good. Like, there’s just not a ton of support and services and resources for kids once they age out of the system. And so this foster agency was trying to create that, but then also figure out where they could grow and improve within their own system. So what did they do? Pretty brilliant. They created two different youth advisory groups, one of kids currently in the program and one of kids who had graduated. And they they were sort of focus groups for all of their ideas. But they also, you know, asked them like, what did you hate about being a foster youth in our program? Like, how did the onboarding go? Could the court visitations have gone better? What could we have provided to you? You know, that first night in that new home, those sorts of things, right. And then and then, of course, post, uh, leaving this, exiting the system. What is it you need most? Right. And so there’s so often I’m sure you’ve seen it too. And I’m sure a lot of people watching this have too. It’s like the RFP gets issued a firm. Lands the contract. They create this beautiful PSA brand. You know, a PSA policy issues based awareness campaign for some department or agency in the state. It gets sent to the population that it’s meant for and it lands flat because you know what stays in the process? Asks the people who are meant to consume this information if it even resonates with them, or if it’s even what they need. So I think that’s the weird thing is, I always recommend to people of like, how much can you bring in your populations that you serve to get that good feedback? And through that, what’s funny, especially with the foster youth example, they ended up, oh my gosh, a lot of those kids end up becoming spokespeople, right? And got more involved in the organization and were telling their story like they, you know, they were spokespeople with really compelling testimonials, and they felt they were happy to do it because they felt like they were part of the project and part of the organization versus just being dictated to.
Scott: You’re you’re so you’re touching on the the stuff I really wanted to ask you about, because we often get this, like, you and I are both consulted and something comes to mind as a, uh, an organization we’ve consulted with that that deals with the homeless and the and and their, their big gripe was, um, you know, when people don’t let us use their photos and in our advertising, it makes it really hard, you know, to like those advertisements are not very successful. And, and, you know, and it was sort of a. A tough moment to tell them you shouldn’t be using any any like people’s photos in your advertisements and social media content, you know. And, uh, and they were really bummed, you know, it was just like, oh, really? No. You’re like really taking all the agency away from, you know, people who you’re serving and, uh, and, you know, there’s just all sorts, you know, privacy and also a whole all these issues. So, yeah, you’ve touched on this a little bit, but like, what are some tactics like, I know because you’ve talked about it previously about, you know, if it bleeds it leads and all this, all these things that are common when we’re using a marketing mindset, a trauma informed approach is almost completely like flipped. So what are what are some proactive communications, you know, trauma informed approaches that I’ll take that can be, uh, empowering for the nonprofits to to think through and use as they’re trying to be successful in their, in their homes.
Laura: Yeah. Gosh, that’s really going to vary based on what the organization is. But let me throw out a few examples. So, um, let me touch upon something that you just said. So I think the more that you can bake the ask into the process earlier, the better off you’re going to be. But also it’s situational. So imagine you are, um, a woman having some economic challenges and you show up at a job fair, or you show up at even just one of these events where they will help you, you know, pick out suits and and help your resume and do some, like, informational interviews. Well, imagine you show up to that community event. And the first one of the first things you see is somebody with video camera wanting to talk to you about your story. Are you going to feel good about even going like I would? I would bolt out the door, right? I mean, maybe not. Some people aren’t going to respond that way, but I would be like, no, I don’t like I’m here to I’m here to better my life. I’m not here to like, talk to you about how, you know, what a hard time I’m going through. Right. And so, so like in that kind of case, like, I wouldn’t have that person there, period. I wouldn’t worry about getting pictures of the job fair or the training. And if you do, again, there’s still ways to do it. You still have to get people to sign off on it, sign waivers, etc. but maybe you only take pictures from the back of the room so that the picture is of the back of heads and whoever’s speaking right, so that there’s like anonymity, anonymity there. Um. So I think you have to pick your moment. I think the timing has to be right when you ask for those sorts of things. I did something similar for a funeral home. This is one of the more random projects I had to work on. But they they are. They live and die by referrals. But it’s like, what part of this grief process do you ask the family who’s grieving their loved one to give you a testimonial? Right. That was a huge pain point. And so what we sort