Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: There is no one central place. So in marketing, we're always taught it's going to take you seven touch points to reach another person, whether that's your user or somebody else. It takes you seven touch points. And the ultimate message is you kind of got to put it everywhere, right? So you've really got to be communicating in the places where your audience is. And you cannot wait for one area of communication to then lead communication in other places. That trickle down is never going to happen or trickle sideways or anything like that.
[00:00:36] Speaker B: As our parents grow older, it can be difficult to guide them through their golden years while still respecting their autonomy and fitting it into our already complex lives. Welcome to the Parent Projects podcast, where our guests share practical wisdom to tackle the issues that impact adult children of aging parents. I'm Tony Siebers. Thanks for joining us today.
Well, today I've got Hudson Davis communications, kind of a keynote. Off of that, we're going to talk with your huddy budy, Blair Huddy, who's going to join us in studio. We're going to break down some communications and family dynamics. And this is her gig. It's her Bailey Wick. If you're with many of the larger organizations from Meta, Google, Apple, Oracle, Adobe, the UN, if you've got a big idea and you need to figure out a way to communicate change into a marketplace, Blair is a great go to to help get your arms around that and make that meaningful connection with people. Blair, I hope I didn't talk you up too much. I really appreciate you coming in and sharing this expertise in how we communicate this passion to serve into our audience base together in here. Thanks so much for being on the podcast and talking to.
[00:01:51] Speaker A: Thank you so much for having me. Tony.
[00:01:55] Speaker B: It goes without saying that you like to tackle big problems and you like to help people communicate about those big problems is a background generally for us. Help our guests outside of the big brands or those things. What is it that leads you to want to tackle something big and help everybody else start chewing through that and breaking it up? What drives you for that?
[00:02:19] Speaker A: Honestly, in particular to the topic of communication and how communication can be such a big thing for so many people. I struggled with that when I was younger. I am autistic and I was undiagnosed, and I had a really difficult time sort of understanding the communication that was going on around me. I couldn't pick up on the social cues and various other things, and I really dove in and it almost became like a special interest to me where I really wanted to understand how communication worked and why it worked in specific ways and how to communicate with different people and being able to really engage anybody in a conversation because I was so uncomfortable with it that I really wanted to confront that and I turned it into my career. So here we are.
[00:03:06] Speaker B: Well, in that career, it's led you into an opportunity to talk to a lot of people with big ideas that are trying to communicate those things down at that first introduction or the first blush, if you will. When you're looking at an issue, is there a passion to decide whether it's a project that matches you? Are there types of projects you like to take on more than others?
[00:03:33] Speaker A: Yeah. So my focus right now are projects that are involved in sustainability and the climate. I'm super passionate about making sure that we have a planet to live on and it's something that we can continue to foster and grow. So I take on projects specifically in making an impact and helping others. I've worked in affordable housing, making sure that everybody has access to housing. I've done a lot of work in helping people understand the impact of their spending and so various aspects of both human rights and other things that are generally meant to help others. That's where I've really found my calling.
[00:04:14] Speaker B: Those of us in the longevity services marketplace, you kind of get a fresh perspective at some level to take that expertise, which I look forward to unpacking today. One of those big challenges that we have is with such a big influx of people going into the entitlement space system, which is what the majority of developed nations use around the country to catch that last lost in lease, the social safety net, we call it. For us, our welfare is Social Security or Medicare, Medicaid at the state level.
We anticipate in the UN looks at this overwhelming just flood of Aids that are going to come into needing to pull on that system. And that creates a competition for resources like nonprofits and others that sit out there. And so we feel mobilized to try to help families help themselves or help us get in front of that and make it a little easier for your kiddos. We've broken our neck at running, at talking to mom and dad, and generally we realized that nobody really wants to talk about getting older and how difficult that.
And then we stumbled upon their kids who are getting older, which I want to talk about in the same vein, like your book, your latest book that came out and trying to teach some lessons from generation. Why?
Right. I get that. Not lost on me, but a similar type of thing. You start turning now to the next generation maybe you can get in front of it and get them to care and make it easier, but probably not. But what you probably can do is we've recognized, well, they have a pain point. This is going to fall on them if that silver tsunami hits, as the experts in the world expect it to hit, leaving a real big opportunity.
Now, we need to shift our communication from talking to mom and dad to talking to their adult children, who may or may not be responsible yet, but they definitely care.
And that's a real challenge for us as businesses that we really want to do well. We really don't want to not be good at that because they don't want to be not good at it.
