May 25, 2023 • 30 mins
The world of media is ever-changing — and no one has played it quite like Jacki Kelley, CEO of the Americas and Global Chief Client Officer of advertising giant, Dentsu. Jacki has been at the center of media and advertising for the last 25 years, with leadership roles at USA Today, Yahoo, Martha Stewart Living, and Bloomberg. Her deep understanding of the media landscape has put her in a valuable position to both manage Dentsu’s global portfolio of clients and lead a team that is always looking to where to go next, from exciting ways to use AI, to more precise messaging that powerfully connects with individuals. But what people may not know is that Jacki comes from a fifth generation cattle ranching family and has been a foster parent for more than 20 children. Bob sits down with Jacki to find out how these experiences have shaped her approach to business, leadership, and company culture.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
You're listening to Math and Magic, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
I hear our clients and our agencies have done the same,
and so I think it's a very different conversation. You
see cmos becoming growth officers. You see cmos taking on
sales and taking on a datascope far broader than what
they used to have, and I think that speaks to.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Marketing as a growth driver.
Speaker 4 (00:28):
Hi, I'm Bob Pittman, and welcome to Math and Magic.
Stories from the Frontiers of Marketing. Our guest today is
someone who's covered the waterfront of media and advertising USA today, Bloomberg, Yahoo,
Media Brands, and now the CEO of the Americas and
global Chief Client Officer of the advertising giant Densu. It's
Jackie Kelly. Most folks who know her in our business
(00:51):
think of her as some of this very sophisticated, urbane person.
They might not guess that she's from a fifth generation
cattle ranching family. She was a member of four h
who raised steers to show at the county fair and
sold them to pay for her first year of college.
She was there for the transition of newspapers to digital
and the handoff of web portals. To social and search,
(01:13):
and has worked with high powered personalities like Mike Bloomberg
and Martha Stewart. She's brought that range to her work
in advertising, helping clients navigate the rough waters of change.
She's also got a big heart along with her brilliance
and her drive to make a real difference in the world. Jackie, Welcome,
Thank you, Bob.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
It's great to be here.
Speaker 4 (01:35):
So before we jump in, we got a lot to
talk about. I want to do you in sixty seconds
to set the context. Ready to go, excellent, Ready to go?
Do you prefer cats or dogs?
Speaker 3 (01:45):
Cats?
Speaker 4 (01:46):
Are you an early riser or night out?
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Early riser? Definitely?
Speaker 4 (01:50):
La or New York, LA, city or country country, winter
or summer?
Speaker 3 (01:56):
Winter, salty or sweet salty.
Speaker 4 (02:00):
Farmers or ranchers, ranchers, beach.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Or mountains, mountains always mountains.
Speaker 4 (02:07):
Pop music or country country? USA Today or New York Times.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
Oh, I gotta go with USA Today.
Speaker 4 (02:14):
Cooker, read out, cook vacation with family or friends, family chat,
GPT or Google Search, still, Google Search, smartest person you know?
Mike Blimberg, childhood hero, my parents? And finally, what's something
you can't without?
Speaker 3 (02:34):
My faith?
Speaker 4 (02:36):
Great? Okay, let's jump in. Let's start with a big
topic in marketing today. As marketers, we got spoiled in
the eighties, nineties, and oughts because Middle America was fascinated
by the coastal elites and wanted to emulate them. But
in the last decade that began to change. Consumers in
America don't necessarily look up to the coastal elites as
(02:57):
the cool kids anymore. There's a different mindset for real America,
Middle America, or flyover America, whatever you want to call it.
You're from rural Colorado and have a special understanding and
connection to this world. So here's the question. How do
we put something like Uber and TikTok and perspective. I
mean Uber, which I think everyone thinks is universal, that
(03:18):
only has ninety million active users in the US, and
TikTok reaches less than thirty percent of the American population,
not what you would think of. How do we keep
that from swaying our own judgment as it influences our
creativity and our decisions we make every day.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Well, I think it starts with each of us as individuals. Personally,
I work really hard to watch and listen to things
that I wouldn't normally watch and listen to just to
see the other point of view. Right, if you're an
individual that only watches Fox News, you should turn on
MSNBC every now and again because you get the contrast.
You hear and understand what the other side is saying,
(03:59):
and it doesn't always have political Right. If you normally
listen to pop rock, turn on country every now and again,
just make yourself, as an individual be more curious about
how others experience the world. Travel to places that you
wouldn't normally choose to go to, and be present when
you're there. I think that's one when I bring it
into the context that you're speaking of with you know,
(04:21):
professionals designing product or in our case, really understanding consumers
of products, whether that be current consumers or those that
our brands want a conquest. We spend a ton of
time really diving into what is unique about those individuals,
what do they have in common, what is different. We
still do ethnographies to really go deep and understand the
(04:42):
psyche of those consumers so that we can be more
specific in how we communicate with them. It takes a
ton of energy, but again it's all about relevance. It's
all about individuals feeling like you know them, like you
understand them. It is about that deep understanding and the
channels that they rely on. Your point about TikTok, while
that is significantly growing, How people use it, why they
(05:05):
use it, the role that plays in their life is
significantly different than the other channels that we would be
advocating for brands, they all might play a role, and they.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
Play very connected roles.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
So really understanding how consumers are using different channels and
how those channels can come together in powerful ways is very,
very valuable. I also think the other thing that's changing
in our organizations to different degrees depending on the companies
we work with, but I'll use DENSU as my example.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
One thing COVID taught us is that people can work
from anywhere.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
We are hiring people from all over, so we now
have thousands.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
Of people that sit in the middle of the country.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
To your earlier point about it being so skewed by
the coasts and potentially being in a bubble, let's jump
to AI.
Speaker 4 (05:49):
Couldn't be a hotter topic right now?
Speaker 3 (05:51):
Couldn't be a hotter topic.
Speaker 4 (05:53):
How will it change advertising and the work you do
for your clients.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
There is not a meeting I go to where AI
is not a topic, if not the first topic.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
And I think there's so many layers we have to
work through.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
If I start with us as an enterprise, we use
AI today, we will continue to use it to make
the work we do more efficient, faster, the quality of
it being potentially better done by computers, so we can
reframe our human capital against things that only people can do.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
There's many places where we're using it where it's still human.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
Assisted because it requires some oversight to make sure that
it is indeed giving us the best decision. Some of
that is around how do you quickly scroll through a
lot of resumes? We still want human assistance in that
to make sure that there's not bias. It's being integrated
into the system by virtue of AI. But I think
the enterprise business application, we're just beginning to fully understand that.
