February 20, 2020 • 24 mins
From The Breakfast Club to Nickelodeon, Bobbi Brown to CoverGirl, there’s no question these brands and personalities have shaped culture. But how did they get their big breaks? And how did they turn opportunities into success stories? Tune in to learn why Charlamagne tha God’s passion for radio probably saved his life; how Gerry Laybourne transformed Nickelodeon into the top network for tweens -- while proving herself as one of TV’s first female executives; and how makeup industry mogul Bobbi Brown created her own luck. Plus, hear Marc Pritchard, Chief Brand Officer of Proctor & Gamble, discuss how his daughters helped him realize the importance of keeping your marketing true to your core values.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
You're listening to Math and Magic, a production I Heart Radio.
Welcome to Math and Magic stories from the frontiers and marketing. Today,
we're gonna hear some of my favorite stories from this
season of Math and Magic with lessons we can all use.
(00:24):
I'm sure you know I love radio. That's where I
started my career, and it's my love for audio that
brought me to I Heart Radio can be transformative for
the listener, but also for the on air personalities. Here's
the story of how Charlemagne the God discovered his talent
for radio and started a new chapter in his life.
(00:47):
You had a lot of problems in school. You graduated
from night school that you had some run ins with
the law. You tried a number of jobs, first working
at a clothing store, telemarketing agency, flower Garden. Your sister
hired you and I guess fired you at Taco Bell
for two weeks. We're not taking it seriously. Then you
discovered radio. Before we get to that, though, why the
bad times? I'm sure you had some explanations then, But
(01:08):
looking back now, what do you think it was about?
What lessons did you take from that? It was really
just about wanting to fit in when you're not getting
what you need at home, you will get it from
the street. And it's not like the love was real
in the screet you know, it just made me feel
good to be accepted. If my father wasn't dealing with
the things he was dealing with, and he probably would
(01:29):
have embraced me a little bit more and gave me
that confidence I needed, and you know, that courage I
needed and just empowered me. I probably would not have
gone to the screets the way that I did. What
did you take away in terms of your life now
from that experience? Nothing? There was nothing beneficial about being
in that situation. You have a bunch of skills that
(01:50):
you really don't need. I don't need to know how
to sell drugs like I don't. I don't need to
know how to carry a firearms. I was carrying it
illegally back then. Anyway, like, none of what I it
through then serves me in my adult life other than
to have those experiences. So when I'm talking to young
men that grew up in these areas, I can relate
to them in a different way and they can look
(02:11):
at me and they can say, oh, well, you know,
he went through a lot of the same things that
I went through when I started to see a lot
of my friends going to jail, and like guys around
me actually getting prison sentences, and people around me actually
getting killed, and cousins that I used to look up to,
they really were the cousins that were doing everything that
I was doing previously, and they ended up broke under
(02:31):
the tree, scrung out on drugs or alcohol or whatever
it was. That was a wake up call for me
at a very young age to say, I don't want
to end up like that. So more important than why
did radio click with you? I was really just looking
for something positive to do. I started working a lot
of odd jobs. I worked at the clothing store called
Demo and the mall. I worked at Taco bell. I
worked at this factory called Industrial Acoustics. I worked at
(02:53):
a telemarketing place where I used to be the guy
that would call your house and try to sell you
twelve CDs for a penny. Did you ever do that? Oh? Yeah,
I was one of the best because I knew music.
That was a gift that I had. I knew music,
so I knew what was good. My mother would tell
me three things that don't pertain to me. I would
always listen to things that don't pertain to me. So
I knew everything from Johnny Cash to Fleetwood mag to
(03:15):
the New jay Z like I knew all of it,
and so I would just know how to sell these
things to these people. And I used to want to rap,
and I was in this recording studio and I met
a guy. His name was Willie will He was a
radio personality that a local station in Charlton called the
ninety three Champs. And I just asked him. I said, ye,
how'd you getting the radio? And he was like, I
went down there and I got an internship. And I'm like,
it's that easy, Like I don't have to be in
(03:35):
school or anything. And he was like, nah, in mind,
this is nine Charleston, South Carolina, so things are a
lot different now. So that's what I did. I went
down there the next day and I filled out the
internship application and they hired me as an intern in
the promotions department. And that's how I got my foot
in the door. But I guess this is one of
the ways that you could say discreet help me because
being at the radio station at the time, some of
these guys wanted wat. I knew how to get wheat,
(03:59):
so I would have to weave for them, and they
would always want me around, like they would always request me, Yo,
I want Charlemagne to drive me to this remote or yo, Charlemage,
where you have come to the studio. So I would
just be in the studio being a fly on the wall,
just sitting there watching everybody do their job. And then
sometimes they would call me in and asked me my
opinion on things, and I would just talk. And the
music director one day, his name was Ron White. Ron
(04:20):
White was like, Yo, you ever thought about being on
the radio And I was like no, but I am
now like yeah, I'll show I'll try it. And so
they made me voice track one Sunday morning from eleven
am to two pm. And I did that for a
few weeks, and then they immediately cut that out because
there was Sunday morning in Charleston, South Carolina, and I
was a bit too much for that Bible belt. So
they started putting me on Saturdays seven pm to midnight,
(04:43):
and I voice tracked from seven to ten and DI
from ten to twelve. I would go live, and I
think the best thing that ever happened to me was
I did not have any radio skills. Nobody taught me
the traditional way to do radio, so I would just
be talking. I go back and listen. It's not the terrible.
