Tune in to Time for A Reset
Michael – 00:00:02:
When the samplers and synthesizers came into music in the 1970s and 80s, they’re kind of like what you’re talking about with the visual AI. There was an ability now, you know, in a keyboard device to have an orchestra. To actually synthesize the sound of a trombone, to synthesize the sound of a drum without having real musicians. And that did, you know, turbocharge the music industry in terms of creativity, but you still had human beings taking those samples and taking those electronically, you know, derived sounds and creating new forms of music like hip hop.
Paul – 00:00:03:
Welcome to the Time For A Reset Podcast, the podcast where I, Paul Frampton, interview senior marketers on the big issues of the day and the thing that they want to see reset with an ever-changing landscape. Welcome back to another episode of Time for a Reset. I’m your host, Paul Frampton, and this morning, I am delighted to be joined by Michael Smith, who’s the Chief Marketing Officer for NPR, a national public radio in North America. Michael has had an illustrious career, both in the radio business, but also in broadcasting TV, working in stations like Disney Channel, Food Network, and delighted to have him here this morning. So welcome, Michael.
Michael – 00:00:39:
Well, it’s great to be here, thank you.
Paul – 00:00:41:
So Michael, I know you may have listened to one or two episodes and you know that we always start with the same question around, if you had a big red button in front of you and you could hit reset on something in the marketing industry, what would that be?
Michael – 00:00:54:
Well, I think over the past few years, there’s been a big rise in brands taking stands on social issues. Some research has shown that consumers resonate with brands that represent or take stands on issues that they care about. And you’ve seen a lot of brands making statements from Budweiser to Gillette to Pepsi, and a lot of them have been having problems with it. And there’s time for a reset in how you do that and when you do that and where you do that. And so I think it’s time to take another look at it.
Paul – 00:01:25:
I agree with you. I think it’s becoming ever more challenging, isn’t it? And I was actually last week at World Federation of Advertisers Conference and saw the kind of AB InBev marketing team present a lot of their work. And obviously they had some challenges with Budweiser and some of their other brands. And they were also talking about when they did the whole kind of World Cup thing and the beer was banned in Qatar two days before they were going to go out with marketing. So marketing is always kind of something that has to deal with volatility and has to deal with the real world and kind of real context. But do you think brands have a right to enter those kind of conversations? Like do consumers expect them to or do brands kind of just feel like they have to be part of culture?
Michael – 00:02:05:
Well, I think people expect brands to live the values that the brands position themselves around. So why people tend to have affinities for brands is because they tend to share values with the brands. So when things happen in society that call for a restatement of your values, and I think consumers expect that. The challenge is around understanding what your brand values are and what your audience values are and making sure that you’re being consistent. So there’s some issues like, Budweiser might be a good example that their core audience tends to be more rural. Tends to be more male, more conservative, and they love those values in the Budweiser brand. So if Budweiser is going to make a statement about social issues, they need to keep in mind who they’re talking for, which is the core Budweiser consumer, rather than maybe speaking from the position of the people in the marketing department who might have different political views or different cultural values than the audience that you’re serving. And I think that’s where you get into trouble.
Paul – 00:03:14:
When you express it like that, it would seem to be quite obvious, wouldn’t it? That actually you start with the customer and who’s your audience. And if you’re talking to your audience, are your values going to resonate with them? But I think what possibly happens, Michael, is a team is looking at what’s trending on social media or what are the big issues of the day and we must have a position. And then suddenly this momentum starts and people start kind of brainstorming and thinking of ideas. And before you know it, a social post has been created. But how do you think brands build out a strategy that means that they can have authenticity in doing this? Because I think you’re right. If most of your audience is a certain type of man in kind of middle America, then there are certain issues that are going to be important to that group that you representing will be very obvious. But then there’s an argument that says that there are lots of underrepresented groups that need brands to have a voice for them to actually kind of support and draw attention to it. So I think part of the challenge is, how do you get the right balance between? This is my core audience and this is where my brand resonates and my values are most relevant. But equally, as a brand, we feel like we have a voice and we have a platform and we should therefore call out or support underrepresented groups that do not get that same kind of attention. I mean, that’s a positive thing, right? But equally, it can be in conflict with the brand. So it’s quite a difficult thing to reconcile, isn’t it?
