Transcript

Bennie F. Johnson

Hello, and thank you for joining us for another episode of AMA’s Marketing / And. I’m your host, AMA CEO, Bennie F. Johnson. In our episodes, we explore life through a marketing lens, delving into conversations with individuals that flourish at this intersection of marketing and the unexpected. We hope to introduce you to visionaries whose stories you might not yet have heard of, but are exactly the ones you need to know.

Through our thought-provoking conversations, we’ll unravel the challenges, triumphs, and pivotal moments that have been shaped by marketing. Today, we have a very special guest, a brilliant innovator and leader and dear friend, Ray Day. Ray is currently vice chair of Stagwell and executive chair of Allison Worldwide.

He is recognized as a leading voice and leader in communications and public relations. He joined Stagwell in February 2020 with more than three decades of experience and insights as chief communication officer of leading global communications teams, brands, and agencies. He is well known for his expertise in reputation building, content creation, data, analytics, and crisis readiness.

Ray believes successful companies, brands, and their leaders will be the ones that quickly shift their focus into the future of communications. Ray, my friend, welcome to the podcast.

Ray Day

Bennie, my friend, it is an honor to be here and any day that starts with AMA is a good day.

Bennie

Thank you so much. It’s fun to have conversations about this nexus of communications and marketing. Marketing and communications. Although distinct areas, so much of our world is really blended in together about what we do. But I’d love to jump in a little bit about your background. I made it little generic on the introduction, but there’s some stops along the journey that we really need to call out.

You know, before joining Stagwell in 2020, you served as IBM’s Chief Communication Officer. Just a little company that we probably haven’t heard much of. In leading the global communications and citizen groups for more than 170 countries, talk a bit about the day-to-day in entering that role with such a large portfolio of message and meaning.

Ray

Absolutely and just a little bit about me. I started life as a journalist. I’m from Detroit, a proud Detroiter, and I in my career I wanted to be a journalist and I happened to land in corporate America first at Ford. I spent 28 years as Ford at Ford ten years leading communications. Did every possible role you could do right at a big company including living abroad for four years and then I went to IBM and what I learned about corporate America is the impact business and leaders can have on the world. And that really was what excited me to go really deep in a company. And I love communications, I love marketing. I grew up in a company way back when I started it for that there was a wall between these two functions. And I’m really, really proud to say that in more than three decades, that wall has nearly been broken down. And it’s just a rare time that I hear someone speaking of marketing or communications. For me, it’s a hand-in-hand relationship.

Bennie

It’s so true and what I love is that you actually extend this even further. We’ll talk a bit about it. It’s not just marketing and communications for you. It’s marketing, communications, wrapped in data and insights. 

Ray

Absolutely. 

Bennie

Right? And that’s really, think, in a contemporary sense, that becomes the glue that ties all of this together.

Ray

I am a data geek, I’m a data focus leader, and I like to think in equations. And I believe that if you start with the best data, and for me data is just listening. And as a leader, our greatest opportunity is to listen more. Listen to people with our ears, but also listen to people with the data. So the best data equals the best strategies in anything we do, and then those best strategies lead to the best execution and creativity. But it all starts with data and really, really being content, being comfortable, and geeking out in the data.

Bennie

I was going to ask you, when did you kind of first fall in love with data?

Ray

Absolutely. It was really, really early in my career at Ford. And when you’re in the auto industry, everyone speaks in auto terms. You get a lot of auto analogies. And my very second week at Ford, a very, very dear mentor of mine called me into his office and he said, Ray, welcome to the auto industry. He said, I want to give you a metaphor for your career and for whatever you do in life. And he said, sit in that driver’s seat and always remember that there’s a reason the windshield is exponentially larger than the rear view mirror. And he said, be a future focused leader. Be the leader who’s talking more about what are we going to see around corners. What is the role going to be like three to five years from now? And I took that to heart and to take that to heart, you have to deal and delve into the data. Because data can be the windshield or data can be the rear view mirror. You don’t need to pay attention to the lagging data. It’s using data to be predictive and get ahead of what’s to come. And that makes you a better business partner no matter which function you’re

Bennie

You know, I love how knowledge transfers and inspiration and words of mentors follow because I know that I’ve used looking around the corner because of my time with you, that I now find myself in conversations and talking to my teams. It’s just such a metaphor that gets us all engaged and it was probably the metaphor I was looking for and didn’t know I needed. As a strategist, I’m talking about the future folks in there, it helps to center people on what’s coming next.