I was yelling and I was screaming, and I'm answering
the phones, and we just was kicking it like how
(05:03):
we would kick it, you know, in the hood. And
it became very popular in a very short amount of time.
One day and they're doing overnights. I said to myself,
I love this. I've never felt passionate about anything before that.
I just knew this is what I want to do
for the rest of my life. So what advice do
(05:24):
you have for those people who want to be the
next year? That's where you fail. You failed by trying
to be the next anything. You should truly just be yourself.
And it's great to be inspired, Like I was inspired
by a lot of radio personalities, but I would have
failed tremendously trying to be any of them. The beauty
of life is that we are all blessed to be
(05:47):
our own individual, unique personality. That's why our DNA is
different than everybody else. If you really tap into who
you are and your experiences and what you've been through.
You can deliver a story that people can relate to,
but nobody else has been through. So I would never
tell you don't want to be like me because you
can't be like me because you haven't gone through what
I've gone through. You're not from where I'm from. You're
(06:07):
not me. Be yourself, genuinely, be yourself, your too authentic self,
and I think that you will be a okay and
you'll be a personality that people want to listen to.
Charlemagne is truly one of a kind, and I love
that he's part of the Heart family. Another media pioneer
I talked with is Jerry Leborne, the first president of
(06:28):
Nickelodeon and a media innovator. She found her calling creating
television for children, and she shared her story becoming one
of the first female executives in television. You had a
bosson Nickelodeon before you were the boss. Where did you
learn from that boss? Well, he was a very conventional,
(06:50):
top down manager. I don't think we had a single
team meeting the whole time. He was vice president of Nickelodeon.
I was the first president. Thank you. He had low expectations.
He sent all of our good creative problems to old
crony friends outside, and he didn't encourage us to work together.
(07:14):
I actually kept a notebook of what I would not
do when I got to be the boss. So when
you gave me the opportunity, I don't know if you
remember this, but you kind of looked at me and said,
I don't know what you can do, but let's see.
It wasn't like, Okay, you're now the executive vice president
of Nickelodeon. It was just I know enough not to
(07:35):
get rid of you. Let's see what you can do.
Oh my god. Nothing could be better than that, Just
a straight on challenge. I took the twenty people that
were working for Nickelodeon off to a conference room and
we put all the things we knew about Nickelodeon. Here's
what's not working, here's what's working, And at the end
(07:57):
of the day, I knew which people were going to
be on the team and which we're not. I fired
seven people. We needed to be a rebellion. We were
taking back Nickelodeon for kids. After the switch to add
support in and the relaunch of Nickelodeon's The Twain Channel,
you really struck gold can you talk a little bit
(08:19):
about one what that felt like, and to why you
think Nickelodeon caught on like that. Well, first of all,
it helps to be the first, to have really no competition,
and to be true to your audience. We literally did
not put anything on the air that hadn't been tested
with kids, and we were adventuresome. We had some big flops.
(08:43):
I remember promising you the Moon with Turkey TV. It
was gonna be comedy clips like MTV for kids, and
the day it arrived on Memorial Day weekend five, it
was even worse than any of Dream Theater. My son,
who at this point was Ken, just started to sob.
(09:07):
This is horrible. You will never work in TV again.
I called everybody back to the office and we spent
six days re editing everything. You know, you let me
off the hook on that. Well, one thing we all
know is you don't come close to getting it right.
In fact, it's the big flops that we got to
take the chances. And we worked for a gun named
(09:29):
Steve Ross who ran Warner Communications and then Time Warner
and Steve used to say, you know, bomb around here.
You a number of fired for making a mistake. You'll
be fired for not making a mistake. You're not making mistakes,
tells me you're not trying anything new, And that was
our lifeblood. But it was just so much fun. And
the other thing was if you were working at Nickelodeon,
you really had to let kids. I had this trick
(09:52):
question which I would ask any employee, probably illegal, what
were you like as a kid, And they tell you everything,
how they get along with their siblings, how they're going
to work in a team, and what they care about.
Let's talk a minute about how it was to be
a woman in this very big job, in this very
highly visible environment. Well, I had this boss, Bob Pittman.
(10:17):
The first day that I was invited into the executive suite,
there were only four of us, Tom Preston, you, Bob Burgante,
and me. I made my husband quiz me for four
hours about sports metaphors. It was terrifying to me. And
(10:37):
I come in and the first sports metaphor that I
could possibly come up with I came up with. And
of course I used tennis metaphor in a basketball court.
And you looked at me and said, you can skip that.
We have you here for what you know, And I
don't care about sports. We want you to be you.
(10:58):
You have no idea how incredibly empowering that was, and
if men would do that, they would get such better results.
But it wasn't that hard for me. You wanted me
to be the nerdy, caring, creative, loving head, and you
(11:19):
encouraged me to make mistakes and you didn't hold grudges.
Let's talk about building companies, building teams. What kind of
culture do you need to have a building situation? Well,
you need different thinkers at the table. You need people
who are strategic, You need people who are creative, You
(11:39):
need people who are tactical, and you need to make
sure that they feel comfortable giving voice to their point
of view and that in fact, the team depends on them.
