In this episode Elaine Roberts, former B2B CMO and MarketingKind member, hosts and interviews:~ Ty Heath – Co-founder of The LinkedIn B2B Institute and former Google and IBM executive on a mission to make marketing science accessible~ Thomas Kolster – author of Goodvertising and The Hero Trap, speaker and marketing activist and one of the founding fathers of the sustainable marketing movement~ Dave Vann – Founder of said & done, brand strategist and advisor to purpose-led B2B businesses and nonprofitsEnjoy this incredibly practical, engaging and important discussion filled with great examples, research and inspiration for how to put purpose to work for your B2B brand.
In this episode we interview Charlie Martin, CEO and founder of The Anti-Greenwash Charter, to explore how we can build trust through radical transparency.He says, ‘we're facing a collective crisis of trust in everything that we engage with...doing something to try and rebuild trust in what we are reading and engaging with is really important because that leads to speed of decision-making, which is what is needed to address some of the fundamental issues at play.'We cover how greenwashing began with marketing, communications and sales professionals freewheeling when it came to making claims that they didn't fully understand and/ or couldn't fully back up. The more recent trends with the tightening of the regulatory landscape in the UK and Europe is leading to an increase in greenhushing with companies scared to get it wrong. And more omission-based greenwashing, where communications may be compliant, but when you dig a little under the surface the bigger story is what was left out. We learn how The Anti-Greenwash Charter is leading the way with radical transparency by supporting signatories with:1) Upskilling all relevant staff members with greenwash awareness training to cut out unintentional greenwashing2) A full static content review to create alignment with regulations3) Co-creation of a Green Claims Policy to act as guardrails for all future communicationsAnd signatories are also subject to periodic campaign reviews from The Anti-Greenwash Charter and their findings are always published.Charlie and his team have also created the new truMRK prototype, an AI-powered editorial assistant that acts like Grammarly for sustainability comms, checking your new communications against your ESG data, regulations, etc. It is a mark of editorial excellence, where readers can click through to a full transparency report.To support the important work of the Charter, please recommend them to businesses that would benefit from joining and encourage every business, no matter how small, to create their own Green Claims Policy. The Charter provides a free template for a Green Claims Policy to download on their website here.And you can also listen to Charlie on The Responsible Edge podcast.This episode is hosted by Anna Mullenneaux and Paul Skinner, founders of the MarketingKind community.
While over 90% of business leaders recognize the importance of sustainability, only 60% have a strategy in place. And many of these strategies are inefficient, ineffective, or simply don't go far enough to address the global challenges we are facing.In this episode Caroline Taylor, OBE, former CMO of IBM Global Markets and Chair of Oasis Community Learning, hosts and interviews Paolo Taticchi and Melina Corvaglia-Charrey, co-authors of How to Be Sustainable: Business Strategies for Leading Change.We start by defining sustainability and talking about the need for long-term shared value. We cover the drivers for sustainable action including the financial risks and the increase in climate litigation. And we explore how to build a strong business case for sustainability.We also discuss the political influence from the US and Paolo shares that anti-ESG sentiment is more talk than fact.Paolo is Professor in Strategy and Sustainability and the Co-Director of the Centre for Sustainable Business at University College London, School of Management. He is a prominent sustainability expert, speaker and consultant working with corporates and governments around the world.Melina is a Researcher at University College London, School of Management. She has over 15 years of experience as a senior marketing leader in the media industry, and also works as a consultant supporting small-to-medium size businesses with their sustainability reporting efforts.You can check out the Chief Sustainability Heroes podcast here.And you can learn more about the MarketingKind community here.
