May 22, 2025 • 38 mins
From the White House, to Edelman, Microsoft, Nissan and IBM, Jonathan Adashek has had a wide-ranging career. His experiences may span from politics, to the business side of PR, to tech, to automotive, but he has developed core beliefs about corporate culture, work ethic, marketing, and communications. Now as IBM’s Senior Vice President of Marketing and Communications, Jonathan joins Bob to share incisive thoughts on what a brand is really made of, adept insight on the current landscape and future of AI, and inspiring advice for building a career. He also speaks fondly about his upbringing in Milwaukee, summers spent at camp, and how he’s passing those meaningful experiences down to his kids.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
You're listening to Math and Magic, a production of iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
There's also the ability to celebrate the successes that people
have in a corporate culture. And equally, I feel like
you've got to be able to celebrate the failures, right
because if you don't celebrate the failures, nobody's going to
be willing to take a risk. And if you can't
take a risk, you're not going to change a culture.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
Hi, I'm Bob Pittman. Welcome to Math and Magic. Stories
from the Frontiers and Marketing. Today, we have someone who
has a storied career, much of it was centered around
PR and communications, and he's got some unique insights for
us coming from that perspective. He's the head of marketing
and Communications for the legendary IBM. It's Jonathan Atischeck. Jonathan
(00:52):
was born and grew up in Milwaukee, loved Camp, started
with a career in politics, moved on to the business
side of a PR firm, an automotive Giant Attack Giant,
before arriving at IBM. He not only is involved in
AI as a business, he's used it to transform the
marketing function at IBM. He's described by those around him
as very real Welcome Jonathan, Thanks Bob.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Great to be here.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
Before we jump into the hot topics today, I want
to start with you in sixty seconds. Are you ready?
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Yep?
Speaker 3 (01:23):
Do you prefer cats or dogs?
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Dogs?
Speaker 3 (01:25):
Early riser, night out? Both West Coast or.
Speaker 4 (01:28):
East Coast, East Coast, New York City or Milwaukee Milwaukee, copa,
Pepsi coke, beach or mountains beach, rock and roll, our Country,
rock and roll coffee or tea, t Books or movies, books,
podcasts or streaming TV.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Streaming TV except for this podcast.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
Thank you, Thank you, the right answer, Cook, read out, Cook,
Crocs or Nikes, Crocs, comedy or drama, comedy Japan or Paris, Japan.
Harley Davidson or Honda Harley Davidson. Okay, we're getting a
little harder. All time favorite music art so grateful dead.
What was your first computer?
Speaker 2 (02:02):
An Apple iiO.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
Not even the GS No oh, I love that first job.
A camp counselor smartest person you know, my wife, childhood hero,
my father and my mother. Favorite sport to watch football,
Green Bay Packers. The most important piece of advice you
ever received.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Don't sweat the small stuff.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
Let's jump in now to put your company in context
and perspective and what you're doing there. I want to
do just a little history because I'm sort of a
fanboy from Tom Watson Junior, so I want to tell
a little story here and then talk about how it
relates to you. In eighteen eighty four, National Cash Register
Company NCR was founded one hundred years ago. Is one
(02:43):
of the dominant high tech companies, so much so that
the government indicted some of their senior executives in nineteen
thirteen for anti trust. One of them was the head
of sales, Tom Watson, and they fired him. In the
aftermath of the government indictment. In nineteen fourteen, he goes
to another high tech company, CTR, which stood for Computing,
Tabulating Recording, as general manager. Ten years later he is
(03:06):
made president and the company was renamed IBM International Business Machines.
Watson was a true visionary. In the nineteen forties, IBM
helped develop the Harvard Mark one. In nineteen fifty two,
IBM released its first commercial scientific computer, the IBM seven
oh one, which was its real entry into the computer biz.
(03:27):
Tom Watson Senior was somewhat cautious about moving beyond punch cards,
but his son Tom Watson Junior was not. Tom Watson
Junior was president of IBM in fifty two, took over
a CEO upon his father's death in fifty six. And
the modern IBM is really, from my perspective of the
outsider looking in, it was his creation. He moved it
from a family run business to the modern management and
(03:49):
corporate structure and operations. He was a true leader and
innovator in American business practices. In addition to what he
did with IBM, the big bet was on the IBM
System three sixty in nineteen sixty four. Might have even
been a bet the company move. Might be argued also
that it's set up the computer battles for the decades
to come. So you've got this amazing and historic brand.
(04:11):
I tell the story only to really talk about what
a brand this is. How do you think about the
brand and how do you manage to keep it evolving.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
You know, you don't become one hundred and thirteen year
old technology company without reinventing yourself. And you even talked
about it in recounting the history. And I think about
the brand is one of the most valuable assets we've
got as a company. I think that people really trust IBM.
There's the old saying of you don't get fired for
(04:41):
hiring IBM that used to be there. And I think
that people look at IBM and when you engage with IBM,
these are the men and women who are going to
help us get to where we need to be. And
we can trust them to come in and do the
right thing for us and help us advance our business
and take advantage of our opportun unities. Have we had
(05:01):
our bumps? Yeah? Along the way we've had our bumps.
Have we not always necessarily stood for that? Yeah? And
I would tell you the story of when I first
got this job offer. I called one of my closest
friends and I said to him I got this offer
from IBM and told them all about it. It was
to run communications. He said to me, I'm really happy
(05:22):
for you, you know, because he knew I've been looking
for a while. He's like, this is great. He said,
I only have one question for you, what does IBM do.
This guy happened to be Sati Anadella's chief of staff.
So it said to me, there's a lot of green
space to make sure people understand where the company's going.
The opportunity that lies ahead for us as a company
(05:42):
and the ability for us to get much more focused
so people understand what we do, what we don't do,
and then how that brand carries behind it.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
So let's take one step down talk about brands in general.
What do you think a brand does for a company
and its products? What is the brand?
Speaker 2 (06:00):
I think the brand is the principles, It's the people,
it's the policies, it's the practice. I talked about trust before.
People trust it, but that's because trust and ethics are
at the heart of how we operate as a company.
I think a brand is a manifestation of what you
bring to life as the organization, not just what you
sell to your customers or your clients, but how you operate,
(06:22):
how you work together inside of a company. That is
what the brand is. And then people look at that
and go, I want to be associated with that, or
I don't want to be associated with it.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
In certain cases, you were at Microsoft and you've been
at IBM, two big tech names in American history. By
the way, both of them evolved and as you say,
up and down. But how would you compare and contrast
those two brands.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
There are two iconic brands in the history of our country,
and I would argue in the world and the changes
that both of them have made in the economy, in
the lives of people around the world, it's hard to
find others that have had the same impact. In my view,
I would say Microsoft's a much more consumer facing brand,
(07:06):
and people know when they're dealing with Microsoft when you
open Word or Office or any of those things or
use your Xbox. IBM, on the other hand, the way
I like to think of it as in many regards
where like the rails, people interact with us every day.
Most times, I would argue, people don't know they're dealing
with us unless you really are focused on what does
(07:28):
IBM do into the details. So they're two different paths,
but two iconic brands, two iconic corporations that are really
important to our country and to the broader global economy.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
You did a wide range of work for clients all
over the globe when you were at Edelman huge pr agency.
What lessons did you take away from that that really
added a dimension to you as and shaped you as
a marketer.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
One of the things for me, Bob you alluded to
it in the opening is how much I loved Camp
I grew up going to summer camp in the north
woods of Wisconsin, a place called camp In or Lochin,
and I really learned there the meaning of a hard
day's work and the ability to say I'm not going
to ask somebody to do anything that I wouldn't do myself.
Up a camp, I'd teach lifeguarding. And you're in a
(08:17):
cold lake in the middle of Wisconsin and.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
Really cold, really cold cold lake, you I wouldn't.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Say, go swim laps without me jumping in with the
class and saying, Okay, I'm going to swim the laps
with you. Fast forward, and I take that gentleman where
I sort of said, we're all going to roll up
our sleeves and do whatever we need to do together.
And I carry that with me today, that whatever needs
to be done, we just need to do it. And
the other big thing I remember often saying to Richard Edelman,
(08:44):
who was a great sponsor and mentor of mine and
gave me some amazing opportunities. But I would say to
Richard oftentimes I'm going to do this job, Richard, like
I don't need it. And if you take that approach
of like I'm just going to go do it the
way I think is right. And if it's not the
right way, and you say, hey, you got to go.
