Transcript
WEBVTT
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Welcome back to be to be growth. I'm looking lyles with sweet fish media.
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Today I'm joined by gene axe as
he's the senior vice president of global
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thought leadership at Aa Arp. Gene, welcome to the show. How you
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doing today, man, Hey Logan, I'm doing well. How about your
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self? I am doing fantastic.
You know, we love to get to
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know our guests right out of the
gate. So, Jean, are you
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team coke or team Pepsi? Where
do you fall in the great debate?
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There? What an else? That
a question. Well, you know,
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I'm neither team coke or team Pepsi. I tend to stay away from the
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soda's as much as possible. I
may have a coke here and there,
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but for the most part I'm I'm
neither and, frankly, to the Hofite
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and their days, I cannot tell
the difference. So my apologies for the
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hey. Well, coke came out
of your mouth. So you know,
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by default your team coke when you
are there, but you know, sounds
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like your team water. Team stay
away from the Sodas, which you know
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I've kind of ebbed and flowed in
in that myself. That's awesome, gene.
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I love to open up the conversation
just to get get to know our
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guests a little bit. We're going
to be talking about, you know,
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something that's right there in your title, thought leadership. A lot of marketing
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teams that I talked to day in
and day out there talking about thought leaderships
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as a concept. You guys have
actually invested at AARP in thought leadership as
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a function, as we are going
to have roles that are specifically dedicated to
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thought leadership. So as we open
up the conversation, I would love to
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hear a little bit about how you
actually define thought leadership, just before we
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get into kind of the tactics of
how do you develop thought leadership? What
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does that look like? What have
you guys learned? What is thought leadership
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to you? First of all,
Logan, I really appreciate that question and
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this conversation. Just a little bit
about a RP, just to kind of
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give us some contexts Arapis and organization
that was founded over sixty years ago by
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a retired principle who went looking for
our retired friend and found her friend was
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a retired teacher living in a chicken
coup, literally a shack without walls,
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and for over sixty years, our
founder, fo Dr Ethel Percy Anders,
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envisioned a society whereby Oder dolls could
really age with dignity, independence and purpose.
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And for over sixty years we've been
on this journey to really ensure that
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we can empower people to choose how
they live in age, that we can
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address the issues of healthcare, that
we could address the issues of financial security
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and then we could address issues of
personal fulfillment. At the end of the
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day, across all ages and generations, we care about our health, we
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care about our financial health and we
also care about our overall wellbeing. So
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as what our CEO refers as health, love him self. So, to
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answer your question about thought leadership,
thought leadership is more than just a buzzword.
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Particular within the Congret of AARP,
we have really been working to position
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the organization as a thought partner with
regards to thinking about how do we change
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the way the world looks at and
views aging, how do we disrupt those
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negative stereotypes? And we work closely
with our colleagues and marketing and communications to
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really do that. Thought leadership is
about having and innovative idea, and innovation
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can be small or it could be
big and it's really thinking about how do
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we break through the noise, base
on evidence that's back by research that provides
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a different perspective, gene. What
I heard you say a couple times,
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there is a different perspective, a
disruptive idea, and I think a lot
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of marketing teams kind of throw thought
leadership and brand awareness together because from a
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from a marketing funnel perspective, they
both kind of sit up here at the
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top of the funnel. Do you
think that, in order to really pursue
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thought leadership, it's not just about
making sure that people know who you are,
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what you do and even what you
stand for, but it has to
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be centered around this idea that we
have a differentiated point of view or we
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see things shifting. We either have
a disruptive idea or we see disruption coming
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and we're the facilitators of that story, that that innovation and that disruption.