The UK advertising industry is the third largest in the world and is known for its creativity. And although many industry leaders are very concerned that their work is fueling the climate crisis, the biggest agencies continue to take on the fossil fuel companies and other major polluters as clients. The UK trade bodies deny that advertising leads to increased consumption and say that only 12% of advertising is effective (so nothing to see here).Dr Victoria Harvey worked for a decade to try to change the industry from within, but when it showed that it was unwilling to change itself she joined with others to take this issue directly to the people. In May Chris Packham's petition garnered 110,000 signatures and on July 7th parliament debated whether or not the UK should ban fossil fuel advertising and sponsorship. You can read Victoria's parliamentary briefing for MPs here with a forward by Chris Packham.In this episode Victoria shares with us her PhD research into how the advertising industry could move away from its current destructive model towards more climate-friendly objectives and together we explore why a UK-wide ban on fossil fuel advertising is needed and how we could bring it about. This issue is often compared to the ban on tobacco advertising, because like the effects of smoking, climate change is a public health crisis. And the number of deaths globally from climate change each year are now similar to the annual global deaths from smoking when tobacco ads were banned in the UK in 2003.Although there is broad support for the change in parliament, the government has no plans to move forward with regulation at this time. Currently progress is happening most rapidly through councils banning fossil fuel advertising and sponsorship in their cities and regions. Edinburgh is leading the way and many others are joining in. Many art and cultural institutions are also refusing to work with the big polluters and know that change is coming. And there are of course hundreds of smaller agencies that have taken a stand and are unwilling to work with high carbon emitting clients.The episode is hosted by Anna Mullenneaux, co-founder of the MarketingKind community.
In this episode Dr Mark Fabian, associate professor of Public Policy at Warwick University, associate fellow at the Bennett Institute at Cambridge University, wellbeing expert and author of Beyond Happy: How to Rethink Happiness and Find Fulfilment, guides us towards how we can increase our wellbeing and the wellbeing of those around us.Together we explore Mark's latest book Beyond Happy, which challenges superficial ideas of happiness and offers a deeply thoughtful framework for living well, both individually and collectively.We also discuss his research on the Wellbeing State, which is building an important and much needed case for changes in education, housing, economic policy and healthcare.Mark shares with us his concept of 'Coalescence of Being', a process by which we gradually integrate our experiences, values, identity, and actions into a coherent, meaningful whole. This could mean setting goals, working towards them, reading social feedback and most importantly learning to introspect on our own motivations and values and using new understandings to course correct along the way.This episode is hosted by Paul Skinner, founder of The MarketingKind community, director of The Agency of the Future and author of The Purpose Upgrade and Collaborative Advantage.
'It's more money for someone somewhere, but it's not more prosperity.'In this episode we interview Tim Jackson, author of Prosperity without Growth and Director of the Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity (CUSP) to explore the ideas in his latest book The Care Economy.We discuss how the current growth-based economy is often a false economy and how we can instead work towards a Care Economy where "health" is the outcome and "care" is our guiding principle.Tim powerfully dissects how the UK health burden has changed since the inception of the NHS and how our growth-based economy feeds chronic disease.Tim says that, 'The food-related costs of chronic disease in the UK are now around £268 billion per year, which is substantially higher than the NHS budget'.For anyone passionate about tackling the ultra-processed foods crisis Tim mentions the Fight Fake Food March on London 6th.The book shares a new philosophy for the economy where health is the ultimate prosperity. Tim believes that creating a Care Economy would mean changing education, regulation and financial systems, but he is not depressed by the road ahead.He leaves us with a note of respair (recovery from despair) saying, 'The narrative form can hold vision for us. It can hold the vision for how things should be working even when they are fundamentally not doing that. And that vision provides a lens for how we could be doing things better. We can ask ourselves how we can do things differently. What would this look like if it had "health" as its goal and "care" as its organising operational principle?'This episode is hosted by Paul Skinner, founder of The MarketingKind community, Director of The Agency of the Future and author of The Purpose Upgrade and Collaborative Advantage.
