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The CMO Podcast
Reclaiming Hope with Samantha Maltin (St. Jude) and George Carey (Human-ology)
00:48:00
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A
Before we dive into today's episode, we would very much appreciate a moment from you to make sure you're subscribed to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen, along with optioning to auto download the episodes. It really is the best way to never miss an episode, along with supporting the show and the amazing team that helps me bring it to you. And while you're there, leave us a rating or review. It only takes a minute and helps more people find the show and helps us learn. And of course share this episode with a friend or colleague who might enjoy it. We wouldn't be here six years later and still going so strong without you all our community. So thank you for being part of it. Now onto the show. Liberty Mutual customizes your car and home insurance. And now we're customizing this ad for your morning commute to wake you up, which could help your driving Science says that stimulating the brain increases alertness. So here's a pop quiz. How many months have 28 days? What gets wetter as it dries? What has keys but can't open? Locks? If you don't want to hear the answers, turn off this Liberty mutual ad now. 12 months a towel piano. Enjoy being fully alert.
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C
I think hope has always mattered. It just feels more urgent now when people are dealing with these compound pressures in daily life. And I think that they can see performative actions a mile away and they're looking for honesty and help, not perfection. But I think that's why I think about hope as a practice, as a way of life, and that that's resonating now.
- [02:11]
A
Hi, I'm Jim Stengel. I've helped hundreds of major brands discover and activate their purpose. Because when a brand's purpose is clear, compelling and authentic, profit naturally follows. Each week, I welcome the CMOs, the chief marketing officers of your favorite brands, to speak to how their job is so much more than marketing. These leaders share their inspiration and challenges along with how they try to build a full, healthy and happy life in and out of the office. And it's that energy that reaches everyone. They touch and we're glad you're here to feel that energy and to learn from these remarkable leaders. So. So here we go. Are you a hopeful leader? Is your brand a hopeful brand? What does hopeful even mean anymore? Well, we are deep into the merry month of May, and we will be talking about the concept of hope today, what it means to leadership, what it means to brand building, and teaser alert. It is not what you think it is. And our new learning about hope could be a big opportunity for you and your brand. My guests today on the CMO podcast are return guests. First, we have Samantha Malton, the chief marketing and brand officer at St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital, ALSAC, the fundraising and awareness arm of St. Jude's Samantha was on our show when she was a CMO at Sesame Workshop. Sam is joined today by George Carey, founder and CEO of Humanology, an insights company that tracks how people's priorities are changing and what that tells us about their shifting needs. George joined our show about a year ago with Michael Moynihan from Lego. This episode could not be more timely. There is a war on hope, and people are fighting it on every front. But don't despair. What follows will help you understand hope today and what you can do to integrate this learning into your brand platform and into how you lead. Let's get going. Well, welcome back to the CMO podcast. Samantha and George, you're both returning guests. Samantha, you were a first a guest in 2022 when you were at Sesame Workshop, and Cookie Monster, if you remember, jumped into our conversation. So I would have to think George is the new Cookie Monster. Would you agree?
- [04:15]
C
Definitely. Definitely.
- [04:16]
B
Yeah, I would. Bert and Ernie were definitely our matchmaker. If that's kind of a build on that.
- [04:21]
C
That is true.
- [04:22]
B
It was through that that we had a chance to get to know each other, and it's been a happy relationship ever since.
- [04:27]
A
So you met when you were at Sesame Street, Samantha?
- [04:30]
C
Yes, we did. I have been a longtime admirer of George and his brain, and he and his team do extraordinary work. And I am a very curious person. I obsess over understanding consumers, our audience. And George studies people, and his team, over decades, have studied people's behaviors. So any chance I get, I reach out to George. He's on my speed dial.
- [04:59]
A
Curious George. I can't resist. Sorry about that.
- [05:02]
B
Yeah, right. Well, Samantha is a very curious person. She does, like, really value different perspectives on old problems, and I think that's why we hit it off. We look at the world through the lens of humanity as opposed to a category or a traditional view. And it's been a really fun collaboration ever since.
- [05:20]
A
We'll get into that. But, Samantha, you left Sesame Street, Sesame Workshop in New York City about 18 months ago and moved your family to Memphis to join St. Jude's ALSAC. So deeply caring for kids is definitely a red thread in your career, your professional life, your personal life. So let's start with how's the last 18 months been for you and your family on this transition? Not a small one.