Michael – 00:04:36:
It is challenging because, you know, as the years have gone on, people have sort of evolved away from Friedman Doctrine. That says, that the primary role of a company is to generate profits for shareholders only, if it was as simple as that. Then it’s easy to say, you know, who are our customers? How do we generate as much revenue from them? And who cares about sort of social justice as stakeholders that companies pay attention to has expanded into society and to employees beyond investors only? Then you do have to consider a broader palette. But I think from the CMO’s point of view, your role is to be an avatar for the customer. There are other people in the organization, whether maybe it’s the CEO or there are people in other parts of the company who may be thinking more about that broader social responsibility. But I always feel like our job as CMOs is to advocate for the audience. And so you have to make a decision when it comes to controversial social issues is, you know, do we want to be a brand for progressive Democrats? Do we want to be a brand for conservative Republicans? Or do we want to be a brand for all people. And you can make a decision. Some brands, say like a Patagonia, maybe they decided they want to be a brand for a more progressive type of consumer. That’s part of their business strategy. But if it’s not your business strategy to target one specific political audience, then you need to keep that and put things in perspective and think about what you’re doing to your brand positioning by making a social statement about something.
Paul – 00:06:07:
I like that delineation. I think that that’s a helpful delineation. Do you think this is getting harder? I mean, there’s a lot of talk about some things are a bit too woke or kind of, and then on the other hand, there’s a lot of talk about the social injustice that exists, particularly there’s a lot of voices around it in North America right now. So is it ever more challenging as a CMO to know how to navigate that?
Michael – 00:06:31:
Well, I think you also have to think about, you talked about authenticity. Where can my brand have a role in this issue? And sometimes my brand can’t have a role in the issue. It’s just, you know, I make toilet paper. What role do I really have in child trafficking? Unfortunately, that’s not something my product has an engagement in. But maybe I have more of a role in a conversation about sustainability and recycling if I’m a paper company. And then that’s where I can lean in. And so I think you have to resist the temptation to feel like you have to say something about every single thing. And think about where the places where your brand can fit in authentically into an area. The other thing, too, is to make sure I think we try to do this is the people who work within your organization are really reflective of the people that you’re trying to serve. Because when they’re not, it’s easy for people in a marketing team to sort of get off track and get inside their own heads and forget about that person who’s out in America who’s actually engaging with your product. The challenge is that, you know, a lot of corporate marketing departments are based in New York City. They’re based in Los Angeles. They’re based in Chicago. You know, and that’s not where most Americans live.
Paul – 00:07:44:
That’s a great point. And I think, unfortunately, quite often that kind of microcosm of thinking everyone’s just like us when we’re in whether, you’re in Manhattan or you’re in London or Chicago or D.C., assuming that people will consume and receive messaging in the same way that you as a marketing team might. What do you encourage your marketing team to do to be aware of that and connect with their audiences? And what do you guys do to actually decide which social issues to kind of align with?
Michael – 00:08:13:
Yeah, one of the things that we do to understand audiences is to talk to them. And we have a panel at NPR. We have a panel of about 4,000 people who listen to our radio and digital podcast content. It’s an opt-in panel we’ve been running for years. And we do flash surveys on just a variety of issues to see how people are feeling about things. We go out in the field and do focus groups, usually at least once a year, sometimes twice a year, into all kinds of markets, large cities, small rural areas, and talk to people. And we do, in fact, thanks to the age of Zoom and people’s comfort with that, we’ve been doing a lot of one-on-one independent individual interviews with people over Zoom about different issues around our brand and our content. So it’s just constantly talking to people and centering what we’re hearing from the audience. And it’s challenging, I think, in a journalism organization sometimes or even content companies because there’s a tendency sometimes for content makers to want to make content that they like. You’re an artist. You’re a movie maker or any kind of entertainment media person. You’re going to do your work and look at it and say, do I like it? And it’s hard to kind of step back and say, it’s not about me. It’s about serving an audience. And so you really need to constantly talk to that audience and put yourself in the shoes of that audience.
Paul – 00:09:31:
Yeah, no, you’re absolutely right. And as you were talking, Michael, it reminded me of when I used to work in agencies, I always remember the Radio Association Bureau in the UK used to talk a lot about radio is the closest medium to people. It’s the one that’s probably the most intimate because of the relationship that you have with the host and you feel like you’re part of the community. Often, obviously, people are invited onto radio in a way that doesn’t generally happen with television and digital. I mean, maybe some social media, we have that with collabs these days. So it’s a good reminder that in a world which is very digital, that it’s important to have those real kind of emotional connections and be close to the audience, isn’t it? Because quite often we have these big channels where we just know because of a data signal or a bit of intent that someone is interested in something, but we know very little about the actual individual behind the audience.
