July 16, 2024 • 47 mins
B2B vs. B2C marketing, internal vs. external communications, public affairs vs. business communications – these are typical examples of the binaries that have long dominated the communications landscape.
As the industry evolves, many professionals are recognizing that these binaries contribute to siloed organizations – and less effective communications across a complex array of external and internal stakeholders. To propel organizations forward during uncertain and challenging times, we must focus on building our skills around more matrixed and fully integrated approaches to communications.
In today’s episode, we are joined by Peter Gudritz, Global Director, Business & Marketing Communications, Global Public Affairs at Dow. With a distinguished career in public affairs and communications, particularly focused on sustainability – including work at the Wildlife Conservation Society and other NGOs – Peter shares the skill sets (and mindsets!) required for communications leaders to adopt a holistic approach that helps build matrixed, resilient organizations, This includes embracing nuance and learning to act as integrators.
We also discuss:
As the industry evolves, many professionals are recognizing that these binaries contribute to siloed organizations – and less effective communications across a complex array of external and internal stakeholders. To propel organizations forward during uncertain and challenging times, we must focus on building our skills around more matrixed and fully integrated approaches to communications.
In today’s episode, we are joined by Peter Gudritz, Global Director, Business & Marketing Communications, Global Public Affairs at Dow. With a distinguished career in public affairs and communications, particularly focused on sustainability – including work at the Wildlife Conservation Society and other NGOs – Peter shares the skill sets (and mindsets!) required for communications leaders to adopt a holistic approach that helps build matrixed, resilient organizations, This includes embracing nuance and learning to act as integrators.
We also discuss:
- How integrating policy insights with robust internal communications can support employees in their role as brand ambassadors and key stakeholders
- The critical role of resilience, adaptability, and strategic communications in aligning a vast, matrixed organization around sustainable innovation as a message and a mission
- The necessity of multi-stakeholder engagement in solving complex challenges such as in the areas of energy, climate or waste reduction
- Balancing qualitative and quantitative metrics to measure communication effectiveness
- Brands that currently have “gravity” for Peter including a book and podcast recommendation: The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, by Jonathan Haid, and Hard Fork Podcast by The New York Times.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:05):
So when I started my career incommunications over thirty years ago, public policy
work and marketing communications were i wouldsay, quite separate at Birst and Marstellar
back in the day, which iswhere I started. It was literally true,
so those of us in B toB and B to see marketing communications
(00:26):
or on one floor, and ourhot shot friends in corporate crisis, public
policy and public affairs were on anotherfloor, in much shall we say lofty
or territory they were up there ishow I always thought of them. Today,
as with so many aspects of ourwork and lives, the boundaries are
far more blurred and the skill setsrequired for career and integrated marketing communications are
(00:50):
much more varied. I personally loveit when arbitrary walls break down in the
face of lived need and experience.I love to see things get mixed.
So I was really excited to getthe chance to hear the perspective of today's
guest, Peter Goodritz. So Peteris nearly fourteen years into a career at
Fortune fifty Powerhouse Dow. Today heserves as global director of Business and Marketing
(01:15):
Communications, but he started his careersquarely in public policy, working first at
multiple environmentally focused nonprofits before joining dowas a public policy manager. So Peter
and I cover a lot of groundto this conversation, from how business communications
has and is changing, what helearned working in the office of the CEO
(01:38):
in the heart of the COVID crisis, which is very interesting, and the
mix of skills that he feels areessential for today's savvy communicator. It's not
what it was thirty one years agowhen I started in the field. So
settle in and enjoy the discussion,and if you like what you hear,
please make sure to like and sharethe episode. Let's get started. You
(02:05):
are listening to Building Brand Gravity AttractingPeople into Your Orbit, a GNS Business
Communications podcast. This is a showfor communications pros across industries looking to gain
an inside of you into industry influence. You're about to hear a conversation with
leading industry professionals talking about the importanceof building business impact through sound brand strategy.
(02:30):
Let's get into the show. Helloand welcome back to Building Brand Gravity.
I'm Ann Green, I'm CEO hereat CNS Business Communications, and I'm
delighted to be joined today by PeterGoodritz of dow Hey Peter, Hey,
Ann, how are you doing?Very good? Very good? Full disclosure,
Dow has been a long time clientof ours, But I've been really
(02:52):
interested in the ark of Peter's careerfor some time. Since I've been he's
been on my radar and I've gottento know him a little bit. He
is currently a global director of businessand market in communications within the now Global
Public Affairs Group. But what's interesting, Peter, about the arc of your
career. And I think something thatwe'll talk about today is where you started
and the evolution to where you aretoday. And one of my themes today
(03:14):
is sort of the breaking down ofboundaries between different areas within our field.
But maybe we can start off withthe arc of your career. From what
I understand, you started in publicpolicy and nonprofit. Is that right?
Yeah, that's right, And Iappreciate being here, So thanks again for
inviting me. Yeah, if yougo, actually even a little further back
from there, right out of college, I actually started in sales. So
(03:37):
I was in technology sales, andit was inside sales. I was on
the phone all day long. Andas it relates to communications, you really
have to think about how you approachyour customer what messaging you want to use,
how you're helping them solve their problems, and things like that. So
it was really it was really good. Two years I learned. I learned
(04:00):
a ton, but it became prettyclear to me that that wasn't my long
term path. And so how Iended up in the nonprofit space in the
policy space was I had been debatingwhether I was going to go to law
school or get my master's in publicpolicy. Landed on the public policy track,
found myself going from Chicago to dC, where I started studying masters
(04:24):
in public policy with a focus onenvironmental policy, and so found myself working
at an NGO called American Rivers doingsome river conservation policy work, mostly on
public lands kind of stuff. Andthen after that I moved over to a
group called the Wildlife Conservation Society,which is a large international conservation organization.
(04:46):
They run the New York Zoos andaquariums headquartered at the Bronx Who And both
of those cases were really really goodexperience working on getting my hands deep in
policy, but seeing the connection betweenand a policy and how we reach out
to our various stakeholders. It's notjust government, right, So at American
rivers I was. I was helpingwith our advocacy, but I was also
(05:11):
building a network of what we werecalling river stewards across the country, so
I had to reach out to abunch of local river conservation activists. So
that was a really interesting experience.And then Wildlife Conservation Society. I was
really getting deep into policy at thatspace because that's when climate policy was being
heavily negotiated. This was eight ninetime frame, and so I got to
(05:33):
work pretty heavily on that. Andthen I found myself coming over to Dow
in a policy context, so abit different than what I've been working on
on the conservation side. But cameinto Dow and was working largely on energy
policy, but you know, avery different context because we're an energy intensive
(05:56):
manufacturer and so I really had tolearn the ins and outs of energy policy
in a totally different way. Soit's really it was a great It was
a great way to get a reallywell rounded experience. I have to go
back to the sales thing for asecond, because there's so much talk today
about resilience, building resilience and alsobeing flexible in your mindset, and I
(06:20):
think that that early training like yousaid, a couple of years will really
get you very deep, especially asyou said, you're on the front line
of it every day. Did doyou feel it made you a bit more
resilient and also sort of flexible andnegotiating how you're going to deal with any
given situation. Yeah, I thinkso. I mean, you know,
for me, it was something thatreally stretched me out of my comfort zone.
(06:41):
I am naturally more of an introvert, and so sitting on the phone
all day long calling people I don'tknow is really not super comfortable for me.
But it built up this kind ofability to hear rejections or at least
counters to what I'm saying, andthink through that process of how I'm how
(07:03):
I'm gonna, you know, meetthe needs of that customer. Maybe it
doesn't work out, but you justhave to think through things a little bit
differently, and you're doing that dayin and day out, so over time,
you just get really kind of comfortablebeing in that space of either hearing
no being rejected, failing and havingto come back not meeting customer needs and
(07:24):
having to call them and talk tothem about what went wrong and take ownership
for things, and so you know, you do that long enough and it
becomes something that, at least forme, it was just a little more
comfortable. And I think that thathas helped, that has definitely served me
throughout my career up to this point. Well, two things come to mind
right away. First of all,and we'll get to this soon, in
(07:46):
terms of the team that you workwith today, it's how it really puts
you in a place of symbiotic likecompassion with media relations professionals who are calling
in a different way. We don'tlike to think of it as sales,
but it's got similar. The otherthing is, and we'll definitely talk about
this later, because when you andI were chatting and you were making points
about what it means to be atruly matrixed organization, I would assume that
(08:11):
that background, it really gives yousome compassion and connection with your colleagues and
sales and other types of parts ofthe business. Absolutely. I mean,
you know, at the end ofthe day, they're the ones on the
front lines with our customers, andso we'll get into it more, but
I you know, arming them withthe latest and greatest and ensuring they have,
you know, all the right messageson some of our biggest initiatives hugely
(08:35):
important. I mean, they're theones speaking to our customers, and it's
ultimately our customers, right that aredriving our growth, driving our business.
So usually, yeah, it's true. And it's interesting because as you're making
that pivot from public policy to businessand marketing communications, that sense of who
is the stakeholder and who's the customeris really really important. But even before
(08:58):
we get there, one of thethings you said, that's very interesting about
the work you did at the WildlifeConservation Society and then the work you do
today at DOO. And by theway, I now have the Simon and
Garfunkle it's all happening at the Zooin my head, so that's all that
you said. The Bronx too,that's growing over in the seventies. That
commercial here is on all the time, so that's in my head now.