- [05:46]
C
It has been a whirlwind, but a very exciting one. As you said, I spent the majority of my career supporting children and families in some way, whether it was entertaining them in my early days in media and entertainment or trying to educate them at Sesame Workshop with Sesame street around the world. And now this feels like another part of the circle of care. Right? This is now physical health and certainly emotional well being and healing as well. I loved my experience at Sesame Street. I had a wonderful learning journey there about how to reach children and families in meaningful ways. And when I was introduced to the folks at St. Jude, it struck me as this is an incredible opportunity to magnify that impact because St. Jude reaches children not only here in Memphis, where we are the world's leading pediatric cancer hospital, but we're also reaching over 400 medical institutions around the world. This is the preeminent global science and research center. And so we're sharing our research and our protocols with many, many institutions around the world. So to me, that was, I would say, a privilege and an incredible opportunity.
- [07:11]
A
So now, George, you came on the show only about a year ago with Michael Moynihan from lego. And that episode was titled the Day the Universe how the Past Five Years has Changed Us. It was a very popular show, very helpful for our audience. We're a year from that episode as you look on it. George, why do you think that episode resonated the way it did with our audience?
- [07:35]
B
I think that a lot of brand leaders and corporate leaders are trying to find ways of being more empathetic and more understanding of their target audience. They realize that traditional category speak and thinking about their playing field within the lines of their category will only get you so far. And I think that one of the things that LEGO does supremely well is to navigate their voice and their activities and their products outside of that swim lane. They spend a huge amount of energy and dollars, quite frankly, trying to understand the human beneath the consumer and work backwards from there to tactics. So to me, if there was success in that episode, it's because it gave your audience a real, living, breathing example of the amazing things that can happen to a business. Again, think about this is a plastic brick which is thriving in the world of high tech devices and everything. Like, how do they do that? Like, what's the magic there? That's the magic is they have found a way to navigate back to the heart of who they're speaking to, as opposed to the head of who they're speaking to.
- [08:40]
A
Well, when we did this episode a year ago, you were studying a lot, the rise of personal agency and people focusing on sort of their families and interaction and authenticity. So since that time, I know we're going to talk about hope in a minute, but how has your company evolved? Talk us through that.
- [08:58]
B
Yeah, we've really zeroed in on this idea of helping our clients navigate change. It's become almost pat to talk about how fast things are changing. Everybody knows that. You don't need me to remind you, but this is really Titanic and there's never been a time in my lifetime. Certainly it's professional that this much change has taken place. But while other people kind of in the marketing and the inside space tend to focus on the behavioral aspects of change and how that change in the world is impacting our outer world, we've really zeroed in on how that change in the outer world is impacting our inner world. And from that, how you can navigate change. What does the trajectory of humanity look like as opposed to the trajectory of the fruit snack category? So we've really sort of zeroed in on that idea of change, the trajectory of change and how brands are or not align themselves with where humanity is going.
- [09:53]
A
That's a good segue into today's topic, which is weighty. It's hope. Right. And this idea of hope is perhaps one of the most relevant and compelling brand currencies of today. But I think as our audience listens to the show from our pre call, this concept of hope is different from men in the audience. I think think about it. Which I think is what is the interesting rug pull, I think of the conversation we're about to have. So I want to set the context for this chat. So, George, maybe we'll go to Samantha next, but I'd like you to start with why the heck are we talking about hope today? Why is this important? What is it? And what has your team learned recently about this concept of hope and how it's shifting?
- [10:35]
B
Yeah, well, it's a great question. I would answer that by saying if emotional relevance is on your List of to do and to create as a CMO or a VP of marketing or anybody who is trying to build brand currency. If empathy is something that. Which you're trying to sort of convey to your. To your audience and to treat them more as people than as consumers, which we talked about in our last episode, you will not find a more powerful way of doing that than in the area of hope. You know, a lot of people right now, in this time of change and tension and stress and so on, have gone all the way to trying to promote joy in people's lives. There's lots of big talks on being done on joy and research being done on joy. What our research says quite clearly is joy is a bridge too far. Given where I am right now as a human, I'd like to be able to get to joy, but if you could just get me to hope, then you've got my attention. And that is exactly what this message is for St. Jude's is how do we sort of get that idea into people's lives? There are two dominant trending emotional trends right now for humanity right now and Americans in particular. One is safety, that we are not feeling safe in any way, physical or emotional. And the other is an absolute dearth of hope in our lives. So if you can be the brand which understands what hope is and authentically gives people reasons to be hopeful, you are in the most salient, the most powerful emotional space that our data would say exists right now.
- [12:03]
A
What do you think, George, are some of the biggest misconceptions right now as people think about hope? So who wouldn't want to help people have hope right, As a person, as an organization, as a brand? But what are the misconceptions?