Ray

Absolutely, absolutely. And think about it with the speed and the focus and direction, what throws you off? Knowing what’s coming around that corner.

Bennie

Absolutely. So I was going to start off with IBM, talk about the technical space in there. But I love the fact that you can’t hide that you’re Detroit’s finest. For our conversation, was going to ease into Detroit. But really, when I think of Ray, you are. 

I remember there was an auto campaign, and we won’t name the auto company in there, but it really focused on this being born in Detroit, being built in Detroit. And really, your career comes in that space. Graduating from Wayne State, Detroit. Going into Ford, Detroit. And even now, we talk about that, your love for that space in there. Talk a bit for me about… And what is Detroit meant for you as a metaphor?

Ray

Absolutely. For me, Detroit, when you become a future focus leader, you also become a leader who talks about reinvention. Right.

And I was when I was at IBM, I was part of a fascinating research study led by the HR team where we did research on the half life of a skill. And the conclusion was that any skill we have today, the half life is about three to five years, which means that we as human beings, we as teams, we as companies, we as departments, functions, whatever it is, we need to reinvent. And what Detroit has taught me and I just passionate about it is the power of reinvention.

Bennie

You can be down and out. You can be bankrupt as the city of Detroit once was. And that hasn’t changed those who love that city. And you look at the city today and the reinvention, the rebirth, the growth, the investment in the city. That is a lesson in leadership. Reinvent yourself. Pull your ups. Pull yourselves up by the bootstraps. Be gritty. Work hard. But reinvent. And again, reinvent with a focus on the future.

I’m so inspired by the brands we see coming up out of Detroit, but that emerged from creators and crafters and innovators So you have you know, not only the front edge of technology Innovation happening there, but you’ve got technology and food craft yet technology in I was watching a conversation the other day with furniture owners Who were taking Detroit’s past and making new furniture? Absolutely, and it feels like could that happen anywhere else in the world possibly but did it feel right?

Ray

For Detroit? Absolutely. 

Bennie

So, you know, we talk about data in a space and one of the things that, actually I’m gonna pull back before that. I’m fascinated by your start at Stagwell. You started in February 2020. Yeah, it’s really, you know, and I wasn’t gonna go there, but you know, as I think about this, because one the things we talk about is

Ray

I mean, it’s everything.

Bennie 

Business leaders and brands being able to being the ones that are quickly able to shift. So you have a storied career and spirited time at Ford, which is one chunk. Then you’re at IBM and you come onto this new role, February 2020. What were you thinking about February 2020?

Ray

2020, I was coming into a company. I was traveling like mad. I was going all around the country, meeting all of our agencies, meeting all of the leaders, and then boom, in came COVID. I was at an airport and I was going to one of the shops trying to get back home to Detroit. And I asked the clerk, do you have any hand sanitizer? Because I think I probably need to buy some hand sanitizer. And the look and the hysterical laughter in her face and her response to me told me, something big is happening, we’re in a new era. But it was, for me, I hearken back to what I saw in that period early in 2020 to 2008 and 2009 in the auto industry when I was at Ford.

I was invited to come to speak to the board of directors when I was at Ford. And you don’t often get invited to the board of directors. And in that time period with the banking collapse and people weren’t buying cars and the great recession upon us, I wasn’t thinking this was to tell me how things were going. And the very first question from the board at the time was, know, Ray, we don’t like our headlines. What are you going to do about it? So a very, very pointed member of the board, and before I could answer, our CEO, Alan Mullally, who’s probably one of the best people I’ve ever met in my life, he stopped me and he said, I’ll let Ray speak in a moment, but ladies and gentlemen of the board, we just lost $17 billion and he put his arms up in brackets. He said, that’s our job. We fixed the business, you’re gonna like your headlines better. And then he said, Ray, what are you gonna do about it? And then it was at that moment that I decided that we needed to rewrite the playbook in communications. It was time to reinvent. It was time to innovate, to go on 90 % offense. I grew up in a system where we were great at defense. We could answer the phone, we could do the cleanup on aisle six better than anyone else. But at that time we needed offense. So I fast forward to 2020.

