Speaker 1: You're listening to Math and Magic, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: When you obsess over the competition instead of obsessing over
Speaker 2: the customer, you're going to get yourself into big trouble
Speaker 2: because if you're obsessing over the competition, all you can
Speaker 2: ever know is what they've already done. You can't drive
Speaker 2: a car ninety miles an hour down the road if
Speaker 2: you're looking in the rearview mirror, and when you're studying
Speaker 2: the competition, you can only be looking backwards.
Speaker 3: Hi, I'm Bob Pipman, and welcome to Math and Magic.
Speaker 3: Stories from the Frontiers of Marketing. On this episode, we're
Speaker 3: going to dig in deep with one of the most
Speaker 3: versatile and agile marketers in the business. Microsoft, Capital One, Uber,
Speaker 3: Hilton and now AT and T have all been atten
Speaker 3: from her handiwork. She's a rare blend of sociologist, strategists, technologist,
Speaker 3: quant and strong leader. She's Kellen Smith Kenny, the chief
Speaker 3: marketing and growth officer at AT and T. Kellen grew
Speaker 3: up and what the college in the Northeast. Her dad
Speaker 3: was a mathematician, her mom was a nurse, and her
Speaker 3: aunt was an artist. She calls it an incredible influence
Speaker 3: of art and science and empathy. Growing up, we call
Speaker 3: it mathem magic. Rare to find both in one person.
Speaker 3: But she is one of those unicorns, and her career
Speaker 3: is not so much marked by where she has been,
Speaker 3: but rather it's marked by the big successes she has
Speaker 3: had at each stop. She and her marketing campaigns have
Speaker 3: won a number of awards. When you dig into how
Speaker 3: she does it, it'll be apparent why. Although kell and
Speaker 3: I are not old friends, my old friends who know
Speaker 3: her well rave about her both as a marketer and
Speaker 3: as a human. Kellen, welcome.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 3: Before we jump into the meaty stuff, I'd like to
Speaker 3: do you in sixty seconds. Are you ready?
Speaker 2: I'm ready.
Speaker 3: Do you prefer cats or dogs?
Speaker 2: Dogs?
Speaker 3: Introvert or extrovert.
Speaker 2: An introverted extrovert or possibly an extroverted introvert?
Speaker 3: Mountains or bas each mountains ski or snowboard ski ski ski,
Speaker 3: your first job, lifeguard, dream.
Speaker 2: Vacation, helly skiing on a glacier.
Speaker 3: Athlete or athlete both cell phone or landline, cell phone,
Speaker 3: all dressed up or keeping a casual all dressed up.
Speaker 3: Favorite thing to cook?
Speaker 2: I can barely boil water.
Speaker 3: Smartest person. You know, my grandmother, childhood hero, my parents
Speaker 3: favorite city, Seattle, And what did you want to be
Speaker 3: when you were growing up?
Speaker 2: President of the United States?
Speaker 3: Well that's yet to come. Okay, before you get to
Speaker 3: be president of the United States. Let's talk about a
Speaker 3: little bit of some other stuff here, and let's jump
Speaker 3: in to where you are right now. AT and T
Speaker 3: one of the greatest brands of the last one hundred years.
Speaker 3: You've got a brilliant strategist, John Stanky is your CEO,
Speaker 3: and he is clearly driving the company to maximize your
Speaker 3: assets and capitalize on that amazing brand. Describe for us
Speaker 3: this next phase of AT and T. Where are you headed?
Speaker 2: When I think about where AT and T is headed
Speaker 2: in the future, we want to be famous for delivering
Speaker 2: the type of connectivity that connects people to greater possibility,
Speaker 2: and we want to do it in a way that
Speaker 2: makes everything simple. We want people to have the confidence
Speaker 2: knowing that it's coming from the experts at AT and T.
Speaker 2: We want every single touch point that we have with
Speaker 2: a customer to be inspiring. That means we need to
Speaker 2: lean into best in class, best in breed connectivity solutions
Speaker 2: from five G and fiber to the converged way that
Speaker 2: consumers and business decision makers are choosing to consume connectivity today.
Speaker 3: So how does having this long and storied brand help
Speaker 3: you and how does it hurt you? What do you
Speaker 3: have to work around?
Speaker 2: The company was founded by Alexander Bell one hundred and
Speaker 2: forty seven years ago, the inventor of the telephone, the
Speaker 2: inventor of cable fiber, the first transcontinental phone call, the
Speaker 2: first call to the moon, three G, four G, five G,
Speaker 2: even the information theory was founded in AT and t's
Speaker 2: Bell Labs. And so we've got this incredibly rich legacy
Speaker 2: of innovation and invention that has powered commerce across the
Speaker 2: United States, that has changed human relations, that superpowered so
Speaker 2: much of the innovation and the technology growth that we
Speaker 2: saw in the early two thousands. So, on the one hand,
Speaker 2: you've got this incredible legacy, and every single employee inside
Speaker 2: of AT and T wants to live up to that legacy,
Speaker 2: and we want to usher in the next great wave
Speaker 2: of innovation for the next one hundred and fifty years.