From that standpoint, is there anything that you can kind of glean off the top of that to think about in the family dynamic, that when you've got a big message and, you know, you've got to promote that message into the families, how do you think about that? What are things that we should be keeping in mind in the front set when we develop communication strategies?
[00:06:49] Speaker A: So the first thing I've experienced, my parents are boomers. I'm a millennial. And I think one of the real reasons that I wanted to write a book from the perspective of a millennial and a book about lessons in particular, was that I got the sense that my parents really still thought of me and looked at me as a child and that there might be other people around the world that still see millennials as children.
And I'm 34 now, so certainly not a child. And so I kind of wanted to educate others that millennials are coming into an age where we're about to be able to become president. I'll be 35 this year. And so perhaps millennials have also learned some real life lessons that can be shared. Now, when you talk about the fundamentals of communication, in particular bringing them into families, it really does start with awareness, and really is you can't know what you don't know. And so the first thing I know, it's difficult to think about having conversations. As you mentioned, my dad had a difficult conversation with me. He's going to be 77 this year. And he was like, you got to know what I want. You've got to know what my desires are. I want to make sure that you don't have to think about it. So he joined something called the Neptune Society, and he asked me to go with him. I really did not want to go. It was very uncomfortable. But we did it, and we did it together.
And so that's sort of the second thing is that there's an awareness, and starting with that awareness can often help open the doors for conversation.
[00:08:21] Speaker B: Yeah. So I like that in order to advise in, they've got to have their own situational awareness of what's going on. And that's something we've communicated to mom and dad for some time. I know we see these things. We call them catalysts. They tend to be these major life events that get families to make action. Right. A debt their mom and dad are going to run through their financial savings that they had for retirement. So it's about to impact adult children late in life divorce. Now mom and dad each have to work on a household with 50% of what they expected to work on a household with. And that's got a change of things or a death of one family member. And now the other ones maybe didn't do certain things in their role. Maybe one was responsible for paying the bills or working from those things, and the other one now has to pick that up, figure out how that's done.
I like that idea of that awareness, of helping them understand where that sits. But also keeping in mind, how do you balance? You've got a family member now taking responsibility to advise somebody else to a loved one. So when you, for instance, what do you think your dad was looking for out of you to communicate or to handle?
[00:09:42] Speaker A: Oh, goodness.
I think there were a couple of things. I think he wanted me to know that he was thinking of me and how his death would impact me.
But I also think that he wanted me to understand that it was something he was aware of. Right. He was aware of his age and that he was getting closer and that he didn't want to leave it for the last minute. And so he wanted me to really understand the process that's going to happen by taking me with him to the Neptune society, I can sort of understand. Okay. I call this number when that time does come, and they're really going to take care of everything. And so I need to deal with them when it comes to the arrangements and all that stuff, because that's now already been paid for.
And so I think he wanted me to hear him and understand him and certainly have a difficult conversation with him, which is something that he really can't stop at 77, it's sort of inevitable at this point, right?
[00:10:44] Speaker B: It is that one thing we all share so far, at least we all share that we die. And that same end, a part of that human experience will come to a conclusion. Right. And regardless.
Okay, so you've got that perspective, that personal perspective there as a business is looking to tackle. Actually, maybe even to do that, it could be highly emotional. Right? Who knows what's going to come out of that conversation between awareness when it goes to happen multiple places, like one family member, okay, I've seen other family members completely shut down. We've all seen that in our businesses.
When you're setting communication and maybe you're an attorney, right? An estate law attorney, or you're a real estate agent, that's really great. At this niche, they understand this is the movement of the largest individual retirement asset out there. And $20,000 makes the difference maybe between an elbow surgery or not sometime like it really matters.
What do you account for in those differences? When you're just starting a strategy as a business to communicate? Do you think about their all difference? Do you just find a center mass that you're going to communicate to and try to get them moving and then get the others to follow? What are some of the general principles that we think about when we want to communicate something difficult and change like that?
[00:12:09] Speaker A: So we used to refer it.