As COVID was upon us, businesses, brands, our clients, our colleagues, they needed it was time again to reinvent. And where the reinvention occurred the most.

Aggressively was internally I saw the greatest innovation in employee engagement employee communications And I saw in my entire career so for me it was a moment Yeah, it was no longer the traveling road trip that I was ready to meet my agencies and colleagues But what we put on the board the wins we put on the board for innovation in the comms and marketing space Was incredible and I guess the question today is when?

Is that next pivot where we as a collective industry are going to reinvent again to perhaps answer an exogenous shock or to say this is a new era, business needs us, it’s time to rewrite that playbook once again.

You know, because you think about it, you come in and classic business leadership literature will always tell you to have that first 90, 100 day plan. But for you, your day of 34. In 34, that plan has to go completely out of the window.

I am, I’m not a-30 day plan, 100 day plan sort of guy. I think anytime you put a fictitious target on someone, another great mentor of mine, and this is something I do to this day, he said, Ray, before you go to bed each day, I want you to think of how you spent your time on a spectrum. At the very left, were you firefighting? Were you putting out a fire? Were you in a crisis? In the middle, were you just implementing someone else’s playbook? Or on the very right, you being transformative. And I think some of those 30, 60, 90, 100 day plans is what we’ve always done in the middle. Write your own rule book. You should be transforming on day one. You should be accelerating by day 10 and exponentially from there. That to me is the mark of a good leader when you don’t take what is tradition, what we’ve always done, but you rewrite that playbook and you rewrite that.

I think to your point, it’s those false structures become training wheels and safety nets, right? If I have this guide, then I know I won’t miss something. But by checking all the boxes and thinking you’re missing, you’re missing the things that are really transformative, right? Absolutely. You’re missing, you’re putting that checklist process before the innovation. Before the innovation.

That’s not how innovation works. You don’t shackle it. You don’t put a time clock on it.

Bennie

No, and you know, I tell my team all the time, if you’re gonna be different, you’re gonna look different, you’re gonna do different. You don’t get to be new doing the same. And it’s, we all know that, but being in the middle of it, you’re saying, hey, this is a new approach to come at the world that we’re a part of. So, I’m going to ask this question because we live in a space in which we have more access to information, more raw points of data at our availability as leaders than any time before. What advice do you have to move us along the continuum from data point to insight to insight to impact?

Ray

Absolutely. And I know some within our industries talk about we have data overload or information overload. For me, information and data are massive opportunities. Right. And bring it on, bring on more and more and more. But our opportunity, our real opportunity is to dig deeper and delve deeper into the data. Too often we as leaders just focus at the primary level rather than the secondary and tertiary level. One example is in all of our companies, we do measurement, measure data, we extract insights from data. I would bet nine out of 10 of our businesses and our companies and our organizations measure sentiment, we measure share, we measure some measure of health as we’ve always done or we have for the past couple decades. What we’re seeing in Stagwell right now is the missed opportunity or the great opportunity for business is go one step further and start paying more attention to emotion.

It’s different to measure sentiment. What do I have a positive or negative view? Right. Then emotion, which means I’m going to act on something. I’m going to be an activist or I’m going to have very emotional views towards something. When you start unlocking, measuring and then acting on emotion, the world opens up. So it’s a different level of looking at data. It’s the same data out there. It’s just how some people see noise, I see opportunity because in all that noise there are red lights just beaming with opportunity as well as risk and you have to be able to spot them.

Bennie

You know, I think it’s really powerful to kind of allow us to pull back for these deeper understandings, right? So if everybody has access to the basic information, then everyone has access to the basic information. And by definition, strategic advantage comes from being able to glean something beyond what everyone else has. So if we all know what time it opens, what time it closes the base level, then we’ll come to kind of pretty standard conclusions.