(06:52):
I think that's pretty game changing for agency holding companies.
When I turn to how we're using it with brands,
I'll give you two examples. One of them is for Intel,
which has incredible technology to help remove fake content. So
the campaign is called deep fake, and through their facial recognition.
(07:15):
Using AI, they can identify very quickly on a computer
screen who is a real talking head and advocate or
pundent and who is fake. And that is now being
applied to governments and companies and media owners to make
sure that we get fake content out of the realm.
So that's one example of a client that's using AI
(07:37):
to really drive good in the world. Another is something
we've just launched with a brand called Europharma that is
using AI technology deeply in a scrolling sense on your
phone where it helps those with Parkinson's do their daily
exercises to make sure that they don't lose their facial expression,
(07:59):
which is a very sad consequence of Parkinson's. So there's
game changing ways to use it to make our work
far more powerful. The final point I'll make that I
think we have to be careful about is there's just
as many probably downsides to it if we're not careful.
And I am an advocate for proactive regulation and I'm
excited about some of the groups that are driving this,
(08:22):
but I think there's lots of ways in which it
can go wrong if we're not very very astute and
hold hands as an industry and are very careful about it.
Speaker 4 (08:29):
Hot topic right now. The economics slowdown. Historically advertisers go, oh, economics,
slow down, quick, take money out of advertising. Save that money,
We'll throw it to the bottom line, or let's hold
it and see what happens. There were some important lessons
learned from twenty twenty. I think one of them was
that people found that when they started spending again, it
cost them a lot more money than if they had
(08:51):
kept spending through the downturn. What do you see happening
now and what do you what are your thoughts on
at tizer spending in times like this.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
I think there's so many case studies in history.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
Even if you go back to nineteen eighty two, another
moment where there was a recession, you had some of
the best brands launched during that time or grew during
that time as a result of their spending into it.
So I think over history we have seen that continue
to be the case. What I see most with marketers
right now, which gives me a ton of optimism, is
(09:26):
there has been a focus certainly on performance right, performance
and ROI and all of that has definitely come even
more into focus in the last i'd say eighteen months.
We have some clients that are probably trading off some
of their brand spend and brand effort in preference of
performance right now, but not exclusively, and most are really
(09:49):
trying to figure out how you work up and down
that spectrum in order to ensure that you've got brand
love at the top, which naturally begins to drive performance
at the bottom of that fine. Well, the other thing
that gives me a ton of hope is I hear
our clients and our CEOs especially talk about marketing as
an investment, as a growth driver, not as a cost.
(10:13):
And I think that is to the credit of the
cmos who have embraced data. They've embraced the importance of
proving the value of every dollar we spend. Agencies have
done the same, and so I think it's a very
different conversation. You see cmos becoming growth officers. You see
cmos taking on sales and taking on a data scope
(10:34):
far broader than what they used to have, and I
think that speaks to marketing as a growth driver, not
as a cost.
Speaker 4 (10:40):
I want to dig into topics we're talking about, but
I want to first get a little context on you.
I want to go back in time when you look
at the Dutton family of Yellowstone, anything there that reminds
you of your fifth generation Ranching family in rural Colorado.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
Oh my god. I love Yellowstone largely for that reason.
Did not look like Yellowstone, So I want to be
perfectly clear. And we never branded each other, only the cattle.
And I wish I was as crazy and as fun
as Beth, but I'm not. I wouldn't trade my upbringing
for anything because it was simple, right, it was, And
(11:16):
I don't I mean that as in the best way, right.
I grew up in a very rural area, a little
town called Franktown in Colorado. I think at the time
there was probably twenty three hundred people in Frankown.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
There's probably not that much more now.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
My graduating class in high school was two hundred and
probably bigger than most would think in a rural town
like that. And I walked into third grade and met
my best friends. There's seven of us, so we met
in third grade. We still celebrate every birthday and every
high and low of life. And I think that that
connectedness and that family and friends and faith first has
(11:54):
always stuck with me. You know. We sat around the
dinner every night together and talked about our day, and
somebody had to cook, somebody had to clean the dishes.
I just the routine of that and the consistency of that,
I think served me well as a human. I hope
it has helped me raise children in a similar way,
although never raised with that level of ruralness that I had.
Speaker 4 (12:17):
So what influence did your family in that environment have
on you that's still with you today? That makes you,
in essence who you are.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
I had the gift of parents that believed anything was possible,
and they allowed us to do what we wanted to do.
They never placed their points of view or their desires
on us. When I was deciding where to go to college,
everybody in my family had gone to a university in Colorado,
and for me, I felt I had four years to
(12:48):
live somewhere else, and everybody comes back to Colorado my
family and I raised it to my dad and he said, sure, honey,
you try, you.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
Go anywhere you want. You can do anything.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
And you know, I guess whether or not I believe
that the fact that somebody else believed that in me
mattered a lot.
Speaker 4 (13:05):
Four h I told that story raising Steers. I'll bet
many of our listeners don't even know what four H is.
Can you explain real quickly what four H is?
Speaker 3 (13:15):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (13:15):
So four H is an organization where youth take on
different projects and those projects range from agriculture, which is
what I did, as well as home economics so cooking
and sewing, and I also did that. But it also
now has a lot of technology projects. They have archery.
(13:35):
The span of what they do now is far different
than it was when I participated, and it is across
the United States. Plenty of people in rural New York
do it and they teach horticulturalism and different things. It's
about giving your heart and your hands and your health
to better living and to really learn different projects. And
(13:56):
then you display those projects.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
So in my case.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
Is where I showed my steers, and then you sell
them and that money which I did for gosh, I
did that for twelve years. The money that I had
saved selling cattle helped pay for my first year of college,
as you mentioned. And it teaches you responsibility at a
really young age. Right, You're up at five thirty in
the morning to feed your animals. You have to walk them,
you have to show them, you have to bathe them.
(14:22):
All of that is happening when you're nine years old,
So it's a really good way to teach young leaders
at a.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
Young age.
Speaker 4 (14:30):
Moral math and magic. Right after this quick break, welcome
back to math and magic. Let's hear more from my
conversation with Jackie Kelly. Let's get your career how and
why USA Today when you join, newspapers are still in
full swing and over time. Of course, we know what
(14:52):
happened to the newspaper and they made the transition to digital
and other kinds of businesses. What did you see in
USA today that initially excited you and then how did
you navigate that change?
Speaker 2 (15:05):
I joined USA Today when they had just turned five
in nineteen eighty eight, and I joined as an intern,
and my initial reason for joining was it was opportunistic, right,
I wanted to learn something. I was interested in broadcast journalism.
