Speaker 1: You're listening to Math and Magic, a production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. It was probably one of the smartest marketing
Speaker 1: deals I ever did, because for ten thousand dollars, we
Speaker 1: were on every coffee cup in the hand. I heard
Speaker 1: the publisher of the New York Times at that moment
Speaker 1: was screaming about the Internet and what are we gonna
Speaker 1: do with it? And somebody pointed out he was holding
Speaker 1: a sidewalk dot Com coffee telephoni hand. I'm Bob Pittman,
Speaker 1: and welcome to Math and Magic. On each episode, I
Speaker 1: chat with someone I truly admire to explore their stories
Speaker 1: from the frontiers and marketing. I've got Gail Troupe Woman
Speaker 1: here with me. Gail is the CMO of My Heart.
Speaker 1: So we know each other very well and have about
Speaker 1: to be better and we've gone through some you know,
Speaker 1: trials and tribulations and battles and were in a foxholes
Speaker 1: and all of that. But on our show we talk
Speaker 1: about math and magic. This is about people who are
Speaker 1: mathematicians or magicians. Gail is one of those magicians. She's
Speaker 1: comfortable with math and she does know what two plus
Speaker 1: two is, can rock excel when needed. But we always
Speaker 1: start our episodes with a feature we called you in
Speaker 1: sixty seconds, will jump in if you don't mind. Do
Speaker 1: you prefer pancakes or waffles? I wish either, but keto
Speaker 1: these days, so neither Rhode Island or New York Ocean
Speaker 1: Stayed all the Way Samantha or Darren Stevens of The Witch,
Speaker 1: of course, Darren Stevens, who oddly influenced my life and
Speaker 1: decision to become a copywriter at an early age. Sunrise
Speaker 1: or sunsets. Sunsets definitely sleep in East Coast or West Coast. Lately,
Speaker 1: I'm kind of buy everything, so hard to choose, but
Speaker 1: so pick one. I guess at the moment. L a
Speaker 1: lightning or thunder thunder power sound all the way? Sweet
Speaker 1: are salty? Salty and currency Madonna or Share I've learned
Speaker 1: in life you never choose between Diva's so I love
Speaker 1: them both. We'll put him out a tie. It's about
Speaker 1: to get harder here. Secret talent want. I think my
Speaker 1: talent would be curating people. Childhood hero Jim Henson Muppets
Speaker 1: all in. First job is He's kosher catering historical idol
Speaker 1: Gloria Steinem Worst fashion trend you've participated in the bi
Speaker 1: level haircut with half a shaved head in the eighties
Speaker 1: has to be my biggest mistake. What's your favorite ice
Speaker 1: cream flavor? Pistachio? And our final question in the Lightning
Speaker 1: Realm so appropriate for us best live concert r E M.
Speaker 1: A bunch of years ago, we were supposed to see
Speaker 1: them in Seattle and my highly responsible wife oddly lost
Speaker 1: the tickets and I tortured her every time I heard
Speaker 1: an r EM song for several years. So we could
Speaker 1: have seen them, but we didn't. And so years later
Speaker 1: she surprised me with front row center seats at an
Speaker 1: r M show in Chicago and it was just magic
Speaker 1: and Michael Stipe after every song handed me the lyrics
Speaker 1: and it was just a crazy, fun, unexpected magic knight
Speaker 1: of music. That is magic. So tell me, and tell
Speaker 1: all of us, how on earth someone from Rhode Island
Speaker 1: you say that with disdain and that's I'm from Mississippi.
Speaker 1: There's no thing. We're all small steaks, steaks otherwise known
Speaker 1: as crime Town. Yeah right, tell us a little bit
Speaker 1: about how you got your mojo with marketing. I mean,
Speaker 1: how did you decide I'm a marketer? And when did
Speaker 1: you decide that's my calling in life. Fascinating. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure I ever decided to be a marketer. Most of
Speaker 1: my career, you know, I always refer to it as
Speaker 1: effective stumbling. I've always sort of followed passions and ideas
Speaker 1: and things that make sense without overthinking them. I'm not
Speaker 1: a big planner, and you know, in ten years I
Speaker 1: must get to hear and these are the steps that
Speaker 1: lead me there. Sometimes I've answered that question with the
Speaker 1: inspiration being Bewitched being my favorite show as a kid,
Speaker 1: and I was like, Wow, these guys get paid to
Speaker 1: sit around and make up crazy ideas and then go
Speaker 1: pitch them to people. And no matter what job I've had,
Speaker 1: and I've been on pretty much every side of the
Speaker 1: marketing table, I an agency, media company, creative in every job,
Speaker 1: I've realized, like, you kind of follow great people and
Speaker 1: where your passion seems to be, and you'll find your
Speaker 1: way to adding some value being of use. And somehow
Speaker 1: that always kept pulling me back in and around content
Speaker 1: and marketing. So when did you say I'm a marketer?
Speaker 1: I mean, there has to be a moment in your
Speaker 1: career when you say, okay, this is that I'm a marketer.
Speaker 1: It's funny. I started a big ad agency wanting to
Speaker 1: be a copywriter, right my bewitched vision of like these
Speaker 1: great offices and you know, sitting around with their feet
Speaker 1: up in a cocktail and making up sentences and you
Speaker 1: have a beer here today I do. It's a it's
Speaker 1: a bourbon. Actually, yeah. Friendly. So I took a job
Speaker 1: at a big agency. First place they put me was
Speaker 1: in PR instead of creative, and they said, oh, will
Speaker 1: move you around. Every month or two, we'll move you
Speaker 1: to a new area. You'll find the right group, they'll
Speaker 1: promote you, and you'll be a copywriter. And in thirty
Speaker 1: days I got promoted before I have removed and I
Speaker 1: became a PR person. And you know, I still look
Speaker 1: back at the early years and PR and go. Now
Speaker 1: we call it earned media, but when you have to
Speaker 1: earn it, you really learned the difference quickly between a
Speaker 1: good idea or a good pitch and a bad pitch.