I remember having a professor who ran insights for major communications firm, he would always talk about insights being something that’s true, that you didn’t know you knew until you hear it and it becomes full center. It becomes the kind of moment of this obvious space. And I love your conversation about sentiment, because we all know that. And that’s language that not only shows up in marketing and branding, it shows up in the rest of the executive suite now. The language has been co-opted. Oh yeah, you’re going to

Ray

Everybody says yes, yes, yes. We’ve always done it. But when we think about our own conviction for innovation and strategic events, sometimes it’s great, as you said, to turn not only the microscope, but to turn the microphone on to ourselves. Like, did we just say, well, we’re going to do the same thing and apply the same thing and expect something different? Exactly. But I love your conversation about the emotion, because then you get into what’s this driving motivation? Where am I? We know that. As we’ve always done. We inherited it and we do it.

I know, brands that really break through have passionate supporters. That’s all language of emotion.

And even in, you we’re very price sensitive environment right now. If you just look at sentiment, do people want to pay more for anything? Well, of course not. It’ll be a red negative. But when you ask people, what is it about pricing that you’re so emotional about? They say two things. One, fairness. Is it fair that X, Y, or Z company is raising its prices when it’s making billions? That’s two rights. It’s a right on one side and a right on other.

But that’s emotional. The second emotional part of pricing today is people say rationally, I understand I might have to pay more for this product or this product, but I want more control. I want to be back in control. Whether it’s going to the grocery store, people feel today triggered. If they had more control, if they’re signing up for a university program, they want more control. I think, again, if all you looked at was sentiment, you’d say, well, there’s nothing we can do, higher prices is going to be a negative. No, people are okay if they are convinced from an emotional standpoint it’s fair and they still have some control over the choices they make.

Well, you think about it, one of our controlling mechanisms is none other than looking no further than personal budget. So if I set my personal budget and I sit down with a family and I understand the social contract of how much money I make, how much money I have, and what I expect things to cost, I then, with that equation, know how I will live.

But if I come in to do exactly what I’ve been doing, and eggs, milk, or your Ford F-150 cost significantly more, right? That it requires you to make then some other choices. Because to your point, we all rationally understand that prices go up. We’re delighted when they go down.

You know, we’re not surprised when they go up a little bit. But when we start to have these conversations where it makes us have choices, do I provide for my family this or that? Can I enjoy this space over to your point? And that’s the control, right? You lose it in there. Or do I feel like someone’s getting over on me? You know, in that…Taking advantage of me. We don’t like to be taken advantage of. As consumers, as Americans, as citizens of the world.

It’s funny we say it that way, that is an American tenet. Don’t want anybody taking advantage of it. Don’t thread on me. The flag is well established.

Bennie

From the beginning to now in this space in there. So you get a chance now to work across an incredible set of companies and agencies that are all working in communication, but in very nuanced ways for clients. What do you wish clients today knew about the positive impact that strength and communications and PR could have?

Ray 

Often those in the comms and the PR space, for a long time we’ve asked for a seat at the table. You will never ever, no matter what your role is in a company, have to be asked to the table if you’re providing business value. I do a lot of speaking on campus and I do lot of advising of people going into this profession, going into comms and PR and having aspirations of working for Fortune 50 companies. People and people who have been in this business a long time that your number one role is to be a business partner. Right. Have business acumen. Be able to speak the language of the CFO. Understand where the revenue comes from. Understand why brand health is important. And then your secondary role is to be a communicator. You’ve gone into this profession, you’ve been trained as one. We assume you know how to do that. Right. But if you are a business partner and if you in the comm space are using your data, data to see around corners to be predictive to flag risk and opportunities I can guarantee you you will not only have a seat at that table you are going to be embraced and needed at that table every day of the week.

Bennie

So what advice do you have to remind our marketing and strategic comms professionals to be proactive every day? You we talk to a lot of it. You get into space in there and it’s don’t lose ground. How do you encourage that shift, that mindset shift?

Ray

Again, I’ll go back to my ratio of how you spend your time. Every one of us has to check ourselves from time to time. There is a time when we have to do firefighting, and we have to do crisis management. But if you find yourself on a habitual basis spending 80, 90, 90 percent of your time on firefighting, you need to check yourself and say, number one, this isn’t sustainable. My team is going to burn out. The high potential people are going to go elsewhere.

Check yourself you and again, that’s what being future focus means to me Sometimes we get so enamored in what are we doing this week this month? What is our quarter going to look like and yeah, you have to run the business, right? But spend more time on where are we headed or the best piece of advice I ever received in business was a leader, no matter what you do, has to hold two thoughts in his or her hand at the same time. First, deal with today’s reality, with it swiftly, candidly, and make sure everyone understands where we are today, but spend an equal amount of time painting that picture of where we’re headed. And so much, we get caught up in today, we forget about tomorrow, and that’s where we have to check ourselves.