Debbie BC was of the Fred Cyber school. You're wrong,
and I'm going to tell you why that's the best
thing for a dreamer like me to have. If you
(12:00):
couldn't have a better relationship. We all had this philosophy
that our responsibility was to make sure everybody at the
table was getting an a. We had a program called
the PIT program Presidents in Training, So everybody at my
executive team were presidents in training, and I promised them.
(12:20):
If you come in here and look at our problems
from up here, we will all learn to be presidents together.
And you won't all be president of Nickelodeon, but you'll
get to be president of something. And many of them did.
They didn't stay right there. We'll be back after a
quick break. Welcome back to Matthew Magic. In today's episode,
(12:52):
we're picking some of the best stories of how great
business leaders got where they are today. I've always believed
that you make your own luck. Bbby Brown, founder of
Bobby Brown Cosmetics and hosted Beyond the Beauty podcast, told
me the story of how she grew her startup cosmetics
company by capitalizing on every opportunity. Take a listen. Late eighties,
(13:19):
early nineies. You began to make your own makeup. How
did that start? Well, not in my kitchen. People say
they started making in their kitchen. I did a shoot
for a magazine. I think it was Mademoiselle magazine. The
story was actually on me. How a makeup artist shops
in New York City for Off the Beaten Path makeup.
We went to Keels, nice guy behind the counter, he's
(13:40):
a chemist. I start talking to him about this lipstick.
I can't find. And he's like, oh, I could make
it for you. I said, really, and I told him
exactly what I wanted. He made it, sent it back
a couple of times, not right to dry the color.
And I said, all right, these are the ten colors
that I think all that you need really to get
any color out there. And he said, how about this,
(14:02):
I'll make the lipstick, you sell it, will sell it
for fifteen dollars. You get seven fifty, I'll get seven fifty.
It's a great idea. And he made them for me
and we started selling them out of my house. By
the time you debuted in Bergdorf Goodman in New York,
by figured something out. Well do you know how I
figured it out. I want to hear that. I was
in the elevator in my then apartment in New York
(14:24):
and there was a girl in the elevator and I
said hello, and she said hello, and I said, my
name is Bobby. Her name was Sharon, and I said
what do you do? She said, I work at a lab,
a cosmetics lab. I said, really, do you have a card?
And that lab still makes the lipsticks today. That is
true story. You debuted in Bergdorf Goodman. They estimated they
(14:44):
would sell a hundred lipsticks in the first month, and
instead they sold the hundred in the first day. Did
that surprise you? Oh, it was pretty cool. But at
the time, I had one baby, I was commuting back
and forth from New Jersey to New York. I was
still working as a makeup artist us my husband was
in law school. You know, money was tight. Everything was
kind of a blur. You had to scramble, obviously to
(15:06):
get more. And berg Doorf must have said, wait a minute,
we got a hit here, let's give it the shelf space. Right. Well,
we were originally on a table, and the only reason
we were on a table is because they didn't have
any counter space. People now think it was a brilliant
marketing idea, and it was in retrospect. And then they said, okay,
we need lip pencils, we need I pencils. So we
slowly started adding and it grew. Then Neiman Marcus called
(15:31):
and said, we'd love to take you in four stores,
and then Barney's called, and then Bendal's called. We didn't
have a salesperson to go sell it. That's pretty good
on it sells itself because it was different than what
was on the market, and it was really hitting a nerve.
And I think the combination of having this product that
actually didn't really look like makeup that was out there
(15:51):
just made you look better. It didn't smell, it felt good.
It wasn't greasy, it wasn't dry. Women looked pretty. It
was a more natural look. It's what people wanted. And
at the same time, not because there was a strategy,
but I was the makeup artist doing makeup for the
fashion shows, so I got to talk about the trends.
I was also on the Today's Show. I got to
(16:13):
talk about it, and everything together look like brilliance. But
it was just really good luck. I'm sure you made
your luck. Let's go back for Goodman. How did you
get the introduction? It's gonna sounds like I make this up,
but I was at a party, someone's fancy party in
New York City, and I said, thank you for inviting me.
My name is Bobby. I said what do you do
and she said, I'm a cousinat Expire Berg doorf Goodman,
(16:35):
I'm not even kidding, and actually give you some money
to put on the roulette table. And for me, I
think we do very well there, so you've been a
big success by almost every measure of success, family, financial, work, fame, etcetera.
I know there are a lot of folks listening who
are building their careers today. What advice would you give them?
(16:56):
I mean, I would first of all say, there's no rush.
I help a lot of young entrepreneurs that I'm friends with,
and they always seem like it has to be done now.
Oh my god, has to be done. Oh my god,
Series A, series B, I don't even know what. Like, guys,
calm down. You got to build a brand. People think
that the whole idea of building a brand is to
sell it and make a lot of money. No, build
a brand that you love. It takes time. It's like
(17:17):
a baby. You gotta nurture it. Building a brand you
love is great advice for entrepreneurs, but for Procter and Gamble,
building a brand is also about staying true to your values.
