Anatomy of a Strategy

Tara met Shervonne Cherry in Baltimore in 2012. At the time, Shervonne was working as a designer and social media strategist, but today, she's the Director of Community & Partnerships at Spark, a growing Coworking organization with spaces in Baltimore and Kansas City.

Shervonne gives incredible insight into how to build local community resources that support Black entrepreneurs (without tokenizing or making it some sort of quota-filling exercise). Her comments on urban design were particularly poignant.

Shervonne on social media:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/srcherry/

https://twitter.com/NoOrdnryCherry

Spark:

https://spark-bmore.com/

This week, Tara and Stef speak to Nate Nichols. Nate is the founder of Palette Group, a commercial creative agency that focuses on community, which he runs with his life partner. He's also the co-founder and creative director of Allyship & Action, a collective that works with vendors and agencies to actively promote diversity within the industry. 

For Nate, everything he’s passionate about is deeply rooted in empathy and the circumstances of his upbringing really influenced how he sees the world and his approach and the importance of what he calls decentering. This episode on empathy and decentering is essential listening if you want to be an effective leader and really bring about positive change.

Nate on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thenichols/

Nate on Twitter: https://twitter.com/thenichols

Nate on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_nichols/

This week on the podcast, Tara and Stef sit down with Danica S. Nelson, Senior Product Marketing Communications Manager and travel enthusiast. But Danica does multiple jobs with her organization. She not only has a senior marketing role, she also works on the DEI (diversity equity and inclusion) initiatives. She balances all of these with ease...but found herself burning out last year and took an extended leave to recharge. Unfortunately, this was cut short by COVID-19.

In this conversation, Stef and Tara discuss the multiple hats Black professionals need to wear as well as the importance of representation.

Links:

Danica on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danicasnelson/

Danica on Twitter: https://twitter.com/danicasnelson 

Website: https://watchdanicawork.com/

Tara has known Ian for well over a decade and she's never had a conversation on race with him. This isn't because of a lack of opportunity. They've shared many a deep conversation, but never about race.

This is a problem. It's one of the biggest problems that White people have, in fact. You may have heard "your silence is violence" and this episode is all about unpacking that.

We also talk about data portability and data ethics, which is crazy fascinating! Ian has been involved in personal data and the quantified self for a long time and has opinions on AI and data that may just surprise you. We had a bit of a mind-blown moment!

Notes:

• Ian’s blog: https://cubicgarden.com/

• Ian on Twitter: https://twitter.com/cubicgarden

• Ian on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cubicgarden/

• Ian at the BBC: https://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/people/ianforrester

• Building a Public Service Internet: https://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/projects/public-service-internet

• DataPortability.org: http://dataportability.org/

• Ian talking about Perceptive Media: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJNClpe-XL8

• Bechdel test: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bechdel_test

• Bechdel tests for race: https://www.the-unedit.com/posts/2018/8/20/7-tests-that-arent-the-bechdel-test-that-measure-movies-for-gender-equality-and-representation

"How can we say that politics shouldn't be a conversation on a business platform when it is the politics, the lobbyists, the things that are happening behind the scenes that govern how business operates?"

Indeed! In this episode, Stefani and Tara speak with the epigrammatic Cher Jones, a social media and brand development expert, and LinkedIn influencer, about many eye-opening subjects. However, the core of the conversation is that, as Cher says, "we don't normalize things that should be normal, and we don't address things that have been normalized that shouldn't be normal."

LinkedIn is particularly fraught with the stifled apoliticalness that perpetuates these ideas and Cher soundly shreds the idea that there is no space in business for politics.

You won't want to miss this episode. 

For the past few months, between COVID-19 and the Black Lives Matter protests, we've opted to put a pause on AoaS to create space for other conversations (with the exception of the episodes with Laura Fitton and Joe Jackman, which we thought were relevant to the COVID-19 discussion).

