#99 - The Taking the P's, The Serious Business of CSR and Facts Don't Speak for Themselves Episode

This transcript was automatically generated by a machine, and as it becomes sentient it may have its own ideas of what we said....

"I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that"

Jeff Clark  0:01  
See that's why the 10 commandments just don't work because let's see I follow the seven and oh I forgot about

Ian Truscott  0:18  
Hello and welcome to episode 99 of Rockstar CML f m, the M is a marketing an F, as well you decide as you're probably wondering, does the world need another effing Marketing podcast? I'm your host Ian Truscott and this weekly podcast this is my excuse to chat with Martin friends older new that I've met through my career from techie to cmo and hopefully share with you some marketing street noise that my guests and I have picked up along the way. Come say hello, we are Rockstar cmo on Twitter and LinkedIn, and a proud member of the Marketing Podcast Network.

This episode was recorded on Friday the 28th of January. Hope you had a good week and you are well safe and staying as sane as you feel you need to be. This week Jeff Clark and I chat about the piece of marketing Rebecca beastman returns chat about CSR corporate social responsibility. I wind down the week in the Rockstar cmo virtual bar to be transported away with my friend Robert Rose for a cocktail and a thought for the week.

But first, we need to tell you about our tap I'll be back in a moment.

Right sounds of our first segment Jeff Clark is a former research director at siriusdecisions Forrester and principals strategic advisory here at Rockstar CMO. And this week, we continued with our discussion on marketing education inspired by listener comments.

Welcome back to Rockstar, cmo FM How are you my friend? I

Jeff Clark  2:10  
am doing very well. Doing very well. Welcome weather here in are cold wintry but Sunny, Western Massachusetts near the Berkshires.

Ian Truscott  2:21  
Nice. Yes, we that's Agenda Item number one now it's

Jeff Clark  2:25  
certainly I don't know what else to say.

Ian Truscott  2:30  
After a long period of grey, we actually had one of those nice, bright blue skies. Cold Days today. So just to prove that it's not always grey in the UK. We actually had a nice day today. So we matched. Although I guess you were probably like 10 degrees Fahrenheit while we were five degrees centigrade is really a big difference.

Jeff Clark  2:52  
Yes, we were. Yes.

Ian Truscott  2:55  
So this week, let's get on with it. I can see it in your face. You can't see the video. We as I promised last week, as we promised last week, we have been inspired by a listener Irene Nicole Kane, who refer to the seven peas in a comment to us on LinkedIn. As we discussed marketing education, and we've third and third in our series of talking about masking education, Artemisia Yeah, and the seven P's by Philip Kotler. So, Jeff, we weren't we seem to have gone from 4pm to 7pm in our discussions, and and then I think we made reference to the fact whether the cool kids even recognise any of the key pays anymore. So are they still relevant? What say you, Jeff,

Jeff Clark  3:42  
while I tell you it says, this is going to be I think might be a little bit of a history lesson as well as some good tips on marketing. But isn't that

Ian Truscott  3:54  
the point of this series? Is that

Jeff Clark  3:57  
is that is that you're everything that that seems cool was like oh, well, geez, somebody actually thought of that. Yeah. And we're just in an evolution, you know, very natural for us human beings to be in kind of this evolution of understanding marketing. And so yes, Irene had referred back to Philip Kotler. He, you know, and I think, you know, I think, you know, the kind of the, the breakthrough he was thinking about was, you know, how we deliver customer value, good experiences. And but what he was building on was work that was done back in 1960. A gentleman by the name of he Jerome McCarthy, talked about the four P's product, price promotion and place and he received the mark American marketing Association's Trailblazer award. So back then he was blazing trails, and quite the

Ian Truscott  4:55  
up and coming kid So

Jeff Clark  5:01  
we stay probably fairly far along in his career at that point, but but the thing was, which I think is a, as I was digging into this, that it was interesting about the, the evolution of this back in 1960 was that he was trying to get people out of thinking of marketing from a functional perspective. So, you know, right. And that's what we've been talking about education, you know, we think of the functions, you know, there's the product team and the brand team, comms team, and, you know, the web team and blah, blah, blah. And, and, and it's, and it's one of things that certainly, you know, I focus a lot in my advisory work is like, Well, how do you how do you raise everybody out of the silos to think about what to do more holistically. So this, you know, this book on the four P's was, you know, basically saying that people managing the marketing function need to be thinking about all the components. So it's like, you know, we got our product. So what's the product? You know, what are how are we going to price it? How are we going to promote it? And then, you know, what's the, what's the place? And so, you know, when you think about a reefer, retail perspective, you know, where's the brick and mortar store, but obviously, in all marketing, I mean, the place now is online. And, you know, and so there's, you know, that certainly has a as an aspect to it, but, you know, you got to think about all all these four things. And, you know, one of the examples I stumbled on, they were talking about, you know, Jet Ski rentals. So I've got a product, you know, I've got something that's interesting for people to, you know, for leisure to, you know, to, you know, take a ride in a jetski so I can price it such that I have maybe some discounts for people who are taking a trip to my location, I got the place where I got to put it so you have to have the jet skis close near where somebody can actually use them. Kids Yeah, up on Hudson Bay in Canada, because probably won't haven't been on that. And, and then that, right, promote it, you know, I certainly send out emails, and I could do Instagram and Facebook, and, you know, people who've, you know, who've, you know, taken the trips, put your pictures up, tweet it out, you know, yeah, so, so again, this, you know, if I'm trying to think about marketing holistically, I got to get beyond the, you know, my individual silos of the functions that within the group and think about how all this works together. But just

Ian Truscott  7:30  
on that just astonishing, isn't it? How much has changed in 60 years in that has not changed. think more holistically. Wow. I mean, it must have been crazy times back then. So they were the basic four P's that everybody knows product, price, promotions, and play. So how do we work our way up to seven?

Jeff Clark  7:54  
Well, you know, what's, what was interesting? It was when I found when I dug into the four P's, I was like, Well, I was up, there were five P's. Because, you know, I had, I think, a couple of bosses who were, you know, talking about the five P's of the marketing mix. And the fifth P was people so, and I actually I couldn't find an attribution to who, who added people but but, you know, the obvious part is that you know, when you're providing a product or service, you know, that there's, there's interaction, so sales people, service people, customer support, you know, how do people appear? Or what are their attitudes, what are their, you know, and this, you know, I mean, just think about you and you go to, you go to your little jet ski trip and if somebody just seals throws you the keys and say it's over there, you know, you're feeling like, what, what's all this about? Am I going to enjoy this or at least I'm getting off on the wrong foot and as I was, as I was thinking through this, I was reminded by one time when I was hiring a brand manager at one of the companies I worked for in Boston area and I ended up interviewing somebody who actually worked at a previous worked at a grocery store and and so I can't remember why I you know, invited him in for an interview because I was I know initially it's like, Well geez, your experiences at a grocery store were a high tech company selling software. And then but what was interesting in the in the interview is that if this grocery store that you worked at, which is a big chain in the in the East Coast, I won't mention the chain because I know these people get touchy about their brands, is that she would just walk it she was walking me through how everything about the experience of somebody coming and of the store, working their way around, you know, selecting things, checking out bagging. It's just like every everything had to be thought through because that was the brand experience. So the checker, the Bagger, the guy worked on the deli counter, or in, you know, the, the butcher and all these different people, you know, so personally run into the aisles, when you say, I can't find the, you know, the hot. It's like, it's like, you have to think through all of that. And that's why I think this this fifth P certainly was is an important thing to consider. And, but, excuse me, but the, the thing that was the, I guess, the breakthrough or whatever for Cotler was, and let's just