of did was like we baked it into the whole thing, and we made it more of like an opt out of we would like, you know, would if you if you would not like to submit a testimonial or a review of our service, like click this box so we don’t ask you. Right. And if they didn’t click that box then the, the the employee like sort of had a little bit more free reign of when to bring it up with them. Right. Going back over to the nonprofit side, I think it’s for larger campaigns, a couple of ways that I would do it. I would look at in-house people. So a lot of times the staff that work at these places have also gone through something similar. Right. Well, that’s another sort of general human thing about us is that once we go through something really awful and make meaning of it, we want to turn around and help spread that meaning to others who are in similar situations. And so you find in a lot of these environments, the staff that are working there also have lived experience, right? So I would start there because they’re going to be hopefully more interested in participating. But again, it’s a hi, would you like to do this or not? Is this required part of your job? Because that’s also probably illegal in California. I’m going to go with it. Definitely illegal in California. Um, so you start there then. All organizations have donors and volunteers that also probably have a little experience in that space. That’s why they’re there. And again, they’re probably hopefully a little bit further on in their healing journey and now are giving back to the organization through volunteering and donations. So they may be in a better place, um, mentally, spiritually, all of it to share that story. Right. And so you see what sort of talent exists there. And then I then I move on to like the graduates of the program, folks that are still supportive, folks that you’re still in communication with, that sort of thing. And then that last tier would be just the the John Q citizen patients, clients, people that are coming through your door that you’re serving every day and they’re it’s trickier that that is sort of that becomes really case by case of what the organization looks like. Um, you can pre-program that into your process so that they’re asked. But really, for something like that, I would actually wait until they’re more to like the graduate stage of things, because somebody who’s an active healing or an active rebuilding of their life, don’t ask them to share their story yet, unless you can tell and you’ve got that dynamic and they really want because there are some people who are like, no, no, no, uh, the quotas, uh, I almost died in silence. So I’m healing loudly, right? Like there are a lot of people who want to share their story. So you have to just sort of gauge that. Um, but that’s, that’s the that that last group that I mentioned is kind of the trickier one because, again, you don’t want to exploit or retraumatize anybody that isn’t ready.
Scott: Right? Right. Well, these are all like, you know, very. Powerful, uh, insights into, you know, how these organizations need to communicate and build. Build trust. Um, yeah. I’m really imagining, you know, like the the anecdote you said of, like, uh, you know, someone arriving to, you know, a job fair or whatever, and there’s someone with a camera there, and, uh, I think, you know, puts undue pressure on that, right? Like, it’s it feels like a quick quid pro quo, like, oh, in order for me to get a free jacket, I need to, like, exploited by a video camera. Right? Right. It it it creates this sense of obligation. Like, if you want the jacket, you got to get, you know, you got to be on Facebook. That’s right. And it’s funny because with some populations, it’s so often you would never do that in a domestic violence event. You would never do that on a child adoption event or a refugee event, right. So you shouldn’t do it for any other population that has likely been through trauma and is actively healing. So it’s yeah, it’s it’s the dangers of like, you know, again, in a different and a different, uh, sector. You know, we’re telling clients like, you need to be the media. You need to, you know, you’ve got to capture all the stuff and tell the stories. And, and so, you know, oftentimes meeting with, you know. Good intentions. A nonprofit might go, we’ve got to have a video guy and the thing and take lots of pictures and tell all the stories and, and, uh, oftentimes it’s just not the right place. And a lot of organizations haven’t come around to that thinking. Um, so also making it so making our next pivot, uh, no conversation. Let’s, let’s talk about the future a little bit. Um, we’re we’re at a really interesting moment. And in comms and technology, it’s funny because you, you and I both lived through the first one, right? Like, early in our careers, social media just, like, was taking over comms and marketing. And now we’re at this moment where it’s AI, right? And and we can see it coming. We don’t yet entirely know what it means or, or, uh, how it’s going to impact us, although we can see a little bit, um, how do you see AI realistically impacting, you know, strategic columns? Uh, and in the next five years or beyond, you know, content creation, right. Like, uh, you know, hey, make me 500 photos or whatever. Uh, you know, we we see that, you know. Yes. Marketed to us, uh, on a daily basis. But where do you where do you see the strategic value for AI and our industry serving our clients?
