September 10, 2025 • 37 mins
What happens when your career path takes unexpected turns? For Jason Brigham, founder of a successful digital marketing agency, the journey from computer science to hospitality to digital leadership reveals powerful lessons about adaptability in an ever-changing landscape.
Brigham candidly shares the pivotal moments that shaped his professional evolution—from abandoning his initial computer science career track to pursue the more social, creative environment of hospitality, to eventually finding his sweet spot in digital marketing. These transitions weren't just about professional satisfaction but aligned with personal milestones like marriage and becoming a parent.
The conversation takes a fascinating turn when exploring artificial intelligence's role in digital marketing. Contrary to popular fears, Brigham argues AI enhances rather than replaces human creativity: "It's never going to take over your creativity. It's never going to take over the insight and experience that you have." His practical advice on AI adoption emphasizes experimentation, knowledge-sharing, and maintaining critical thinking when evaluating AI outputs—valuable guidance for professionals at any career stage.
Perhaps most illuminating is Brigham's perspective on workplace culture post-pandemic. As his agency embraced a remote-first approach with hybrid options, he discovered something unexpected—many young professionals crave at least some in-person experience, fearing they'll miss crucial socialization and mentorship opportunities in a fully remote environment. This insight challenges common narratives about workplace preferences and highlights the importance of offering choice rather than one-size-fits-all solutions.
Ready to expand your digital marketing horizons? Listen now for Brigham's compelling call to think globally, embrace curiosity, and approach career development with an open mind to possibilities beyond traditional paths. Whether you're just starting your career or looking to navigate industry changes, this conversation offers both practical wisdom and inspirational perspectives.
This podcast is proudly sponsored by USC Annenberg’s Master of Science in Digital Media Management (MSDMM) program. An online master’s designed to prepare practitioners to understand the evolving media landscape, make data-driven and ethical decisions, and build a more equitable future by leading diverse teams with the technical, artistic, analytical, and production skills needed to create engaging content and technologies for the global marketplace. Learn more or apply today at https://dmm.usc.edu.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Mediascape Insights from Digital
Changemakers, a speaker seriesand podcast brought to you by
USC Annenberg's Digital MediaManagement Program.
Join us as we unlock thesecrets to success in an
increasingly digital world.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
I'm thrilled to have Jason Brigham on Mediascape
Insights from DigitalChangemakers.
Jason, we were just talking andI said I have to push record
right now because we're talkingabout how the world has changed
so much and I'd love for you toshare a little bit about your
journey from computer scienceinto working at the Marriott and
(00:42):
then you know the way that yourcareer came together to now
having this amazing agency andthe work that you do.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Thank you.
Yeah, no, it wasn't really thetraditional linear path I
suppose A lot of people take.
You know, going to college andchoosing a major and that
leading into a career path.
You know, at the time, as I wasgoing to college was, I think,
like many people, young people,somewhat uncertain.
I wanted to go into somethingwhere I could find a career path
(01:10):
immediately out of college andthat was kind of my driving
force behind what I chose to doand why I selected to be a
computer science major.
But once I graduated and Istarted to have to live, I guess
, real life and adult life andwhatnot, getting into the job
market, I was fortunate enoughto have opportunities.
But as soon as I started in thekind of true career world and
(01:34):
whatnot too, I found that itreally wasn't my car, it wasn't
the fit for me.
Largely had to do with, youknow, I was the youngest of my
professional peers in my officeand the type of work I was doing
just wasn't very challengingand it didn't really give any
opportunity for creativity.
And I was 21 years old, I hadrecently moved from Vermont,
(01:55):
small state of Vermont, to thebig state of California and this
new city in San Diego and newenvironment, the opportunity to
meet new people.
And so I had one of those kindof life moments where you say I
don't know that I want to dothis anymore.
And like many people, manycollege students, the careers
you choose typically are gigopportunities.
(02:15):
So I worked in bars, I workedin restaurants, I managed both,
and so I was very familiar withthat environment.
I was also familiar with thefact that many of the people in
that environment are my age,they're my demographic, and so
for me it was that kind ofcareer path change where I was
like I want to go somewherewhere I can make friends, meet
people in my new city, be in anenvironment that's fun and
(02:37):
creative and collaborative, andget something in the start of my
career that I was going to beenjoying and having fun with,
and so that was the kind ofpivot move.
But then, as time went on and mylife changed, my wife and I
decided to get married.
We also decided to start afamily, and for as much fun as
(02:58):
hospitality can be, the hoursare incredibly demanding Nights,
all of this A lot of thosetimes where people normally have
time off to spend with thefamily people in hospitality
fortunately for us that you knowaren't working in hospitality
and can take advantage of that.
You know they are working and Ihave an enormous amount of
appreciation for everybodythat's in the hospitality
(03:19):
industry.
I just want to say that to beclear.
But that was another moment inmy life where we had to.
We decided that would be achange and I needed to
reconsider my career, where Iwas going, and so I happened to
find my way via my neighbor,into the digital marketing world
and it was funny at the timeshe made the conversation.
(03:39):
She's like well, you studiedcomputers in college, digital
marketing, you know all that andI was like not exactly the same
thing, but I appreciate it.
And if you believe that, Icould probably sell someone in
the organization to make thembelieve that and I was not that
misleading in my representationmyself, but it was something
where I was like I'm you knowI'm a tech and client and I'm
(04:00):
enthusiastic.
I you know, most of my life tolive in an animal analog world,
but I've firmly embraced thedigital world.
I'm enthusiastic.
Most of my life I've lived inan analog world but I've firmly
embraced the digital world.
I'm excited for thoseopportunities and that began my
journey within the digitalmarketing and advertising world
and, through that initial step,went on and started another
agency with partners and theneventually took over yet another
agency that I actually was ableto go through a successful M&A
(04:24):
in 2019, right before thepandemic, which was good and bad
timing and the whole world ofbusiness transactions especially
when you're working in anindustry that's relying upon
people spending money onadvertising and marketing to
have an event like that thataffected the entire world, was a
big deal.
But it was another moment andkind of a pivotal change in my
(04:44):
life, of importance, ofperseverance and taking care of
people and making sure that youhave enough belief in the people
that are around you within ourorganization and an agency that
you can overcome this challenge,and we're very fortunate to
have overcome that challenge andcame out relatively unscathed
and was able to continuebuilding in the subsequent years
(05:05):
all the way through to where weare today, and so it's been a
really exciting journey.
I've been lucky that I've workedwith amazing people along the
way.
The culture and the industry isjust so creative and
forward-thinking and progressive, and it's a really great
environment for myself as ayoung person to get involved
(05:26):
with and work with like-mindedpeople, but also, as I've
matured in the industry, to alsocontinue to be learning and
getting to new platforms and newsocial media channels, and now
we have all these changesrelative to privacy policy and
analytics.
That's shaking things up, andit's just such a dynamic and
ever-evolving and changingindustry that it's for someone
(05:48):
who is passionate about learningand continuing to experience
new things, it's a great placeto be.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
Yeah, Well, tell us about the name behind your
organization, how you choose thename and what are the areas of
expertise that your team playsin when it comes to the digital
ecosystem.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
Absolutely so it actually goes back to.
It'd be a much longer story ifI told the false story, but I'll
just tell you the origin of thename.
And so a friend of mine and wewere looking to start a business
and he's actually Indonesian bybirth, and so the origin of the
name was an Indonesian term.
We actually dated it back toactually a Sanskrit that's
(06:29):
loosely, you know says manysolutions under a single thread,
and so the idea behind it wasthat we wanted to be an
organization that helps peoplesolve unique problems, and that
there wasn't necessarily a onesize fits all or, you know, a
blueprint that everybody had tofollow.
But they need help with theirsales operations or they need
help with their marketing ortheir digital strategy or their
(06:51):
executive leadership or whatnot,too.
We would be able to providesupport to help them resolve
those solutions, whether it befrom our team or through the
network of partners that we hadbuilt over the years of very
capable, amazing people that canslot into that, that we had
built over the years of verycapable, amazing people that can
slot into that, and so ourwhole mantra has always been you
know, we're here to help.
You know, and if you havechallenges and sometimes your
(07:13):
challenges are not as obvious.
You know we can help uncoverthose things, but the intention
is always to help find solutionsin a creative way whenever
possible.