Michael – 00:10:23:
Yeah, I mean, audio, which even we talk about radio or digital audio. It’s a very unique medium because there’s something special about, as you said, the intimacy of audio and the emotional resonance of, maybe it’s the trust that you take when you hear someone say something to you versus when you read something. I mean, a good example is how AI is evolving to, you know, you’ve probably heard about the ChatGPT 4.0 announcement where, you know, the big innovation is the ability to talk to the AI and have it talk back to you in real time. There’s something really magical about that experience. It’s very different than just typing it in and reading it. So that speaks to the uniqueness of audio. For us, one of the things that we always come back to is what’s the mission of our brand? And NPR, the mission is really around creating a more informed public. It’s really about serving people who are curious and interested in culture and in events and history and want to understand the world better. It’s not about changing their minds or telling them what they should think. It’s about just. I’m curious about something. Help me go down that rabbit hole to learn more. So when you get into the issues about taking stands or any kind of positioning, taking positions on things, that’s not really our job in terms of our mission. Our job is to help you understand the issue and then you can take a well-informed stand. So we kind of filter what we do back through that underlying mission.
Paul – 00:11:50:
That’s such an important role today. I mean, we don’t need to talk about. We know all the challenges with voices and politics, and news organizations that maybe have slight slants different ways, whether you’re in North America or the UK, it’s fairly similar. So I think the importance of encouraging curiosity and actually allowing people to go deeper and to get broader perspective is so critical, particularly for young people. Because let’s face it, you’re not taught at school how to consume content. You just assume that someone on TikTok has a similar authority to someone on a radio audio station. We need to find a better way of helping young people to work out how do I decipher and judge for myself what is of value. And I think a lot of that does come through education and comes through becoming more of an expert in things. And there’s a danger. You mentioned GenAI. There’s a danger that some people will just surf the surface to get a little bit of information so that they can be an expert without going too deep. So kind of important that we continue to have you guys and the BBC does a very good job in the UK, right? Of making sure that there’s an investment in that kind of content and that, that stays and supports a lot of the other slightly more entertainment led news content that we have in the world.
Michael – 00:13:09:
Yeah, I think, you know, every time that there is a major paradigm shift in how information is distributed, there is a period of sort of uncertainty in terms of what to trust. You know, if you go back to prior to the printing press, people knew who to trust. They trusted the priests and the kings and different authorities. Then all of a sudden the printing press came and there was a lot of turmoil because all of a sudden anyone could print stuff and you didn’t know what to trust. Then it kind of settled into the world that we had up until about 20 years ago. We kind of knew these are the institutions, the New York Times, the BBC. There are certain things you kind of believe in. Now we have the internet, which is like the next printing press, where almost now anyone can have a sub stack or can post on Twitter or X. And there’s a lot of confusion again about like, who do I trust? Is it a YouTuber or a TikToker or is it the New York Times? And I think it’ll settle into a new equilibrium where you kind of, okay, we’ve got this new technology. Now we know this YouTuber is a trusted one. This one’s not. But we’re in that sort of crazy storm. I think you add the layer of AI bots and things where it’s just crazy. But I think in the next five or 10 years, just like we know what printed things to trust, we will know what bots to trust.
Paul – 00:14:26:
So you’re an optimist. You’re an optimist. I like that.
Michael – 00:14:28:
Yeah, I think, you know, the arc of history has been positive in the sense that technology has allowed us to include more of society into the conversation. You know, we’ve raised literacy and we’ve created an opportunity for more people to speak and be heard and be part of the social conversation. So that’s a good thing. You know, it creates tension and maybe more, people say, polarization and conflict. But I think that that’s a good thing. I would rather there be a world where 90% of the population is part of the conversation, there’s a lot of yelling and fighting, than a world where people like me are excluded. And then, you know, people talk about how there wasn’t any polarization 50 years ago. Well, yeah, there wasn’t because the only people who were in the conversation, you know, were from one group. They all agreed with each other. But, you know, if you’re Black or you’re gay or you’re, you know, whenever you weren’t even allowed to be part of the conversation. So and now we’re at the table in the conversation and people are saying, oh, my God, it’s polarized. I can’t believe there’s all this disagreement.