Speaker 2: But also you have to resist getting complacent. You can't
Speaker 2: look backwards and take a victory lap again and again.
Speaker 2: You have to push forward into the future.
Speaker 3: Is there's still a legacy of the brand power of
Speaker 3: Bell Labs. I mean, when I was growing up, there
Speaker 3: could not be a bigger name in technology and innovation
Speaker 3: than Bell Labs.
Speaker 2: You know, I'll tell you a funny little story, and
Speaker 2: my dad actually worked at Bell Labs, and so I'd
Speaker 2: heard about Bell Labs as a kid growing up. What's
Speaker 2: been incredible since coming to AT and T is when
Speaker 2: you meet with people who work in the labs. They
Speaker 2: are some of the finest academics and scholars in their universities,
Speaker 2: in their colleges, and they will tell you they contemplated
Speaker 2: every big tech company and they wanted to come to
Speaker 2: AT and T because they wanted to be part of
Speaker 2: Bell Labs. So I would say absolutely, if you look
Speaker 2: at the incredible contributions that Bell Labs scientists, technologists have
Speaker 2: made to our society, there is a tremendous amount of
Speaker 2: pride there.
Speaker 3: So you're a marketer who is not based in La
Speaker 3: New York or San Francisco, but rather in Dallas. Just
Speaker 3: being in real America give you and your marketers an edge.
Speaker 2: Now, that's a great it's a great way of thinking out.
Speaker 2: I always tell people. I'm a New Yorker living in Dallas,
Speaker 2: supporting the Cowboys, eating the best tex mechs in the US,
Speaker 2: and wearing cowboy hats to the rodeo, and absolutely I
Speaker 2: think it helps you get in touch with your customer base.
Speaker 2: But even if you are a marketer living in LA
Speaker 2: or San Francisco or New York, it is so crucial
Speaker 2: that you spend time with the customers that you spend
Speaker 2: time with frontline employees. That is the best lesson. One
Speaker 2: of the most incredible experiences I've had at AT and
Speaker 2: T is we have these connection days for our employees
Speaker 2: that work at headquarters, and I actually went into people's
Speaker 2: homes and installed fiber. You get to see the types
Speaker 2: of questions that customers have, from the very tech savvy
Speaker 2: customers who want to do everything themselves, to the customers
Speaker 2: that are much more reliant on the technicians that go
Speaker 2: on premises. You get to see what it's like to
Speaker 2: actually wire fiber throughout a building that's got you one
Speaker 2: thousand tenants. It's pretty extraordinary.
Speaker 3: Well that's cool. So how has your past experience Microsoft,
Speaker 3: cap One, Uber Hilton prepared you for this particular opportunity.
Speaker 2: Gosh, I've had such incredible opportunities in my career. The
Speaker 2: thing I learned at Microsoft is that technology and technology
Speaker 2: alone is not going to be the reason why somebody
Speaker 2: adopts your product. I worked at Microsoft and the very
Speaker 2: first product I worked on was Windows Vista. It was
Speaker 2: one of the most highly anticipated technology products of its era.
Speaker 2: I think it was five years in the making, people
Speaker 2: everywhere or on the edge of their seats waiting to
Speaker 2: see what Microsoft would release. You probably remember that when
Speaker 2: we released it into the marketplace, it landed like a
Speaker 2: nuclear thud ball bomb. It was a total bomb. And
Speaker 2: what we learned in that time time was that we
Speaker 2: had fallen in love with the technology and we had
Speaker 2: forgotten about the most important person in the equation, and
Speaker 2: that was the end user. We missed the consumerization of technology.
Speaker 2: We missed that the vast majority of our customers weren't
Speaker 2: using ninety nine percent of the features that we put
Speaker 2: in that operating system. That ultimately bloaded the operating system,
Speaker 2: slowed it down and made it far less attractive. And
Speaker 2: so the incredible lesson learned from Microsoft is focus on
Speaker 2: the customer. I'd seen at times in my career, whether
Speaker 2: it was teams I was on, or competitors I was
Speaker 2: facing off against. Is when you obsess over the competition
Speaker 2: instead of obsessing over the customer, you're going to get
Speaker 2: yourself into big trouble because if you're obsessing over the competition,
Speaker 2: all you can ever know is what they've already done.
Speaker 2: You can't drive a car ninety miles an hour down
Speaker 2: the road if you're looking in the rearview mirror, and
Speaker 2: when you're studying the competition, you can only be looking backwards.