Laura: Yeah. Um, so let me talk about AI. But then I want to talk about decentralization too. So with AI, I was a pretty early adopter. I am obsessed. Um, I use AI every single day with every single one of my clients. It saves me untold hours of time of work. And I don’t have any clients that have. The work it’s producing is good. I don’t have client. We’re not on version 17 of the press release. Right? Like, I’m getting things through the approval process faster because what it’s spitting out is better. Um, and it’s again, saving my time so that I don’t have to take on less clients or go out and hire more people or that sort of thing. So for folks like us, um, it’s tricky because there’s I think there’s going to be I think there’s going to be communicators that focus really hard on the graphic design piece of AI. I think there’s going to be people who focus on the video creation side of AI. I’m right now focused more on I use AI specifically for ideation strategy and for writing. And so I’ll dive into that a little bit because I think the so, so far so good that we’re still needed. Humans are still 100% relevant to this process. I don’t know if I will ever get here, but it is not a copy paste exercise. You cannot just put in a prompt. Copy paste what it gives you and you’re done. That’s not what we’re talking about. And and I’m sure it will be that there are lots of people who do it that way. I think that’s going to be an unintended consequence of AI. Is that the amount of just crap content that’s out there is going to drastically go up, right? Um, and you’ve already seen search engines try to accommodate for that and rank, um, rank natural language versus over. Anything they can tell was, you know, made on AI on your website. Um, so they’re trying to sort of accommodate for that. But yeah, there’s going to be a lot of crap content out there, but not what we’re creating for people. I think. I think this is like a sweet spot. I think, like for people like us who have 15 plus years of experience, it’s a really, really, really exciting time. And hopefully it doesn’t bite us on the ass. And we’re all unemployed in front of here because I don’t. Yeah. Um, and so what I mean by that is you’re still getting my brain. You’re still getting my ideas. You’re still getting my strategy. You’re still getting all of my experience to bear. But now, instead of spending eight hours on a press release or not. But don’t take that long. You know what I mean? Is that spending hours on the op ed or press release, I now spend that time on setting up the AI agent. So I use cloud AI. I love it because the project side of things you can. I create a project for each client, and I’m able to put in the brand voice. I’m able to put in all the different instructions and prompts of, generally speaking, what it needs to do, and then I’m able to upload all sorts of resource material, fact sheets, talking points, media coverage. Cloud can now scan websites. So now I can put all that in and I can put in our competitors. It can. So that now I’ve basically created an AI agent. Although they can get even more sophisticated when I’m explaining is would anybody off the street can do. It’s about to get even crazier in terms of automation and, and, um, and, uh, the types of influencers that are going to actually be made. I can talk about that in a second. But anyway, sticking to sticking to more like the content ideation side. And so now what I’ll do is I’ll spend an hour on the prompt. And I’ll spend an hour conversing with it, because one of the life hacks with any AI tool is okay. Now, before you start your work, ask me questions to improve this prompt to improve your work. Right. So then you can have a little bit of and they’ll push back on things it’s not clear on. And then and then I end up spending another hour editing it, judging it, putting it back into the voice. It’s not always going to get things right. And then you have to go and fact check all anything fact based because it will hallucinate. It will create statistics that aren’t real. Um, the life hack there is. You ask it to, um, cite its sources with the URL, and that helps cut down on that. But anyway, so you got to do that. Um, so it’s still my work. It’s just been enhanced by this fake junior employee free program to do it. Right. So in that way, I think it’s totally revolutionized. And also, like there’s plenty of times where I hate what it what it gives me, but for whatever reason, for my brain, it is easier for me to redo an entirely new press release. Then start out with a blank sheet of paper. Right. So for me, I’m a I’m a strong writer. And I’m also, I think, an even stronger editor and producer. So if I can just get any draft in front of me, it all of a sudden becomes way more clear. Like, this is all wrong. And now I know what it needs to be right. And so now we’re off to the races. So yeah, I think AI is really going to change the game, allowing people to take more clients and maybe even