The long and short of it is it used to be that sort of just kind of tell everybody as if they're all the same, and we would call that spray and pray, right? So you just kind of spray that message out there and pray it hits the right person. Right. But today we've learned that it's really so much more than that. And so when you look at a business, you would help them develop really niche personas, and I would encourage them to really narrow down their messaging to that Persona. We can take that fundamental and bring that into the family dynamic. So your children of different ages are really going to need to be spoken to in different ways. And so you have to have the sort of understanding of the message that you need to get across. And how you say that to your five year old, your twelve year old and your 30 year old millennial are going to be really different, but the message is the same. You still have to get that point across. And so you, as the communicator, the person who has something to share, you have to do the legwork to understand how you're going to reach those different audiences. And that comes from understanding how they like to be spoken to. So, for example, the millennial generation, we do not want to turn on the news. We do not want to go read a newspaper. We are going to open our phones and go to social media. So if you wanted to use some sort of article or something like that to back up your position or something like that. Sending it to us on social media is going to have more of an impact. Now, when I look at the alphas, they don't want to read an article whatsoever. They want to watch a video. So you might send them a TikTok on a topic. Right. So how you communicate to the folks in your life that are of different generations or different time periods or different levels of understanding, you really do want to take the time and effort to customize your message, whatever that is, to that audience.
[00:14:05] Speaker B: And is that a selection of that Persona that your product itself generally is going to be most quickly understood to.
I'm an ex, but if you've got siblings that are Gen Z or you've got millennials that sit with them, there's usually a smattering of family and multigenerational, particularly if you're eastern european, south american, like, those cultures tend to engage unilaterally at this moment without even being told to. They're already engaging multiple generations to help with taking care of grandma or whatever that looks like they're more accustomed to it. So would you start with thinking, okay, well, my product is best understood here. Pick that generation and then go with that and expect to pick up the others. Is that kind of what I'm hearing there, or is it.
[00:14:55] Speaker A: I would say it's a little bit less of the audiences that are going to be best understood and more the focus on the audiences where you're going to get the greatest return. So when I am advising businesses, I would go, okay, well, where is your revenue going to come from? That is immediately where we go in terms of use case and user Persona. Let's define it for this one segment where the majority of you feel your revenue is going to come from or whatever your goal is. Right. If your goal as an organization is to bring on more members or more users. Right. Great. What is the channel that we can acquire the most amount of users? The fastest. Let's go there. Great. If that's social media, what do people want to see on social media? Well, they want to be able to engage with it. They want it to synthesize the message and distill it down. They want something that is commentable. Right? So the algorithms really don't like likes. They think likes are very passive, whereas comments, shares, saves are what they call active. So you then start to think about, okay, well, how can I make this content more active? How can I encourage comments? How can I encourage people to share versus just something that people are going.
[00:16:04] Speaker B: To scroll and like, right, so that's great. And that starts to touch something we've talked about off camera, which is what it takes in. I'll try to paraphrase what we before because I loved where the conversation was. Wish the cameras were on already.
[00:16:18] Speaker A: For us.
[00:16:22] Speaker B: In a time in which things are changing so rapidly, the demand on leadership and business is to be just, that is to lead and not unless to manage, instead of waiting for the outcome to hit and then figure out what to do after it land, educating yourself and arming ourselves with, well, where are we likely to go? What's the connected tissue here? What's influencing who's moving what in what direction? And how do we put ourself in a position to see those things that causes us to maybe think about not just where are we going to sell our existing product line in, but how do we listen to where our product line needs to be five years from now? Which, if I look backwards, five years, it's crazy.
[00:17:07] Speaker A: Totally different.
[00:17:09] Speaker B: I mean, the first 35 years, like there's a 35 year pan that maybe accomplished what happened in the last five years, maybe even two and a half years. And that's a time where we were all stuck inside.
We weren't even interacting with each other as much. You really could have been. What's going to happen with that open?
It's quite fascinating. Okay, so you're developing back to it. You're a business. You're going to pick that Persona that you're going to write to, you want to lead. If one of those things is, I've just got this particular service to communicate through, what I hear you saying is understand where they are, how do they listen? What are they looking for? What's the content drive? Okay, yeah, exactly. How about when you want to lead? When you want to lead and you want to set yourself up to listen, and they don't know what they don't know yet, you just want to position yourself to be able to hear. Is there any tricks to the trade of positioning yourself for that?
[00:18:07] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm a big fan of leading from the front. So, for example, I am just a lifelong learner, and so I recognize and see that AI is the future and technology is the future and it's not going away. And so I thought, gosh, if I'm going to lead going forward, I better have an innate understanding of what this stuff is and what it's like to build it, right? And so I made the decision to go back to school and I've started taking classes on how to code AI, literally understanding how to code python, and the fundamental understanding of whatever it is, that technology, that user, that space, whatever it is, that fundamental understanding is going to help you lead. And your job as the leader is to make sure that the people around you have that same fundamental understanding. So whether it's giving them access to that information, whatever resource you use to learn. So for example, if you're taking free classes online, share that link, that kind of stuff. So really making sure that the folks around you, whether that's folks in your department or folks in your organization, you're the CEO, you sit at the top. You want to make sure that everybody from top to bottom has access to the same resources so that they can understand what's going on. And the next step that I would say towards that is really not shying away from difficult conversations. I see leaders all the time miss an opportunity to communicate to their staff, to communicate to their organization because of something difficult happening. And the leaders that I have most admired and learned from are the ones that found the way to have the difficult conversation with the organization and still make the people in that organization leave that conference going. Yeah, okay. This is going to be really great. Right?