Now, we see that our silence on the topic of Black Lives Matter was akin to saying, "This is not our problem." This was wrong and it took a Diversity, Equity & Inclusion facilitator, Karlyn Percil of KDPM Consulting Group, calling me (Tara) out on this silence to knock me out of my comfort zone (and white fragility).

So, Stef and I sat down and decided that we need to do the work and speak up about it and that this podcast was a fantastic place to start. This episode is the introduction to a series (which will be as long as it needs to be) of conversations with Black professionals in various parts of the marketing industry on their experiences, perspectives and insights into how marketing - as an industry, an institution and as a practice contributes to the perpetuation of white supremacy and anti-Black racism.

In this episode, we mentioned the following resources to check out:

• Adweek article on the lack of Black representation in the advertising, PR, and communications world: https://www.adweek.com/agencies/a-brief-rundown-of-racism-within-advertising-and-why-its-still-happening-today/
• The Publicis stats (Adweek): https://www.adweek.com/digital/publicis-groupe-us-diversity-data-7-actions/
• Open Letter to the Ad Industry from 600+ Black professionals (Adweek): https://www.adweek.com/agencies/600-black-advertising-professionals-demand-meaningful-action-from-leadership-in-open-letter/ 
• The original letter: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yVH9y0geSyJmpqUH2utaK7x1Salq5CE5IIkx0HHCGuM/edit
• Nathan Young of Periscope Group (founder 600&rising): https://twitter.com/notnathan
• Bennett D. Bennett of Aerialist (founder 600&rising): https://twitter.com/BennettDBennett
• 600&Rising: https://600andrising.com/
• Nate Nichols of Palette Group (founder of the Allyship and Action summit): https://twitter.com/thenichols
• The initial Allyship and Action summit recording on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6s3vhTLXDM
• Register for the upcoming summit on August 4: https://www.freelancercybersummit.com/events/allyship-and-action

All the way back in February, Stefani and Tara sat down to speak with Joe Jackman, founder of Jackman Reinvents and author of The Reinventionist Mindset, about the need for retail to reinvent itself if it was going to keep engaging a very digital-minded consumer.

Oh boy, did that escalate quickly! Though they spoke with Jackman in February, he has covered this topic a bit since, so they discuss what reinvention looks like now as opposed to what they discussed in February. 

Show Links:

• Joe Jackman - https://joejackman.com
• Phlywheel - https://phlywheel.com

This episode was recorded pre-COVID-19 crisis, but Tara and Stef found a few parallels between the outbreak and the climate crisis.

We’ve got a brand new format that will give you a much clearer insight into digital strategies from here on out!

Our guest this week is Laura Fitton, who is the Principal and Founder of The enough company. Her aim was to explain and evangelize market-driven shifts that can bring speed and scale to the climate crisis fight. Her approach merges her environmental science and policy degree with her expertise as a tech CEO/Founder, author, professional speaker, and recognized trailblazer in communications, community, and social media. 

Once upon a time dubbed a "Queen" of Twitter, Laura “@Pistachio” Fitton led the team that wrote ‘Twitter for Dummies’ and founded oneforty.com (acquired by HubSpot) in 2009 when she recognized that software built on Twitter’s API was going to change the world. Laura is credited with convincing the likes of Guy Kawasaki and thousands of tech execs that Twitter would have real business, media, and cultural value. She founded the first Twitter for Business consultancy, Pistachio Consulting, in 2008 and has been speaking professionally about the business use of Twitter since 2007. 

Laura has lectured at HBS and MIT-Sloan and has been quoted in dozens of national publications including BusinessWeek, Forbes, Fortune, Newsweek, and The Wall Street Journal. 

She also once raised $25,000 for charity December 2008 in the first-ever "donate by tweeting" charity campaign.