Ian Truscott  10:51  
Okay, let's just let's just remember that remained by where we are with a five p, so we're at product price promotions place, and people just in case people are singing along at home, right? We can't, we can't attribute it. That who added the fifth P So Jeff, you're taking that one? Right. So the Great, I'll take it. So let's work our way up to Cutler with isn't now the seven does he start with the same five

Jeff Clark  11:17  
starts with the same five? Yeah, so so so he's building, he's, you know, he's innovating by building on work that's happened before, you know, and again, trying to trying to get people to think more, you know, more holistically about how they're managing the marketing mix. And of course, when when, sometimes when people say the marketing mix, you think of basically your delivery channels or the promotion aspects, my marketing matches my didn't mix is my digital ads and my events and my social data. Yeah, but this in this case, the marketing mix is thinking of all the components that go into the the full picture of managing marketing. So as it's kind of alluded to earlier, is I think that the big jump here is that as people became more worried about providing a good customer experience of which is it certainly the by example, the grocery store, they were worried about a good customer experience. Yeah, but but, you know, he, he says, you know, we really need to add processes, and processes that are that are touching the customer. So, you know, customer service process, you know, self service technologies, you know, any kind of process design in us certainly, you know, we're familiar with that, with dealing with websites and content management systems, you know, what's the process by which we actually present something to a customer. And so, you know, whether it's an online or an offline experience, we have to think about what's behind that engagement, which is a really, you know, for all types of businesses is a really challenging effort. Because, again, you're, you're typically your, your, the people who are doing this work are sitting in silos, and it's only the CMO, you know, who maybe has a, you know, a broad view. And if they don't have like a Customer Experience Officer, then, you know, the CMO is alone in trying to figure out how to how to make all these pieces work together. So process was the sixth one. And then the seventh one was physical evidence. And as I was going through this, I was thinking about, like, you know, you're shopping for perfume or cologne? Or what's the face, like, we actually can eat? You know, you're, you're, you're experiencing the product? And what, what was interesting

Ian Truscott  13:43  
about the unboxing of absolutely all that stuff.

Jeff Clark  13:47  
Yeah. And the thing is that whether you got a tangible product or not, it is good to be thinking about what the physical evidence is. So, you know, like, the, the example that that I saw for, you know, for more of an abstract product, like insurance, I mean, you're you, you sign the contract, you know, from there on what happens. And so if there's some sort of, you know, onboarding documents, some brochures, some something that you get, and I was thinking about how many companies we would do, you know, a customer onboarding with a welcome kit, you know, that kind of thing that's like, oh, you know, now my post purchase experience, have something that is abstract, that software is actually supported by this, this, this physical element. And so, you know, I think that that, again, these two elements are all about touching, engaging the customer and making sure that they're having a good experience and does it support your brand,

Ian Truscott  14:50  
right. But when I first saw these because I must admit, I mean, I'm relatively well read ish, I suppose. based on the number of books I own, but I was not familiar with the seven PS, I'll be honest with you, I was familiar with the four and the five. And when I was looking at this initially, I was wondering whether these were just a bit derivative of the existing PS, you know, like, if it back in 1960, when you were talking about people, that was the way that cut, that's the only customer experience touch point, right? Yeah. So really, they were talking about customer experience in the language of the day, right, which was predominantly about people. And so but then I was then I thought to myself, but really, I think an argue with myself, is I think these additional, these additional two Ps reflect the times and they do

Jeff Clark  15:42  
they do, and by the way, I'm happy to let you argue yourself. Cuz I really entertaining.

Ian Truscott  15:49  
I also wonder if they, once you go beyond a certain number, trying to think of more words that start with P to match the argument is the problem. Because really, it's four P's customer experience. It's, it's it Well, five peas in a C, really, isn't it? Because what we're orchestrating your customer experience, was really saying about physical evidence, we just talked about the experience of the products on me. Yeah.

Jeff Clark  16:19  
And so I mean, you're, you're right on the button with the fact that these last two the process and physical evidence is, is because so much so much of the transactions have gone virtual or online. So therefore, am I losing something that implants an aspect of my brand? In the customer, you know, and I certainly would feel this little, you know, a lot of online experiences is that, you know, you just you're, you don't see who the people are behind it, you lose touch, becomes very impersonal becomes something that, frankly, if I'm, if I'm ticked off at him, at some point, I'm just going to drop them because I don't have necessarily a positive, you know, brand impression, it's just a transaction. So you got to do something that really helps to build that in. And to your other point is, I mean, I know from, you know, from human psychology, I mean, it's very hard for us to remember anything over seven, which is, which is always why See, that's why the 10 commandments just don't work. Because it's like I found, let's see, I follow the salmon. Oh, I forgot about the guy's wife or whatever, that other way. And

Ian Truscott  17:38  
so, I think I think I think I can remember about as many moments as I could the seven piece. Yes, right. It's probably three.

Jeff Clark  17:47  
And there was a, you know, there. I mean, there was a an article that Irene had, you know, we'll send us the link, and it's like it then the people who wrote it, it was the professional Academy. I don't know what they're professionals at other than following things like this. But they asked the question, is there an eighth P? Oh, my God, really, which was productive, which they postulated to be productivity and quality? And, I mean, the thing is that you run into the other issue. I mean, there's one you can't remember a now I'm going to forget the 80. But there's also you start to get into overlap where you see that? Well, you know, it's like, sort of the productivity and the quality of it all. It's all about delivering the product. So how is that different process? How does the different from the physical evidence How's that different from the original thoughts about the product and its packaging itself for the pricing? And so, so I think, I think we got to like stop at seven and the future marketing innovators of the world have got all kinds of different alphabet for different purposes.

