Jen Wong: “We often get lumped in with social media, but we’re actually not social media. We define ourselves as a community of communities.”

At a time when technology is often in the headlines for the grip it has on consumers, Jen Wong offers a sign of hope: technology can, in fact, be additive, not addictive. We chat with the COO of Reddit about the rules of engagement in the platform’s communities and why brands should be paying more attention to context. She also fills us in on her favorite subreddits.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Good Company is a production of I Heart Radio. We
often get monthing with social media, but we're actually not
social media. Hi, I'm Michael Casson. Welcome to Good Company,
where I'll explore how marketing, media, entertainment, and tech are intersecting,

(00:20):
transforming our lives and the way we do business at
a breakneck speed. I'll be joined by some of the
greatest business minds and strongest leaders who will share how
they build companies from the ground up or transform them
from the inside out. My bed is you'll pick up
a lesson or two along the way. It's all good Today.
I'm excited to welcome a longtime friend and colleague, Jen Wong,

(00:44):
the chief operating officer Read at a good Company. Jens CEO,
you have the privilege and I guess the responsibility of
overseeing revenue operations, consumer and product marketing, finance, talent growth.
That's pretty fulsome day job. It keeps seem busy. It's fun.
Now you're having fun. That's the most important. Jen. I

(01:06):
am on four and a half years in and still
having a lot of fun. It's been like a different
company every year, so keeps you on your toes. So Jen,
I'd love if you could tell our audience a bit
about your own background, you know, professional and personal, and
you know four and a half years it read it.
But as I said to the audience, you and I
have worked together for probably a dozen years already or

(01:27):
maybe more in various iterations. But you've had such an
interesting career path, you know. It's funny. I started in
quantitative finance, something very very different, and I can't say
it was a very thoughtful choice. Was probably driven by
student loans more than personal passion, and it took me
a while to evolve into something closer to like what

(01:48):
is my personal passion. So people who know me personally
know I love pop culture. I love cultural zeitguys, I
love content, always have an opinion on the latest product,
whatever it is. And it took me through business school
to make that pivot towards something that I you know,
bringing together what I personally love and what I do

(02:09):
for a job. So I worked in consulting for five years,
but McKinzie, that gave me really great I think strategy training,
and then you know, I'm joined Tim Marmstrong at all
doing that turnaround. I've worked at Pop Sugar Shop Style,
which is you know, consumer digital media and a shopping
search engine, went to timing another turnaround. I'm optimistic. That's

(02:31):
how I end up in Turnaround and then came here
to read it four and a half years ago. And
I love building businesses. All of those who have had
a common theme, which is their consumer oriented. They do
have advertising businesses, you know, someone's had subscription businesses. And
I love this industry and over the last you know,
ten plus years, we gotten to know you and others

(02:54):
in it. I think it's an exciting, fun place that's
always very close to changes in you know, consumer behavior
and guys and what's coming next. So that's that's really
fun for me. I'm going to come back to a
couple of the words you use there later on, but
I wanted to call something out that I heard you
say recently that I thought was intriguing, and I'd love
you to drill down on it a bit. I think

(03:16):
the way you described it was read it is an
additive social media platform, not an addictive one. I think
it's such an interesting way to kind of put out
the company's vision, if you will, and maybe that's a
basis for how you invite the consumer into the conversation.

(03:38):
First of all, I love some thinking on what you
mean by that. I think I know, but I love
your take on it. A and B is read at
delivering on it from your perspective. I hope the answer
to that is asked to be additive. It's such an interesting,
you know, play on words. You read as an incredibly
mission company and we've been around for seventeen years and

(04:01):
our missions community belonging and empowerment for every in the world,
and it's it's our north start, you know, in terms
of how we operate, and we often get lengthened with
social media, but we're actually not social media. I mean,
we clearly defined ourselves as a community of communities, so
you know, a hundred thousand communities that are user driven
around every passion and interesting you could possibly imagine. And

(04:26):
I think that distinction is really important because you know,
you look at the research, it does show that there
are aspects of social media and social media usage that
ends up in a place where people, you know, have
obsessive behaviors that may result in anxiety or depression. And
you know, we look at how people spend their time

(04:49):
on Reddit. You know, our communities, they are places that
they engage with, that they where they feel a sense
of belonging. And that's where the additive comes in. Where
it's a place where people feel, they feel informed, they
feel like they trust the people around them. It's not mindless.
That actually is a fair amount of deaths to it

(05:09):
in terms of both the content and the engagement and
like all the sort of positive associations. If you look
at the tons of research on this, like we've done
it with talk Shop, it's you know, it's shown up
in a number of different places, but in the general
feeling is that it's a welcoming, safe and kind of
authentic place, very trustworthy, and that means the laws to us.