(09:05):
You got to be willing to take risks is basically
where I'm getting to because if you don't take risks,
you're not going to advance your career.
Speaker 3 (09:12):
Fantastic advice. We're going to come some advice later, but
that's a great piece of it right there. In addition
to starting and building brands, I've also been involved in
rehabilitating brands. And it always intrigues me how brands lose
their way? Why do you think and how do companies
lose their way on their brand?
Speaker 2 (09:30):
Very simply, they lose focus. If you lose focus, if
you try and do too many things, if you get
away from what is core to your business and what
you need to do as an organization, and make a
move that's too quick, that doesn't bring your existing clients
your employees with you, you will start to lose focus.
(09:51):
I was fortunate when I was at Edelman. I had
Starbucks as one of the clients and I was the
global client relationship manager there and Howard Schultz used to
often say to us, if we lose our existing customers
because we're focused on getting new ones, We're going to
spend more time, more money, more effort trying to win
back the customer we just lost than trying to go
(10:12):
get the new ones. And we can't do that.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
So in an organization, how do you ingrain that in
people so that the organization stays focused on focus.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
I'm going to tell you what I'm going to tell you.
I'm going to tell it to you again, and then
I'm going to tell it to you one more time,
and I'm going to keep telling it to you until
you're sick and tired of hearing it from me. Because
when I get frustrated with it, then finally you're just
starting to listen. Being repetitive and being transparent that is
really key.
Speaker 4 (10:44):
You know.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
It's interesting you talk about that on our music radio stations.
I start out as a radio announcer and it's on
the air, and when the people on the air are
sick of a song, I'd have played this song so
much if I got to play it one more time.
Going to shoot myself is about the time the consumer says,
what's that new song you're playing?
Speaker 2 (11:02):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
It is.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
So it's interesting. I think in every business how detached
do we get from where the consumer is if we're
not extraordinarily careful about looking at data as opposed to
trusting our gut.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
I agree.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
You know, when you think about brands, there s need
to be two models. One is, let's call it the
Steve Jobs model of there is a person who is
the keeper of the brand. There's the other model and
Microsoft where the company sort of institutionally kept the brand.
How do you see it? What do you come down
on that one?
Speaker 2 (11:32):
I think that when you're looking at a big company overall,
it's too much for one person, any one person, to
be the only person who keeps the brand. And I
think that the principles of the brands need to live
in the organization on a day to day basis. And
the way I look at IBM is we've got I
(11:53):
don't know, more than two hundred and seventy five thousand
people around the world. They need to be instilled, they
need to be representing the brand to people around the world.
They need to be understanding what we're trying to do
as a company to help them do that, and if
they're not, then we're failing from the beginning. They're great
leaders at those big companies that you talked about, But
(12:14):
I think I'm a believer that the bigger group will
make it even better.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
You're in charge of marketing. Your job is to get
the brand out. How do you train those two hundred
and seventy five thousand employees on the brand?
Speaker 2 (12:28):
You know, it goes back to repetitiveness as we talked about.
It goes back to radical simplification in the messaging and
the positioning and what you're trying to do. And it
really is making sure you're enabling people. You're giving them
the tools, making it easy for them to find what
(12:49):
they need to carry that message forward in whatever situation
they need to be in. You have to serve it
to people on a silver platter. You can't make it
an expedition for them them to go find information about
the brand, about whatever you're trying to do. Otherwise, they
got other things to do in their lives. They're going
to go do other things and then tell whatever story
(13:09):
they want.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
Let's apply it to politics. I know you were in
the Clinton administration, and for those of us who were
old enough to be a part of all that, you
would argue a brilliant marketer of what he did. Can
you use some examples from that.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
You know, I think for him, he got to very
direct engagement with the voters, and he made it a
very simple message. Remember, it's about the economy, stupid, right,
And that was key and everybody could understand that simple message.
And he was so engaging with people that whether you
(13:46):
were in the room, if you were in the room
and engaging with them, you felt like you were the
only person there. You could be in a room of
one hundred thousand people and you felt like you were
the only person. You and he were the only two
people there. But if you were also watching it on
television or seeing of it someplace, I think that carried
through it transcended. President Clinton was an amazing is an
(14:06):
amazing communicator, and I think it's he's one of the
rare talents. You don't see people at that level on
a regular basis, and I think that's really how he
pushed it.
Speaker 3 (14:17):
I want to tie brand a little bit to corporate culture.
How do you think about corporate culture? What is it
and how does it help a company succeed.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
Corporate culture is really important because you can get set
on the business and know where you're going from a
here's our objective from a business goal, But how do
you get the culture that's going to be there to
really enable that is a whole other effort. And as
I talk about it with Arvin Krishna, our CEO today,
(14:51):
Arvin's very focused on how do we make sure that
we've got a culture that enables what we want people
to do? And I think a key part of this
whole driving a culture. There's transparency, there's the ability for
people to take risks, there's the ability for people to
(15:12):
move with speed. Those are really important pieces. But there's
also the ability to celebrate the successes that people have
in a corporate culture. And equally, I feel like you've
got to be able to celebrate the failures, right because
if you don't celebrate the failures, nobody's going to be
willing to take a risk. And if you can't take
(15:34):
a risk, you're not going to change a culture. So
how do you continually evolve? And I think that evolution
of a culture is more important today than it was
in the past because business is changing, technology is changing,
the landscape is changing so much.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
I think your point about celebrating mistakes failures is hugely important.
How do you do that.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
I'll give you an example of me. One of my
first meetings that I had and once I took over
marketing with Arvind and some of my peers. It was
my worst performance in my professional career, hands down. Why
I was anxious. I didn't have my hands around the
data the way I wanted it to. I didn't feel comfortable.
(16:18):
I just I did not land it. It was so
bad that Arvin stopped me in the middle of the
meeting in front of everybody and said we'll deal with
it later. I called him after the meeting and I
talked to him and I apologized because I was like,
that's not what you expect from me, and that's not
why I'm here. And he gave me some good feedback
and was understanding and was clear that we're going to
fix it. It's not fine, but we're going to fix it.
(16:40):
And every Friday I write a note to my entire
team around the world, and that Friday, I wrote a
note in explicit detail explaining to people what happened there.
And many people could not believe that I was being
that vulnerable and that transparent with my team at all
(17:01):
levels of my team, saying this is what I did,
and oh, by the way, the CEO cut me off
because I was so bad. It showed people A not
everything's perfect, and b we all can make mistakes and
things can happen, and you can adjust, you can learn
from them, and you can take a step forward and
do it. That's a simple example for me.
Speaker 3 (17:22):
Did that writing the note give you more cred and
stronger relationships with the org than if you had done
a really good presentation. Never had the opportunity to do
something like that.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
I think it helped me with some people, not with everybody,
And personally writing that note was so cathartic for me
as well. But I think it was important to show
that not everything's going to be perfect, because I say
it all the time, not everything's going to be perfect,
But you have to show that not everything's going to
be perfect.
Speaker 3 (17:49):
I worked for a brilliant entrepreneur, Steve Ross, who really
created Time Warner out of have Spather and lost two
funeral homes, and he used to say, you know, Bob,
you'll never be fired here for making a mistake. You'll
be fired here for not making a mistake. John making
a mistake tells me I don't try anything new because
nobody gets it right one hundred percent of the times,
and we want you to try new things. More of
(18:10):
math and magic. Right after this quick break, welcome back
to Mathem Magic. Let's hear more from my conversation with
Jonathan Adaschek. Let's go back in time to get context
on you. Milwaukee. I actually was the midday disc jockey
(18:32):
a writ radio there in nineteen seventy two. I did
one semester at Carroll College in Walkshaw. I once ran
a theme park company, six Flags, with a park halfway
between Chicago and Milwaukee. And yet Milwaukee remains a mystery
to me. Can you explain that? I mean, it is
a unique culture. They don't have water fountain, stay of bubblers.
Can you explain it? And tell us about the Milwaukee
(18:54):
that was there when you were growing up.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
So I grew up just north of the city in
the suburb was a town called Whitefish Bay. It was
a great place to raise a family and to be
a kid growing up and playing in the streets. We
used to play kick the can and climb on the
neighbor's roof to hide from other people and all that
kind of fun stuff. And it was an amazing place. Unfortunately.
