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The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström®: Expert Mode Marketing Technology, AI, & CX
#741: Managing your brand reputation in real-time with Jeff Hahn, Hahn Agency
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Jeff Hahn
The Agile Brand.
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Greg Kilstrom
Welcome to Season seven of the Agile Brand where we discuss the trends and topics marketing leaders need to know. Stay curious, stay agile and join the top enterprise brands and martech platforms as we explore marketing, technology, AI, E commerce, and whatever's next for the omnichannel customer experience. Together we'll discover what it takes to create an agile brand built for today and tomorrow and built for customers, employees and continued business growth. I'm your host Greg Kilstrom, advising Fortune 1000 brands on martech, AI and marketing operations. The Agile Brand podcast is brought to you by Tech Systems, an industry leader in full stack technology services, talent services and real world application. For more information, go to teksystems.com to make sure you always get the latest episodes, please hit subscribe on the app you listen to podcasts on and leave us a rating so others can find us as well. And now onto the show.
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Co-host or Interviewer
AI, Real time marketing and influencer partnerships.
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Greg Kilstrom
Can be amazing ways to reach customers.
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Co-host or Interviewer
But how do you manage the risk that they could potentially bring to your brand and your reputation in an instant?
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Greg Kilstrom
Agility requires a willingness to adapt quickly to changing market conditions and customer expectations. It also demands the ability to experiment, learn and iterate on strategies in real time.
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Co-host or Interviewer
Today we're going to talk about navigating the evolving PR landscape and how AI.
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Greg Kilstrom
Is impacting communication strategies, particularly in the realm of influencer marketing and brand reputation. Tell me Discuss this topic. I'd like to welcome Jeff Hahn, principal at HAN Agency and author of the book Breaking Bad 12 Essential Crisis Communication Tools. Jeff, welcome to the show.
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Jeff Hahn
Thanks Greg. Very good to be with you.
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Co-host or Interviewer
Yeah, yeah. Great to see you again. Always good to talk. Before we dive in, why don't you give a little background on yourself and your role at HAN agent?
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Jeff Hahn
Yeah, I'm the principal at HAN. We're about 45 people. Agency. We really focus on two major categories, energy and power and then health and nutrition. So we kind of like to talk about ourselves as heating and eating agency. In both of those cases, there's this really interesting ribbon that is in common with both sectors. And that's the thing that I focus on, which is crisis communication. Because things go wrong in whether it's the oil patch or the power lines and severe weather events, or with food recalls or medical situations, especially litigation. I find myself bouncing between both of these categories on a very frequent basis.
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Co-host or Interviewer
Never a dull moment. I would imagine so. Yeah, definitely. Well, we're going to talk about a few things here. I want to start with talking about. Certainly we talk about AI a lot on this show. We don't talk as much about pr and so I wanted to talk a little bit about that with you. A lot of people are concerned about potential downsides of AI and marketing and PR and, you know, rightfully so. But what are some of the ethical considerations that brands need to be mindful of as they integrate AI into their communication strategies?
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Jeff Hahn
Well, I think there are three that really orbit around my head on a regular basis. First, we're all concerned about human mimicking and deception. You know, when AI is able to impersonate humans so well, it's, it's important even on the PR side and perhaps especially on the PR side, that we're transparent and we disclose that we are using AI or AI as a part of the activity that we are working with. So I think that's a really important first big step in order to set down a platform of trust. Trust is really at the crux of all these. The second one, privacy and data ethics are a real big red flag with these large language models ingesting all kinds of content. I mean, the entire Internet every day. I think we're going to be talking a lot more about regulating excessive behavioral tracking and AI that's interpreting your inputs without your permission. So that's another ethical concern. I have a third one that's kind of a curve ball if you're into the energy transition conversation like we are in our firm and you work with the kind of clients that we do. Sustainability is a really interesting topic. And of course, we rarely think about the fact that a query into an LLM uses about 10x the power of a standard query in say, a Google platform. And that power demand has actually shifted entire narrative in the energy industry from climate crisis to power shortage.
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Co-host or Interviewer
Wow.
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Jeff Hahn
It's all AI driven. And these data warehouses that we're hearing about and data centers are popping up next to nuclear power plants even these days are all part of this really interesting challenge that AI presents. And it's, I'll put it into this category of ethics because we have to be mindful of the resource uses as a matter of ethical consideration.