charge less for the clients that they are taking. Right. And maybe it’s even going to allow people to expand the types of services they offer. I’ve always been somebody that if a client has another challenge and I don’t maybe know what to do, I’m still going to try to figure it out for them as long as it’s still with Elaine. And I even find that that’s really helpful with I. So what I mean by that is, um, they want to add a specific feature process to their website, and I built the website for them. But what they’re asking me to do, I’ve never done. I’ll go to Claudia and say, you’re an expert in Wix. I need to build the following tool. Now tell me step by step like I’m an eighth grader, how to do it? Mhm. Right. And so now. So instead of spending 15 hours of research, messing it up, fixing it, trying it again, now I know, like step one, step two, step three. So I think that’s also going to be a huge tool for us. Um, and then just the ideation part of it, it’s really, really fun. It will come up with some wild ideas that just again, helped you expand your own thinking a little bit and get out of your own way, because, you know, we there’s a science to this and there’s an art, and sometimes the science part of it can become formulaic of like, oh, I’m writing the 12th press release on this topic. And I, you know, I also, I think, helps keep it fresh and helps keep you fresh. Now, I don’t know if you’re 22 years old, just start and you’re a communicator or a marketer and you’re just starting these tools. I would love to do a side by side of give me an a 22 year old, the same assignment, and see what the work product is, because I don’t know if I don’t know if this is ego or not or truth. I don’t know if theirs would be as good as mine, because again, I’m able to write better prompts based on the experiences that I’ve had and the expertise gathered. Right? So that’s why I say, I think for like mid to senior folks, this is a really exciting moment to make your day go easier. Um, but I don’t know. I think for the junior folks, I think there’s still, um, you still need that more real world experience. And then I think maybe the calculation for you is that you get really good at knowing how to talk to the AI programs that you’re using so that you can help companies integrate and write. Like, I think that’s your sweet spot there, right? Um, no. I mean, honestly, I think you’re for one, you would clearly do better than the 22 year olds, even on 25. Um. It is intended to prompt writing, and even if the one or the junior, uh, staff person that’s our stalking horse here is, you know, smart. You have the experience. Like to me, like when I’m prompting, it’s not like, uh, hey, take this and do this with that. Right? You really are like, it’s the instruction you. If you were if you were instructing an intern, you would say, hey, I need you to write this and be sure to include A, B, C, and D, right. Like because you’re like, here are the most salient things that I need to make sure are included in this project. And that’s part of the crafting process is, hey, I need you to take, you know, everything that’s on this website, but here’s what I need is I need you to pay special attention to these things because these are my priorities as a professional. I want to make sure these are highlighted, included, called out, you know, punctuated whatever. And, uh, and, and that’s part of your expertise is, is. Knowing that the output is good, but you’ve got to you know what the input is, right? What are you telling the AI to include as its inputs so you get the right outputs? And as far as hallucinating, I mean, I you know, I have an example I won’t share for the podcast, but I’ve gotten some, some advice from, from AI, uh, in the last six weeks, I’ll just say that it was, uh, you know, completely made up, just completely fabricated, hallucinated. Uh, I recommend that you take this course of action. And I was like, are you sure? Is that legal? No, it’s like the Elephant Man. Well, I will say a lawyer was involved. Like I was consulting with a lawyer, and I was like, oh, you know, ROC told me not to throw rock, rock, rock, rock, rock. I mean, this course of action was like, no, no, that’s that’s not a thing. Like, that’s completely against the so. Anyway, um. So. Yeah. And thankfully, the humans are still needed, right? Um, right. And then I think the other sort of benefit, uh, and then I’ll go into the big wild card of like, what comes next, right. But I think the other benefit is it’s democratized communications, even more similar to what social media did. Now you’ve got your Twitter feed where you can say whatever you want. You don’t have to wait for the Sacramento Bee to cover you, right? You’ve got a direct pipeline to your people. Um, this is democratized communications and marketing because now it’s easier to offer new things to clients. So in our case, podcasting 2 or 3 years ago used to be a very time consuming, expensive thing. And now we’re