We've really started, you know,started looking at the types of
brands and industries we workwith and I've really started
gearing ourselves toward reallymission-driven organizations and
that's not always necessarilyin the traditional sense of
(07:36):
nonprofits and things of thatnature, however they are.
But so much of the technologyworld has moved towards being
very mission-driven, whetherthat be helping under-s, under
service communities or findingbetter solutions that enable
people to do things moreeffectively within finance,
within housing and real estate.
You know that's been a bigthing is to hopefully be a
(07:57):
little bit more altruistic inour motivations and not always
be focused on revenue butfocused on making a difference
and hopefully, you know,affecting lives around the world
for the better.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
Yeah, amazing, and we've had many conversations not
unrecorded, yeah, so I'm reallyexcited to have this
conversation with you and haveus recording it to talk about
these areas.
I want to talk about somethingwe were briefly touching on
before we jumped on, which issomething that is really
important to both of on, whichis something that is really
important to both of us, whichis AI pedagogy teaching people
(08:29):
how to use AI, whether from theuniversity perspective or the
business perspective, and yourown team.
So we talk about that framingfor your team.
And then how does that work andcorrelate with what we need to
make sure our students who aretaking programs masters in
digital media, digital socialright what skill sets do they
(08:51):
need to have in this new notreally new, just new words and
everybody knows about it right,aiml?
Speaker 3 (08:58):
world, but I think that's a really good point,
though, too, is, while everybodyknows about it, I don't know
that we at least from myexperience and working with a
kind of a broad swath ofindividuals with the inside and
outside of digital and whatnottoo, everybody's aware of it.
I don't know that everybodytruly understands what it is,
(09:23):
and there's AI and LLM andthere's acronyms thrown around
all the time and whatnot too,and it can create some confusion
.
But where I really help to, Iguess, encourage people is the
concept of adoption.
It's just try it as an exampleand this is unrelated to my
professional life, but I had asmall group of dads that we have
a workout program that we doevery Saturday morning and, on a
(09:47):
whim, I use ChatGPT to draft upsome logos and some t-shirts
that we're going to be made andwhatnot too, and I'd share them
with the on our groups groupchat and several people were
like, oh my God, you did theseall yourself, and I was like I
can't take any credit for it.
I'm like this was all done byAI and that sparked the
conversation about.
(10:07):
Well, oh, I didn't know itcould do that, and I think there
are lies to that point.
Like.
A lot of people are aware of it, but they don't understand the
function and how it can enableand that's the other part of it,
too that I'm trying to help myteam and young people in my
community to recognize is thatit's a tool that helps to enable
(10:29):
things.
It's never going to take overyour creativity.
It's never going to take overthe insight and experience that
you have.
Just like any tool, it's abouthow you use it and how you put
in the inputs and how you tailorthose things and so.
But, that being said, it is ameans of which you can
accelerate your work outputs.
(10:50):
It's a means of which you canwork through more complex things
in a shorter amount of time,and particularly for
applications within the industry.
Every young person I've talkedto in college and otherwise I'm
giving them that adviceDefinitely take the time to
learn it.
Many, if not all the programsdo have free options, and so
there's not typically a cost foryou to go and get the basic
(11:14):
program with ChatGPT or Claudeor whatever it might be.
There are definitely the Iguess not buyer beware, but the
kind of cautionary tales thatyou have to also reinforce of
like it's still learning.
You know, it's still very young, it's in its infancy, and it's
not always going to give youaccurate output.
So you do need a human person.
(11:35):
You do need someone to factcheck and spot check these
things Never take credit for itas it being your own, because
it's not and making sure thatagain, you can quickly learn and
adapt things.
I equate it to if you'retraveling to a new city in the
country and say you're going toRome, italy, for the first time,
you probably would go to Googleand maybe do some searches best
(11:59):
places to eat in Rome whywouldn't you do that with
ChatGPT?
Or could ChatG GPT also takeinto factors into consideration
as to where you're staying, thetrip map or the route that
you're taking to other places,and that tool could actually
potentially give you anitinerary that could help you
find some of those best spots togo to.
And so, again, it's justanother tool in that arsenal of
(12:23):
different things that you wantto become familiar with in order
to help breed efficiency.
And then the other piece ofadvice I always give, too, is
like talk about it with others.
I've learned more aboutadopting and kind of adapting to
this AI world by talking withother people and then providing
me use cases.
Well, I do it this way, or Iuse this prompt, or I always end
(12:45):
my prompt in do you have anyquestions before I get started?
And learning those things hasenabled me to become more
efficient in utilizing thosetools.
It's interesting in the academicside of things.
My oldest daughter is actually afreshman, or just I shouldn't
say she's no longer a freshman.
She just completed her freshmanyear in college and it's been a
big topic and was through theirorientation all the way in each
(13:09):
of the core syllabi about whenand how is appropriate to use AI
copywriting and for the mostpart it seems like people have
all learned their lesson ormaybe done that before and
whatnot too.
But I also think it created alittle bit of a fear and a
stigma in people saying, well, Idon't want to touch that, I
(13:31):
don't want to get caught usingit, and I think that was a bit
of a detractor because it is atool of enablement.
It is helping you to the verysimplest things get over that
hour of writer's block that youhave, like, bring in a prompt
and get some, you know, get someinsight and have that guide you
to getting going and cuttingover that hump on that paper
that you have to turn in, orusing it to find citations from
(13:55):
different articles that you canquickly and easily reference.
There's practical applicationsof utilizing those tools within
academia.
That doesn't, you know, doesn'tsway them into the wrong or bad
uses, I guess, if you will nottaking advantage of it.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
Yeah, well, I mean, one use case I have is in the
class I just finished teaching,which is DMM 510.
And we talk about advertising,analytics, data analysis,
measurement, and so the secondweek of class is MarTech how do
you create a stack?
So, instead of having them justgo through and hypothesize, I
(14:29):
said put this prompt into anyllm of your choice, including
martech bot, which is a funlittle thing to work with, and
ask for some different tools andhow they would play.
You know, based on your goalsfor your organization, which
ones would make the most senseand why, and then create a
little, you know, create alittle chart, and let me know if
(14:51):
you think these were, analyzeit right.
Was this correct?
Is this what you would use, orare there other tools, and what
other tools are you currentlyusing in your business?
That maybe there's overlapbetween what the recommendations
were.
You don't need all of themright To create a good tech
stack, and so the criticalthinking aspect, to me, is so
important 100% and you ask them,you prompt that.
Speaker 3 (15:15):
Is there an iteration , iterate, iterate, iterate,
take the next step, take thenext step Don't be done and just
say easy button, check done,iterate on that and force that
challenge and whatnot too, andyou'll find that I hope they'll
find that they'll get even moreinsight in going through the
experience and asking it tochallenge itself and themselves
to get to a better solution.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
Well, and, as you mentioned, the prompt
engineering, so they learn howto create better prompts to
actually get the answer theywant for the industry they want,
instead of just somethinggeneric.
Speaker 3 (15:45):
Exactly.
Yep, well, and that'sfascinating.
Mari, a good friend of mine, isin the telecommunications
industry and we were talkingabout that and that he did bring
up just that point of theimportance of iterating.
And don't assume that thesingle prompt, because AI, in
its nature, its first thing isto get you the answer as quickly
as possible.
So it combs all of the data,searches for the matching terms
(16:09):
that meet your query and quicklyreturns them back to you, which
is great in the idea ofefficiency, right, but it isn't
necessarily the answer youreally were looking for.
And so it is about.
And where the critical thinkingcomes into play is okay, wait,
that's not exactly what I wasasking.
Like, is that because the AIdidn't understand me?
(16:30):
Is it because maybe Imisunderstood it?
But I think that's a pointwhere and I think this is
important, you know, especiallyfor people that are learning to
that like then don't just stop,don't just assume like, oh well,
it didn't work.
You know there's got to be thatiteration and that's where I
think a lot of that.
You know the concern where youknow people say that ai is the
(16:50):
death of critical or creativethinking.
I'm like, I don't think that'sat all the case, I bet.
I think it.
It should prompt you to thinkwhat's next and maybe I should
ask in a different way, maybeit'll give me a different result
.
Okay, now that I know, I knowthat, like, let me ask those
things again.
And so it's back to thosethings.