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Do you think that that is something
that always has to be there with thought
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leadership? I think there's a lot
of noise, there's a lot of information,
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there's a lot of content that's being
generated and then the question becomes exactly
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how do you break through that noise
and then how do you spark change,
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how do you spark action? And
I think that's where I thought leadership,
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working closely with communications and marketing,
can really have a great partnership. So
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for us at a RP is really
thinking about what are those different angles of
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looking at an issue and how can
you create some insights, some ideas,
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some solutions. That really causes people
to say, you know what, I
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never thought about it this way,
I never thought about that. How can
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we expand people's thinking around certain challenges? How can we cultivate relationships with nontraditional
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people and non traditional organizations and nontraditional
sectors to adopt our mindset, are perspective
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or to basically put the issues of
aging on their agenda? So thought leadership
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in that regard. I think it's
critically important for many organizations who are trying
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to figure out ways in which to
not only be relevant but also to be
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impactful, not only to be a
relevant in the sense of they provide services
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in a range of information and content
to their customer grace, but they are
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that go to resource. When you
think of x, you think of this
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organization, and I think that part
of that is really thinking about how do
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we position our organizations to really be
that? That what we've referred to as
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a ARP, and this is actually
through our great work of our communication colleagues,
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that we are that wise friend and
that there's defender, meaning the fact
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that I can aarpp that, and
I think part of the role of thought
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leadership is to be on the cutting
edge, is to look at the data
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transit, to look at what's emerging
and figure out what are the opportunities to
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really kind of highlight the value proposition
of the organization with regards to whatever that
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changing landscape. Maybe Yeh Gene,
you talked a little bit. They're about
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the partnership with communications and marketing,
as well as those in your organization that
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are specifically focused on thought leadership.
I want to come back to that in
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a second, but you just something
just kind of rolled off your tongue there
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where you said we want to be
that wise friend and that fierce defender to
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the audience that you serve. It
those characteristics. Is that something that you
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guys have been intentional? Did you
kind of workshop those terms that Hey,
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this is really what kind of everything's
going to roll up to, or is
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that just kind of where you guys
have landed through figuring out, you know,
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how you're serving with the content that
that you're sharing. Well, I
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give our leadership tramiss amount of meredit
for this, from our CEO to our
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chief marketing and communication officer, for
really kind of thinking holistically in terms of
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exactly what are we trying to do? What is our value proposition for our
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thirty eight million members and then also
to the general population of those turning fifty
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and older, and it really blow
down into being a wise friend and a
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fierce defender, whether that is the
communications work, the information that we provide,
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the services, the programs that we
deliver across the country or the advocacy
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work that we do on Capital Hill, whether that's at the national level or
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in state capitals across the country.
That that as an organization, we want
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a partner and meet people where they
are. And if you think about your
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closed network of friends and family members, they serve as that function that when
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something comes up, whether it's great
or not so great, you call your
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closest confident and say hey, I
want to talk to you about something,
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and they serve as that wise friend. Or they can also serve as that
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fierce offender really looking out for your
best interest. And as an organization,
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we see ourselves as really trying to
serve our members and the general fifty plus
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population. And those two regards gene
as, you guys looked at building out
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an actual function dedicated to thought leadership. What did that look like and how
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many people have you know now thought
leadership is their title? How is that
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structured? Is it within marketing?
I'm really curious. As you know,
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marketing and sales organizations there's a few
different flavors out there. There's kind of
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debate in the way, you know, things should be structured in different,
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different organizations. I would love to
hear a little bit about you know,
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how many people do you guys have
dedicated to thought leadership? Has that changed?
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How long have you guys had folks
dedicated to thought leadership? What is
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the the organizational relationship with calms and
marketing? Just as others start to think
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about what would this look like for
us to actually, you know, not
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just talk about thought leadership but dedicate
resources in a function to it. So
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I have a small but mighty team
that have the titles thought leadship associated with
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their official titles. I will say
that at a RP we're very fortunate and
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regards to the support that we have
across the entire organization. So thought leadership,
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that the idea of creating content,
idea of thinking about solutions, the
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idea of bringing in speakers and pushing
those out happens throughout our entire organization.
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Our function particularly really looks to create
thought leadership platforms, initiatives that leverages a
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lot of the thoughtsh that's having across
the organization to really position a ARP as
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that global thought leader, as that
global thought partner. I think that week
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as a function has been around for
about five years under our CEO, who
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really envisioned to have a very solutions
oriented function within the organization that was on
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the cutting edge, that was thinking
about cutting edge issues, that were thinking
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about innovative conversations, that was taken
a pulse of where things were and looking
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for opportunities for us to really provide
value. So, as a team and
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as a department, are part of
our charges to lead with value, thinking
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about how do we leverage the thought
this ship that's having across all of Aarp,
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how do we leverage the thought leadership
in the opportunities that we see in
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the external environment to really elevate key
insights, key conversation's, key perspectives.