Just a little side thing. Butyou talked about being in an energy intensive
(09:22):
manufacturing business, and that's very interesting. You really have that through line of
sustainability. And I think sometimes whenpeople are thinking about energy, they're thinking
about energy producers, they're not alwaysthinking about energy users, and that must
be that must have been a reallyhelpful lens for you to adopt or learn
more about as you came into theDOW context from the nonprofit context. Is
(09:43):
that true? Yeah? Absolutely,Like I said, I mean, I
think it gave me a much morewell rounded perspective on how complex energy really
is. When we're talking about butenergy is what drives everything, right,
I mean, even if you bringit forward to today and think about you
know, AI and all the datacenters that are being built up, Like
(10:05):
one of the biggest issues that theyare going to be contending with over time
is access to electricity or energy topower those those data centers. So it's
a hugely important topic. And youcome into a company like now and you
know, half the company here expertson energy in some way, or energy
or engineers, and so it wasa huge learning curve for me. It's
(10:28):
been great experience because it ultimately iswhat drives drives everything. So, you
know, as we're looking to decarbonizeover time, I mean, understanding the
interplay between getting to a low carbonfuture and what that means for where we
are today in terms of energy iscrucial. Yeah. You know, it's
(10:48):
so funny as I kind of livein a double consciousness of a communications practitioner
and counselor, but also an organizationalleader in my role, and I'm always
thinking about what are those messages andmindsets that are most important for this moment,
And you're reminding me it's like,first of all, pay attention to
the nuance and also there's a lotof dynamic tensions out there. When you
(11:09):
tell I was totally thinking also aboutAI. How we're in this moment where
AI is going to advance so manythings. You know, people have a
lot of feelings hashtag feelings about AI, but the fact is is that there's
such amazing things happening, but it'salso this really problematic challenge regarding the energy
consumption, and that just seems tobe the name of the game today.
(11:31):
How is it that as professionals inthis space, we really pay attention to
deep nuance, which I think isvery important working with companies like that,
but also understand that some things arein dynamic tension with each other. Do
you see that as a mindset ora skill set that should be cultivated these
days? Nuance is just really importantfor any of these big conversations. I
(11:54):
think we can all agree that weneed to decarbonize. We're we're very folks
on it. It's one of ourmain strategic pillars is decarbonize and grow.
But you know, just saying weneed to then switch to all renewables,
that's not going to be practical,it's not going to work well. We
will see a lot of negative ramificationsfrom that. And so you start talking
(12:18):
about these spaces from a communication standpoint, from a policy standpoint, from a
business standpoint, hugely, hugely complex, and so I think that we need
to get to a place where we'reless afraid of nuance. We need to
get into it. And it doesn'tmean that anyone is trying to slow anything
(12:39):
down or anything like that. It'swe're trying to get to a solution,
and you have to understand the detailsand how things practically work in order to
figure out how we move forward.So I think really working through the sticking
points and the nuance, and Iknow we'll talk about it later, but
I think this is where working acrossso many different stakeholder groups is really important,
(13:03):
because all those perspectives are crucial foranything that we're going to do from
a business standpoint, right, wereally have to understand how we're going to
move the needle, and you reallyonly can do that when you understand all
of your main stakeholders perspectives. Yeah, there's very few silos anymore. Everything
(13:24):
is permeable. So between the publicpolicy and then the role that you're playing
today, which I want to getinto more. You were in the office
of the CEO for a while atDow and that, to me is a
really interesting bridge because talk about gettingthe bird's eye view of the whole stakeholder
landscape. How did that experience sortof shape you or inform you or widen
your lens or whatever metaphor you wantto share with me. Yeah, I
(13:48):
mean it was. It was greatexperience, and I think from a you
know, going back to the careerart discussion, not something that was on
my radar, but that's probably truealmost every single role that I've taken.
I love that though. I thinkthat's amazing. Right. I've had I've
been open to things. I've I'vehad goals, I've had interests all that,
(14:09):
but I haven't I've rarely kind ofpointed to a job and said I
want that job. I've I've kindof just said yes to things as they've
come along. So you know,going back to twenty fifteen, this is
our previous CEO's chief staff at thetime reached out to me and we had
some conversations, and I decided tojoin the team. And it made a
(14:31):
lot of sense at the time becauseI was in a policy and an advocacy
role at the time and or CEOwas very active in those spaces, so
I had a familiarity of the spacethat he was operating in, so moved
into that space. But to yourpoint, you know, you then very
quickly see it across the entire organization, and you know, it's a it's
(14:56):
an interesting space to lead. Sous it lines up under our communications function.
So there's the executive communications piece ofit, and then there's kind of
just the general executive support that comesalong with it, the preparation, the
thinking through how best to use youknow, this individual's time across you know,
(15:18):
a large global company. And soyou know, for me at that
point five years into my time atDOW, it was an amazing way to
see across the company, to goto all sorts of you know, our
production facilities and all sorts of differentregions, and so the learning curve there
(15:39):
was was it was great. Itwas rapid, you know, you got
to get up speed pretty quickly,but it was just such a tremendous way
to see to see the company toyour point, the breadth of the stakeholders
that at that level you're having toengage with, right so you know,
all of our top customers are goingto want to have time at some point
(16:00):
with the CEO, all of ourpolicy makers. The CEO is helping to
open doors they and they want tomeet with him. Obviously our employees,
right this is they're a huge,huge part of things. And so you
know, just thinking through that broadlandscape, and then it was I was
kind of in a unique position ofone when I first started is when we
(16:23):
also announced a major transaction of theDow DuPont merger, and so that kind
of, you know, shook upthe landscape. Like literally the day that
my stuff left, I had beenliving in Philadelphia, was moving back to
Midland, Michigan, where we're headquartered, and literally the day that my stuff
left Philadelphia is the day that weannounced the merger. So a small thing.
(16:44):
So yeah, so the landscape shifteda little bit. So we worked
through that, but then was alsofortunate enough in that period to work through
a CEO transition, so previous CEOretired, new CEO who is our current
CEO, Jim Fitterlan came in andyou get to see a lot from that
perspective of different styles, how theyapply those to their leadership of an organization.
(17:10):
And because we were going through thismerger and then ultimately spinning out as
as a new now as we werecalling it, you know, how how
you're bringing new culture into the organizationand how we're framing things differently, and
it was it was a really reallygood opportunity to kind of think through from
(17:32):
my standpoint, kind of how westrategically UH used his time and how we
thought through what with the biggest thingswere to tackle initially but then but to
really see from that level the consistencyand message and the you know, real
(17:52):
passion for the team and for peopleand that's how we're going to move forward.
And I think that that was justit was a great learning opportunity for
me, real privilege to be ableto you know, be close to leadership
at that level. Opens a lotof doors to be around leadership at a
lot of other companies. So youget to see a lot of different styles
(18:15):
and ultimately, you know, Ithink you get to work on a lot
of different things. But I alwayssay, what's also unique about it,
at least the way we were structuredas a small team, a lot of
responsibility. You don't really own much, right, so you're kind of pulling
on different parts of the organization toget your work done. And you know,
(18:38):
for me then working through the matrixorganization that we are, you know,
once again, that's just a it'sa skill set that you know probably
had a little bit of it comingin, but but you're not going to
be successful in that role unless youcan navigate that. So put that on
steroids a little bit for me.Oh, I bet, you know.
And it's it's interesting. First ofall, there's you're making me reflect on
(19:00):
the fact there's moments in our careerthat sometimes we see them when we look
back, sometimes we know it's happeningat that moment that are really a masterclass
in a way. Or you canthink of another analogy where there's just this
confluence of opportunities or this moment intime where it's just going to be this
big leap of growth and might behard, might be different, but it's
(19:23):
exciting and I believe were you stillin the office of the CEO during the
COVID when that was unfolding. Yeah, it's another big moment in time too.
Absolutely, And you know, soyou learn a lot about how to
one the critical importance of a steadyhand, calm demeanor, right because all
(19:45):
of a sudden, a lot ofpeople are looking at you when things change
overnight. We're sending people home,right, Yet we also have a huge
percentage of our workforce that's going towork every day in this environment because we're
running twenty four cents and so ityeah, really really interesting vantage point to
see things and also to learn howto adapt very very quickly. Right.
(20:07):
So we at the time I washelping out with our global leadership conference that
we put on every year, weobviously stopped that and so adapting quickly to
say, we still need to alignwith the organization, but now we have
to do this in this virtual environmentthat at the time was not what it
is today as everybody knows. Andthen you know, I think we'll probably
(20:30):
touch on this later, but justthe amount of internal communications at that point,
it just went through the roof andgave me a deep appreciation for the
value of it that I see soclearly now in my current role. It's
a different application of it, butit's just so it's so important, So
(20:52):
give me a really deep appreciation forthat as well. Yeah, you know,
another binary from back in the daythat I've observed was this sense of
internal communications versus external communications. Soobviously, things like social media to a
conversation, the evolution of the webbroke a lot of that down, okay,
and society changes generationally. But alsoI think it was a false binary
(21:15):
to begin with in many ways,although it was easier to command and control
things in and out back in theday, not not totally. But I
think the other thing is there wasa real hierarchy for my observation about external
comms being the thing and internal commsbeing yeah, we have to do some
internal comms. I think that hasradically shifted. I used to talk about,
(21:36):
you know, to me, thedrop falls in the pond and the
first ring that radiates out is yourown people and your own internal stakeholders.
How is your understanding of what hasbeen known as internal communications change? I
mean, do you agree with someof what I'm thinking that those that there
was never shouldn't have been a binaryto begin with. In some ways,
I do, I do. Andyou use the social as a great example.