Speaker 1: When you have to get on the phone and actually
Speaker 1: talk to another human and try to pitch them an
Speaker 1: idea cold, which was a lot of what PR was
Speaker 1: back in the day, you really quickly learned if you
Speaker 1: were wasting people's time, if you had something worth hearing
Speaker 1: and how to get to it in a minute. I
Speaker 1: still look back at all those PR years of really
Speaker 1: earning the ideas and earning the press and the coverage
Speaker 1: is still a lot of what we have to do
Speaker 1: as marketers today. But I don't think I really became
Speaker 1: a marketer, would declare myself one, until I got to Microsoft,
Speaker 1: and then I started marketing early Internet properties at Microsoft,
Speaker 1: you know, Sidewalk, car Point, Expedia, Home Advisor, and then
Speaker 1: I was like, oh my god, I'm doing this thing
Speaker 1: called marketing on this thing called the Internet that no
Speaker 1: one's ever done before. And it was just a fun,
Speaker 1: giant playground of new and learning. So all those lessons
Speaker 1: you learned slugging it out trying to get free media PR,
Speaker 1: what did you apply when you went to Microsoft? You know,
Speaker 1: you were in the wild wild West. At that moment,
Speaker 1: people sort of forget that nobody believed they needed to
Speaker 1: be on the Internet. The big sales pitch was not
Speaker 1: how are you gonna be on the internet? Shot you
Speaker 1: need to be on the Internet. I'm not sure I
Speaker 1: need to be on the Internet. It's hard to imagine now,
Speaker 1: but that was the challenge, right, like getting marketers to
Speaker 1: believe the Internet mattered way back when was job one,
Speaker 1: back in the early AD days. So what did you
Speaker 1: bring to it from your from the PR days? You
Speaker 1: learned the idea of the possible. Right, anything was possible,
Speaker 1: and Microsoft was sort of a place to like test
Speaker 1: that exponentially. Right, whatever it was, you could see it,
Speaker 1: there was a way to find somebody who could connect
Speaker 1: you to it, someone who knew someone. There was a
Speaker 1: way to pitch it. There was a way to get
Speaker 1: somebody to write something about a product. And it might
Speaker 1: take ten tries to find a pitch that worked, but
Speaker 1: when you did, it was possible. One of my favorite
Speaker 1: stories about early Microsoft marketing was we were launching the
Speaker 1: city guide called Sidewalk and Arc was one of our
Speaker 1: first markets, and we were trying to be of the
Speaker 1: city relevant local but we had like ten ten tiny
Speaker 1: marketing budgets, so we weren't going to go by giant
Speaker 1: ads or do TV. And so we're like, what's iconic
Speaker 1: to New York And at the time it was those
Speaker 1: coffee cups and delis. It's pre Starbucks, right, there were
Speaker 1: coffee cups with the Greek you know, with the urn,
Speaker 1: those coffee cups, were like, you know what if we
Speaker 1: could get on those coffee cups. And so we found
Speaker 1: the dude who distributes the coffee cups and he's in
Speaker 1: like a warehouse in Queens and we said, what would
Speaker 1: it cost, will pay to print the cups. We just
Speaker 1: want to put sidewalk dot Com on them. And again,
Speaker 1: none of these things have been done before. It sounds
Speaker 1: normal now, and he was like, what do you mean
Speaker 1: you're gonna print the cops about We negotiated with the
Speaker 1: dude and it turned out he wanted ten thousand dollars
Speaker 1: in cash and for a week we would own every
Speaker 1: coffee cup. If we gave him ten thousand dollars in cash,
Speaker 1: we'd print them and it would say sidewalk dot com
Speaker 1: instead of the Urn. And it was probably one of
Speaker 1: the smartest marketing deals I ever did, because for ten
Speaker 1: thousand dollars we were on every coffee cup in the hand.
Speaker 1: I heard the publisher of the New York Times at
Speaker 1: that moment was screaming about the Internet and what are
Speaker 1: we going to do with it? And somebody pointed out
Speaker 1: he was holding a sidewalk dot com coffee in his
Speaker 1: sand Do you have one of those you know, I
Speaker 1: do somewhere in a box, somewhere in a garage. So
Speaker 1: at Microsoft it was the wild wild West. Now was
Speaker 1: at a o L at the time. We were sort
Speaker 1: of the Facebook Google at the moment, and it was
Speaker 1: sort of the battle of the giants at the moment.
Speaker 1: What did you learn from that experience that you think
Speaker 1: people missed today? I think it goes to the premise
Speaker 1: of the show, right, where's the balance between math and magic? Right?
Speaker 1: Too much of one and you're gonna do some crazy
Speaker 1: idea that won't catch and might win an award, but
Speaker 1: it isn't going to move a lot of product. I
Speaker 1: remember the days when I started running advertising at Microsoft,
Speaker 1: and the creative presentation would be three hours and the
Speaker 1: media people would be lucky to get fifteen minutes. At
Speaker 1: the end when we ran over, it might get rescheduled.
Speaker 1: And then slowly through this last decade, the media people
Speaker 1: would start and they'd get three hours and the creatives
Speaker 1: would be lucky to get fifteen or twenty minutes to
Speaker 1: present the entire campaign idea that was going to go
Speaker 1: into the math. Microsoft was such an engineering, math driven culture,
Speaker 1: and I tend to be more of an idea first
Speaker 1: creative person and then let's look at the math and
Speaker 1: support it and learn quickly. So learning to balance the two.
Speaker 1: The early Internet was all about that, Oh my god,
Speaker 1: we have data right now, we're running ads or people
Speaker 1: going to sidewalk dot com. Are they not? It was
Speaker 1: traffic up exponentially the week we put the coffee cups
Speaker 1: in market. It was if it wasn't, we would know.
Speaker 1: And we've never had that real time access to data.