Ian Truscott  18:54  
Well, yeah, I mean, like I was saying about the Cutlass, seven notes, it felt feels to me like that whole P thing had been stretched too far. That point once you got past four or five,

Jeff Clark  19:05  
but also things like pea soup, which I mentioned, it was one of my lunch. Very

Ian Truscott  19:09  
nice. Yeah, very nice. It's pea soup. That's true. But, but also like if you look at the basic four P's, I mean, it just it that's about a marketing mix, isn't it it's about the basic elements you need to go to market with something right? Yep. The five P's of adding people well, okay, yeah, great, we can add the people because obviously that's important as well. So you've got your products you've got your price you've got your promotions, how you're going to get out there where are you going to place the products you've got your people sounds about right five Ps I'm on board, but then processes lead to me is like it's part of what you should be doing as marketing anyway do is it part of your marketing mix? Or is it actually part of how you go to market like in these in these seven P's nowhere here is their payroll, right? But you know, you're gonna need payroll. How many talking fees? Are we going to list? Right. So? And as as for the eight productivity and quality, according to my notes here? That's a step

Jeff Clark  20:13  
up to four. I think I think you're arguing effectively that innovation might be best focused on consolidating. Yes. Yes. And, you know, which, which may happen. I mean, well, actually, it's evolved, you know, some and somebody is gonna come up with five M's. Music, using different words to describe the same thing,

Ian Truscott  20:37  
as we carry on with this series. And I've interviewed a number of book authors on this very show that have had that have a number of excellent acronyms that didn't start with P. No. Well, they could. Yeah, acronyms. They didn't, they didn't, they didn't, they didn't contain any peas, some of them like grits from, from, I'm gonna have to I got carry on where I've forgotten the author's name of Christina, who was on the show. Oh,

Jeff Clark  21:07  
yeah. That and that was, uh, yeah, that was very interesting. Yes, it is. So, you know, I think one of the things that is a good good takeaway is that is to, when you when you hear these constructs, and, you know, and they may be interesting, because they become, you know, interesting talking points or whatever, but, but seeing what stands the test of time, so I think your, your, your discussion, or I say you're you're arguing against P, P six, and seven, is actually a, I think that shows that the the first five P's are, are something that stands the test of time, you know, and we can, we can fill this a little bit, but if, you know, if I, if again, if I'm building my marketing, you know, training enablement programme, as a CMO, I would definitely put the five P's in there and say, you know, and if you want to go, and I just think there is a case that with in the virtual world, these, these other two, you know, have a potential place, but it becomes this becomes something to get everybody in your marketing team, on the same p page, yes, about?

Ian Truscott  22:24  
Well, I want to get getting on the same page, I'm gonna have to focus on the P that is people, which is whenever I refer to a past guest, I have to have this thing where my brain doesn't forget what that because that sway in the grip methodology was by Christine del villa. And I. So I shall include a link to her stuff in the show notes. But that's also what we're going to continue to talk about right in our continuing education is we'll look at some of these other models and see how they stack up against this. The classic and so tinkered with by Kotler

Jeff Clark  23:01  
listeners should send in their their favourite model they want us to dissect or their favourite book.

Ian Truscott  23:11  
Yeah, whatever it is that floats their marketing boat and keep them sane on a regular basis. And what they go back to refer to it would be great to hear some of that stuff, or anything else that you think we should be discussing, or if you agree or disagree, I think there should be eight PS, or seven or three, or it's all actually

Jeff Clark  23:28  
and we will share that we bring you in.

Ian Truscott  23:32  
Yeah. All right. So so we've done the weather. We've done the four Ps, the five Ps, seven PS, we've mentioned Irene, I've forgotten the guest name. So that's the agenda sought out one last thing. What's the track? We're going to end with Jeff?

Jeff Clark  23:45  
Well, it has to do with PS. Yes. So great tune from the Black Eyed Peas puppet, which begins with P. So I think that that's a great way to end this, this episode. And we'll come up with another letter for the next time I'm on. I love

Ian Truscott  24:09  
it. And and that is also from 2009. So we've accelerated this. Oh, Jeff. Well, I'll play out with Black Eyed Peas puppet from 2009. And we'll see you next week. Jeff? Yep. Excellent. Well, we'll carry on with this and I'll see you then. Cheers, buddy. Okay. Bye bye. Bye. Joining us

Thank you, Jeff, that was puppet by the Black Eyed Peas in 2006. Look at us a track from this century. Anyway, if you have a suggestion for a topic or a book or even a track, please let us know. We are Rockstar cmo on Twitter and LinkedIn. And thank you, Irene for your suggestion this week. right onto my guest. You may remember Rebecca beastman, the Chief Marketing Officer at reputation from Episode 93, we had a fun conversation, during which we discussed Rebecca's impressive marketing career through b2c and b2b Tech, the rebranding of reputation, and we touched on the social impact programme, she launched at RMS risk modelling software company as an important topic and an age of brainwashing. And I wanted to know more. And this week, Rebecca agreed to come back and dig into it. Hope you enjoy the conversation.

Rebecca, welcome back to Rockstar, cmo FM how are you? Good. How

Rebecca Biestman  25:56  
are you doing?

Ian Truscott  25:56  
I'm doing very well. Thank you very much. And for the listeners who didn't hear you on a couple of weeks ago. Tell us a little bit about yourself.

Rebecca Biestman  26:05  
Yeah, my name is Rebecca beastman. I am Chief Marketing Officer for a b2b SaaS technology company called reputation. I've spent 10 years in tech marketing before that spent the first 10 years of my career in retail, and CPG and sort of have switched back and forth between marketing functions and social impact functions throughout my career.

Ian Truscott  26:27  
Yeah, and that's an it was a great conversation. I encourage people to go back and listen as well. And I think the reputation product, it was really interesting about the your, the way you went through your rebrand and your focus on reputation, which is kind of important to all of us. But one of the things that we talked about before we hit record, we were going to talk about CSR, one of your passions and areas of expertise, corporate social responsibility, but we didn't quite get time. So thank you for coming back and discussing that. So why don't we start with the basics from your perspective. And I'm presuming most listeners know what CSR is corporate social responsibility. What do you think is a good CSR programme?

Rebecca Biestman  27:06  
Yeah, in my experience, companies that have a good CSR programme is one that kind of goes beyond this broad aspirational mission, but it actually directly connects to the business model of the company. And that's the way that it's going to feel authentic and meaningful for all the stakeholders, not just your employees internally, but also for your customers or prospective customers.

Ian Truscott  27:27  
Yeah, I like the way that we really quickly got to authentic. That's the key to all of these things, isn't it? Um, but and it's NCSL has become a bit trendy lately. We're hearing a lot about that and some of the other acronyms around the same discipline. And you're not new to this. Tell us about your experience that I mean, we talked about when you were at risk management software, when you were last on the show, and that you created a CSR programme there. So tell us your experience about that.

Rebecca Biestman  27:55  
Absolutely. You know, they took a pretty unique approach to social impact. And CSR. Risk Management Software is a risk modelling software company. And so they basically sell their risk models on a software platform to large insurers, reinsurers and financial institutions. Yeah. But what they quickly realised is that these risk models could have a lot of positive impact if they were able to open up new markets and offer these models to large global NGOs, government organisations and nonprofits. So I was brought in to basically do business development work and open up those new verticals so that they could not only use their products solely for profit, but either give them pro bono are at a steep discount, and also open up the business to new verticals. And that was really kind of the marriage of these two things. Doing well, by also doing good is what made the programme so sticky, and really helped it grow over the years that I was there. So they had sort of a very unique approach to their social impact.