In my conversation with Mark Pritchard, chief brand officer of
p AND, we talked about some of his most impactful
campaigns and how they pushed his brand forward. I want
(17:44):
to talk a little bit about the view of this company,
and I want to go back in time back to
when you were GM of the cover Girl business and
you had an epiphany about the broader impact you could
have on culture. It had an immediate effect on the
Easy Breezy, Beautiful agg campaign, very well known at that time.
Can you tell us what led to that epiphany and
(18:05):
how it changed you What I was doing at the
time as I was a general manager of our CoverGirl business,
which is Baltimore, and then my white Betsy and our
three daughters, who are all under the age of ten,
went to a place called wind River Ranch up in
the Colorado Rockies. It was a spiritual ranch, nondenominational spiritual ranch.
Because I was born Catholic, my wife's Jewish. My dad
(18:26):
was an alcoholics anonymous, so we had a higher power
and he was also there with us. When we were there,
the spiritual leader at the very end of it came
up to me and said, you know, Mark, you really
can make a big difference in the world because you're
in business. The greatest force for good in the future
is going to be business. It's not going to be clergy,
(18:46):
it's not gonna be government. It's going to be business.
If you choose to do so, you can do a
lot of good. We had just introduced the easy Briefing
Beautiful cover Girl campaign, and I literally it was an
epiphany where I thought, oh wow, the effect that we
have on the standard of beauty is profound. We're essentially
portraying what we view is the standard of beauty and
(19:09):
unfortunate the time, the spokespeople we had were too young,
too skinny, and too white. And I sat there and
looked at my ten year old daughters and I said,
you know, I have an obligation to do the right thing,
and I knew then that we needed to make a change.
We brought in Queen Latifa, we brought in Mellon Generous,
(19:30):
Sophia Vergara, Pink, Janelle Monet. We became diverse. We moved
to a standard of beauty that came from within as
opposed to externally. And it was really a very profound
moment because I realized how much impact advertising can have
on people's perceptions. And that was really the start of
(19:50):
what I hope we're doing now. At that moment, What
was the reaction internally from the consumers and from the
ad industry. Well, it first when I went back and
talked to our agencies at the time, they're like, well, wait,
wait a minute. No, no, no, no, no no, that's
not what women want to see. They don't want to
see themselves. They want to see other people who are
(20:14):
the quote better version of themselves. M M. I said no, no,
no, no no, no, no, we need to try we can
do something that's better. Thankfully, Alice Erickson, who was the
creative director at the time, did a magnificent job and
she's the one who really, along with the other team,
brought in Queen Latifa. That really is what transformed that
(20:34):
campaign and that brand. What was the reaction internally when
you came back with this epiphany, you know, internally people
got it. They got it pretty quickly. They thought, you know, yeah,
this is something we can do, and we went for it.
It really unlocked a lot of creativity. P and G
is a huge company, but it has a heart that
(20:55):
you might actually expect from a nonprofit. You talked a
little bit about where this came from, but I'd like
to hit a couple of the things you've done and
are doing just to get a little context on it.
Love over Bias Can you give us a minute on that? Yeah?
Love over Biased was our last Olympic Ad, which was
trying to shine the light on the bias that exists
(21:15):
in the world and then imagine what the world can
see if they looked at it through mom's eyes and
looked at people through mom's eyes. It was just a
brilliant add It was one of the best we've ever done.
It was also directed by Alma Horrell, who is you
may know he founded Free the work just a brilliant director.
Gave just such a touch to it that was just
(21:36):
phenomenal that really helped build our business. At the same time,
were you able to measure it in any way the
impact it had on changing attitudes? Primarily the way we
measured that one is through just the sentiment that it provided.
The reactions that we've got of an ad is really
brilliant or a piece of work is really brilliant. It
does amplify and get carried. You've been a vocal advocate
(21:57):
for pay equality. I think if one numbers are right,
about forty of the managers of the company are now women.
Sorry with old numbers, How did the company do that?
What was the process to get there? Because I think
there's a lesson in that for a lot of other
companies that are wrestling with the same issue. A big
part of that came from leadership. When I started, there
(22:19):
were not many women managers with the leadership at the
time John Smail, then eventually John Pepper and others said
diversity is important, and that led to over time now
at CENT and we're seeking to get leadership still today,
David Taylor is absolutely adamant about the power of diversity
and over time. What we also found, Bob was that
(22:40):
diversity is not only the right thing to do, it's
the smart thing to do when it comes to building business.
The most diverse companies, the most diverse teams tend to
do better as gender, it's races, ethnicity, it's a sexual
and gender identity, it's ability, religion, and a each And
(23:00):
we look at things now on an intersectional basis because
it's intersectional. Quality is important. A big part of that
is because that's who we serve. We serve all humanity,
so therefore our company needs to reflect humanity. So we're
deliberately focusing on that. We're not where we want to
be yet, but we're absolutely deliberate about making a difference there.
(23:21):
That's it for today's episode of Math and Magic. Hope
you picked up some valuable insights. We'll be back to
our regularly scheduled series next week with another guest from
the front lines of marketing. Until then, I'm Bob Pittman.
Thanks for listening. Thanks so much for listening to Math
and Magic production of I Heart Radio. This show is
(23:41):
hosted by Bob Pittman. Special thanks to Sue Schillinger for
booking and wrangling our wonderful talent, which is no small feat.