Speaker 1: I think at some point in recent years probably the
Speaker 1: pendulum is swung too far back and we're looking at
Speaker 1: math without context for whether those numbers really mean things.
Speaker 1: Are they real people or they boughts or clicks that
Speaker 1: go nowhere? Are they humans who are embracing your message
Speaker 1: and buying your products? So if you look at it today,
Speaker 1: we do business with a lot of great marketers. The
Speaker 1: thrill of our job as we actually get to stick
Speaker 1: our nose and everybody else's mark eating business. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: never gets boring talking about math and magic, talking about
Speaker 1: these early lessons, What fundamental do you think is missing?
Speaker 1: Who is the arbiter of the math and the magic? Right?
Speaker 1: There's so few people you have a great sense of both.
Speaker 1: Most people tend to excel in one and are a
Speaker 1: little more deficient in the other. But how do you
Speaker 1: balance the two, and how do you find that rare
Speaker 1: unicorn who can balance the math and the magic. I'm
Speaker 1: also a huge believer in teams. Teams who can push
Speaker 1: each other and do a little Batman Robin and you know,
Speaker 1: can actually balance math and magic. I don't think most
Speaker 1: management structures are set up for teams very well. But
Speaker 1: I think that if we're going to find that good balance,
Speaker 1: we're going to have to get better at teamwork and collaboration.
Speaker 1: So let me jump back a little bit. When you
Speaker 1: were starting out. There's a story about you and some diamonds,
Speaker 1: and you tell us the story my very very very
Speaker 1: first job before I got promoted in PR, they put
Speaker 1: me answering phones and I'm at a giant at agency
Speaker 1: Ware that had the of Beer's business. You know, they
Speaker 1: are the main people who created the diamond Is Forever line.
Speaker 1: I was sitting there and I'm making like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: like thirteen thousand dollars a year and wondering if I
Speaker 1: should ask my parents for money to pay my phone
Speaker 1: bill again. And and there are these crazy power women
Speaker 1: and they were brilliant, and they lived in a world
Speaker 1: I've never even seen. Right. They were like people who
Speaker 1: could pick up the phone and change the cover of
Speaker 1: Vogue tomorrow. They were like you out there the desk,
Speaker 1: you here, here, you you, yeah, you take this, take
Speaker 1: this piece of jewelry. And they throw like some necklace
Speaker 1: at me and they'd go, this needs to get over
Speaker 1: to Harper's in an hour and ensure it for three
Speaker 1: million dollars, and I'd be like afraid to touch it.
Speaker 1: I am like Lena dunhaman girls, and I'm living in
Speaker 1: designing women in the eighties, full of shoulder pads and diamonds,
Speaker 1: and it was entertaining and fascinating. And when you watched
Speaker 1: what they really did and how power got brokered, it
Speaker 1: was unbelievable. Learning that I probably only sat there for
Speaker 1: about two we before they realized I wasn't the the
Speaker 1: bearest person. But yeah, I got di'mon safely to Harper's.
Speaker 1: And you know, I never lost anything worth millions of dollars.
Speaker 1: So so let's go back to Rhode Island, going even
Speaker 1: further back. What is it in your nature nurture? What
Speaker 1: is it in you that has made you this great marketer.
Speaker 1: I was an adopted only child growing up in suburban
Speaker 1: Rhode Island. You know, they're sort of pros and cons
Speaker 1: of that, right, I got lots of attention and time
Speaker 1: with adults pretty early on I was a little kid.
Speaker 1: I learned the power of conversation, the power of having
Speaker 1: something to say, sitting at the table with grown ups,
Speaker 1: being able to banter and listen. And you know, most
Speaker 1: of my jobs here at my heart, I spend a
Speaker 1: good amount of my life, you know, pitching ideas. So
Speaker 1: I learned to listen and understand where people were at
Speaker 1: their priorities, their mood, their nuances, and find my way
Speaker 1: into those adult conversations. And that's what we're all doing.
Speaker 1: Creating the ideas sometimes times is easier than pitching and
Speaker 1: selling and finding your way into the right conversation with
Speaker 1: the right people at the right moment where something actually
Speaker 1: will land. So you're known here as a great writer.
Speaker 1: Were you always a great writer? Yeah? I think I've
Speaker 1: always probably instinctively been drawn to words. Um horrific artist.
Speaker 1: I can't draw at all. Um my math is is okay,
Speaker 1: but words always fascinated me. And you know, like I said, conversation.
Speaker 1: I grew up in a family of people who talked,
Speaker 1: and that's how things were communicated. It was all out
Speaker 1: in the open, good or bad. It was always said.
Speaker 1: It's funny I married someone who grew up in a
Speaker 1: family where it was never said, and you had to infer. So,
Speaker 1: you know, I've always seen words as the way to accomplish,
Speaker 1: the way to get hurt, the way to relate to people,
Speaker 1: the way to get what you wanted in life. And
Speaker 1: I think great writing comes from great conversation. Moral math
Speaker 1: and magic. Right after this quick break, welcome back to
Speaker 1: math and Magic. We're here with Gail Troberman. So we're
Speaker 1: back to the present. Yes, you talk a lot about culture, brands,
Speaker 1: products and culture. Give us a little your view on
Speaker 1: that and enlighten us. You know, there's a product and
Speaker 1: that's the thing, and it does whatever it does, it
Speaker 1: has a function, and then there's brands, and brands are
Speaker 1: things you have emotional attachments to. Why am I drinking
Speaker 1: this bourbon and not another one? You know, you like
Speaker 1: to say rationally that I like it because it's the
Speaker 1: taste and it's you know, made this way and filtered
Speaker 1: this way and age this way. But the reality is
Speaker 1: I love the packaging, you know, I'm drawn to the
Speaker 1: idea behind this brand. It feels right to me. Branding
Speaker 1: done well is when a brand really knows who they are.