Learning how to do that is a really core tenant to what you're talking.
[00:20:06] Speaker B: About into that leadership and being able to create the environment where they feel that they can contribute.
I hear you too. The days of having time to get comfortable with what you saw and then figure your own version of that, and then make a structured integration of that back in relationship and start to invite your organization to that and roll through. There just isn't time for that today. Things are moving quicker. And so I think it's requiring, and there's some other cultural stuff that has to happen here, but that is not small. I got it. It's not small, but to the same degree, allowing people to parallel plan with thought before you get in. I was reminded that great author Ben Lidel writes a lot of this, and he talks about when two forces get set up and they collide against each other. Number one, first of all, those are the conversations people remember. Those hard ones. Those are the meetings they do. They come out and it sticks with them. Right?
But when those things happen, there's energy that's released off of that and you can harness that energy. And that chances are that comes off of it. It might be a hot mess. You might have to get good at reading tea leaves and go back to school to understand how to do that. Or hire Hudson Davis communications to help you figure out how to pull something like that altogether. But the reality is, if you shy away from that, or if one's too strong to the other, you lose the kinetic force of creativity that comes off the outside of that. So we actually have so much more in common if we allow that to come in and have that conversation internally in our organizations and let that creatively happen and make sure that that conversation happens and doesn't get overwhelmed from one side to the next. I think we're learning how to balance that.
[00:22:01] Speaker A: I see that a lot also in crisis communication. So, for example, when large organizations are dealing with a public relations nightmare, right. Their natural instinct is to say nothing, right? And I would come in as an impartial public relations advisor and say, no, you need to address this, and you need to address it now.
I was talking with my husband this morning about how social media managers are now sitting in the middle between social media and the commentary and sentiment that's happening on social media and large organizations or political figures or things like that. Social media managers sit in the middle, and so they have this really heavy load of communication that's sitting on their back more impossible than any one person could sort of deal with, and it's time to start addressing that. That's a difficult conversation. Right. But we've got to start talking about how major organizations plan to incorporate sentiment from social media into their business operations.
[00:22:59] Speaker B: Well, now we come back into family dynamics, particularly when we start communicating out to there. One other thing that Mr. Lidel talks about in his writings is that if you think of change, those forces of change coming in against culture and culture, maybe he looks at his three different sides. There's individuals, there's companies, and there's institutions. Individuals or the families, man, they can adjust. We adjust pretty dang quickly. These went, I think it was like overnight. I really remember overnight. It went from your God given right to smoke a cigarette to a fine. If you lit a cigarette up and it was like the right information, right place, man in New York City had just, like, flipped. And then everything changed so quickly.
We've seen the power of individuals to work so quickly. Then you see companies, they have rules, they have policies, they have procedures to be predictable so business can be responsible. You can be a good steward of funds.
That means they move slower. So those social media managers are watching people and families, like, shift super quickly. But their organizations have structured ways to come into place. And so organizations move slower, even slower than that, he contended, were institutions like government and universities, because they have historical context and they have real hardened policies as to what's allowed to change or religious institutions, because something's got to be that norm or else if you follow everything right, I'm not going to get that right, but you can't follow every whim of that someplace. We need that constant beat to make sure that we're slowing down and not getting caught up in the tidal wave of the movement. Right. Of the main push.
It's interesting when you talk about those social media managers, they're watching people flip quickly and they can go that pure democracy. Even we get into politics, we talk through. I remember learning pure democracy is a really rough thing. It didn't work here in our country. Our forefathers wanted something different because the 51% never looked after the 49%. Historically, unfortunately, we wish they would did. Right. And you'd wish that some of the ideas that everybody could be equal into those altruistic things just hadn't played out yet along. When you mix in power and money and other things. So from that standpoint, if families start shifting in dynamics and each of them are different and companies take much longer to come up, you can parallel plan.
What can you communicate as an organization while you're trying to figure yourself out? Maybe get clearance from your board or something like that. How do you work in that type of a position?