I think that knowledge sharingaspect of it and that can, like
(17:10):
you know, here's what works forme, like what works for you has
made such a difference, I think,and you know, at least in my
interactions with my team, mypeers, and just becoming more,
and I get excited about it.
So when I get a new tip, I'mlike, oh gosh, I got to go home
and try that or see what thatdoes for me, type thing.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
Yeah, and to your point as well, knowing which
LLMs are better for which areasthat you're exploring right.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
Is it for complexity, because it has more up-to-date
information and maybe has alittle bit better research?
Is it cloud, which I say andmany people say is more
human-sounding?
Openai has a really great thing.
Every single one has differentthings about it, and also I had
the experience of when GoogleCloud Services went down and I
(17:59):
could not access my cloud and Iwas about to go to a big meeting
.
I had just done a whole bunchof prep work and I hadn't copied
and pasted over yet.
So then I was like, oh my gosh,do I have to recreate this?
Let me remember exactly how Iprompted go into my, because I
do have backup projects inOpenAI.
So I was like, all right, youknow, but it makes you really
think about the value ofinformation and we can't lose
(18:21):
our critical thinking.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
We have to still be able to know the information.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
You can't lose our critical thinking, exactly.
Speaker 3 (18:24):
We have to still be able to know the information.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
You can't just rely on the outputs.
Speaker 3 (18:29):
A hundred percent.
Yeah, I had a very similarexperience during that output
and I was like everything's gone.
And again you have that momentof like.
I was so dependent or soreliant upon this piece of
technology, having the storagebe there and whatnot too that in
the absence of it, do I go intopanic or do I say, ok, take the
(18:51):
stuff back.
You know, again I'm going tomake myself sound old.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
I graduated four years before you, by the way.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
Then I won't say it again, but I always make the
joke with my daughters when itcomes to directions and I was
like we didn't have smartphoneslike Emily, and we barely had
MapQuest.
And they look at me when I sayMapQuest, what's MapQuest?
And we literally went onlineand printed out step-by-step
instructions which.
How more people did get intocar accidents flipping through
(19:22):
pages of MapQuest directionsstill boggles my mind.
But again, that you know beingso reliant on digital is
actually, I think, a detriment.
You know that you become soused to.
I can just put the address intomy Apple Maps or Google Maps
and it'll give me, literallyit'll hold my hand until I
arrive at the front door ofwherever I'm going to.
But what if you forgot yourphone?
(19:43):
Or you know what if yourservice goes out?
What do you do?
And so do you have the abilityto then quickly say, okay, I can
figure this out.
And whether that be fordirections or whether that be
for whatever it might be, youshould have that ability to
critically think how am I goingto get myself out of that
situation?
Speaker 2 (20:03):
Yeah, Well, I wanted to ask you about something when
it comes to your business, andyou argue that there's a growing
demand for talent still indigital marketing, data
analytics, e-commerce, when somuch of what we hear is, oh no,
those are the jobs that can betaken over with artificial
intelligence and machinelearning.
So I'd love to just bring it on, because this is good news for
(20:26):
our students 100%.
Speaker 3 (20:28):
Well, and I do think, particularly in the digital
marketing, in the agencyindustry, it is still, and will
still be for the veryforeseeable future and beyond
that, a very people-forwardindustry, like the IP in most
agencies is its people.
It's how they represent thebrand, their knowledge and
experience working alongside abusiness that actually provides
(20:51):
them.
I always tell my team I'm likeyou're just an extension of that
marketing team.
Just because your LinkedIn saysyou work for Guna and your
client is Ripcord doesn't meananything other than you're just
an extension of that marketingteam and part of that team.
But I do think it's importantto recognize the fact that, yes,
ai is going to start and has insome instances helped to
(21:15):
facilitate the production ofsome of these things, especially
data and analytics and insights.
But the ability to communicatethe story of what that data
means and the why and then, well, what's next?
It's not there yet and I don'tnecessarily foresee that
happening anytime soon that itreplaces that person who is
(21:36):
creative, can be critical intheir thinking, has that ability
and that presence to saydirectly to the C-suite or the
CMO or their director ofmarketing like you know, this is
what the data is showing us.
We ran it through our different, you know, ai sets or data
scraping and filtering.
Here's the outputs, here's whatit means and here's what we're
going to do about it.
(21:56):
That human element is not goingto be replaced anytime soon, and
we're still at a stage rightnow, at the early part of AI,
where there's still thatfact-checking Like you have to
double-check the data and youcan't just assume it is for what
it is.
I mean, that's been an issue.
I mean data fidelity has beenan issue as long as the
(22:20):
internet's been around.
And what's your source of truthand how accurate is that?
And what's your source of truthand how accurate is that?
And I think that's anotherfactor as well, too is that
there's so much of theconfiguration of analytics in
order to effectively andproperly track data.
There are typically two pointsin regards to, well, what is
your tech stack?
Possibly three to five to 10,plus different sources of data
(22:44):
that may also be vying for thesame single source of truth and
value.
And so, taking all those thingsinto consideration, that again,
I have not seen any technologythat's going to then replace
that human being who can say,okay, like, I see the outputs
and it's great that it helpedproduce a more consolidated
picture of what the outputs, andit's great that it helped
(23:09):
produce a more consolidatedpicture of what happened.
But, like, let me kind of pullthese.
You know, let me pull thesethreads and see again how valid
are these different things.
And you know, it's givingcredit to tv, where we're also
sharing credit with meta andwell, but at the end of the day,
shopify is saying somethingdifferent, like understanding
that combination of the techstack, the data and analytics
sources, the fidelity of thedata, and then having those
(23:30):
outputs of a report still needsto have someone that can
function critically in reviewingthat information.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
Yeah, fantastic.
I love your answer and I lovethe fact that there's still a
need.
But I would also say, if youhave that AI advantage, you're
going to be placed in a betterposition to win and get that
role.
(24:02):
So I also want to talk aboutremote work, because you went
through an M&A right before thepandemic and right before we all
realized how nice it is to haveto work from home.
So talk about that.
How has it impacted theindustry, you know?
Are you a remote first company?
Are you hybrid?
What's your philosophy and whydo you think that other
organizations should also looktowards your strategy?
Speaker 3 (24:19):
Absolutely yeah.
So we are remote first, but wedo offer hybrid solutions.
So we do have a joint officethat is available for the team
to take advantage of and it's ina co-working space, which I
think is great, becauseco-working also has all the
extra amenities that go alongwith most co-working spaces.
And it was interesting because,having gone through the onset
(24:42):
of the pandemic, everybody gohome and experiencing what that
was like for so many people whowe were entirely in an office
and I've only been in office forthe majority of my professional
career up until the pandemic.
And if anybody had asked me,even in 2019, would I ever want
(25:03):
to move towards a hybrid or aremote scenario, I would say I'm
not opposed to it because Irespect people having work-life
balance and I understand mycommute is 30 minutes.
If someone's commute is 90minutes and they don't want to
come in a few days a weekbecause they don't want to spend
three hours in the car, Itotally respect that.
You know, at the end of the day, having that type of open, you
(25:26):
know, kind of culture also gavethe respect of like get your
work done in the time that youknow you need to do it, and like
, if that's from eight to four,great.
If that's from 10 to six,that's fine too, like at the end
of the day, we just got to makesure we, you know, are
accountable to ourselves,accountable to one another and
getting those those things done.
But anyway, and so the hardestpart, I think, was so many
(25:51):
people were accustomed to goingto work every day that all of a
sudden.
This, this new thing, happenedin a remote and there's
obviously a lot of fear andanxiety just on a global scale
beyond.
You know, whether I'm workingat home or not, that it was just
a very difficult time in ourculture for a lot of people.
I mean, the agency world itselftypically tends to skew a bit
(26:13):
younger typically younger andsingle which was, I think, hard
for a lot of my team that didn'tnecessarily have a family unit
or roommates or someone elsethat they were home by
themselves.
They missed that socialization.
And so as we came back intothings and obviously a lot of
the social distancing was stillin place but socializing was
(26:35):
becoming more common and you goback to work and things of that
nature we kind of opened it upand didn't really make a hard
and fast rule Like, hey, we'regoing to open the office again.
No one is obligated to go in,so you don't have to if you
don't want to, but it's open andit was.
You know, we have key cardaccess and things of that nature
.
So it wasn't, you know, wedidn't have to worry about other
personnel being in there andstuff like that.