Speaker 1: And Microsoft I had so many great opportunities to inherit
Speaker 1: insanely powerful brands right like Windows. The world's businesses run
Speaker 1: on a thing called windows or office and the role
Speaker 1: they play in the world in society, it's insane, right,
Speaker 1: And then you know you have to go market at
Speaker 1: and there's just certain things that might be the coolest,
Speaker 1: most kick ass crazy idea ever. But Windows shouldn't do it.
Speaker 1: I remember once seeing one of the global teams. You
Speaker 1: never quite knew what would happen when you gave the
Speaker 1: briefs and the money out around the world. And in
Speaker 1: one country we were launching Windows seven at the time,
Speaker 1: and it was just such a bad idea somebody had
Speaker 1: decided to execute for a brand with the gravitas of Windows.
Speaker 1: It was the it was the Windows seven whopper, and
Speaker 1: it was seven patties, and it made national news here
Speaker 1: in the States because it was just such an insanely
Speaker 1: wrong idea for a brand like Windows. But there were
Speaker 1: brands like Xbox or being that could do crazy stunts
Speaker 1: and things because they were new brands or they were
Speaker 1: grounded in entertainment and fun. And I think it's like humans.
Speaker 1: You know, there's places where I can show up and
Speaker 1: you know, Gaale belongs and I'm comfortable and I'm going
Speaker 1: to have a great time. And then there's places where
Speaker 1: I might get invited, but maybe I shouldn't be there,
Speaker 1: or if from there, maybe I should adapt my behavior
Speaker 1: to the norms and modes of this place. And so
Speaker 1: building a great brand means being honest about who you are,
Speaker 1: getting mad and then finding the partners. We say at
Speaker 1: all the time at my heart, right, we have these
Speaker 1: shows with these great friendships and relationships with millions and
Speaker 1: millions of consumers. A brand can pop in and be
Speaker 1: a guest, but they can't really take over that relationship.
Speaker 1: And some brands fit naturally, and some maybe it's a
Speaker 1: little more awkward when they show up in a studio
Speaker 1: or on air live, and maybe they're better in a
Speaker 1: rehearsed or recorded setting. Going to your point about knowing
Speaker 1: who you are, Graydon Carter did a fantastic job editing
Speaker 1: Vanity Fair. He had this sort of uncanny ability to
Speaker 1: say that belongs in Vanity Fair and that doesn't. And
Speaker 1: if you said why, I looked at I can't understand why,
Speaker 1: but he's right. It sort of makes Vanity Fair feel
Speaker 1: like Vanity is a great keeper of the vision. Who
Speaker 1: is the keeper of the vision for these brands and
Speaker 1: who should it be to sort of say it's staying
Speaker 1: appropriate for the culture that you're not doing that when
Speaker 1: those seven whopper Yeah, exactly. It's a really good question
Speaker 1: because I think a lot of how the marketing ecosystem
Speaker 1: has changed. You know, if you look back, a diamond
Speaker 1: is forever right two Beers, you know that tagline. I
Speaker 1: actually had the joyous task one day of taking the
Speaker 1: woman who wrote it to the hair salon. She was
Speaker 1: ninety at the time. And that line endured for so
Speaker 1: long because there were keepers of the line right. There
Speaker 1: was an agency that had been on that business for decades.
Speaker 1: There were people who had worked on that business for decades.
Speaker 1: There were clients who had been at Two Beers for
Speaker 1: decades and and had learned it, and it had been
Speaker 1: passed down like a legacy to the next generation of
Speaker 1: keepers of today's ecosystem, jobs are much more transient and
Speaker 1: marketing we all bounce around much faster. Agency relationships are
Speaker 1: not the marriages they used to be. They're more kind
Speaker 1: of flirtations and flings, and you know, without that, it's
Speaker 1: very easy to look away, get distracted and start trying
Speaker 1: to build an identity, be based on who you want
Speaker 1: to be and maybe not as grounded in the truth
Speaker 1: of who you are. I've had the luxury of working
Speaker 1: with some of the greatest creatives in the industry, and
Speaker 1: and one of the things that I think external agencies
Speaker 1: bring that clients sometimes are going to have a harder
Speaker 1: time is truth. A great agency will show up and
Speaker 1: tell you the things you don't want to hear, and
Speaker 1: keep you honest to who you are and how you
Speaker 1: can show up in the world. All the best relationships
Speaker 1: at Microsoft that we had, they were highly collaborative and
Speaker 1: highly contentious, but the trust and love and respect was
Speaker 1: always there for what we each had to get done. Well.
Speaker 1: Many of my closest friends are still from those errors
Speaker 1: of screaming at each other at midnight about taglines or
Speaker 1: you and I agree on this, and I don't think
Speaker 1: everybody does speak the truth, And no matter how tough
Speaker 1: it is, we'll have a fight we'll have an argument,
Speaker 1: but we're in search of winning, not in search of you.
Speaker 1: Give me a little of something you don't think right now,
Speaker 1: give you a little something I think it's not right,
Speaker 1: and we'll wind up with a crappy That is true
Speaker 1: of the things we fight about. It is never that
Speaker 1: get it right. I don't need to be right right.
Speaker 1: So in an organization, big organization, we're twelve thousand people.
Speaker 1: You've worked in Microsoft was much larger than that. I've
Speaker 1: worked in bigger ones and smaller ones. How does an
Speaker 1: organization build that capability to let someone say that's not us, No,
Speaker 1: not a whopper. So much comes I think from leadership
Speaker 1: and culture. Microsoft just spent sixteen years there, and I
Speaker 1: got there early, early on in my career, so I
Speaker 1: look at that as where I really grew up as
Speaker 1: a marketer. There were good years and bad years. There
Speaker 1: were great projects, there were massive failures. But the one
Speaker 1: thing about that culture that was always true was there
Speaker 1: was a huge appetite for truth and honesty. And I
Speaker 1: remember the first email I ever got from Bill Gates
Speaker 1: when we launched Sidewalk, and we're like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: look at the numbers. Week one Seattle sidewalk, you know,
Speaker 1: and he was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's great. What
Speaker 1: isn't working? And it was like this light bulb moment
Speaker 1: for me. And I think culture has to be set
Speaker 1: by leaders in an organization. And if you see the
Speaker 1: people above you speaking truth, accepting blame, being accountable, and
Speaker 1: they create a culture where there's not punishment or penalty
Speaker 1: for being wrong, there's embracing and learning fast and rewarding
Speaker 1: those behaviors. That was definitely the culture of Bill and
Speaker 1: Steve and the early Microsoft team. So that's definitely my mode.