Nikki Etre for pulling research, Bill Plax and Michael Asar
for their recording help, our editor Ryan Murdoch, and of
course Gayl Raoul, Eric Angel, Noel Mango and everyone who
helped bring this show to your ears. Until next time,
(24:11):
h
You're listening to Math and Magic, a production I Heart Radio.
Welcome to Math and Magic stories from the frontiers and marketing. Today,
we're gonna hear some of my favorite stories from this
season of Math and Magic with lessons we can all use.
(00:24):
I'm sure you know I love radio. That's where I
started my career, and it's my love for audio that
brought me to I Heart Radio can be transformative for
the listener, but also for the on air personalities. Here's
the story of how Charlemagne the God discovered his talent
for radio and started a new chapter in his life.
(00:47):
You had a lot of problems in school. You graduated
from night school that you had some run ins with
the law. You tried a number of jobs, first working
at a clothing store, telemarketing agency, flower Garden. Your sister
hired you and I guess fired you at Taco Bell
for two weeks. We're not taking it seriously. Then you
discovered radio. Before we get to that, though, why the
bad times? I'm sure you had some explanations then, But
(01:08):
looking back now, what do you think it was about?
What lessons did you take from that? It was really
just about wanting to fit in when you're not getting
what you need at home, you will get it from
the street. And it's not like the love was real
in the screet you know, it just made me feel
good to be accepted. If my father wasn't dealing with
the things he was dealing with, and he probably would
(01:29):
have embraced me a little bit more and gave me
that confidence I needed, and you know, that courage I
needed and just empowered me. I probably would not have
gone to the screets the way that I did. What
did you take away in terms of your life now
from that experience? Nothing? There was nothing beneficial about being
in that situation. You have a bunch of skills that
(01:50):
you really don't need. I don't need to know how
to sell drugs like I don't. I don't need to
know how to carry a firearms. I was carrying it
illegally back then. Anyway, like, none of what I it
through then serves me in my adult life other than
to have those experiences. So when I'm talking to young
men that grew up in these areas, I can relate
to them in a different way and they can look
(02:11):
at me and they can say, oh, well, you know,
he went through a lot of the same things that
I went through when I started to see a lot
of my friends going to jail, and like guys around
me actually getting prison sentences, and people around me actually
getting killed, and cousins that I used to look up to,
they really were the cousins that were doing everything that
I was doing previously, and they ended up broke under
(02:31):
the tree, scrung out on drugs or alcohol or whatever
it was. That was a wake up call for me
at a very young age to say, I don't want
to end up like that. So more important than why
did radio click with you? I was really just looking
for something positive to do. I started working a lot
of odd jobs. I worked at the clothing store called
Demo and the mall. I worked at Taco bell. I
worked at this factory called Industrial Acoustics. I worked at
(02:53):
a telemarketing place where I used to be the guy
that would call your house and try to sell you
twelve CDs for a penny. Did you ever do that? Oh? Yeah,
I was one of the best because I knew music.
That was a gift that I had. I knew music,
so I knew what was good. My mother would tell
me three things that don't pertain to me. I would
always listen to things that don't pertain to me. So
I knew everything from Johnny Cash to Fleetwood mag to
(03:15):
the New jay Z like I knew all of it,
and so I would just know how to sell these
things to these people. And I used to want to rap,
and I was in this recording studio and I met
a guy. His name was Willie will He was a
radio personality that a local station in Charlton called the
ninety three Champs. And I just asked him. I said, ye,
how'd you getting the radio? And he was like, I
went down there and I got an internship. And I'm like,
it's that easy, Like I don't have to be in
(03:35):
school or anything. And he was like, nah, in mind,
this is nine Charleston, South Carolina, so things are a
lot different now. So that's what I did. I went
down there the next day and I filled out the
internship application and they hired me as an intern in
the promotions department. And that's how I got my foot
in the door. But I guess this is one of
the ways that you could say discreet help me because
being at the radio station at the time, some of
these guys wanted wat. I knew how to get wheat,
(03:59):
so I would have to weave for them, and they
would always want me around, like they would always request me, Yo,
I want Charlemagne to drive me to this remote or yo, Charlemage,
where you have come to the studio. So I would
just be in the studio being a fly on the wall,
just sitting there watching everybody do their job. And then
sometimes they would call me in and asked me my
opinion on things, and I would just talk. And the
music director one day, his name was Ron White. Ron
(04:20):
White was like, Yo, you ever thought about being on
the radio And I was like no, but I am
now like yeah, I'll show I'll try it. And so
they made me voice track one Sunday morning from eleven
am to two pm. And I did that for a
few weeks, and then they immediately cut that out because
there was Sunday morning in Charleston, South Carolina, and I
was a bit too much for that Bible belt. So
they started putting me on Saturdays seven pm to midnight,
(04:43):
and I voice tracked from seven to ten and DI
from ten to twelve. I would go live, and I
think the best thing that ever happened to me was
I did not have any radio skills. Nobody taught me
the traditional way to do radio, so I would just
be talking. I go back and listen. It's not the terrible.
I was yelling and I was screaming, and I'm answering
the phones, and we just was kicking it like how
(05:03):
we would kick it, you know, in the hood. And
it became very popular in a very short amount of time.
