How Leaders Think with Kenny Lange

Kenny Lange [00:00:00]:
And it's a fast way to get rid of the blinking cursor and the blank screen or blank sheet of paper. You know, whatever might be intimidating you as a marketer, writer, or just a small business owner.

Caroline Crawford [00:00:09]:
Sometimes I'll just ask a question being like, does this make sense?

Kenny Lange [00:00:12]:
Dear Chad GPT, am I an idiot for writing this?

Caroline Crawford [00:00:16]:
Exactly.

Kenny Lange [00:00:23]:
Welcome to the how leaders think podcast, the show that transforms you by renewing your mind and giving you new ways to think. I am your host, Kenny Lang, and with me today is Caroline Crawford. She is not only a marketing and communications expert, she's also the founder of cultivate Communications. She helps business leaders align their marketing initiatives effectively so that they can achieve their overarching business goals, which you'd be surprised how often that doesn't happen. She is not only just seasoned at helping people model and shape their communications, but she also has a 13 year successful track record with blending together the visionaries with the integrator to create some rocket fuel, some might say. Welcome to the show, Caroline.

Caroline Crawford [00:01:08]:
Thank you so much for having me, Kenny. I really appreciate that intro. And the rocket fuel.

Kenny Lange [00:01:13]:
Absolutely. I feel like I should have gotten my certified integrator like certificate and I could have held it up. I don't know, maybe I put it on the refrigerator. But tell me, what is on your mind?

Caroline Crawford [00:01:25]:
Oh, that is a loaded question. I would say right now, what's on my mind is just the way that marketing is moving the world in many ways.

Kenny Lange [00:01:36]:
All right, that's a deep ocean for us to swim in. Let's. Let's see if we can avoid the sharks. So when you talk about the way that marketing is moving the world forward, before we started recording, I told you, you know, I have a degree in communication, so I'm sure we could really nerd out about the way language shapes culture and things like that. But how are you seeing marketing shape and move the world today? How are you seeing it being different?

Caroline Crawford [00:02:03]:
I love that question. I think right now, I don't even know if it's really a trend, but more so, the evolution of the influence that marketing has on everyone, and it's going beyond selling a product or service. And it is truly starting conversations, if you look at how influencers or TikTok is, is, you know, the stake that they have, for instance, in a business. But beyond that, the way that they're influencing conversations, it's incredible. For better or for worse, right? Like, there's definitely some pros and cons to it, of course. But if you really think about the types of conversations that companies are having now with their consumers and the type of information that's being received by consumers as well. I really think that it's starting to shape and it starts to make people look differently. Liquid death does this really well because they really have taken, you know, I can nerd out and I'll try to refrain from all of the marketing stuff that they're doing.

Caroline Crawford [00:03:03]:
But if you look beyond it deeper, how they're changing the world, you know, they have missions beyond just, you know, selling products, selling a water product. Right. They are talking about climate change and then the way that they do it, they found interesting ways to spark those conversations in a very creative way. And I think that's something that, I don't know, maybe I wasn't tuned into at the very least, or it just wasn't at this grand scale as it is now. But that's how I kind of see, you know, how marketing has shifted and how it's really evolved and now has become part of the way that people are viewing the world again. Is it directly, always time back to a sale and whatnot? But every day we're interacting with businesses and whether or not we're conscious of.

Kenny Lange [00:03:50]:
It, it sounds like you're noticing that brands, at least the ones who are doing it well, are speaking with their customers as opposed to speaking at their customers.

Caroline Crawford [00:04:00]:
Yes, exactly.

Kenny Lange [00:04:02]:
So I haven't followed a lot of what liquid death has done, although they had some high caffeinated product, and I used to have caffeine enthusiasts in my business card, and everything else someone bought me is like, this would be perfect for you. I was like, are you?

Caroline Crawford [00:04:15]:
I appreciate the commitment.

Kenny Lange [00:04:16]:
Tell me to die. At least you understand my brand. So with that shift, obviously when you see these things turning, not everybody's on board. And usually there are some early adopters, trendsetters, things like that. What do you see as the prevailing wisdom and thinking about marketing? Is it as simple as, well, it's just to create awareness about goods and services? Or do you think that there's a different, more deeply rooted mentality that would keep brands from moving the direction that you've described?