[00:25:54] Speaker A: Acknowledgment. I think that's the best and easiest way. So it's the, hey, I hear you. We have some stuff that we need to handle on this side. Right? So if you're a big organization that takes a lot to move the needle in some way, just that quick acknowledgment of this is how often we monitor our social media, or this is how often we do this, or we hear you, this is what's going on, this is how we're going to respond. It's that simple. Acknowledgment and outlining, hey, I heard you. I understand you. Here's how I'd like to address that. The time that it's going to take to address that is approximately this. Right. So you're kind of communicating your own limitations, but acknowledging the concerns that were brought forward.
[00:26:38] Speaker B: I love that boy, that is real. And it's a great approach from that affirming that I hear in that you're affirming that, hey, that's a worthy conversation to have. We're just not prepared to do it. Got to give us a second.
[00:26:57] Speaker A: I think there's a large segment of the population that has sentiments, whatever they are. They have sentiments about critical issues and things like that. And I think they just want to be heard. They just want somebody to acknowledge and say, hey, whatever side of it that you're on, I hear you. I understand you. I hear your concerns. I am seeing that. Right. So for larger institutions, we want to know. You've seen that. I've seen my concern. You've seen my concern. You've heard me. And whether that is acknowledging, hey, this is how often we do this, or this is, like you said, with legislation, this is the limitation to that. We can't do that because of this. Right. It's just that acknowledgment and the effort that went into the acknowledgment and the communication around what or why it's taking so long or those other aspects to.
[00:27:51] Speaker B: It, I think people can understand that it's authentic to them that, oh, yeah, once you hear it, I wasn't surprised to listen to him talk about individuals move quicker than companies, than institutions. And having been somebody who's led in all of those places, I'm like, oh, yeah, but once they say it, you're like, okay, well, now what grace am I kind of given to allow that?
How do I let that play out?
[00:28:18] Speaker A: But if they don't acknowledge that, you're left to form your own opinion, and 99% of the time that opinion is not going to be good. The opinion is going to be, I'm not being heard, and so I'm not.
[00:28:28] Speaker B: Valued, which is exactly kind of the point. He goes, when we see that institutions or companies aren't moving, especially if we haven't heard that they hear us, it is easy for us to just say, well, this is antiquated, and we throw the baby out with the bathwater, if you will. It's like, well, this is numb. This is blind to what the point is. And in all reality, I rarely see that. Things in my life I've learned are rarely this or that or black or white. It's almost always both. I mean, it's almost always both. End.
One thing I miss most out of being in government and emergency management. I used to be able to click on the news and know what was wrong, where they were assuming, and probably wrong in where that was. And now I miss knowing that and seeing that difference, and now just know that it's there. What are they? First reports are always wrong. Yeah, are always wrong. But maybe instead of trying to report against it, you're saying, acknowledge it.
[00:29:33] Speaker A: Yeah. And even if you're having difficult conversation, let's say, go back to the one that we were talking about between my dad and I doesn't mean that we have to have that all figured out. Just means that we're both aware of the situation. We both know the other is aware of the situation, and we now know that we can work on it together. That's it.
[00:29:52] Speaker B: So now I am going to tap right into that expertise of you. Now we want to engage and we'll talk. I'm a generation xer. You're a millennial is what you're saying, right? Okay.
[00:30:05] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:30:06] Speaker B: So now a company wants to engage off of that.
They want to hear you and they want to be genuine, authentic to that. How do they hear you? What are ways that more than just word of mouth off of that. What are some good ways right now that you're seeing in the marketplace that let you hear that generation?
[00:30:26] Speaker A: It's really interesting. There is no one central place. So in marketing, we're always taught it's going to take you seven touch points to reach another person, whether that's your user or somebody else. It takes you seven touch points. And the ultimate message is you kind of got to put it everywhere, right? So you've really got to be communicating in the places where your audience is. And you cannot wait for one area of communication to then lead communication in other places. That trickle down is never going to happen or trickle sideways or anything like that. For example, people are not going to share something from social media and then have it live in an email. It's not going to cross that boundary by itself. You have to do that. So in order to reach your audience, whoever that might be, you might then create a social post, create a blog, write an email, produce an ad, whatever it is. So you are going to have to go through those seven touch points. And there is a lot of lift that goes into setting up successful communication between anybody.
And it's necessary. It's necessary to do that. So it is necessary to take the time and effort to really go to those seven different touch points, wherever they are. So as a gen xer, if I want to make sure that I reach you, I'm probably going to go to Instagram or Facebook, or I might email you or I might write an article or something like that. If I'm trying to reach a gen alpha, I would put it in somewhere totally different and it would be in video format. And that doesn't mean that I don't do any of the other things. Right. I've got to do it all.