(21:56):
If you look at our social channel, some of the highest engagement on
our lives social channels are employees,right, So that's where a lot of
our employees are learning about things thatwe're doing and seeing. Right. It's
it's yeah, we're doing stuff throughinternal channels as well. But a big
percentage of our population doesn't have accessto a computer, right because they're in
(22:17):
plants and you know, in themanufacturing environment, but they're personally on LinkedIn
or x or something like that,and so those those channels are actually really
important for our internal audience as well. But I just you know, if
you if you go to so inthe COVID context, very very rapidly,
(22:37):
we had to you know, wewere meeting with leaders, our leadership what
we define like people leaders. Soit's about the top thirty five hundred within
the company, anybody that which hasa lot of people leaders to reach it
is. And so we were doingweekly calls with them to align on kind
of here's what we're doing, hereare the next steps. We would highlight
them. We were doing things likeyou know, turning over facilities to produce
(23:02):
hand sanitizer, like, we weredoing a lot of that stuff. So
we were aligning around some of thoseactivities that we're doing, but also aligning
on kind of the nuts and boltsof how we're operating through this through this
environment. And then weekly there wasan all employee communication that went out as
well. So that's that's a lotof communication. As we look forward to
today, you know, I thinkthat we probably came down a bit on
(23:26):
the overall I mean, we're notdoing that that much internal, but if
you think about within our businesses,it's really really important that this concept of
kind of internal for external. Wehave to talk to our employees to align
them around strategy and what are ourmajor initiatives and what are we really really
(23:47):
focused on? What does what doesthe market look like today? Is it
are we in a challenging environment,are we in a growth environment? What
what do things look like? Andhow is that informing what we do?
Because then our employees become ours,right, not just our sales folks,
but yes, our sales folks whoare going out and meeting with our customers
every day, so they definitely haveto have that but if any employee,
(24:08):
they're talking to their friends, theirfamilies, we are generally Yes, we
have some sites in bigger cities,but generally speaking, we're located in smaller
town, smaller communities around the world. We're tightly knit within those communities,
and so our employees need to bearmed with the ability to go and speak
about what we're doing or be informedabout what we're doing, right, so
(24:30):
they become our biggest ambassadors, andso that's really really important. And then
you just get into like the nutsand bolts of building company pride super important
and making sure that you know,people really understand that things behind are.
When we talk about decarbonize and growor transform the waste, when we're talking
(24:52):
about plastics, what does that reallymean? What is the work that we're
really doing? And so the internalpart I genuinely believe you just kind of
can't be successful in anything that you'redoing if you're not able to align and
encourage and inspire your employees around allthe great work that you're doing. So
(25:15):
I couldn't agree more. And frankly, we're here to cultivate understanding between people.
We're here to try to improve literalcommunications between people. That could be
a marketing message too. You know, I want to give something of service
to you, and I want toserve it at the right time because you
need this thing or this service oryou want to learn more. But it's
amazing internally if you can't kind ofpeople talk about hearts and minds, If
(25:40):
you can't bring that excitement or thatunderstanding to your own team, especially when
it's as global and large as now, what an incredible incubator for understanding.
You know how messages are received andhow they resonate. You know, if
you don't start there, where areyou going to start? So you from
(26:00):
public policy office of the CEO nowyour global director of Business and Marketing Communications.
So years ago, what did youthink business and marketing communications meant?
Like, what was your perception ofwhat that would be and did you self
identify with that at all? Beforeevolving I think and bringing a ton of
skill sets to the role. NowI've been close to it. I've been
(26:21):
within our public affairs leadership team fora number of years now, so I
had a decent understanding of everything thatwent into it. But I if I'm
being totally honest, I think Itended towards really kind of understanding what we
would call more purely marketing communications work. Like I understood the promotional activities and
(26:44):
all the responsibilities around that in whatwe were doing to try to get in
front of our customers and you knowtrade shows as an important piece of that,
and how we're using digital channels andthings of that nature. What I
think I probably I can say now, being you know, a year and
a half or so into the role, I probably did discount or just didn't
(27:06):
have a great awareness of all thewhat I would call business communications stuff that
goes into the role. So youknow, there we're talking about the real
strategic communications around big business initiatives,the executive communications support right from our business
presidents or our you know, globalmarketing leaders. There's a lot of communications
(27:29):
support that goes around, you know, when they're going out and talking about
the business and talking about DOW Sothat's a huge part. When we're doing
you know, various versions of Mand A, the team gets involved in
that, and then you know,there's crises fromtimes, there's issues that need
to be managed, and again it'sthis team that really is on the front
(27:53):
lines within the business helping to managethat. Yes, with with others in
corporate and government affairs and and thewhole again matrix and diversity of folks around
the company. But I think that'sa piece of it that I really wasn't
surprised a little, but it probablydidn't have the full context on just how
(28:17):
much of that is part of therole and important for everyone within the team,
right, not just the kind oftop leaders within the team, but
really everybody. Everybody gets involved inin some respect. So and it's exciting
to peel back the layers of theonion. You know, again, you
were directly involved with a lot ofthat, but then to peel deeper and
see and the interplay between what mightbe understood as business or corporate communications and
(28:40):
the marketing communication side that might bemore customer or prospect driven. You seeing
that symbiotic relationship between the two,and how the issues landscape and articulating really
purpose and values and also very tangible. You've talked about two of them,
the declimatizing and also reducing ways ofplastics piece that you folks are working looking
really hard on. You know howthat creates a conversation that ultimately does have
(29:04):
a lot of customer impact. Mean, how have you seen, Peter as
you reflect on your role and movingtoward it, How have you seen business
comms or marketing comms changing over time? What's your reflections on the landscape that
you and your team are working innow? Yeah, I think no question,
the importance of the multi stakeholder environmentis just huge. So if you
(29:32):
kind of take a step back andlook at Dow overall, right, so
we have I'll talk a little bitabout, you know, since the time
that Jim came in New Dow andlooking forward, so we no longer have
a mission. We have an ambition, right, and the ambition is to
be the most innovative, customer centric, conclusive and sustainable materials science company in
(29:52):
the world. And I think that'simportant because an ambition mindset is you're kind
of always striving for something. It'snot about being the biggest, it's not
about being you know, it's reallyabout being kind of the best in those
areas that will then make you asuccessful company. And so we're really focused
on that. And then underneath that, we also developed and rolled out kind
(30:15):
of the purpose, so the whybehind what we're doing, and that's to
deliver a sustainable future for the world. Through our material science expertise in collaboration
with partners. So that piece isembedded in our purpose is that collaboration with
partners, and I think a bigpart of that is to reflect on and
have a little bit of humility aroundwe don't have all the answers we need.
(30:38):
These are big problems that we're tryingto solve, right so, climate
change and decarbonization huge challenge, Plasticwaste Plastics as a material are critically important.
Plastic waste a big issue and wereally need to we need to work
across the value chain with all sortsof other stakeholders to help solve that.
So I think, you know,those kind of themes around collaboration really really
(31:04):
important. My team's role specifically ESis you know, lead generation to be
part of the sales conversion process andall of that. But that's definitely not
where it stops, you know,to use the title of the podcast here,
right, it's it's around building brandgravity. We're building brand equity,
(31:25):
brand loyalty, leading with our technologiesand solutions and working with all of our
partners, customers and others on howwe solve all of those those issues.
As a B to B company,I think what's really changing when we start
thinking about stakeholders is maybe at onetime it was it was feasible for us
to really kind of mostly focus onour direct customer. Our direct customer,
(31:52):
we're making things that then our directcustomer is usually adding to converting in some
way, doing something to it tomake the final product, or even or
even just one more step down thechain before it becomes a final product.
And so it puts us in adifferent place. But I think we used
to be able to say, Okay, we're going to focus on those people,
(32:15):
the converters, let's call them.I think now what you're seeing is
so many different influence points on consumerbehavior, on the value chains, on
what is what is actually driving demandor sending demand signals into the market.
It's totally it's totally different. Sotoday we have to do a lot more
(32:37):
to understand not just our customers,but our customers customers. We have to
understand and know if we could haveany influence among you know, with consumer
behavior or within the whole value chain, and who the value chain captain may
be, where is where's decision makingreally happening, or where's changed really really
(32:59):
happening. So that's a big shiftfor us. You know, the regulatory
environment is driving demand signals in amuch stronger way than I think in the
past. So if you use youknow, a good example I think are
if you look at like electric vehiclesgo around the world and in any one
geography, there's there's a different approachto how we are trying to drive the
(33:22):
adoption of electric vehicles. That's that'sa huge thing that we need to understand,
and that as business communicators, weneed to understand what that environment is
so that as we're out and promotingDOW solutions, we can be aware of
the differences in you know, whatEurope is doing is different, is quite
(33:43):
different than what the United States isdoing, is very different than what China
is doing, right, and sowe have to really have that understanding of
that that policy environment. And thenjust to name, you know, a
couple of hours, we talked aboutemployees, so I don't want to discover
that that's that's huge and number oneas we've talked about, but then you
also look at NGOs and academia andhow they are they have their own platform
(34:06):
to drive preferences into the market,and that's just grown exponentially with digital.
Right, It's it's just a verydifferent thing that we have to understand.
And so for all of our allof all of my team, you know,
really understanding all of those dynamics inanything that we do is hugely important.