(05:30):
That's really important to us more than anything because I
think that's the you know, that is accomplishing our mission,
right we we believe that. I think this just shows
to be true that if more people use Reddit, like
the internet becomes in the world becomes a better place
because people get access to the information and the feeling
is belonging that they need. And so that's like how

(05:52):
we think about our products. That's actually how we think
about our business. Like we've built an advertising business that
I think is really in harmony with our principles, our
privacy principles of like users having control over their identity
and their data, not tracking you all around the internet,
but only on our property, sharing that information to give

(06:14):
you relevant you know, advertising. So you know it permeates
into I think the experiences on our platforms which just
reinforce this sort of additive nature. I love that. And
I told you it's going to come back to some
words because my next question. You know, we hear brands
and agencies and marketers speaking very often these days about

(06:35):
the importance of community, and I'll again keep put a
pin in that word. I think, redd, it's been at
the forefront of community, and I think it is a community.
I guess my question is how do you define that
community today? And is the community evolving? Yeah, so it's interesting.
The work community is used a lot in a lot

(06:58):
of different places, and you know, I think it's it's
used in different context. It is important, I think to
markers because they realize the communities are increasingly influential and
their stopped along the way in the consumer decision journey, right,
because it's a place where you can go and you
really find out what real people think about a product,

(07:20):
a service, or a decision that you're about to make,
like unbarnished opinion. And that's really important because you want
to know what real people think. You know, for communities
on Reddit, they're they're really defined by like four different
aspects i'd say at large, and I can talk about
how the communities evolved. One is this idea of membership,
Like it's a delineation of like your inner or out

(07:41):
and your inngering out based typically on your interests and
what you're into, and you know a sense of your
identity that you might be exploring. So a sense of
membership that defines in or out. Second is influenced like
you actually have to be able to engage with the
community way where they value your opinion, not just you know,
passive listening, like you actually can share and feel like wow, okay,

(08:03):
somebody's listened to me and I get a response to it.
And that's that's Reddit. I mean, Reddit starts with communities
and you post into a community. We don't have a
followership mechanism. It's not like if you have two hundred
million followers, you get a disfortunate voice that crowds out
somebody who has to not true starts with a post.
If you have an idea that's good and interesting, it

(08:24):
will be valued by the community. And all posts started
zero and earn their way up by any person. So
it's very equal, very different than deer platforms, especially social
media with followership models, so the influence is very democratic.
The third is this idea of like needs fulfillment, like
are you able to get what you need? Can you
access it? Can you ask a question and get answers

(08:46):
like quality answers back and on Reddit one of the
amazing things that you go into communities, you ask the question,
you get quality answers, like sometimes five word plus answers
within twenty four hours, so that's an incredible thing. And
the fourth they shared experience. So all of these communities
have like their own vernacular and their own nuances and

(09:07):
culture and experiences. Right, they all have their own rule.
You know in some communities it's like hey, you know,
we talk about these things and not these things, or
and ask Creddit like it's only questions. You gotta have
a question mark at the end, or you know, they
have a certain kind of like more rays, et cetera.
Those four things like really define Reddit communities and It
makes them very i think, distinctively strong compared to what

(09:31):
are other areas of the community against the backdrop of
what's going on in our world today with so much
turmoil and so much tension and and divisiveness. Are the
communities evolving, you know, in line with what's happening outside
of those communities. Yeah, the communities are so fast to
respond to I r L or real life. They're really fast.