We are all using AI every time we use social media (whether we want to or not), so in this episode Nicole Mezzasalma, Senior Consultant on Innovation at Battenhall, helps us explore the risks and opportunities involved.Nicole highlights the risks of using AI on social media:1) Consumer backlash - most people don't want to see AI generated photos and videos on social media and they will not be shy in letting you know2) Copyright liability - you are potentially opening up your brand to copyright lawsuits3) Bias - AI tools often confirm and worsen gender and race bias, so you need to actively work to counter thisNicole shares her concerns about the wild west of AI regulation and the UK government's current attempts to change copyright law so that creators have to opt out to protect their work from being used as AI LLM training data.She also flags concerns about the quality of AI generated content, especially when LLMs like ChatGPT are being trained on AI generated social media content.Nicole's recommendations for using AI tools to improve your social media engagement include:- Where AI really shines is with data analysis. It can look at large swaths of data and find trends and patterns and classify and categorise things much quicker than humans can.- NotebookLM can act as a self-contained second brain or client brain (and it can transform anything into a podcast or radio show).- AI tools can help to protect vulnerable people by providing effective content moderation for social media.- By making chatbots more realistic and helpful (and knowing when to pass the customer to a human) AI tools can help to increase customer satisfaction and engagement.We then open up for a group discussion, which covers everything from sustainability and misinformation, to how AI will impact the capitalist model and the role marketing can play in creating a positive vision for change.At Battenhall Nicole helps clients and internal teams to implement innovation-related work, such as new and niche social media platform campaigns, and experiments that break new ground in the industry. Nicole has over 20 years of experience in marketing, communications and strategy, with a strong focus on social media. She is a Top Voice on LinkedIn. And she speaks about AI and Social Media at conferences around the world.This episode is hosted by Anna Mullenneaux, co-founder of the MarketingKind community.
In this episode we gain insight into the role journalism can play in tackling climate change with the brilliant Anna Turns, journalist and broadcaster, Senior Environmental Editor for The Conversation and author of Go Toxic Free.We discuss the importance of solutions journalism, how to combat RFK jr.-style misinformation, advice for more effective climate storytelling, Anna's experience campaigning to reduce plastic pollution with her daughter and why she wrote Go Toxic Free: Easy and Sustainable Ways to Reduce Your Chemical Pollution.We also cover Anna's important work as Senior Environmental Editor for The Conversation, where journalists collaborate with academics to bring their research to the wider public. She shares how her Guardian article on an avian flu outbreak in Gambia, which posed a serious risk to UK poultry farmers, led to a change in UK government policy.You can listen to her recent BBC radio series Secrets of The Sea here.And Anna recommends checking out the Solutions Journalism Network for anyone interested in further exploring how journalism can tackle social problems.This episode is hosted by Paul Skinner and Anna Mullenneaux, co-founders of the MarketingKind community.
In this episode Raj Sisodia explores the role of Conscious Capitalism and conscious marketing in the age of Trump. The discussion starts with the chaos and cruelty of the Trump presidency and quickly moved on to how Conscious Capitalism and conscious marketing can provide an antidote.Raj cites Sam Harris saying that bad ideas can be more dangerous than bad people and when they catch on can cause havoc. We cover how economic and business theories become self fulfilling as business students change their language, behaviour and world view according to what they are studying.We discuss the shame of a marketing based only on perception and persuasion, as reflected in the phrase: ‘It's not real, that's just marketing'. We explore the higher purpose marketing can better serve and the need to understand the real underlying needs, the things that people might not even know about themselves, and find a way to meet those needs. And Raj says that we may need to come up with a better name for marketing, like the 'human resources' department should be called the 'people' department.Raj shares his 4 As of marketing as an alternative to the 4 Ps: - Acceptability- Affordability- Accessibility- AwarenessWe also explore the 4 principles of Conscious Capitalism and how when you are able to accomplish all 4, they are synergistic:1) Higher purpose - your reason why beyond profit2) Stakeholder orientation - making decisions that benefit all3) Conscious leadership - guiding their team towards shared values4) Conscious culture - valuing transparency, collaboration and well beingRaj explaines that the consciousness of the leader is the starting point. And he gives examples of great leaders such as James Sinegal founder of Costco, Satya Nadella CEO at Microsoft and his friend and co-author John Mackey, founder of Whole Foods.Raj reminds us that when we have stakeholders who are invested in our organisations emotionally then they all become marketers for us.Raj says our businesses have to be good for the individual, good for the group and good for the planet. In biology it's called multilevel selection. There can't just be a good business case. There has to also be a societal case, a planetary case, and a human case.We explore how to elevate the right leaders in business, the people who have both strength and love. They may not be the people who are putting themselves forwards.Raj is the author of 15 books including Awaken, Shakti Leadership, The Healing Organization, Conscious Capitalism, Everybody Matters, Firms of Endearment and The 4 A's of Marketing.Raj is a founding member of the Conscious Capitalism movement, FEMSA Distinguished University Professor of Conscious Enterprise and Chairman of the Conscious Enterprise Center at Tecnologico de Monterrey and Co-Founder and Chairman Emeritus of Conscious Capitalism Inc.This episode is hosted by Paul Skinner, author of The Purpose Upgrade and Collaborative Advantage, director of The Agency of the Future and founder of the MarketingKind community.