- [12:14]
B
Yeah, I think the biggest one is that hope is this kind of glittery, soft, shiny, aspirational notion that, you know, we want to kind of treat as a warm blanket that keeps people warm and safe at night? That's not what our data shows. We actually are able to map the emotional ingredients of what hope is, and it's a big word, hope. So, like, what lives within hope? And the headline that came out of that exercise is, hope is much more gritty than glittery. If there's one dominant emotional connection with hope, it's this whole idea of not giving up, just sticking in there, being resilient, despite headwinds, despite every reason, in some cases, to give up. Hope is primarily defined by the idea of grit and determination. So that's the biggest difference.
- [13:03]
A
Yeah. So, Sam, still setting the context of this discussion you know, you've always been about hope at St. Jude's right? I think that's probably the word that's been associated with you since its founding by Danny Thomas many years ago. But you're learning a lot more with George and others about what are the negative drivers of hope, what restores hope. So talk a bit about your journey with George and this concept of hope and your team and what you've learned and maybe how this is affecting how you think about your brand's foundation and the activations which you bring to life around the world.
- [13:38]
C
Yes. Well, we're studying a lot of different aspects of hope. And as George started to say, hope is a universal human need, and it is synonymous with things that people need to feel secure. As George said, like, there is a correlation between people's financial security and. And having hope, which is really, if you think about it, the whole basis of our business model. At St. Jude, no family receives any bill for treatment, for travel, for housing, for food, because they need to focus on letting their child live so that they can have hope. And when I think about that, like, hope should not be a luxury. We are trying to help people afford hope. You know, one of the other things that we're studying is that hope heals. There is a direct correlation with healing and the having hope for families. And we know there's decades of research that we have here that are demonstrating that of psychosocial research, that hope actually supports better health outcomes. One of the misconceptions, though, just to add to what you and George were talking about, I used to think about hope as a movement or something that was communal. And what we're learning from our research is that it's really made up of individual actions. It's very personal. And I'm sure George can share more from his research. We have geeked out about this a little bit, but in order to have hope, in order to be able to give someone else, you have to have it yourself. Well, it is inspired by individual actions, and then it becomes this virtuous cycle. When you're able to share hope, it builds hope. And that's how it eventually can form a movement.
- [15:30]
B
But it's quite personal to build on that. You're exactly right, Samantha. If we look at it's from our studies on hope, the things that detract from hope, that make us hopeless versus the things that make us hopeful. What makes us hopeful at the very bottom of the list is being part of a community. Interesting to me. So to your point, that's me sort of going out into the world and finding connections, that is not the thing that is making me be hopeful. You know, by far the number one thing that gives people hope, as you just said, is financial stability. That is the number one driver of hope. And right behind that is this idea of small, personal, everyday joys. The kinds of experiences that no one but you and maybe somebody else in your house are actually going to see. But those two things together are the number one and the number two drivers of hope. And the biggest detractor of hope is not having enough money to buy the things that I need. So when a brand takes a price increase, and I know we all have to take price increases, they need to understand that that's not just an inconvenience, that's robbing their consumer of hope.
- [16:35]
C
You also think about hope. It's not just the idea, it's an action. It's something that you practice. It's a way of life. Foreign.
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D
Hey everybody, this is Andrea Sullivan, the CEO of Vive and we produce the CMO podcast and are so excited to have partnered with Jim Stengel for so many years. Wanted to tell you a little bit about something that could be right for you. Vive is a program for entrepreneurs and business leaders who want to get more out of their life and become their best and happiest selves, both personally and professionally. We have a 12 month program that allows people to meet up with some of the best business leaders out there and additionally experts in the wellness sector so that you can learn how to nurture yourself. So we teach things around sleep optimization, meditation, all those good things as well. Please reach out to us at Podcastive Co to get more information. That's P O D C A S T T S at Vyve Co. Thanks for listening to the CMO podcast and hope to talk to you more about Vibe.
- [17:52]
A
So with all this heady stuff we're talking about, which by the way is super interesting, Samantha, how's this affected how you're working with your team and you're working on the St. Jude's brand and advancing its mission, its purpose? As we talked a minute ago, it's always been about hope. When I think about St. Jude's it is hope. But this is nuanced and you're talking about what you're learning as the CMO of this organization. How's your lens changed in the last 18 months because of this learning journey you're on?