Speaker 1: I hope I instill that in others. It's not always easy.
Speaker 1: It's hard for all of us as humans to admit
Speaker 1: when we're wrong and take accountability and blame. But I
Speaker 1: do think that tends to be on brand for me.
Speaker 1: What advice would you have for someone who's in an
Speaker 1: organization and wants to speak the truth, wants to say
Speaker 1: they made a mistake, but they know the organization is
Speaker 1: going to kill them reject for it. How should they
Speaker 1: handle it in that organization? Sort Of, all the best
Speaker 1: moves in my career, and probably where I've accomplished the
Speaker 1: best work has always been when I'm working with or
Speaker 1: four people. I really try. So my first piece of
Speaker 1: advice to people would be find the person that you
Speaker 1: do trust and ask them for advice or tell them
Speaker 1: what's going on and see if they can't help you.
Speaker 1: Maybe if your manager isn't that person. Having mentors and
Speaker 1: sort of trusted advisors or you know, confidants, it's so
Speaker 1: important tell them, get advice and try to find your way,
Speaker 1: and if that's not where you're working, go find another job.
Speaker 1: There's a million of them, you know. As I talked
Speaker 1: to and I mentor young people in the industry, I
Speaker 1: thought it was bad when I was doing my crappy
Speaker 1: job and I was hating my life messengering diamonds around,
Speaker 1: going what have I done? Why did I do all
Speaker 1: this work in college to do this? And I go
Speaker 1: out and have a bourbon with my friends and laugh
Speaker 1: about it and get up and do it again. Now,
Speaker 1: the pressure on people in the workforce and your first
Speaker 1: jobs is instead of going out and admitting that you've
Speaker 1: got a crappy entry level job and you're gonna learn
Speaker 1: your way through it and laugh about it and move on,
Speaker 1: you have to go instagram your great job and all
Speaker 1: the amazing things that are happening and put on this
Speaker 1: other face of success when you really haven't found it yet.
Speaker 1: So you have a great idea in a company we
Speaker 1: talk about internally that you know, what really makes the
Speaker 1: difference here is an epiphany or an insight. The rest
Speaker 1: of it's just we're making the trains run. But what
Speaker 1: really makes the company great and gives us a win
Speaker 1: is I got it. Everybody's got one of those. I
Speaker 1: don't care who they are in this company. One day
Speaker 1: they wake up and go, I've got it. How do
Speaker 1: you take that idea and share it with someone in
Speaker 1: a way that can be heard and they can make
Speaker 1: a difference. It's going to really vary, depending probably on
Speaker 1: the company, the culture, the kind of position you're in.
Speaker 1: But my experience, and you know, one of the luxuries
Speaker 1: of this job is right, we get to work with
Speaker 1: a lot of the great cmos and CEOs and industry
Speaker 1: after industry, medium business, giant, corporation. I'm sure if whatever
Speaker 1: person in this company had their epiphany moment and sent
Speaker 1: you an email, I suspect nothing bad would come of
Speaker 1: that for someone. Whether your idea gets dismissed or embraced,
Speaker 1: or they agree, or they don't agree. I think every
Speaker 1: great leader would love a person in the company with
Speaker 1: the guts to stand up and say, hey, I had
Speaker 1: a great idea. Shoot an email over and I don't
Speaker 1: think it'll hurt you. I think it will only get
Speaker 1: you noticed. Should they blast it out or should they
Speaker 1: tell only their supervisor? Oh, it definitely depends on the
Speaker 1: culture in a company. But I'd say, if you really
Speaker 1: think you have a great idea, go up a level
Speaker 1: or two, or four or five. And I think a
Speaker 1: lot of times people in the C suite are actually
Speaker 1: a little more removed from new ideas and thinking, and
Speaker 1: they're working with that sort of same leadership team all
Speaker 1: the time. So I take the leap. I don't think
Speaker 1: anyone's ever gotten fired for one email with a good idea.
Speaker 1: Just make sure it's a good idea and you've done
Speaker 1: your homework on it. We've talked a little bit about
Speaker 1: the women and the advertising business earlier in your career.
Speaker 1: Are very powerful women. What powerful woman did you see
Speaker 1: that maybe was your role model or set a tone
Speaker 1: that today you're trying to emulate for all the women
Speaker 1: who look up to you and say that's my role model.
Speaker 1: I've had the luxury, you know. And I, as a woman,
Speaker 1: you know, of my increasing years to have worked for
Speaker 1: a lot of badass women in my in my day, Um,
Speaker 1: I've actually been really fortunate. You know. At Microsoft, I
Speaker 1: worked for a couple of really astounding women. But there's
Speaker 1: one person. There's really only one person I think in
Speaker 1: my career that I really called a mentor. And we
Speaker 1: worked together very briefly at Microsoft, and she was sort
Speaker 1: of running the New York sidewalk business at the time.
Speaker 1: Her name was Chella Irvine, and she's just just genius.
Speaker 1: I was such a creative person and she was just
Speaker 1: such Everything to her was so logical and concise and planned.
Speaker 1: And she was that person through my career who was
Speaker 1: always able to look me in the eye and be
Speaker 1: I took a job once and I don't think she
Speaker 1: approved very much of the decision. I already made it,
Speaker 1: and she just said to me, you know, that sounds
Speaker 1: meaty and prestigious, and you know it sounded good on paper.
