Damn Good Brands | Brand Marketing, Public Relations, & Social Media's Superstars

Catherine Blades is the SVP, Chief ESG, and Communications Officer of Aflac, a company she’s been at for over 6 years. Catherine is a PR News Hall of Famer, Forbes' inaugural inductee in the Women in Communications Hall of Fame, a two-time Cannes Lion winner, a 2017 inductee into the PR Week Hall of Femme as well as the first American to win the Relations 4 the Future Medal at Davos.   Catherine has also been named to the Latino Leaders’ Latina 100 (2020), a Children’s’ Miracle Network CHANGEMAKER (2020), the inaugural PR Week Most Purposeful CCO (2019), a Top 25 Power Woman by NY Moves magazine, four-time Top Woman in PR winner, was named to the Forbes Communications Council, as a contributing writer and serves as a member of the Fortune Most Powerful Women Community.  In the interview, we get into Catherine’s perspective on purpose-driven companies, what an ESG communication entails, and an incredible new incarnation of the Aflac duck that brought hope and care to victims of childhood cancer through innovation.  Here are some key takeaways from this conversation between Lippe Taylor CEO Paul Dyer Aflac CCO, Catherine Blades. To hear the entire conversation, check it out on the Damn Good Brands Podcast below.  Never waste a crisis. In the midst of the pandemic, Aflac took tremendous strides to keep their entire shareholder base whole including setting up a no-interest loan program for their sales force which mostly worked on commissions. Aflac also gave very generously (to the tune of $11 Million) followed by a multitude of donations to minority-related causes that added up to 50% of the company’s total donations for the year. From a communications standpoint, crises enable companies to reveal who they really are, don’t let them go to waste.   Embrace your holistic view. Catherine made a very interesting observation on how Communications professionals are the only members of a company, outside of a president or CEO, who have to take the perspective of all shareholders into account when making decisions. Customers, investors, employees, shareholders, et al. are all perspectives you must consider as a comms executive, which speaks to the larger responsibility of Communications leadership and the holistic & macro perspectives it requires.    Purpose and Profit Can Go Hand in Hand. Catherine spoke about how Aflac’s commitment to being a company dedicated to a purpose beyond shareholder value was pushed back on by some investors. Catherine then went on to explain how being purposeful, in addition to being the right thing, is profitable because, in this day and age, people want to purchase from companies that are contributing to the greater good of society. This echoes a larger truth about how giving back is no longer a ‘nice to have’ for brands but is entirely table stakes in today’s economy.

“Our early employees took a big risk and banded together in what we call today a warrior spirit. It was a matter of ‘we must survive against all odds.’ I think those very early beginnings served as a great foundation for what our culture has become today.”

"Growing up in West LA with that street art culture, I was really into skateboarding and surfing, and that whole sensibility, juxtaposed with The Louvre, and then the punk rock scene and hip hop, I threw all of that into a blender to see what would come out."

Dustee Jenkins is the Head Of Global Communications and Public Relations at Spotify. Dustee joined Spotify in late 2017 from Target, where she spent seven years, culminating in the role of Chief Communications Officer. In addition to being part of PRovoke Media’s Influence 100, Dustee has been Recognized by Mashable as one of 10 Pioneering Women Changing the Field of Communications, and was listed on PR Week’s Global Power Book and also highlighted by Ad Age for 40 Under 40 in Marketing, and PR Week’s 40 Under 40 in Public Relations. In this conversation, Dustee and Lippe Taylor CEO, Paul Dyer, discuss internal and external communications in the era of COVID, new and exciting advancements at Spotify, as well as the virtues of being press shy. Before we begin, here are three key takeaways from this conversation with Spotify’s Dustee Jenkins.  Be press shy (or at least ‘press selective’). Daniel Ek, Spotify’s CEO, is notorious for being ‘press shy,’ but upon closer inspection, it’s clear that Daniel is simply highly selective about what he talks to the press about, which is extremely strategic. As a result, people pay more attention to his announcements because they’re usually exciting and meaningful. The practice of forgoing 'press for press sake' also gives Daniel more focus and energy to spend on internal communications (see next bullet).  Double-down on internal communications. Spotify has always been very focused on internal communications and transparency, two qualities that have become significantly more important in today’s very uncertain times. Spotify takes transparency so seriously that they have even coordinated a way for any of their staff to ask their CEO Daniel anything they want, and to do so anonymously using an app called Slido, which allows a Reddit-like function to upvote and downvote questions.   Use your mission to move mountains. Before becoming the behemoth audio platform that it is today, Spotify had to start off by individually going to all the major record labels to convince them to license their artists on the Spotify platform. That is an incredibly herculean task, especially considering that many of those labels considered Spotify to compete with record sales at the time. Daniel accomplished this primarily by explaining his mission against piracy with enough passion and purpose, and the rest is Spotify history. This story is indicative of how the communications function goes above and beyond press, and how the right mission can enable your company to transcend extremely daunting, even seemingly impossible tasks. So work on that mission statement, you never know where it can ultimately take your company.  ----- Produced by Simpler Media