(09:53):
I mean you see this like during the pandemic, they
were on top of coronavirus before it was even in
the news. Here. You know, crypto like us an example
like look, Reddit has been in the decentralized web three
crypto will thinking about it for years years, years years.
It's like you know, some of the original bitcoin olders
and they're obviously hypothesizing about the future. But communities respond

(10:16):
very very quickly to ideas and read. It was one
of the first areas where you start started to see
discussion about gender fluidity and see that emerge, you know,
a discussion so very early thinking and responds very quickly.
I mean you see this like even like very practical things. Right.
So you have this runoff in Georgia for the Senate
race and in our slash Georgia, like suddenly people are

(10:38):
like okay, They're posting like how to vote right resources
for like you know how to vote in terms of
you know, active vote or Ballotipedia, and trying to figure
out like how to you know, make sure that people
know how to vote in a unique situation, right in
a runoff. They respond so quickly to that. Or in
the UK, if you look at UK personal finance, you

(10:59):
have this energy crisis and people are worrying about their
energy build and people are asking questions about how I
save some money on energy build and people are going
into insane detail about a six minute shower is thirty
four pence, so you know, if you can take a
fifteen minute shower down to ten minutes, like this is
how much you can save on your energy bill or

(11:19):
turn this knob off during the day and this will
save you this much money in the incredibly quick response
to the real things people are dealing with. Well, and
what's interesting, So I told you I was going to
give you my words. Jen funny about this. I was
an English major and as a result of that, I
think a lot about words because they matter, and I
came up with a couple of keywords this year that

(11:41):
I think influence our industry. And when I say that,
I mean, you know. I define media link as living
at the intersection of marketing, media, advertising, entertainment, sports and technology.
That's a pretty busy intersection, but it covers all the
areas that we focus on. And if I was charged
with starting a conversation or spiking the conversation, I was

(12:02):
thinking of phrases or words that I would use, and
so I came up with ten words, and funny as
it is, five of them to start with the letter T.
Five of them start with the letter C. So I've
started to affectionately refer to them as media links, tease,
and cs. I don't mean terms and conditions. So let
me give you the T words because you'll understand why
I saved it because you've used so many of these

(12:23):
words and what you've talked about. The T words are trust, transparency, talent, technology,
and transformation. So I submit to you, Jen Wang, if
you're sitting at a dinner party and you start a
conversation at the intersection I alluded to, and you use
those five words, that's the dinner You're going to have

(12:43):
a conversation. About trust, transparency, talent, technology or transformation the
C words. And this is where you really struck gold
in the first part of our conversation content, commerce, culture, creativity,
community and curation. And I really think by the way,
I was one of my like, that's a good idea.
I think I'm gonna use that. I've been talking about

(13:04):
this for the last few months, and it's it resonates
because people go, Michael, that's those are the ten words
that inform my life right now. I think that's right.
You know, if I'm a marketer, if I'm a publisher,
if I'm a consumer, if I'm a brand, you know,
those are the words. And some fashion have I created
that trust with the brand is their transparency for the

(13:26):
authenticity and purpose and all the things we need. The
talent I either dearth of or the what we went
through with the quiet quitting and the great resignation and
all of that and the and the dearth of talent.
On the other hand, technology underpins everything. And find me
a company or anybody that's not on some sort of
a transformation journey right now, transformed to this or that

(13:49):
or and just go down the list. Content leads every
conversation today it's content and commerce, content and this content
and that. Anyway, I'm just curious your sponse, and I
can read your your response through your expression. I think
you kind of agree, But I'm curious what you think
of those words as thoughts. I have to really, I

(14:09):
think that's very clever, and I think that is true.
In fact, you could probably play a drinking game with
that and people do pretty well because those are the topic.
You know, in my case, it would have to be
a martini, you know that, right, Those words I think
play well into what I believe Reddit's online communities have become.