Speaker 1: It was brutal. But my advice to people as always
Speaker 1: find that person who thinks like you. Don't. It's really
Speaker 1: easy to surround yourself with people who have skills like you,
Speaker 1: who have your same sense of humor, who see the
Speaker 1: world the way you do, and they're part of your tribe.
Speaker 1: And that's easy. The people who make you better are
Speaker 1: the people who are just so different and you look
Speaker 1: at them and you go wow, I never in a
Speaker 1: million years would have thought that or said that. And
Speaker 1: if you collaborate with them, you really learn. And and and
Speaker 1: she challenged me through my career. Quite. I want to
Speaker 1: give you a compliment because I work with you a lot,
Speaker 1: is that you do pick up things from people and
Speaker 1: I see you somebody has a great idea and you go, wow,
Speaker 1: got it? Yeah, exactly, it's the idea I can't touch it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if the ideas have to all come from me, were
Speaker 1: in trouble. It's the ability to spot them that makes
Speaker 1: great marketers. It's a great talent. So you went to
Speaker 1: this job that turned out not to be so media
Speaker 1: and wonderful. What sort of the worst failure? That miserable moment?
Speaker 1: And how did you get out of it? Miserable days?
Speaker 1: And microsoft everything felt just like life or death. It's
Speaker 1: a beautiful intensity around that you would spend months and
Speaker 1: months and months on, you know, an idea or a
Speaker 1: camp pine or strategy. At one point, we had been
Speaker 1: working for two years, two whole years, trying to convince
Speaker 1: the leadership at the moment in Microsoft Corporation that we
Speaker 1: needed to change the logo. It was the entire word
Speaker 1: Microsoft with that little niche in the M, and we
Speaker 1: were in a mobile error and it didn't fit. Somebody
Speaker 1: had just decided once to cut the M off and
Speaker 1: that was becoming what Microsoft around the world was as
Speaker 1: a brand. And we're like, we need a mark, and
Speaker 1: then we need an identity system, and we need to
Speaker 1: rethink visually who we are as a brand in this
Speaker 1: visual error. The first year, we just came in with
Speaker 1: the idea and we got thrown out of Steve Palmer's office.
Speaker 1: The next year, we did all the research, we did
Speaker 1: the brand identity company. We did. It was probably eighteen
Speaker 1: months of like really crazy amount of work, and we
Speaker 1: went in and the same thing. He kind of threw
Speaker 1: me out of his office and he was like, I'm
Speaker 1: not changing every sign and every business card, and and
Speaker 1: it just seemed like this enormous like undertaking. It's funny
Speaker 1: because part of the end of that story is a
Speaker 1: little bit of how I landed here with you was
Speaker 1: you were like, I think I'm gonna change then him
Speaker 1: of the company, and I was like, that's a little odd.
Speaker 1: I heart media. I don't know, and we wrestled through
Speaker 1: the pros and cons and then you said something like yeah,
Speaker 1: we're gonna do it, and we're gonna do it in
Speaker 1: like six weeks. You want to help. Changing everything felt impossible,
Speaker 1: and yet when you broke it down, it was a
Speaker 1: series of It might have been a hundred page spreadsheet,
Speaker 1: but you were like, there's just a series of places
Speaker 1: the brand appears, what does it cost? Do it, don't
Speaker 1: do it? Change it, pain over it. But the key
Speaker 1: learning for me there is continuing to see the possibility
Speaker 1: and continuing to fight even when you lose, because that
Speaker 1: still was the right idea and eventually it wasn't me.
Speaker 1: Someone else got the leadership of the company to make
Speaker 1: the right decision to make that change. So you know
Speaker 1: you're gonna win, someone lose some but the right idea
Speaker 1: and the right moment is the key. You work through
Speaker 1: some ad agencies. You worked at Microsoft, you worked around that.
Speaker 1: There's always somebody somewhere in your career that just wants
Speaker 1: to get you, and you're not being paranoid. They really
Speaker 1: do want to get it. It does happen. Did you
Speaker 1: ever have one of those? And how did you handle it?
Speaker 1: I have had them. Sometimes I've handled it well. Sometimes
Speaker 1: I haven't. You know. I always said, if I were
Speaker 1: going to write a business book, the topic I would
Speaker 1: cover is misread intentions and the thing I've learned about
Speaker 1: myself and the thing I've probably armed my assassins with
Speaker 1: on my not best days, and sometimes I've restrained myself
Speaker 1: and been more methodical about how to manage my interactions
Speaker 1: with the people who they just don't get. You. You know,
Speaker 1: we had some horrific offsite once on some team that
Speaker 1: just wasn't jelling. And I'll tell you it was the
Speaker 1: smartest group of humans I've ever worked with by far.
Speaker 1: Everyone on that team was just a genius, but we
Speaker 1: just didn't collaborate well. We all saw things from these
Speaker 1: different perspectives, and we were in functional areas which exacerbated
Speaker 1: our different way of thinking creative media research PR. And
Speaker 1: we had some offsite. And my boss at the time,
Speaker 1: who I am still very good friends have basically said
Speaker 1: I'm going to in the next two days at this
Speaker 1: lodge up in the Northwest. You're either going to work
Speaker 1: your ship out or I'm going to fire all of you.
Speaker 1: Here's your moderator go crazy. And it was brutal, and
Speaker 1: we had to really be honest with each other about
Speaker 1: how I thought about you, where my perceptions came from.