(19:18):
It was also a very segregated city, to the point
that my mother was on the school board and in
Whitefish Bay, and there was a big desegregation lawsuit and
it was Section two twenty, I believe it was called.
And part of the settlement was that the suburbs would
bust kids into the city, and the city would bust
(19:38):
kids into the suburbs. And my mother said, I'm going
to ask the people in the village Whitefish Paid to
do the same thing. I'm going to lead by example,
so you know, I want you to go. My parents
told me, you're going to go, get on the bus
and go into the city. And I loved it. I
loved it. I used to take the bus to elementary
(20:00):
school in downtown. It was across the street from the
Schlitz Brewery. And I remember the day the Schlitz Brewery
went on strike and never came back. And I remember
asking the bus driver every day to stop at the
USA Today box I can put a quarter in and
get the paper. It was just a great city, a
city that is so passionate about Milwaukee, about the brewers,
(20:22):
about the bucks, about the packers, about just the great
heritage there, you know, the saying is it's a great
city on a great lake.
Speaker 3 (20:29):
And it really is an amazing I've not heard that one.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
Yeah, that's a great line, and it's changed a lot
and it's even more fun to go to today.
Speaker 3 (20:38):
I grew up in Mississippi and I drove to Milwaukee
in a car, had never been north of Saint Louis
and I showed up there and man, I hate food
I never seen in my life. I mean meat and
potatoes Mississippi. To the food that was available in Milwaukee,
it was great interest in me. Frozen custard, yeah, god,
it everything.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
It's amazing.
Speaker 3 (20:57):
I still go back every year.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
My kids go to the same summer camp that I
went to growing up.
Speaker 3 (21:02):
You've talked about camp being very important. Clearly it's had
an impact on you. What do you think it really
did for you and what do you think people can
get out of camp with their kids.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
Camp is the place that I have my closest friends.
Those are my closest friends.
Speaker 3 (21:19):
And how many were from Milwaukee versus other places?
Speaker 2 (21:22):
A lot were from Milwaukee, some from Madison, some from Chicago.
But you also had people who would come from Israel
every year, or there was a guy who lived in
Hawaii or the guy who lived in France. But it's
become even broader now, but those are my closest friends
still to this day. We are all there for each
other at the moments that it matters the most, whether
(21:44):
that's a celebration or a moment of sorrow with the
loss of a parent or a sibling. We all travel
around the world to see each other. It taught me
about relationships, taught me about a hard day's work. As
I got older and worked there we build and you know,
have these amazing days out in the north woods of Wisconsin,
and I just love it and I love the fact
(22:07):
that my kids go there.
Speaker 3 (22:09):
What life lessons did you learn from your parents?
Speaker 2 (22:12):
My parents did everything they could to take care of us,
there were five of us, and to give us the
best life they really could. And it wasn't without hardships.
My dad was an entrepreneur and had his ups and
downs in business, and that could cause some difficulties in
the house money wise or just tensions, but we always
found a way to work through it. And they always said,
(22:35):
you know what, unconditional love is there, and it's something
that I always make sure my kids know that unconditional love,
no matter what happens, is never going to go away.
And when I get on a plane, every time I
leave the house, I always say to my kids, never forget. Well,
I might not be here tonight to say good night
to you. Don't forget I love you more than anything
(22:57):
else in the world. And I really took that from them,
and I really try hard to carry it forward.
Speaker 3 (23:02):
That's great to push that to the next generation. And
by the way, there's a through line you hear again
and again and again of successful and confident people. How
did you jump to politics? Was that your goal to
be in politics or was that an accident?
Speaker 2 (23:17):
My mom ran for school board and I still remember
hammering the signs into the frozen ground of Wisconsin Whitefish Bay,
and I remember saying, I was I don't know, nine,
ten years old, and I was like, I want to
go work in the White House one day, and I
want to slog through the snows of Iowa or New
Hampshire with a presidential candidate. And I just stayed focused
(23:37):
on it, and so yes, it was my goal, Wow,
to go to Washington, d C. To work in the
White House in the West Wing.
Speaker 3 (23:44):
And when'd you go to the Clinton White House? When
was that? What year is.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
At ninety seven? I started in the White House?
Speaker 3 (23:51):
Well, lucky you.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
And then slog through the snows of Iowa with John
Kerrey when he was running for president. It was great.
I was very fortunate. I had two big goals I
wanted to do and I got to do them both.
You know, at a very young age.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
Well it's fabulous. Just jump to autos. You were actually
working in Japan and Nissan. How did you wind up there?
I mean, this is a jump and you, I guess,
had been an Edelman before that, right?
Speaker 2 (24:16):
I went Edelman, then I went to Microsoft, then I
went to Nissan, and I knew that I wanted to
make a change for Microsoft. I loved Microsoft, but I
knew that I wanted to become the chief communications officer
at a global company and ideally live overseas. And this
sort of came about a lot of people said to me,
(24:36):
what's the difference? How did you make that jump? In reality?
Today a car is not just an engine on four wheels.
It's a computer sitting on top of an engine on
four wheels. Today it's helping to facilitate how you move
your whole interactions that you've got on your phone and
whatever content that whole thing. So it was a much
(24:58):
easier transition. I felt like then a lot of people
thought it would be. I would say a big difference
is when you look at the margins and the two businesses. Right,
Automotive Nissan's an amazing company. I'm its biggest cheerleader, But
the margins and automotive are much thinner than they are
(25:20):
in technology. And you really watch your dollars, and I
think it makes you get a lot more creative in
how you spend them and where interesting.
Speaker 3 (25:28):
Yeah, even in a high margin business, cost matter, Cost
matter still goes to the.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
Spend a lot of time on that topic. Right now.
Speaker 3 (25:36):
I was going to ask you what you learned in
that industry, but it sounds like you learned about cost
and the importance of it. What else?
Speaker 2 (25:43):
I also learned a lot about the global perspective. Right So,
at Nissan I had a team of three hundred and
fifty people around the world who were really working on
a range of different issues everywhere, whether it was around manufacturing,
or it was selling vehicles, or it was regulations or
issues management, any of those things, and it would differ
(26:05):
from wherever you were in the world. I was forced
to learn a lot more about if you take an
action here in this country, how is it going to
carry over to another place?
Speaker 3 (26:14):
As on a side, did you ever learn to speak Japanese.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
A little bit? But I could say to you right now,
futatsubidugon guys chamas.
Speaker 3 (26:22):
I have no idea what you said, but it sounds
impressive to beers. Please, Okay, so let's jump to hot topic.
It's something we have to talk about always on Mathemagic AI.
In addition to selling it, you actually use it. You're
right in the middle of it. You've used it to
transform your own infrastructure. Can you talk about the Let's
(26:44):
Create marketing campaign launch in twenty twenty two and how
you pulled AI around that, and then talk about how
you've used AI in the organization.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
AI's been really instrumental for us as a company. We've
been at it for a long time from Watson and Jeopardy.
But when Arvin Christian became CEO in April of twenty twenty,
he said, we are going to be the leading hybrid
cloud and AI company. This is well before everybody's talking
about generative AI. That focus that helped us then take
(27:17):
it to the rest of the activities we were going
to do around marketing, around communications, around the products that
we build. And a fundamental that we've been doing is
we've implemented what we would call client zero, where we're
creating AI products and services, we're using them ourselves as
(27:37):
a company, and then we're going to talk to people
about those. So in the past two years, we've taken
roughly three point five billion dollars out of our run rate,
largely using AI and automation. That then we can go
have a conversation with somebody and say this is what
we did. Let me share with you the good, the bad,
(27:58):
the ugly. People will then make it decision if they're
going to work with us or sometimes we're just sharing
that out of best practices. There many times I have
conversations with fellow marketing leaders about how do we simplify
how do we take our event budget? And today we
do half the number of events that we were doing
just over two years ago, but we're getting five percent
(28:20):
more return on those events because we're much more targeted
using AI. We're creating better content, we're creating better experiences.
I've got a team of roughly three hundred designers, eighty
percent of their average time is spent on derivative assets.
By giving them AI tools, we can take that eighty
(28:41):
percent down. That's not eliminating their job, but that's enabling
them to do more creative But for me, it's just starting.
There's so much more AI that we're building out in
the function for marketing, for communications, for CSR across the board.
That's really going to change the way we're managing our
content andbuting it making sure we're taking people on a
(29:04):
journey that is full of not just personalized content, because
that is where everybody seems to be going in marketing today.