Obviously that wasn't broadcast journalism, but it was the opportunity
to get into a journalistic organization. And USA Today at
(15:27):
the time, I love the innovation of that product. At
the time, there was no color newspapers, there was no
nationally distributed newspaper. There was no newspaper that could have
the sports scores from the game ends at eleven o'clock,
and it's in that morning paper. That was by virtue
of the satellite technology of printing that USA Today was
(15:48):
using at the time. So USA Today was breaking every
rule in newspapers, and I thought that was incredibly exciting.
So I joined as an intern. Learned a ton That
was a company that gave me the opportunity. That was
a company that grew leaders. They would bring people in young,
they would teach them and train them and give them
lots of different opportunities. And so I left eighteen years later.
(16:11):
I liked to joke that I was the longest living intern.
I had spent nine years in circulation and I spent
nine years in advertising. So you know, the distribution side
of a company like USA Today is just as critical
as the advertising. In the case of USA Today, we
had just as much revenue, sometimes far more in circulation
than we did in advertising, especially in the early days,
(16:31):
as we were convincing advertisers that this was a viable product.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
So I loved it because it was innovative.
Speaker 4 (16:38):
You went on to Yahoo, you did a stint with
Martha Stewart, and then you crossed the fence to the
agency side running media brands. What made you jump the fence?
Speaker 2 (16:49):
This is kind of a fun story, and I give
credit to people that can identify talent and then encourage
us to do something that would not be obvious to us.
Case I had left USA, I had gone to Yahoo
and worked for Wyndam Millard. Wynda Millard is an incredible
mentor for me and convinced me to come to Yahoo.
But it wasn't that hard to convince me because I
(17:11):
knew newspapers were changing. I knew I needed to get
a much better digital education. I wanted to go to
the deep end, and at the time, Yahoo or Google
were your two choices, and Yahoo was teaching brands how
to build a brand on the web, so that was
obvious for me. And then followed Wenda to Martha Stewart
to fully integrate Martha's organization. It was post her being
(17:32):
in what she calls the clink clink, and we were
building her brand back and consumers never left her, advertisers had,
so there was a lot of work to do around
integrating her organization. I'd love that challenge. It was in
that moment that Wenda actually had heard about an opportunity
through a friend of hers that was running UM globally,
a gentleman named Matt Siler, and she said, you should
(17:55):
look at this because it would be a next phase
of your career. And I had wanted to be at
the agency side. I'd been on a panel at Advertising
Week and famously referred to agencies as a barrier to
my progress as a media owner, which did not go overwhell.
But I believed that agencies were failing clients and media
(18:17):
owners because they were not giving us the gift of
time and transparency. Those were the two things that I
really wanted from an agency, and I just couldn't get anyway.
Long story short, Matt saw what I saw. Matt saw
the opportunity to leverage media owners as real content partners
in the work that media brands and UM specifically was
doing for clients. And it was the first time that
(18:38):
I saw an agency executive see what I saw as
the opportunity to partner differently with media owners. And it
was one of those moments in life where you can
keep complaining and pointing the finger and wishing it was different,
or you can jump to the other side and help
make that so. And then I got bit right then.
I just loved the agency side. It's such an incredible
place to operate in our industry. But that's how I
(19:01):
got there, great people that told me I should.
Speaker 4 (19:04):
Well, you jumped the fence again, back when you went
with Michael Bloomberg when he had just come out of
his twelve years as probably the most spectacular in New
York City mayor ever, and you joined just as he
was re entering the private world. Tell us what was
so great about that that caused you to go, Wait
a minute, I'm in the ad world, but now I'm
going back.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
So I'm one of those people, and this is probably
not a good thing to share, but I keep my
head down and I don't really look for new opportunities,
but then something will get into my line of sight
and I get excited about it. And that's what happened
with Bloomberg. Mike was coming back to the organization, but
it was assumed he'd come back into the foundation. I
don't think anybody assumed he'd come back and be the
(19:46):
CEO of the company again. And the leadership at the
time was going to take the twenty six hundred journalists
of Bloomberg, which is at the time was more than CNN,
New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal combined. It
was a for Milis still is a formidable journalism team,
and again going back to my love of journalism and
(20:06):
the importance of that and being in a newsroom, I
missed that aspect, and so the intention was to take
that incredible journalistic team and really create a competitor to CNN.
So it was broad in the aperture, from financial news
to broader general news as well. That's what got me
in there. And it was integrated right. They had broadcasts,
(20:28):
they had print, they have the terminal, they have incredible
digital property, and so the ability to run that and
have some oversight of editorial was super interesting to me.
Speaker 4 (20:38):
We talked a little bit about den Sue. You obviously
came back to DENSU. You've had a spectacular impact in
advertising again through DENSU. I want to talk a little
bit about corporate culture. People have said our corporate cultures
and our values is our operating system, and just like
in technology, if you don't get that right, none of
the other programs work well. Had DENSU you got the
(21:00):
far flung organization. We've talked about people working remotely. Now
and wyoming in places like that, how do you get
buy in, especially post pandemic, the new work environment.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
I will say post pandemic, it's harder. I think it's
harder because we do not have people coming together in
the way they used to, which means as leaders, we
need to work harder at it. First and foremost, my
executive team and I work really hard on making sure
that we are embodying those cultures. We spend a lot
of time becoming as productive as we can as a
(21:31):
collective unit and operating system ourselves, and we're really candid
with one another when one of us is acting in
a way that may suggest that we're not living into
those values. So that's one holding one another accountable. I
think the other is peer to peer platform. We have
to create visible ways where our culture is displayed. One
(21:52):
of our values is around making society better. So it's
not just about the work we do. We want the
work we do for brands to actually make it impact
in the world and to improve society. Our global CEO
kiro Igarashisan talks about being business to business to society
and that society piece being so important that is really
(22:13):
in the fabric of our culture. So when we have
a piece of work, the intel piece of work around
deep fake is an example of this, we really celebrate
that because that is an example of us actually making
the world a better and safer place. So I think
to put a fine point on it behaving that way
as individuals, and then when you have a piece of
work or a client example, making sure the network can
(22:35):
celebrate that and we.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
Make it visible.
Speaker 4 (22:38):
You've had a charmed career and I know giving back
is very important to you. You're the board chair of
the Egg Council. You've been on the boards of a
number of organizations, but one of the most important clauses
for you is foster care. I think a foster family
for over twenty children. Can you tell us a little
bit about foster care in the US why we should
all get involved in what touched you about it?