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Co-host or Interviewer
Yeah, yeah, no, that's great. Yeah. And I, you know, I've heard some things about the, you know, about the last point, but I don't think it's being talked about nearly as much as maybe some of the other, some of the other concerns. And yeah, it's, there's a lot, there's a lot to unpack there. And just, you know, there's such a race to adopt AI by so many organ. I mean, I know a lot of the organizations I work with. You know, the, the challenge is how do we use AI and, and use it more quickly and more thoroughly throughout the organization. There's not a talk about, you know, energy usage or anything like that. So. Yeah, definitely.
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Jeff Hahn
Right. The whole conservation conversation will be something that happens, I suspect in a couple years. It'll catch back up. Right now, the leading edge of AI is all about speed and the capability and all the things that Sid Banerjee talked about in your last episode. It's exciting times. That's a really interesting challenge that we're going to face.
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Co-host or Interviewer
Yeah, yeah. Well, and then to kind of flip things then. I know you mentioned a couple of things there, but where do you see the greatest opportunity, particularly in PR and for PR professionals to use AI to improve work and better serve clients, things like that?
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Jeff Hahn
All of those are true, but since I'm a crisis guy, I think what I'll home in on is that prediction, crisis prediction and simulation are going to be the really amazing ventures that we find ourselves in in a short amount of time. I think the big opportunity for brands is to switch from rapid response to anticipating potential crises and then burning that risk down through the built scenarios and simulations. So that's a really interesting capability that in our crisis toolkits, we're using best guesses and analog kinds of measures to try to predict the difference between possibility and probability. AI is going to close that gap in a. In a really interesting way and allow for immersion scenarios that'll. They'll make you cry, they're so realistic. Yeah, yeah, we're just months and months away from that.
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Greg Kilstrom
I mean, that's.
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Co-host or Interviewer
Yeah, that's fascinating because, I mean, you know, just dipping my toes into like synthetic research and Personas and stuff like, that's one facet of this. But a lot, a lot of these things that you're mentioning, you know, there's, there's geopolitical, there's environment, you know, there's all kinds of aspects to this. So the, the idea that you could simulate multiple scenarios and then predict the likelihood of those happening and be ready. Right. Because, I mean, you've all. You've always. I assume there's always like a playbook for like, what if these few scenarios happen? And, you know, you map out as many as you can, but, like, the depth and breadth and accuracy. Right. Is pretty intriguing. Right?
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Jeff Hahn
Yeah, you're exactly right. We do have playbooks and we create them for our clients all the time. I think what the interesting implications for AI are, is that those playbooks are going to come to life and they'll be turned over from the comms team to the risk management team. And risk managers are going to take those scenarios and say, hey, we've got a flank that's open to particular challenges. Let's burn those down and then move on to the next one in priority order.
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Co-host or Interviewer
Yeah, yeah. Wow. Yeah, we'll have to have you back and let's talk about that in a year or something and see how that's evolved. That's great.
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Jeff Hahn
It's good news for the PR craft because oftentimes we feel like we're not at the. At the grownups table.
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Co-host or Interviewer
Right.
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Jeff Hahn
Great example where PR can harness AI and take its place.
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Co-host or Interviewer
Yeah. Yeah. That's fascinating. I also want to talk about influencer marketing. One of the things I mentioned at the top of the show. So, you know, it's certainly, it's been. It's been around for a while, but it's become incredibly complex. And beyond just things like follower counts and things like that, what are the key metrics that brands should be looking at when evaluating potential influencer partnerships?
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Jeff Hahn
Yeah, you're right, Greg, on the follower counts. And you can put engagement rates and growth trends, all those are good. I'm thinking in my head, though, about your question and reminded that it was more than 20 years ago that a guy named Al Reese wrote a book called the Fall of Advertising and Rise of pr.
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Co-host or Interviewer
Yeah.
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Jeff Hahn
And in that book, Al says, hey, don't buy ads, make news. This is where I think the idea of influencers come in and you begin to measure things like earned media crossover. The questions behind that idea think crossover as the metric are these. Did the influencer help the brand make news? And did the influencer help the brand build trust? Now you're measuring outcomes instead of outputs. And I think that idea of earned crossover could be one of those things that helps us again, redefine the metrics that make a difference. The other thing about this influencer game that I'm actually very intrigued by, we're living in a low trust era right now. That means brands with messages are often viewed quite skeptically. But if you shift that power from message over to the messengers with influencers, I do believe you've got yourself the right play for this era that we find ourselves in, because you're borrowing from that influencer's trust reservoir.