Ian Truscott  28:58  
That's really cool. So I like that expression doing well as well as doing good. So. And I was going to ask you what the benefits of having a good CSR programme, but sounds like if it's absolutely wedded into your business, actually both promote each other, and then they help each other?

Rebecca Biestman  29:14  
Absolutely. I mean, a good CSR programme should absolutely provide opportunities for business development for growth for employee engagement generating good well, I mean, ultimately, that's what also results in higher shareholder value. And so people have this idea that corporate social responsibility and business outcomes are intrinsically separate from one another. When done well, they can absolutely, positively kind of affect and impact one another up and down the chain of a business and that takes takes a lot more thought it takes a lot more strategy and a lot more time to develop CSR programmes that are like that. But it's, it's possible

Ian Truscott  29:53  
and you think that's where the benefits are when they're more deeply rooted into an organisation because otherwise, isn't it just seen as a thing a cost a bit of marketing? It's on the side, isn't it? It's not core to what you're doing as a business. It might be core to your beliefs, but it's not core to what you're doing as a business.

Rebecca Biestman  30:11  
Absolutely, when it is syphoned off and siloed, as kind of its own separate programme, or it's just, you know, a donation matching programme or an employee volunteering programme. There's nothing wrong with any of those. But when that's all it is, and it stops there, the level of impact it's going to have in an organisation is automatically stifled right from the get go.

Ian Truscott  30:33  
Right? And did risk management self LMS have that in place before you joined? Was that something that you generated for them?

Rebecca Biestman  30:40  
Yeah, yeah. And and the way that we they did not have anything in place. Again, we saw this synergy between the products and services that they were offering for it to serve, its and being able to kind of extend that out, open up new markets for them. And the way that we also were able to kind of bring in the core business value of what they did to the employees directly, was that they had a lot of kind of scientists and engineers and risk modellers that had a tonne of subject matter expertise. And so when we started opening up and working with nonprofits and NGOs, we were actually able to bring our subject matter experts on site to Haiti, to Brazil to Nepal, to places that had their kind of catastrophe, vulnerable geographies where we had models that work anyway, to bring them on the ground so that they can work side by side with organisations that we were impacting with our technology. Again, it's just a more authentic, meaningful way to bring these programmes back to the people who work at the company, but

Ian Truscott  31:39  
it must have been awfully fulfilling for the people in your team, right? That probably, I don't know, a huge amount about risk management software, but it's probably dry or dealing with, you know, people in in New York Downtown or in the financial district or something like that. And then you find yourself helping an NGO in a place like Brazil, that must be mostly part of the risk management software experience for employees, right?

Rebecca Biestman  32:04  
Yes. And it was sort of became this aspirational programme that employees apply to every year, we created a really unique experience for employees every year, and it became a recruiting and retention tool of employees. And, you know, when we sought to build the programme, we knew that there would kind of be this positive halo effect on an employee. We didn't really have an idea of how beneficial that would become until the programme had been developed and going for a few years.

Ian Truscott  32:30  
Right, right. And so when you were looking at the benefits of this, it sounds like there were clear commercial benefits, because you were opening up new markets. Did you see a change in retention? Or did you measure it by like simply the number of people who were super interested in being on the programme?

Rebecca Biestman  32:45  
Absolutely, yeah, we measured application rates, every interview we did, there was any mention of the programmes that we had. And I would say the qualitative and quantitative feedback that we got from the programmes that we were launching had a huge impact on morale, retention, our ability to recruit top talent, and in today's market, things like that are more important than ever. So I would say that, you know, candidly, that was kind of a secondary consideration when we started these programmes. But if CSR has done well, and if your social impact programmes are meaningful and deeply embedded in your business, you're going to get those Halo effects all around the organisation.

Ian Truscott  33:23  
Yeah. And just thinking about, I mean, where are you based at risk management software? I mean, was there something around the local market and make this work for you? Or do you think it's a, it wouldn't matter where you were headquartered? It's something that everybody can do from that perspective.

Rebecca Biestman  33:36  
Yeah, the programmes we set up are global in nature as we're offices, but it's interesting that you kind of talk about impact on local community, because free company is CSR programmes should look different. And company has the ability to have meaningful social impact programmes, but for some companies, just as you've said, if there is a direct tie with the local community based on the products and services that they're offering, there's absolutely no opportunity to get local, and have that meaningful impact kind of on the ground where you're based. And there are a lot of companies today who do that really well.

Ian Truscott  34:09  
Right. And I think there's almost no obligation nowadays, especially with the reputation that big tech has and these guys in taxation and contributes the community, that larger organisations should take a look at, you know, the few miles around their headquarters and help help the folks there. Do you think that's more of a sort of thing that consumers are starting to expect?

Rebecca Biestman  34:31  
I think there is absolutely an expectation that all businesses not only have the obligation, but the privilege to be able to give back to their local communities and that if these businesses are not making the communities where they sit better, what is the point of funding the business in such a waste? I mean, consumers today are becoming so much more discerning about all of this spectrum of environmental sustainability, you know, everything from ESG to kind of local philanthropy, you Consumers today don't just expect it they expect it in a meaningful and again authentic way.

Ian Truscott  35:05  
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, one of my daughters is very against me buy anything from Amazon. Right. From the things that she's she's heard around that organisation, I think people are getting a lot more sensitive to that. But we you talk there about, we've both talked there about a little bit of an obligation and maybe people should look at this stuff. Do you think every brand every company needs having CSR programme or at least consider one?

Rebecca Biestman  35:30  
I think in some way, shape or form, every organisation has the opportunity to have authentic social impact programmes. And so my answer to that would be yes. With the big caveat and asterik that not every social impact programme or CSR programme should look the same. There is no one size fits all. And so the the most difficult part about launching a CSR programme is figuring out what CSR should mean for your brand. Yes, easy.

Ian Truscott  35:55  
Yeah, I mean, sounds like when you're at risk management software, they were all in. But it might be something you start small in one of your offices and work up to something like that. I mean, it sounds like a major undertaking means sending people to other countries and stuff is not something everybody can can stand, right. Yeah,

Rebecca Biestman  36:11  
no. And, you know, grassroots, halvings employees, grassroots start these programmes, that's often how social programmes get started, especially when you're in a business where it's not completely clear how the business model can align that programmes oftentimes it's the employees themselves that are passionate, come up ideas, and then they kind of grow from there.

Ian Truscott  36:33  
Yeah. And often, I mean, my question was, my next question is like, what's marketers role? Which is an odd question, because often CSI is just thrown into marketing. And, and it isn't, it isn't embedded in in the company as a whole. But what would you say is the ideal role that marketing should be playing around a CSR programme? For the listeners?