Speaker 3: It sounds like you probably did the same thing at
Speaker 3: Cap one, Uber and Hilton two. A consumer focus seems
Speaker 3: to be your hallmark.
Speaker 2: Oh thank you, Yeah, I would say at Capital one
Speaker 2: we were incredibly, incredibly scientific about how we went to market,
Speaker 2: and so we treated it as this just obsession with
Speaker 2: getting better and better. We had this learning mindset, this
Speaker 2: growth mindset all throughout the company, so that test and
Speaker 2: learn mentality was so critical. And of course when you're
Speaker 2: testing and learning, the ultimate guidepost is the customers. Are
Speaker 2: the customers receptive to it? Are they buying it? Are
Speaker 2: they upgrading? Are they telling other people about it? You
Speaker 2: get immediate feedback. The other thing that was incredible about
Speaker 2: Capital one is that that company found religion about building
Speaker 2: a brand through all of the testing and learning that
Speaker 2: it did in performance marketing before performance marketing was even
Speaker 2: a word. And so, years and years ago, when Capital
Speaker 2: One was one of the largest customers of the US
Speaker 2: postal service, they ran a test a blank envelope with
Speaker 2: no branding on it, and then an envelope that actually
Speaker 2: had the Capital One logo on the outer left hand corner.
Speaker 2: And what they originally found was that the blank envelope
Speaker 2: outperformed the branded envelope. And right then and there, yeah, ouch,
Speaker 2: and right then and there, the founder and CEO of
Speaker 2: Capital One, Rich Fairbank, said this is unacceptable. We have
Speaker 2: got to build this brand. And so that's when the
Speaker 2: company really leaned into building awareness, building consideration, building familiarity,
Speaker 2: and ultimately preference.
Speaker 3: Interesting stuff. We keep going back to power of brand, brand, brand,
Speaker 3: even when we talk performance marketing.
Speaker 2: So when I arrived at Uber, we were spending around
Speaker 2: a billion dollars in performance marketing. However, what we started
Speaker 2: to recognize was that the pipeline of true prospects where
Speaker 2: we were going to source that next great wave of
Speaker 2: growth was starting to elude us. And we did some
Speaker 2: very rudimentary quick turn research based on hypotheses that some
Speaker 2: of us on the team had. Do you remember when
Speaker 2: people say I'm going to call an uber?
Speaker 3: Do you remember, Oh yeah, I sure do.
Speaker 2: Right, So we did a survey and it turned out
Speaker 2: that eighty five percent of people who had never tried
Speaker 2: Uber thought you literally called an uber. You picked up
Speaker 2: the phone and tiled one eight hundred and five to
Speaker 2: fyy five UBER. So we recognized that we had a
Speaker 2: massive amount of education that we needed to do. So
Speaker 2: we recognized we needed to turn on more upper funnel
Speaker 2: channels like radio, like TV, like digital video. And I
Speaker 2: cannot make this up. Within the first two weeks of
Speaker 2: turning on TV, all of the lower funnel performance vehicles
Speaker 2: were performing twenty seven percent better.
Speaker 3: I want to go back a little bit on what
Speaker 3: you're doing at at and T. Let's talk about the transformation.
Speaker 3: It's a huge, huge company and by reputation, you would
Speaker 3: expect it to be more toward the bureaucratic the end
Speaker 3: of the spectrum. So how do you John Stanky and
Speaker 3: the rest of his team turn the battleship for transformation.
Speaker 2: One of the things that we recently did as a
Speaker 2: company was we declared our purpose. We said, what is
Speaker 2: the epicenter of why we do everything that we do,
Speaker 2: what motivates us? And we did a tremendous amount of
Speaker 2: research across customers, employees, investors, historians, even people in adjacent industries.
Speaker 2: We wanted to understand how they viewed AT and T,
Speaker 2: where they felt that we had room and frankly, the
Speaker 2: authority to play, but we also wanted to make sure
Speaker 2: that it was a reflection of us on our very
Speaker 2: best day, that it honored the folklore and the incredible
Speaker 2: history of the company, but that it was ready to
Speaker 2: take AT and T into the next several decades. And
Speaker 2: so when we declared that purpose, which is to connect
Speaker 2: people to greater possibility with expertise, simplicity and inspiration, we
Speaker 2: paired that with a series of seven strategic imperatives, the
Speaker 2: things that we knew we needed to do over the
Speaker 2: course of the next five to seven years to really
Speaker 2: become famous for connecting people to greater possibility, to really
Speaker 2: become the undisputed expert on connectivity. And then in addition
Speaker 2: to those strategic imperatives, we focused on the culture of
Speaker 2: the company. We declared our culture values. When you're working
Speaker 2: inside of a legacy company. Having clarity of purpose but
Speaker 2: also having clarity of expectation on the culture you want
Speaker 2: to build is so incredibly powerful. We talk about acting boldly,
Speaker 2: not playing it safe, you know, not allowing yourself to
Speaker 2: take that victory lap and then get complacent, but continuing
Speaker 2: to challenge yourself. And then if we're going to act boldly,
Speaker 2: we need to move faster. So those four cultural values
Speaker 2: are guiding every action we take inside the company, and
Speaker 2: then we evaluate ourselves on how are we progressing against
Speaker 2: those culture pillars. Each year we survey our employees, we
Speaker 2: get their feedback and they don't hold back, and so
Speaker 2: just keep pushing ourselves and pushing ourselves and pushing ourselves
Speaker 2: to be the very best that we can be.