It's got to be relevant content because I couple weeks
ago got a personalized email in my work address around
a hair extension thing, and I didn't care about it.
(29:26):
But if it was relevant, then it's a different level
of engagements. I think people who are just talking about
personalization only have half the story.
Speaker 3 (29:33):
Yeah, I think you're very much on target. I was
at AOL in the mid nineties when we sort of
brought the Internet to the mass market, and it's interesting
everybody was talking at the time and said, you know,
you're going to have all this free time now because
this is going to do We didn't have any free time.
We did more work. Whatever time we had we filled up.
We was able to double our work, triple our work.
(29:55):
And you're making that point about AI that we're not
going to create more time for us to do nothing.
We're going to do more in that same amount of time.
Speaker 2 (30:01):
Yeah, I mean jobs will change, people will have to
move into different roles. If you think about go back
to telephones, right, for a while, you had to call
the operator, had to patch the call through. Yeah, when
the operators went away, that didn't mean that all those
people lost went out of work, became unemployed. They changed
the roles that they were in. You can see this
happen through the history of our economy in the past, right,
(30:24):
and I think it's going to happen here too.
Speaker 3 (30:26):
So let's go back to the Let's Create marketing campaign
which you were talking about focus and I just love
what you did with Let's Create because at the heart
of it, it seems to be about focus, about let's
take all these disparate things and let's build one umbrella
for this company.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
We had more than forty three campaigns out there at
any one time, and really trying to get everything under
one umbrella was crucial for us. You know, a lot
of this is driven by data, and our fundamental is
our clients. Data is our clients data. It's never our data.
They hold the keys for it. So the only way
you can really get to a solution or take advantage
(31:02):
of an opportunity is by doing it together. And that's
why we went with a model of let's create and
it's really been a big focus for us. And it's
not just an advertising tagline, it's what we're trying to
do with our clients in practice as well, and really
part of our work as an organization as a company
is we don't just go in and solve our clients
(31:25):
problems for them, we create solutions.
Speaker 3 (31:29):
Five years from now, paint the picture of how AI
will change American business or worldwide business.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
Today we say AI is moving so fast. I think
five years from now we'll probably look back and go
it didn't move as fast as we were thinking at
the time. But I think that what's going to be
key is skilling in five years from now, because the
average shelf life of technology skill to day is just
under three years, so the ability to give people time
(31:58):
in jobs to regulate, keep their skills up to either
use an AI tool or operate in an organization that
has AI deployed. That is going to become more normal.
I'm more normalized. I work in a company that today
does think forty and says you should take forty hours
of learning a year, So we provide opportunities. Not everybody
(32:21):
gets that same opportunity, and I think that's going to
be more regular. I think that the ability if I
focus into where we are in marketing and the client journeys,
I think it's going to be a much more personalized,
relevant journey that is going to have a better understanding
of where they are in a buying cycle, when they're engaged,
when they're not engaged, in how you better tell the
(32:43):
story to them at the various times where they are.
And I think it's going to create more opportunities for
people to focus on the things that they're really passionate
about and bring new ideas to the market.
Speaker 3 (32:55):
I want to do a little advice. You've got this
great range of experience someone wants to build a career.
How important do you think range is versus I'm starting
here in the marketing department and I'm going to one
day wind up being the CMO. I mean two different
approaches to winding up in the job you're in.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
I think that you have to get to a point
where you have a good level of discomfort in your job.
People get to a job and they get to a
place where they're like, I can do one hundred percent
of this job with my eyes closed, and I'm always comfortable.
And I think you need to get to a place
where you're like ten percent comfortable and ninety percent is
(33:39):
forcing you to learn new muscles, and I'm always trying
to learn build new muscles. You can do that. You
can say I'm going to start in this marketing job
and I want to be the CMO. But the best
way in my mind to do that is to build
a vast set of professional muscles so that you understand, Hey,
the business is trying to do this, and I understand
why they're trying to do that and the impact it's
(34:00):
going to have on our bottom line, so that I
can then understand what marketing actions I have to take
to deliver my part against that. So I think that
range is important, and I think it provides people with
opportunities that they never even thought about before.
Speaker 3 (34:17):
Fantastic. So one more piece of advice, if you could
go back in time, what advice would you give your
twenty one year old self.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
Don't sweat the small stuff and don't get so excited.
Speaker 3 (34:27):
You know what, That's a very common advice people give
through the twenty one year old self. This must be
something about twenty one year olds versus a older folks.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
I used to get a little more excited in my days,
and I try and just be a little more relaxed
now because I now understand that not everything's going to
be perfect. How do you learn from every interaction you've got?
Speaker 3 (34:49):
We end each episode of Math and Magic to allow
us to do a shout out. It's called math and
magic because I think there are the two components of marketing,
two components of business. Is you've got to know the data,
you got to know the math side of it, but
you've also got to do something with it. Just because
you know about the person, I mean, you can excite them.
You need some magic there. Who would you give the
shout out to for the math side and the magic side?
Speaker 2 (35:11):
I got to say on the math side, the ability
to understand the data and to really look at things.
There's two people who I've come across in my life
who really get it more than any others. One is
Larry Summers when he was Treasury Secretary. I worked for
Larry and his ability to look at information and put
(35:35):
it together and really comprehend it in a way that
none of us could as as quickly as he could.
For sure, it made an impact. Sometimes it was frustratingly impressive.
And my current boss, Arvin Krishna, he understands the data
unlike anybody else I deal with, and I sit down
with him and talk about things, and his ability to
(35:56):
pull a fact from here in a fact from here
and put it together and then do the math around
it is really quite amazing. On the magic side, can
I give you my magician in general?
Speaker 3 (36:07):
Yes? Please?
Speaker 2 (36:08):
Oh's the mentalist.
Speaker 3 (36:09):
Oh my god. Somebody just said they just saw him,
and then they made me watch a video that had
taken on their cell phone. Jonathan, I am really fascinated
with the range of your career. It's really unusual and
very impressive if you ever get the chance to do it,
and those that do don't do it quite as well
as you do. And the momentum you've got at IBM
is so impressive. Thanks for sharing your insights and stories today.
Speaker 2 (36:32):
Thank you, Bob for having me and really honored to
be here. And I'm a lucky guy throughout my career
and lucky to be here with you today.
Speaker 3 (36:38):
Well, you're very nice. Thanks. Here are a few things
I picked up from my conversation with Jonathan. One, do
your job like you don't need it. This may sound counterintuitive,
but for Jonathan, his philosophy revolves around taking risk. If
you're playing it safe for getting comfortable, you're not living
up your full potential. He believes that trusting your instincts,
putting yourself out there, and even failing can be the
(37:01):
pathway to advancing your career.
Speaker 2 (37:04):
Two.
Speaker 3 (37:05):
Repetition doesn't have to hold you back. Lived experience and
data shows that when you're getting sick of a certain message,
that's about the moment when other people are starting to
hear it. Radical simplification and repetition are what makes a
message truly accessible, whether within a company culture or for consumers.
It's not about keeping you stuck where you are. It's
(37:27):
about advancing and broader understanding of your story. Three. B
Client zero at a time when AI is still daunting
for many, IBM is leading the conversation by example. They're
embracing AI at every level, and they're being transparent about
the good and the bad. AI has allowed the company
to grow by leaps and bounds, but perhaps more importantly,
(37:50):
they've established a trustworthy reputation in a rapidly evolving space.
I'm Bob Pittman. Thanks for listening. That's it for today's episode.
Speaker 1 (37:59):
Thanks so much, thanks for listening to Math and Magic,
a production of iHeart Podcasts. The show is created and
hosted by Bob Pittman. Special thanks to Sidney Rosenbloom for
booking and wrangling our wonderful talent, which is no small feat.
The Math and Magic team is Jessica Crimechich and Baheath Fraser.
Our executive producers are Ali Perry and Nikki Etoor.
Speaker 3 (38:20):
Until next time.