Paul – 00:15:26:
Yeah, that’s a wonderful, very beautifully articulated point, Michael, actually. What makes us think that we need to have a society? There is always agreement, actually. The idea that people can only progress and move forward if they have different perspectives and then they find a way to actually understand each other and have empathy and then move forward doesn’t mean they necessarily always agree. I think that’s a really good reminder for us all. And as you were talking there about technology and how it’s changed, whether it was the medieval times or whether it was the printing press or whether it was the personal computer or the phone or now GenAI, inevitably, these technologies do bring positive change as long as people can overcome their anxiety around them and actually lean into them earlier. Generally speaking, I think you’re right. History has shown us that the personal computer did the very opposite to what a lot of people thought, which was, well, it’s going to take all the jobs away. It actually, obviously, created whole new industries and whole new creativity services and creative industries that hadn’t existed prior to that. And GenAI, we don’t really even know what’s possible. There’s the talk of conscious AI and all of those things, which I think are quite scary for people. But at the same time technology, we tend to, I think it was Bill Gates that said, we tend to overestimate it in the short term and then underestimate it in the long term, don’t we? And I think that’s kind of the point you’re making is like, look at periods of time rather than these short increments.
Michael – 00:16:50:
Yeah, I think that from a marketer’s point of view, the thing that is required is adaptability and flexibility, because the complexity has grown exponentially over the last 30, 40 years. But, I think about when I got out of college in the 1980s and went to work at an ad agency in New York City, and we would do a media plan for a package good. And it was pretty straightforward. This is right in the days of Microsoft Excel was coming out and you could put it on a spreadsheet. There was, you did some print, you did some radio, you did some outdoor and they did some TV ads. And that was it. And then you kind of split the budget in four. And today you think about the plethora of, I just was on a presentation from an agency that’s using AI to create custom target segments and then create custom creative. This is audio creative using AI generated voices and AI generated copy. You look at a person’s IP address, you kind of have some data graph information about who they are. And then you on the fly create a customized audio spot targeting them. And then right then, and then you insert it. You will have, you know, hundreds of different versions of an ad for, say, an insurance company or something, all being AI generated in real time. So imagine the media planning and strategy around that.
Paul – 00:18:11:
Right, going back to the point about inclusivity. And I know that you’re a big D in AI, obviously. Are you an optimist around how things like AI will help with equality? I mean, obviously there’s been a lot of talk about potential biases in AI because of, let’s face it, most of the engineers are probably white and from a certain background and male. How do you feel AI will kind of help with ensuring that we can deliver better messages to the right people and actually include everyone. I’ll add one additional thing to this. When I was at the WFA conference the other week, there was a lot of talk about accessibility and the fact that a lot of people through, some impairment will not, whether they’re deaf or blind or have neural issues, will not be able to see ads. I think they said something like 10 to 15% of ads are actually fully accessible. For some reason, no one’s really focused on that until now. And that is possibly something that AI could solve. But do you feel like technology will help with that or hinder in that space?
Michael – 00:19:11:
You know, the arc of history has been towards greater inclusion and greater liberty and greater social justice. And along with that has been greater technology. So I think technology and AI as an example of this will provide people with tools to have more access to be participants in society and in commerce and just prosperity. So, I’m very positive about that. I mean, the fact that, you know, you think about how technology, it removes gatekeepers. You know, you can be a YouTube influencer or a TikToker who builds an audience, builds an income as, let’s say, a food influencer or as a travel influencer, or even as a producer of entertainment content. And 40 years ago, you would have to go to a studio or to some other gatekeeper. And then that’s a situation where you could be discriminated against. Now you can do it yourself without a gatekeeper. So I think that these technologies are just enabling people who have been previously marginalized to have access.
Paul – 00:20:13:
Like, no, I love that whole kind of decentralization is a really good point. And sticking with the kind of technology and creativity angle, what’s your view about how the data side, the fact that marketing is becoming a lot more scientific, AI is playing a role. We talked about that. Like, what’s your role on how that’s changing the role of CMOs and the role of marketing departments and where data versus creativity lives these days?
Michael – 00:20:37:
I think that it’s just the complexity has increased. That tension, that balance between data and creativity has been, you know, since the very beginning, probably of advertising, when you did a focus group or interviewed individual people to get the take on your product. And then you took that information back to your creatives and you made creative. It’s just that now, you know, the tools that you have to get these signals are just supercharged from where they were years ago. I remember there was a TV show called Mad Men that was really popular, you know, maybe 10 years ago. And then they had an episode where they were actually doing testing. And I remember them, they were showing an ad and they had like a few people come in, you know, that they found off the street in New York to look at the ad. And it just showed me that was the early days of data. And now we’ve got, you know, these huge technological tools that allow you to, you know, get data signals from millions and millions of people and all that. So the basic concept of advertising being art creative and being a science data has not changed and won’t change. It’s just, there’s always going to be that dance between the art and the science.