Here’s a rundown of what was discussed on the podcast:

• 3:00 - Coronavirus COVID-19, fake news, and climate change.
• 4:44 - Confirmation bias.
• 6:00 - Where misinformation comes from and who is spreading it.
• 8:24 - Laura Fitton on the information bubble around climate
• 10:09 - How do people like Laura stop preaching to the choir?
• 12:33 - Larry Fink’s annual letter to CEO’s.
• 14:00 - BlackRock’s letter was a trickling down of environmentalism.
• 15:34 - What is needed to create significant movement in changing behaviors.
• 16:16 - What else needs to be done to fight climate change.
• 18:20 - Climate awareness post coronavirus. 
• 20:00 - Longterm planning for climate awareness
• 23:00 - The silver lining of a crisis. 
• 30:00 - Temperature check on our new podcast format.

Links:

• The Enough Company: https://www.enough.co
• Want to save the environment, eat less meat: https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/560548/want-save-environment-eat-less-meat
• Coronavirus dashboard: https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6
• Impact of global warming on human fatality: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/global-warming-and-health/
• Coronavirus: The Black Swan of 2020 https://medium.com/sequoia-capital/coronavirus-the-black-swan-of-2020-7c72bdeb9753
• Black Rock - Larry Fink’s letter to CEO’s https://www.blackrock.com/corporate/investor-relations/larry-fink-ceo-letter
• New York Times cover’s Larry Fink’s letter on the Daily https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/14/business/dealbook/larry-fink-blackrock-climate-change.html
• Project Drawdown https://drawdown.org/
• Laura - https://twitter.com/Pistachio
• Enough Company - https://twitter.com/enoughcompany

Be sure to follow her on Twitter and LinkedIn!

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Thanks for listening, we hope you enjoyed this episode. Make sure to follow Tara at @missrogue & Stefani at @stefanif. You can also check out Tara's YouTube channel; it has over 200 videos on digital strategy and online audience building.

Anatomy of a Strategy podcast is recorded in Toronto, Canada in the offices of Truly Inc. Produced by Stefani Forster and Tara Hunt, editing by Joe Pacheco.

If you’re new to this podcast, AOAS is a marketing podcast that explores the hidden psychology and behaviors that drive marketing strategies. It’s not about marketing per se.

We aren’t here to celebrate and rehash case studies as much as we are here to dissect the culture in and around the successes and failures of marketing. We want to ask, “What was going on in the world that helped that message succeed and that other one fail?”

AOAS is less of a marketing practice podcast and more of a Marketing THOUGHT podcast.

Our guests won’t be the typical marketing podcast guests. In fact, some of them turned us down initially when we asked them to be on the podcast because they didn’t understand what they had to do with marketing.

To give you a sense, we will be talking to - and have talked to - linguists, economists, psychologists, activists, sociologists, journalists, anthropologists, biologists, data scientists, historians, statisticians, urban planners, and epidemiologists.

This is how we explore strategies in our own work, but most people think of marketing as the marketing PRACTICE side: mostly the ads and creative they are inundated with. And, what we are very keen on demonstrating is that that these are the visible outputs and only a small fraction of the impact marketing thought has on the world and our economy.

We’ve got a very special episode, this week…Introducing our new co-host on the podcast, Stefani Forster! Find out what's happening! Where's Carlos gone? What's going down? 

Stefani is the Creative Director at Truly and a content strategist with experience at some of Canada's top agencies and publications.

She worked at Touché! Media and PHD Canada on various national brand campaigns before moving to the content side, serving as an editor and content manager at The Huffington Post Canada, Hello! Canada magazine and Corus Entertainment, writing articles, producing videos, and spearheading social growth.

Here’s a rundown of what was discussed on the podcast:

• [0:45] - What’s changed at Truly and Anatomy of a Strategy podcast
• [10:35] - Stefani’s story and what brought her to Truly.
• [14:00] - Learning about an agency’s real audience.
• [18:30] - How will the podcast change now.
• [24:00] - Who are Stefani’s dream guests for the podcast?
• [25:38] - How women’s studies helped shape our view of the world.
• [33:15] - Tara’s dream guests for the podcast.
• [38:35] - The root of marketing.

Join us in welcoming Stefani to the podcast. Be sure to follow her on Twitter and LinkedIn!