- [18:22]
C
Well, one of the things that we're learning is that giving inspires hope. And as we Start to think about how do we inspire people to give, how do we make it part of their traditions and their rituals? That really is how hope activates, right? It's building traditions of hope. And so I think about that when we're building our campaigns, when we're thinking up creative, that's really going to connect emotionally with our audience. How do we create traditions of hope? And we've built it into some of our campaigns. We worked on a campaign called Art of Hope where we tried to unlock the creativity and the imagination of our patients and took some of their patient artwork and asked them, what would you hope that this art would do? What rocket ship would? Where would you like this rocket ship drawing to take off or your butterfly? And they told us and we animated it and brought it to life. And it was a beautiful expression of hope. But I think that it touches people in different ways. That's one way. The other way is traditions and thinking about how we touch people's daily lives. I always have thought about this, right. It's not just at St. Jude. I think any marketer thinks about how am I getting into people's daily lives and their daily habits. Anyone who's not thinking about hope, this basic essential human need is not really focusing on what customers want today, like every generation today, wants to feel a sense of purpose and understand the values of brands that are coming to them to buy their products or their services. It's something essential that you have to tap into.
- [20:08]
A
George, what's your reaction to all that?
- [20:09]
B
Yeah, I can only applaud what she's saying. But the thing that I like to add on to it is that hope is an avenue for any brand to build relevance. You don't have to just be St. Jude's to be able to make people hopeful. As I mentioned, when we map like the drivers of hope, there's 10 different things. Hope is not one thing. It's a very big table. There's room at it for many different brands. One of the drivers of hope is personal creative self expression. If you are a brand which stands for or propagates creative self expression, there's a place for you at the table of hope. Another aspect of hope is exercise and caring for myself. If you're Nike, if you're another brand that sort of is in that space, there's a place for you at this table. So it's a very broad space that has incredible amount of need, but an incredible amount of avenues through which brands can have a stake in this.
- [21:04]
C
Trust is a mechanism that converts hope into action. And I think that it directly influences behavior. And so I think when a brand is showing up and practicing hope credibly, it drives trust, it drives engagement. And I think that's what we're all looking for, particularly now in this environment.
- [21:29]
A
If we had been talking, I don't know, five years ago, 10 years ago, maybe it's better about hope, I suspect we'd be having a different conversation.
- [21:37]
B
Yeah, for us, we've been tracking human emotion for a long time. And there was a period, it was the year 2016 actually, when our data swung dramatically in a simple, powerful way, which was that American families went from hopeful to fearful. That was the year in which it happened. And it's just now beginning to come back. You know, we're just now getting to the point where people are realizing that this is such an important part of my emotional well being. And it's something which is also, I think, very apparent across generations. You know, one of the things that we're able to look at is hopefulness by age group. And interestingly enough, the kids in this country are the most hopeful. And what you see is hope takes a real beating. As you age as a teenager, there's a much smaller percentage of Americans who are hopeful. As a parent, there's a smaller and non parent adults who are the least hopeful in the country. So it become an epidemic, you know, the absence of hope in your life. It happened in 2016 with the tipping point. But again today it's beginning to come back onto the, onto the screen in a big way.
- [22:49]
A
Which categories or brands do you think have a particularly strong opportunity to play in this space? I mean, we were talking about this a minute ago. As you think about right now, if you're running the largest trade organization in the US like the ana, and you thought this was a really powerful growth driver or a connector for people. Which categories or brands would you talk about first?
- [23:12]
C
Well, first of all, charity as well as a whole, I think it's so deeply connected to it. But aside from that, one that comes to mind right now is probably NASA, right? Artemis 2. What could be more hopeful than that? I think they're all our emotional support astronauts. George and I have talked about this. I think brands like Lego that we mentioned earlier have an expression of creativity and imagination that is so hopeful. I think about your alma mater, Jim P and G. And there's nothing more hopeful than watching an Olympics moms campaign, right, where moms are helping their children follow their dreams and succeed. I think there's so many, I mean, George, you mentioned a lot the other day when we were chatting.
- [24:00]
B
Yeah, to me it's not about categories. It's about the emotional ingredients of these brands. You can find hopefulness in a band Aid you can have in a breakfast cereal. It's just a matter of what your emotional DNA is and whether that's aligned with the emotional ingredients of hope. So, you know, one of the examples that I, that Jim, you have been talking a lot about recently that I think is a prime one is in the restaurant space, which is Chili's. You know, they have this brilliant thing going on right now where they made it making it very clear to us that for the amount of money you spend in the drive through at McDonald's, you can have this really wonderful experience in the Chili's where you sit it down, there's a waitress, you have a beer and some nachos, you know, and, and that is like playbook of exactly what drives Hope. Number one is this idea of like personal financial security. And number two is small everyday joys. That's what this is. So there's a restaurant brand which is doing this extremely well and certainly profiting appropriately from it. You know, on the other side in the world of toys, did we just mention Lego and LEGO in the adult space, not the kids space? You know, I think one of the most powerful aspects of Lego's huge success in with, with adults is they're bringing hope into people's lives. Because one of the emotional ingredients is this idea of escapism and close personal connections with a small circle of friends. As you all know, that's what Lego's adults Welcome is promoting right now. This is, it's not about creativity, it's about like, wouldn't it be nice to get a group of your friends together, you know, and maybe have a glass of wine with it and make these LEGO floral arrangements. So again, it doesn't matter whether you're selling hamburgers or Legos, it just matters whether you understand this is what Hope means. And this is the aspect within my brand that gives me permission to play there. And beyond that, the world's your oyster. And I'll just make one other sort of point about this, which is that based on my kind of perspective, and there may be some that I'm missing, I don't know any brand that staked out Hope is their primary reason for being any of them. I mean, Samantha in her space and the nonprofit, they are owning Hope, but I'm not aware of any brand squarely landing on Hope as their brand Essence or their brand mission or their brand vision. Another way of saying that is the single most powerful and rapidly rising human need, which is hope, represents emotional white space for the commercial world to begin to get into.