Speaker 3: The world we live in is filled with messages for
Speaker 3: consumers and across so many platforms. How do you break
Speaker 3: through that? Are we back to the magic of reach
Speaker 3: and frequency?
Speaker 2: Gosh, when you look at the statistics, it is staggering.
Speaker 2: Customers are being bombarded with content. The last time I checked,
Speaker 2: I think the average person scrolls through at least a
Speaker 2: football field and a half of content on their phone each.
Speaker 3: Day the last time, like it to me.
Speaker 2: I must say, I know the last time I checked,
Speaker 2: the average personived over one hundred and fifty emails a
Speaker 2: day the last time I checked, And this one really
Speaker 2: knocked me back in my seat. The amount of time
Speaker 2: that the average consumer in the US spends on social
Speaker 2: media per day is over two hours. If we think
Speaker 2: about that in aggregate, that's over one full month a
Speaker 2: year that people are now spending on a technology that
Speaker 2: fifteen to twenty years ago didn't even exist. The game
Speaker 2: board is stacked differently now for marketers, the game board
Speaker 2: is stacked differently for brands. So can we play the
Speaker 2: game the same way that we played it fifteen twenty
Speaker 2: years ago? Not a chance we won't be successful. You know,
Speaker 2: if the old measure was reach and frequency, that totally
Speaker 2: undermined the power of incredible creative at least at at
Speaker 2: and T we are really leaning into how do we
Speaker 2: make sure that the quality of our creative is the
Speaker 2: absolute best in industry, and how do we make sure
Speaker 2: that the media and sponsorships that we're engaging with are
Speaker 2: the absolute premium.
Speaker 3: Moral Math and Magic. Right after this quick break, welcome
Speaker 3: back to Math and Magic. Let's hear more from my
Speaker 3: conversation with Kellen Kenny. I want to step back in
Speaker 3: time a little bit. I want to put you in context,
Speaker 3: tell us where you grew up, and paint a picture
Speaker 3: of that time and place.
Speaker 2: I grew up in a town called Brewster, New York.
Speaker 2: It was the last stop on the Harlem line of
Speaker 2: Metro North, so there were absolutely friends of mine whose
Speaker 2: parents commuted into this city. The city was a place
Speaker 2: that I went once or twice a year. Went to
Speaker 2: Brewster High School, where my graduating class was one hundred
Speaker 2: and eighty. I was a big time athlete, and as
Speaker 2: you appropriately called out an athlete, I had fourteen varsity
Speaker 2: letters by the time I graduated. So I come from
Speaker 2: a law online of athletes, and I was always taught
Speaker 2: that you got to work really hard, and if you
Speaker 2: work hard enough, practice long enough, you can be successful.
Speaker 3: So how often did you eat at Red Rooster?
Speaker 2: Okay, not only did I eat self served ice cream
Speaker 2: at Red Rooster in Brewster, but I also went mini
Speaker 2: golfing at the Red Rooster. Have you ever gone mini
Speaker 2: golfing there?
Speaker 3: I have. I have when my oldest son was a
Speaker 3: little kid. And by the way, with a little kid,
Speaker 3: you've got to stop at Red Rooster. Just the drive
Speaker 3: was how far to Red Rooster, not how far is
Speaker 3: it to where we're going.
Speaker 2: Well, I got to tell you I never took off
Speaker 2: as a golfer, and I blame the mini golf course
Speaker 2: at the Red Rooster because that windmill obstacle. It got
Speaker 2: me every time.
Speaker 3: So talk a little bit about your parents. You mentioned
Speaker 3: them earlier. What impact did they have on you?