[00:32:01] Speaker B: And that's interesting. You come down and that perspective from you too, is very digital from that. So those same concepts were used in marketing when it was more kinetic prior to the real adoption of the Internet, but really only for ghost seek information when you wanted it, not social media side. It was three touch points. Right. You wanted somebody actively within their day while they were moving from something to see your brand approximately three times. And on that, that would translate to, oh, something's happening here I should be aware of into work.
Are you thinking that that's been extended now because of the digital footprint, the amount of information that's coming at everybody, that's kind of where you're leaning from.
[00:32:45] Speaker A: Yes, exactly. So it's just additional touch points. So movies didn't shift away from having billboards. Right. They still have billboards. They're now just also on social media and doing those things and using those other resources and retargeting people. So it really is, we've just added four more avenues to those three. And we've got to make sure that those boxes are ticked, too.
[00:33:07] Speaker B: Okay.
From what you said earlier, making sure we're customizing that to that group that we really are looking to stick to and communicate through into those platforms. They are. So I've noticed where we're at, there are a lot of social media places to be able to go and have conversations to, but in general, there are a few that stand out more for us. Those family members that tend to lead into this are 50 to 65 year old working moms. That is a target demographic. It is a pain point. They are trying to balance work, home, school, empathetically.
Their natural disposition in their generation is to be the one everybody looks to, to step up, or they put it on themselves and feel that that's what it is. Or mom and dad has an expectation. I mean, there's real stuff to that.
So understanding where that might sit and how that's probably going to change. And as leaders now, understanding, well, okay, this is where I am today, but where's this going to be three years from now? Where is this going to be five years from now? When technology shifts and it's the next generation who's tackling this problem. And that looks like it changes a lot.
[00:34:13] Speaker A: Yeah. And how as a person of one generation, am I spreading that knowledge to the people in other generations? One of the big challenges that we have in our society today is that knowledge transfer. So you're talking about as boomers start to enter the true senior care space, you're talking about 40 million people that are going to enter senior living and then the next couple of generations after that are even double that. Right. So we're doubling it now, but it's going to be even bigger.
And so how do we talk to those people? And what do they want to see? The language that they want to see the way it looks. Right. You can't just make a product that works. It's also got to look right.
Including all of those different things really ensures that your message, whatever that is, gets across to the right people in the right place at the right time. And so really having an in depth understanding of that person, whatever that core Persona is, whether it's the core of Gen X or the core of something else, understanding what the core of that is, will give you those answers. That tells you what channel, what platform, what time of day. So if I'm targeting the mom, the working mom is going to be on LinkedIn because she's got stuff to do with her job, right? So she's going to go there, but she might also look at stuff in the lunchroom. So maybe I should post flyers in the lunchroom, and maybe I should have an internal meeting to talk to that person about it. And maybe I should also, in addition to the meeting, send an email and put it in the newsletter, and maybe I should also post it on our social accounts. Right? There are so many things that we've got to do to reach that person.
[00:35:59] Speaker B: Well and even continue to pull on that string from that, that particular person. You look at the pain points that make them unique, and if their pain points are the difficulty in managing that with all these other relationships, I've got high school games to attend. I've got college, potentially, of a kiddo. Maybe I'm going back to school. Where do I fit these things in? If you can address and meet them? Someplace that's solving in those areas where that pinch point is making itself present, not maybe necessarily even where you are, but just that awareness that, hey, there's something that's out there. So they're continuing to see that. That becomes that equivalent in that brand of us, making sure they saw us three times on their drive time. You're hitting those major pain points. And when they're experiencing them, seeing that there could be a relief for you.
[00:36:45] Speaker A: Yeah. And I'd say really encourage folks to get straight to the point, right? So that busy mom has got stuff to do, she's got places to be. And so when you are communicating to her, you really do just want to get to the point, and she wants to understand the benefits to her. And the features to her and what difference that's going to make in her day. If it's going to reduce her time to do this, just tell her that. Right? Like, don't beat around the bush. She doesn't have that time to waste. So truly understanding your audience can give you a ton of clues of how, where, why, when, what to say, all that stuff.