Speaker 1: And oh my god, hearing people who really disliked you,
Speaker 1: like deep rooted hate sometimes for you, who you've been
Speaker 1: working with for years, and you knew you didn't groove,
Speaker 1: but you were like wow. There were tears and there
Speaker 1: was yelling, and it was really a pivotal thing that
Speaker 1: I learned that the biggest mistake people tend to make
Speaker 1: about me in my career is I think fast. I
Speaker 1: talk fast. I oh that idea, that idea. I'm not
Speaker 1: always good at explaining how I got there or why
Speaker 1: I feel that way. I'm pretty good at pivoting when
Speaker 1: somebody convinces me otherwise, like no, wait, you're right, that's
Speaker 1: a different data point, a different way of seeing it,
Speaker 1: and okay, let's do that. You know, I'm not attached
Speaker 1: to ideas, But every time I have one of those
Speaker 1: assassins who's coming at me, they tend not to understand
Speaker 1: what drives me or my intentions and they're misreading them.
Speaker 1: Is a needing to be right or trample over, and
Speaker 1: sometimes you just have to go back into their office
Speaker 1: and remind each other that we're motivated in different ways,
Speaker 1: but it's not personal, it's work and share bourbon. Yes,
Speaker 1: So the world has changed a lot since you started
Speaker 1: carrying a bag of diamonds around social Now we've still
Speaker 1: got television, it's changed somewhat. We've got radio, but instead
Speaker 1: of being just broadcast, it's over all these platforms. So
Speaker 1: we've got podcast today, prints still here. How do you
Speaker 1: make it all work today? How do you think about
Speaker 1: that media mixed in the digital error. I think we've
Speaker 1: all become so enamored of the new neck shiny and
Speaker 1: I love being on the leading edge. I love trying
Speaker 1: things first. And part of why we go into marketing
Speaker 1: is not to do the same thing over and over,
Speaker 1: but to learn. So testing and learning in these new
Speaker 1: spaces as they come up, and learning this snap and
Speaker 1: pin in post and tweet and whatever the next flavor
Speaker 1: of things is is important. But one of the things,
Speaker 1: and I learned it in Microsoft. I learned the power
Speaker 1: of broadcast media, which I started in digital, and I
Speaker 1: really learned the power of scale. That's something I'm seeing
Speaker 1: with clients here at my heart over and over again,
Speaker 1: is the power of radio to each night out of
Speaker 1: ten Americans is not something to be overlooked. And I
Speaker 1: think sometimes are human biases are really getting the way
Speaker 1: of our ability to honestly balance math and magic. And
Speaker 1: I say it to clients pretty much every day, right,
Speaker 1: like you need to really look at the math and
Speaker 1: then decide which magic fits into that math. I think
Speaker 1: it's a little less matching luggage campaigns than we've seen before.
Speaker 1: One thing we've learned from the digital error as far
Speaker 1: as like planning across silos, is you really do in
Speaker 1: the clutter that's out there today. You really do need
Speaker 1: to have a voice in a connection with your consumer
Speaker 1: all the time. Right. It used to be you could
Speaker 1: do a campaign for three months at big weight and
Speaker 1: go away for a while and then wait a few
Speaker 1: months and come back. I do think brands have to
Speaker 1: have a more real time, every day a touch point
Speaker 1: with their consumers. So finding the places where you can
Speaker 1: afford to do that and then finding things worth saying
Speaker 1: every day. That to me is a little bit of
Speaker 1: the magic of today's marketing landscape, and then from a
Speaker 1: math standpoint, you know, I think it's really being honest
Speaker 1: with yourself about the thing you might love and it's
Speaker 1: really cool and sexy and maybe it'll win you a
Speaker 1: can lie in. But if four people saw it doesn't
Speaker 1: matter talk. Yeah, I'd say, you know, if I look
Speaker 1: at things I've learned here at my heart, I think
Speaker 1: frequency and audio is particularly powerful pairing. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of brands out there. There's a lot of products out
Speaker 1: there that I actually love and would go by, and
Speaker 1: they're just not in my head. We've had this conversation,
Speaker 1: you know about alcohol brands. Right, I stand at the
Speaker 1: bar and I go, what do I want tonight? Sometimes
Speaker 1: it's just short form high frequency. Remind me who you are,
Speaker 1: Remind me what you do, Remind me that you even exist,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to be inclined to buy it if
Speaker 1: I'm in that target and you put yourself in my
Speaker 1: consideration set. Sometimes we overthink the message the old top
Speaker 1: of mind. Yeah, you were there at the beginning of
Speaker 1: the Internet. You were there obviously at the beginning of diamonds.
Speaker 1: We'll put that aside. And they were there in the
Speaker 1: beginning of branded content. You really were one of the
Speaker 1: pioneers before anybody put that word. I know, it was like,
Speaker 1: I don't know what it was before. How did you
Speaker 1: sort of start with branded content? Where did the idea
Speaker 1: come from? And how did it wind up being a
Speaker 1: thing that was in so many ways, probably one of
Speaker 1: the best jobs I ever had. And it started as
Speaker 1: an experiment with this crazy woman Joe and Bradford, who
Speaker 1: was never going to make it at Microsoft and came
Speaker 1: from the outside and was going to drive ad sales
Speaker 1: on the Internet and a company that didn't even like
Speaker 1: saying the word advertising. I think at that time we
Speaker 1: called advertising the merchant business. And she had aspirations for
Speaker 1: where billions of dollars out there in the ad market
Speaker 1: and going to shift to digital. I met her, I
Speaker 1: didn't work for her, and we met a couple of
Speaker 1: times in different meetings, and you know, she'd take me
Speaker 1: aside and she said, all right, you get marketing. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna get you in any room you want the best
Speaker 1: marks in the world, the biggest companies, I'll get you
Speaker 1: in those rooms. I need you to bring them ideas
Speaker 1: that we can do on the Internet, because I'll never
Speaker 1: make a billion dollars on hotmail banners. I need ideas,
Speaker 1: I'll give you the resources you need. You tell me
Speaker 1: what you need, we'll figure it out. And I was like, wow,
Speaker 1: it's kind of a crazy cool opportunity. How can I
Speaker 1: say no? She's this force of nature? And I said okay,
Speaker 1: and I started this little experiment with two people doing
Speaker 1: what became a hundred million dollar branded content business a
Speaker 1: few years later. I just listened to great marketers, heard
Speaker 1: what they wanted, and then I came back talked to
Speaker 1: engineers about how could I do a thing that does that?