Speaker 2: Well, my parents were definitely my heroes growing up. They
Speaker 2: were both incredibly kind, loving, supportive, but they set a
Speaker 2: really high bar for their one and only child. I
Speaker 2: threw my hat into the ring for everything class president,
Speaker 2: you know, varsity sports, varsity society, national honor society, if
Speaker 2: there was a club, I wanted to raise my hand
Speaker 2: and be a part of it. But my mom, she
Speaker 2: started her career as a nurse. She then went on
Speaker 2: to lead out patient services for one of the largest
Speaker 2: hospitals in the state of New York. It was White
Speaker 2: Plains Hospital. At the time, she had an organization of
Speaker 2: a thousand people, and every once in a while, and
Speaker 2: I would have a day off from school, she'd bring
Speaker 2: me into the office and I would do administrative task
Speaker 2: like filing and I remember thinking, Wow, the people in
Speaker 2: the hospital, they really respect my mom. She was kind
Speaker 2: to everyone. Everybody greeted her with a smile, but you
Speaker 2: could also tell that she meant business. She was tough,
Speaker 2: but a huge inspiration. And then my father, who I
Speaker 2: had mentioned, worked at Bell Labs. He actually worked at
Speaker 2: Bell Labs after his stint with the Boston Red Sox,
Speaker 2: so he was a professional pitcher in the Major Leagues
Speaker 2: for the Red Sox. And his nickname when he was
Speaker 2: pitching for the Red Sox was college Boy, because at
Speaker 2: the time, a lot of professional baseball players actually didn't
Speaker 2: go to college. And not only did he go to college,
Speaker 2: but he was getting his master's degree at the University
Speaker 2: of Southern cal in the off season, so obviously he
Speaker 2: really valued education. He went on to work at Bell
Speaker 2: Labs and then he went on to become a teacher.
Speaker 2: But he was always my number one coach. So every
Speaker 2: sport I ever played, my personal coach was my dad.
Speaker 2: He just loved sport, he loved competition, and he was
Speaker 2: an incredible motivating factor all throughout my life.
Speaker 3: So let's talk about college. You went to college at Colgate,
Speaker 3: Why there and what did you study?
Speaker 2: So I started off as a math major. I then
Speaker 2: migrated over to computer science. I ended up minoring in
Speaker 2: computer science but really falling in love with economics, so
Speaker 2: I majored in economics. And one of the coolest things
Speaker 2: I did when I was at Colgate was I went
Speaker 2: on the London Economics Study Group and we got to
Speaker 2: do incredible programs with the London School of Economics. We
Speaker 2: had economists for her Magistry's Treasury coming in and doing
Speaker 2: independent study with us.
Speaker 3: You went on to be a tech consultant, then went
Speaker 3: to Northwestern for business school. What foundations did those experience
Speaker 3: give you?
Speaker 2: I had an important realization that I wanted to be
Speaker 2: closer to the customer. While I loved the work that
Speaker 2: I was doing as a technology consultant, I loved the
Speaker 2: intellectual rigor of it, what I missed was the feeling
Speaker 2: that I was impacting something directly. And I would say
Speaker 2: as a pretty young professional, I began to form my
Speaker 2: values as an individual. And I always say that the
Speaker 2: eyes of Kellen are I want to have an impact.
Speaker 2: I want to drive real innovation, and I want to
Speaker 2: do all of that with integrity. My personal motto is
Speaker 2: that the view is better from the high road. Then
Speaker 2: I went on to Northwestern Kellogg School of Management, where
Speaker 2: the program was famous for being student led, and I
Speaker 2: didn't really know what that meant before I got there,
Speaker 2: But what I realized was they expected you to form
Speaker 2: your committees. They expected you and your co students to
Speaker 2: run every one of those committees, to decide on the strategy,
Speaker 2: to define the execution, plan, to operate to raise the funds.
Speaker 2: We really were self governed, and that was so important
Speaker 2: because for the first time in my career, I was
Speaker 2: working with people who had very, very different backgrounds from me.
Speaker 2: And what I originally thought when I went into business
Speaker 2: school is this is taking longer we have to We're
Speaker 2: wasting all this time figuring out how we want to
Speaker 2: work together. That was sort of my going in assumption
Speaker 2: for the first two three weeks at business school, I'll
Speaker 2: just do it, it'll go faster. And then within four
Speaker 2: or five weeks I realized, Kellen, you idiot. The collective
Speaker 2: wisdom of this group of four or five or seven
Speaker 2: people is truly transformative. And one thing that I kind
Speaker 2: of beat myself up about was I had always played
Speaker 2: team sports, I had always played softball, I had always
Speaker 2: been on basketball teams growing up. Why did it take
Speaker 2: me so long to figure out that the working world,
Speaker 2: the professional world, was a team sport too.
Speaker 3: You know, it's interesting. We talked to a lot of
Speaker 3: people in mathem Magic, and I think that's probably one
Speaker 3: of the common elements that comes through is teams when
Speaker 3: people don't and the people who build great teams are
Speaker 3: the big, big winners here. It's interesting looking at your
Speaker 3: career and you know it's going through the research. I
Speaker 3: was sort of fascinated by the fact that, you know,
Speaker 3: and Microsoft, cap One Uber you were building had extra money.