One day and they're doing overnights. I said to myself,
I love this. I've never felt passionate about anything before that.
I just knew this is what I want to do
for the rest of my life. So what advice do
(05:24):
you have for those people who want to be the
next year? That's where you fail. You failed by trying
to be the next anything. You should truly just be yourself.
And it's great to be inspired, Like I was inspired
by a lot of radio personalities, but I would have
failed tremendously trying to be any of them. The beauty
of life is that we are all blessed to be
(05:47):
our own individual, unique personality. That's why our DNA is
different than everybody else. If you really tap into who
you are and your experiences and what you've been through.
You can deliver a story that people can relate to,
but nobody else has been through. So I would never
tell you don't want to be like me because you
can't be like me because you haven't gone through what
I've gone through. You're not from where I'm from. You're
(06:07):
not me. Be yourself, genuinely, be yourself, your too authentic self,
and I think that you will be a okay and
you'll be a personality that people want to listen to.
Charlemagne is truly one of a kind, and I love
that he's part of the Heart family. Another media pioneer
I talked with is Jerry Leborne, the first president of
(06:28):
Nickelodeon and a media innovator. She found her calling creating
television for children, and she shared her story becoming one
of the first female executives in television. You had a
bosson Nickelodeon before you were the boss. Where did you
learn from that boss? Well, he was a very conventional,
(06:50):
top down manager. I don't think we had a single
team meeting the whole time. He was vice president of Nickelodeon.
I was the first president. Thank you. He had low expectations.
He sent all of our good creative problems to old
crony friends outside, and he didn't encourage us to work together.
(07:14):
I actually kept a notebook of what I would not
do when I got to be the boss. So when
you gave me the opportunity, I don't know if you
remember this, but you kind of looked at me and said,
I don't know what you can do, but let's see.
It wasn't like, Okay, you're now the executive vice president
of Nickelodeon. It was just I know enough not to
(07:35):
get rid of you. Let's see what you can do.
Oh my god. Nothing could be better than that, Just
a straight on challenge. I took the twenty people that
were working for Nickelodeon off to a conference room and
we put all the things we knew about Nickelodeon. Here's
what's not working, here's what's working, And at the end
(07:57):
of the day, I knew which people were going to
be on the team and which we're not. I fired
seven people. We needed to be a rebellion. We were
taking back Nickelodeon for kids. After the switch to add
support in and the relaunch of Nickelodeon's The Twain Channel,
you really struck gold can you talk a little bit
(08:19):
about one what that felt like, and to why you
think Nickelodeon caught on like that. Well, first of all,
it helps to be the first, to have really no competition,
and to be true to your audience. We literally did
not put anything on the air that hadn't been tested
with kids, and we were adventuresome. We had some big flops.
(08:43):
I remember promising you the Moon with Turkey TV. It
was gonna be comedy clips like MTV for kids, and
the day it arrived on Memorial Day weekend five, it
was even worse than any of Dream Theater. My son,
who at this point was Ken, just started to sob.
(09:07):
This is horrible. You will never work in TV again.
I called everybody back to the office and we spent
six days re editing everything. You know, you let me
off the hook on that. Well, one thing we all
know is you don't come close to getting it right.
In fact, it's the big flops that we got to
take the chances. And we worked for a gun named
(09:29):
Steve Ross who ran Warner Communications and then Time Warner
and Steve used to say, you know, bomb around here.
You a number of fired for making a mistake. You'll
be fired for not making a mistake. You're not making mistakes,
tells me you're not trying anything new, And that was
our lifeblood. But it was just so much fun. And
the other thing was if you were working at Nickelodeon,
you really had to let kids. I had this trick
(09:52):
question which I would ask any employee, probably illegal, what
were you like as a kid, And they tell you everything,
how they get along with their siblings, how they're going
to work in a team, and what they care about.
Let's talk a minute about how it was to be
a woman in this very big job, in this very
highly visible environment. Well, I had this boss, Bob Pittman.
(10:17):
The first day that I was invited into the executive suite,
there were only four of us, Tom Preston, you, Bob Burgante,
and me. I made my husband quiz me for four
hours about sports metaphors. It was terrifying to me. And
(10:37):
I come in and the first sports metaphor that I
could possibly come up with I came up with. And
of course I used tennis metaphor in a basketball court.
And you looked at me and said, you can skip that.
We have you here for what you know, And I
don't care about sports. We want you to be you.
(10:58):
You have no idea how incredibly empowering that was, and
if men would do that, they would get such better results.
But it wasn't that hard for me. You wanted me
to be the nerdy, caring, creative, loving head, and you
(11:19):
encouraged me to make mistakes and you didn't hold grudges.
Let's talk about building companies, building teams. What kind of
culture do you need to have a building situation? Well,
you need different thinkers at the table. You need people
who are strategic, You need people who are creative, You
(11:39):
need people who are tactical, and you need to make
sure that they feel comfortable giving voice to their point
of view and that in fact, the team depends on them.