“Storytelling is much more a science than an art. But it’s still an art, and it needs to be informed by science, meaning analytics data.”

“Innovation is the lifeblood of our business. It really is. It's not about the ingredients, it’s about keeping our brands top of mind and close at hand and always evolving to suit the ever-changing, ever-evolving needs of the consumer.”

Welcome to DAMN GOOD BRAND Origin Stories! A new series dedicated to uncovering the entrepreneurial journeys behind some of today’s most successful brands straight from the founders themselves.  Today we’re talking to Joel Clark, the co-founder and CEO of Kodiak Cakes. In addition to being a client, Kodiak Cakes is an all natural food company based in Utah that specializes in pancake mix. Their product also includes other healthy snacks like bars, oatmeal and more. The story behind Kodiak Cakes is very inspiring since the company struggled for over a decade before becoming a huge success.  Kodiak Cakes started when Joel sold his family recipe pancake mix door to door in a little red wagon as a child.  He basically kept on going until the brand became a success. There may be a little more to the story than that, so I’ll let Joel tell it. The story behind the brand is a long road of struggles that end in glory as the brand is the fastest-growing pancake mix brand in the US, growing 80% year-on-year and approaching $100 million in revenue. The critical moment for Kodiak Cakes was with the introduction of Power Cakes; a super healthy, super hearty pancake mix that included protein powder. Power Cakes really enabled the brand to break through in the market place and the story behind it’s inception is a real lesson in pivoting and product innovation, and even to a degree, a Blue Ocean Strategy.  You may have seen Power Cakes on Shark Tank where, despite receiving offers, Joel walked away empty handed. The resulting coverage from the appearance, however, gave Kodiak Cakes a significant boost in sales, and today the brand is on the fast track to becoming a household name. We talked to Joel about the grueling path to success, major leadership lessons, and tips to boost your resilience in the face of the inevitable adversity that comes with entrepreneurship. All this and so much more on today’s episode of Damn Good Brands.  Here are some key takeaways from this conversation with Joel Clark.    Get experience selling door to door (or at least making cold calls). Joel began Kodiak Cakes by selling the recipe door to door as a child. This may seem like a cute story but it instilled in him some very important skills. A number of notable entrepreneurs & business leaders have a background in door to door sales including Paul Mitchell and Patrón founder, John Paul Dejoria, who used to sell encyclopedias. The nature of semi-confrontational sales tactics like selling door to door and cold calls forces you to master a number of skills that will tremendously serve you as an entrepreneur; it forces you to learn to build instant rapport, have a tight and compelling elevator pitch, and embrace discomfort. Perhaps most importantly, these sales tactics also instill a sense of resilience, as salesmen have to take a lot of rejection, as do entrepreneurs.    Set goals. With something as daunting as launching a national brand, it’s very instinctual for most people to get overwhelmed by the largeness of the task and either give up or be driven to analysis paralysis. As Reverend Desmond Tutu said, 'the only way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time,' meaning that even the most daunting tasks in life can be accomplished gradually by taking one step at a time.  As he was building Kodiak Cakes, Joel would set six month goals for himself and depending on whether he hit them, he’d decide whether or not to move forward with the business. Of course, he kept hitting them, and the incremental progress launched Kodiak Cakes into a very successful place.    Focus on the little wins. During the many difficulties and dark nights of the soul that come with launching a successful brand, Joel would focus on the fan mail he’d receive from happy customers instead of his inbox of unread emails and bills - these seemingly little things had a major effect on his level of motivation and inspired him to push forward despite the difficulties. In the scheme of it all, little things like glowing customer reviews aren’t little at all because they can be tremendously motivating when the going gets tough. So try to focus on the good where you can get it because often your psychology needs it to push forward.    Create your brand organically. Kodiak as a brand very naturally conveys a rustic and adventurous image of the outdoors, hiking, and even bears - all of which was what Joel and his family grew up with. The brand pillars of Kodiak are entirely authentic because they’re outgrowths of who Joel is and where he comes from. This instills a very strong sense of authenticity into his brand which is what a lot of consumers are very attracted to. Many products attempt to reverse engineer a compelling brand based on focus groups and market research - both of which are important but there’s an undeniable level of authenticity that occurs when a brand's identity is based on genuine elements of the founders identity and passion.  Books mentioned:  Built to Last by Jim Collins  Thanks for listening! Don’t forget to subscribe and follow the show on Linkedin.