Bennie

You know, I love your advice in this space because we’ve been a profession, especially on the comm space, where we’ve kind of self, we’ve created a self-fulfilling loop that our value comes in that moment of crisis. And so often in organizations you’ll see teams that need the crisis to prove their value.

But if our value is tied into the future and the business, the crisis comes and goes today and tomorrow and yes, we’re gonna be there. Yes, we have the skills. Yes, that’s in our purview. But that’s not the only reason for your comms team to exist.

Ray

Absolutely, and the BASCOM’s team will not only be able to do the cleanup on aisle 6, the BASCOM team will prevent the cleanup on aisle 6 to begin with by being predictive and getting ahead of it.

Bennie

It’s so true in this space. Are there leaders that you look to now that you see that have a grasp of the insights and data that kind of stand out for you? No industry you have to lead to. I’m always curious at whose role modeling what we see as a future.

Ray

I think there’s a lot of people that are role models in this space and I wouldn’t want to single out anyone where I think we where I spend more of my time trying to role model people is on our role as storytelling. and whether we’re in marketing comms or whether we’re in finance each of us has a role to play storytelling and I hear a lot of people talk about Apple and the story of Apple and Steve Jobs being on stage and what a master he was at unveiling the iPhone or the iPad or whatever it was. And I correct people every time and say yeah he had strong products but if you look at one of Steve Jobs most quoted quotes and one of his favorite quotes is the most powerful person in the world is the storyteller. And he learned how to be a masterful storyteller. If you’re leading people, if you’re leading a function, if you’re leading a business, take people to where they’ve never been or they never imagined they could go. That’s the sort of leaders, those are the people that I emulate and that I like to hang out with.

Bennie

And you know what I love about that is good storytelling ability to amplify itself. Because the story of Apple now isn’t really, to your point, isn’t really the story that Jobs told in that moment. It’s the story of the story of the story. And that’s how stories become legend. Right? And when we think about it, we’re enamored with the legend as the inspiration of the story.

Ray 

Absolutely. And we want to follow people.

Bennie

We want to follow people that do it. That makes it about more than just the product and the space. I think back to your time at Ford, so many of the models are about how we craft our American identity. Absolutely. Right? Absolutely. It’s work, it’s play, it’s identity, it’s travel. So much of that is a shape in there.

So, you know, one of the things that I find interesting and we’re going to take a pivot because we’re talking Detroit. We’ve talked about cars and we’ve talked about building. But one of things that I find fun is we need to talk about sport for a second. You know, one of the things that’s really interesting is Stagwell is known for its presence at Cannes. It’s really built around sports speech and sports impact. In our storytelling, in our space in there. What brought you all to understanding this unique moment of communication, sport, and the world?

Ray

Absolutely. So agencies routinely go to Cannes and they host people, they wine and dine people, they appear on stage. And we wanted to be part of that at Stagwell. And the first year we went to Cannes and we listened. Looked at what everyone else was doing and we came back and said, yeah, we see what others are doing and that’s interesting. But we’d like to have a point of view, right? And so we decided our point of view was where do we see? exponential growth in business in Culture we took a point of view that there is Exponential growth occurring worldwide in sports, right? Particularly women’s sports, right? So what we said is yeah, we will as a secondary tertiary.

Focus, we will wine and dine people, but our emphasis is gonna be sport beach. We’re gonna take over a beach, we’re going to highlight athletes, we’re gonna talk about athletes who are investing in sport, and we’re gonna really over-index on women, women’s sports. Because the intersection of business plus sport is just magical. And if you’re trying to achieve growth, we’re all in business to achieve growth, really look at, and the first year we did it we we learned and we put ourselves on the map and then this year we were the talk of the town and we had a record a record attendance at sport Beach and we’ll be back next June for another

Bennie

It was phenomenal to watch that kind of space in there and our conversations about storytelling. We think about all of those master story narratives, against the odds, growing, building, winning. It’s ripe for this conversation. And yes, people still talk to this day about sports beach and this conversation and this intersection between personalities, culture, and brand. And it didn’t hurt that you kind of lined it up perfectly with what, had the Summer Olympics.