(34:28):
Where it gets interesting and I thinkvery complex, is on the one
hand, you know, through digitalchannels and through all the technologies that we
have and measurement capabilities, we canbe very very targeted, right, We
can target messages to a very specificaudience. At the same time, everybody
(34:49):
has access to a lot of differentplatforms where they can get messages that are
not necessarily targeted at them. Sowe have to think about all of that
as we are driving our various communicationsstrategies. And good examples, we recently
hosted an investor day, right,So investor Day obvious who the core audience
for that is, but it's apublic event in terms of we broadcast it.
(35:14):
We put stuff out on our website, like anybody can tune in and
watch this, and so you thenhave to think about, yes, your
messages are targeted towards investors and ownersof key stakeholder. But you know,
as my team was putting together theirmaterials for how we're updating investors on where
we are and where we're going withineach of our businesses. You have to
(35:35):
also think our customers are tuning in, our employees are tuning in, community
leaders are probably tuning in, policymakersmaybe tuning in. I think that's powerful.
It gets back to that word Iused earlier, permeability that you know,
there's and it's an interesting time again, a dynamic tension, right,
because with AI and other types oftechnologies, at least how generative AI were
(35:59):
the attempt to get there being appliednow in marketing and communications, et cetera,
the targeting will become more predictive,more precise. That's the dream at
least, and many are advancing thatthere's a real arms race now in that
field. So technology, com tech, marketing, tech, all of these
things will the written word, allof this stuff creative is expanding and changing,
(36:20):
so the targeting will increase. Butyou're right, there's still increase permeability
between audiences. So it does soundlike you know, the teams that you're
overseeing, those working on business commsand corporate and issues, management and marketing,
communications and experiential and events. Youknow, that that need to be
very mindful of all stakeholders in allcontext and understanding how this context we're going
(36:43):
to wait more heavily to this stakeholder, but others will come along, and
how does it resonate first and foremostfor those one or two primary audiences,
But what are the valances or thevibrations for the others. For my team,
you know, large number of themare sitting within business leadership teams,
and so they're connecting with you know, marketing, commercial sales, technical services,
(37:07):
R and D, sustainability and youknow, all the different parts that
get a business to operate. Communicationsoften plays the role of kind of helping
to connect the dots between those folksand drive towards consensus. So that's one
big skill set of being able toeven work within that context. And then
(37:30):
a big company like ours, youknow, if you're working on something related
to let's say plastic waste, Imean that has business context, that's very
you know, there are a lotof business interest definitely corporate interests, definitely
geographic interest and you have to beable to work within all of those things
to knock down the silos. Weare going to be silent, We're a
(37:51):
big organization. They just naturally exist, right, But you have to be
able to understand who are the folksyou need to work with and how do
you how do you work with them, and so I think that piece is
hugely important. Part of that,I think does also come down to how
you build your network and so howyou think about working with people and so
(38:12):
candidly, you know, I thinkone of the challenges coming out of COVID
is we're doing so much virtually thatit tends towards or it can towards the
transactional. Right. You have athirty minute meeting on your calendar, you
join, you wrap up whatever wason the agenda, and you turn off
your camera and you go about whateveryou were doing. And so I think
(38:34):
it's it's really really important, especiallyfor people as they're coming into Dow kind
of early on, to be aroundcolleagues and to get to build those networks,
because over time, that's how youreally learn how you get things done.
I'm glad you're mentioning that because Ithink it's a skill set. We
need to honor what is possible virtuallyand amazing opportunities, but also honor what
(38:57):
is happening in creating deeper relationships.What's required from that, whether you're in
physical proximity or not. I lovethat. I think it's really really important.
Yep. And so yeah, Imean all of that kind of then
lends itself to we all operate inthe great space. Things are ambiguous.
I just believe if you can't operatein that space, it's going to be
(39:21):
a bit of a bit of astruggle. So I think that that's a
skill set that people really need tolean into. I think the hard communication
skills. I mean some people aremore naturally better writers or more naturally.
I think you can learn really thehard communication skills, and I do believe
they're hard. I actually don't lovecommunications being referred to as the soft skills.
I think that they are. Ithink it's very hard to do it
(39:44):
well. But how that all comestogether, So dealing with a matrix,
dealing with ambiguity, having a planbe because things are changing faster than ever
before, and so it's okay tohave something not work as as you thought
it might. But how do youhow do you adjust? And the last
(40:04):
thing I'll say is I think thatlends itself to is we're thinking through a
lot of what we're doing in theplastic space or energy transition. Right,
so we're working in the nuclear space, we have a project on nuclear or
our mobility team working on you know, evs and like vehicles and that kind
of thing. These are all reallynew business models and so some things aren't
(40:30):
gonna work out. And I thinkthat we also need to get a little
more comfortable in even talking about orhow we talk about failure and what we've
learned, what we're doing, youknow, what we're moving on to.
But I think that that concept ofit's okay, especially in the environment that
(40:50):
we are in today two to saywe don't we don't know everything. We're
gonna learn along the way, andsome things aren't gonna work out. And
I think it's sometimes for you know, a one hundred and twenty six year
old organization like we are versus astartup, you know, you kind of
don't you know, as comfortable talkingabout that. And I think it's just
it's increasingly important for us to doso. Yeah, And it's funny going
(41:14):
back to the silos. I waslaughing to myself because you're saying, obviously
Dao was huge, but I've runa company that is like thirty or thirty
five people, and now one thatis like one hundred and thirty five.
And silos exist everywhere. Every humancommunity creates little camps and that's a beautiful
thing and it's also a challenge.Two things true at once. And so
before we run away today, Peter, you mentioned the name of the podcast
(41:36):
earlier building brand Gravity. Is thereanything culture in the world of brands that
has you and it's gravity? What'ssomething that's exciting to you right now?
Yeah, So, actually a fewthings. So one, I recently read
Jonathan Heights's new book, The AnxiousGeneration. Amazing book. I think everybody
should read this. It is alsoreading about The Anxious Generation has made me
(41:59):
anxious parent because you know, Ido little kids, and so it's a
book that I just haven't been ableto stop thinking about because the research and
the data that's presented, and it'sreally hard to ignore about how this like
living in this virtual world and onscreens all the time, how it's really
(42:20):
impacted our kids. And so thatone, it's an amazing book. I
highly recommend it, but it isnot you know, you come out of
it. It's not a light it'llit'll get you thinking, So, so
that's definitely it's not a light romYeah, absolutely, that's definitely one.
The hard Fork podcast is one.And actually I think that was recommended to
me by GNS his own Kyle Turner. Oh, he's great, Kyle.
(42:43):
Kyle's on top of everything out therein the tech world, especially absolutely,
and he turned me onto this andI listened to it all the time.
It's it's if you're interested in innai is or all things really tech.
But but they spend so much timean ai They cover the gamut on all
the stories, but in a reallyfunny way, and I think it's it's
(43:05):
really really well done. And thenthe last thing, and it's just something
that I've been connecting with my kidson lately. So the Spear in Las
Vegas, I'm sort of obsessed withnow and in part I thought it was
cool before, but you know,they recently had Fish played there for like
five nights. I'm a big fishman, and now Dead and Company are
grateful Dead He's doing a bunch ofshows there and the videos that like,
(43:29):
they're just filling my timelines with theamazing light shows and visuals and everything.
So one I'm super jealous of everybodythat's been at any of these shows.
But what I think has been kindof cool about it is it's fun to
show my kids and it's been agreat way to introduce them to some of
this music that I love that Ithink without this they would kind of think
(43:50):
it's not so cool. I lovethat. Oh, this sphere is such
a thing, and you got tobook yourself a ticket, got to get
out there. I know I'm trying, but more luck yet. Well,
Peter, thank you so much fortalking to me today. It's been such
a pleasure to have you on buildingbrand gravity and thank you for making the
time. Thank you. I reallyreally appreciate it and appreciate the longtime partnership
(44:13):
with with GNS. Oh, thankyou. I love the conversation I just
had with Peter Goodritz of dow Youknow, he's Global Director of Business and
Marketing Communications within the Global Public AffairsGroup, but he's played a lot of
different roles across his career, includingin nonprofit NGOs, on the public policy
side, and in the office asa CEO. Is that he's got a
good sense of, first of all, how permeable a lot of aspects of
(44:37):
our field are as in it usedto be B to B marketing versus B
two C, or internal communications versusexternal communications, or you know, maybe
public policy, public affairs versus marketingcommunications, or business communications. And I
think the biggest lesson of my conversationwith Peter is how these things are very
(44:57):
symbiotic and very co mingled. Alot of the silos you got to break
them down. And one of thethings you had talked about a lot was
what's the skill sets needed from communicatorstoday in any of these contexts. And
one of the things that you talkedabout a lot is the ability to really
work in a multi stakeholder environment.So we may he gave the example of
(45:17):
working with on an investor day,so ostensibly the main audiences investors, but
the fact is is that the otherpeople tuning in because it's public are maybe
NGOs or community leaders, employees,other stakeholders, also customers and prospects,
not just investors. So in someways that may seem obvious in our context
today, but being in this fieldfor thirty years on the agency side,
(45:42):
it was not always obvious of howpermeable these areas were, and a lot
of things were very binary. Well, I do B two C. I
don't do B to B. Andthe fact is is that now today a
lot of it is business to businessto consumer and back again. And certainly
some divisions I saw earlier in mybetween, Oh, those are the corporate
guys, or the public policy folksor the public affairs folks, were the
(46:05):
Marcom people, were the B twoC or B to B communicators. This
stuff is very commingled. So Iloved hearing Peter speak about that. And
the other skill set he talked aboutquite eloquently is the idea of what it
means to work in a truly matrixto organization. So his organization is very
large, very global. But thefact, even in a smaller context,
(46:25):
like say my own agency GNS,where we have over one hundred people in
different disciplines and specialties, you haveto be really compassionate and empathetic and also
a learner to understand what is happeningin those other areas and to learn how
to work with people across those divisionsand silos. And that's a constant.