- [26:24]
C
You're so right, George. About the categories. One of the most hopeful campaigns I remember seeing is the detergent brand vanish. And they did this campaign around living with autism and giving people hope. And it was beautiful, and it connected on such a deep level, and it was detergent.
- [26:41]
A
So let's stay on this line. I love that challenge, George. And we're going to talk about advice for CMOs in a minute, but is there any brand that. We've talked about a few already, but any brand for you personally, the two of you, which you think is connecting in this area of hope, that makes you think about taking an action, makes you think about, you know, your view of that brand. St. Jude's of course. You live with it. But beyond that.
- [27:05]
B
Yeah, for me, my favorite brand in the hope space right now. I don't know if you guys been reading about this thing called the Tin can phone.
- [27:13]
A
Yeah, I have been. Yeah.
- [27:14]
C
Yes. I'm getting one for my kids.
- [27:17]
B
Okay. So for those of you don't know what is. It's. It's a. It's a landline. It doesn't have a screen on it. It doesn't have any kind of texting feature whatsoever. You gotta pick it up and you gotta dial a number and you have to have a list of. But I mean, to me, that's really hopeful that parents are saying, you know what? I have to have that. Because what it's saying is that I recognize that the kind of technology that my kids are being exposed to and in many cases expect to have is not good for them, and that I'm going to stamp in and make a change which will give them a much better chance of staying out of the kinds of emotional challenges that some of these technologies have. So I think that there is incredible hope in watching parents respond so positively to the idea of a tin can phone, which is from the 1950s, but is incredibly relevant today. So that's my champion of hope right there.
- [28:09]
C
I am getting them for my children who are 8 and 9. So I'll give you the other lens of it. You talked about how we would feel as adults. I'm looking at it through my children's eyes. And really anything through my children's eyes, I think they're at that age where there is not a broader awareness. They have eternal optimism, no matter what it is, whether it's the tin can phones and they have no idea what a landline is or was back in the day. They just see it as a way to talk to their friends and they think it's so fun. But really, anything, they don't have fear. They don't have the same sense of fear or potential failure. They just have eternal optimism. And that is the most hopeful thing of all.
- [29:08]
A
Now let's talk about leadership a bit and let's get into a little bit of therapy for CMOs, if you will. CMOs have internal organizations and external stakeholders, customers, partners that they work with to help bring the brand to life. So you two are into this more than most. If you were to have a good session, the two of you, with a working CMO of any company right now, what would your agenda be for them? Thinking about them with an internal audience and the external audience. And George, I know you and Samantha have been immersed and you talked about a little bit a few minutes ago, the drivers of negative hope, if you will, and the restorers of hope. What sort of things would you counsel them to look at as they think about being a great, effective leader inside their company and outside their company?
- [29:57]
B
Yeah, I would start by counseling to really think about the ripple effect, the emotional ripple effect of their choices. When you have to confront an issue like price advances or influencer selection or the many different things that a CMO has to deal with, it may seem like you're working in a kind of a limited sphere of the kind of impact that's going to have on people. And of course they're very aware and very eager to do the right thing, but you often don't realize the extent to which it cascades into a much more significant action that's going to impact your the consumers on the end. So again, we talked a little bit about price and I don't want to sort of beat a dead horse, but we are going to have to find a way of dealing with inflation and the cost of goods in a way which doesn't lead to pricing, which leads to hopelessness. Another area that I think, again, just as an example, and this is some of the work that we've done together with Samantha at St. Jude's is on the tactics. You can be really thoughtful about things like influencer strategy. One of the things that Samantha and her team have had us doing at Humanology is to help understand better, like what kinds of influencers and public figures are most aligned with their brand Essence of hope. So it becomes not just a question of how popular is Taylor Swift versus Beyonce or one athlete versus another athlete. But what's the emotional DNA? What are the emotional connections that people make to these individuals? And in the case of hope, which of those different types of public figures are most hopeful? So you can be a lot more planful, both at a high level, strategic level, but also at a tactical level when you begin to sort of factor in this human connection to hope.