[00:37:22] Speaker B: I love that. Again, also, from that family dynamic standpoint, you really hit on intergenerational communication is huge to the same degree as a business. You can't tackle all of this change on yourself or you shouldn't try. You should have your team giving you those perspectives. Our clients and the clientele that we speak into providing ways that they can share intergenerationally, like from one to the next. Whether it's a social share, from a TikTok over into instagram, because that's that place, or pinterest, because that's where working mom goes to solve a problem, right? That's where their mindset is going to be. Or understanding what's the mindset when you're geofencing or geotargeting the benefit, catching them outside of a lowe's where maybe they're solving a problem or a costco off of that, versus catching them outside of a gym where they've just done that, where they're trying to stay away from that, or trying to do a Super bowl commercial about something that nobody wants to talk about in the first place, or they're trying to relieve off of that. Thinking about those types of things, I think can really help us center mass our messages and as an industry and longevity services in general, be able to tackle it.
[00:38:35] Speaker A: And I hope that leaders do take the time to understand the real purpose of each platform and channel. So for know, the real purpose of Facebook has leaned into community. As you're scrolling Facebook, nearly all you see are posts and reels and groups. They want you to join groups. So that's very community focused, right. When you move over to Instagram, a lot of the functionality is very engagement focused. You can do polls, you can share stories, you can post reels, you can do all kinds of things. So your action and your content has to change when you move over to Instagram, because you know that you're engagement focused, not community focused. Well, now when I go over to Twitter, sorry, x. It's entirely different now, right? So the opportunity, there is much more customer service, real time engagement, real time interaction. On TikTok, it is search. A lot of people don't understand that the primary function of TikTok is search.
They don't understand what sets these platforms apart. So TikTok has an in app editor that no other app has. That's what sets it apart and it's search functionality. So taking a step, a beat, just a quick beat, to fundamentally understand the purpose of all those channels, whether they're social media or not, whether it's email or understanding the purpose of having a conversation with someone, when you go in and you're aligned on the purpose of that conversation or that channel or that platform or that user, you have a much better chance of effectively communicating whatever it is you're trying to communicate.
[00:40:03] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think then making sure that fits down into the brand where it makes sense that you communicate in that particular way and not trying to communicate in a way that's not you is going to become increasingly important. Particularly we look and we see in this day in which you and I are recording this, we're just a few days out from the first of what I was expecting to come probably a month ago, but watching OpenAI scrape the Internet and scrape social media, pull our content and our subject matter expertise that we put out there, expecting it to lead people to us, and now it's being leveraged and used in somebody else's sales model without that credit being thrown in a different direction. These are really things we have to think about before posting our content from one place to the next. And what you put out there, not just is it the right place, it's the right content for that. Are you using it the way that that platform wants you to be used? And then that other side is thinking about how you're protecting that intellectual property for you and retaining it.
[00:41:03] Speaker A: That IP issue is going to be the single biggest issue as marketers. That's the one thing that we look at in terms of using AI across the board, in particular, those of us who are at agencies and dealing with clients, rather than somebody that's in house, is that we don't yet know. Let's say I'm writing something for a client. I decide I'm going to ask chat GBT to do some research for me. Anything that I enter about that client information, whether it's the name of the company, the size of the company, inner workings, we don't know how that data is being accessed or used.
And so that's one of the fundamental things that leaders need to at least understand. Again, I don't have a fast answer for that. I just need to have the conversation with the people around me, whether that's my staff or the people that I'm working with, just so we have that conversation so that everybody understands that we're all on the same page.
[00:41:52] Speaker B: Agreed. And I think in general, I think the answer to that is just, yes, it's being used.
We looked for years, if you look at how it informed those organizations and social media platforms, took years of collecting information before it was like, oh, we'll figure out what we do with this a little bit later. And they waited decade, they really waited a decade to understand how to make use of that data and to turn that into models that they could work off of.
And that's saying that we get to, even on the AI standpoint, that it is something to say that we get to continue on the trajectory we think we're going to be. AI being developed in the early 50s, right? I think 1954, originally being stopped at the congressional level with the Department of Defense stepping in in the late fifty s and early sixty s and saying we can't understand it until we do. No, this is it. I already start to see the government with executive order starting to try to rein that in. Whether or not they can in this day and age, put that genie back in the bottle, I don't know that they can. But that said, I think you do have to think anything you put out, we tell our children, anything you put out is public. It's going to be there forever. It's going to live there forever. And that includes an interaction you might put in a program or an app. Unless specifically know that that program or app is not sending that information out, people will start paying attention to that.