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That really helps to change how the
world views and sees aging. Really,
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going back to what I said earlier, Logan about moving away from this negative
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stereotype that older adults are a liability
in the climb to really thinking about how
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do we leverage the aging of the
population, because actually older adults are an
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asset and in many cases are as
a tremendous contributors to our society, whether
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it's the amount that they spend in
volunteering, whether it's the amount that they
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spend and caregiving, or their economic
contributions more broader to society. So a
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great example I'll show you of a
thought leadership initiative is what we refer to
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as a long every economy outlook,
which it basically quantifies the economic value of
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those who are aged fifteen older,
and we found that in two thousand and
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eighteen the economic contribution of the fifty
plus population was eight point three trillion dollars.
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So if you were to think about
that, the fifty plus population,
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if you were to think about just
countries, if the fifty plus population was
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its own country, the economic contributions
alone would be the third largest in the
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world, next to China and to
the United States. And this is not
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just for the fifty plus. It's
also a ripple effect across generations. You
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know why? Because we're able to
actually forecast when millennials will turn fifty,
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and they will turn fifty and twenty
thirty one. That's not too far away.
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And then they annual. Did you
have to say that? Yes,
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I want you to embrace your age
Logan. There is is happening on the
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fly, right here on the flood. You know that every day we're aging,
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and the beautiful thing is the fact
that how people are aging today is
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dressed to be different from how they've
age in the past. So how do
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we start to engage industries and sectors
to think differently about what it means to
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get older in the US or even
today's internationally of older persons to get older
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in the world? So part of
what we're doing is looking for those nuggets
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to be able to have those conversations
and say, did you know that there's
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a ripple effect, that this is
in a generation? Know that when you
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look at two thousand and eighteen.
Or you look at two thousand and thirty
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one, the economic contribution of the
fifty plus population will go from a point
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three tree into almost thirteen trillion dollars. That's a significant portion in terms of
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the economy and its generational as I
indicated, you know, millennials turn fifty
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and two thousand and thirty one and
Genese would turn fifty and two thousand and
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forty two. So again, just
kind of thinking about that changes the dynamics,
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a change of the conversation and you
start to see these issues differently.
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We work very close with our marketing
and communication colleagues to be able to say,
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okay, here's some great insights,
here's a way to break through the
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noise and to have a different type
of conversation, and we work in partnership
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to think about how we communicate at
how do we market, how do we
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change that? So this is a
really good example, I think, gene,
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of where you were talking about changing
our perception or bringing a disruptive idea,
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and this example of showing the data, telling the story of the economic
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impact of the fifty plus in America, how that tactically happened. Now I'm
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curious tactically how it actually came about? Would you say that a lot of
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your team members, a lot of
their day to day is spent on on
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researching and kind of analyzing stuff out
there in the market, as well as
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the content that you're marketing team has
already been producing to find those trends,
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to find the stories to tell that? You know, if you're going to
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develop a thought leadership team, they
need to be kind of journalistic in mindset
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and kind of research oriented, or
is it more a communications is kind of
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sharing this direction? And then you
kind of, I guess, where does
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it start? Yeah, where does
the we're just kind of the role.
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If you're building out a thought leadership
team, what are some of the characteristics
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that map to, you know,
kind of what the daytoday looks like?
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I think that's a great question and
Aarp's unique in a sense that we have
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a research team, we have a
public policy institute and we're able to glean
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a lot of those insights from those
teams. With regards to our thought leadership
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team, and what I would say
in response to your question is, if
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I think you need a combination of
people who are big thinkers, people who
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have an entrepreneur on mindset, meaning
the fact that they can look at a
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problem and come up with different types
of solutions, who are expansive and they're
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thinking and who can connect the dots. I think that's critically points to be
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able to connect the dots. And
what our team actually does? They do
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a little bit of clearly have to
do an environment scan to get a sentence
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to exactly what is the nature of
the conversation in the solution of being proposed,
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but you also need that expansive mindset
to say, is there a different
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angle here that is not being discussed
or being highlighted, where we can provide
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value? That's a social with our
organization where we have credibility and I'll give
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you I'll give you another example of
how we actually do that. And then,
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third, can we connect the dots? Can we connect the DOTS internally?
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Can we connect the DOTS externally?
Can we create lanes of opportunity for
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the organization to provide value? Again, how are we leading with value and
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get I'll give you a perfect example
of this. There's been a lot of
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conversations around the feature of work,
where there it's robots, where there's our
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automation just really kind of having these
conversations, but for a very long time
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there was little conversation about another nagatrend
that was happening, and that was the
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fact that people are living longer and
either want or need to continue working.