- [31:38]
A
Samantha, how do you react to that question I asked? George pontificated on a bit.
- [31:44]
C
I think we always have to be thinking about how to increase impact. So in this case, how do we magnify hope? And when I think about how that relates to us in general, we are a hospital here in Memphis, but we have a global model. And the single biggest factor of whether a child survives cancer is actually where they live. And we've been able to increase survival rates from 20% to 80% in the US since the hospital opened since 1962. But that is not enough because those statistics are much lower internationally. One in five children will not survive. When we think about how do we magnify our impact? How do we multiply the work that we're doing here? We are not just now focused on sharing research and protocols, but actually trying to get the medicines themselves into the hands of these medical institutions around the world. So we have a global initiative of $200 million global initiative to share these medicines through our partnerships UNICEF and World Health Organization and get into 50 countries by 2030. We're well on our way now. But I think no matter what business you're in, no matter what brand you're stewarding, you have to think about how you scale your impact. How do we magnify hope?
- [33:14]
A
Has this immersion in hope that you both have been on, has it changed how you show up for your team and your families?
- [33:23]
B
It certainly has for me. And actually it's been one of the things that gives me hope, I have to say. One of the things that I see my personal family struggle with is like, where do you find hope? It's becoming increasingly difficult to find that rejuvenating, liberating, invigorating feeling of, oh God, that's what hope feels like right now. And for me, it's just brought me closer to my family. It's brought me to the realization that if you want to feel hopeful, then try and get yourself invited to one of my kids gatherings because you'll be surrounded by some of the most idealistic, right minded, wonderful young people you could possibly imagine. So yeah, that's to me, it's a unifying bond, which is just bringing our family closer together. On a personal level.
- [34:07]
A
How about as a team leader? You have a company, George, you work with clients. Has this changed how you show up for them?
- [34:13]
B
I think it just gives the kind of work we do at Humanology and the team. I have to say, Jim, you referenced George's thinking on this matter a little earlier. Frankly, there's a very wonderful and talented team at Humanology, which is, I have to give credit for this team. But I think for us, it gives us real belief and passion for the kind of work we're doing for brands. To me, there is a role for every brand to play in lifting up humanity. And you may think to yourself, gee, Campbell's soup or you know, YouTube. Yes. If you can understand, again, the deeper emotional desires that we're most focused on serving right now in our lives and to connect those with these brands, you know that that gives us hope and passion and commitment, which is going well beyond doing simple insight work.
- [35:02]
A
Samantha, how about yourself? Any changes in how you're showing up?
- [35:05]
C
You know, I think trust is the foundation for where hope can live. And when I think about the incredible team that we have here at LSAC and St. Jude and my marketing leadership, it is so incredible because of the trust that we have in each other. And that gives me hope. And we are helping people every day afford hope. And that is inspiring. And for my family, I think as I've been studying hope and working on this more, I have shifted my lens. I see things so differently now through my children's eyes, that hope becomes optimism. And it's kind of incredible because I'm in a role where every day I am seeing miracles happen and tiny and great acts of hope here. And then I go home. And as my children get older and now are eight and nine big kids still, I think through their eyes, everything is just hope and wonder.
- [36:12]
A
I mean, you talked about the generational difference in hope from your data and Samantha's kind of talking. You're both talking about your children. I mean, I suspect some of that is just the naivete, the experience in life. But maybe there's more. I've seen your data. There's an enormous difference in hope with teenagers and with adults, parents and non parents. So what's going on there? And what can we learn from the younger generation other than to be younger?
- [36:43]
B
It's a great question, Jim. One of the things that Samantha and I were talking about the other day that I find particularly interesting is that parent adults are more hopeful than non parent adults. And the cynic might have thought the opposite would be true. That if you've got these little kids you're bringing into this world, with all the stuff happening right now, it's like, oh my God, it's never going to work out. And it just raises the question, what's the chicken and what's the egg? Are people who are just wired for hope more likely to have kids? And so therefore they show up with kids. There's a lot of young adults who are choosing not to have kids. Maybe it's the hopeful parents that are having kids. Or is it the fact that just by having a kid in your life you become hopeful? So again, as I was saying earlier, kids are an incredible tonic for hope, whether it's because we're pre programmed for it or because they're, they're bringing it to our lives.
- [37:35]
C
I found that data fascinating because as a cynic you would think you don't want to bring your children into this complicated world where you might feel less hope than before. But from personal experience, I can say that I absolutely feel more hope from my children.