Caroline Crawford [00:04:52]:
Yeah, absolutely. I think that there is a gap in the way that marketing is viewed for companies. A lot of the times they do see it as simply like, we just need to get the word out and they essentially boil it all down to, we have an email blast, we have social media post, whatever, kind of quote unquote, surface level stuff there is that technically is marketing. But when you look at marketing deeper and you know, this is where I really like to look at marketing from a systemic level because it really is the bedrock of a brand. And when you treat it as such, when you look at it as it's just woven into everything that you're doing, it's not just kind of that afterthought or part of a process. You can really take examples like liquid death where they, and again, I just keep going to them because I just watched a presentation from them, so bear with me. But they really have put marketing at the forefront of their business development. And so when I think the prevailing thought is really like, how can we embed marketing more? How can we see our business development through the lens of marketing? So, meaning if as you have those discussions of your business development, or the way you want to act with customers or the way you want to evolve your business through the lens of marketing, you start asking really deep questions like how are people going to react to this, how are we going to push this mission forward? And that is what marketing does.

Caroline Crawford [00:06:23]:
But by the time it happens, a lot of the time is later in the stage and I find that that's where a lot more surface level marketing starts to happen.

Kenny Lange [00:06:32]:
Gotcha. So including marketing and more than just, hey, we need some graphics, we might need a little bit of ad copy. Sounds like the recommendation you would be making is because typically those are your people, they're very skilled at crafting a message and bringing consistency, which is still startling to me how few companies are good at that. Obviously when you have billions of dollars you can afford to do that, but that's not the majority of companies. Right? When we're thinking about marketing as a business development tool, and I'm glad you brought that up. Something that I encountered quite a bit when my agency owner and operator days was people thought marketing was just the creative, it was just the assets. And marketing's real job is to generate those business development opportunities. Its almost starting the conversation and then sales may pick that up and then carry it through to completion.

Kenny Lange [00:07:37]:
Is that what youre seeing the skilled companies out there do is sort of start it, hand it off and allow a continuation. That way it feels like a one unified experience?

Caroline Crawford [00:07:49]:
Yeah, I think theres definitely part of that. I think it can vary by company because if they dont have the right infrastructure in place, then that will impact it. But I think to what you were saying, I like that marketing is seen as the creative so often, and sales, and this is why there's kind of this infamous feud between marketing and sales. A lot of the time, which is kind of false, but at the same time I've experienced it in some ways where it's like. And it's because marketing is a support role. And that role isn't just to sales. It isn't just building brand awareness. It's sometimes directly internally to your colleagues.

Caroline Crawford [00:08:26]:
You know, there's such a thing as internal communications for, especially for large organizations. And I think when it's treated as just the creatives, that is where you lose the value that marketing can bring. And therefore it's harder to justify certain investment in marketing. But when you treat it as kind of that process, like you mentioned, with sales and then there is this kind of continuation, that is the dream. Because at the end of the day, that's a smooth process. That's marketing being able to support and lift up sales in the right way. But what happens is that in the day to day there's all these kind of different components. There's a lot of access points to marketing to get that some, someone in that customer journey and getting them through that funnel.

Caroline Crawford [00:09:09]:
And that's the funnel that sales manages. But then also the marketing doesn't stop once you get that sale. The marketing has to continue with that current client.

Kenny Lange [00:09:17]:
Right. And are you seeing a difference? Because obviously, like with the example of liquid death, you know, there direct to consumer that it's a mass product. Are you seeing a difference with brands that are predominantly selling direct to consumer versus those that are selling in more of a b two B space?

Caroline Crawford [00:09:36]:
Totally. I think that especially now, a lot of the brands that are selling direct to consumer are pushing the boundaries more than professional services. And again, I use liquid death. My background is not direct to consumer, but I love looking to them from a creative standpoint because you can emulate certain principles that they're laying out. In some ways, what they're doing is finding creative ways to reach their customers, their ideal target audience from a way that they would understand. That almost feels like you're talking to a friend. However, with b two B companies, what happens a lot of the time is we get so professional and those boundaries aren't pushed as much. Or if they are, it's done in an awkward way and it's not really.