Speaker 1: And we found our way to all of the earliest
Speaker 1: innovations for brands online. We made things move, we created
Speaker 1: experiences on top of words, we eventually got into video,
Speaker 1: we put games in messaging, and and all of those
Speaker 1: things came out of sitting with a marketer and going
Speaker 1: how are you trying to launch that cola? And you know,
Speaker 1: who are you trying to reach with that car, and
Speaker 1: then finding a way to connect it back to technology.
Speaker 1: So for me, you know, branded content was where I
Speaker 1: learned everything about digital marketing and how to build a
Speaker 1: business without even meaning to. I also learned that you
Speaker 1: have to not stay in a box. We fought with engineers,
Speaker 1: and we fought with homepage editorial people, and we broke
Speaker 1: probably every rule there was to break within the MSN organization.
Speaker 1: But we built a brand new business and a brand
Speaker 1: new category for the Internet. So you know, maybe we
Speaker 1: need to break some more things around here. So branded
Speaker 1: content today too much? Not enough? Good question? I think
Speaker 1: it depends where. You know, as marketers were not known
Speaker 1: for restraint, we tend to overdo that which works or
Speaker 1: obviously I'm biased, but I think branded audio content is
Speaker 1: the next giant greenfield. The numbers of people listening to podcasts,
Speaker 1: the ability for brand to say, what's the conversation I
Speaker 1: want to have, who should I have it with, what
Speaker 1: of the topics we should talk about, and then curate
Speaker 1: that conversation and that content themselves or with a partner.
Speaker 1: There's an endless number of stories brands have the right
Speaker 1: to tell. And I think audio is so fast and efficient,
Speaker 1: and people are listening more and watching less branded Instagram pages.
Speaker 1: Maybe we have enough. Don't We normally say, okay, recommend
Speaker 1: a book. Well, since we're in this business, we have
Speaker 1: to say recommend a podcast and recommend a book. What
Speaker 1: podcast do you recommend. What book do you recommend? I
Speaker 1: tend to read probably more fiction than nonfiction, But when
Speaker 1: it comes to like work and business books, I always
Speaker 1: go back to Strength Finders. Every team I ever worked
Speaker 1: with or manage, I go back to it because the
Speaker 1: core idea of reminding yourself that it's okay to play
Speaker 1: to your strengths and you're probably never going to be
Speaker 1: good at the stuff you suck at. Surround yourself with
Speaker 1: people who are good at the stuff you suck at.
Speaker 1: It's just such a fundamental principle. I've tried to live
Speaker 1: my career around and then you know, I've been trying
Speaker 1: to catch up on a lot of our new I
Speaker 1: Heart podcasts. Again, I'm a little biased, but I love
Speaker 1: Spit as a marketer. It's a branded podcast that we've
Speaker 1: done with twenty three and me the DNA test Company.
Speaker 1: DNA is a fascinating topic. It's changing everything in our
Speaker 1: sense of identity and connection and who we are. There's
Speaker 1: just an endless array of stories to be told. So
Speaker 1: I love this idea of mashing up interesting brainiac academics
Speaker 1: with fascinating pop culture people and seeing what happens in
Speaker 1: a conversation about identity and belonging. It's raw and it's real,
Speaker 1: but it's also great marketing because it's really built on
Speaker 1: the truth of who twenty three and me are as
Speaker 1: a brand, and they're just scratching the surface of stories
Speaker 1: they can tell. I want to sort of close it up.
Speaker 1: You've gone all the way from Rhode Island. You've been
Speaker 1: the bagman for a diamond if you've been at Microsoft
Speaker 1: and really the go go years really inventing the Internet
Speaker 1: and your I heeart. You really alated a pivotal role
Speaker 1: here and really reinventing this whole audio world and taken
Speaker 1: this company from the old clear channel one platform broadcast
Speaker 1: radio to this multi platform company that is I Heart
Speaker 1: and that has a whole different relationship with consumers and
Speaker 1: with our advertising partners. What's one thread that's gone through
Speaker 1: it all? We close up today and say this is
Speaker 1: Gail Treberman, Genius CMO. The one threat about Gail is
Speaker 1: I'm passionate about great conversations that lead to great ideas
Speaker 1: with great people, and those are the three things when
Speaker 1: they come together. In my life, I've always been at
Speaker 1: my best, performing my best, accomplishing great results, and having
Speaker 1: a shipload of fun, Gail. Thanks. Here are some things
Speaker 1: I picked up from Gail. One. According to Gail, brands
Speaker 1: no longer have the luxury of dropping a big campaign
Speaker 1: for a few months and then going away to plan
Speaker 1: another one. Instead, brands need a real, everyday touch point
Speaker 1: with consumers. Two. If you're looking for a mentor, Gail
Speaker 1: always recommends the person who doesn't think like you do.
Speaker 1: It's too easy to surround yourself with people who have
Speaker 1: the same background and skill set as you do. Three.
Speaker 1: Gayle believes there's still room to do some great branded
Speaker 1: content because, as she puts it, there's an endless number
Speaker 1: of stories brands have the right to tell. And a
Speaker 1: quick plug here, I'm a little biased and that audio
Speaker 1: is the fastest and most efficient way to tell those stories.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening. I'm Bob Pittman. That's it for today's episode.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for listening to Math and Magic, a
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio. This show is hosted by
Speaker 1: Bob Pittman. Special thanks to Sue Schillinger for booking and
Speaker 1: wrangling our wonderful talent, which is no small feat Nikki
Speaker 1: Etre for pulling research, Bill Plax, and Michael Asar for
Speaker 1: their recording help. Our editor Ryan Murdoch, and of course
Speaker 1: Gayl Raoul, Eric Angel, Noel Mango and everyone who helped
Speaker 1: bring this show to your ears. Until next time,