Speaker 3: They have plenty of money to put at it. And
Speaker 3: then at Hilton you were dealing with a situation that
Speaker 3: had big cutbacks and heag count and spending. Yet you
Speaker 3: won there as well. So clearly it wasn't how BIG's
Speaker 3: my budget? How many people do I have? What was
Speaker 3: common about those challenges you had?
Speaker 2: Well, one of the most galvanizing conversations I had related
Speaker 2: to Hilton happened before I joined. I was sitting down
Speaker 2: with Christmasta, the CEO, and he was passionately speaking to
Speaker 2: the power of brand. He said the last two remaining
Speaker 2: loose ends that he wanted to tie up was around
Speaker 2: technology and brand, and he said, how is Hilton going
Speaker 2: to achieve its full potential? How is Hilton going to
Speaker 2: leave the legacy that it deserves if you're a franchise
Speaker 2: company and you don't have world class technology and you
Speaker 2: don't have world class brand and marketing. And so I
Speaker 2: could see even before I started. Frankly, we were just
Speaker 2: having a conversation. I wasn't even applying for the job,
Speaker 2: but I could see that he was dead serious about
Speaker 2: investing in Hilton's future, and he had incredible natural instincts
Speaker 2: about where to take marketing and where to take the brand.
Speaker 2: The ambition inside the company was really inspiring. And one
Speaker 2: of the things that I found inside of Hilton that
Speaker 2: was such a secret weapon was the culture of hospitality,
Speaker 2: the customer focus, and the entrepreneurial spirit of making sure
Speaker 2: that every single customer's stay was a type of momentum
Speaker 2: that I was able to leverage coming in and doing marketing.
Speaker 2: That was another example of a company where we needed
Speaker 2: to define the purpose. It was another example of the
Speaker 2: company where we had an incredible, rich legacy. We were
Speaker 2: able to, again through experimentation and learning agendas, get to
Speaker 2: a place where we were much more efficient.
Speaker 3: You've got a pretty high perch in the world of business.
Speaker 3: How should we think about companies' responsibilities and even imperative
Speaker 3: to help the world be a better place? And what
Speaker 3: should we do and what should we not do.
Speaker 2: One of the things that's been inspiring to me about
Speaker 2: AT and T is that the company has a legacy
Speaker 2: of doing the right thing, stepping up when we recognize that, hey,
Speaker 2: there is a digital divide forming in society. The kids
Speaker 2: who have access to computers can do their homework, and
Speaker 2: the kids who don't can't do their homework. And so
Speaker 2: I would say so many of the lessons that I've
Speaker 2: learned throughout my career in terms of doing the right
Speaker 2: thing the responsibility of businesses have really been epitomized by
Speaker 2: the stances that AT and T is taking. I absolutely
Speaker 2: believe that companies need to do good in the world,
Speaker 2: and that doing good in the world is motivating to employees.
Speaker 2: It attracts customers to you, it attracts investors to you.
Speaker 2: Over the course of the past three years, we've deployed
Speaker 2: over two billion dollars to help close that gap, and
Speaker 2: we identify the gap as people who either don't have
Speaker 2: access to it because they're in a community that is
Speaker 2: so rural that it's underserved, or to people who technically
Speaker 2: they do have access, but it's not affordable to them.
Speaker 2: And AT and T is trying to fight the pressures
Speaker 2: on both ends because we recognize that if we want
Speaker 2: to have a brighter future as a society and as
Speaker 2: a country, we need our children the leaders of tomorrow.
Speaker 2: We need those students to have access to technologies so
Speaker 2: that they can do their homework, that they can continue
Speaker 2: to learn.
Speaker 3: I will give AT and T a nod. In Hattiesburg, Mississippi,
Speaker 3: when I was elementary school, AT and T brought things
Speaker 3: to our elementary school assembly and I still remember them
Speaker 3: bringing in I guess it was in the air of Sputnik.
Speaker 3: They brought in was at the Vanguard satellite or brought
Speaker 3: in some presentation, little model of it and showed it
Speaker 3: to these kids in this little town. And I was
Speaker 3: a science kid, and it was like changed my life.
Speaker 3: And I'm sure at that moment it was the same thing.
Speaker 3: It was that sort of continuing community outreach and trying
Speaker 3: to build the next generation. So let me move back
Speaker 3: to you. You've had great successes people who know you well,
Speaker 3: friends of ours. The one word everybody uses is humble.
Speaker 3: How do you keep your ego in check when you've
Speaker 3: had all these successes?
Speaker 2: First of all, being described as humble is a real compliment,
Speaker 2: So thank you for passing that along. I appreciate it.