Caroline Crawford [00:10:24]:
It's hard. It's harder to find that balance. I find because you do have to have a certain level of professionalism and a certain way to speak to people. But that's where we all start to like if you look at financial services company, I guarantee you can't pick one out of a lineup and be like, that's the one. Because they all sound the same. So it's. That's where I think the challenge really is, is how do you push those boundaries while still maintaining a reputation you need to uphold.

Kenny Lange [00:10:52]:
Right. My dad is a certified financial planner, and he was one of my first clients when I started my agency. And I got. That was my first exposure. Yeah. Because he's. People think it's like, oh, that was easy sell. Like, no, that's probably the hardest sell I made in my five years owning an agency.

Kenny Lange [00:11:08]:
He's very, very hard on me. But it's good. It produced results, I guess. But I. Getting to understand compliance departments worked with the lawyer. Like, there's things that. They're really, really nit picky. I probably just pissed off all the financial people and the lawyers.

Kenny Lange [00:11:23]:
Please don't.

Caroline Crawford [00:11:23]:
Financial background is my. That's my background. I came from that, and I've been. I've been saying that for years now. So you're not alone. You can throw me on.

Kenny Lange [00:11:31]:
Okay, awesome. Awesome. We'll be named in some sort of collective lawsuit. But with the change, like, from direct to consumer to b two b. I mean, it is a little easier when you're talking to some, you know, the. The end consumer in just their personal life. Cause they get a lot more say and control over how they want to be represented. Whereas when you're within a company, some companies allow for a lot of individualism and some not so much.

Kenny Lange [00:12:01]:
I'm not here to say one's right and the other's wrong, but what's your brand going to be at the end of the day, would you say? A lot of the b two b is reminding themselves that it's human to human selling. Right. And finding a way to humanize their brand. At least what I've observed is those that have humanized themselves more, even though they're primarily b two b, those people seem to be winning. What are you seeing?

Caroline Crawford [00:12:33]:
Yeah, I think you're 100% on the money. I think, you know, direct to consumer has such an interesting challenge because it's all about volume. So they can't reach out to the customer directly. Right. I mean, obviously there's some channels like email that will get them there, but they don't know their customer as intimately as a b two b company would necessarily. Right. And so I think with that, I think what they do well is forcing themselves to get into the mindset of their ideal target audience and again, push those boundaries to talk like them or to showcase that they know what's going on in your head, but at a grander scale. I think with b two b, the unique challenge is that it's really a matter of trust building, because there's a lot more at stake a lot of the time.

Caroline Crawford [00:13:22]:
And so what they have to do is be more focused on the relationship building. So exactly what you said. Human to human contact. It doesn't matter your audience, whether you're b two b or b two c. So that's what's happening now with the b two c companies, is that they are making sure that they're thinking human to human and doing so and pushing those boundaries. But with b two b, that's always been the case. But where it starts to fall short is that they end up relying on. You have to be doing it one to one, essentially.

Caroline Crawford [00:13:54]:
Therefore, it creates this challenge when it comes to scaling that marketing. So how do you keep that human to human principle and apply it at a larger scale from a marketing standpoint?

Kenny Lange [00:14:07]:
Right. What you said reminds me of. I forgot who said it. It was they were around in the HubSpot ecosystem, but noticing some of the trends. One thing they noticed, and this is back, 2016, 2017. So it's been a hot minute that mass personalization was going to be the next big iteration, which we see in a lot of our technology. Right. We get to customize a lot of our tech, our experiences.

Kenny Lange [00:14:37]:
Some companies use that sort of language so that they could just track and target you with their ads. It's a personalized experience. But I do think that for the most part, people do want something that is contextualized to them, like what matters to me. And I think people have enough sense to know that everything that matters to them is not going to matter to the brand, drink that they consume, or the types of chips that they use, or even clothes that they wear. But one thing I would be curious for you to weigh in on is, since I brought up the point of mass personalization, we're talking shifts. AI is huge and garnering more and more information. Actually, as we're recording this, the worldwide developer conference from Apple has just happened. They've announced their position and how they're integrating artificial intelligence, which they're calling Apple intelligence, which is perfectly Apple.

Caroline Crawford [00:15:32]:
I was literally just about to say that it is perfectly Apple to do.

Kenny Lange [00:15:37]:
That way to stay on brand.