Speaker 3 (23:00):
Now?
Speaker 2 (23:01):
Thank you for asking that question, Bob, because I have
been accused of recruiting foster parents whenever I can, so
I will take this opportunity for all your listeners to
do that. I got involved because my family, through our church,
had been able to be camp counselors at a camp
for foster children one summer and through that experience, I
(23:22):
learned two stats that stunned me. One was that fifty
percent of the homeless in the US were at some
point in the foster system, and seventy percent of those
that are incarcerated were at some point in the foster system.
So it struck me that if you fix the foster system,
you might actually fix a lot of things that our
(23:44):
country then struggles with long term. And more importantly, how
unfair that these kids never had the chance to live
up to their full potential. That's what bothered me most
is the fact that by virtue of their circumstances, which
is not their fault, they were compromised it to homelessness
and incarceration all these other things. So it really struck
(24:04):
me that we could actually make a difference. And I
mentioned it to my husband coming back from camp that week,
and I'd had the eleven year old girls, my own daughter,
Ashley was eleven at the time, and he had the
eleven year old boys, And as we were driving back,
I said, I think we should do this, and he
hesitated because he was with the eleven year old boys.
His week was not quite as kumbaya as mine was.
(24:26):
And then he came back two weeks later and said,
I think you're right. I think we can make a difference,
and we got licensed. We've now had twenty six foster
children and we adopted our twenty fifth, which is Little Nova,
which we adopted last summer, and it is game changing.
I encourage anyone who has room in their home and
in their heart to consider it.
Speaker 3 (24:47):
And there's many different ways. You don't have to be
in it forever.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
You can do respe care where you take kids for
a weekend as they find a more permanent foster placement
for them.
Speaker 3 (24:57):
But there's a lot of good that.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
Can come from you just showing love and affection and
routine to a child at a time when their whole
world has turned upside down.
Speaker 3 (25:06):
So I highly recommend it.
Speaker 4 (25:08):
Well, you're doing a lot for them. What do they
do for you? What insights in the humanity in the
world have you gotten as a result of being a
foster parent?
Speaker 2 (25:18):
Like all things in life, you get so much more
than you give. They have fulfilled us as a family
in a really different way. They have taught me a
different level of resilience because these kids have seen things, Bob,
that you and I have never seen, and yet they
have come out on the other side optimistic and playful
and hopeful, so they remind you of the importance of resilience.
(25:42):
I've also learned a lot about the system and our
government and in many ways where it.
Speaker 3 (25:47):
Can be fixed.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
It's made me more interested in public policy. It has
taught our family a lot about diversity, right, a lot
about how different cultures to your earliest point about how
do we become less polarizing and more integrated. It has
taught us that because we've had children of all different nationalities,
and as a result of that, we do our best
to bring that culture into our home, which has been
incredibly educational.
Speaker 4 (26:09):
Let's jump to some advice a couple of points before
we wind up today. You've been through a lot of careers.
If someone's thinking about changing jobs, what should they consider?
What advice can you give them?
Speaker 2 (26:21):
The advice I always give people is to pick people.
I think exceptional leaders can make a mediocre company exceptional,
and less exceptional leaders can make a great company less great.
And so I always say, pick people. You will learn
so much and the opportunities will be so much richer.
(26:43):
First and foremost, and then the other I would say
is to not be afraid to zig and zag. I
think we've gotten very focused as professionals on climbing the ladder.
I think there's a lot more benefit if you're willing
to go to a horizontal opportunity in order to expand
your own learning. It will give you an opportunity to
leap forward in a very different way.
Speaker 4 (27:03):
We end each episode of Math and Magic with a
shout out to the greats or the influences on our
guests from the two polls of great marketing, the math
those whose brilliance is in the analytics finding the insights
that make a difference in who see the world through data,
and the magic those who add the spark, those who
excite the consumer or others with their sheer creativity. I'm
(27:28):
going to ask you for a shout out. Who are
your two shout outs on the math side and on
the magic side.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
On the math side, I would give a big shout
out to David Williams, who's the founder of Merkel. I
mentioned Merkle earlier in terms of its importance to our
capability at DENSU, but David acquired Merkel when it was
twenty five people and five million dollars in revenue as
a really direct mail company and built it into a
(27:56):
robust performance marketing and personalization engine with identity at the core.
Speaker 3 (28:00):
It's incredible what he built.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
And what I loved about David is not only was
he a mathematician in terms of understanding the power of
that going forward, but he reinforced for me the value
of what I call balcony to basement, like being able
to really understand the guts of the organization but also
lift up and be really.
Speaker 3 (28:20):
Inspiring with your vision.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
And he knew when to pivot and to see something
coming and get ahead of it, and he did that.
Speaker 3 (28:26):
Brilliantly for Markle Magic.
Speaker 2 (28:29):
For Magic, I'm going to shout out to a book
that I've recently just finished by Sally Sessman. And Sally
is an exceptional executive and communication leader.
Speaker 3 (28:40):
She's been at Amex S D.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
Lauder and now she's advisor, and she's recently written a
book called Breaking Through. And the magic of this book
is it is a reminder and an incredible guide on
the importance of communication. And she has ten power principles
or tenants in there that really speak two executives. So
I give Sally the shout out for magic and highly
(29:03):
recommend the book for everyone.
Speaker 4 (29:05):
Jackie, You've had an amazing career in life. You've still
got so much ahead of you. I'm not trying to
make you sound like you're anywhere near the end of that. Congrats.
Thanks for sharing these insights and experiences with us today.
Speaker 3 (29:18):
Thank you for inviting me, Bob, I appreciate it.
Speaker 4 (29:22):
Here are a few things I picked up from my
conversation with Jackie. One, stay curious. If you want to
appeal to customers with different demographics, it's important to venture
outside your bubble, listen to a different kind of music
than you're used to, or turn on a different news channel.
When you stay open minded, your products and your life
experiences will be better for it. Two. Choose people over companies.
(29:46):
A brilliant leader can make any company better, and less
worthy leaders can drag a company down. When you trust
and admire the people you work for, you'll learn more
and you'll be more fulfilled overall. Three, don't be afraid
to change direction. People often get hung up on climbing
the ladder in one company or industry, but when you
(30:06):
make a horizontal move to a place you wouldn't have
expected or climbed to the other side of the fence.