Rebecca Biestman  36:55  
It's a great question. You know, I don't think marketing should play a central role rather than an execution of social impact programmes to your point, because greenwashing and all of these people can sniff that out really easily. These days, I think marketing has a very specific role, which is to do what they do well, and that's still the value that's being deployed from all of these initiatives across the company, and amplify that value, where it's meaningful and authentic. And having that kind of filter to be able to distil and amplify the value of the activities that are already going on. Right, which created authentically, that's really marketing's job anyway. And they shouldn't in their lane, instead of marketing kind of incepting these programmes for marketing sake, because that's the easiest way to appear, you know? Yeah, absolutely.

Ian Truscott  37:46  
Um, so really, you would see a CSR programme and the marketers role the same as any product or service or anything the organisation is doing. Our role is up amplification and finding the right audience. And engagement isn't to actually deliver the product or service. Right? That's right. Yeah, yeah. And but do you think marketers have a particular skill set here? Why does CSR programmes always wind up with marketers? I mean, is it just because we're people people or what why do you think it is? It's always marketers that looking at these programmes? You know,

Rebecca Biestman  38:19  
it is funny how that happens. I think intrinsically people who are in marketing kind of understand the value of CSR and social impact programmes, and I'm, you know, we can't deny that there's marketing value in these programmes, especially if they're done well. And they're done. Right. And, you know, I think marketers kind of intrinsically understand the business implications of having strong social programmes. And I think marketers are people, people, I think a lot of times, they're often champions for these causes, you know, marketing HR teams, those teams tend to be more focused on building our programmes like this. And then marketing teams are the ones to talk about it anyway. So often ends up kind of sitting there, but I've seen it. I've been at companies where these programmes have sat under the head of HR, they've sat under the Head of Brand and communications, they've sat under the business development team, I've seen they've sat under the kind of operations or strategy teams, you're finding more and more that these rooms will sit under different arms of the organisation again, where it makes sense for them. It's all

Ian Truscott  39:27  
right. Yeah, I'm probably asked marked as a board of talking about features and functions. So we just like something else to talk about write a great story. No, I'm getting great service because some, you know, the, the interest outside work that a lot of our colleagues or even our management teams and CEOs have can be really interesting to our audience and our buyers. Right. So this these some of these are great stories to tell. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And I mean, I was gonna ask you about the height and scepticism against brands with the woke Washington greenwashing. But I think you've covered that I think what what we're saying Hearing that this isn't a marketing function, that's when you get found out. It's actually when it's, it's either authentically employee driven from the grassroots or it's something that's core of the mission for the C suite. Yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah. So and so it goes beyond marketing words. And it was interesting, because we had this conversation, when you're on the one you're on the podcast, it was off off record, because we didn't get around suit man. But I was actually talking to a CMO that I mentor about creating a CSR programme, what their plans for it, and it gave him some decisions to make. And he was thinking well, that if we take a particular path, say like, we have a view about tobacco use, or we have a view about recycling, or whatever it is, he might need to make some decisions about the clients that he works with, he chooses. And I actually read an article, I think it was an Ad Age or one of their marketing rags, about similar thing where agencies were thinking about who they should work with. And I think one of the Forrester or Gartner analysts posted about LinkedIn, I said, won't that be the other way round soon as well, where companies are going to choose whether to work with agencies or based on that. So this whole ecosystem of CSRS is is a month or? So it's a very long question. And whether this contents or customer we've seen, I mean, it's starting to become core, isn't it in the way that that we work?

Rebecca Biestman  41:23  
Absolutely, you know, making decisions about being intentional? Yeah. When you manage your business responsibly, they can have all kinds of implications. There's all kinds of downstream effects and AI companies that have fired entire customer segments. Yeah, they divested from entire lines of businesses that have been profitable for them. And so this is not a small undertaking, or a kind of peripheral consideration to make around the business if you want to do CSR, right. If you want to have meaningful social impact programmes, you at some point, have to decide how far you're going to take that and there can be ramifications for the business that are major, not minor. And so what your mentee is grappling with is a really serious thing. In your point, there's precedent for companies completely changing the way that they do business, because they take it seriously. Yeah. And

Ian Truscott  42:22  
do you think anything, because as marketers, we also need to look at who we look to, to help us the agencies we use, the vendors that we use, and take a look at their CSR programmes and see if they're, if their values align with ours?

Rebecca Biestman  42:36  
Yeah, you know, and this is something that's happened when I started out in retail, I got corporate, I worked for a bit at the gap Foundation, and so you know, responsible supply chain and, and that kind of vendor ecosystem and having these conduct for the vendors that they use. That's something that's been around for a long time on the retail consumer packaged goods side, because supply chain is such an important part of their corporate responsibility programmes. And so I do think that now in b2b and kind of software industry, there hasn't that hasn't been as common that is becoming more or a consideration, whereas before that kind of vendor ecosystem or supply chain really wasn't on about.

Ian Truscott  43:20  
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And you've mentioned a couple of brands, obviously, we've talked about risk management software, but you were behind this ESL programme. And you mentioned the gap there. And what other examples do you think of brands that are doing this? Well, or companies that doing this? Well, where have you seen this implement?

Rebecca Biestman  43:35  
Yeah, you know, on the retail side, I think Patagonia is just for a company that takes social impact and CSR and puts out of profit, they've shown that time and time again, on the tech side there, there are smaller tech companies like Kiva and others that are really mission driven kind of core foundational, the way they built their business was around mission. So it is all kind of automatically authentic. You do have big tech, who has programmes that are kind of scaled and take it very seriously. So Cisco network Academy is one. They've had that programme for years that impacts 1000s of people around the world. And so I think kind of different industries have their own take, again, on what it means to be kind of authentic and have it organically sit within the core business processes that are already in place.

Ian Truscott  44:26  
Right. And this is an extra question that I didn't, didn't prepare, but I was just thinking about the fact you work for reputation, right? So yeah. Do you see this coming through in your day job as well that CSR is is an integral part of an organization's reputation. It comes through in the numbers that you look at?

Rebecca Biestman  44:43  
Absolutely. And I mean, we have products that do social media listening for our customers. We are monitoring for them. We work with the biggest brands in the world. So there's absolutely reputational risk that comes from supply chain issues. We engagement, employee compensation issues that come from safety and health issues with some of our larger brands. We hear about these things all the time. And often our tools are able to kind of pick up that crisis and the centre of that crisis very quickly, so that brands really understand where they need to make those meaningful change.

Ian Truscott  45:21  
Well, people aren't scared to share bad news on social media.

Rebecca Biestman  45:26  
For brands, it's becoming more imperative than ever to make sure that they have the appropriate programmes and processes in place to be able to manage it, because to your point, you make a mistake, and it's out there. Yeah, absolutely. He. And so it's really about it's not just compliance. It's not just crisis management. It's about doing the right thing before there's ever and shifting your time for companies.