(26:56):
So I would say we had people goin, a handful of people go in
like every couple of weeks or so, and that went on for a while
and then we moved to, and so oneof the kind of cool things that
I think was a great opportunity, and why a hybrid and a remote
model is great in this industry,is that our recruiting
(27:17):
capabilities expandeddrastically and all of a sudden
we had team members outside ofSouthern California that were in
Idaho, were in Texas, that werein Oregon and whatnot too, and
so we had the opportunity towork with these people that we
wouldn't have been even on ourradar prior to this, that now
were people that we couldpotentially work with.
And how rad is that, where weget to meet new people in
(27:39):
different walks of life anddifferent experiences that are
now being able to work andcollaborate.
So that was, I think, probablythe coolest thing.
And then, kind of fast forward,we were saying, like we kept
doing the kind of polls of likewho wants to go back in?
And everyone was like, yeah,we'll go back in.
Okay, who wants to go in once aweek, every other week, once a
(28:00):
month?
Okay, and it was funny becauseyou know we said, okay, fine,
that's cool, we'll set up thisco-working space.
It's open, it's available.
You're welcome to come in.
If we have clients or we haveto host someone, we have it
available to us.
But don't feel any obligationof going back over the last I
(28:27):
would say year and a half, aswe've gone and started building
back more of our intern programsand speaking at more of the
local universities and things ofthat nature.
Every young person, everystudent, without fail.
The question that they will askis are you in-person or are you
hybrid or are you completelyremote and it's not a loaded
question or it's not arhetorical question.
They just to know.
But I would say the vastmajority of the young people, in
(28:49):
particular the students thatare starting their careers, are
wanting to be in, at a minimum,a hybrid environment.
And at the time, because Iwould have these kind of open
conversations about it, I waslike, I mean, I'm like, yeah,
it's cool, but you don't have tocommute and, like you're, you
have a lot more flexibility inyour day, and if you want to
(29:10):
throw a little laundry, and youcan, and you can still get back
to work.
But without fail.
Everybody was like, well, whatabout?
Like the socialization aspect?
What about like having anopportunity to sit down.
Yeah, a hundred percent.
And I sadly realized that afterthe fact and after multiple
conversations, that all of thesepeople may have never been in
an in-office environment at all,and so where I took it for
(29:35):
granted and kind of thought, ohgosh, I'm glad I don't have to
work, can you, you know, an hour, hour and a half of my day,
that I get back in my life andflexibility is nice and I can
kind of go in the office whenit's convenient for me, and
stuff like that.
I don't know that I wouldgenuinely want that if I was,
you know, in my you know lateteens, early twenties, thinking
(29:56):
about my career path, because somuch of what my experience was
getting into this industry wasbeing in that environment, was
being in an office and, you know, being able to go over to
someone's desk and likebrainstorm and like, hey, I've
got this like creative idea.
What do you think if we're notto?
And so I do see a lot of value,as you know, for our
organization and for otheragencies to have, at a minimum,
(30:20):
you know, that option of havinga hybrid or some, you know,
in-person days because,especially in kind of the
learning and the experientialand the socialization aspects,
all the kind of cool things thathelp create that.
You know that people value thatyou know I mentioned earlier
about.
You know what makes you knowagencies so valuable to people
like it's kind of a big deal.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
Yeah, yeah, it's something we talk about at the
university level.
Often.
Some people hate someprofessors hate teaching online.
They want a classroomexperience.
I actually have found thatvirtual teaching.
I have great relationships withmy students.
Many of them come back and askme for advice, or they ask me
(31:00):
for advice, guidance, referrals,recommendations, so many
different things and so I feellike there is a way to do it.
But you have to be in thatmindset.
But then I also do value.
I had a friend in town fromHouston last night and she's a
friend and I work with her on anumber of different things for
one of her businesses PR andstrategy and it was so great to
(31:22):
be in the same room because wehaven't been in the same room
for over six years.
Speaker 3 (31:26):
Right.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
All the work we've done together has been remote,
but to be able to sit thereacross from the table and
brainstorm over dinner, therewas nothing like it.
Speaker 3 (31:35):
Right.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
Yep.
So there's a happy mediumsomewhere in there.
Speaker 3 (31:39):
Absolutely Good to hear you work.
And yeah, I think again, choiceright.
When you have choice, I meanthat's a powerful thing, you
know, and I think that's what Iwould say at the very minimum.
(32:00):
You know, like our organizationwants to be able to, our team
to have that choice and notnecessarily be stuck one way or
the other.
And I think that's kind of thebiggest takeaway, at least in
where we are, just in allindustries is I think people
tend to lean more well, I lovethe idea and I love being in
person, I love sitting acrossfrom you and doing those
sessions and planning things out, but I'd like to be able to
have the choice that if I'm justnot feeling like today's my day
, where I want to, I just wantto put my headphones in and my
(32:21):
head down and do work like to beable to do that.
And I think that's, you know, Ithink that's a great part of
what helps breed a healthyculture is making sure that
people have choice.
Speaker 2 (32:31):
Yeah, yeah, 100%.
So, jason, what is that lastpiece of advice that you would
leave our students with today?
Speaker 3 (32:38):
About you know what it means to be globally minded
and to you know, aspire to leadpeople and whatnot and I've been
.
I've had a very fortunate thatboth of our daughters at the
elementary school level wentinto the international
baccalaureate program and one ofthe guiding principles is this
(32:58):
kind of global thinking, beingthinking about you are a global
citizen, not just an American orCanadian or whatever whatever.
Like you're a global citizen,not just an American or Canadian
or whatever, whatever.
Like you're a global citizen.
And I think that's kind ofwhere we've lost a lot of sight,
and particularly wheretechnology and the internet and
communication, telecom, like weare a global society and the
(33:19):
things that we do and how werepresent ourselves and be
vulnerable and be inquisitiveand learn from other people.
Like the very fortunateexperience of being introduced
to a gentleman who was a formerNavy SEAL he's actually now
pathing and looking to start hisown consultancy and he was
(33:40):
talking about his experience ofgoing through the Stanford
Executive Leadership Program, ofwhich Harvard has one more and
there's several of them and hereinforced the value of being
present in part of a globalcommunity and meeting people
from all walks of life and allover the world.
And so my advice is to beinquisitive, think globally,
(34:01):
want to learn from others, andbecause there's so much, I think
that we we don't get a chanceto experience by only focusing
on our small bubble that if weopen up our that aperture a bit
further and get to see more inthis world, that will live way
more enriched and happier lives.
And so yeah, and if you canfind the means to do it, travel
(34:23):
like if you can find them,because I think that's a great
way to get those experiences Noteverybody can do it and get it,
but if that's just traveling,you know, from California,
arizona Arizona is a littledifferent than California Get to
learn, get there by carFantastic, and that's such a
great thing to leave us with,because the students in this
(34:44):
program are from all over theworld, so it plays really well
and I think that's somethingthat we really try to bring to
the classroom.
Speaker 2 (34:53):
So I teed it up perfectly.
Speaker 3 (34:55):
Hugely important and that's again, I think, where
there's such a great opportunityis to reinforce that and then
hopefully enable young people tocontinue to advocate that and
share that with others.
Because, again, regardless ofwhere you get your news or
information or media and allthat thing but there's a lot of
really wild things going on andI think that again, too many
(35:16):
people have narrowed theiraperture way too tight and
forget that there's all of thesebeautiful things and amazing
things that are around them, andso to have that opportunity,
and especially in an environmentlike yours, it's a blessing and
I would tell them to tellanybody that they can Keep doing
that.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
Fantastic.
Of course we're going to linkto your LinkedIn and to the Guna
website.
Last question Do you haveinternships or opportunities
available?
If any of my students want toreach out to you?
Speaker 3 (35:47):
I don't currently, but I would please encourage
them to reach out if they haveinterest.
As I mentioned before, manysolutions on a single thread I
have a number of great friendsand colleagues in agency world
in the SaaS industry that, ifthey have an interest in getting
into media and or technologycompanies, I am more than happy
(36:08):
to make introductions and invitepeople to take advantage of my
network in any way they can.
It's something I take great joyin doing, so please feel free
to connect, Let me know whatyou're interested in and I will
do my best to help.
Speaker 2 (36:21):
Fantastic.
Thank you so much.
This has been a delightfulconversation, as always.
Speaker 3 (36:26):
Always, and I can't appreciate it.