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Co-host or Interviewer
Yeah.
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Jeff Hahn
And it's a very smart play, I think, for brands. Watch for that idea of earned crossover, though. It's my thought I don't know if anybody else is going to pick up on it, but it feels to me like it's a new kind of metric, very layered in its nuances. But our data science team can put those things together into nifty little dashboards and algorithms that give you real time updates. We'll see. We'll see if it takes.
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Co-host or Interviewer
Yeah, sounds, yeah, you need a, you need a good acronym for it. That's, that's my only advice. But ex. So anyway, I'll leave that to the, to the branding folks.
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Jeff Hahn
But yeah, your listeners will have a good time with that. They can send in their ideas. Nice, nice.
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Co-host or Interviewer
So, yeah, and definitely, definitely agree about the, you know, influencers can help with some of the lack of trust or just, you know, building, building greater trust. And, and yet, you know, the caveat here is, you know, we have seen some high profile influencer campaigns backfire and some. A little bit. Or, or what? And some, you know, spectacularly. Let's just say what advice would you have to brands to mitigate risks? Because it, it's not like it always backfire like it often, it most often works. It's just, it's those other times. Right. So how do you mitigate those risks?
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Jeff Hahn
That's a really interesting question. And today we actually get the opportunity to ask, well, is a backfire a bad thing? Think about this. If you're American Eagle today and people are giving you grief about Sydney Sweeney, are you mad or unhappy? Gee, whizzing, stock price through the roof.
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Co-host or Interviewer
When'S the last time anyone talked about American Eagle?
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Jeff Hahn
So this is one of those kind of questions or moments when you say, is all PR good, pr, maybe. So the definition of a backfire is changing now. Just another example, a couple years back, the brand Solo Stove, which is a wood running stove for your patio, they hired Snoop Dogg as their, their influencer. Snoop was going to go smokeless, which of course is antithetical to his personal brand. So it was catchy. Well, three months after that campaign ran the chairman of Solo Stove, the CEO, all fired because sales didn't increase. So it is a really interesting metric for us to ask ourselves at the outset of engaging with an influencer, what are our expectations? And you go back to some of the classics. Is it just reach or awareness? If you expect sales to move, then you're putting a very different marker on that influencer. And you need to think about what kind of backfire you might be up against by the measures that you adopt. It's a challenging time. Not just to know FTC or advertising standards, authority stuff, good contracts, all that's true. But knowing what success means is the first best defense against something going really wrong. Because you've just misaligned the influencer with the metric.
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Co-host or Interviewer
Yeah, yeah. And I think, you know, people get so caught up in the campaign or you know, whatever you want to call it, that they forget. Yeah, they forget what the conversation was that preceded the thing launching and all that. And then, yeah, you kind of make up what the goals are as you go if you're not intentional about that from the beginning. So yeah, definitely.
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Jeff Hahn
Yeah, intentional is a great word. That's the whole idea. Get that alignment in and typically we'll have a lower risk of backfire.
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Greg Kilstrom
Want to learn more and join the discussion About Marketing and AI? Attend a premier conference dedicated to marketing and AI. That's Meicon, the Marketing Artificial Intelligence Conference. From October 14 through 16 in Cleveland, Ohio. Meakon brings together the brightest minds and leading voices in AI. Don't miss this opportunity to connect with a dynamic community of experts, visionaries and enthusiasts. The Agile brand is proud to be the lead media sponsor of this important event. Register today@marketingai institute.com that's marketing AI institute.com and use the code Agile 150 for $150 off your registration fee. I can't wait to see you there.
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Co-host or Interviewer
So let's talk a little more about crisis communications and you know, not, not just with influencer campaigns, but in other things as well. You know, we're living, you know, news travels fast. A crisis can erupt and spread globally in minutes. Given where we are today and the tools that we have today, what are some of the essential first steps that a brand should take when facing one of these sudden crises?