Caroline Crawford [00:15:38]:
They're like, we invented AI.

Kenny Lange [00:15:40]:
Yeah. They're like, AI originally meant Apple intelligence. I'm like, wait, what? So with regards though, to that or machine learning or anything else, there can be a concern that, well, we've been pushing to make things more human, make things more personal, understand people. But marketing has been one of the first industries disrupted by AI because of what you're talking about. Can we market the same message at scale, be multi channel, reach more people, more diverse people, garner feedback and we're going to use AI to do it. Some people are saying that that starts to lose the human element because we're going to recognize that's AI, that was a robot, that's an automated response, and we're turned off. How are you thinking about the introduction of artificial intelligence in the marketing space or just business growth space with your clients or the people that you interview on your podcast?

Caroline Crawford [00:16:44]:
Yeah, I think that's a great point. And I think, you know, kind of going back to what you were saying about the personalization and how people are using AI, I don't think AI is as this may be a little controversial, but I don't think it's as detrimental to marketing as people have been making it out to be. I think that, yes, it's kind of taken over in many ways because there are companies like Jasper for instance, where that you can have it copyright, even chat, GPT, all these apps coming out, all they're really doing is just making your life a little bit easier to generate content, to generate all these things. I think that eventually it's going to spit out something generic. Anytime I've tested it, it's spat out really generic copy. However, I use it to help kind of give me a leg up when I'm like, okay, I have an idea that it's, I'm trying to flesh out things like that. I love using it for that. But I think when it comes to personalization on a mass scale, things like that, I have yet to really see a lot of technology that can really take that to the next level.

Caroline Crawford [00:17:54]:
That's not to say that there are some sales technology that really helps with this. There's chat box, you know what I mean? There's certain touch points that AI has been really helpful to establish. But at the end of the day, if you don't have the team in place, who knows your company, who knows how to kind of gut check the things that are in place, AI isn't going to be effective for you because you still have to have that kind of thought of psychology, science, data, all the things that marketing requires of you. And I think that again, just to kind of go back to the core point of just that personalization, there are ways to set that up and you can leverage AI as a tool to help give you the leg up. But from a grander standpoint, I think you still need that human to provide that context and to really think and apply what the company is doing and the voices of the company and all that deep stuff that comes with.

Kenny Lange [00:18:54]:
Right. Almost turning a lot of marketers more into editors where they can take that and it's like, eh, like we're almost there, kind of like in your example of your, you know, I use it a lot that way as well as have a rough idea. And I just like, let's, let's just get the ball rolling. It's a fast way to get rid of the, the blinking cursor and the blank screen or blank sheet of paper, you know, whatever might be intimidating you as a marketer, writer, or just a.

Caroline Crawford [00:19:22]:
Small business owner, sometimes I'll just ask a question, be like, does this make sense? You know what I mean? Like, you just never know any part of the creative process.

Kenny Lange [00:19:32]:
Dear chat, GPT, am I an idiot for writing this?

Caroline Crawford [00:19:36]:
Exactly. So I think again, and that's just how I see it, because, and the reason being is because I like to see marketing from all angles, no matter what you could have. Maybe I'm just not great at the prompts, but the best prompts that I've created, it still felt generic because it doesn't have the heart that is required from the company. And so that's why I don't see it as so detrimental and kind of this craze in worrying people. But I do see that it can create more efficiencies and can be extremely beneficial to a company and a team.

Kenny Lange [00:20:10]:
It may not be taking your job, but it certainly is something to ignore at your own risk. We can't pretend it's not there, and it's not a tool. A lot of the conversations I'm having because I'm nerdy, so I end up in really technical conversations from time to time. But what I've been hearing repeatedly is the skill and talent of prompt engineering, which sounds very fancy. Prompt engineering becoming or soon will be an essential skill for a lot of positions, especially those that deal heavily in copy. So as we're thinking about prompt engineering, people don't need to ignore that. A lot of marketers have, you know, hopefully are experimenting with certain tools just to learn, have exposure to it. The one area that you know, and hopefully a leader is listening to this and processing, not tuning out, is like, oh, that's just for the marketer people.