It's diplomacy and connection, and it'sunderstanding and learning. And I think it's
(46:50):
wonderful that he underscored that as askill set for communicators. As he said,
we are often the ones connecting thedots between different parts of the organization,
so I hope people take to listenand enjoy it. We are GNS
Business Communications. We are a teamof media strategists, storytellers, and engagement
experts who meet you at the intersectionof business and communications. To learn more,
(47:14):
visit gscommunications dot com. You're listeningto building brand gravity, attracting people
into your orbit a GNS Business Communicationspodcast. Keep connected with us by subscribing
to the show in your favorite podcastplayer. If you like what you've heard,
please rate the show that helps usto keep delivering the latest in industry
(47:36):
influence. Thanks for listening. Untilnext time.
So when I started my career incommunications over thirty years ago, public policy
work and marketing communications were i wouldsay, quite separate at Birst and Marstellar
back in the day, which iswhere I started. It was literally true,
so those of us in B toB and B to see marketing communications
(00:26):
or on one floor, and ourhot shot friends in corporate crisis, public
policy and public affairs were on anotherfloor, in much shall we say lofty
or territory they were up there ishow I always thought of them. Today,
as with so many aspects of ourwork and lives, the boundaries are
far more blurred and the skill setsrequired for career and integrated marketing communications are
(00:50):
much more varied. I personally loveit when arbitrary walls break down in the
face of lived need and experience.I love to see things get mixed.
So I was really excited to getthe chance to hear the perspective of today's
guest, Peter Goodritz. So Peteris nearly fourteen years into a career at
Fortune fifty Powerhouse Dow. Today heserves as global director of Business and Marketing
(01:15):
Communications, but he started his careersquarely in public policy, working first at
multiple environmentally focused nonprofits before joining dowas a public policy manager. So Peter
and I cover a lot of groundto this conversation, from how business communications
has and is changing, what helearned working in the office of the CEO
(01:38):
in the heart of the COVID crisis, which is very interesting, and the
mix of skills that he feels areessential for today's savvy communicator. It's not
what it was thirty one years agowhen I started in the field. So
settle in and enjoy the discussion,and if you like what you hear,
please make sure to like and sharethe episode. Let's get started. You
(02:05):
are listening to Building Brand Gravity AttractingPeople into Your Orbit, a GNS Business
Communications podcast. This is a showfor communications pros across industries looking to gain
an inside of you into industry influence. You're about to hear a conversation with
leading industry professionals talking about the importanceof building business impact through sound brand strategy.
(02:30):
Let's get into the show. Helloand welcome back to Building Brand Gravity.
I'm Ann Green, I'm CEO hereat CNS Business Communications, and I'm
delighted to be joined today by PeterGoodritz of dow Hey Peter, Hey,
Ann, how are you doing?Very good? Very good? Full disclosure,
Dow has been a long time clientof ours, But I've been really
(02:52):
interested in the ark of Peter's careerfor some time. Since I've been he's
been on my radar and I've gottento know him a little bit. He
is currently a global director of businessand market in communications within the now Global
Public Affairs Group. But what's interesting, Peter, about the arc of your
career. And I think something thatwe'll talk about today is where you started
and the evolution to where you aretoday. And one of my themes today
(03:14):
is sort of the breaking down ofboundaries between different areas within our field.
But maybe we can start off withthe arc of your career. From what
I understand, you started in publicpolicy and nonprofit. Is that right?
Yeah, that's right, And Iappreciate being here, So thanks again for
inviting me. Yeah, if yougo, actually even a little further back
from there, right out of college, I actually started in sales. So
(03:37):
I was in technology sales, andit was inside sales. I was on
the phone all day long. Andas it relates to communications, you really
have to think about how you approachyour customer what messaging you want to use,
how you're helping them solve their problems, and things like that. So
it was really it was really good. Two years I learned. I learned
(04:00):
a ton, but it became prettyclear to me that that wasn't my long
term path. And so how Iended up in the nonprofit space in the
policy space was I had been debatingwhether I was going to go to law
school or get my master's in publicpolicy. Landed on the public policy track,
found myself going from Chicago to dC, where I started studying masters
(04:24):
in public policy with a focus onenvironmental policy, and so found myself working
at an NGO called American Rivers doingsome river conservation policy work, mostly on
public lands kind of stuff. Andthen after that I moved over to a
group called the Wildlife Conservation Society,which is a large international conservation organization.
(04:46):
They run the New York Zoos andaquariums headquartered at the Bronx Who And both
of those cases were really really goodexperience working on getting my hands deep in
policy, but seeing the connection betweenand a policy and how we reach out
to our various stakeholders. It's notjust government, right, So at American
rivers I was. I was helpingwith our advocacy, but I was also
(05:11):
building a network of what we werecalling river stewards across the country, so
I had to reach out to abunch of local river conservation activists. So
that was a really interesting experience.And then Wildlife Conservation Society. I was
really getting deep into policy at thatspace because that's when climate policy was being
heavily negotiated. This was eight ninetime frame, and so I got to
(05:33):
work pretty heavily on that. Andthen I found myself coming over to Dow
in a policy context, so abit different than what I've been working on
on the conservation side. But cameinto Dow and was working largely on energy
policy, but you know, avery different context because we're an energy intensive
(05:56):
manufacturer and so I really had tolearn the ins and outs of energy policy
in a totally different way. Soit's really it was a great It was
a great way to get a reallywell rounded experience. I have to go
back to the sales thing for asecond, because there's so much talk today
about resilience, building resilience and alsobeing flexible in your mindset, and I
(06:20):
think that that early training like yousaid, a couple of years will really
get you very deep, especially asyou said, you're on the front line
of it every day. Did doyou feel it made you a bit more
resilient and also sort of flexible andnegotiating how you're going to deal with any
given situation. Yeah, I thinkso. I mean, you know,
for me, it was something thatreally stretched me out of my comfort zone.
(06:41):
I am naturally more of an introvert, and so sitting on the phone
all day long calling people I don'tknow is really not super comfortable for me.
But it built up this kind ofability to hear rejections or at least
counters to what I'm saying, andthink through that process of how I'm how
(07:03):
I'm gonna, you know, meetthe needs of that customer. Maybe it
doesn't work out, but you justhave to think through things a little bit
differently, and you're doing that dayin and day out, so over time,
you just get really kind of comfortablebeing in that space of either hearing
no being rejected, failing and havingto come back not meeting customer needs and
(07:24):
having to call them and talk tothem about what went wrong and take ownership
for things, and so you know, you do that long enough and it
becomes something that, at least forme, it was just a little more
comfortable. And I think that thathas helped, that has definitely served me
throughout my career up to this point. Well, two things come to mind
right away. First of all,and we'll get to this soon, in
(07:46):
terms of the team that you workwith today, it's how it really puts
you in a place of symbiotic likecompassion with media relations professionals who are calling
in a different way. We don'tlike to think of it as sales,
but it's got similar. The otherthing is, and we'll definitely talk about
this later, because when you andI were chatting and you were making points
about what it means to be atruly matrixed organization, I would assume that
(08:11):
that background, it really gives yousome compassion and connection with your colleagues and
sales and other types of parts ofthe business. Absolutely. I mean,
you know, at the end ofthe day, they're the ones on the
front lines with our customers, andso we'll get into it more, but
I you know, arming them withthe latest and greatest and ensuring they have,
you know, all the right messageson some of our biggest initiatives hugely
(08:35):
important. I mean, they're theones speaking to our customers, and it's
ultimately our customers, right that aredriving our growth, driving our business.
So usually, yeah, it's true. And it's interesting because as you're making
that pivot from public policy to businessand marketing communications, that sense of who
is the stakeholder and who's the customeris really really important. But even before
(08:58):
we get there, one of thethings you said, that's very interesting about
the work you did at the WildlifeConservation Society and then the work you do
today at DOO. And by theway, I now have the Simon and
Garfunkle it's all happening at the Zooin my head, so that's all that
you said. The Bronx too,that's growing over in the seventies. That
commercial here is on all the time, so that's in my head now.
Just a little side thing. Butyou talked about being in an energy intensive
(09:22):
manufacturing business, and that's very interesting. You really have that through line of
sustainability. And I think sometimes whenpeople are thinking about energy, they're thinking
about energy producers, they're not alwaysthinking about energy users, and that must
be that must have been a reallyhelpful lens for you to adopt or learn
more about as you came into theDOW context from the nonprofit context. Is
(09:43):
that true? Yeah? Absolutely,Like I said, I mean, I
think it gave me a much morewell rounded perspective on how complex energy really
is. When we're talking about butenergy is what drives everything, right,
I mean, even if you bringit forward to today and think about you
know, AI and all the datacenters that are being built up, Like
(10:05):
one of the biggest issues that theyare going to be contending with over time
is access to electricity or energy topower those those data centers. So it's
a hugely important topic. And youcome into a company like now and you
know, half the company here expertson energy in some way, or energy
or engineers, and so it wasa huge learning curve for me. It's
(10:28):
been great experience because it ultimately iswhat drives drives everything. So, you
know, as we're looking to decarbonizeover time, I mean, understanding the
interplay between getting to a low carbonfuture and what that means for where we
are today in terms of energy iscrucial. Yeah. You know, it's
(10:48):
so funny as I kind of livein a double consciousness of a communications practitioner
and counselor, but also an organizationalleader in my role, and I'm always
thinking about what are those messages andmindsets that are most important for this moment,
And you're reminding me it's like,first of all, pay attention to
the nuance and also there's a lotof dynamic tensions out there. When you
(11:09):
tell I was totally thinking also aboutAI. How we're in this moment where
AI is going to advance so manythings. You know, people have a
lot of feelings hashtag feelings about AI, but the fact is is that there's
such amazing things happening, but it'salso this really problematic challenge regarding the energy
consumption, and that just seems tobe the name of the game today.