Thank you so much for havingand taking the time with me
today.
It's been so much fun.
I always have fun with you,though, so that's not surprising
at all.
Speaker 2 (36:35):
And thank you to everybody who's watching this
episode or listening to it onyour favorite platform.
This is Mediascape Insightsfrom Digital Changemakers.
I'm your co-host, AnnikaJackson, and we'll be back again
with another amazing guest toshare their story, their journey
and some insights for you tomake your career path a little
smoother.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
To learn more about the Master of Science in Digital
Media Management program, visitus on the web at dmmuscedu.
Welcome to Mediascape Insights from Digital
Changemakers, a speaker seriesand podcast brought to you by
USC Annenberg's Digital MediaManagement Program.
Join us as we unlock thesecrets to success in an
increasingly digital world.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
I'm thrilled to have Jason Brigham on Mediascape
Insights from DigitalChangemakers.
Jason, we were just talking andI said I have to push record
right now because we're talkingabout how the world has changed
so much and I'd love for you toshare a little bit about your
journey from computer scienceinto working at the Marriott and
(00:42):
then you know the way that yourcareer came together to now
having this amazing agency andthe work that you do.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Thank you.
Yeah, no, it wasn't really thetraditional linear path I
suppose A lot of people take.
You know, going to college andchoosing a major and that
leading into a career path.
You know, at the time, as I wasgoing to college was, I think,
like many people, young people,somewhat uncertain.
I wanted to go into somethingwhere I could find a career path
(01:10):
immediately out of college andthat was kind of my driving
force behind what I chose to doand why I selected to be a
computer science major.
But once I graduated and Istarted to have to live, I guess
, real life and adult life andwhatnot, getting into the job
market, I was fortunate enoughto have opportunities.
But as soon as I started in thekind of true career world and
(01:34):
whatnot too, I found that itreally wasn't my car, it wasn't
the fit for me.
Largely had to do with, youknow, I was the youngest of my
professional peers in my officeand the type of work I was doing
just wasn't very challengingand it didn't really give any
opportunity for creativity.
And I was 21 years old, I hadrecently moved from Vermont,
(01:55):
small state of Vermont, to thebig state of California and this
new city in San Diego and newenvironment, the opportunity to
meet new people.
And so I had one of those kindof life moments where you say I
don't know that I want to dothis anymore.
And like many people, manycollege students, the careers
you choose typically are gigopportunities.
(02:15):
So I worked in bars, I workedin restaurants, I managed both,
and so I was very familiar withthat environment.
I was also familiar with thefact that many of the people in
that environment are my age,they're my demographic, and so
for me it was that kind ofcareer path change where I was
like I want to go somewherewhere I can make friends, meet
people in my new city, be in anenvironment that's fun and
(02:37):
creative and collaborative, andget something in the start of my
career that I was going to beenjoying and having fun with,
and so that was the kind ofpivot move.
But then, as time went on and mylife changed, my wife and I
decided to get married.
We also decided to start afamily, and for as much fun as
(02:58):
hospitality can be, the hoursare incredibly demanding Nights,
all of this A lot of thosetimes where people normally have
time off to spend with thefamily people in hospitality
fortunately for us that you knowaren't working in hospitality
and can take advantage of that.
You know they are working and Ihave an enormous amount of
appreciation for everybodythat's in the hospitality
(03:19):
industry.
I just want to say that to beclear.
But that was another moment inmy life where we had to.
We decided that would be achange and I needed to
reconsider my career, where Iwas going, and so I happened to
find my way via my neighbor,into the digital marketing world
and it was funny at the timeshe made the conversation.
(03:39):
She's like well, you studiedcomputers in college, digital
marketing, you know all that andI was like not exactly the same
thing, but I appreciate it.
And if you believe that, Icould probably sell someone in
the organization to make thembelieve that and I was not that
misleading in my representationmyself, but it was something
where I was like I'm you knowI'm a tech and client and I'm
(04:00):
enthusiastic.
I you know, most of my life tolive in an animal analog world,
but I've firmly embraced thedigital world.
I'm enthusiastic.
Most of my life I've lived inan analog world but I've firmly
embraced the digital world.
I'm excited for thoseopportunities and that began my
journey within the digitalmarketing and advertising world
and, through that initial step,went on and started another
agency with partners and theneventually took over yet another
agency that I actually was ableto go through a successful M&A
(04:24):
in 2019, right before thepandemic, which was good and bad
timing and the whole world ofbusiness transactions especially
when you're working in anindustry that's relying upon
people spending money onadvertising and marketing to
have an event like that thataffected the entire world, was a
big deal.
But it was another moment andkind of a pivotal change in my
(04:44):
life, of importance, ofperseverance and taking care of
people and making sure that youhave enough belief in the people
that are around you within ourorganization and an agency that
you can overcome this challenge,and we're very fortunate to
have overcome that challenge andcame out relatively unscathed
and was able to continuebuilding in the subsequent years
(05:05):
all the way through to where weare today, and so it's been a
really exciting journey.
I've been lucky that I've workedwith amazing people along the
way.
The culture and the industry isjust so creative and
forward-thinking and progressive, and it's a really great
environment for myself as ayoung person to get involved
(05:26):
with and work with like-mindedpeople, but also, as I've
matured in the industry, to alsocontinue to be learning and
getting to new platforms and newsocial media channels, and now
we have all these changesrelative to privacy policy and
analytics.
That's shaking things up, andit's just such a dynamic and
ever-evolving and changingindustry that it's for someone
(05:48):
who is passionate about learningand continuing to experience
new things, it's a great placeto be.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
Yeah, Well, tell us about the name behind your
organization, how you choose thename and what are the areas of
expertise that your team playsin when it comes to the digital
ecosystem.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
Absolutely so it actually goes back to.
It'd be a much longer story ifI told the false story, but I'll
just tell you the origin of thename.
And so a friend of mine and wewere looking to start a business
and he's actually Indonesian bybirth, and so the origin of the
name was an Indonesian term.
We actually dated it back toactually a Sanskrit that's
(06:29):
loosely, you know says manysolutions under a single thread,
and so the idea behind it wasthat we wanted to be an
organization that helps peoplesolve unique problems, and that
there wasn't necessarily a onesize fits all or, you know, a
blueprint that everybody had tofollow.
But they need help with theirsales operations or they need
help with their marketing ortheir digital strategy or their
(06:51):
executive leadership or whatnot,too.
We would be able to providesupport to help them resolve
those solutions, whether it befrom our team or through the
network of partners that we hadbuilt over the years of very
capable, amazing people that canslot into that, that we had
built over the years of verycapable, amazing people that can
slot into that, and so ourwhole mantra has always been you
know, we're here to help.
You know, and if you havechallenges and sometimes your
(07:13):
challenges are not as obvious.
You know we can help uncoverthose things, but the intention
is always to help find solutionsin a creative way whenever
possible.
We've really started, you know,started looking at the types of
brands and industries we workwith and I've really started
gearing ourselves toward reallymission-driven organizations and
that's not always necessarilyin the traditional sense of
(07:36):
nonprofits and things of thatnature, however they are.
But so much of the technologyworld has moved towards being
very mission-driven, whetherthat be helping under-s, under
service communities or findingbetter solutions that enable
people to do things moreeffectively within finance,
within housing and real estate.
You know that's been a bigthing is to hopefully be a
(07:57):
little bit more altruistic inour motivations and not always
be focused on revenue butfocused on making a difference
and hopefully, you know,affecting lives around the world
for the better.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
Yeah, amazing, and we've had many conversations not
unrecorded, yeah, so I'm reallyexcited to have this
conversation with you and haveus recording it to talk about
these areas.
I want to talk about somethingwe were briefly touching on
before we jumped on, which issomething that is really
important to both of on, whichis something that is really
important to both of us, whichis AI pedagogy teaching people
(08:29):
how to use AI, whether from theuniversity perspective or the
business perspective, and yourown team.
So we talk about that framingfor your team.
And then how does that work andcorrelate with what we need to
make sure our students who aretaking programs masters in
digital media, digital socialright what skill sets do they
(08:51):
need to have in this new notreally new, just new words and
everybody knows about it right,aiml?
Speaker 3 (08:58):
world, but I think that's a really good point,
though, too, is, while everybodyknows about it, I don't know
that we at least from myexperience and working with a
kind of a broad swath ofindividuals with the inside and
outside of digital and whatnottoo, everybody's aware of it.