Debbie BC was of the Fred Cyber school. You're wrong,
and I'm going to tell you why that's the best
thing for a dreamer like me to have. If you
(12:00):
couldn't have a better relationship. We all had this philosophy
that our responsibility was to make sure everybody at the
table was getting an a. We had a program called
the PIT program Presidents in Training, So everybody at my
executive team were presidents in training, and I promised them.
(12:20):
If you come in here and look at our problems
from up here, we will all learn to be presidents together.
And you won't all be president of Nickelodeon, but you'll
get to be president of something. And many of them did.
They didn't stay right there. We'll be back after a
quick break. Welcome back to Matthew Magic. In today's episode,
(12:52):
we're picking some of the best stories of how great
business leaders got where they are today. I've always believed
that you make your own luck. Bbby Brown, founder of
Bobby Brown Cosmetics and hosted Beyond the Beauty podcast, told
me the story of how she grew her startup cosmetics
company by capitalizing on every opportunity. Take a listen. Late eighties,
(13:19):
early nineies. You began to make your own makeup. How
did that start? Well, not in my kitchen. People say
they started making in their kitchen. I did a shoot
for a magazine. I think it was Mademoiselle magazine. The
story was actually on me. How a makeup artist shops
in New York City for Off the Beaten Path makeup.
We went to Keels, nice guy behind the counter, he's
(13:40):
a chemist. I start talking to him about this lipstick.
I can't find. And he's like, oh, I could make
it for you. I said, really, and I told him
exactly what I wanted. He made it, sent it back
a couple of times, not right to dry the color.
And I said, all right, these are the ten colors
that I think all that you need really to get
any color out there. And he said, how about this,
(14:02):
I'll make the lipstick, you sell it, will sell it
for fifteen dollars. You get seven fifty, I'll get seven fifty.
It's a great idea. And he made them for me
and we started selling them out of my house. By
the time you debuted in Bergdorf Goodman in New York,
by figured something out. Well do you know how I
figured it out. I want to hear that. I was
in the elevator in my then apartment in New York
(14:24):
and there was a girl in the elevator and I
said hello, and she said hello, and I said, my
name is Bobby. Her name was Sharon, and I said
what do you do? She said, I work at a lab,
a cosmetics lab. I said, really, do you have a card?
And that lab still makes the lipsticks today. That is
true story. You debuted in Bergdorf Goodman. They estimated they
(14:44):
would sell a hundred lipsticks in the first month, and
instead they sold the hundred in the first day. Did
that surprise you? Oh, it was pretty cool. But at
the time, I had one baby, I was commuting back
and forth from New Jersey to New York. I was
still working as a makeup artist us my husband was
in law school. You know, money was tight. Everything was
kind of a blur. You had to scramble, obviously to
(15:06):
get more. And berg Doorf must have said, wait a minute,
we got a hit here, let's give it the shelf space. Right. Well,
we were originally on a table, and the only reason
we were on a table is because they didn't have
any counter space. People now think it was a brilliant
marketing idea, and it was in retrospect. And then they said, okay,
we need lip pencils, we need I pencils. So we
slowly started adding and it grew. Then Neiman Marcus called
(15:31):
and said, we'd love to take you in four stores,
and then Barney's called, and then Bendal's called. We didn't
have a salesperson to go sell it. That's pretty good
on it sells itself because it was different than what
was on the market, and it was really hitting a nerve.
And I think the combination of having this product that
actually didn't really look like makeup that was out there
(15:51):
just made you look better. It didn't smell, it felt good.
It wasn't greasy, it wasn't dry. Women looked pretty. It
was a more natural look. It's what people wanted. And
at the same time, not because there was a strategy,
but I was the makeup artist doing makeup for the
fashion shows, so I got to talk about the trends.
I was also on the Today's Show. I got to
(16:13):
talk about it, and everything together look like brilliance. But
it was just really good luck. I'm sure you made
your luck. Let's go back for Goodman. How did you
get the introduction? It's gonna sounds like I make this up,
but I was at a party, someone's fancy party in
New York City, and I said, thank you for inviting me.
My name is Bobby. I said what do you do
and she said, I'm a cousinat Expire Berg doorf Goodman,
(16:35):
I'm not even kidding, and actually give you some money
to put on the roulette table. And for me, I
think we do very well there, so you've been a
big success by almost every measure of success, family, financial, work, fame, etcetera.
I know there are a lot of folks listening who
are building their careers today. What advice would you give them?
(16:56):
I mean, I would first of all say, there's no rush.
I help a lot of young entrepreneurs that I'm friends with,
and they always seem like it has to be done now.
Oh my god, has to be done. Oh my god,
Series A, series B, I don't even know what. Like, guys,
calm down. You got to build a brand. People think
that the whole idea of building a brand is to
sell it and make a lot of money. No, build
a brand that you love. It takes time. It's like
(17:17):
a baby. You gotta nurture it. Building a brand you
love is great advice for entrepreneurs, but for Procter and Gamble,
building a brand is also about staying true to your values.
In my conversation with Mark Pritchard, chief brand officer of
p AND, we talked about some of his most impactful
campaigns and how they pushed his brand forward. I want
(17:44):
to talk a little bit about the view of this company,
and I want to go back in time back to
when you were GM of the cover Girl business and
you had an epiphany about the broader impact you could
have on culture. It had an immediate effect on the
Easy Breezy, Beautiful agg campaign, very well known at that time.