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Jeff Hahn
Well, the thing that most brands get wrong in any response is speed. They're just not fast. And that's the challenge you have to comprehend these days because the news does travel instantaneously. The old saying is a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth gets its pants on. So that was a saying from the 1700s. So imagine today. But the speed of response is probably the number one challenge. And within that, believe it or not, the assembly, the gathering of a rapid response team to actually assess an issue and make a response is the underlying reason that brands are too slow. They don't have their team defined. The team doesn't know their roles. If they're together for the first time, they don't know how to act. And these are the things that you never see out in front of the curtain. But they're the things that are slowing down a brand from doing what it needs to do. Now, we do have some good examples lately. And I'm going to take the fantastic case of the Kiss Cam and Astronomer. Right, Astronomer comes out. It wasn't right away, but it was pretty quick that they hired Gwyneth Paltrow, the ex wife of Chris Martin from Coldplay who exposed the Kiss Cam scandal. Just fantastic. And she's talking about technical matters in that, in that bit that she did. She has no clue what she's saying, but it was a brilliant little maneuver and I was struck by how quickly they were able to put that creative idea into place. So you do find brands who can move quick and make news with the choices that they have in front of them. This is a good example.
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Co-host or Interviewer
Yeah, yeah. And so I want to talk about your book a little bit as well. And so your book is called Breaking Bad News. What's the key takeaway that you'd like listeners to have from it?
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Jeff Hahn
Well, we know in any type of situation it's impossible for a brand to know when what's going to break bad and when. It's typically at the worst possible time. Well, the essence of the book is that it is possible for brands, and especially the rapid response teams, to know what their options are when it comes to responding. And when I say that, I think down now through the book and the models that I created there that are simply option sets. There are four big ones. Holding statements. There's four options for a good holding statement, messaging. What's our message going to be in the middle of all this spaghetti hitting the fan? Well, there's 16 options. Messenger, who's going to be the spokesperson? There are seven options. And then how are we going to get the word out? There are 12 options. So options are much better than answers because good judgment has to lead the way when the pressure's on. I just love the idea of being able to present my clients and walk them through their options in the middle of the fog that they get put in and they can quickly pick. I want that one, that one, that one. Good. We've got our plan. Go. Yeah, options are better than answers. That's the essence of the book.
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Co-host or Interviewer
Nice. Nice. Well, yeah, we'll definitely, we'll put a link to the, to the book in the, in the show notes and definitely, definitely recommend people check it out.
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Jeff Hahn
Oh, yeah.
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Co-host or Interviewer
So as we, as we wrap up here, just a couple, a couple of things I want to talk about and you know, future, future Facing, and it's hard to look five to 10 years out. So let's maybe, you know, say couple two to three years out. You know, what are some of the trends that you see shaping the future of PR and communications?
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Jeff Hahn
I think about this stat that it's rattling around in my head all the time. In the year 2000, there were about 50 independent major media companies. Today, that's number six.
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Co-host or Interviewer
Wow.
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Jeff Hahn
The implication of that sea change is that syndication is running rampant. And one of the most important aspects of a PR practitioner's life is going to be able to keep up with the effect that syndication has on a news story. Just mushrooms out through a thousand different websites in seconds. So real time analytics, they now become a critical skill that a PR practitioner has to have. We used to be able to wait for those, but the days of a weekly report, monthly report, quarterly report, forget it. We've got to move into real time analytics, environment and ecosystem. And quite frankly, clients have to as well. We see this effect too, by the way, on the decentralized media standpoint with the growth of podcasts. That's another really interesting. You know, two to three years from now, I still think podcasts have legs. I, in my own fragmented media ecosystem, what I allow in to my world into my head, it's podcasts and print only. And I have my five that I listen to religiously. You're going to continue to find this fragmentation as podcasts find their smaller niches and, and, and really grow their tribes in that respect. So now a PR practitioner isn't pitching a reporter, they're pitching over into an audience, into a podcaster like you.
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Co-host or Interviewer
Yeah, yeah. And I can attest to the fact that I am pitched multiple times a day. But for, and, and I, I also share, I do hope that podcasts are, are around in, in two to three years as well. Cause I've, you know, I'm having fun on the show. I want to, you know, make it to year 10 at least, you know.
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Jeff Hahn
Yeah, yeah.
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Co-host or Interviewer
But, yeah, no, I, I agree. It's like, it's. And I can empathize. I've never been a PR practitioner, but like I, I can empathize with how fragmented that must be that, you know, I've got people reaching out to me. Most of them are good fits. Some of them not even close, but, you know, I guess they're casting a wide net, right? So.
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Jeff Hahn
Yeah, exactly. And I think that's, that's is another implication for AI. Hey, if I want to get on Greg Kilstrom's podcast What do I need to say to him? You can actually practice that pitch with AI now and you can get some feedback.