I don't know that everybodytruly understands what it is,
(09:23):
and there's AI and LLM andthere's acronyms thrown around
all the time and whatnot too,and it can create some confusion
.
But where I really help to, Iguess, encourage people is the
concept of adoption.
It's just try it as an exampleand this is unrelated to my
professional life, but I had asmall group of dads that we have
a workout program that we doevery Saturday morning and, on a
(09:47):
whim, I use ChatGPT to draft upsome logos and some t-shirts
that we're going to be made andwhatnot too, and I'd share them
with the on our groups groupchat and several people were
like, oh my God, you did theseall yourself, and I was like I
can't take any credit for it.
I'm like this was all done byAI and that sparked the
conversation about.
(10:07):
Well, oh, I didn't know itcould do that, and I think there
are lies to that point.
Like.
A lot of people are aware of it, but they don't understand the
function and how it can enableand that's the other part of it,
too that I'm trying to help myteam and young people in my
community to recognize is thatit's a tool that helps to enable
(10:29):
things.
It's never going to take overyour creativity.
It's never going to take overthe insight and experience that
you have.
Just like any tool, it's abouthow you use it and how you put
in the inputs and how you tailorthose things and so.
But, that being said, it is ameans of which you can
accelerate your work outputs.
(10:50):
It's a means of which you canwork through more complex things
in a shorter amount of time,and particularly for
applications within the industry.
Every young person I've talkedto in college and otherwise I'm
giving them that adviceDefinitely take the time to
learn it.
Many, if not all the programsdo have free options, and so
there's not typically a cost foryou to go and get the basic
(11:14):
program with ChatGPT or Claudeor whatever it might be.
There are definitely the Iguess not buyer beware, but the
kind of cautionary tales thatyou have to also reinforce of
like it's still learning.
You know, it's still very young, it's in its infancy, and it's
not always going to give youaccurate output.
So you do need a human person.
(11:35):
You do need someone to factcheck and spot check these
things Never take credit for itas it being your own, because
it's not and making sure thatagain, you can quickly learn and
adapt things.
I equate it to if you'retraveling to a new city in the
country and say you're going toRome, italy, for the first time,
you probably would go to Googleand maybe do some searches best
(11:59):
places to eat in Rome whywouldn't you do that with
ChatGPT?
Or could ChatG GPT also takeinto factors into consideration
as to where you're staying, thetrip map or the route that
you're taking to other places,and that tool could actually
potentially give you anitinerary that could help you
find some of those best spots togo to.
And so, again, it's justanother tool in that arsenal of
(12:23):
different things that you wantto become familiar with in order
to help breed efficiency.
And then the other piece ofadvice I always give, too, is
like talk about it with others.
I've learned more aboutadopting and kind of adapting to
this AI world by talking withother people and then providing
me use cases.
Well, I do it this way, or Iuse this prompt, or I always end
(12:45):
my prompt in do you have anyquestions before I get started?
And learning those things hasenabled me to become more
efficient in utilizing thosetools.
It's interesting in the academicside of things.
My oldest daughter is actually afreshman, or just I shouldn't
say she's no longer a freshman.
She just completed her freshmanyear in college and it's been a
big topic and was through theirorientation all the way in each
(13:09):
of the core syllabi about whenand how is appropriate to use AI
copywriting and for the mostpart it seems like people have
all learned their lesson ormaybe done that before and
whatnot too.
But I also think it created alittle bit of a fear and a
stigma in people saying, well, Idon't want to touch that, I
(13:31):
don't want to get caught usingit, and I think that was a bit
of a detractor because it is atool of enablement.
It is helping you to the verysimplest things get over that
hour of writer's block that youhave, like, bring in a prompt
and get some, you know, get someinsight and have that guide you
to getting going and cuttingover that hump on that paper
that you have to turn in, orusing it to find citations from
(13:55):
different articles that you canquickly and easily reference.
There's practical applicationsof utilizing those tools within
academia.
That doesn't, you know, doesn'tsway them into the wrong or bad
uses, I guess, if you will nottaking advantage of it.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
Yeah, well, I mean, one use case I have is in the
class I just finished teaching,which is DMM 510.
And we talk about advertising,analytics, data analysis,
measurement, and so the secondweek of class is MarTech how do
you create a stack?
So, instead of having them justgo through and hypothesize, I
(14:29):
said put this prompt into anyllm of your choice, including
martech bot, which is a funlittle thing to work with, and
ask for some different tools andhow they would play.
You know, based on your goalsfor your organization, which
ones would make the most senseand why, and then create a
little, you know, create alittle chart, and let me know if
(14:51):
you think these were, analyzeit right.
Was this correct?
Is this what you would use, orare there other tools, and what
other tools are you currentlyusing in your business?
That maybe there's overlapbetween what the recommendations
were.
You don't need all of themright To create a good tech
stack, and so the criticalthinking aspect, to me, is so
important 100% and you ask them,you prompt that.
Speaker 3 (15:15):
Is there an iteration , iterate, iterate, iterate,
take the next step, take thenext step Don't be done and just
say easy button, check done,iterate on that and force that
challenge and whatnot too, andyou'll find that I hope they'll
find that they'll get even moreinsight in going through the
experience and asking it tochallenge itself and themselves
to get to a better solution.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
Well, and, as you mentioned, the prompt
engineering, so they learn howto create better prompts to
actually get the answer theywant for the industry they want,
instead of just somethinggeneric.
Speaker 3 (15:45):
Exactly.
Yep, well, and that'sfascinating.
Mari, a good friend of mine, isin the telecommunications
industry and we were talkingabout that and that he did bring
up just that point of theimportance of iterating.
And don't assume that thesingle prompt, because AI, in
its nature, its first thing isto get you the answer as quickly
as possible.
So it combs all of the data,searches for the matching terms
(16:09):
that meet your query and quicklyreturns them back to you, which
is great in the idea ofefficiency, right, but it isn't
necessarily the answer youreally were looking for.
And so it is about.
And where the critical thinkingcomes into play is okay, wait,
that's not exactly what I wasasking.
Like, is that because the AIdidn't understand me?
(16:30):
Is it because maybe Imisunderstood it?
But I think that's a pointwhere and I think this is
important, you know, especiallyfor people that are learning to
that like then don't just stop,don't just assume like, oh well,
it didn't work.
You know there's got to be thatiteration and that's where I
think a lot of that.
You know the concern where youknow people say that ai is the
(16:50):
death of critical or creativethinking.
I'm like, I don't think that'sat all the case, I bet.
I think it.
It should prompt you to thinkwhat's next and maybe I should
ask in a different way, maybeit'll give me a different result
.
Okay, now that I know, I knowthat, like, let me ask those
things again.
And so it's back to thosethings.
I think that knowledge sharingaspect of it and that can, like
(17:10):
you know, here's what works forme, like what works for you has
made such a difference, I think,and you know, at least in my
interactions with my team, mypeers, and just becoming more,
and I get excited about it.
So when I get a new tip, I'mlike, oh gosh, I got to go home
and try that or see what thatdoes for me, type thing.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
Yeah, and to your point as well, knowing which
LLMs are better for which areasthat you're exploring right.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
Is it for complexity, because it has more up-to-date
information and maybe has alittle bit better research?
Is it cloud, which I say andmany people say is more
human-sounding?
Openai has a really great thing.
Every single one has differentthings about it, and also I had
the experience of when GoogleCloud Services went down and I
(17:59):
could not access my cloud and Iwas about to go to a big meeting
.
I had just done a whole bunchof prep work and I hadn't copied
and pasted over yet.
So then I was like, oh my gosh,do I have to recreate this?
Let me remember exactly how Iprompted go into my, because I
do have backup projects inOpenAI.
So I was like, all right, youknow, but it makes you really
think about the value ofinformation and we can't lose
(18:21):
our critical thinking.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
We have to still be able to know the information.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
You can't lose our critical thinking, exactly.
Speaker 3 (18:24):
We have to still be able to know the information.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
You can't just rely on the outputs.
Speaker 3 (18:29):
A hundred percent.
Yeah, I had a very similarexperience during that output
and I was like everything's gone.
And again you have that momentof like.