Kenny Lange [00:21:09]:
That's just for, you know, the frontline salespeople that are going to be using the tool. But really the introduction, integration of these sort of tools are made much higher up in the executive or senior leadership teams or senior manager teams, and they may not be the ones who are utilizing the product or, but they're the ones who are making the final decision. What sort of questions do you think they should be asking as they consider integrating AI into their marketing to help them?

Caroline Crawford [00:21:46]:
Some questions that they can ask is where are the inefficiencies? That's kind of the first step in my opinion, because if there's a part of the creative process and one, the leadership has to be willing to look at the behind the scenes and kind of see how the sausage gets made. A lot of the time, marketing people take on a task and it gets done and they don't really understand what goes into creating one single post, for instance, there's a lot of work and a lot of effort that goes into it as just an example. Right. So the leader has to be willing to look into what is my team actually working on, what is their process? The marketing team can still look at, explain as they go, okay, this is what we're going to do. This is our process, this is our approach. But in the context of when they look to AI, how can they integrate it? What are the efficiencies happening with your team? What speed bumps are they coming across in the process that they can't really answer? You don't really have time for. It's not really something that you even have to answer, but they're coming to you because you're the leader. So AI can be really beneficial to say, okay, when you're researching X or when I task you with why, you know what, spit out an outline in AI, ask AI to create an outline for us.

Caroline Crawford [00:23:07]:
And then that will give me the ability to provide you the information you need. And that's how you can leverage certain prompts with it. That's how you can make sure, because essentially as the leader, your team needs to extract information from you. And most of the time, especially with marketing, it's hard to do that when they don't know what they don't know. So they don't know what to ask always. But AI can be really beneficial in saying create an outline of questions to ask a leader. I've done that before and it's fat out some decent questions. The team should still, you know, filter through, make sure that they, they're not asking some basic questions that they can find on their own.

Caroline Crawford [00:23:43]:
But I think that's one way to start integrating. And then again, outlines are fantastic for AI to spit out because it just takes up one step out of the process, out of the way, and makes it very clear for people to be like, okay, this is what, this is the general direction we're trying to go in. Again, optimize that to make sure from a strategic standpoint, it makes sense and it's applicable to other conversations that are happening, things like that. But I think that's just the best way to start integrating. And then the more you do that, the more you can see AI as literally what it's meant to be doing is like a virtual assistant to say, hey, what do you think about this? Let's spit out this type of outlier. Essentially, it's greasing the wheels a little bit more than you would on your own.

Kenny Lange [00:24:26]:
Absolutely. I love that. That's a great place to start. As you were talking, I thought, I was like, well, if I wanted to be cheeky, I might sign up for a trial of an AI tool and have it write a case. Help me make a case to my boss to get us to use AI. Maybe that's how the robots simple things like, hey, like, we don't need it to make. Help us do a brand new thing. But what I hear you saying is, how can it just help you do the existing things you're doing a little faster, maybe a little better, or, you know, minimize the number of mistakes or something like that.

Kenny Lange [00:25:02]:
Like, it could help with some proofreading or something else like that.

Caroline Crawford [00:25:06]:
Provide clear direction for the process. Yeah, I think that's a lot of time where a lot of challenges come at play because no one knows what the process actually is.

Kenny Lange [00:25:15]:
Yeah, um, you. That's an interesting way to go, is that you could either have it ask you, like, hey, I need you to act as a process expert, and I want to optimize what I'm doing here. Can you ask me questions and then make recommendations and it'll walk you through? Or you could throw a bunch of stuff I actually had at GPT four. Oh, create a house cleaning schedule. Because apparently my kids are very confused about the fact that they don't have to pay for anything in this home and they think that also means they don't have to clean. But I was like, hey, I've got four older kids. Here's their ages, no more than 30 minutes. I need you to be like a cleaning organizational wizard.

Kenny Lange [00:25:59]:
How can I get them to clean? And I was like, ask me questions. They're like, well, how often and how many pets and all this stuff? And I was like, all right, that's a good question. I put it all in and then I had it spit out a spreadsheet for me. This is fantastic. I was like, I don't feel like I'm being replaced as a dad, but it at least saved me some $20 a month on chat. GPT was a lot better than trying to hire an organizational expertise. So as people are thinking about going back to your first answer of what's on your mind, is marketing moving the world forward? AI may be at the front of that, but certainly the humanizing the brand, and then that just feels like attention we're going to be wrestling with for quite a while. But if, whether it's utilizing AI or another process, if someone said, hey, I just want to understand my customer better.