Speaker 2: I truly want to be seen as somebody who is
Speaker 2: both humble and confident. And part of where my humility
Speaker 2: comes from is if you're surrounded by extraordinary people, extraordinary
Speaker 2: friends and extraordinary family, extraordinary coworkers, it is humbling. Every
Speaker 2: time I'm in a relationship with a coworker or a mentor,
Speaker 2: I am tracking all of the things that they do
Speaker 2: that really impress me, and I want to be more
Speaker 2: like them. And so there's rarely a person that I
Speaker 2: come across that I don't think X, Y, and Z
Speaker 2: are the things I admire about that person, and I
Speaker 2: wish I could be more like that. And so I'm
Speaker 2: constantly thinking about where I want to go, not what
Speaker 2: I've accomplished. I'm constantly thinking about what I can do
Speaker 2: to be better, not what I've done that makes me good.
Speaker 2: And by the way, that's probably a byproduct of being
Speaker 2: raised by parents who had an incredibly high bar that
Speaker 2: kept on rising. So I just focus on where the
Speaker 2: bar is rising, not the bars that I've already leaped over.
Speaker 3: I think it probably goes back to that mini golf
Speaker 3: course at Red Rooster, that humbling experience of the windmill.
Speaker 3: Let's talk about work life balance. Any advice on that.
Speaker 3: You got a family, You obviously have a rich mosaic,
Speaker 3: a friend ships. How do you make that work?
Speaker 2: That is a question that keeps me humble. My family
Speaker 2: is an incredible priority for me. I was asked a
Speaker 2: question the other day and they said, how do you
Speaker 2: stay grounded? I'm like, well, if you have an eleven
Speaker 2: year old daughter, she's going to keep you grounded. She's
Speaker 2: going to put you right in your place every day.
Speaker 2: Same thing with my eight year old daughter. But no
Speaker 2: balance for me is making sure that I'm there at
Speaker 2: the school concerts, making sure that I'm there to help
Speaker 2: with homework, making sure that I'm there to cheer them
Speaker 2: on when they're starring in an production of The Jungle
Speaker 2: Book or Cat and the Hat. We talked about this earlier.
Speaker 2: I'm not someone who can cook. I don't get home
Speaker 2: and whip up a meal. I outsource that, but I
Speaker 2: do try to be present when I'm home. I do
Speaker 2: try to make sure that the weekends are as sacred
Speaker 2: as humanly possible for family. I do try to make
Speaker 2: it home to tuck the kids into bed every night.
Speaker 2: I used to sing them lullabies almost every night, but
Speaker 2: I was told by my eleven year old that that
Speaker 2: is totally uncool and now unacceptable. But yeah, it's just
Speaker 2: making time for the moments that really matter, prioritizing time
Speaker 2: on vacation and then with work. I'll be honest, I'm
Speaker 2: not the best at not letting it encroach on life
Speaker 2: outside of work, but at least when the kids are awake,
Speaker 2: I try to be with them. It's after they go
Speaker 2: to bed that I hop back on the phone or
Speaker 2: the iPad or the computer and bang out work or
Speaker 2: even take work calls. The one thing I will say
Speaker 2: as a leader that I am very proud and think
Speaker 2: I've done well, is I really honor my team members
Speaker 2: their time with their families. I don't ever, unless it
Speaker 2: is a true emergency, I don't ever send them a
Speaker 2: text or an email on the weekend. I always am
Speaker 2: very respectful about things they're doing in the evening, and
Speaker 2: so I think modeling it with your direct reports. Making
Speaker 2: sure that people on your team know that you really
Speaker 2: respect their time is another way.
Speaker 3: Do you think that that experience you had with your mom,
Speaker 3: where you went to work with her and saw her
Speaker 3: working and participated in her work helped you understand that
Speaker 3: sort of work life integration that families have.
Speaker 2: Oh? Absolutely, so. I saw a woman who was the
Speaker 2: epitome of work hard, play hard. There was no one
Speaker 2: more diligent. There was no one more focused on making
Speaker 2: sure her patients had excellent, excellent care. There was no
Speaker 2: one more focused on making sure that when she had
Speaker 2: her state reviews that she came back and got a
Speaker 2: perfect score again, because that was a reflection of the
Speaker 2: type of care that they were offering their patients. But
Speaker 2: also she was a wonderful leader. But it didn't end there.
Speaker 2: She was an incredible mother. She came to all my
Speaker 2: softball games, tennis matches, ski races. She literally would bundle up,
Speaker 2: walk up the side of mountains, you know, in the
Speaker 2: middle of a blizzard if it meant importing me. So
Speaker 2: she was an incredible example. But not only that, she
Speaker 2: had a rich life. She had wonderful friends, She played
Speaker 2: tennis herself, and she competed. So I saw a woman
Speaker 2: who worked incredibly hard but led a very rich life
Speaker 2: with family and friends. She was an incredible example to me.
Speaker 3: So let me ask one more personal question. If you
Speaker 3: could go back in time and give your twenty one
Speaker 3: year old self some advice, what would that advice be.