- [38:04]
A
Now I want a last big block before we start closing. This is George. You had a very provocative statement a few minutes ago about no one owns hope. It's not in the middle of anyone's brand pyramid or brand diamond or whatever it might be. And that it could be. I mean, the argument I think we've been having here, the discussion we've been having, is it might be the most relevant currency today. And so what should we do about that? Who listening, who are brand managers, marketing directors, CMOs are thinking scratch on their heads saying, how do we do this? How do we play in hope? How do we go from where we are today to maybe something that is more hopeful to help us make a deeper connection with people, to, you know, to drive our brand, to drive our business, to make my organization more inspired.
- [38:48]
B
Well, I have two thoughts on that. I'm sure Samantha will also. We talked in our last episode, Jim, about the idea of goosebump marketing, which is the marketing, which is when you see it as an audience, it strikes a nerve. It's so real and so authentic that it gives you goosebumps. If you want to be a hopeful brand and sort of have that kind of huge emotional reaction, you can't just say to your audience, I'm about hope. You've got to find kind of the organic connection between some aspect of hope and the emotional DNA that's within your brand. So again, through whatever means you Decide to do that, you've got to sort of do take some emotional inventory of what your brand stands for on a quantitative basis and figure out which of those is A, most connected to Hope and B, most relevant to them as human beings. So it's right under all of our noses. And again, the first print that gets there, I think is going to find a lot of receptivity and enthusiasm.
- [39:42]
A
So what's your data say about maybe the top three or four drivers of hope that people could ponder?
- [39:47]
B
Number one, financial stability. Number two, small everyday joys. Number three, feeling emotionally supportive. So this idea of I'm here to help you not just with the rational parts of your life and the challenges you face on a, on an everyday basis, but to sort of understand and support you as a human and emotionally. The fourth one is feeling physically fit. So, you know, between those four, there's a lot of space here for, for, for a whole range of brands and categories to play. I was going to say the other thing you can do is you can associate yourself with a cost organization that stands for hope. Yeah, and I would say you would do really well. Think about St. Jude's because they are the one. I mean, again, there's lots of nonprofits doing lots of great things and I admire and salute all of them. But there's only one that has sort of staked this idea of promoting and spreading hope in the world, and it's St. Jude. So there's a lot to be gained, I think, by calling Samantha and her team to find ways of partnering.
- [40:46]
C
Well, HOPE is one of our brand tenants.
- [40:49]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [40:50]
C
We think about hope as part of our DNA. Hope and humanity. Excellence in patient care and science and research breakthroughs. World class, cutting edge science and research breakthroughs. And it is that pyramid that drives us. And it is our goal to be seen as a beacon of hope globally. I do think that anyone in any seat that is stewarding a brand has to think about appealing to people's need states. And I said it before, but I deeply believe hope is a universal human need. So if you're thinking about how to connect with your brand, you have to touch that in some way.
- [41:37]
B
Just another thought that a CMO might consider is this whole conversation, I think, on the topic of hope gives you a whole new way of talking about value in the marketplace. Every single one of our clients is looking for ways to talk about value. And a lot of it tends to be pretty rational. Again, not to be critical at all. But it's like, buy this and get another one free. Or the kind of loyalty programs, and that's fine. But this gives you this idea of hope, gives you a much more emotionally evocative way of talking about value. You're not just saving me a buck. You're not just giving me an extra order of french fries when I buy a hamburger. You're making it possible for me to feel hopeful again that there is a way for me to be happy and satisfied in a way which is affordable.
- [42:22]
C
Yeah, I think you're also giving people agency so they can feel that they can do something meaningful. People want to do good in the world. George can show you research that shows people want to be a good person. What that looks like by generation, by geography may vary slightly, but in general they want to have an impact in the world.
- [42:46]
A
Yeah, I love that.
- [42:47]
C
So I think it gives you agency, I think proof, because you can see your progress and your impact.
- [42:54]
A
You know, I don't want to, I'm going to state the obvious here, but there's not a whole lot of hope in geopolitics these days. Just as we're recording, just all sorts of stuff is going on. So, I mean, it's a tremendous opportunity and a chance for incredible impact, to use your word, Samantha, and personal fulfillment. An agency, if you're leading a brand or a company to play in this hope space. Because I think brands and companies can do this in a way that a lot of our other organizations cannot right now.
- [43:24]
B
Just another sort of thought on that is hope is generationally agnostic, as we just spoke about, is category agnostic, and it's also market agnostic. The desire for hope is every bit as great among a 35 year old mom in Germany as a 35 year old mom in the US as a 35 mom in South Korea. So for those people who are looking for a single message which is going to resonate emotionally and magnetically around the world again, you won't do better than hope.