You're listening to Math and Magic, a production of iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
There's also the ability to celebrate the successes that people
have in a corporate culture. And equally, I feel like
you've got to be able to celebrate the failures, right
because if you don't celebrate the failures, nobody's going to
be willing to take a risk. And if you can't
take a risk, you're not going to change a culture.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
Hi, I'm Bob Pittman. Welcome to Math and Magic. Stories
from the Frontiers and Marketing. Today, we have someone who
has a storied career, much of it was centered around
PR and communications, and he's got some unique insights for
us coming from that perspective. He's the head of marketing
and Communications for the legendary IBM. It's Jonathan Atischeck. Jonathan
(00:52):
was born and grew up in Milwaukee, loved Camp, started
with a career in politics, moved on to the business
side of a PR firm, an automotive Giant Attack Giant,
before arriving at IBM. He not only is involved in
AI as a business, he's used it to transform the
marketing function at IBM. He's described by those around him
as very real Welcome Jonathan, Thanks Bob.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Great to be here.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
Before we jump into the hot topics today, I want
to start with you in sixty seconds. Are you ready?
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Yep?
Speaker 3 (01:23):
Do you prefer cats or dogs?
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Dogs?
Speaker 3 (01:25):
Early riser, night out? Both West Coast or.
Speaker 4 (01:28):
East Coast, East Coast, New York City or Milwaukee Milwaukee, copa,
Pepsi coke, beach or mountains beach, rock and roll, our Country,
rock and roll coffee or tea, t Books or movies, books,
podcasts or streaming TV.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Streaming TV except for this podcast.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
Thank you, Thank you, the right answer, Cook, read out, Cook,
Crocs or Nikes, Crocs, comedy or drama, comedy Japan or Paris, Japan.
Harley Davidson or Honda Harley Davidson. Okay, we're getting a
little harder. All time favorite music art so grateful dead.
What was your first computer?
Speaker 2 (02:02):
An Apple iiO.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
Not even the GS No oh, I love that first job.
A camp counselor smartest person you know, my wife, childhood hero,
my father and my mother. Favorite sport to watch football,
Green Bay Packers. The most important piece of advice you
ever received.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Don't sweat the small stuff.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
Let's jump in now to put your company in context
and perspective and what you're doing there. I want to
do just a little history because I'm sort of a
fanboy from Tom Watson Junior, so I want to tell
a little story here and then talk about how it
relates to you. In eighteen eighty four, National Cash Register
Company NCR was founded one hundred years ago. Is one
(02:43):
of the dominant high tech companies, so much so that
the government indicted some of their senior executives in nineteen
thirteen for anti trust. One of them was the head
of sales, Tom Watson, and they fired him. In the
aftermath of the government indictment. In nineteen fourteen, he goes
to another high tech company, CTR, which stood for Computing,
Tabulating Recording, as general manager. Ten years later he is
(03:06):
made president and the company was renamed IBM International Business Machines.
Watson was a true visionary. In the nineteen forties, IBM
helped develop the Harvard Mark one. In nineteen fifty two,
IBM released its first commercial scientific computer, the IBM seven
oh one, which was its real entry into the computer biz.
(03:27):
Tom Watson Senior was somewhat cautious about moving beyond punch cards,
but his son Tom Watson Junior was not. Tom Watson
Junior was president of IBM in fifty two, took over
a CEO upon his father's death in fifty six. And
the modern IBM is really, from my perspective of the
outsider looking in, it was his creation. He moved it
from a family run business to the modern management and
(03:49):
corporate structure and operations. He was a true leader and
innovator in American business practices. In addition to what he
did with IBM, the big bet was on the IBM
System three sixty in nineteen sixty four. Might have even
been a bet the company move. Might be argued also
that it's set up the computer battles for the decades
to come. So you've got this amazing and historic brand.
(04:11):
I tell the story only to really talk about what
a brand this is. How do you think about the
brand and how do you manage to keep it evolving.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
You know, you don't become one hundred and thirteen year
old technology company without reinventing yourself. And you even talked
about it in recounting the history. And I think about
the brand is one of the most valuable assets we've
got as a company. I think that people really trust IBM.
There's the old saying of you don't get fired for
(04:41):
hiring IBM that used to be there. And I think
that people look at IBM and when you engage with IBM,
these are the men and women who are going to
help us get to where we need to be. And
we can trust them to come in and do the
right thing for us and help us advance our business
and take advantage of our opportun unities. Have we had
(05:01):
our bumps? Yeah? Along the way we've had our bumps.
Have we not always necessarily stood for that? Yeah? And
I would tell you the story of when I first
got this job offer. I called one of my closest
friends and I said to him I got this offer
from IBM and told them all about it. It was
to run communications. He said to me, I'm really happy
(05:22):
for you, you know, because he knew I've been looking
for a while. He's like, this is great. He said,
I only have one question for you, what does IBM do.
This guy happened to be Sati Anadella's chief of staff.
So it said to me, there's a lot of green
space to make sure people understand where the company's going.
The opportunity that lies ahead for us as a company
(05:42):
and the ability for us to get much more focused
so people understand what we do, what we don't do,
and then how that brand carries behind it.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
So let's take one step down talk about brands in general.
What do you think a brand does for a company
and its products? What is the brand?
Speaker 2 (06:00):
I think the brand is the principles, It's the people,
it's the policies, it's the practice. I talked about trust before.
People trust it, but that's because trust and ethics are
at the heart of how we operate as a company.
I think a brand is a manifestation of what you
bring to life as the organization, not just what you
sell to your customers or your clients, but how you operate,
(06:22):
how you work together inside of a company. That is
what the brand is. And then people look at that
and go, I want to be associated with that, or
I don't want to be associated with it.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
In certain cases, you were at Microsoft and you've been
at IBM, two big tech names in American history. By
the way, both of them evolved and as you say,
up and down. But how would you compare and contrast
those two brands.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
There are two iconic brands in the history of our country,
and I would argue in the world and the changes
that both of them have made in the economy, in
the lives of people around the world, it's hard to
find others that have had the same impact. In my view,
I would say Microsoft's a much more consumer facing brand,
(07:06):
and people know when they're dealing with Microsoft when you
open Word or Office or any of those things or
use your Xbox. IBM, on the other hand, the way
I like to think of it as in many regards
where like the rails, people interact with us every day.
Most times, I would argue, people don't know they're dealing
with us unless you really are focused on what does
(07:28):
IBM do into the details. So they're two different paths,
but two iconic brands, two iconic corporations that are really
important to our country and to the broader global economy.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
You did a wide range of work for clients all
over the globe when you were at Edelman huge pr agency.
What lessons did you take away from that that really
added a dimension to you as and shaped you as
a marketer.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
One of the things for me, Bob you alluded to
it in the opening is how much I loved Camp
I grew up going to summer camp in the north
woods of Wisconsin, a place called camp In or Lochin,
and I really learned there the meaning of a hard
day's work and the ability to say I'm not going
to ask somebody to do anything that I wouldn't do myself.
Up a camp, I'd teach lifeguarding. And you're in a
(08:17):
cold lake in the middle of Wisconsin and.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
Really cold, really cold cold lake, you I wouldn't.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Say, go swim laps without me jumping in with the
class and saying, Okay, I'm going to swim the laps
with you. Fast forward, and I take that gentleman where
I sort of said, we're all going to roll up
our sleeves and do whatever we need to do together.
And I carry that with me today, that whatever needs
to be done, we just need to do it. And
the other big thing I remember often saying to Richard Edelman,
(08:44):
who was a great sponsor and mentor of mine and
gave me some amazing opportunities. But I would say to
Richard oftentimes I'm going to do this job, Richard, like
I don't need it. And if you take that approach
of like I'm just going to go do it the
way I think is right. And if it's not the
right way, and you say, hey, you got to go.
(09:05):
You got to be willing to take risks is basically
where I'm getting to because if you don't take risks,
you're not going to advance your career.
Speaker 3 (09:12):
Fantastic advice. We're going to come some advice later, but
that's a great piece of it right there. In addition
to starting and building brands, I've also been involved in
rehabilitating brands. And it always intrigues me how brands lose
their way? Why do you think and how do companies
lose their way on their brand?
Speaker 2 (09:30):
Very simply, they lose focus. If you lose focus, if
you try and do too many things, if you get
away from what is core to your business and what
you need to do as an organization, and make a
move that's too quick, that doesn't bring your existing clients
your employees with you, you will start to lose focus.
(09:51):
I was fortunate when I was at Edelman. I had
Starbucks as one of the clients and I was the
global client relationship manager there and Howard Schultz used to
often say to us, if we lose our existing customers
because we're focused on getting new ones, We're going to
spend more time, more money, more effort trying to win
back the customer we just lost than trying to go
(10:12):
get the new ones. And we can't do that.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
So in an organization, how do you ingrain that in
people so that the organization stays focused on focus.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
I'm going to tell you what I'm going to tell you.