(14:30):
You've really become a town square. And I'm curious when
you think of it in that way, where are the
brands getting their opportunity to be in that town square?
If you're advising a brand and any brand, consumer package, goods, brand,
pick it, you know, financial services. Is there any category
where somebody is really doing it right to show up

(14:51):
as a brand in the context of the communities on Reddit.
Can you give an example or you know of a
great example of a brand showing up and not being intrusive,
but showing up in the right way in the community. Yeah,
there's actually a lot now which is great, you know,
having been working in you know, building this over the
last like four and a half years. I mean, you know,

(15:12):
the base that proposition is what communities are increasingly influential
in the consumer decision journey, right, and marketers know this,
and that's why they're so focused on community because they
know they can sway you know, people's purchase decisions and
how they feel about brands and products. And you know,
if you go through Reddit, you can see that's where
Reddit places outsize role in the moment of consideration. So

(15:36):
those real people who you know, real conversations with no
agenda behind product recommendations, etcetera. So you know, we have
brands that come on to Reddit. They do a variety
of things, like we're really full funnel. They access our
unduplicated reads from a brand standpoint, or they you know,
are more performance oriented and they're looking for somebody to
come you know, on our quicker conversion basis. Like it

(15:57):
really is full funnel, which is great because we have
high intent and a lot of audience. There's a lot
of brands that are doing it right, which is great,
which is great to see over the last couple of years.
You know, often you start in one piece of the journey,
you know, either discovery or conversion, and then you sort
of expand from there to to use everything. But if
you look at fun things like yousa yogurt for example,

(16:20):
right so Noosa, which is you know, very quirky, you know,
kind of yoga brand, Like they partnered with our Creative Studio,
which is a karmel ab and they made this like
back to school themed, you know twist. They did an
engagement from which I read it worked really well, which
is when you ask a community to vote or to
comment on something. In this case, they asked users to

(16:42):
vote their favorite yogurt flavor or like the flavor that
they would trade you know, in the one room. And
it's got people thinking about you know, hey, don't want
strawberry or lemon. And that just absolutely crushed metrics in
terms of brand recall and favorability and purchase intent because
they engaged with the community and invited them in to comment.

(17:06):
And not everybody starts there, but you are best advertisers
are a long time. They get there because that is
fun and that's really deep and it's very unique. You know,
it's it's so funny. Jen Years ago, and this is
probably before I knew you. Even this is a dozen
maybe closer to fifteen years ago. I was sitting with
the then CEO of Unilever, Paul Pullman, and Paul asked

(17:30):
me a question. And it was early in the development
of social media as a phenomena and as a reality.
And he said, Michael, this is a legitimate question. And
again you shouldn't judge him because it was at the
right time he was asking this question. He said, Michael,
do I really need to pay attention to this social
media stuff, Facebook and you know, whatever, whatever the topic

(17:52):
dure was. And I said to him, I said, you know, Paul,
my answer is yes. But let me tell you why.
I said. I had a mentor early in my career
who said, if you have a choice. This was before emails,
so this is I'm old. He said, if you have
a choice of using your feet, your facts, or your
phone to engage with your customer, your client, use your feet,

(18:15):
get in front of the person, have a conversation. And
that was sage advice to me. So I said, Paul,
if you subscribe to that, which I do, then social
media enables you. And then I stopped. I said, how
many people a day touch a Unilever product somewhere in
the world, and the number back then was like a billion.
Now it's probably two billion. But you think about it,

(18:38):
it's not hard to get to when you talk about
four hundred brands that are, you know, part of your
daily diet, from when you brush your teeth in the
morning to when you put Dove common cream on to
go to sleep at night, and all the things you
do in between. You could see how billions of people
touched some product of Unilever during the day. I said,
imagine if you actually had a chance to have a

(19:00):
conversation with those people. You never could before. Now you can't.
I said, that's why you need to pay attention to
social media. You can actually have that conversation with two
billion people. Yeah, and it makes such a difference for
them to be heard. Yeah. No, no, no. By the way,
having that voice is so critical. And you said something
else about the funnel gen that you know you use

(19:21):
the word performance. I made up a word a couple
of years ago and it's worked, and the word was
brand formants. So brand formance is a word that we
kind of own in the marketplace, and it's the idea
of bringing the context and concept around brand marketing higher
funnel and performance marketing and bringing them together, you know,

(19:42):
and just curious how you look at the idea of
brand and performance being really more aligned than I think
they're really intertwined. So I love the word and phrase grandformance,
and I think that is sort of how we view
it as well, sort of a blind of the two.
And the other thing that's really different I think it
Reddit is we are an interspace platform. To remember, users