Ian Truscott  45:50  
And I can only imagine that. And so we're coming up to time. But if, if this has inspired listening to create CSR programme and speaking to you, I certainly feel inspired. And how do you start? And how do you sell a CSR programme to your management team board? And presume you needed to do that RMS? So where where should somebody start? They don't need to be a marketer, anybody that's listening that thinks that that company could do good, where do you start?

Rebecca Biestman  46:16  
Yeah, CSR should not be disconnected. business outcomes. If your CSR programme is intrinsically linked to your outcomes, you know, increased revenue, opening up new markets, experimenting with new products, or pricing models, even include improving employee retention, and employee engagement. Those are all core metrics that a business cares about. I the programmes that you're creating, not just your business model, but to these core business metrics, so that it's very aligned with the priorities of an executive team of a board management team, you will be able to execute these programmes and have support and buy in at the highest levels. Because again, there is no disconnection between a business outcome and the programme that you're trying to create. The programmes that you're trying to create are fueling positive. And really making that connection and understanding that you're not gonna have a problem selling this at any level. Yeah, if you're,

Ian Truscott  47:16  
if you're positioning, right, I mean, and it sounds to me like, and I hadn't considered this before, it sounds to me like it's like, anything really we do as a marketing team is, I mean, I always talk about you had a similar thing you just mentioned, but I always talk about awareness, revenue and trust. And if the thing your any, because it's the acronym is art. So it sounds quite nice. But marketers create art. If you can't align the thing you want to do against awareness, revenue and trust, a thin the C suite law, well understand, then they're not going to get on board. And it sounds like CSR exactly the same, right? You could be doing it for awareness, you could be doing it for revenue, could be doing to build brand trust, these are all good things. But you need to make it clear. And when you when you have that conversation, speaking that language right.

Rebecca Biestman  47:57  
And the CSR programme that you're implementing doesn't accomplish those things. It's probably not the right programme anyway. So let me kind of a filter for you to say, Wow, if I can't marry all of these activities that we're doing in business outcomes, then it's probably not authentic, and it probably will be syphoned off to the side and not taken seriously. Anyway. And that's not the kind of CSR programme.

Ian Truscott  48:21  
I let you see the word right in my mouth, I was thinking exactly what you were saying there is that if you can't align with a CSR programme with your core business, it will not be authentic, and it will look in authentic because there's no way that you can run a garbage collection. I don't I'm gonna I can't think of an analogy. But you know, whatever it is that you know that it needs to be key to what you're talking about Otherwise, otherwise, do you know employees should be encouraged to do that kind of stuff, but maybe it's not your CSR programme? That's right. Yes. Excellent. What a nice note to end on. Thank you very much, Rebecca. I think that's inspired me hope it inspires listener. And if people want to talk to you about CSR or anything else, where can they find

Rebecca Biestman  48:59  
you? Yeah, you can find me on LinkedIn. Rebecca Viessmann. Just look me up

Ian Truscott  49:03  
on I'll include all your links in the show notes. Thanks very much, Rebecca, speak to you very soon.

Thank you, Rebecca. I really enjoyed that conversation. And I will of course, include all of Rebecca's links in the show notes which you can find at Rockstar cmo.fm. And if you like this segment, please let her know. Right. Friday evening, time to wind down in the Rockstar cmo virtual bar. My friend and content marketing guru Robert Rose to be transported away with a cocktail and a marketing thought

Good evening, ma'am it what do you drink?

Robert Rose  50:03  
Oh, hello, my friend. It's nice to see you in the bar. You know, and it's I have to say it's beautiful here. It's, it's it's rare for winter, but it's quiet. And that's nice. I'm sure you're happy about that.

Ian Truscott  50:19  
I'm very happy when the bar is quiet. I said Yeah, way better.

Robert Rose  50:23  
Last thing you need given I've what I understand your last week to be is any more production or post production challenges. Think of your of your wonderful podcast. So we have a show here in Southern California. Yes, it has been absolutely spectacular weather. And as it turns out, in the rest of the US this coming weekend in which your listeners are listening to this, it is about to be ungodly winter, like, you know, East Coast is going to get two feet of snow and it's so I thought we'd just you know, throw that in their face. A bit of a summer drink a Southern California drink here. And we call it just for fun, too To Kill a Mockingbird. I'm hoping it's called Tequila Mockingbird, which is a very simple drink. It is very great in the summer so when it's warm, this is not this is not your standard winter cocktail. It is tequila Of course. You're a nice rep Assata works best here not An Na Ho with a little bit of muddled watermelon and muddled watermelon is kind of a weird thing. You don't really muddle it, you just sort of crush it until it turns into a juice and then a slice of jalapeno. You stick in there just add a little bit of spice to it. And put that over ice and you have yourself a very refreshing summer sit by the pool or the beach on a warm winter day here in Southern California. Oh very

Ian Truscott  52:02  
nice. Yeah, we do some mild weather as well. Not quite cool weather that we're into for some mild weather this this weekend ourselves. But so I shall attempt to make that drink from the ingredients on my desktop bar as usual. And you'll be pleased to know that I've actually got an additional ingredient this week. What did you get? Oh, let's

Robert Rose  52:26  
ah, all those not at all with a gin and tonic. But yeah, a fun. Yeah.

Ian Truscott  52:33  
No. Well, we've moved on now haven't we? So let me let me start off with the the most English of reposado tequilas. Oh by the way to keep the mockingbird My wife bought me a cocktail book for Christmas called Tequila Mockingbird. So there you go. I think she's trying to encourage me to drink tequila as well. So two people in my life want me to up my my up my cocktail game. Well straight if you include Dennis. Let me let me get into this gym. So there we go some some nice and put that in the book. Did you did you put ice in that?

Robert Rose  53:13  
Oh, yeah, of course. Yeah. It's warm here in Southern California. Cool drink here. I really am all winter. Hey, yeah,

Ian Truscott  53:21  
I'm gonna have to think about this dropping ice into this into this metal shaker and not killing the listeners arrows. So I've got some ice. I'm going to pull some gin upon that. I mean English, tequila. And then I have What did you put in that?

Robert Rose  53:42  
You know, there's a little bit of what we would classically call a muddled watermelon. But that's you know, I mean, muddled is a little bit of a of an overkill statement for watermelon because all you really need to do is take a spoon and squish it till it turns into a juice. And then of course, a one slice depending on your tolerance for two slices of jalapeno, how can you track that kick?

Ian Truscott  54:05  
Alright, let me give that okay, so then the nice paper that the Martini company have already done the muddling for me and have created something called extra driver mousse. I don't know if

Robert Rose  54:19  
you're familiar. Not that but yes, fine. It's very

Ian Truscott  54:22  
similar, I think to in mailings in the it's a light colour. A little whisker of that. And then jalapenos. I can introduce my lips to that. So I have olives. I'm not gonna put the olive in yet. What are you doing, man? You've got to stare at first? Yeah. Did you make it very, very cold?

Robert Rose  54:46  
Yeah, yeah.