using podcasts. All right. There’s script. There’s all these other tools where very quickly you can record, have transcripts, then you feed that transcript to make a blog, to make the social media post, to make the email newsletter or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And, um, and so now we’re able to do things faster and cheaper for our clients, right? And so then that increases your ability to communicate new and more thoughtful ways. Particularly with video and podcasting, which is becoming, um, you know, it’s funny. It’s like people either want it eight seconds or they want it in three hours, right? So that’s kind of a new game, right? And that goes to my point. Um, before we move off, I too far, but I do want to touch on decentralization of media because I think that’s another big piece that’s been happening in the last few years where now it’s like, okay, cool being The Washington Post, be on CNN, but who cares how many people are going to actually see it, right? If you’re a true audience, is unicorn aficionado in Utah, they have a blog, they have a TikTok, they have a YouTube. And you can. Right. And so again, like this goes back to my earlier comment of the better you know, your message, your audience is and who you’re trying to target. You don’t have to work with the big guys anymore and only get two sentences in a story. You can, right? You can. There’s more opportunity to play. Um, but then switching back to AI real quick, I think the big question mark in my mind is what comes next, I think. Some of the most exciting and most surreal things are happening on the video side of things on these AI influencers. Um, and I think one of my predictions is that, um, there’s going to be and I’m trying to figure out how to do this for myself, but it’s so easy now to create an avatar. And so and that be the face of whatever it is your company is or your blog is or your Instagram feed is. Right. And so really honing in on that character and I think those are going to become intellectual, like I think those are going to become assets or I think they’re going to become almost think like a Disney character. It’s going to be that’s it’s not going to be it’s going to be AI influencers. It’s not going to be social media, and it’s not going to be human being influencers anymore, at least not as as much. Um, and so I think, you know, it remains to be seen what comes next with AI because as we’ve talked a lot about, it’s hard to keep up. It’s, it’s, there’s if you if you don’t like opus AI, well then you’ve got cat cut and 30 other competitors and tomorrow there’ll be another the, the the winners and losers within the industry haven’t shuffled out yet. Right. There are a million texts to Two video options. There are a million picture and photo editors, right? There’s all sorts of companies that are flying around right now. And so I, uh, you know, I have my favorites, but it’s hard to keep up because every day I feel like there’s a new AI tool company service that you can utilize. And thanks for the free trials. But, you know, I it’s hard to keep up. It’s it is funny and and it’s a it’s it’s it’s it’s it’s a cautionary tale almost to people out there because I like I still, uh, am a fan of, of x.com formerly Twitter. Um, and every day I’m on, I’m on Twitter, I see someone because I’m the I’m the target market for this messaging is, you know, that race is dead. No. You know, uh, anthropic and Claude has just dropped a new model and it does it and everything else is obsolete. And I’m like, no, it’s not, because, yeah, every other tool, frankly, already communicates better than the, you know, 22 year old thing. You know, they’re saying, oh. You know, whatever. They’re almost at the doctor level or whatever, but the tools were already using today and our have are revolutionizing how we do our work. And as they continue to get better and better and better and better. I guess the answer is nothing’s obsolete. Nothing’s been made obsolete. The tools you’re using today that are AI capable are probably heads above anything you would have found or even existed five years ago. Yeah. And things will continue to iterate and get better. You should always look for, you know, things that are better, faster than what you’re using now. But don’t always go for the next shiny object, because there’s also going to be a lot of flashes in the pan. Um, and kind of to your point, although Google is definitely in the race and we use Google every day. The Gemini product, there is not yet a Google of I who owns the landscape, right? There’s a handful of market leaders and they’re all making. You know, great products, but there’s not a de facto, uh, there’s no winners. Yeah. Right now we don’t have, like, the established, like Ford and Target and Coca-Cola of AI companies. Yeah, right. You’ve got a few clear winners, but anything’s possible because remember, a couple months ago, everybody was freaking out when deep seat drop deep Seac dropped