Can you tell us what led to that epiphany and
(18:05):
how it changed you What I was doing at the
time as I was a general manager of our CoverGirl business,
which is Baltimore, and then my white Betsy and our
three daughters, who are all under the age of ten,
went to a place called wind River Ranch up in
the Colorado Rockies. It was a spiritual ranch, nondenominational spiritual ranch.
Because I was born Catholic, my wife's Jewish. My dad
(18:26):
was an alcoholics anonymous, so we had a higher power
and he was also there with us. When we were there,
the spiritual leader at the very end of it came
up to me and said, you know, Mark, you really
can make a big difference in the world because you're
in business. The greatest force for good in the future
is going to be business. It's not going to be clergy,
(18:46):
it's not gonna be government. It's going to be business.
If you choose to do so, you can do a
lot of good. We had just introduced the easy Briefing
Beautiful cover Girl campaign, and I literally it was an
epiphany where I thought, oh wow, the effect that we
have on the standard of beauty is profound. We're essentially
portraying what we view is the standard of beauty and
(19:09):
unfortunate the time, the spokespeople we had were too young,
too skinny, and too white. And I sat there and
looked at my ten year old daughters and I said,
you know, I have an obligation to do the right thing,
and I knew then that we needed to make a change.
We brought in Queen Latifa, we brought in Mellon Generous,
(19:30):
Sophia Vergara, Pink, Janelle Monet. We became diverse. We moved
to a standard of beauty that came from within as
opposed to externally. And it was really a very profound
moment because I realized how much impact advertising can have
on people's perceptions. And that was really the start of
(19:50):
what I hope we're doing now. At that moment, What
was the reaction internally from the consumers and from the
ad industry. Well, it first when I went back and
talked to our agencies at the time, they're like, well, wait,
wait a minute. No, no, no, no, no no, that's
not what women want to see. They don't want to
see themselves. They want to see other people who are
(20:14):
the quote better version of themselves. M M. I said no, no,
no, no no, no, no, we need to try we can
do something that's better. Thankfully, Alice Erickson, who was the
creative director at the time, did a magnificent job and
she's the one who really, along with the other team,
brought in Queen Latifa. That really is what transformed that
(20:34):
campaign and that brand. What was the reaction internally when
you came back with this epiphany, you know, internally people
got it. They got it pretty quickly. They thought, you know, yeah,
this is something we can do, and we went for it.
It really unlocked a lot of creativity. P and G
is a huge company, but it has a heart that
(20:55):
you might actually expect from a nonprofit. You talked a
little bit about where this came from, but I'd like
to hit a couple of the things you've done and
are doing just to get a little context on it.
Love over Bias Can you give us a minute on that? Yeah?
Love over Biased was our last Olympic Ad, which was
trying to shine the light on the bias that exists
(21:15):
in the world and then imagine what the world can
see if they looked at it through mom's eyes and
looked at people through mom's eyes. It was just a
brilliant add It was one of the best we've ever done.
It was also directed by Alma Horrell, who is you
may know he founded Free the work just a brilliant director.
Gave just such a touch to it that was just
(21:36):
phenomenal that really helped build our business. At the same time,
were you able to measure it in any way the
impact it had on changing attitudes? Primarily the way we
measured that one is through just the sentiment that it provided.
The reactions that we've got of an ad is really
brilliant or a piece of work is really brilliant. It
does amplify and get carried. You've been a vocal advocate
(21:57):
for pay equality. I think if one numbers are right,
about forty of the managers of the company are now women.
Sorry with old numbers, How did the company do that?
What was the process to get there? Because I think
there's a lesson in that for a lot of other
companies that are wrestling with the same issue. A big
part of that came from leadership. When I started, there
(22:19):
were not many women managers with the leadership at the
time John Smail, then eventually John Pepper and others said
diversity is important, and that led to over time now
at CENT and we're seeking to get leadership still today,
David Taylor is absolutely adamant about the power of diversity
and over time. What we also found, Bob was that
(22:40):
diversity is not only the right thing to do, it's
the smart thing to do when it comes to building business.
The most diverse companies, the most diverse teams tend to
do better as gender, it's races, ethnicity, it's a sexual
and gender identity, it's ability, religion, and a each And
(23:00):
we look at things now on an intersectional basis because
it's intersectional. Quality is important. A big part of that
is because that's who we serve. We serve all humanity,
so therefore our company needs to reflect humanity. So we're
deliberately focusing on that. We're not where we want to
be yet, but we're absolutely deliberate about making a difference there.
(23:21):
That's it for today's episode of Math and Magic. Hope
you picked up some valuable insights. We'll be back to
our regularly scheduled series next week with another guest from
the front lines of marketing. Until then, I'm Bob Pittman.
Thanks for listening. Thanks so much for listening to Math
and Magic production of I Heart Radio. This show is
(23:41):
hosted by Bob Pittman. Special thanks to Sue Schillinger for
booking and wrangling our wonderful talent, which is no small feat.
Nikki Etre for pulling research, Bill Plax and Michael Asar
for their recording help, our editor Ryan Murdoch, and of
course Gayl Raoul, Eric Angel, Noel Mango and everyone who
helped bring this show to your ears. Until next time,
(24:11):
h
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