Kenny Lange [00:26:59]:
I want to speak their language, I want to in some way humanize my brand and my company, my products, my services, so that a more approachable, obviously, business development goes up, all those sorts of things. What's an easy first step someone can take in the next 24 hours with little to no money to walk down that path?

Caroline Crawford [00:27:18]:
Yeah, absolutely. That, I would say the first is go back to why you started doing what you're doing, because there is a story in there that is the human aspect to it that's going to relate to the others. And then you can, once you flush out that story, that can be replicated over and over again. And so that's part of the more of the building while you're developing your strategy. But people overlook that. They're like, oh, we exist because XDev or this is our differentiator. They're clear about some things at a very high level, but there is now this big trend happening, especially on social media, where storytelling plays a bigger role in the posts that are being created. LinkedIn, for instance, will boost posts that are more personal stories or someone talking about personal anecdotes.

Caroline Crawford [00:28:08]:
And then what happens is a lot of the times people just say their story once and then never go back to it. And the challenge that they need to find, or the balance that they need to find, is really how do you tell your story in different ways, the same story in different ways, over and over and over again, and tie it back to their business? You can really only do that if you really go back to why you started your business. And then the next is to ask questions to your clients or past clients or audience, what they have. They have the knowledge that you're looking for at the end of the day. And those answers can then generate a lot of content for you to help you develop a marketing strategy.

Kenny Lange [00:28:50]:
Those are great. Your first answer on going back to the why, it reminds me, Simon Sinek's like, I think he has the most popular TED talk of all time or something, but he said, people don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it.

Caroline Crawford [00:29:03]:
Yeah.

Kenny Lange [00:29:03]:
And it's funny you mentioned that LinkedIn is boosting personal stories. As I go back and I keep reviewing my data to see, like, what kind of posts are working, I'm trying a bunch of different things every time. It's, it was some story about, like, my family or the, and one was sort of woven in with my why for the business of making an impact and foster an adoptive care is those were the ones that performed the best. It wasn't the ones where I felt like, I am dropping straight wisdom on these people and they are just going to like, their businesses are going to be amazing and they're all going to want me to write a book about this. And that might get like ten reactions sometime. I celebrated 15 years of marriage, and here's something I did with my kids, and it's like 150 reactions. All right, well, I guess my personal life is more interesting than my, my business acumen, but I think those are really easy. So thank you for sharing those.

Kenny Lange [00:30:04]:
Caroline, if people want to know more about you, cultivate communications and anything else that, that you're talking about about, where would you send them?

Caroline Crawford [00:30:12]:
Well, for anyone who really has no idea where to start or how to kind of extract their differentiator in the market and get their kind of gold out there, I have a three step marketing guide that essentially helps them navigate through an audit if they want to do a marketing audit, as well as extracting basically the gold that's in their head of what topics can they talk about that their audience is actually going to care about, there's a diagram in there that's going to be really helpful for them. And then I do have a podcast called the Edge Effect, a marketing podcast that is all about marketing. I nerd out. And so we're talking all about this type of stuff all day long. So definitely I'll have all the show. I'm sure the links will be in the show notes.

Kenny Lange [00:30:58]:
Absolutely. Yeah, we'll link up that guide. Definitely linking up the podcast LinkedIn Instagram website. So we'll make sure that the people can get in touch with you. Well, as one nerd to another, thank you so much for being a great guest and sharing your wisdom with us today. For all of you listening or watching, thank you so much for spending a little bit of your day with us. It really does mean a lot. The goal of the podcast is just really help people grow, see their situations and new perspectives so that they can reach their goals.

Kenny Lange [00:31:29]:
And if you would like to help your fellow leaders on this journey like subscribe, share rate, review, any of those things, just help with the visibility. Number one, I'm really grateful. I don't do this to make money. I do this to help people and create awareness and have different conversations. But you may in fact help somebody unlock the issue that's been holding them back from reaching their goals. So it's a simple way to pay it forward. And doesn't that feel good? Well, until next time, change the way you think you'll change the way you lead. We'll see you.