Ian Truscott  54:48  
gins and tonics. It's much easier to make a gin and tonic on the radio. All right, I mean, no. Pull this cocktail glass

Robert Rose  54:58  
on the radio. Your boomerangs showing my friend. Yes.

Ian Truscott  55:05  
All right. I mean, give that stick. No, I live in. I live in right.

Jeff Clark  55:12  
Hmm. Cool.

Ian Truscott  55:14  
You can certainly taste that English tequila. Wow. Yeah. That's Jolly good. That's very nice. And

Robert Rose  55:21  
that's that's the most English of tequilas. Yes, it's that's and that incense

Ian Truscott  55:25  
that soup is lovely warm weather in California. And presumably, this is where you're going to whisk us away to bear in mind the rest of the world.

Robert Rose  55:32  
Yes, we're will be here in my backyard. Having these cocktails, we will take the drive out through the Santa Monica Mountains out to there's a little restaurant in Malibu that we will go sit at which is right on the Malibu Pier. And they have amazing hamburgers. And we'll have a delicious hamburger sitting on the pier, watching the surfers and chatting about all things that we chat about.

Ian Truscott  56:00  
Lovely. And we'll be drinking Mondays and what was it called?

Robert Rose  56:05  
What's what the drink is called? Tequila Mockingbird. Yeah. Lovely. Okay, so for no other reason than I just love the pond. Yeah, yeah,

Ian Truscott  56:13  
I love it. And so when we, you just mentioned that we'd be sitting there in these hamburgers, drinking these Tequila Mockingbird and watching the surface, what would we be discussing this week?

Robert Rose  56:26  
Well, you know, it has to do with what we're producing his content these days, you know, I was, you know, I was talking with this health care company. And, you know, the interesting thing was, it was five years ago, they started this thing that they wanted to launch. And it was basically a content platform, you know, whether you call it a blog, or a digital resource centre, whatever, you know, like a little mini website, just call it Yeah. And with the, you know, with the help of a, you know, a few ad agency consultants, they launched this thing. And the idea was that it was going to become this repository of facts. And the idea was, is that they were going to set up this digital library that could answer every question very factually, very straightforward. No, you know, no muss, no fuss, you know, almost in that sort of COP, like, you know, you know, just the maximum kind of thing. And they, and they literally said, we're going to let the facts speak for themselves. And we're going to win as a result, this customer retention battle, because we'll be providing all of this amazing knowledge. This is the part where the narrator comes in and goes, it didn't work.

Ian Truscott  57:40  
It sounds like a vendor that has a little bit features and things are going to win the feature function was like winning the knowledge war, because our knowledge is,

Jeff Clark  57:47  
well, that was the idea,

Robert Rose  57:48  
right? We're winning the knowledge of war. Right, you know, no one's fighting that. And, you know, I mean, look, facts rarely speak for themselves. You know, they are they're bashful that way, you know, facts are, you know, and I mean, you think about the last time you were in an argument with anyone, you know, whether it be a colleague, whether it be your boss, whether it be you know, your spouse, whether it be your friends on social media, what whoever it is, think about the last time that you won the argument by simply listing out facts. And the answer is never, you never did that. Yeah, the guy interesting. Yeah. All right. And interestingly, you know, there's there's been research done on this, there's, there's, there's research that recently been done that called the backfire effect, which is, when you actually list out facts like that, that sort of support your point in sort of an evidentiary based way, it actually starts to increase the sort of resistance or misperceptions among who it is you're arguing with? And I mean, you can see this happening on social media all the time, right, you know, we see it in culture all the time right now. And the thing is, you know, people start coming up with alternative facts, or these are the facts that feel true to me. And the key is that, you know, we have to make people care about the facts. And that's the, that's the whole point of all of this stuff is that in order to make anything worthwhile and really persuasive, you've got to not only show why, you know, and provide evidence that this is important, but you have to present it in a way that people care about it. And that's really interest in so as we get further into this sort of AI driven, algorithmic driven, sort of list out, you know, all the information and you know, ingredients, you know, based sort of arguing and content assembly We have to increasingly think about how we're going to make people care, you know, how are we asking how we're going to make those people care. So, you know, if our only goal, quite frankly, is to give something, you know, give people something that they're going to either disagree with, or agree with, or sort of, you know, give them you know, a piece of information that satisfies a query, and not have them care, because they're not going to take action. And we don't care if they attack action, or whatever, fine. A fact is, all you need, right, you can become Wikipedia. But, you know, if you really want them to care, you're going to have to wrap it in the story, you're going to have to put it into something you care about. So you're going to have to put the care and feeding into how you assemble those facts into something that is more meaningful. And, you know, when I was talking to this, this client, I said, you know that, you know, if you want this thing to be successful, it can't just be a repository of information, it has to be something that has a point of view, and actually makes people care about what it is that you're informing them on. So that's, that's the thing that I think worth discussing.

Ian Truscott  1:01:10  
Yeah, I love that. And I also was having a conversation the other day, for an interview for this show that's going to go out next week, about exposing executives, to information from these automated curation tools. This was about competitive intelligence. And that's the same sort of thing as if you expose people to data or to facts, I'm holding up my air quotes there that come from the machines, and you haven't put that human overlay on it and told a story around it. And that gets exposed your executives? That's the same kind of thing, isn't it? Where? Yeah, you know, where really is? Yeah. Well, no, it's sorry.

Robert Rose  1:01:52  
I was just gonna say where, you know, where you, you know, and this happens all the time, right? Where, you know, you're trying to be impartial, or you're trying to be research based. And, you know, so you you present all these, this this list of figures? And don't put any meaning behind it. Right. Yeah. And, and if there's no meaning behind it, you know, it doesn't matter. It just doesn't Yeah, there. You know, I used to I, you know, there was funny, and this is an internal communications thing I used to see all the time clients would, you know, I would say, Tell me about your measurement strategy. Tell me about your marketing measurement strategy. And they would say, oh, here it is. And they would send me, which was ostensibly, a, you know, all the analytics tools like Google Analytics, and Adobe Analytics, you know, they all have this ability to sort of, you know, Export as pdf. Right. And so, you literally export a bunch of reports out as a PDF, assemble it all into one document, and that was their measurement strategy. Yeah. You know, without any, without any meaning place to all those, yes, you're basically leaving it up to the audience to put meaning on the figures. And guess what, it may not be what you think it is?

Ian Truscott  1:03:08  
Yeah. Yeah. And then it's no context either, is it with that, and all you need is somebody a couple of layers up from you, and you're in the organisation, catching the wrong drift from some stats, and your strategy can be distracting to this, you know, all over the place. Got it by that kind of thing?

Robert Rose  1:03:28  
Yeah, that's exactly right. You know, so, you know, so you have to, you have to not only add the context, but you have to, but you have to assign as a as the relayer of those facts, you have to assign some level of meaning to him, because that's what makes us care about them. Right. I mean, it's the, you know, it's the there's the classic scene and in The Simpsons, right, where, you know, Lisa comes running into Homer saying, trying to get him to, you know, care about, you know, helping her out at school. And she's, you know, she yells at him it because he's not getting it seemingly not getting it. And he's, she's like, you just don't understand. And he says, Oh, honey, I understand. But just because I understand doesn't mean I care. Yeah, exactly. That, you know, and that's it, right, you know, and so many ways, we, you know, our CEO, or our audience, or our client, or whoever it is, yeah, they understand you just don't care.