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So who best but a ARP to
be able to elevate that Naga trend into
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the future work broader conversations that there
are many companies are seeing for to five
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generations working at the same time.
How do you leverage that? So what
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we were able to do is create
a major initiative with the Road Economic Forum
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and OECD called living, learning and
earning longer, and the goal was to
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bring global companies together around the concept
of an h diverse workforce, because longevity
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was another compelling and profound Nagatrend,
similar to what we're seeing with automation and
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robots. And what we've been able
to do we had a major global conference
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where we brought in a hundred and
fifty c sweet ex decatives. We created
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a lot of content and reports that
found that an age diverse workforce actually is
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better for the bottom line of the
company, that the aid the workforce is
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more likely to be sustainable over time. Turnover is at much lower because there's
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this mutual opportunity for mentorship, reverse
mentorship and the like. And now we
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have a collaborative that has thirty seven
global companies, that has over a hundred
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one point eight million employees and close
to the train iles worth of revenue,
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all around this notion of how can
we leverage and Fossa a age diverse workforce.
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So again, these conversation were happening
around the future of work, but
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no one was looking at it from
the Ang of longevity. A RP,
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given our organization in our history,
serves as a credible partner that can elevate
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the issues of longevity. We built
strategic relationships with the World Economic Forum and
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OECD, and now we have a
major collaborative with over with nearly forty global
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companies, that has a reach of
one point eight million employees, that neet
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monthly to exchange promising practices that are
being implement in other organizations. That's huge.
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Man, the impact of having folks
dedicated to thought leadership is just very
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apparent. They're in that story.
You know. The the other initiative you
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were talking about just kind of took
me a back it actually spoke to you
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know, hey, I kind of
responded negatively to hitting fifty as a millennial,
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and that's exactly the story that you
guys are trying to tell, trying
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to disrupt that narrative of, you
know, turning fifty is a bad thing.
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I wasn't necessarily think about it from
a work perspective, but you know,
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I just think that was that was
kind of Meta and and I love
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the the tactical examples here. Gene. If there are marketing teams out there
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that have kind of been kicking around
thought leadership, we want to build our
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brand as a thought leader and you
wanted to give them a start here.
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What would be the first one to
two steps you would recommend them start doing,
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whether they build out functions and titles
dedicated to thought leadership, or it's
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it's someone in marketing or someone in
marketing leadership that says we need to take
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a different approach or we need to
add thought leadership into our mix. What
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would you recommend, as we close
out the conversation today, a few steps
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for them to take to start heading
in the right direction? I appreciate that
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question. I think there's a couple
of things. One is to start with
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the question why if you can answer
the question why you're what has more impact,
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and what I mean by that is
the fact that there was a strategic
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decision that was made to create a
thought leadership function within the organization, and
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part of that strategy was that our
leadership felt that there was a tremendous opportunity
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to help frame the conversations, to
help establish an agenda that can actually change
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how the world views aging issues and
that a RP could play a significant role
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in that process. So the first
thing is to really be able to articulate
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what is the what the white factor, and then you're what has impact right.
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The other thing I would recommend,
Logan as for those who are thinking
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about this, is to really think
about the opportunities for inner organizational collaboration,
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meaning the fact that when I first
became senior vice person global goal leadership,
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the first person I called I called
to key leaders within the organization. The
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first person was a senior vice president
for brand, the second was the senior
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vice president for media relations, and
I did that because I see the relationship
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between thought leadership, brand a communication
as critical, because what we're ultimately doing
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is positioning the organization to be relevant, to be impactful, to be strategic
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and to be an innovator, and
I thought that I was critically important for
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us to stablish that. So the
first thing is why? What's the strategy?
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Why you see this as in for
it? If you can answer those
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questions, then the second becomes exactly
how do you create the collaboration as necessary
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within the organization so you get out
of this turf box, and then the
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third is really thinking about what's the
impact? You're trying to make what was
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sucsess look like for you, and
I think that being able to do those
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three things will be critically important to
not just creating a thought leadership function but
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sustaining it over time. Yeah,
because that last one, gene, what
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are some of the things that you
that you guys measure success on since you
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guys have had folks dedicated to thought
leadership, because it to some it's kind
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of like it's kind of this this
fluffy term. I'm not sure how to
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measure its impact. It's not sales
to where I'm looking at. You know,
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quantifiable revenue would have been some of
those indicators of success since you guys
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have gone down this path. So
there's a couple I think I'll use the
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example with regards to the future of
work in our partners with the road economic
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from an Olycd the fact that we
have more and more global companies recognizing their
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value of a multigenerational workforce and the
role that Lungervi's plane is critically important.