(11:31):
How is it that as professionals inthis space, we really pay attention to
deep nuance, which I think isvery important working with companies like that,
but also understand that some things arein dynamic tension with each other. Do
you see that as a mindset ora skill set that should be cultivated these
days? Nuance is just really importantfor any of these big conversations. I
(11:54):
think we can all agree that weneed to decarbonize. We're we're very folks
on it. It's one of ourmain strategic pillars is decarbonize and grow.
But you know, just saying weneed to then switch to all renewables,
that's not going to be practical,it's not going to work well. We
will see a lot of negative ramificationsfrom that. And so you start talking
(12:18):
about these spaces from a communication standpoint, from a policy standpoint, from a
business standpoint, hugely, hugely complex, and so I think that we need
to get to a place where we'reless afraid of nuance. We need to
get into it. And it doesn'tmean that anyone is trying to slow anything
(12:39):
down or anything like that. It'swe're trying to get to a solution,
and you have to understand the detailsand how things practically work in order to
figure out how we move forward.So I think really working through the sticking
points and the nuance, and Iknow we'll talk about it later, but
I think this is where working acrossso many different stakeholder groups is really important,
(13:03):
because all those perspectives are crucial foranything that we're going to do from
a business standpoint, right, wereally have to understand how we're going to
move the needle, and you reallyonly can do that when you understand all
of your main stakeholders perspectives. Yeah, there's very few silos anymore. Everything
(13:24):
is permeable. So between the publicpolicy and then the role that you're playing
today, which I want to getinto more. You were in the office
of the CEO for a while atDow and that, to me is a
really interesting bridge because talk about gettingthe bird's eye view of the whole stakeholder
landscape. How did that experience sortof shape you or inform you or widen
your lens or whatever metaphor you wantto share with me. Yeah, I
(13:48):
mean it was. It was greatexperience, and I think from a you
know, going back to the careerart discussion, not something that was on
my radar, but that's probably truealmost every single role that I've taken.
I love that though. I thinkthat's amazing. Right. I've had I've
been open to things. I've I'vehad goals, I've had interests all that,
(14:09):
but I haven't I've rarely kind ofpointed to a job and said I
want that job. I've I've kindof just said yes to things as they've
come along. So you know,going back to twenty fifteen, this is
our previous CEO's chief staff at thetime reached out to me and we had
some conversations, and I decided tojoin the team. And it made a
(14:31):
lot of sense at the time becauseI was in a policy and an advocacy
role at the time and or CEOwas very active in those spaces, so
I had a familiarity of the spacethat he was operating in, so moved
into that space. But to yourpoint, you know, you then very
quickly see it across the entire organization, and you know, it's a it's
(14:56):
an interesting space to lead. Sous it lines up under our communications function.
So there's the executive communications piece ofit, and then there's kind of
just the general executive support that comesalong with it, the preparation, the
thinking through how best to use youknow, this individual's time across you know,
(15:18):
a large global company. And soyou know, for me at that
point five years into my time atDOW, it was an amazing way to
see across the company, to goto all sorts of you know, our
production facilities and all sorts of differentregions, and so the learning curve there
(15:39):
was was it was great. Itwas rapid, you know, you got
to get up speed pretty quickly,but it was just such a tremendous way
to see to see the company toyour point, the breadth of the stakeholders
that at that level you're having toengage with, right so you know,
all of our top customers are goingto want to have time at some point
(16:00):
with the CEO, all of ourpolicy makers. The CEO is helping to
open doors they and they want tomeet with him. Obviously our employees,
right this is they're a huge,huge part of things. And so you
know, just thinking through that broadlandscape, and then it was I was
kind of in a unique position ofone when I first started is when we
(16:23):
also announced a major transaction of theDow DuPont merger, and so that kind
of, you know, shook upthe landscape. Like literally the day that
my stuff left, I had beenliving in Philadelphia, was moving back to
Midland, Michigan, where we're headquartered, and literally the day that my stuff
left Philadelphia is the day that weannounced the merger. So a small thing.
(16:44):
So yeah, so the landscape shifteda little bit. So we worked
through that, but then was alsofortunate enough in that period to work through
a CEO transition, so previous CEOretired, new CEO who is our current
CEO, Jim Fitterlan came in andyou get to see a lot from that
perspective of different styles, how theyapply those to their leadership of an organization.
(17:10):
And because we were going through thismerger and then ultimately spinning out as
as a new now as we werecalling it, you know, how how
you're bringing new culture into the organizationand how we're framing things differently, and
it was it was a really reallygood opportunity to kind of think through from
(17:32):
my standpoint, kind of how westrategically UH used his time and how we
thought through what with the biggest thingswere to tackle initially but then but to
really see from that level the consistencyand message and the you know, real
(17:52):
passion for the team and for peopleand that's how we're going to move forward.
And I think that that was justit was a great learning opportunity for
me, real privilege to be ableto you know, be close to leadership
at that level. Opens a lotof doors to be around leadership at a
lot of other companies. So youget to see a lot of different styles
(18:15):
and ultimately, you know, Ithink you get to work on a lot
of different things. But I alwayssay, what's also unique about it,
at least the way we were structuredas a small team, a lot of
responsibility. You don't really own much, right, so you're kind of pulling
on different parts of the organization toget your work done. And you know,
(18:38):
for me then working through the matrixorganization that we are, you know,
once again, that's just a it'sa skill set that you know probably
had a little bit of it comingin, but but you're not going to
be successful in that role unless youcan navigate that. So put that on
steroids a little bit for me.Oh, I bet, you know.
And it's it's interesting. First ofall, there's you're making me reflect on
(19:00):
the fact there's moments in our careerthat sometimes we see them when we look
back, sometimes we know it's happeningat that moment that are really a masterclass
in a way. Or you canthink of another analogy where there's just this
confluence of opportunities or this moment intime where it's just going to be this
big leap of growth and might behard, might be different, but it's
(19:23):
exciting and I believe were you stillin the office of the CEO during the
COVID when that was unfolding. Yeah, it's another big moment in time too.
Absolutely, And you know, soyou learn a lot about how to
one the critical importance of a steadyhand, calm demeanor, right because all
(19:45):
of a sudden, a lot ofpeople are looking at you when things change
overnight. We're sending people home,right, Yet we also have a huge
percentage of our workforce that's going towork every day in this environment because we're
running twenty four cents and so ityeah, really really interesting vantage point to
see things and also to learn howto adapt very very quickly. Right.
(20:07):
So we at the time I washelping out with our global leadership conference that
we put on every year, weobviously stopped that and so adapting quickly to
say, we still need to alignwith the organization, but now we have
to do this in this virtual environmentthat at the time was not what it
is today as everybody knows. Andthen you know, I think we'll probably
(20:30):
touch on this later, but justthe amount of internal communications at that point,
it just went through the roof andgave me a deep appreciation for the
value of it that I see soclearly now in my current role. It's
a different application of it, butit's just so it's so important, So
(20:52):
give me a really deep appreciation forthat as well. Yeah, you know,
another binary from back in the daythat I've observed was this sense of
internal communications versus external communications. Soobviously, things like social media to a
conversation, the evolution of the webbroke a lot of that down, okay,
and society changes generationally. But alsoI think it was a false binary
(21:15):
to begin with in many ways,although it was easier to command and control
things in and out back in theday, not not totally. But I
think the other thing is there wasa real hierarchy for my observation about external
comms being the thing and internal commsbeing yeah, we have to do some
internal comms. I think that hasradically shifted. I used to talk about,
(21:36):
you know, to me, thedrop falls in the pond and the
first ring that radiates out is yourown people and your own internal stakeholders.
How is your understanding of what hasbeen known as internal communications change? I
mean, do you agree with someof what I'm thinking that those that there
was never shouldn't have been a binaryto begin with. In some ways,
I do, I do. Andyou use the social as a great example.
(21:56):
If you look at our social channel, some of the highest engagement on
our lives social channels are employees,right, So that's where a lot of
our employees are learning about things thatwe're doing and seeing. Right. It's
it's yeah, we're doing stuff throughinternal channels as well. But a big
percentage of our population doesn't have accessto a computer, right because they're in
(22:17):
plants and you know, in themanufacturing environment, but they're personally on LinkedIn
or x or something like that,and so those those channels are actually really
important for our internal audience as well. But I just you know, if
you if you go to so inthe COVID context, very very rapidly,
(22:37):
we had to you know, wewere meeting with leaders, our leadership what
we define like people leaders. Soit's about the top thirty five hundred within
the company, anybody that which hasa lot of people leaders to reach it
is. And so we were doingweekly calls with them to align on kind
of here's what we're doing, hereare the next steps. We would highlight
them. We were doing things likeyou know, turning over facilities to produce
(23:02):
hand sanitizer, like, we weredoing a lot of that stuff. So
we were aligning around some of thoseactivities that we're doing, but also aligning
on kind of the nuts and boltsof how we're operating through this through this
environment. And then weekly there wasan all employee communication that went out as
well. So that's that's a lotof communication. As we look forward to
today, you know, I thinkthat we probably came down a bit on
(23:26):
the overall I mean, we're notdoing that that much internal, but if
you think about within our businesses,it's really really important that this concept of
kind of internal for external. Wehave to talk to our employees to align
them around strategy and what are ourmajor initiatives and what are we really really
(23:47):
focused on? What does what doesthe market look like today? Is it
are we in a challenging environment,are we in a growth environment? What
what do things look like? Andhow is that informing what we do?