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Co-host or Interviewer
Yeah.
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Jeff Hahn
AI knows enough about you, Greg, where it will say he would never go for that.
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Co-host or Interviewer
Yeah, yeah, I believe it. Well, and so along those lines too, you know, there's certainly a lot of talk about people coming into the job market and you know, just how things have changed. I mean, you know, I always use the anecdote for, with myself. I mean, I, my first job out of college I was a webmaster, which was a job that didn't exist when I left high school. You know, so it's like I look at this as, I think AI is having an even bigger change on, on some things than even the, the Internet. But certainly it's one of those big change times where I think there's jobs that are going to exist five, six years from now that, that we don't even know what they are right now. But what advice would you give to young professionals that are, they're just starting their careers out and things are under such massive change.
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Jeff Hahn
Yeah. AI as the starting point to the conversation today is a proper starting point for the wrap up because it's really destroying the bottom rung of the career ladder. We've got a social issue coming our way as a result the, that we're going to have to reckon with in a thousand different ways. I think that's PR as a career is no exception. And so my advice, again, a little biased because I'm a crisis guy. But I'll tell you a quick story. I was a junior in high school. That was several years back. A friend of mine said just say more than 10 and I wanted to be on the baseball team. Well, the only position on the baseball team was one that no one else wanted to play. It was the catcher. I was really a small guy in high school. None of the equipment fit me, but I raised my hand and I got to play. That's my advice to young practitioners today or new out of college. Raise your hand. Find ways to put yourself in the most difficult situations that no one else wants to be in. No one wants to play catcher. And you get two benefits from that good experience and you build resiliency. You then come out of those hand raising experiences kind of beat up and bruised, but boy, are you differentiated. And those are the kinds of gritty young professionals I look for when I think about how do we want to expand, what's the kind of value system to the new practitioners, to our space? Do I want to see in them. That's it.
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Co-host or Interviewer
Yeah. I love that advice. That's great. Well, Jeff, thanks so much for for joining today. I've got one last question for you before we wrap up. I asked to everybody here, what do you do to stay agile in your role and how do you find a way to do it consistently?
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Jeff Hahn
I have another counterintuitive response. Yeah, I don't watch the news unless it's absolutely necessary. Instead, I read and read and read and read. Probably two, almost three hours a day I'm reading the news. It helps me stay agile because I can discover narratives that I can't get from, you know, sound bite television or even online news stations. In reading, I'm able to really digest a lot more information and then find a pattern. So it really helps me stay nimble and agile that, hey, things in this space are changing. I'm just seeing it. Last week we were saying this. This week we're saying that, okay, so it's different than most people would probably sign up for, but call me Warren Buffett acolytes. Just sit down and read for half a day and then make decisions after that.
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Co-host or Interviewer
Nice, nice. That's great. Well, again, I'd like to thank Jeff Hahn, principal at Han Agency for joining the show. You can learn more about Jeff Han Agency and get a copy of Breaking Bad 12 Essential Crisis Communication Tools by following the links in the show notes.
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Greg Kilstrom
Thanks again for listening to the Agile brand brought to you by Tech Systems. If you enjoyed the show, please take a minute to subscribe and leave us a rating so that others can find the show as well. You can access more episodes of the show@theagile brand.com that's theagile brand.com and contact me if you're interested in consulting or advisory services or are looking for a speaker for your next event, go to www.greggkillstrom.com that's G R E G K-I H L S T R O M.com the Agile brand is produced by Missing Link, a Latina owned, strategy driven, creatively fueled production co op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content. Until next time, stay curious and stay agile.
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Jeff Hahn
The Agile Brand.
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Greg Kilstrom
Before we continue, I wanted to share a key strategic resource that that a majority of the Fortune 500 are already aware of. Finding the best technology, business and talent solutions is not easy. With business demands and competitive pressures mounting, you need to be able to design, deploy and optimize your technology to provide leading customer experiences while driving business growth. Those of you that have been listening to this show for a while know that this podcast is brought to you by Tech Systems, a global provider of technology, business and talent solutions for more than 80% of the Fortune 500. Tech Systems accelerates business transformation for their customers. Whether you're looking to maximize your technology roi, drive business growth, or elevate customer experiences, Tech Systems enables enterprises to capitalize on change. Learn more@techsystems.com that's T E K systems.com now let's get back to the show.