because it was right. And it’s it’s a great program. I use it for a lot of research stuff too. Um, so yeah, it sort of remains to be seen how all of this is going to play out. And I would also encourage people, particularly creative creatives, if thinking about like, how can I create faceless, nameless revenue streams from this? So, for example, let’s say you really are interested in the Sacramento Kings. That’s your jam. Well, there’s no reason why. Um, and I see this. I follow a bunch. It seems to be a very, like popular ex thing where you take a given piece of news. So like, let’s say a sappy article about a coaching hiring decision or whatever. You feed that through Claudia chatbot to whatever you say, come up with a 6 or 7 Twitter. X. I can’t call it X. It’s all right. An X thread highlighting this article, right? Like make an SEO because like now on, I feel like a lot of social media platforms are turning more to just searches versus hashtags to find content, right? So make sure that it hits all the different search functions. Um, and then so now you’ve got your six tweets and then you can go schedule those and it becomes like a long thread. And at the link at the bottom it has like a link back to your website or your podcast or your blog or whatever the source material is. And it’s almost like you become your own sort of news source for a very, very niche topic. Right? And over time, you can monetize that and you don’t have to put your name on. You don’t have to put your name on it. So much of it is automated and set and forget. But we already know how to do this for clients. And so my big challenge in the last couple of years and I always encourage others, is like, think about what you do for your clients and try to do it for yourself as well. Do you know how to set things up for clients? So why aren’t we doing it for our niche? Weird things that we love. Talking about trying to create a little bit of money off of that because I think there’s so much opportunity. Again, everybody’s so niche. Um, you can find whatever you’re interested in. There is a world on the internet that is organized around that. Right? And so there’s so much opportunity, so much opportunity. But it just remains to be seen how all this is going to sort out, because there is this sort of got problems with AI number one, energy usage. Right. We’re California is a state where you have to beg people to turn off the air conditioners. And now we’re trying to electrify the fleets and our vehicles and like, can the grid actually handle this? And I take some more energy than anything. And so and then quantum computing haven’t talked about quantum computing. That’s on the Hill that’s coming up. Yeah. And that’s going to require a tremendous amount of energy. So no one I don’t Sacramento I think is starting to look at that. But I don’t think anyone it’s left out of the discussion way too much in my opinion is like the actual energy usage we’re going to have to. To fully maximize the potential of AI for society. We’re going to obviously have to solve the energy problem. Um, and then I would say the other issue of it is just the ethical use of it. Right. And every time you search for something or every time you ask it for something, it’s just pulling from what already exists. Let’s work. That’s time and effort and hours, especially when you talk about the art side of things. Right? Like it’s it didn’t just generate a painting for you out of nothing. It’s based on actual work. This is on the internet. So that’s also sort of an unfortunate piece of this is what’s going to happen to those folks, right? I know for a fact I am charging people less because of how much I’m able to use. I, I know for a fact that I’m not hiring as many freelancers and outsourcing as much. Right. And so you can imagine a firm. Well, first off, I think PR firms with 20 people are going away because like the days of I was on a conference call the other day with a traditional big PR firm, and they had six staff people on the PR on the call. Oh yeah. Of course. Only two talks, but all of them were charging their hourly time to that class anyway. Just insane that that’s so antiquated. They’re going to get pushed out of the market pretty quick if they keep doing it that way. But I do think there is going to be a conflation. There’s going to be a contracting in our world of not as many people are going to need to be hired. And so how do you sort that out? And or there could be a situation where every major firm or company now has an AI communications person, right? Who is like the wrangler of AI for the team. And they figure out the best programs and the best processes. I mean, like almost like a website manager. It’s now like the AI manager. So there could also be some jobs that come out of this too. So I don’t know, it’s the it’s the, the fear factor of are we training our replacements is I don’t I don’t know the answer to that. I sure hope not. Right. Or can I pivot away fast enough to