In this episode we interview Rupert Read on how we can engage the climate majority in taking on the needed work of transformative and strategic adaptation to climate change.We explore Rupert's journey from Green Party councillor to helping to launch Extinction Rebellion to founding the Climate Majority Project. We discuss Rupert's latest book Transformative Adaptation: Another World is Still Just Possible and how the concept of Thrutopia can help us to imagine the possible futures we want to create.Rupert says that 'We literally cannot go on the way we are going - we need to choose a different path and that needs to be a path of transformation and adaptation... If the way we try to adapt is (like the current government is doing) throwing a little bit of money at building hard flood defenses, it will not be enough. They are expensive, high carbon and will not last.We need to instead adapt in a way that is transformative and works with nature to create solutions that will be sustainable, so in the case of flooding for instead it means changing uplands land management, it means creating sponge cities.'The conversation gots controversial when it came to DEI, with disagreement on whether we can fully separate the issues of climate change and inequality.Rupert argues that 'there has been some polarisation around decarbonisation and there's a lot more around DEI, but there is very little around adaptation, because it is incredibly tangible. And this is what research around this shows. We're facing these worsening climate impacts and if we can succeed in bringing people together in the UK around work on transformative or strategic adaptation to climate change I think you will start to see communities that are less polarised.'We discuss the importance of truth and Rupert recommended Mike Berners-Lee's new book A Climate of Truth.And Rupert encourages us all to join the Climate Majority Project's Regulate Us campaign. He says, 'we can take action through our own businesses, but even if we are trying to lead by example, there will always be bad actors. And if bad actors can get away with it then they may put us out of business, so government needs to regulate. And government will only regulate if business people step up and say "we can't do it by ourselves".'This episode is hosted by Anna Mullenneaux, co-founder of the MarketingKind community.
"Move the money, change the world."This is the philosophy behind Chris Baker's brilliant book Obsolete: How Change Brands are Changing the World.In this episode Chris inspires us with his journey from co-founding Change Please and then Serious Tissues, to writing the book and now helping to bring together a consortium of Change Brands for collaboration and scale.Since January 115 brands have signed up to work together as an informal holding company or 'Rebel Alliance' as Chris describes it in the book. He says 'the benefits of collaborating out weight the benefits of competing against each other'.We discuss many of the Change Brands, such as Tony's Chocolonely, Oatly, Smol, Suri, Liquid Death and Deep Green, covered in the book and a winning formula for creating Change Brands.When talking about the current backlash against ESG and DEI (especially in the US), Chris quotes Sun Tzu "in the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity".When asked where to start with creating a Change Brand Chris says that 'making the right choice aspirational is really powerful'. He advises us to:1) Genuinely give a shit about what you are creating (for example read the founding story of Trip Drinks)2) Explore categories where there is a decent margin and where minimum order quantity isn't too big (Change Please vs Serious Tissues)3) Look at who are the players dominating your space (the founders of Suri knew there was no love for Oral B and Philips, the two big players in their market)Change Brands are taking risks and leading the way for others to come along and copy. And they make it easier for governments to legislate for positive change by showing what's possible.Chris believes in impact over purpose, words over actions. Brands should create minimum footprint and maximum impact.For anyone interested in the power of Change Brands read the book, vote with your wallet and if you have any questions you can find Chris on LinkedIn.This episode is hosted by Paul Skinner and Anna Mullenneaux, co-founders of the MarketingKind community.