Ray

World Cup, now, the rise of the WNBA, all perfect kind of planning for you. For example of not just adopting the playbook of others or what others have always done, we went in with a strong point of view from a story standpoint and then a whole different execution against that different point of view. And that’s how we differentiated. And that is what we’re all supposed to be doing is differentiate, come with a point of view and have people tell stories about you based on that point of about this is, and for those who are listening who run their own enterprise and agencies, you’re always the hardest client to have, right? We know how to build the brand, we know how to build design and the campaign for everyone else because we have that objective view. But what’s lovely about this is you’re applying your strategic approach that we’ve been talking about to yourself in this space. Because I’m sure there might have been voices in the room that goes, why are we so hyper focused on sports? We do all these other things.

Why are we focused on this space in there? No one else does this, focused and we’re going to have a point of view and our objective was where do we see exponential growth and let’s focus on that one exponential growth point and let’s do one thing really really well and that’s how we’ll stand.

Bennie

Aecause you’ve built in effect a portfolio of activations. It’s an activation on top of an activation with content and engagement in different ways. So that’s really going to writ large on the global stage. What I’d love to talk about is how you got into the business of just what the data say. We joke and we laugh about that because it’s… such a pleasant and refreshing play of words, but it’s something that we all look to, this kind of one-on-one moment that we get our note from Ray.

Ray

Just for context for anyone listening who does not know what the data says. If you don’t make sure you subscribe. But every Friday morning I put out an email note that now reaches 25,000, 30,000 people. It’s a collection of all the data within our Stagwell agencies and we have several research agencies and companies. We are in the field every single night.

Bennie

They have to know.

Ray 

Asking people about what’s on your mind. What’s driving you? What do you see? What do you want? And when I first joined Stagwell as a data geek I was it was like opening a present and seeing all this data around me. So I decided if I’m excited about it there’s got to be another person out there who’s out who is equally excited. So I just started to consolidate it all into an email note and share our data.

And as you pointed out, then COVID hit. And what became really important is people were looking to this measurement to see where’s the opportunity, where’s the risk, and particularly from an employee engagement standpoint, they were looking at our data. The CDC was looking at our data to look at how are we going to get through this as a country, as a culture. So it just took off five years on. This email continues and it’s just a treasure trove of all the data we gather each week sharing, sharing it with others and then people reach out to us and say, I’d love to know more on X, Y or Z, can you cut it this way? And it’s really become a great calling.

Bennie

It it’s it’s that moment of curation that I will say if I glance on my phone if I’m traveling or I look down and it comes through I’m like yeah and you know it’s it’s the kind of gift that keeps on giving what I love

Ray

Is how your curiosity sparks deeper curiosity, which is kind of the hope of us getting to insights. How do we take, because as you said, there are some times that I’ll see you’ve taken one slice at it, and then it naturally gets you thinking about, okay, well that’s interesting, but what if we sliced it a different way? What would we reveal? When you think about the future of our profession and the future of this truly data-driven approach. What gets you most excited?

Number one, I’ve never been more excited about this profession. We live in a world where people fear AI, they fear new technology, they fear the economy, geopolitics, whatever it is. We live in a very dynamic world. And where some people see excess risk, I see opportunity.

And that’s what gets me excited, particularly from a communications and a marketing standpoint. We are the people at the tip of the spear, or we’re also the ones that pull it all together. We pull organizations together, we pull companies together, and this future focus helps the world move from what some could interpret as a fearful state today to an opportunity tomorrow. And that’s our greatest opportunity and that’s what excites me so much, is keeping that data-led future focus to help people move from A to B and to help society move forward.

Bennie 

A great point to end our conversation, Ray, it’s you continue to provide the validation for the equation that it’s our words, our images, our data together that create the best stories. And it’s that storytelling that drives our future. My friend, thank you for joining us.

Thank you all for listening to this very special episode of AMA’s Marketing / And. Once again, I encourage you to follow Ray and follow the work of Stagwell and Allison Worldwide. We encourage you to find out more about how storytelling, words, PR and comms can be a part of your success path with the work we have at the AMA and Marketing / And. Thank you.