something new that, you know, makes me I don’t know. And I think, you know, I’m trying to become a basket weaver on the weekends or whatever, you know? Well, that’s one of the we followed Gary Vee, but that’s one of his predictions. And I think it’s right where he’s saying that. Like we’re reaching this critical threshold with technology, where now you’re going to find more and more premium luxury niche experiences in real life. He was like he predicted, in five years, you’re going to be able to hire people to go on walks with you because we’re just going to start. I’m going to start that business right now. Right. Like if you know how to paint, you’re going to be, you know, there’s going to be real money to be made by hosting four or 5 or 6 people in your home, your community center, whatever. Now, of course, there’s privacy and safety issues to what we’re talking about. Like those I don’t how do you vet the person you’re going to go for a walk with to make sure you’re safe, but like, we’ll figure that out. But I think his point is, is like there is there is going to be a pendulum shift back to we will pay a premium to connect with each other in person because it’s all becoming zoom teams. Okay. You’re telling me the future of business is those small places? I think they’re typically in malls. I used to have a client of a client in this space, but, uh, it’ll be the business where it’s typically ladies get together and they drink wine and paint. Right? Isn’t that so? Yes, yes. Extrapolate that. Yeah. Across anything. Ten, 15 year old business. But now you’re saying like that’s the future is like, you know, people gather for curated high touch. Uh, experiential, uh, experience experiential experiences. That’s definitely the wrong I think that post. Well but I so I think it’s it’s going to be these fake AI influencers that become characters that people attach to. Right. And so then that avatar becomes an asset, just like anything else that you can leverage in a million ways. It’s going to be the hand-to-hand IRL, you know, real touch points. And I think the third one that I is going to probably produce is, um, and this is also want to give it to Gary Vee, too. He called this a few years ago, and I’m already starting to see it, where, um, everyone can become their own reality show. So I think if you’re a hairstylist to a salon and you just set up a little cam and all you do is and it’s like Truman Show, it’s just playing all day and people get to watch you do your consultations and the before and afters and the makeovers and stuff. And they also get to hear you gossip and talk trash about whatever’s going on. And I’m already seeing that, like, that’s already happening. And there’s already a few, um, there’s one guy that I love. He builds like cabins in the woods in the middle of nowhere, And it’s so I don’t know. There must be like an ASMR component to it, but it’s so relaxing and soothing and he’s explaining what he’s doing. And so you’re learning a little bit, but like he doesn’t have a show on HGTV, he just has a little webcam set up. And there’s a million ways to, to to monetize that potential books potential. Right. Like you could just go off on that. So I think that’ll also be a third way that people can make money. And that’s using technology and leveraging AI to be able to get it out to the masses and find your people that are interested in that.
Scott: Yeah, I love it, I love it, I love it. Well, we’ve my so many subjects, we’re gonna have to we’re gonna have to put a pin in this, um, because we’ll save some stuff for future conversations and, you know, episodes, because it’s been a lot of fun. So, uh, thank you for joining me for a 10th anniversary mk TNG, uh, podcast. Thank you, first of all, for being a part of our team. It’s just
Laura: thank you for having me on the team.
Scott: Yes. Thank you. Yeah. I mean, it’s a pleasure to know you. And, uh, we did we did try, uh, for many years for opportunities to work together. I’m so happy you found a place for you here. And I love to work together. And I value your expertise and all the things you’ve shared. Here is what gets baked into the work that we do with our clients. It’s, uh. It’s a pleasure for for me, and I think for our team to work with you and to deliver, you know, our, our, our, our tagline at MKTNG is for brands who care. And we like working with, uh, companies that have a purpose, right? Whether they’re trying to make infrastructure bigger, better, faster, stronger or they’re trauma informed, you know, community organizations trying to deliver, you know, care in a their services in a in a compassionate way that serves, uh, their clients. I think you have a unique perspective to how to help those organizations communicate better. So, uh, anyway, thank you again for for joining joining me and for bringing this great perspective you have to our organization to our clients.
Laura: Awesome, awesome. Let’s keep it going. Thanks.
Scott: We will. All right. Thanks.