In this episode Wim Vermeulen, keynote speaker, strategist, partner at BUBKA and author of Speak Up Now!, explores the future of marketing.Wim covers the important leadership role that business has in helping us all to adapt to and mitigate the climate emergency. When politicians are incapable of thinking beyond 4 to 5-year election cycles, family run businesses are thinking in terms of 5 generations.Wim shares that we've gone beyond the phases of moral duty and regulation, when it comes to climate we're now in the risk management phase. In this phase demonstrating our credibility is more important than ever. We have to show that we're not on the side of misinformation and that we are responsible.We also discuss storytelling and language, activating the silent majority and modeling the potential for the most effective messaging.We cover the 4 barriers to shifting demand towards planet-friendly products.1) Affordability - you need to aim for the 90%, not the 10% to create real impact2) Knowledge - people don't know what 'sustainable' means, so find a simple way to communicate real benefits3) Convenience - make it easy, they don't want to work for it4) Lack of action - 'don't ask me to save the world when politicians and businesses have created the problem'Wim says marketers have to talk to the sustainability leaders in their organisations. They have to learn from them. And then show the CEO how marketing can contribute by identifying new value that can be created with more sustainable products and services. And he leaves us with a note of optimism, saying in the future 'there is plenty of room for lighthouse brands'. Wim believes that the language of hope will be incredibly important and we will want to buy from businesses that give us hope. Wim’s work at BUBKA focuses on the 'Demand Shift', examining how corporate sustainability drives business growth, enhances brand value, and inspires consumers toward less but more sustainable consumption.In 2023, his contributions were recognized by the marketing industry with the Silver Marketing Leadership Award, and his latest book, Speak Up Now: Marketing in Times of Climate Crisis, received the PIM Literature Award in the Netherlands.In 2024, BUBKA was awarded Agency of the Year in the Positive Impact category, and its Net Credibility Score (NCS) research work won an AMMA award.In the conversation Wim mentions his recent collaboration ‘We, the hopeful’ about the story of 2050, which you can view here.This episode is hosted by Catherine Archer, founder of Brand Archery, former CEO of JING and member of the MarketingKind community.
In this episode Lotte Jones, Chief Commercial Officer of The News Movement, helps up to explore the future of media and how new media is pushing traditional news media to innovate.She introduces us toThe News Movement, which is a modern media company, born on social providing factual content aimed at engaging Gen Z.We discuss the challenges The News Movement faced in building their commercial offerings for brands while growing organically (they now reach 100M views per month), of balancing the rigour of traditional journalism with the creativity of social media, and finding the right ways to support the creator economy.Lotte reminds us that:- Building community and engagement makes our organisations more resilient- When we're overwhelmed by the state of the world we need opportunities to take meaningful action- When working with clients don't be afraid to alter the brief!If you are not yet following The News Movement, Recount and Capsule, you can find them onInstagram, TikTok andYouTube. The episode was hosted by Tom Hadley, aMarketingKind member and founder ofExodus 25.
In this episode Dr Chris Arnold encourages us to 'Think outside the tick-box' and 'Supercharge the "S" in ESG'. Chris says, "We often talk about a climate crisis, but I want to talk about the social crisis. If you look at the social crisis we have, slavery is massive. We're talking about well over 50 million people in this world in modern day slavery. It's one of the biggest criminal factors. We also have crises in housing, poverty, hunger and unemployment." 1. Chris advises businesses to start by defining their social purpose. And to make sure there is a strong values alignment between their brand and their stakeholders. 2. Then look at their social impact strategy, including the causes they want to support, employee engagement and well beyond. And decide how they will achieve this strategy through partnerships or campaigns. 3. Once they have an action plan, they also need a plan for measuring impact. 4. And finally they need to communicate their impacts. Chris Arnold is a Dr of Business, author of Ethical Marketing & The New Consumer, founder of My Social Impact and was Brand Republic’s Ethical Marketing blogger for 10 years. An expert in ethical marketing and social impact, he has worked with top brands on social impact campaigns, including Diageo, Sainsbury’s, Heineken, Brewers, Hackney Council, London Community Arts and over 25 charities. In addition to being a member of the MarketingKind community, Chris is a member of the Institute of Corporate Responsibility & Sustainability (ICRS), NetworkOne Sustainability Think Tank and an Investors in Community Ambassador. This episode is hosted by Anna Mullenneaux and Paul Skinner, founders of the MarketingKind community.
In this episode we hear from Will Hutton, one of the UK's most influential economics commentators, former editor-in-chief of The Observer, author of six major books on political economy including The State We're In and co-chair of The Purposeful Company. Will shares his honest assessment of Labour's first 6 months in office and together we explore the ideas and solutions from his latest book This Time No Mistakes. We discuss the importance the 'we society', of living our values and national pride (where it can be genuine), being honest about wicked problems, why fairness matters and the possibility of social media in public ownership. The episode is hosted by Paul Skinner, founder of the MarketingKind community, director of The Agency of the Future and author of The Purpose Upgrade and Collaborative Advantage.