Paul – 00:21:41:
Yeah, the balance has kind of just shifted a bit. And you talked about the importance of talking to your audience, your panel, doing the Zoom calls. How much do you rely on data analytics as a source of like, what do we need to create kind of new content on? Or how do we serve audiences differently?
Michael – 00:21:57:
We look at data to understand, say you’re making podcasts, you know, what kinds of shows should we make? You know, we survey people on what genres do you like? Do you like comedy? Do you like sports? Do you like true crime? You know, we look at what areas seem to be growing in terms of interest. But then if you say, okay, well, people really want comedic sports podcasts. But then you still have to go make the show and figure out what the idea is. And then that is really an art. And all the years I’ve been in the business, with all of the tools that we have, never been able to have an audience tell us how to actually make something that would be creatively engaging. It’d be great if you could say, here, you take the pen. You write the script for me, and they can tell you kind of in general areas that they’re interested in. But you still have to go back to your office and come up with the magic.
Paul – 00:22:48:
Yeah, which is part of the magic. Although, I don’t know. I mean, never say never. There might be some gen AI in a few years where actually that might be possible. I mean, I’m not going to say it’s going to be anywhere near as good as the content your producers produce. But I’m pretty sure there’ll be a use case where that kind of thing does happen. I mean, some of the text-to-video stuff that’s being done now already is quite remarkable. Where you just describe what you want an image to be. And a cat coming out of underneath a duvet, touching a human’s hand. The human waking up and touching the cat. And then it creates that whole video for you. And it looks seamless. It’s quite incredible how the technology just, in nanoseconds, can just put that concept and those texts together. And find the right images. And then suddenly bring it all together. So, I’m sure it will affect content production in time.
Michael – 00:23:37:
Yeah, I think it will. I think it’ll take it to another level. I use the analogy of in music production, I have a background on my own personal life as a musician. And when the samplers and synthesizers came into music in the 1970s and 80s, they’re kind of like what you’re talking about with the visual AI. There was an ability now, you know, in a keyboard device to have an orchestra, to actually synthesize the sound of a trombone, to synthesize the sound of a drum, and without having real musicians. And that did turbocharge the music industry in terms of creativity. But you still had human beings taking those samples and taking those electronically derived sounds and creating new forms of music like hip hop. So I think what you’ll see is now if you’re a movie writer or maker or director or whatever, yeah, you have tools, you can speak a scene to life, but then you’re going to be putting those things together and using those tools to make incredible movies now. So. We just have new tools to be creative with.
Paul – 00:24:38:
I really love that keyboard synthesizer example. That’s a phenomenal example. And it never actually occurred to me, but it’s a really good metaphor for what’s going on. And I love your point about it’s just new tools come along, but it doesn’t stop the creator being the overall kind of architect. Obviously, the tools to be able to paint increased and improved significantly over thousands of years. The quality of watercolor and kind of paint is so different to how it was. People still paint. It’s not like they stopped painting, and that actually is just done for. The art of developing something and imagining it and making it come to life and the process of creativity, I think you’re right, strikes me listening to you, is something that we need to make sure we keep telling people, actually, the process of creativity is the beauty of it, because people don’t just want to see something that’s developed entirely by a machine, because that’s not human. And after all, humanity is pretty important to why we are on this earth.
Michael – 00:25:31:
Well, I think the bar gets raised in creative. The expectation from the audience will be, yeah, I get that you’re going to have computer or AI-generated imagery, but what are you going to do with that? You know, it’s sort of like people might have been blown away a hundred years ago when they first saw the first sort of Walt Disney animated movie, but now they’re like, well, that’s just table stakes. I’m not blown away by the fact that there’s some animation. I want to see you use those tools to do something interesting. So I think they’re going to expect to see, oh yeah, you have an AI-generated Sora stuff in your stuff, but everybody does. So why is yours more interesting than somebody else’s?
Paul – 00:26:11:
Yeah, how do you differentiate, right? Yeah, I agree. Well, so this is a beautiful segue into my ultimate question, Michael. And you’ve talked very eloquently about kind of history and different examples of how technology has just moved things forward, made it either made creative inclusivity or created new tools. So the question is about, what does the CMO of the future, so the person doing your job in 10 years time. What are the kind of different types of attributes that you think CMOs will need with the changing role of marketing, with technology, with data? What do you think?