[00:43:17] Speaker A: Yeah. And I really do want to encourage people, whether they're individuals or folks leading in an organization, to really understand that you can really curate your digital presence and that you can truly control what other people see when they search you, but better believe that they're going to search you. Right. I call it the abcs. Always be connecting. If I'm going to meet somebody, if I've just met somebody, you better believe I'm going to connect with them. I want them to know who I am. I want them to have access to me and feel more comfortable. And so when I do have that connection, you better believe that they're going to read my past posts. And I need to make sure that those past posts are reflection of who I am because they're going to read it on their own and form their own opinions. So if you're an organization, you can do that via public relations, right? Getting articles written or paying for articles that show up in certain high domain authority places to really curate that message. And so remember that both as an organization and as an individual, you can curate your digital presence to really work for you.
[00:44:19] Speaker B: Yeah, well, and much like a living, breathing person, people can understand that an organization evolves and positions evolve because technology is changing from that. Highly, highly recommend if you're going to make a position or a good size pivot as an organization, develop a professional strategy to communicate through to the marketplace historically, as you go through that, or make sure that that gets into that record there so somebody can follow. Got it. What the progression was of that organization. And I think that might be something that might be a new thing that we really have to make sure that we plan for. Before it used to be, well, if it's not in front of them, they probably won't dig out. But the reality is technology is making all of that readable and usable and indexable, and so it's able to pull that forward pretty darn quickly and easily. So it's going to be increasingly, I think, a part of the consumer experience. So as we talk with families, making sure they can keep up with where you're coming from, I love that understanding of that cultivation that that's a real thing. So love that.
What else should we be thinking about at the high end? Any major stuff off of that as we start landing this airplane?
[00:45:34] Speaker A: I think all of it, I would really sort of round out and just say, what conversations have you been avoiding that even just start to bring awareness to the. All right, I'm going to have to have this, right? Just kind of bring it back into your mind. That thing that you pushed off weeks ago, that conversation that you've been putting off, start to just bring some awareness and acknowledgment to, okay, how might I address this? Who am I addressing this to? Who do I need to say this to? It's going to be difficult, but how am I going to say that? And what should that look like and what do I want them to feel like?
I've had many difficult conversations with people close to me, and if I feel like I'm going to have trouble, I'll write it down and bring notes, but I've got to have that conversation. So I'd really encourage people, the communication or the conversations that you've been avoiding, just take a peek at it, bring it back up, let it resonate a little bit and uncover it and see what happens and try and see how you might be able to communicate that.
[00:46:34] Speaker B: I love that it's hard to get perspective, but really, do we look at this? That could be dangerous for our organization to have that publicly. What happens in that conversation if it goes south? The reality is that discontent we feel even here in the United States is happening in almost all developed nations around the world. There's something happening with this in where we are in this period of history. So trust that it's there. Communicate your way. Acknowledge that is awkward. That sits out there. But I think overall, you and I have talked about before, embracing if you don't like where things are, waiting to see where it lands, and then trying to manage your organization through, it's probably going to lead to death to your organization.
[00:47:17] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:47:22] Speaker B: This organization needs this. Your organization deserves and needs leadership. And it needs people proactively learning about where they're going to be leading through the hard conversations and then understanding. I'll grab this again from Ben.
The calvary's not coming. You are the so it is incumbent upon us as leaders to determine how to communicate this and get through those, even the family dynamics and how technology is changing inside the industry. Yeah, I love it. Blair, man, you nailed it. That was practical. I could sink my teeth into it. I think I got a good understanding of some places to start there. Where could I find more? If we've got something to kind of hit you on socials or how can we find you and get some more information on you?
[00:48:07] Speaker A: I am either Blair Huddy or real Blair Hutty on all the things. Would love to connect with everybody, both online offline. Super grateful to even have had this experience.
[00:48:17] Speaker B: Awesome. Well, Barhetti and Hudson Davis Communications just really appreciate the time you guys took to break this down for us on a business perspective and families. If you're watching this, which is a lot of business speak, you can understand where we're coming from and what it takes out of companies that genuinely want to help families work through this technology challenges up ahead. This is what we commit to and it's what we're here to do. So thank you for joining us. And Blair, thank you so much for being my huddy buddy and sharing your time, talents and treasures with us and our audience.
[00:48:48] Speaker A: Thank you so much for having me.
[00:48:50] Speaker B: Thank you.
Well, that's it for the team this week, and thanks for joining us. If you've enjoyed the content, remember to subscribe and to share this episode on the app that you're using right now. Your reviews and your comments, they really help us expand our reach as well as our perspective. So if you have time also drop us a note. Let us know how we're doing for tips and tools to clarify your parent project, simplify communication with your stakeholders, and verify the professionals that you choose. You can find us on YouTube, follow us on Instagram and Facebook. Thanks again for trusting us. Until our next episode. Behold and be held.
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