Speaker 2: Believe in yourself and continue to challenge the status quo.
Speaker 2: Don't accept that because somebody has tried it before and
Speaker 2: it's not been successful, that it can't work out for you.
Speaker 2: Be the type of person that other people want to
Speaker 2: be around. Be the type of leader that brings out
Speaker 2: the very best in those around you. Extend trust, create
Speaker 2: a psychologically safe environment for everyone you work with, because
Speaker 2: that's when people do their absolute best work.
Speaker 3: We end each episode of Math and Magic with a
Speaker 3: shout out to the greats on both ends of the
Speaker 3: spectrum of marketing. The math folks, those who use the
Speaker 3: analytics as their secret weapon, and the magicians, those who
Speaker 3: use that sort of raw creativity and showmanship, who get
Speaker 3: your shout out for each So my.
Speaker 2: Shout out on the math and science side Adam Grant.
Speaker 2: I actually had the opportunity to interview him at a
Speaker 2: marketing town Hall a couple of years ago, right after
Speaker 2: he had written the book Think Again, and in my
Speaker 2: humble opinion, it is the best business book of our generation.
Speaker 2: He systematically and scientifically illustrated the difference between companies and
Speaker 2: individuals that approach their work like scientists, with humility, curiosity,
Speaker 2: a bias for learning. They challenge their assumptions versus the
Speaker 2: people who are trapped in that over confidence cycle of
Speaker 2: hubris and arrogant and confirmation bias. And I read that
Speaker 2: book and I thought, oh my gosh, everybody needs to
Speaker 2: read this.
Speaker 3: Okay, on the magician side, who gets it?
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm going to give it up to my girl,
Speaker 2: Reese Witherspoon.
Speaker 3: Wow, I know so.
Speaker 2: A couple of months ago, I had an opportunity to
Speaker 2: interview Reese and Jennifer Garner and Mindy Kayling at the
Speaker 2: inaugural Shine Away connected by AT and T event in
Speaker 2: La and Reese really does have that magic touch. In
Speaker 2: addition to being a brilliant business woman with an insatiable
Speaker 2: appetite for books, it seems that every project she touches
Speaker 2: turns to gold. Her formula of championing the creative work
Speaker 2: of women is producing staggering results. I know this because
Speaker 2: I prepared for the interview, but at the time, over
Speaker 2: sixty of Reese's book clubs picks had landed on the
Speaker 2: New York Times bestseller List. She had fifteen wins. I
Speaker 2: believe it was across Emmy's SAG and Golden globes. Not
Speaker 2: to mention, you know some of my very favorite content
Speaker 2: of the year and over the past few years. My
Speaker 2: shout out goes to Reese Weatherspoon.
Speaker 3: Wow. That's great, Kellen. Really a great conversation, and sadly
Speaker 3: we just scratched the surface. But thanks for the insights,
Speaker 3: stories and advice, and most of all, congrats on your
Speaker 3: amazing successes.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you so much. It is an incredible honor
Speaker 2: to be interviewed by you.
Speaker 3: Here are a few things I picked up from my
Speaker 3: conversation with Kellen. One, get on the ground. You need
Speaker 3: to know your consumer to know what they want, but
Speaker 3: you never will unless you meet them head on. Get
Speaker 3: out from behind your desk and seek out experience as
Speaker 3: you usually wouldn't be in be in the focus room,
Speaker 3: get on the retail floor, our visit customers' homes with
Speaker 3: technicians like Kellen did. The more you know, the better
Speaker 3: your product will be. Two, your brand is whether you're
Speaker 3: a startup or an iconic company like AT and T,
Speaker 3: the most important thing to do as a marketer is
Speaker 3: to build a strong brand identity. Make sure the public
Speaker 3: knows who you are and what your brand stands for.
Speaker 3: That familiarity will bring trust, and trust will bring a
Speaker 3: loyal consumer base. Three. Work as a team sport in business.
Speaker 3: Your greatest tool is the people around you. When a
Speaker 3: team really works together, their diversity of experience will bring
Speaker 3: about more creative solutions and build something unique. I'm Bob Pittman.
Speaker 3: Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1: That's it for today's episode. Thanks so much for listening
Speaker 1: to Math and Magic, a production of iHeart Podcasts. The
Speaker 1: show is hosted by Bob Pittman. Special thanks to Sidney
Speaker 1: Rosenblut for booking and wrangling our wonderful talent. Small Feet
Speaker 1: Mathematics producers are Emily Meronoth and Jessica Crimechich. It is
Speaker 1: mixed and mastered by Bahed Fraser. Our executive producers are
Speaker 1: Nikki Etoor and Ali Perry, and of course a big
Speaker 1: thanks to Gail Raoul, Eric Angel Noel and everyone who
Speaker 1: helped bring this show to your ears until next time.