I'm going to tell it to you again, and then
I'm going to tell it to you one more time,
and I'm going to keep telling it to you until
you're sick and tired of hearing it from me. Because
when I get frustrated with it, then finally you're just
starting to listen. Being repetitive and being transparent that is
really key.
Speaker 4 (10:44):
You know.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
It's interesting you talk about that on our music radio stations.
I start out as a radio announcer and it's on
the air, and when the people on the air are
sick of a song, I'd have played this song so
much if I got to play it one more time.
Going to shoot myself is about the time the consumer says,
what's that new song you're playing?
Speaker 2 (11:02):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
It is.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
So it's interesting. I think in every business how detached
do we get from where the consumer is if we're
not extraordinarily careful about looking at data as opposed to
trusting our gut.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
I agree.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
You know, when you think about brands, there s need
to be two models. One is, let's call it the
Steve Jobs model of there is a person who is
the keeper of the brand. There's the other model and
Microsoft where the company sort of institutionally kept the brand.
How do you see it? What do you come down
on that one?
Speaker 2 (11:32):
I think that when you're looking at a big company overall,
it's too much for one person, any one person, to
be the only person who keeps the brand. And I
think that the principles of the brands need to live
in the organization on a day to day basis. And
the way I look at IBM is we've got I
(11:53):
don't know, more than two hundred and seventy five thousand
people around the world. They need to be instilled, they
need to be representing the brand to people around the world.
They need to be understanding what we're trying to do
as a company to help them do that, and if
they're not, then we're failing from the beginning. They're great
leaders at those big companies that you talked about, But
(12:14):
I think I'm a believer that the bigger group will
make it even better.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
You're in charge of marketing. Your job is to get
the brand out. How do you train those two hundred
and seventy five thousand employees on the brand?
Speaker 2 (12:28):
You know, it goes back to repetitiveness as we talked about.
It goes back to radical simplification in the messaging and
the positioning and what you're trying to do. And it
really is making sure you're enabling people. You're giving them
the tools, making it easy for them to find what
(12:49):
they need to carry that message forward in whatever situation
they need to be in. You have to serve it
to people on a silver platter. You can't make it
an expedition for them them to go find information about
the brand, about whatever you're trying to do. Otherwise, they
got other things to do in their lives. They're going
to go do other things and then tell whatever story
(13:09):
they want.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
Let's apply it to politics. I know you were in
the Clinton administration, and for those of us who were
old enough to be a part of all that, you
would argue a brilliant marketer of what he did. Can
you use some examples from that.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
You know, I think for him, he got to very
direct engagement with the voters, and he made it a
very simple message. Remember, it's about the economy, stupid, right,
And that was key and everybody could understand that simple message.
And he was so engaging with people that whether you
(13:46):
were in the room, if you were in the room
and engaging with them, you felt like you were the
only person there. You could be in a room of
one hundred thousand people and you felt like you were
the only person. You and he were the only two
people there. But if you were also watching it on
television or seeing of it someplace, I think that carried
through it transcended. President Clinton was an amazing is an
(14:06):
amazing communicator, and I think it's he's one of the
rare talents. You don't see people at that level on
a regular basis, and I think that's really how he
pushed it.
Speaker 3 (14:17):
I want to tie brand a little bit to corporate culture.
How do you think about corporate culture? What is it
and how does it help a company succeed.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
Corporate culture is really important because you can get set
on the business and know where you're going from a
here's our objective from a business goal, But how do
you get the culture that's going to be there to
really enable that is a whole other effort. And as
I talk about it with Arvin Krishna, our CEO today,
(14:51):
Arvin's very focused on how do we make sure that
we've got a culture that enables what we want people
to do? And I think a key part of this
whole driving a culture. There's transparency, there's the ability for
people to take risks, there's the ability for people to
(15:12):
move with speed. Those are really important pieces. But there's
also the ability to celebrate the successes that people have
in a corporate culture. And equally, I feel like you've
got to be able to celebrate the failures, right because
if you don't celebrate the failures, nobody's going to be
willing to take a risk. And if you can't take
(15:34):
a risk, you're not going to change a culture. So
how do you continually evolve? And I think that evolution
of a culture is more important today than it was
in the past because business is changing, technology is changing,
the landscape is changing so much.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
I think your point about celebrating mistakes failures is hugely important.
How do you do that.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
I'll give you an example of me. One of my
first meetings that I had and once I took over
marketing with Arvind and some of my peers. It was
my worst performance in my professional career, hands down. Why
I was anxious. I didn't have my hands around the
data the way I wanted it to. I didn't feel comfortable.
(16:18):
I just I did not land it. It was so
bad that Arvin stopped me in the middle of the
meeting in front of everybody and said we'll deal with
it later. I called him after the meeting and I
talked to him and I apologized because I was like,
that's not what you expect from me, and that's not
why I'm here. And he gave me some good feedback
and was understanding and was clear that we're going to
fix it. It's not fine, but we're going to fix it.
(16:40):
And every Friday I write a note to my entire
team around the world, and that Friday, I wrote a
note in explicit detail explaining to people what happened there.
And many people could not believe that I was being
that vulnerable and that transparent with my team at all
(17:01):
levels of my team, saying this is what I did,
and oh, by the way, the CEO cut me off
because I was so bad. It showed people A not
everything's perfect, and b we all can make mistakes and
things can happen, and you can adjust, you can learn
from them, and you can take a step forward and
do it. That's a simple example for me.
Speaker 3 (17:22):
Did that writing the note give you more cred and
stronger relationships with the org than if you had done
a really good presentation. Never had the opportunity to do
something like that.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
I think it helped me with some people, not with everybody,
And personally writing that note was so cathartic for me
as well. But I think it was important to show
that not everything's going to be perfect, because I say
it all the time, not everything's going to be perfect,
But you have to show that not everything's going to
be perfect.
Speaker 3 (17:49):
I worked for a brilliant entrepreneur, Steve Ross, who really
created Time Warner out of have Spather and lost two
funeral homes, and he used to say, you know, Bob,
you'll never be fired here for making a mistake. You'll
be fired here for not making a mistake. John making
a mistake tells me I don't try anything new because
nobody gets it right one hundred percent of the times,
and we want you to try new things. More of
(18:10):
math and magic. Right after this quick break, welcome back
to Mathem Magic. Let's hear more from my conversation with
Jonathan Adaschek. Let's go back in time to get context
on you. Milwaukee. I actually was the midday disc jockey
(18:32):
a writ radio there in nineteen seventy two. I did
one semester at Carroll College in Walkshaw. I once ran
a theme park company, six Flags, with a park halfway
between Chicago and Milwaukee. And yet Milwaukee remains a mystery
to me. Can you explain that? I mean, it is
a unique culture. They don't have water fountain, stay of bubblers.
Can you explain it? And tell us about the Milwaukee
(18:54):
that was there when you were growing up.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
So I grew up just north of the city in
the suburb was a town called Whitefish Bay. It was
a great place to raise a family and to be
a kid growing up and playing in the streets. We
used to play kick the can and climb on the
neighbor's roof to hide from other people and all that
kind of fun stuff. And it was an amazing place. Unfortunately.
(19:18):
It was also a very segregated city, to the point
that my mother was on the school board and in
Whitefish Bay, and there was a big desegregation lawsuit and
it was Section two twenty, I believe it was called.
And part of the settlement was that the suburbs would
bust kids into the city, and the city would bust
(19:38):
kids into the suburbs. And my mother said, I'm going
to ask the people in the village Whitefish Paid to
do the same thing. I'm going to lead by example,
so you know, I want you to go. My parents
told me, you're going to go, get on the bus
and go into the city. And I loved it. I
loved it. I used to take the bus to elementary
(20:00):
school in downtown. It was across the street from the
Schlitz Brewery. And I remember the day the Schlitz Brewery
went on strike and never came back. And I remember
asking the bus driver every day to stop at the
USA Today box I can put a quarter in and
get the paper. It was just a great city, a
city that is so passionate about Milwaukee, about the brewers,
(20:22):
about the bucks, about the packers, about just the great
heritage there, you know, the saying is it's a great
city on a great lake.