Ian Truscott  1:04:26  
Yeah, yeah. And, but I mean, I kind of took the compensation in to a measurement direction, but from a content marketing direction, what was it in back to your back to the client that you were advising? What was it that they saw them? Because the thing is, is as content marketers, we're always looking for the source of good research, right? So you know, places like Content Marketing Institute, places like that, where we're looking to make a point about something and we're finding the stats and match it up point of view, right? With it today, sort of where they try to build themselves as those People that people go to them quote, because they had the facts no better than everybody else's? Or was it just they were telling a very dry story?

Robert Rose  1:05:06  
Well, there's a fairly interesting thing there. Because one of the challenges, and this has come up in a couple of other instances as well, where somebody will say to me something like, Well, I'm a technical, you know, writer, my job is not to, you know, my job is only to write out the facts or write out the How to, or the recipe or the ingredients, or whatever it is, and make it clear and make it understandable. And I disagree with that. I, you know, I think the best technical documentation is technical, there's no doubt about that, you know, and it is specific, and it is clear, and it is understandable. But it's also presented in a way that makes me care about the value of what I'm getting. And, and so many times what I've seen, and this was the case, in this particular client example, where they say, Well, it's, you know, there's a difference. And so we're gonna have different people, you know, and different skills and different roles with different purposes. So we're gonna have this group over here, and they're going to write pretty marketing, copy and poetry and stories, care. And then these people over here, we're going to stick them in a dark basement and put them in front of a green screen and make them write technical documentation or facts. And, you know, and never the two shall meet. And I just think that's a mistake. I just think that's a core mistake, because I think both can learn from each other. Right? Both of those skill sets can learn from one another, you know, it's like, it's why journalists, in many cases make such great content marketers, is because their job is to not only report what happened, but make you care about what happened. And, you know, and so that's the real magic these days is not just reporting the news. You know, it's reporting the news in a way that makes you care about the news.

Ian Truscott  1:07:00  
Yeah, yeah. And that, and that's, you know, that's our job, isn't it in telling the story, because we, you know, we have great products, or we have great ideas. And it's building that story around that.

Robert Rose  1:07:17  
Yeah, well, that's it, right. I mean, it's all about building a story. And you know, in that mean, in different, you know, over different cocktails, we can talk about, you know how that ladders up and you know, and creates a hierarchy of messaging and stories, and all those kinds of things and creating consistency there. But, but at the end of the day, at the most molecular level, what you're talking about is taking a bucket of facts, a bucket of, you know, information, and turning it into a story, right? That's the That's the magic. That's the sauce, right? That's the secret sauce of all of this is looking at your mug full of facts and going, how do I stir this up into something that's actually quite tasty? Because otherwise, nobody's gonna care? Yeah, yeah. And then it didn't matter. It doesn't matter. Even if they understand it, it doesn't matter.

Ian Truscott  1:08:03  
Yeah, no, I love it. I know. So when you're talking about technical documentation in these days, that's also part of the the content that people consume when they're making a decision. Right? So you need to have that concentrate story all the way through?

Robert Rose  1:08:15  
Well, that's right. I mean, the first, you know, the, whenever you talk about story structure, yeah, no, one of the you know, it's part of the hero's journey, and it's part of so many other story structure methodologies, the very first thing that you have to do is create an urgency. And, and, you know, in for action, you know, so in any movie, book, or magazine, article, newspaper articles store, any story you're doing, the first thing you're trying to do, is create an urgency for finishing and caring, right, because people don't care, they won't finish it. Yeah. And so when you're setting up your hero, whether you're setting up the story, you know, with your lead, whether you're setting up, you know, whatever it is you're doing, you're setting some sort of like, this is why you should keep reading, and this is why the hero needs to act. This is why you need to act. And that's the, you know, in any story that you're doing, you have to you have to be able to persuade someone to take that action or change that belief or whatever you're trying to do. And if all you do is list out the facts, you're not going to do that.

Ian Truscott  1:09:25  
Yeah. Well, that's a brilliant thought. I love it. Thank you very much for it. And where might people find other thoughts similar to this?

Robert Rose  1:09:32  
On my bug ridden new website? Yeah. Which is, which thank you for pointing out a few of the things I'm working on them in my copious amounts of spare time. Yeah, we've been splitting up as it were the the new content advisory dotnet website and trying to squash as many of the little link bugs etc. This is what you do when you assign a content marketer to work in WordPress is you get a bunch of mistakes. But it was Well, as fast as we can, but it'll be

Ian Truscott  1:10:05  
it was one link. It's perfectly fine. And if spent Pete when people will spin the dial on the interwebs, and they want to hear or talk to you of it, where will they find you?

Robert Rose  1:10:18  
On the mistake free social media networks, of course me. Usually LinkedIn and Twitter is where I spend most of my time these days. Although I keep threatening to do a tick tock, and I'm going to try and do that. I may even try this weekend to do a couple of TiC TOCs and launch them and see what the hell happens. But yeah, for now, LinkedIn and Twitter would be the best.

Ian Truscott  1:10:41  
Let me know when you're on tick tock me. I look forward to seeing it. And

Robert Rose  1:10:45  
well, I don't know if I'm letting anybody know. But

Ian Truscott  1:10:49  
Well, I tell you what the good place to be to do a tick tock would be the Rockstar cmo virtual bar. Will I see you again here next week?

Robert Rose  1:10:57  
Of course job Yes. special thing I of course.

Ian Truscott  1:11:02  
Alright, I'll see you then.

Thank you, but maybe the facts can't speak for themselves. So that's a wrap on episode 99 of the Rockstar, cmo effing Martin podcast, part of the Marketing Podcast Network. Thank you for dropping a dime into your podcasting jukebox, selecting our track and jiving along with us. I've been your host Ian Truscott. Thanks again to Jeff, Rebecca and Robert for sharing their insight. Please follow them say hello and check out all the links we discussed in the show notes which you can find on your favourite podcast app, or at Rockstar cmo.fm. You can also find all our previous episodes. So does the world need another effing Marketing podcast? Let us know we are Rockstar cmo on LinkedIn on Twitter. And please drop a rating or review in your favourite podcasting app. Or just keep listening. I'm glad you're here. Next week is episode 100. Some small differences. I'd like to interview Jeff and share with you his marketing background. He doesn't actually know that yet. I'll be learning about win loss analysis with an expert can Schwartz I'm looking forward to that. And we celebrate 100 with Robert in the Rockstar cmo virtual. Until then, have a great week. Hope you can join us here next week on Rockstar cmo

Transcribed by https://otter.ai