In this episode Jonathan Gabay shares with us what he has learned about how to create brand trust in an AI world from decades of work in marketing and advertising, creating training course for the CIM and universities and writing 15 books including his latest Practical Digital Marketing and AI Psychology. The number one question he gets asked when delivering AI training courses around the world, is: "Will AI take my job?". There is naturally an inherent distrust in AI and when you add that to the high level of distrust in advertising (according to the 2024 Edelman Trust Barometer), we need to actively work to build brand trust when using AI tools. Jonathan recommends we use these 3 pillars to create brand trust: 1) Fundamentally we need to demonstrate competence and reliably deliver on our brand promises. 2) We also need to act with integrity and be transparent about our use of AI. 3) And we have to show a genuine benevolence towards our customers or service users in how we use their data and interact with them. And this means integrating the human touch thoughtfully alongside AI tools. In this episode we also discuss explainable AI, ethical data stewardship, authentic social proof, hyper-personalisation, censorship, the need for critical thinking, and how AI tools will transform the relationship between people and brands over time. Jonathan has written 15 books on copy writing, marketing, branding and leadership. He regularly comments on major news channels including CNN, ABC, BBC and Bloomberg. Many educational bodies and institutions, including the Chartered Institute of Marketing, the University of West London, the Oxford College of Marketing, the Cyprus Marketing Institute, and Google, have featured and endorsed his digital psychology and creative courses. Workshops and Masterclasses are delivered at universities across Europe, the Middle East, and America. In addition to creating and leading graduate-level programmes, Jonathan advises major educational institutions on integrating artificial intelligence (AI) into their curricula. This episode is hosted by Anna Mullenneaux, co-founder of The MarketingKind community.
In this episode Dennis Yi Tenen explores what the history of machine learning can tell us about the future of how AI technologies will impact storytelling and culture. Together we discuss Dennis's book Literary Theory for Robots: How Computers Learned to Write, why he wrote it and what he has learned in the process. He shares how the challenges that arise with AI are social problems, similar to the challenges we've seen throughout history with each technology change. And as marketers we are well places to help society to adapt in useful ways. He argues that AI is better understood as a social or collective intelligence rather than a single entity. AI is more representative of an aggregation of human knowledge and technological capabilities rather than an independent godlike character. Dennis says that humans have been automating the writing process throughout history and AI is just the next step. Dennis suggests it is more useful to focus on specific, actionable issues rather than abstract existential threats of AI. He says that Europe has often been better than the US at getting the balance right between regulation and innovation and we should make sure that we continue to protect information in the public domain. When asked about the dangers of commoditising the outputs caused by the drive for efficiency in the creative process with AI, Dennis says: "Your body needs to go through the experience of exercise to derive the benefits. Let's extend this to intellectual capacities... Maybe we need to get to the mental gym". Dennis is an associate professor of English at Columbia University, where he also co-directs the Center for Comparative Media. His research happens at the intersection of people, text, and technology. A long-time affiliate of Columbia’s Data Science Institute, formerly a Microsoft engineer in the Windows group and fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, his code runs on millions of personal computers worldwide. Here is the link to the ChatGPT generated sequel to Literary Theory for Robots, which Paul mentions in the conversation and Dennis comments on. This episode is hosted by Paul Skinner, author of The Purpose Upgrade and Collaborative Advantage and founder of the MarketingKind community.
In this episode we learn from Kate Goldman-Toomey, Executive Director of Partnerships at Open Planet, how they are creating a library of high-quality climate and nature footage, free to use for educational, environmental and impact storytelling. She said, "the climate and nature crisis is also a communications crisis. We're not going far enough or fast enough so in order to collectively shift the dial and to accelerate action we need to supercharge storytelling at an exponential scale." She tells us about the incredible work Open Planet is doing to democratize climate video content. Their library contains over 12,000 clips of documentary video content contributed by over 60 filmmakers and in the next year they aim to expand their library to over 150,000 clips. Kate shares their upcoming projects including a new feature documentary with David Attenborough on the Ocean, a feature documentary and impact campaign on Biodiversity, and a recent project on health x climate with Wellcome. And how they are building a global network on content creators who are telling their local climate stories and making them available through the Open Planet platform. I encourage everyone to explore Open Planet's library at OpenPlanet.org, share it with the climate educators, non-profits and anyone looking to tell better climate stories. If your organisation may be interested in partnering with Open Planet please reach out to Kate. Together we can all empower better climate storytelling. This episode is hosted by Anna Mullenneaux, co-founder of the MarketingKind community.