“PR is more than press releases. It’s understanding where the audience is so you can share stories that will resonate.”

“We found it’s much easier to teach a comedian how to sell than it is to teach a marketer how to be funny.”

Welcome to Damn Good Brands. Today, as part of our Influence 100 series in partnership with The Holmes Report, we are speaking to Ken Hong, the Head of Global Corporate Communications at LG. Ken has been at LG for over ten years.  Throughout the course of that time, he has witnessed and led the company through a number of technological and overall changes in the marketing landscape. Ken currently resides in Korea, but his position has taken him all over the world, giving him a very globalized perspective on consumer technology and the state of communications.   We discuss Ken’s philosophy of leadership during comprehensive company evolution, and his overall thoughts on today’s state of communications.  Here are some key takeaways from this conversation with Ken Hong: Study psychology and political science or hire those who have. Ken is very vocal about the importance of lesser-mentioned disciplines that better enable communications professionals, specifically political science and psychology. Ken claims that his studies in both of these fields helped him tremendously as a communications leader since they gave him a fundamentally better understanding of humanity, culture, and therefore communications.    Think global, stay local. Despite working in five international cities, Ken finds that experience in global comms is in low demand, whereas local expertise in any given market is much more valuable. Ken recommends that comms leaders have a baseline understanding of global communications but remain focused on their local markets, since global expertise is rarely important to local clients. Keep your challenger mindset. Part of Ken’s success comes down to his refusal to rest on his laurels even when LG achieves market leader status in certain categories. In Ken's view, there is no fundamental sense of “having arrived,” considering the speed of change. In an industry like electronics with its diverse array of products, it’s critical to always be cognizant of the brands that aren’t market leaders and keep pushing them forward to remain vigilant.   ----- Produced by Simpler Media

This episode delves into the many offshoots of social media, from emerging trends in social good and influencer marketing, to its origins as a natural means of expression in our digital age.

In August of 2019, Lippe Taylor hosted an event called Taking Your Seat at the Table: Strategies for Reaching the C-Suite as a Woman. The centerpiece of the evening was a roundtable discussion on the topic of executive female leadership.

In August of 2019, Lippe Taylor hosted an event called Taking Your Seat at the Table: Strategies for Reaching the C-Suite as a Woman. The centerpiece of the evening was a roundtable discussion on the topic of executive female leadership.

“We're not just going to follow the latest fad out of the door. We need to know that it is really going to provide our consumer a better outcome. We're in the business of science and technology and ultimately better health outcomes for our consumers.”

Paul Dyer and Torod Neptune discuss the intricacies of generating robust but universal strategies for global communications

PayPal’s Senior Vice President of Corporate Affairs, Franz Paasche, sits down with us to discuss the keys to a fully integrated digital communications practice.

eBay is driven by a strong sense of purpose to champion entrepreneurs all over the world through technology. In this interview with eBay's Chief Communications Officer, Dan Tarman, we get into how eBay ensures an unshakeable brand consistency within both their internal and external communications strategies and the keys to using comms to fuel a positive company culture that inspires and energizes employees as well as customers.

Robyn Streisand is an entrepreneur, marketer and founder of Titanium Worldwide and The Mixx; a collective of certified diverse agencies that act as a single unified marketing force for brands. We talk about Robyn’s background in entrepreneurship including how she became one of the most authoritative voices in her space and get into the finer details of how brands can best engage the LGBT community.

Zack Dugow is an entrepreneur and founder of Insticator; a startup that’s revolutionizing and disrupting the world of online ad buying. Insticator recently secured over 8 million in Series A funding and is still on fire