(20:04):
are anonymous, and what they express on the platform are
their interests, and these interests are often not expressed in
other places. So we are not a place that leads
with demographic information or tracking around the Internet, which is
very different. I think philosophically, large parts of the digital
ad ecosystem have been based on very micro levels of

(20:25):
demographic targeting and tracking, and it's very different on Reddit.
But I think it is very unique and very powerful.
There's there's just two things that are really powerful. One
an interstgraph, which is highly unduplicated. So for example, like
I might be on Instagram and you see what I
did over the weekend with my kids, etcetera, and that's
for my friends. But you have no idea that I'm
an added gardener, which is where I spent a lot

(20:47):
of my time in Reddit. You have no idea that
I'm shopping for like a new vacuum cleaner, because I'm
doing that on Reddit and that's my friends on Instagram
couldn't care less about that. And so that's really really
powerful well and different because we're private, we see a
different aspect of people that is a different potential customer,
write a different view on a potential customer that you

(21:09):
want to see anywhere else. And the second thing is
because we have a lot of context and conversation, Like
every conversation is in the context of a community, a
hair community, a gardening community, of photo community, whatever it
is that you're passionate about. That context is kind of
like search like intent right context and gives you a
lot of intent around the person. And I think for years,

(21:34):
I feel like we may be let go of context
being important because it was so much about the information
on the person, when in reality, I think a balance
of those two things is incredibly powerful and that that's
our belief and that's the cornerstone of what we bring
to the table that I think is very different. But
I think is you know, sort of you know their
eggs and flows in in our in our industry. But

(21:57):
I think you know, people always say text is important
as well as you know, both things do matter. Context
matter my kind of final question, and God knows, I
could talk to you forever, so I hate to say final,
but in this podcast, I think I know the answer
because of what you just said. But if you had
to pick, you know, you can't pick your favorite child,

(22:18):
You can't pick your favorite this or that, can't pick
your favorite client. But if you had to pick your
favorite communities or you know, subreddits. You know, I'm guessing
gardening and vacuum cleaners might be in there. But you know,
you kind of favor as Jen Wang, an individual, you know,
not Jen Wang CEO of Reddit. Yeah, I mean a lot.

(22:39):
You know, I've organized myself and then basically what is like,
you know, six seven different speeds. I've got my food
one which is like pizza and Breddit and just my
conquest of trying to make a perfect sour tough. I
got vegetable gardening. I went to a pasta class and
I learned how to make pasta. So I'm I'm right
there with you. I did learn how to make pasta overthink, Yeah,

(23:02):
that's next on my list. Okay, I learned, you know,
my vegetable gardening one, and I just I love looking
at everybody you know, bounce abul m harvest and getting
help with my sailed character. A year than three years
of this now, but I keep keep going and ready
to keep helping me. You know, I've got subreddits that
are for music so Indie rocks just like and one

(23:25):
for photography so I love polaroids. They have to one
toy cameras I collected of old camera Holga camera, so
that's great. I love all the you know, old camera
and toy camera sub greddit, So I've got different ones
like that. You know, I've probably got six or seven
different worlds that I ligion on Reddit that people don't

(23:45):
don't know unless I here. Oh but that's why. That's
why I asked, you know, hopefully in in good company
here we can expose a little of the real gen Wong.
There you go, Jen, It is always a pleasure for
me to have the chance to speak with you. I
learned so much from you and when we get a
chance to chat, because your insights and your ability to

(24:06):
socialize them in a conversation like this is world class.
I just want you to know that. And you make
the difficult seem simple, and you make the simple even
more understandable. So I appreciate always you taking the time.
I appreciate our friendship and our partnership, and I appreciate you.
Thank you so much. Michaels' Jeelan's mutual. I think it's

(24:28):
been over a decade and you're one of, you know,
both values people in this industry that always has a
pulse from what's happening. So you go talking to you,
Gen Wang, thank you. I'm Michael Casson, Thanks for listening
to Good Company. Good Company is a production of I

(24:48):
Heart Radio Special Thanks to Lena Peterson, chief Brand Officer
and Managing Director of medial Link, for her vision I'm
Good Company, and to Jen Seeing, vice President Marketing Communications
of Media Link for programming amazing talent and content. Mmmmmmmm