Speaker 3 (20:29):
And it really is an amazing I've not heard that one.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
Yeah, that's a great line, and it's changed a lot
and it's even more fun to go to today.
Speaker 3 (20:38):
I grew up in Mississippi and I drove to Milwaukee
in a car, had never been north of Saint Louis
and I showed up there and man, I hate food
I never seen in my life. I mean meat and
potatoes Mississippi. To the food that was available in Milwaukee,
it was great interest in me. Frozen custard, yeah, god,
it everything.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
It's amazing.
Speaker 3 (20:57):
I still go back every year.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
My kids go to the same summer camp that I
went to growing up.
Speaker 3 (21:02):
You've talked about camp being very important. Clearly it's had
an impact on you. What do you think it really
did for you and what do you think people can
get out of camp with their kids.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
Camp is the place that I have my closest friends.
Those are my closest friends.
Speaker 3 (21:19):
And how many were from Milwaukee versus other places?
Speaker 2 (21:22):
A lot were from Milwaukee, some from Madison, some from Chicago.
But you also had people who would come from Israel
every year, or there was a guy who lived in
Hawaii or the guy who lived in France. But it's
become even broader now, but those are my closest friends
still to this day. We are all there for each
other at the moments that it matters the most, whether
(21:44):
that's a celebration or a moment of sorrow with the
loss of a parent or a sibling. We all travel
around the world to see each other. It taught me
about relationships, taught me about a hard day's work. As
I got older and worked there we build and you know,
have these amazing days out in the north woods of Wisconsin,
and I just love it and I love the fact
(22:07):
that my kids go there.
Speaker 3 (22:09):
What life lessons did you learn from your parents?
Speaker 2 (22:12):
My parents did everything they could to take care of us,
there were five of us, and to give us the
best life they really could. And it wasn't without hardships.
My dad was an entrepreneur and had his ups and
downs in business, and that could cause some difficulties in
the house money wise or just tensions, but we always
found a way to work through it. And they always said,
(22:35):
you know what, unconditional love is there, and it's something
that I always make sure my kids know that unconditional love,
no matter what happens, is never going to go away.
And when I get on a plane, every time I
leave the house, I always say to my kids, never forget. Well,
I might not be here tonight to say good night
to you. Don't forget I love you more than anything
(22:57):
else in the world. And I really took that from them,
and I really try hard to carry it forward.
Speaker 3 (23:02):
That's great to push that to the next generation. And
by the way, there's a through line you hear again
and again and again of successful and confident people. How
did you jump to politics? Was that your goal to
be in politics or was that an accident?
Speaker 2 (23:17):
My mom ran for school board and I still remember
hammering the signs into the frozen ground of Wisconsin Whitefish Bay,
and I remember saying, I was I don't know, nine,
ten years old, and I was like, I want to
go work in the White House one day, and I
want to slog through the snows of Iowa or New
Hampshire with a presidential candidate. And I just stayed focused
(23:37):
on it, and so yes, it was my goal, Wow,
to go to Washington, d C. To work in the
White House in the West Wing.
Speaker 3 (23:44):
And when'd you go to the Clinton White House? When
was that? What year is.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
At ninety seven? I started in the White House?
Speaker 3 (23:51):
Well, lucky you.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
And then slog through the snows of Iowa with John
Kerrey when he was running for president. It was great.
I was very fortunate. I had two big goals I
wanted to do and I got to do them both.
You know, at a very young age.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
Well it's fabulous. Just jump to autos. You were actually
working in Japan and Nissan. How did you wind up there?
I mean, this is a jump and you, I guess,
had been an Edelman before that, right?
Speaker 2 (24:16):
I went Edelman, then I went to Microsoft, then I
went to Nissan, and I knew that I wanted to
make a change for Microsoft. I loved Microsoft, but I
knew that I wanted to become the chief communications officer
at a global company and ideally live overseas. And this
sort of came about a lot of people said to me,
(24:36):
what's the difference? How did you make that jump? In reality?
Today a car is not just an engine on four wheels.
It's a computer sitting on top of an engine on
four wheels. Today it's helping to facilitate how you move
your whole interactions that you've got on your phone and
whatever content that whole thing. So it was a much
(24:58):
easier transition. I felt like then a lot of people
thought it would be. I would say a big difference
is when you look at the margins and the two businesses. Right,
Automotive Nissan's an amazing company. I'm its biggest cheerleader, But
the margins and automotive are much thinner than they are
(25:20):
in technology. And you really watch your dollars, and I
think it makes you get a lot more creative in
how you spend them and where interesting.
Speaker 3 (25:28):
Yeah, even in a high margin business, cost matter, Cost
matter still goes to the.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
Spend a lot of time on that topic. Right now.
Speaker 3 (25:36):
I was going to ask you what you learned in
that industry, but it sounds like you learned about cost
and the importance of it. What else?
Speaker 2 (25:43):
I also learned a lot about the global perspective. Right So,
at Nissan I had a team of three hundred and
fifty people around the world who were really working on
a range of different issues everywhere, whether it was around manufacturing,
or it was selling vehicles, or it was regulations or
issues management, any of those things, and it would differ
(26:05):
from wherever you were in the world. I was forced
to learn a lot more about if you take an
action here in this country, how is it going to
carry over to another place?
Speaker 3 (26:14):
As on a side, did you ever learn to speak Japanese.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
A little bit? But I could say to you right now,
futatsubidugon guys chamas.
Speaker 3 (26:22):
I have no idea what you said, but it sounds
impressive to beers. Please, Okay, so let's jump to hot topic.
It's something we have to talk about always on Mathemagic AI.
In addition to selling it, you actually use it. You're
right in the middle of it. You've used it to
transform your own infrastructure. Can you talk about the Let's
(26:44):
Create marketing campaign launch in twenty twenty two and how
you pulled AI around that, and then talk about how
you've used AI in the organization.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
AI's been really instrumental for us as a company. We've
been at it for a long time from Watson and Jeopardy.
But when Arvin Christian became CEO in April of twenty twenty,
he said, we are going to be the leading hybrid
cloud and AI company. This is well before everybody's talking
about generative AI. That focus that helped us then take
(27:17):
it to the rest of the activities we were going
to do around marketing, around communications, around the products that
we build. And a fundamental that we've been doing is
we've implemented what we would call client zero, where we're
creating AI products and services, we're using them ourselves as
(27:37):
a company, and then we're going to talk to people
about those. So in the past two years, we've taken
roughly three point five billion dollars out of our run rate,
largely using AI and automation. That then we can go
have a conversation with somebody and say this is what
we did. Let me share with you the good, the bad,
(27:58):
the ugly. People will then make it decision if they're
going to work with us or sometimes we're just sharing
that out of best practices. There many times I have
conversations with fellow marketing leaders about how do we simplify
how do we take our event budget? And today we
do half the number of events that we were doing
just over two years ago, but we're getting five percent
(28:20):
more return on those events because we're much more targeted
using AI. We're creating better content, we're creating better experiences.
I've got a team of roughly three hundred designers, eighty
percent of their average time is spent on derivative assets.
By giving them AI tools, we can take that eighty
(28:41):
percent down. That's not eliminating their job, but that's enabling
them to do more creative But for me, it's just starting.
There's so much more AI that we're building out in
the function for marketing, for communications, for CSR across the board.
That's really going to change the way we're managing our
content andbuting it making sure we're taking people on a
(29:04):
journey that is full of not just personalized content, because
that is where everybody seems to be going in marketing today.
It's got to be relevant content because I couple weeks
ago got a personalized email in my work address around
a hair extension thing, and I didn't care about it.
(29:26):
But if it was relevant, then it's a different level
of engagements. I think people who are just talking about
personalization only have half the story.
Speaker 3 (29:33):
Yeah, I think you're very much on target. I was
at AOL in the mid nineties when we sort of
brought the Internet to the mass market, and it's interesting
everybody was talking at the time and said, you know,
you're going to have all this free time now because
this is going to do We didn't have any free time.
We did more work. Whatever time we had we filled up.
We was able to double our work, triple our work.
(29:55):
And you're making that point about AI that we're not
going to create more time for us to do nothing.
We're going to do more in that same amount of time.