Because then our employees become ours,right, not just our sales folks,
but yes, our sales folks whoare going out and meeting with our customers
every day, so they definitely haveto have that but if any employee,
(24:08):
they're talking to their friends, theirfamilies, we are generally Yes, we
have some sites in bigger cities,but generally speaking, we're located in smaller
town, smaller communities around the world. We're tightly knit within those communities,
and so our employees need to bearmed with the ability to go and speak
about what we're doing or be informedabout what we're doing, right, so
(24:30):
they become our biggest ambassadors, andso that's really really important. And then
you just get into like the nutsand bolts of building company pride super important
and making sure that you know,people really understand that things behind are.
When we talk about decarbonize and growor transform the waste, when we're talking
(24:52):
about plastics, what does that reallymean? What is the work that we're
really doing? And so the internalpart I genuinely believe you just kind of
can't be successful in anything that you'redoing if you're not able to align and
encourage and inspire your employees around allthe great work that you're doing. So
(25:15):
I couldn't agree more. And frankly, we're here to cultivate understanding between people.
We're here to try to improve literalcommunications between people. That could be
a marketing message too. You know, I want to give something of service
to you, and I want toserve it at the right time because you
need this thing or this service oryou want to learn more. But it's
amazing internally if you can't kind ofpeople talk about hearts and minds, If
(25:40):
you can't bring that excitement or thatunderstanding to your own team, especially when
it's as global and large as now, what an incredible incubator for understanding.
You know how messages are received andhow they resonate. You know, if
you don't start there, where areyou going to start? So you from
(26:00):
public policy office of the CEO nowyour global director of Business and Marketing Communications.
So years ago, what did youthink business and marketing communications meant?
Like, what was your perception ofwhat that would be and did you self
identify with that at all? Beforeevolving I think and bringing a ton of
skill sets to the role. NowI've been close to it. I've been
(26:21):
within our public affairs leadership team fora number of years now, so I
had a decent understanding of everything thatwent into it. But I if I'm
being totally honest, I think Itended towards really kind of understanding what we
would call more purely marketing communications work. Like I understood the promotional activities and
(26:44):
all the responsibilities around that in whatwe were doing to try to get in
front of our customers and you knowtrade shows as an important piece of that,
and how we're using digital channels andthings of that nature. What I
think I probably I can say now, being you know, a year and
a half or so into the role, I probably did discount or just didn't
(27:06):
have a great awareness of all thewhat I would call business communications stuff that
goes into the role. So youknow, there we're talking about the real
strategic communications around big business initiatives,the executive communications support right from our business
presidents or our you know, globalmarketing leaders. There's a lot of communications
(27:29):
support that goes around, you know, when they're going out and talking about
the business and talking about DOW Sothat's a huge part. When we're doing
you know, various versions of Mand A, the team gets involved in
that, and then you know,there's crises fromtimes, there's issues that need
to be managed, and again it'sthis team that really is on the front
(27:53):
lines within the business helping to managethat. Yes, with with others in
corporate and government affairs and and thewhole again matrix and diversity of folks around
the company. But I think that'sa piece of it that I really wasn't
surprised a little, but it probablydidn't have the full context on just how
(28:17):
much of that is part of therole and important for everyone within the team,
right, not just the kind oftop leaders within the team, but
really everybody. Everybody gets involved inin some respect. So and it's exciting
to peel back the layers of theonion. You know, again, you
were directly involved with a lot ofthat, but then to peel deeper and
see and the interplay between what mightbe understood as business or corporate communications and
(28:40):
the marketing communication side that might bemore customer or prospect driven. You seeing
that symbiotic relationship between the two,and how the issues landscape and articulating really
purpose and values and also very tangible. You've talked about two of them,
the declimatizing and also reducing ways ofplastics piece that you folks are working looking
really hard on. You know howthat creates a conversation that ultimately does have
(29:04):
a lot of customer impact. Mean, how have you seen, Peter as
you reflect on your role and movingtoward it, How have you seen business
comms or marketing comms changing over time? What's your reflections on the landscape that
you and your team are working innow? Yeah, I think no question,
the importance of the multi stakeholder environmentis just huge. So if you
(29:32):
kind of take a step back andlook at Dow overall, right, so
we have I'll talk a little bitabout, you know, since the time
that Jim came in New Dow andlooking forward, so we no longer have
a mission. We have an ambition, right, and the ambition is to
be the most innovative, customer centric, conclusive and sustainable materials science company in
(29:52):
the world. And I think that'simportant because an ambition mindset is you're kind
of always striving for something. It'snot about being the biggest, it's not
about being you know, it's reallyabout being kind of the best in those
areas that will then make you asuccessful company. And so we're really focused
on that. And then underneath that, we also developed and rolled out kind
(30:15):
of the purpose, so the whybehind what we're doing, and that's to
deliver a sustainable future for the world. Through our material science expertise in collaboration
with partners. So that piece isembedded in our purpose is that collaboration with
partners, and I think a bigpart of that is to reflect on and
have a little bit of humility aroundwe don't have all the answers we need.
(30:38):
These are big problems that we're tryingto solve, right so, climate
change and decarbonization huge challenge, Plasticwaste Plastics as a material are critically important.
Plastic waste a big issue and wereally need to we need to work
across the value chain with all sortsof other stakeholders to help solve that.
So I think, you know,those kind of themes around collaboration really really
(31:04):
important. My team's role specifically ESis you know, lead generation to be
part of the sales conversion process andall of that. But that's definitely not
where it stops, you know,to use the title of the podcast here,
right, it's it's around building brandgravity. We're building brand equity,
(31:25):
brand loyalty, leading with our technologiesand solutions and working with all of our
partners, customers and others on howwe solve all of those those issues.
As a B to B company,I think what's really changing when we start
thinking about stakeholders is maybe at onetime it was it was feasible for us
to really kind of mostly focus onour direct customer. Our direct customer,
(31:52):
we're making things that then our directcustomer is usually adding to converting in some
way, doing something to it tomake the final product, or even or
even just one more step down thechain before it becomes a final product.
And so it puts us in adifferent place. But I think we used
to be able to say, Okay, we're going to focus on those people,
(32:15):
the converters, let's call them.I think now what you're seeing is
so many different influence points on consumerbehavior, on the value chains, on
what is what is actually driving demandor sending demand signals into the market.
It's totally it's totally different. Sotoday we have to do a lot more
(32:37):
to understand not just our customers,but our customers customers. We have to
understand and know if we could haveany influence among you know, with consumer
behavior or within the whole value chain, and who the value chain captain may
be, where is where's decision makingreally happening, or where's changed really really
(32:59):
happening. So that's a big shiftfor us. You know, the regulatory
environment is driving demand signals in amuch stronger way than I think in the
past. So if you use youknow, a good example I think are
if you look at like electric vehiclesgo around the world and in any one
geography, there's there's a different approachto how we are trying to drive the
(33:22):
adoption of electric vehicles. That's that'sa huge thing that we need to understand,
and that as business communicators, weneed to understand what that environment is
so that as we're out and promotingDOW solutions, we can be aware of
the differences in you know, whatEurope is doing is different, is quite
(33:43):
different than what the United States isdoing, is very different than what China
is doing, right, and sowe have to really have that understanding of
that that policy environment. And thenjust to name, you know, a
couple of hours, we talked aboutemployees, so I don't want to discover
that that's that's huge and number oneas we've talked about, but then you
also look at NGOs and academia andhow they are they have their own platform
(34:06):
to drive preferences into the market,and that's just grown exponentially with digital.
Right, It's it's just a verydifferent thing that we have to understand.
And so for all of our allof all of my team, you know,
really understanding all of those dynamics inanything that we do is hugely important.
(34:28):
Where it gets interesting and I thinkvery complex, is on the one
hand, you know, through digitalchannels and through all the technologies that we
have and measurement capabilities, we canbe very very targeted, right, We
can target messages to a very specificaudience. At the same time, everybody
(34:49):
has access to a lot of differentplatforms where they can get messages that are
not necessarily targeted at them. Sowe have to think about all of that
as we are driving our various communicationsstrategies. And good examples, we recently
hosted an investor day, right,So investor Day obvious who the core audience
for that is, but it's apublic event in terms of we broadcast it.
(35:14):
We put stuff out on our website, like anybody can tune in and
watch this, and so you thenhave to think about, yes, your
messages are targeted towards investors and ownersof key stakeholder. But you know,
as my team was putting together theirmaterials for how we're updating investors on where
we are and where we're going withineach of our businesses. You have to
(35:35):
also think our customers are tuning in, our employees are tuning in, community
leaders are probably tuning in, policymakersmaybe tuning in. I think that's powerful.