It may give you an opportunity to leap forward in
exciting new ways. I'm Bob Pittman. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
That's it for today's episode. Thanks so much for listening
to Math and Magic, a production of iHeartRadio. The show
is hosted by Bob Pittman. Special thanks to Sidney Rosenbloom
for booking and wrangling our wonderful talent, which is no
small feat. Our editor Emily Meronoff, our engineers Jessica Crinchitch
and Baheid Fraser, our executive producers Nikki Etoor and Ali Perry,
(30:42):
and of course Gail Raoul, Eric Angel Noel and everyone
who helped bring this show to your ears. Until next time,
You're listening to Math and Magic, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
I hear our clients and our agencies have done the same,
and so I think it's a very different conversation. You
see cmos becoming growth officers. You see cmos taking on
sales and taking on a datascope far broader than what
they used to have, and I think that speaks to.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Marketing as a growth driver.
Speaker 4 (00:28):
Hi, I'm Bob Pittman, and welcome to Math and Magic.
Stories from the Frontiers of Marketing. Our guest today is
someone who's covered the waterfront of media and advertising USA today, Bloomberg, Yahoo,
Media Brands, and now the CEO of the Americas and
global Chief Client Officer of the advertising giant Densu. It's
Jackie Kelly. Most folks who know her in our business
(00:51):
think of her as some of this very sophisticated, urbane person.
They might not guess that she's from a fifth generation
cattle ranching family. She was a member of four h
who raised steers to show at the county fair and
sold them to pay for her first year of college.
She was there for the transition of newspapers to digital
and the handoff of web portals. To social and search,
(01:13):
and has worked with high powered personalities like Mike Bloomberg
and Martha Stewart. She's brought that range to her work
in advertising, helping clients navigate the rough waters of change.
She's also got a big heart along with her brilliance
and her drive to make a real difference in the world. Jackie, Welcome,
Thank you, Bob.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
It's great to be here.
Speaker 4 (01:35):
So before we jump in, we got a lot to
talk about. I want to do you in sixty seconds
to set the context. Ready to go, excellent, Ready to go?
Do you prefer cats or dogs?
Speaker 3 (01:45):
Cats?
Speaker 4 (01:46):
Are you an early riser or night out?
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Early riser? Definitely?
Speaker 4 (01:50):
La or New York, LA, city or country country, winter
or summer?
Speaker 3 (01:56):
Winter, salty or sweet salty.
Speaker 4 (02:00):
Farmers or ranchers, ranchers, beach.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Or mountains, mountains always mountains.
Speaker 4 (02:07):
Pop music or country country? USA Today or New York Times.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
Oh, I gotta go with USA Today.
Speaker 4 (02:14):
Cooker, read out, cook vacation with family or friends, family chat,
GPT or Google Search, still, Google Search, smartest person you know?
Mike Blimberg, childhood hero, my parents? And finally, what's something
you can't without?
Speaker 3 (02:34):
My faith?
Speaker 4 (02:36):
Great? Okay, let's jump in. Let's start with a big
topic in marketing today. As marketers, we got spoiled in
the eighties, nineties, and oughts because Middle America was fascinated
by the coastal elites and wanted to emulate them. But
in the last decade that began to change. Consumers in
America don't necessarily look up to the coastal elites as
(02:57):
the cool kids anymore. There's a different mindset for real America,
Middle America, or flyover America, whatever you want to call it.
You're from rural Colorado and have a special understanding and
connection to this world. So here's the question. How do
we put something like Uber and TikTok and perspective. I
mean Uber, which I think everyone thinks is universal, that
(03:18):
only has ninety million active users in the US, and
TikTok reaches less than thirty percent of the American population,
not what you would think of. How do we keep
that from swaying our own judgment as it influences our
creativity and our decisions we make every day.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Well, I think it starts with each of us as individuals. Personally,
I work really hard to watch and listen to things
that I wouldn't normally watch and listen to just to
see the other point of view. Right, if you're an
individual that only watches Fox News, you should turn on
MSNBC every now and again because you get the contrast.
You hear and understand what the other side is saying,
(03:59):
and it doesn't always have political Right. If you normally
listen to pop rock, turn on country every now and again,
just make yourself, as an individual be more curious about
how others experience the world. Travel to places that you
wouldn't normally choose to go to, and be present when
you're there. I think that's one when I bring it
into the context that you're speaking of with you know,
(04:21):
professionals designing product or in our case, really understanding consumers
of products, whether that be current consumers or those that
our brands want a conquest. We spend a ton of
time really diving into what is unique about those individuals,
what do they have in common, what is different. We
still do ethnographies to really go deep and understand the
(04:42):
psyche of those consumers so that we can be more
specific in how we communicate with them. It takes a
ton of energy, but again it's all about relevance. It's
all about individuals feeling like you know them, like you
understand them. It is about that deep understanding and the
channels that they rely on. Your point about TikTok, while
that is significantly growing, How people use it, why they
(05:05):
use it, the role that plays in their life is
significantly different than the other channels that we would be
advocating for brands, they all might play a role, and they.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
Play very connected roles.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
So really understanding how consumers are using different channels and
how those channels can come together in powerful ways is very,
very valuable. I also think the other thing that's changing
in our organizations to different degrees depending on the companies
we work with, but I'll use DENSU as my example.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
One thing COVID taught us is that people can work
from anywhere.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
We are hiring people from all over, so we now
have thousands.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
Of people that sit in the middle of the country.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
To your earlier point about it being so skewed by
the coasts and potentially being in a bubble, let's jump
to AI.
Speaker 4 (05:49):
Couldn't be a hotter topic right now?
Speaker 3 (05:51):
Couldn't be a hotter topic.
Speaker 4 (05:53):
How will it change advertising and the work you do
for your clients.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
There is not a meeting I go to where AI
is not a topic, if not the first topic.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
And I think there's so many layers we have to
work through.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
If I start with us as an enterprise, we use
AI today, we will continue to use it to make
the work we do more efficient, faster, the quality of
it being potentially better done by computers, so we can
reframe our human capital against things that only people can do.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
There's many places where we're using it where it's still human.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
Assisted because it requires some oversight to make sure that
it is indeed giving us the best decision. Some of
that is around how do you quickly scroll through a
lot of resumes? We still want human assistance in that
to make sure that there's not bias. It's being integrated
into the system by virtue of AI. But I think
the enterprise business application, we're just beginning to fully understand that.
(06:52):
I think that's pretty game changing for agency holding companies.
When I turn to how we're using it with brands,
I'll give you two examples. One of them is for Intel,
which has incredible technology to help remove fake content. So
the campaign is called deep fake, and through their facial recognition.
(07:15):
Using AI, they can identify very quickly on a computer
screen who is a real talking head and advocate or
pundent and who is fake. And that is now being
applied to governments and companies and media owners to make
sure that we get fake content out of the realm.