Speaker 2 (30:01):
Yeah, I mean jobs will change, people will have to
move into different roles. If you think about go back
to telephones, right, for a while, you had to call
the operator, had to patch the call through. Yeah, when
the operators went away, that didn't mean that all those
people lost went out of work, became unemployed. They changed
the roles that they were in. You can see this
happen through the history of our economy in the past, right,
(30:24):
and I think it's going to happen here too.
Speaker 3 (30:26):
So let's go back to the Let's Create marketing campaign
which you were talking about focus and I just love
what you did with Let's Create because at the heart
of it, it seems to be about focus, about let's
take all these disparate things and let's build one umbrella
for this company.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
We had more than forty three campaigns out there at
any one time, and really trying to get everything under
one umbrella was crucial for us. You know, a lot
of this is driven by data, and our fundamental is
our clients. Data is our clients data. It's never our data.
They hold the keys for it. So the only way
you can really get to a solution or take advantage
(31:02):
of an opportunity is by doing it together. And that's
why we went with a model of let's create and
it's really been a big focus for us. And it's
not just an advertising tagline, it's what we're trying to
do with our clients in practice as well, and really
part of our work as an organization as a company
is we don't just go in and solve our clients
(31:25):
problems for them, we create solutions.
Speaker 3 (31:29):
Five years from now, paint the picture of how AI
will change American business or worldwide business.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
Today we say AI is moving so fast. I think
five years from now we'll probably look back and go
it didn't move as fast as we were thinking at
the time. But I think that what's going to be
key is skilling in five years from now, because the
average shelf life of technology skill to day is just
under three years, so the ability to give people time
(31:58):
in jobs to regulate, keep their skills up to either
use an AI tool or operate in an organization that
has AI deployed. That is going to become more normal.
I'm more normalized. I work in a company that today
does think forty and says you should take forty hours
of learning a year, So we provide opportunities. Not everybody
(32:21):
gets that same opportunity, and I think that's going to
be more regular. I think that the ability if I
focus into where we are in marketing and the client journeys,
I think it's going to be a much more personalized,
relevant journey that is going to have a better understanding
of where they are in a buying cycle, when they're engaged,
when they're not engaged, in how you better tell the
(32:43):
story to them at the various times where they are.
And I think it's going to create more opportunities for
people to focus on the things that they're really passionate
about and bring new ideas to the market.
Speaker 3 (32:55):
I want to do a little advice. You've got this
great range of experience someone wants to build a career.
How important do you think range is versus I'm starting
here in the marketing department and I'm going to one
day wind up being the CMO. I mean two different
approaches to winding up in the job you're in.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
I think that you have to get to a point
where you have a good level of discomfort in your job.
People get to a job and they get to a
place where they're like, I can do one hundred percent
of this job with my eyes closed, and I'm always comfortable.
And I think you need to get to a place
where you're like ten percent comfortable and ninety percent is
(33:39):
forcing you to learn new muscles, and I'm always trying
to learn build new muscles. You can do that. You
can say I'm going to start in this marketing job
and I want to be the CMO. But the best
way in my mind to do that is to build
a vast set of professional muscles so that you understand, Hey,
the business is trying to do this, and I understand
why they're trying to do that and the impact it's
(34:00):
going to have on our bottom line, so that I
can then understand what marketing actions I have to take
to deliver my part against that. So I think that
range is important, and I think it provides people with
opportunities that they never even thought about before.
Speaker 3 (34:17):
Fantastic. So one more piece of advice, if you could
go back in time, what advice would you give your
twenty one year old self.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
Don't sweat the small stuff and don't get so excited.
Speaker 3 (34:27):
You know what, That's a very common advice people give
through the twenty one year old self. This must be
something about twenty one year olds versus a older folks.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
I used to get a little more excited in my days,
and I try and just be a little more relaxed
now because I now understand that not everything's going to
be perfect. How do you learn from every interaction you've got?
Speaker 3 (34:49):
We end each episode of Math and Magic to allow
us to do a shout out. It's called math and
magic because I think there are the two components of marketing,
two components of business. Is you've got to know the data,
you got to know the math side of it, but
you've also got to do something with it. Just because
you know about the person, I mean, you can excite them.
You need some magic there. Who would you give the
shout out to for the math side and the magic side?
Speaker 2 (35:11):
I got to say on the math side, the ability
to understand the data and to really look at things.
There's two people who I've come across in my life
who really get it more than any others. One is
Larry Summers when he was Treasury Secretary. I worked for
Larry and his ability to look at information and put
(35:35):
it together and really comprehend it in a way that
none of us could as as quickly as he could.
For sure, it made an impact. Sometimes it was frustratingly impressive.
And my current boss, Arvin Krishna, he understands the data
unlike anybody else I deal with, and I sit down
with him and talk about things, and his ability to
(35:56):
pull a fact from here in a fact from here
and put it together and then do the math around
it is really quite amazing. On the magic side, can
I give you my magician in general?
Speaker 3 (36:07):
Yes? Please?
Speaker 2 (36:08):
Oh's the mentalist.
Speaker 3 (36:09):
Oh my god. Somebody just said they just saw him,
and then they made me watch a video that had
taken on their cell phone. Jonathan, I am really fascinated
with the range of your career. It's really unusual and
very impressive if you ever get the chance to do it,
and those that do don't do it quite as well
as you do. And the momentum you've got at IBM
is so impressive. Thanks for sharing your insights and stories today.
Speaker 2 (36:32):
Thank you, Bob for having me and really honored to
be here. And I'm a lucky guy throughout my career
and lucky to be here with you today.
Speaker 3 (36:38):
Well, you're very nice. Thanks. Here are a few things
I picked up from my conversation with Jonathan. One, do
your job like you don't need it. This may sound counterintuitive,
but for Jonathan, his philosophy revolves around taking risk. If
you're playing it safe for getting comfortable, you're not living
up your full potential. He believes that trusting your instincts,
putting yourself out there, and even failing can be the
(37:01):
pathway to advancing your career.
Speaker 2 (37:04):
Two.
Speaker 3 (37:05):
Repetition doesn't have to hold you back. Lived experience and
data shows that when you're getting sick of a certain message,
that's about the moment when other people are starting to
hear it. Radical simplification and repetition are what makes a
message truly accessible, whether within a company culture or for consumers.
It's not about keeping you stuck where you are. It's
(37:27):
about advancing and broader understanding of your story. Three. B
Client zero at a time when AI is still daunting
for many, IBM is leading the conversation by example. They're
embracing AI at every level, and they're being transparent about
the good and the bad. AI has allowed the company
to grow by leaps and bounds, but perhaps more importantly,
(37:50):
they've established a trustworthy reputation in a rapidly evolving space.
I'm Bob Pittman. Thanks for listening. That's it for today's episode.
Speaker 1 (37:59):
Thanks so much, thanks for listening to Math and Magic,
a production of iHeart Podcasts. The show is created and
hosted by Bob Pittman. Special thanks to Sidney Rosenbloom for
booking and wrangling our wonderful talent, which is no small feat.
The Math and Magic team is Jessica Crimechich and Baheath Fraser.
Our executive producers are Ali Perry and Nikki Etoor.
Speaker 3 (38:20):
Until next time.
Host
Bob Pittman
Popular Podcasts
Amy Robach & T.J. Holmes present: Aubrey O’Day, Covering the Diddy Trial
Introducing… Aubrey O’Day Diddy’s former protege, television personality, platinum selling music artist, Danity Kane alum Aubrey O’Day joins veteran journalists Amy Robach and TJ Holmes to provide a unique perspective on the trial that has captivated the attention of the nation. Join them throughout the trial as they discuss, debate, and dissect every detail, every aspect of the proceedings. Aubrey will offer her opinions and expertise, as only she is qualified to do given her first-hand knowledge. From her days on Making the Band, as she emerged as the breakout star, the truth of the situation would be the opposite of the glitz and glamour. Listen throughout every minute of the trial, for this exclusive coverage. Amy Robach and TJ Holmes present Aubrey O’Day, Covering the Diddy Trial, an iHeartRadio podcast.
Betrayal: Season 4
Karoline Borega married a man of honor – a respected Colorado Springs Police officer. She knew there would be sacrifices to accommodate her husband’s career. But she had no idea that he was using his badge to fool everyone. This season, we expose a man who swore two sacred oaths—one to his badge, one to his bride—and broke them both. We follow Karoline as she questions everything she thought she knew about her partner of over 20 years. And make sure to check out Seasons 1-3 of Betrayal, along with Betrayal Weekly Season 1.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.