It gets back to that word Iused earlier, permeability that you know,
there's and it's an interesting time again, a dynamic tension, right,
because with AI and other types oftechnologies, at least how generative AI were
(35:59):
the attempt to get there being appliednow in marketing and communications, et cetera,
the targeting will become more predictive,more precise. That's the dream at
least, and many are advancing thatthere's a real arms race now in that
field. So technology, com tech, marketing, tech, all of these
things will the written word, allof this stuff creative is expanding and changing,
(36:20):
so the targeting will increase. Butyou're right, there's still increase permeability
between audiences. So it does soundlike you know, the teams that you're
overseeing, those working on business commsand corporate and issues, management and marketing,
communications and experiential and events. Youknow, that that need to be
very mindful of all stakeholders in allcontext and understanding how this context we're going
(36:43):
to wait more heavily to this stakeholder, but others will come along, and
how does it resonate first and foremostfor those one or two primary audiences,
But what are the valances or thevibrations for the others. For my team,
you know, large number of themare sitting within business leadership teams,
and so they're connecting with you know, marketing, commercial sales, technical services,
(37:07):
R and D, sustainability and youknow, all the different parts that
get a business to operate. Communicationsoften plays the role of kind of helping
to connect the dots between those folksand drive towards consensus. So that's one
big skill set of being able toeven work within that context. And then
(37:30):
a big company like ours, youknow, if you're working on something related
to let's say plastic waste, Imean that has business context, that's very
you know, there are a lotof business interest definitely corporate interests, definitely
geographic interest and you have to beable to work within all of those things
to knock down the silos. Weare going to be silent, We're a
(37:51):
big organization. They just naturally exist, right, But you have to be
able to understand who are the folksyou need to work with and how do
you how do you work with them, and so I think that piece is
hugely important. Part of that,I think does also come down to how
you build your network and so howyou think about working with people and so
(38:12):
candidly, you know, I thinkone of the challenges coming out of COVID
is we're doing so much virtually thatit tends towards or it can towards the
transactional. Right. You have athirty minute meeting on your calendar, you
join, you wrap up whatever wason the agenda, and you turn off
your camera and you go about whateveryou were doing. And so I think
(38:34):
it's it's really really important, especiallyfor people as they're coming into Dow kind
of early on, to be aroundcolleagues and to get to build those networks,
because over time, that's how youreally learn how you get things done.
I'm glad you're mentioning that because Ithink it's a skill set. We
need to honor what is possible virtuallyand amazing opportunities, but also honor what
(38:57):
is happening in creating deeper relationships.What's required from that, whether you're in
physical proximity or not. I lovethat. I think it's really really important.
Yep. And so yeah, Imean all of that kind of then
lends itself to we all operate inthe great space. Things are ambiguous.
I just believe if you can't operatein that space, it's going to be
(39:21):
a bit of a bit of astruggle. So I think that that's a
skill set that people really need tolean into. I think the hard communication
skills. I mean some people aremore naturally better writers or more naturally.
I think you can learn really thehard communication skills, and I do believe
they're hard. I actually don't lovecommunications being referred to as the soft skills.
I think that they are. Ithink it's very hard to do it
(39:44):
well. But how that all comestogether, So dealing with a matrix,
dealing with ambiguity, having a planbe because things are changing faster than ever
before, and so it's okay tohave something not work as as you thought
it might. But how do youhow do you adjust? And the last
(40:04):
thing I'll say is I think thatlends itself to is we're thinking through a
lot of what we're doing in theplastic space or energy transition. Right,
so we're working in the nuclear space, we have a project on nuclear or
our mobility team working on you know, evs and like vehicles and that kind
of thing. These are all reallynew business models and so some things aren't
(40:30):
gonna work out. And I thinkthat we also need to get a little
more comfortable in even talking about orhow we talk about failure and what we've
learned, what we're doing, youknow, what we're moving on to.
But I think that that concept ofit's okay, especially in the environment that
(40:50):
we are in today two to saywe don't we don't know everything. We're
gonna learn along the way, andsome things aren't gonna work out. And
I think it's sometimes for you know, a one hundred and twenty six year
old organization like we are versus astartup, you know, you kind of
don't you know, as comfortable talkingabout that. And I think it's just
it's increasingly important for us to doso. Yeah, And it's funny going
(41:14):
back to the silos. I waslaughing to myself because you're saying, obviously
Dao was huge, but I've runa company that is like thirty or thirty
five people, and now one thatis like one hundred and thirty five.
And silos exist everywhere. Every humancommunity creates little camps and that's a beautiful
thing and it's also a challenge.Two things true at once. And so
before we run away today, Peter, you mentioned the name of the podcast
(41:36):
earlier building brand Gravity. Is thereanything culture in the world of brands that
has you and it's gravity? What'ssomething that's exciting to you right now?
Yeah, So, actually a fewthings. So one, I recently read
Jonathan Heights's new book, The AnxiousGeneration. Amazing book. I think everybody
should read this. It is alsoreading about The Anxious Generation has made me
(41:59):
anxious parent because you know, Ido little kids, and so it's a
book that I just haven't been ableto stop thinking about because the research and
the data that's presented, and it'sreally hard to ignore about how this like
living in this virtual world and onscreens all the time, how it's really
(42:20):
impacted our kids. And so thatone, it's an amazing book. I
highly recommend it, but it isnot you know, you come out of
it. It's not a light it'llit'll get you thinking, So, so
that's definitely it's not a light romYeah, absolutely, that's definitely one.
The hard Fork podcast is one.And actually I think that was recommended to
me by GNS his own Kyle Turner. Oh, he's great, Kyle.
(42:43):
Kyle's on top of everything out therein the tech world, especially absolutely,
and he turned me onto this andI listened to it all the time.
It's it's if you're interested in innai is or all things really tech.
But but they spend so much timean ai They cover the gamut on all
the stories, but in a reallyfunny way, and I think it's it's
(43:05):
really really well done. And thenthe last thing, and it's just something
that I've been connecting with my kidson lately. So the Spear in Las
Vegas, I'm sort of obsessed withnow and in part I thought it was
cool before, but you know,they recently had Fish played there for like
five nights. I'm a big fishman, and now Dead and Company are
grateful Dead He's doing a bunch ofshows there and the videos that like,
(43:29):
they're just filling my timelines with theamazing light shows and visuals and everything.
So one I'm super jealous of everybodythat's been at any of these shows.
But what I think has been kindof cool about it is it's fun to
show my kids and it's been agreat way to introduce them to some of
this music that I love that Ithink without this they would kind of think
(43:50):
it's not so cool. I lovethat. Oh, this sphere is such
a thing, and you got tobook yourself a ticket, got to get
out there. I know I'm trying, but more luck yet. Well,
Peter, thank you so much fortalking to me today. It's been such
a pleasure to have you on buildingbrand gravity and thank you for making the
time. Thank you. I reallyreally appreciate it and appreciate the longtime partnership
(44:13):
with with GNS. Oh, thankyou. I love the conversation I just
had with Peter Goodritz of dow Youknow, he's Global Director of Business and
Marketing Communications within the Global Public AffairsGroup, but he's played a lot of
different roles across his career, includingin nonprofit NGOs, on the public policy
side, and in the office asa CEO. Is that he's got a
good sense of, first of all, how permeable a lot of aspects of
(44:37):
our field are as in it usedto be B to B marketing versus B
two C, or internal communications versusexternal communications, or you know, maybe
public policy, public affairs versus marketingcommunications, or business communications. And I
think the biggest lesson of my conversationwith Peter is how these things are very
(44:57):
symbiotic and very co mingled. Alot of the silos you got to break
them down. And one of thethings you had talked about a lot was
what's the skill sets needed from communicatorstoday in any of these contexts. And
one of the things that you talkedabout a lot is the ability to really
work in a multi stakeholder environment.So we may he gave the example of
(45:17):
working with on an investor day,so ostensibly the main audiences investors, but
the fact is is that the otherpeople tuning in because it's public are maybe
NGOs or community leaders, employees,other stakeholders, also customers and prospects,
not just investors. So in someways that may seem obvious in our context
today, but being in this fieldfor thirty years on the agency side,
(45:42):
it was not always obvious of howpermeable these areas were, and a lot
of things were very binary. Well, I do B two C. I
don't do B to B. Andthe fact is is that now today a
lot of it is business to businessto consumer and back again. And certainly
some divisions I saw earlier in mybetween, Oh, those are the corporate
guys, or the public policy folksor the public affairs folks, were the
(46:05):
Marcom people, were the B twoC or B to B communicators. This
stuff is very commingled. So Iloved hearing Peter speak about that. And
the other skill set he talked aboutquite eloquently is the idea of what it
means to work in a truly matrixto organization. So his organization is very
large, very global. But thefact, even in a smaller context,
(46:25):
like say my own agency GNS,where we have over one hundred people in
different disciplines and specialties, you haveto be really compassionate and empathetic and also
a learner to understand what is happeningin those other areas and to learn how
to work with people across those divisionsand silos. And that's a constant.
It's diplomacy and connection, and it'sunderstanding and learning. And I think it's
(46:50):
wonderful that he underscored that as askill set for communicators. As he said,
we are often the ones connecting thedots between different parts of the organization,
so I hope people take to listenand enjoy it. We are GNS
Business Communications. We are a teamof media strategists, storytellers, and engagement
experts who meet you at the intersectionof business and communications. To learn more,
(47:14):
visit gscommunications dot com. You're listeningto building brand gravity, attracting people
into your orbit a GNS Business Communicationspodcast. Keep connected with us by subscribing
to the show in your favorite podcastplayer. If you like what you've heard,
please rate the show that helps usto keep delivering the latest in industry
(47:36):
influence. Thanks for listening. Untilnext time.
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