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The fact that we can turn to
nearly forty global companies that have a reach
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of one point eight million employees and
the total revenue of close to a trillion
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dollars. It's a great example of
how you can take an idea translate into
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influence and translated into impact. The
other thing I would say is that as
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we have these relationships and we build
these conversations and and these partnerships to extend
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to which these untraditional organizations and institutions
are and are integrating and embedding many of
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our perspectives and ideas as part of
their agenda, that is another tangible example
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of impact. And then, thirdly, I think the fact that you can
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be a you can track and measure
the change in tone and conversation or people's
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use of certain terminology and and perspectives
like the longer economy outlook, as another
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example of impact. Right because I
think at the end of the day,
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for us at a are p the
role of thought wayships to do three things.
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One is information. Is the world's
most important currency. So how we
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producing valuable information that is of value
not to just us as an organization,
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but to our users? Do they
feel that they're more educated? Do they
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feel empowered? Can they do something
with the information that we're producing to them
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in addition to the information that's not
that's that's great, but we also want
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to influence. How we enforcing conversations, how we influencing partnerships? And then
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not just influence and information, but
more portly impact, to your point earlier,
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what's the pact that we're having?
So, as organizations think about their
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thought theership functions, I think they
want to think about those three eyes information.
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What information are you producing that is
really thought provoking and breaking through the
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noise? Influence? Where you showing
up? Are you showing up to the
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choir or are you showing up in
places that people would never have thought you
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would be in? Are you building
relationships with traditional partners, or are you
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thinking about untraditional partners where you can
cultivate relationships? And then, third,
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what's the impact that you're having and
the essential which you can address those three
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eyes. I think it will really
put you in a very good position as
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an organization. I think listeners of
this show know that I am a sucker
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for a good alliterative list and that
is always good to help it stick in
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your mind. So I really appreciate
that because I think measurement when it comes
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to thought leadership is one of those
things it's a little bit tough for people
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to talk about, to nail down, and I think that framework really does
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does summon up well. Gene Gene. If anybody listening to this would like
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to ask you any follow up questions
that we weren't able to get to here
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in this interview or just stay connected
with you, what's the best way for
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them to reach out or stay connected? Absolutely so, by all means they
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can reach I'm on social media,
as you could imagine. My twitter handles
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at gene axis, or they can
always shoot me an email at a ARP,
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which is j axe as at a
RP dot org, or they can
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find me on linked and so there's
three different ways you can reach me.
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Would happy, be happy to connect. I'm always looking to increase my twitter
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followers, so please go ahead and
on twitter and shoot me a like or
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something that extent. As you can
see, Logan, I'm not too familiar
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with how you do it on twitter. I just see the numbers I left,
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but nevertheless I love it. I
love it, Ge and, for
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anybody listening, last name is Accius. Will Link to Jeans Linkedin profile right
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00:26:33.559 --> 00:26:36.319
in the show. Now it's make
it easy to connect with them and they
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00:26:36.559 --> 00:26:38.480
find them everywhere. Gene, thank
you so much for being our guest today.
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I really appreciate this look behind the
curtain at thought leadership within a ARP.
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But thank you so much, Logan. I really enjoyed our conversation and
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I'm going to go have a coke. Gary v says it all the time
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and we agree. Every company should
think of themselves as a media company first,
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00:26:59.470 --> 00:27:03.099
then whatever it is they actually do. If you know this is true,
346
00:27:03.180 --> 00:27:06.819
but your team is already maxed out
and you can't produce any more content
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00:27:06.859 --> 00:27:10.460
in house, we can help.
We produce podcast for some of the most
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00:27:10.539 --> 00:27:14.660
innovative bb brands in the world and
we also help them turn the content from
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00:27:14.700 --> 00:27:18.490
the podcast and the blog posts micro
videos and slide decks that work really well
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00:27:18.569 --> 00:27:22.809
on Linkedin. If you want to
learn more, go to sweet fish Mediacom
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00:27:22.369 --> 00:27:26.769
launch or email logan at sweet fish
Mediacom