I was so dependent or soreliant upon this piece of
technology, having the storagebe there and whatnot too that in
the absence of it, do I go intopanic or do I say, ok, take the
(18:51):
stuff back.
You know, again I'm going tomake myself sound old.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
I graduated four years before you, by the way.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
Then I won't say it again, but I always make the
joke with my daughters when itcomes to directions and I was
like we didn't have smartphoneslike Emily, and we barely had
MapQuest.
And they look at me when I sayMapQuest, what's MapQuest?
And we literally went onlineand printed out step-by-step
instructions which.
How more people did get intocar accidents flipping through
(19:22):
pages of MapQuest directionsstill boggles my mind.
But again, that you know beingso reliant on digital is
actually, I think, a detriment.
You know that you become soused to.
I can just put the address intomy Apple Maps or Google Maps
and it'll give me, literallyit'll hold my hand until I
arrive at the front door ofwherever I'm going to.
But what if you forgot yourphone?
(19:43):
Or you know what if yourservice goes out?
What do you do?
And so do you have the abilityto then quickly say, okay, I can
figure this out.
And whether that be fordirections or whether that be
for whatever it might be, youshould have that ability to
critically think how am I goingto get myself out of that
situation?
Speaker 2 (20:03):
Yeah, Well, I wanted to ask you about something when
it comes to your business, andyou argue that there's a growing
demand for talent still indigital marketing, data
analytics, e-commerce, when somuch of what we hear is, oh no,
those are the jobs that can betaken over with artificial
intelligence and machinelearning.
So I'd love to just bring it on, because this is good news for
(20:26):
our students 100%.
Speaker 3 (20:28):
Well, and I do think, particularly in the digital
marketing, in the agencyindustry, it is still, and will
still be for the veryforeseeable future and beyond
that, a very people-forwardindustry, like the IP in most
agencies is its people.
It's how they represent thebrand, their knowledge and
experience working alongside abusiness that actually provides
(20:51):
them.
I always tell my team I'm likeyou're just an extension of that
marketing team.
Just because your LinkedIn saysyou work for Guna and your
client is Ripcord doesn't meananything other than you're just
an extension of that marketingteam and part of that team.
But I do think it's importantto recognize the fact that, yes,
ai is going to start and has insome instances helped to
(21:15):
facilitate the production ofsome of these things, especially
data and analytics and insights.
But the ability to communicatethe story of what that data
means and the why and then, well, what's next?
It's not there yet and I don'tnecessarily foresee that
happening anytime soon that itreplaces that person who is
(21:36):
creative, can be critical intheir thinking, has that ability
and that presence to saydirectly to the C-suite or the
CMO or their director ofmarketing like you know, this is
what the data is showing us.
We ran it through our different, you know, ai sets or data
scraping and filtering.
Here's the outputs, here's whatit means and here's what we're
going to do about it.
(21:56):
That human element is not goingto be replaced anytime soon, and
we're still at a stage rightnow, at the early part of AI,
where there's still thatfact-checking Like you have to
double-check the data and youcan't just assume it is for what
it is.
I mean, that's been an issue.
I mean data fidelity has beenan issue as long as the
(22:20):
internet's been around.
And what's your source of truthand how accurate is that?
And what's your source of truthand how accurate is that?
And I think that's anotherfactor as well, too is that
there's so much of theconfiguration of analytics in
order to effectively andproperly track data.
There are typically two pointsin regards to, well, what is
your tech stack?
Possibly three to five to 10,plus different sources of data
(22:44):
that may also be vying for thesame single source of truth and
value.
And so, taking all those thingsinto consideration, that again,
I have not seen any technologythat's going to then replace
that human being who can say,okay, like, I see the outputs
and it's great that it helpedproduce a more consolidated
picture of what the outputs, andit's great that it helped
(23:09):
produce a more consolidatedpicture of what happened.
But, like, let me kind of pullthese.
You know, let me pull thesethreads and see again how valid
are these different things.
And you know, it's givingcredit to tv, where we're also
sharing credit with meta andwell, but at the end of the day,
shopify is saying somethingdifferent, like understanding
that combination of the techstack, the data and analytics
sources, the fidelity of thedata, and then having those
(23:30):
outputs of a report still needsto have someone that can
function critically in reviewingthat information.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
Yeah, fantastic.
I love your answer and I lovethe fact that there's still a
need.
But I would also say, if youhave that AI advantage, you're
going to be placed in a betterposition to win and get that
role.
(24:02):
So I also want to talk aboutremote work, because you went
through an M&A right before thepandemic and right before we all
realized how nice it is to haveto work from home.
So talk about that.
How has it impacted theindustry, you know?
Are you a remote first company?
Are you hybrid?
What's your philosophy and whydo you think that other
organizations should also looktowards your strategy?
Speaker 3 (24:19):
Absolutely yeah.
So we are remote first, but wedo offer hybrid solutions.
So we do have a joint officethat is available for the team
to take advantage of and it's ina co-working space, which I
think is great, becauseco-working also has all the
extra amenities that go alongwith most co-working spaces.
And it was interesting because,having gone through the onset
(24:42):
of the pandemic, everybody gohome and experiencing what that
was like for so many people whowe were entirely in an office
and I've only been in office forthe majority of my professional
career up until the pandemic.
And if anybody had asked me,even in 2019, would I ever want
(25:03):
to move towards a hybrid or aremote scenario, I would say I'm
not opposed to it because Irespect people having work-life
balance and I understand mycommute is 30 minutes.
If someone's commute is 90minutes and they don't want to
come in a few days a weekbecause they don't want to spend
three hours in the car, Itotally respect that.
You know, at the end of the day, having that type of open, you
(25:26):
know, kind of culture also gavethe respect of like get your
work done in the time that youknow you need to do it, and like
, if that's from eight to four,great.
If that's from 10 to six,that's fine too, like at the end
of the day, we just got to makesure we, you know, are
accountable to ourselves,accountable to one another and
getting those those things done.
But anyway, and so the hardestpart, I think, was so many
(25:51):
people were accustomed to goingto work every day that all of a
sudden.
This, this new thing, happenedin a remote and there's
obviously a lot of fear andanxiety just on a global scale
beyond.
You know, whether I'm workingat home or not, that it was just
a very difficult time in ourculture for a lot of people.
I mean, the agency world itselftypically tends to skew a bit
(26:13):
younger typically younger andsingle which was, I think, hard
for a lot of my team that didn'tnecessarily have a family unit
or roommates or someone elsethat they were home by
themselves.
They missed that socialization.
And so as we came back intothings and obviously a lot of
the social distancing was stillin place but socializing was
(26:35):
becoming more common and you goback to work and things of that
nature we kind of opened it upand didn't really make a hard
and fast rule Like, hey, we'regoing to open the office again.
No one is obligated to go in,so you don't have to if you
don't want to, but it's open andit was.
You know, we have key cardaccess and things of that nature
.
So it wasn't, you know, wedidn't have to worry about other
personnel being in there andstuff like that.
(26:56):
So I would say we had people goin, a handful of people go in
like every couple of weeks or so, and that went on for a while
and then we moved to, and so oneof the kind of cool things that
I think was a great opportunity, and why a hybrid and a remote
model is great in this industry,is that our recruiting
(27:17):
capabilities expandeddrastically and all of a sudden
we had team members outside ofSouthern California that were in
Idaho, were in Texas, that werein Oregon and whatnot too, and
so we had the opportunity towork with these people that we
wouldn't have been even on ourradar prior to this, that now
were people that we couldpotentially work with.
And how rad is that, where weget to meet new people in
(27:39):
different walks of life anddifferent experiences that are
now being able to work andcollaborate.
So that was, I think, probablythe coolest thing.
And then, kind of fast forward,we were saying, like we kept
doing the kind of polls of likewho wants to go back in?
And everyone was like, yeah,we'll go back in.
Okay, who wants to go in once aweek, every other week, once a
(28:00):
month?
Okay, and it was funny becauseyou know we said, okay, fine,
that's cool, we'll set up thisco-working space.
It's open, it's available.
You're welcome to come in.
If we have clients or we haveto host someone, we have it
available to us.
But don't feel any obligationof going back over the last I
(28:27):
would say year and a half, aswe've gone and started building
back more of our intern programsand speaking at more of the
local universities and things ofthat nature.
Every young person, everystudent, without fail.
The question that they will askis are you in-person or are you
hybrid or are you completelyremote and it's not a loaded
question or it's not arhetorical question.