- [43:53]
C
Yeah, I think hope has always mattered. It just feels more urgent now when people are dealing with these compound pressures in daily life. And I think that they can see performative actions a mile away and they're looking for honesty and help, not perfection. But I think that's why I think about hope as a practice, as a way of life and that that's resonating now.
- [44:25]
A
Last question. What gives each of you hope in your life right now?
- [44:28]
B
Well, for me, two answers. Right before this program, I took my dog for a walk in the park and there was a mom, sorry, a mom and a dad and two kids like 5 year old and 7 year old, and they were playing hide and seek. They weren't all on their phone, having a picnic, ignored each other. You know, they. They were doing what we used to do 50 years ago. And you can't believe the squeals of laughter and joy when the little girl went around and found her dad hiding the obvious place in full view, but kind of pretending to hide again. That's restoration of kind of the basic human values that have always given us joy and real authentic comfort. The world I saw in that moment of play between a parent and their child. And the second one, as I said earlier, is my daughter's getting married. And that just gives me a tremendous sense of hope that these two wonderful human beings are going to come together and bring more of that into the world with hopefully some grandchildren.
- [45:29]
A
I love that. George. Well, I think we're going to see an ad the next six to nine months. It opens with a family playing hide and seek in a public park. Samantha, how about yourself?
- [45:40]
C
Absolutely. My children, every day, every day is new. And they give me hope in every situation. When I'm having my lowest day, this is an incredible place to be. And miracles happen every day. And some days are really hard, some days we lose children. And when I come home and I see their faces and I get to be with them and enjoy our time as a family, my husband, that gives me hope.
- [46:10]
A
Beautiful. Well, we're recording this the week before the big Advertising hall of Fame, which I'm being inducted into next week, a big thing in New York City. And I'm just raising it because I had to write a speech. And I reflected on the first time I came to this ceremony, which was in 2002, so a long time ago. And it was to prepare John Smale's induction into the hall of Fame, who's a Previous chairman and CEO of P& G. And I was very moved that night because the hall of Fame is all these people who are senior, where their stories are told. And I felt a tremendous amount of hope for business, for brands, for myself, you know, 24 years ago. And I try to go every year because you hear the stories of a few people who've made a notable impact and it fills you with hope on all sorts of levels. So this is an interesting episode to be recording. It's my last episode I'm recording before heading to New York for this thing. But I think we all have the potential, right? This is what this episode is about. Through our brands and through ourselves, to do tangible things to inspire hope, which is, I don't know, I guess George and Samantha, you'd argue, possibly the most
- [47:24]
B
powerful emotion and available to just about any brand that chooses to look closely at it.
- [47:29]
A
Beautiful. Wow. Okay, George and Samantha, anything else you want to say before we wrap up this beautiful conversation about hope?
- [47:38]
B
Well, just a quick congratulations to you, Jim, for your induction into the hall of Fame. That was a big deal. There's a lot of awards out there. I think more than we need. But this is a big one and you certainly have earned it. The kind of impact you're making on the marketing community, it just can't be overstated.
- [47:54]
C
It is very special. We are all looking forward to seeing you up there next week and celebrating you.
- [47:59]
A
Well, hey, you two. You've been on the show before. Welcome back. This is a fantastic discussion. I love you both, and it's great getting the two of you together. You've not been on the show as a couple. I can tell you have a wonderful relationship, working relationship. So thanks for the great conversation.
- [48:14]
C
Thank you so much.
- [48:15]
B
Thank you, Jim.
- [48:17]
A
That was my conversation with Samantha and George. I'm going to do this one a little bit differently today. Three things in this conversation that gave me hope. And the first one was this entire discussion about the rich brand territory or brand currency of hope and how no brand other than maybe St. Jude's has that the center of their brand strategy. There is such opportunity, especially in these times, to try to be a brand or a company that stands for hope, that engenders hope, that takes actions to drive hope. I think that's very, very powerful. And that gave me hope today. Second one, these two people, George and Samantha, I know them. They've been on the show before. Both these people give me hope. They're wonderful human beings. They're doing work that's important. I love their partnership together. You can tell they work together so well. But I think how they approach their life, how they approach their business, certainly gives me hope. And the third area, and I'll stay with the friendship and family theme. I'm hopeful about next week. I'm being admitted into the hall of Fame. My entire family's coming together. It always makes me hopeful when the people I love and I've spent my life with, friends, family, come together and get on, have a great time, get to know each other better and show their gratitude, their love and their hope. I'm looking forward to that next week. This discussion made me very hopeful about that. That's it for this week's episode of the CMO Podcast. As always, I would be grateful if you shared our show with your friends, along with subscribing and leaving a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen. The CMO Podcast is a Vive original production.