Michael – 00:26:44:
Well, I think it’s sort of inherent in your question about marketing and technology. I think they will need to understand the basics of marketing, which are understanding price, product, positioning, all the things that have been around for 100 years. Those disciplines will still be core. But the thing that will change is the technologies used to affect marketing or to do marketing. I always tell when I talk to college students, I tell them that continuous learning is something that you’re going to need to really optimize throughout your career. Because I think about when I got out of college, you know, 99% of what I learned is kind of not that relevant today in terms of technology, because it was before the internet. It was before the smartphone. So you think about where you’ll be in 20 or 30 years, probably half the tools you will use to market to consumers haven’t even been invented yet. So you’re going to need to be adaptable and very flexible as the years go on. But again, back to the basic principles of I’m trying to create an emotional connection with a consumer that resonates, that makes them have a positive feeling about my brand. And they’ll want to engage and buy it and pay a premium price for it because of that emotional connection. You know, that’s what marketing is all about. It’s brand marketing that will never change.
Paul – 00:28:00:
Beautifully said. And finally, Michael, we always ask our guests to be vulnerable for a minute. I mean, you’ve got three. Decades of experience, a lot of wisdom you shared today. There’ll be listeners listening, thinking, oh, he’s got it all together. He’s got this really clean perspective on what’s happened over a long period of time. Like there’s obviously things that you’ll be working on that you try to focus on for your own growth, whether as a CMO or as a person. So would you mind just sharing vulnerably a couple of those with us?
Michael – 00:28:28:
I think the thing that I focus a lot on is just understanding the changing consumer behavior and not getting in a bubble, sometimes with your own experience or the people that are around you. And one thing that helps me is I’m kind of an older dad. So I have an eight-year-old daughter. And I’m just always fascinated watching her in terms of how she engages with media, the kinds of things that she finds fascinating and interesting. This last night, she was glued for like almost 30 minutes to a series of videos by a TikToker who acts out dramatic scenes, just literally on one side of the screen. She’s just speaking in the voices of characters, while on the other side of the screen, you’re watching close up of someone doing nail art. I’m not sure what the hybridization of this, of why it’s nail art, but she finds this super fascinating. And I’m thinking, well, this is entertainment. And I look at it and it has like, you know, 20 million views. So the fact that the kind, the forms of media and entertainment that people of the next generation will find engaging are totally different than what my generation finds engaging. And as a marketer, it’s about having your marketing messages appear where people are engaged. And where people’s attention is. So understanding where that attention is going is a real challenge because people are interested in things that as an over 50 person, you’re just like, I can’t understand it.
Paul – 00:29:56:
Right. That’s great advice. And part of why I’ve always loved being in advertising and marketing is I think it does keep you young because you have to stay connected to trends. You have to keep close to technology and you probably are closer than most industries to emerging new kind of social platforms or new technologies. AI is a good example of that, right? And I think that does keep us all young and keeps us all kind of open-minded to how things might change. So all that remains, Michael, is for me to thank you for your time. I really enjoyed our conversation. I’ve enjoyed a lot of your nuggets and examples. The one that really stands out for me as a metaphor for how GenAI should be considered is the synthesizer and on the keyboard, actually, just a different way of supporting how musicians would create music. And why not think about GenAI in a very similar vein? So I’m definitely going to use that one. So thank you for that.
Michael – 00:30:46:
Yeah, sure. I mean, I think it goes back to my undergraduate degree was in something called Science, Technology and Society. When I was in school, we had to define what those words mean. And technology just means tool that helps people. So a fork is a technology to go from eating with your hands to using a device to make eating easier. So that’s all technologies are. And we continue to evolve with more sophisticated technologies to make one thing easier than it was before. But human beings are still at the root of it. It’s just we have more, you know, shoes are a technology to be able to walk on, without your feet being hurt, you know. So if you think of it in that framing, these are just more sophisticated technologies, but they’re still rooted in some human need and human problem that they’re solving.
Paul – 00:31:33:
Well, I can’t think of any better place to finish than that. So thank you, Michael, for joining us today.
Michael – 00:31:38:
Oh, thank you, Paul, for having me. I really enjoyed it.
Paul – 00:31:41:
Likewise. And that is a wrap for this episode of Time For A Reset, the marketing podcast with global leaders, brought to you by CvE Consultancy. I’ve been your host, Paul Frampton, and I hope the insights from this episode will help you reset and refine how you implement successful change for strategic transformation for your brand. Look forward to seeing you next week as I chat with another senior marketing leader. And please don’t forget to follow us on your favorite listening platform, Apple, Spotify, or wherever else. Look forward to catching you soon.