So that's one example of a client that's using AI
(07:37):
to really drive good in the world. Another is something
we've just launched with a brand called Europharma that is
using AI technology deeply in a scrolling sense on your
phone where it helps those with Parkinson's do their daily
exercises to make sure that they don't lose their facial expression,
(07:59):
which is a very sad consequence of Parkinson's. So there's
game changing ways to use it to make our work
far more powerful. The final point I'll make that I
think we have to be careful about is there's just
as many probably downsides to it if we're not careful.
And I am an advocate for proactive regulation and I'm
excited about some of the groups that are driving this,
(08:22):
but I think there's lots of ways in which it
can go wrong if we're not very very astute and
hold hands as an industry and are very careful about it.
Speaker 4 (08:29):
Hot topic right now. The economics slowdown. Historically advertisers go, oh, economics,
slow down, quick, take money out of advertising. Save that money,
We'll throw it to the bottom line, or let's hold
it and see what happens. There were some important lessons
learned from twenty twenty. I think one of them was
that people found that when they started spending again, it
cost them a lot more money than if they had
(08:51):
kept spending through the downturn. What do you see happening
now and what do you what are your thoughts on
at tizer spending in times like this.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
I think there's so many case studies in history.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
Even if you go back to nineteen eighty two, another
moment where there was a recession, you had some of
the best brands launched during that time or grew during
that time as a result of their spending into it.
So I think over history we have seen that continue
to be the case. What I see most with marketers
right now, which gives me a ton of optimism, is
(09:26):
there has been a focus certainly on performance right, performance
and ROI and all of that has definitely come even
more into focus in the last i'd say eighteen months.
We have some clients that are probably trading off some
of their brand spend and brand effort in preference of
performance right now, but not exclusively, and most are really
(09:49):
trying to figure out how you work up and down
that spectrum in order to ensure that you've got brand
love at the top, which naturally begins to drive performance
at the bottom of that fine. Well, the other thing
that gives me a ton of hope is I hear
our clients and our CEOs especially talk about marketing as
an investment, as a growth driver, not as a cost.
(10:13):
And I think that is to the credit of the
cmos who have embraced data. They've embraced the importance of
proving the value of every dollar we spend. Agencies have
done the same, and so I think it's a very
different conversation. You see cmos becoming growth officers. You see
cmos taking on sales and taking on a data scope
(10:34):
far broader than what they used to have, and I
think that speaks to marketing as a growth driver, not
as a cost.
Speaker 4 (10:40):
I want to dig into topics we're talking about, but
I want to first get a little context on you.
I want to go back in time when you look
at the Dutton family of Yellowstone, anything there that reminds
you of your fifth generation Ranching family in rural Colorado.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
Oh my god. I love Yellowstone largely for that reason.
Did not look like Yellowstone, So I want to be
perfectly clear. And we never branded each other, only the cattle.
And I wish I was as crazy and as fun
as Beth, but I'm not. I wouldn't trade my upbringing
for anything because it was simple, right, it was, And
(11:16):
I don't I mean that as in the best way, right.
I grew up in a very rural area, a little
town called Franktown in Colorado. I think at the time
there was probably twenty three hundred people in Frankown.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
There's probably not that much more now.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
My graduating class in high school was two hundred and
probably bigger than most would think in a rural town
like that. And I walked into third grade and met
my best friends. There's seven of us, so we met
in third grade. We still celebrate every birthday and every
high and low of life. And I think that that
connectedness and that family and friends and faith first has
(11:54):
always stuck with me. You know. We sat around the
dinner every night together and talked about our day, and
somebody had to cook, somebody had to clean the dishes.
I just the routine of that and the consistency of that,
I think served me well as a human. I hope
it has helped me raise children in a similar way,
although never raised with that level of ruralness that I had.
Speaker 4 (12:17):
So what influence did your family in that environment have
on you that's still with you today? That makes you,
in essence who you are.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
I had the gift of parents that believed anything was possible,
and they allowed us to do what we wanted to do.
They never placed their points of view or their desires
on us. When I was deciding where to go to college,
everybody in my family had gone to a university in Colorado,
and for me, I felt I had four years to
(12:48):
live somewhere else, and everybody comes back to Colorado my
family and I raised it to my dad and he said, sure, honey,
you try, you.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
Go anywhere you want. You can do anything.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
And you know, I guess whether or not I believe
that the fact that somebody else believed that in me
mattered a lot.
Speaker 4 (13:05):
Four h I told that story raising Steers. I'll bet
many of our listeners don't even know what four H is.
Can you explain real quickly what four H is?
Speaker 3 (13:15):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (13:15):
So four H is an organization where youth take on
different projects and those projects range from agriculture, which is
what I did, as well as home economics so cooking
and sewing, and I also did that. But it also
now has a lot of technology projects. They have archery.
(13:35):
The span of what they do now is far different
than it was when I participated, and it is across
the United States. Plenty of people in rural New York
do it and they teach horticulturalism and different things. It's
about giving your heart and your hands and your health
to better living and to really learn different projects. And
(13:56):
then you display those projects.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
So in my case.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
Is where I showed my steers, and then you sell
them and that money which I did for gosh, I
did that for twelve years. The money that I had
saved selling cattle helped pay for my first year of college,
as you mentioned. And it teaches you responsibility at a
really young age. Right, You're up at five thirty in
the morning to feed your animals. You have to walk them,
you have to show them, you have to bathe them.
(14:22):
All of that is happening when you're nine years old,
So it's a really good way to teach young leaders
at a.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
Young age.
Speaker 4 (14:30):
Moral math and magic. Right after this quick break, welcome
back to math and magic. Let's hear more from my
conversation with Jackie Kelly. Let's get your career how and
why USA Today when you join, newspapers are still in
full swing and over time. Of course, we know what
(14:52):
happened to the newspaper and they made the transition to digital
and other kinds of businesses. What did you see in
USA today that initially excited you and then how did
you navigate that change?
Speaker 2 (15:05):
I joined USA Today when they had just turned five
in nineteen eighty eight, and I joined as an intern,
and my initial reason for joining was it was opportunistic, right,
I wanted to learn something. I was interested in broadcast journalism.
Obviously that wasn't broadcast journalism, but it was the opportunity
to get into a journalistic organization. And USA Today at
(15:27):
the time, I love the innovation of that product. At
the time, there was no color newspapers, there was no
nationally distributed newspaper. There was no newspaper that could have
the sports scores from the game ends at eleven o'clock,
and it's in that morning paper. That was by virtue
of the satellite technology of printing that USA Today was
(15:48):
using at the time. So USA Today was breaking every
rule in newspapers, and I thought that was incredibly exciting.