They just to know.
But I would say the vastmajority of the young people, in
(28:49):
particular the students thatare starting their careers, are
wanting to be in, at a minimum,a hybrid environment.
And at the time, because Iwould have these kind of open
conversations about it, I waslike, I mean, I'm like, yeah,
it's cool, but you don't have tocommute and, like you're, you
have a lot more flexibility inyour day, and if you want to
(29:10):
throw a little laundry, and youcan, and you can still get back
to work.
But without fail.
Everybody was like, well, whatabout?
Like the socialization aspect?
What about like having anopportunity to sit down.
Yeah, a hundred percent.
And I sadly realized that afterthe fact and after multiple
conversations, that all of thesepeople may have never been in
an in-office environment at all,and so where I took it for
(29:35):
granted and kind of thought, ohgosh, I'm glad I don't have to
work, can you, you know, an hour, hour and a half of my day,
that I get back in my life andflexibility is nice and I can
kind of go in the office whenit's convenient for me, and
stuff like that.
I don't know that I wouldgenuinely want that if I was,
you know, in my you know lateteens, early twenties, thinking
(29:56):
about my career path, because somuch of what my experience was
getting into this industry wasbeing in that environment, was
being in an office and, you know, being able to go over to
someone's desk and likebrainstorm and like, hey, I've
got this like creative idea.
What do you think if we're notto?
And so I do see a lot of value,as you know, for our
organization and for otheragencies to have, at a minimum,
(30:20):
you know, that option of havinga hybrid or some, you know,
in-person days because,especially in kind of the
learning and the experientialand the socialization aspects,
all the kind of cool things thathelp create that.
You know that people value thatyou know I mentioned earlier
about.
You know what makes you knowagencies so valuable to people
like it's kind of a big deal.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
Yeah, yeah, it's something we talk about at the
university level.
Often.
Some people hate someprofessors hate teaching online.
They want a classroomexperience.
I actually have found thatvirtual teaching.
I have great relationships withmy students.
Many of them come back and askme for advice, or they ask me
(31:00):
for advice, guidance, referrals,recommendations, so many
different things and so I feellike there is a way to do it.
But you have to be in thatmindset.
But then I also do value.
I had a friend in town fromHouston last night and she's a
friend and I work with her on anumber of different things for
one of her businesses PR andstrategy and it was so great to
(31:22):
be in the same room because wehaven't been in the same room
for over six years.
Speaker 3 (31:26):
Right.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
All the work we've done together has been remote,
but to be able to sit thereacross from the table and
brainstorm over dinner, therewas nothing like it.
Speaker 3 (31:35):
Right.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
Yep.
So there's a happy mediumsomewhere in there.
Speaker 3 (31:39):
Absolutely Good to hear you work.
And yeah, I think again, choiceright.
When you have choice, I meanthat's a powerful thing, you
know, and I think that's what Iwould say at the very minimum.
(32:00):
You know, like our organizationwants to be able to, our team
to have that choice and notnecessarily be stuck one way or
the other.
And I think that's kind of thebiggest takeaway, at least in
where we are, just in allindustries is I think people
tend to lean more well, I lovethe idea and I love being in
person, I love sitting acrossfrom you and doing those
sessions and planning things out, but I'd like to be able to
have the choice that if I'm justnot feeling like today's my day
, where I want to, I just wantto put my headphones in and my
(32:21):
head down and do work like to beable to do that.
And I think that's, you know, Ithink that's a great part of
what helps breed a healthyculture is making sure that
people have choice.
Speaker 2 (32:31):
Yeah, yeah, 100%.
So, jason, what is that lastpiece of advice that you would
leave our students with today?
Speaker 3 (32:38):
About you know what it means to be globally minded
and to you know, aspire to leadpeople and whatnot and I've been
.
I've had a very fortunate thatboth of our daughters at the
elementary school level wentinto the international
baccalaureate program and one ofthe guiding principles is this
(32:58):
kind of global thinking, beingthinking about you are a global
citizen, not just an American orCanadian or whatever whatever.
Like you're a global citizen,not just an American or Canadian
or whatever, whatever.
Like you're a global citizen.
And I think that's kind ofwhere we've lost a lot of sight,
and particularly wheretechnology and the internet and
communication, telecom, like weare a global society and the
(33:19):
things that we do and how werepresent ourselves and be
vulnerable and be inquisitiveand learn from other people.
Like the very fortunateexperience of being introduced
to a gentleman who was a formerNavy SEAL he's actually now
pathing and looking to start hisown consultancy and he was
(33:40):
talking about his experience ofgoing through the Stanford
Executive Leadership Program, ofwhich Harvard has one more and
there's several of them and hereinforced the value of being
present in part of a globalcommunity and meeting people
from all walks of life and allover the world.
And so my advice is to beinquisitive, think globally,
(34:01):
want to learn from others, andbecause there's so much, I think
that we we don't get a chanceto experience by only focusing
on our small bubble that if weopen up our that aperture a bit
further and get to see more inthis world, that will live way
more enriched and happier lives.
And so yeah, and if you canfind the means to do it, travel
(34:23):
like if you can find them,because I think that's a great
way to get those experiences Noteverybody can do it and get it,
but if that's just traveling,you know, from California,
arizona Arizona is a littledifferent than California Get to
learn, get there by carFantastic, and that's such a
great thing to leave us with,because the students in this
(34:44):
program are from all over theworld, so it plays really well
and I think that's somethingthat we really try to bring to
the classroom.
Speaker 2 (34:53):
So I teed it up perfectly.
Speaker 3 (34:55):
Hugely important and that's again, I think, where
there's such a great opportunityis to reinforce that and then
hopefully enable young people tocontinue to advocate that and
share that with others.
Because, again, regardless ofwhere you get your news or
information or media and allthat thing but there's a lot of
really wild things going on andI think that again, too many
(35:16):
people have narrowed theiraperture way too tight and
forget that there's all of thesebeautiful things and amazing
things that are around them, andso to have that opportunity,
and especially in an environmentlike yours, it's a blessing and
I would tell them to tellanybody that they can Keep doing
that.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
Fantastic.
Of course we're going to linkto your LinkedIn and to the Guna
website.
Last question Do you haveinternships or opportunities
available?
If any of my students want toreach out to you?
Speaker 3 (35:47):
I don't currently, but I would please encourage
them to reach out if they haveinterest.
As I mentioned before, manysolutions on a single thread I
have a number of great friendsand colleagues in agency world
in the SaaS industry that, ifthey have an interest in getting
into media and or technologycompanies, I am more than happy
(36:08):
to make introductions and invitepeople to take advantage of my
network in any way they can.
It's something I take great joyin doing, so please feel free
to connect, Let me know whatyou're interested in and I will
do my best to help.
Speaker 2 (36:21):
Fantastic.
Thank you so much.
This has been a delightfulconversation, as always.
Speaker 3 (36:26):
Always, and I can't appreciate it.
Thank you so much for havingand taking the time with me
today.
It's been so much fun.
I always have fun with you,though, so that's not surprising
at all.
Speaker 2 (36:35):
And thank you to everybody who's watching this
episode or listening to it onyour favorite platform.
This is Mediascape Insightsfrom Digital Changemakers.
I'm your co-host, AnnikaJackson, and we'll be back again
with another amazing guest toshare their story, their journey
and some insights for you tomake your career path a little
smoother.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
To learn more about the Master of Science in Digital
Media Management program, visitus on the web at dmmuscedu.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
My Favorite Murder is a true crime comedy podcast hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. Each week, Karen and Georgia share compelling true crimes and hometown stories from friends and listeners. Since MFM launched in January of 2016, Karen and Georgia have shared their lifelong interest in true crime and have covered stories of infamous serial killers like the Night Stalker, mysterious cold cases, captivating cults, incredible survivor stories and important events from history like the Tulsa race massacre of 1921. My Favorite Murder is part of the Exactly Right podcast network that provides a platform for bold, creative voices to bring to life provocative, entertaining and relatable stories for audiences everywhere. The Exactly Right roster of podcasts covers a variety of topics including historic true crime, comedic interviews and news, science, pop culture and more. Podcasts on the network include Buried Bones with Kate Winkler Dawson and Paul Holes, That's Messed Up: An SVU Podcast, This Podcast Will Kill You, Bananas and more.