In this episode Neil Davidson shares what he is learning as part of his doctoral research on GenAI and creativity. In addition to his studies Neil is CEO of HeyHuman and a Founding Member of the MarketingKind community. When speaking about generative AI, Neil says, 'This is going to change at an individual level, a team level, an organisational level pretty much everything we do in time as creative agencies. It will change jobs, it will change processes and it will change revenue models.' His research includes investigating questions such as 'what defines creativity? How do you measure it? And how do you nurture it in organisations?'. Neil explores why there are a lot of talented and accomplished creatives who believe that generative AI threatens their identity. And we cover how AI is already changing the creative process. Neil shares 5 examples of where AI is going creatively: 1) Keyboard warriors who don't think AI will change their jobs (but remember this is the worst AI will ever be and it's only as good as its prompting) 2) Elite creatives who make AI part of their craft like Anton 3) Midjourney gurus like Sherry Horowitz, who is poet and fine artist moving into using AI in film 4) AI has the biggest effect on the least skilled - Carl doesn't have years of creative experience, but is using AI to create effective corporate comms films 5) John with decades of film editing experience believes he will likely receive 10% to 20% of the work in future and he will become the human finesse after AI has done most of the editing AI is already an effective thinking partner, adaptive author, futurist, creative augmentor, media architect, insights synthesizer, compressing time consuming tasks and content creator. And Neil leaves us with an important reminder... 'it won't be the AI that takes your job, it will be the creative using AI that takes your job.'
In this episode we explore how we can narrate our way to a safer world with Dr Malka Older, humanitarian, academic and best-selling author of Infomocracy. Just like when reading Malka's novels, this discussion helps us differently about how we structure our lives, our work and our politics. The narratives that guide us have an enormous effect on how we respond to, address and recover from our most profound problems, even including our disasters and emergencies. So in the face of changes in technology and divisive societal trends how can we ensure that our cultural narratives are helping us to be prepared, responsive and resilient? She says, 'As a disaster researcher...we see again and again in personal experience and in literature that if you have no money but you have both community and organisation you are far better off than the other way around, than having a lot of money and a community where people are very divided and hate each other and no organisation in terms of what to do with the money.' As wealthy western democracies are being hit by more and more disasters will we be able to come together to rebuild our divided communities to become more resilient? Or will we continue to think that our money and technology will be enough protect us? The discussion covers everything from how no one in real life reacts like they do in disaster movies, to the incredible importance of hearing all voices from all corners of the world and in all languages (not just the ones that we are familiar with). Malka’s science-fiction political thriller Infomocracy was named one of the best books of 2016 by Kirkus, Book Riot, and the Washington Post, and shortlisted for the 2019 Neukom Institute Literary Arts Award. With the sequels Null States (2017) and State Tectonics (2018), she completed the Centenal Cycle trilogy, a finalist for the Hugo Best Series Award of 2018. Links to her short fiction, poetry, and essays can be found here. Named Senior Fellow for Technology and Risk at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs for 2015, she has more than a decade of field experience in humanitarian aid and development, ranging from field level experience as a Head of Office in Darfur to supporting global programs and agency-wide strategy as a disaster risk reduction technical specialist. She has responded to complex emergencies and natural disasters in Sri Lanka, Uganda, Darfur, Indonesia, Japan, and Mali, in the last three as Team Leader. Her doctoral work on the sociology of organizations at the Institut d’Études Politques de Paris (Sciences Po) explores the dynamics of multi-level governance and disaster response using the cases of Hurricane Katrina and the Japan tsunami of 2011. In September 2024 Malka took on the role of Executive Director of Global Voices. This episode is hosted by Paul Skinner, founder of the MarketingKind community, director of The Agency of the Future and author of The Purpose Upgrade and Collaborative Advantage.