So I joined as an intern. Learned a ton That
was a company that gave me the opportunity. That was
a company that grew leaders. They would bring people in young,
they would teach them and train them and give them
lots of different opportunities. And so I left eighteen years later.
(16:11):
I liked to joke that I was the longest living intern.
I had spent nine years in circulation and I spent
nine years in advertising. So you know, the distribution side
of a company like USA Today is just as critical
as the advertising. In the case of USA Today, we
had just as much revenue, sometimes far more in circulation
than we did in advertising, especially in the early days,
(16:31):
as we were convincing advertisers that this was a viable product.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
So I loved it because it was innovative.
Speaker 4 (16:38):
You went on to Yahoo, you did a stint with
Martha Stewart, and then you crossed the fence to the
agency side running media brands. What made you jump the fence?
Speaker 2 (16:49):
This is kind of a fun story, and I give
credit to people that can identify talent and then encourage
us to do something that would not be obvious to us.
Case I had left USA, I had gone to Yahoo
and worked for Wyndam Millard. Wynda Millard is an incredible
mentor for me and convinced me to come to Yahoo.
But it wasn't that hard to convince me because I
(17:11):
knew newspapers were changing. I knew I needed to get
a much better digital education. I wanted to go to
the deep end, and at the time, Yahoo or Google
were your two choices, and Yahoo was teaching brands how
to build a brand on the web, so that was
obvious for me. And then followed Wenda to Martha Stewart
to fully integrate Martha's organization. It was post her being
(17:32):
in what she calls the clink clink, and we were
building her brand back and consumers never left her, advertisers had,
so there was a lot of work to do around
integrating her organization. I'd love that challenge. It was in
that moment that Wenda actually had heard about an opportunity
through a friend of hers that was running UM globally,
a gentleman named Matt Siler, and she said, you should
(17:55):
look at this because it would be a next phase
of your career. And I had wanted to be at
the agency side. I'd been on a panel at Advertising
Week and famously referred to agencies as a barrier to
my progress as a media owner, which did not go overwhell.
But I believed that agencies were failing clients and media
(18:17):
owners because they were not giving us the gift of
time and transparency. Those were the two things that I
really wanted from an agency, and I just couldn't get anyway.
Long story short, Matt saw what I saw. Matt saw
the opportunity to leverage media owners as real content partners
in the work that media brands and UM specifically was
doing for clients. And it was the first time that
(18:38):
I saw an agency executive see what I saw as
the opportunity to partner differently with media owners. And it
was one of those moments in life where you can
keep complaining and pointing the finger and wishing it was different,
or you can jump to the other side and help
make that so. And then I got bit right then.
I just loved the agency side. It's such an incredible
place to operate in our industry. But that's how I
(19:01):
got there, great people that told me I should.
Speaker 4 (19:04):
Well, you jumped the fence again, back when you went
with Michael Bloomberg when he had just come out of
his twelve years as probably the most spectacular in New
York City mayor ever, and you joined just as he
was re entering the private world. Tell us what was
so great about that that caused you to go, Wait
a minute, I'm in the ad world, but now I'm
going back.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
So I'm one of those people, and this is probably
not a good thing to share, but I keep my
head down and I don't really look for new opportunities,
but then something will get into my line of sight
and I get excited about it. And that's what happened
with Bloomberg. Mike was coming back to the organization, but
it was assumed he'd come back into the foundation. I
don't think anybody assumed he'd come back and be the
(19:46):
CEO of the company again. And the leadership at the
time was going to take the twenty six hundred journalists
of Bloomberg, which is at the time was more than CNN,
New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal combined. It
was a for Milis still is a formidable journalism team,
and again going back to my love of journalism and
(20:06):
the importance of that and being in a newsroom, I
missed that aspect, and so the intention was to take
that incredible journalistic team and really create a competitor to CNN.
So it was broad in the aperture, from financial news
to broader general news as well. That's what got me
in there. And it was integrated right. They had broadcasts,
(20:28):
they had print, they have the terminal, they have incredible
digital property, and so the ability to run that and
have some oversight of editorial was super interesting to me.
Speaker 4 (20:38):
We talked a little bit about den Sue. You obviously
came back to DENSU. You've had a spectacular impact in
advertising again through DENSU. I want to talk a little
bit about corporate culture. People have said our corporate cultures
and our values is our operating system, and just like
in technology, if you don't get that right, none of
the other programs work well. Had DENSU you got the
(21:00):
far flung organization. We've talked about people working remotely. Now
and wyoming in places like that, how do you get
buy in, especially post pandemic, the new work environment.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
I will say post pandemic, it's harder. I think it's
harder because we do not have people coming together in
the way they used to, which means as leaders, we
need to work harder at it. First and foremost, my
executive team and I work really hard on making sure
that we are embodying those cultures. We spend a lot
of time becoming as productive as we can as a
(21:31):
collective unit and operating system ourselves, and we're really candid
with one another when one of us is acting in
a way that may suggest that we're not living into
those values. So that's one holding one another accountable. I
think the other is peer to peer platform. We have
to create visible ways where our culture is displayed. One
(21:52):
of our values is around making society better. So it's
not just about the work we do. We want the
work we do for brands to actually make it impact
in the world and to improve society. Our global CEO
kiro Igarashisan talks about being business to business to society
and that society piece being so important that is really
(22:13):
in the fabric of our culture. So when we have
a piece of work, the intel piece of work around
deep fake is an example of this, we really celebrate
that because that is an example of us actually making
the world a better and safer place. So I think
to put a fine point on it behaving that way
as individuals, and then when you have a piece of
work or a client example, making sure the network can
(22:35):
celebrate that and we.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
Make it visible.
Speaker 4 (22:38):
You've had a charmed career and I know giving back
is very important to you. You're the board chair of
the Egg Council. You've been on the boards of a
number of organizations, but one of the most important clauses
for you is foster care. I think a foster family
for over twenty children. Can you tell us a little
bit about foster care in the US why we should
all get involved in what touched you about it?
Speaker 3 (23:00):
Now?
Speaker 2 (23:01):
Thank you for asking that question, Bob, because I have
been accused of recruiting foster parents whenever I can, so
I will take this opportunity for all your listeners to
do that. I got involved because my family, through our church,
had been able to be camp counselors at a camp
for foster children one summer and through that experience, I
(23:22):
learned two stats that stunned me. One was that fifty
percent of the homeless in the US were at some
point in the foster system, and seventy percent of those
that are incarcerated were at some point in the foster system.
So it struck me that if you fix the foster system,
you might actually fix a lot of things that our
(23:44):
country then struggles with long term. And more importantly, how
unfair that these kids never had the chance to live
up to their full potential. That's what bothered me most
is the fact that by virtue of their circumstances, which
is not their fault, they were compromised it to homelessness
and incarceration all these other things. So it really struck
(24:04):
me that we could actually make a difference. And I
mentioned it to my husband coming back from camp that week,
and I'd had the eleven year old girls, my own daughter,
Ashley was eleven at the time, and he had the
eleven year old boys, And as we were driving back,
I said, I think we should do this, and he
hesitated because he was with the eleven year old boys.
His week was not quite as kumbaya as mine was.
(24:26):
And then he came back two weeks later and said,
I think you're right. I think we can make a difference,
and we got licensed. We've now had twenty six foster
children and we adopted our twenty fifth, which is Little Nova,
which we adopted last summer, and it is game changing.
I encourage anyone who has room in their home and
in their heart to consider it.
Speaker 3 (24:47):
And there's many different ways. You don't have to be
in it forever.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
You can do respe care where you take kids for
a weekend as they find a more permanent foster placement
for them.
Speaker 3 (24:57):
But there's a lot of good that.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
Can come from you just showing love and affection and
routine to a child at a time when their whole
world has turned upside down.
Speaker 3 (25:06):
So I highly recommend it.
Speaker 4 (25:08):
Well, you're doing a lot for them. What do they
do for you? What insights in the humanity in the
world have you gotten as a result of being a
foster parent?
Speaker 2 (25:18):
Like all things in life, you get so much more
than you give. They have fulfilled us as a family
in a really different way. They have taught me a
different level of resilience because these kids have seen things, Bob,
that you and I have never seen, and yet they
have come out on the other side optimistic and playful
and hopeful, so they remind you of the importance of resilience.
(25:42):
I've also learned a lot about the system and our
government and in many ways where it.
Speaker 3 (25:47):
Can be fixed.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
It's made me more interested in public policy. It has
taught our family a lot about diversity, right, a lot
about how different cultures to your earliest point about how
do we become less polarizing and more integrated. It has
taught us that because we've had children of all different nationalities,
and as a result of that, we do our best
to bring that culture into our home, which has been
incredibly educational.
Speaker 4 (26:09):
Let's jump to some advice a couple of points before
we wind up today. You've been through a lot of careers.
If someone's thinking about changing jobs, what should they consider?
What advice can you give them?
Speaker 2 (26:21):
The advice I always give people is to pick people.
I think exceptional leaders can make a mediocre company exceptional,
and less exceptional leaders can make a great company less great.
And so I always say, pick people. You will learn
so much and the opportunities will be so much richer.
(26:43):
First and foremost, and then the other I would say
is to not be afraid to zig and zag. I
think we've gotten very focused as professionals on climbing the ladder.
I think there's a lot more benefit if you're willing
to go to a horizontal opportunity in order to expand
your own learning. It will give you an opportunity to
leap forward in a very different way.
Speaker 4 (27:03):
We end each episode of Math and Magic with a
shout out to the greats or the influences on our
guests from the two polls of great marketing, the math
those whose brilliance is in the analytics finding the insights
that make a difference in who see the world through data,
and the magic those who add the spark, those who
excite the consumer or others with their sheer creativity. I'm
(27:28):
going to ask you for a shout out. Who are
your two shout outs on the math side and on
the magic side.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
On the math side, I would give a big shout
out to David Williams, who's the founder of Merkel. I
mentioned Merkle earlier in terms of its importance to our
capability at DENSU, but David acquired Merkel when it was
twenty five people and five million dollars in revenue as
a really direct mail company and built it into a
(27:56):
robust performance marketing and personalization engine with identity at the core.
Speaker 3 (28:00):
It's incredible what he built.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
And what I loved about David is not only was
he a mathematician in terms of understanding the power of
that going forward, but he reinforced for me the value
of what I call balcony to basement, like being able
to really understand the guts of the organization but also
lift up and be really.
Speaker 3 (28:20):
Inspiring with your vision.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
And he knew when to pivot and to see something
coming and get ahead of it, and he did that.
Speaker 3 (28:26):
Brilliantly for Markle Magic.
Speaker 2 (28:29):
For Magic, I'm going to shout out to a book
that I've recently just finished by Sally Sessman. And Sally
is an exceptional executive and communication leader.
Speaker 3 (28:40):
She's been at Amex S D.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
Lauder and now she's advisor, and she's recently written a
book called Breaking Through. And the magic of this book
is it is a reminder and an incredible guide on
the importance of communication. And she has ten power principles
or tenants in there that really speak two executives. So
I give Sally the shout out for magic and highly
(29:03):
recommend the book for everyone.
Speaker 4 (29:05):
Jackie, You've had an amazing career in life. You've still
got so much ahead of you. I'm not trying to
make you sound like you're anywhere near the end of that. Congrats.
Thanks for sharing these insights and experiences with us today.
Speaker 3 (29:18):
Thank you for inviting me, Bob, I appreciate it.
Speaker 4 (29:22):
Here are a few things I picked up from my
conversation with Jackie. One, stay curious. If you want to
appeal to customers with different demographics, it's important to venture
outside your bubble, listen to a different kind of music
than you're used to, or turn on a different news channel.
When you stay open minded, your products and your life
experiences will be better for it. Two. Choose people over companies.
(29:46):
A brilliant leader can make any company better, and less
worthy leaders can drag a company down. When you trust
and admire the people you work for, you'll learn more
and you'll be more fulfilled overall. Three, don't be afraid
to change direction. People often get hung up on climbing
the ladder in one company or industry, but when you
(30:06):
make a horizontal move to a place you wouldn't have
expected or climbed to the other side of the fence.
It may give you an opportunity to leap forward in
exciting new ways. I'm Bob Pittman. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
That's it for today's episode. Thanks so much for listening
to Math and Magic, a production of iHeartRadio. The show
is hosted by Bob Pittman. Special thanks to Sidney Rosenbloom
for booking and wrangling our wonderful talent, which is no
small feat. Our editor Emily Meronoff, our engineers Jessica Crinchitch
and Baheid Fraser, our executive producers Nikki Etoor and Ali Perry,
(30:42):
and of course Gail Raoul, Eric Angel Noel and everyone
who helped bring this show to your ears. Until next time,
Host
Bob Pittman
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