I Make People Care

Wait a Minute

VERNON: Hey, everyone, this is Vernon Ross with the Stories That Lead podcast, where we focus on revelation instead of conflict. And today I have a special guest, Jeremy Lang. He is a strategic communications expert: content strategy and storytelling, copywriting and editorial leadership.

And something interesting about Jeremy really struck me. On his website, he writes, and it's the headline that you see, "I make people care." When I see something like that, I think people will sometimes gloss over it. I see statements like that and go, "Wait a minute. That's a significant statement." It is as significant as the TED Talk statement to me, because if you're sharing a story worth telling, I take stuff like that really seriously. So when someone goes, "Oh, I'm gonna do a TED Talk," I'm like, "Well, is it really a story worth telling?" A lot of stories are. But when you make a statement like "I make people care," it's interesting.

And then he follows up with talking about connecting the dots and priorities and what your audience truly needs, and rising above all of that. Something like that, to me, comes across as someone who's been responsible for writing headlines, and responsible for not only writing the story but understanding how the story's going to land with audiences. So Jeremy, why don't you take us a little bit into how you got into the comms industry, and some of your experience as an editor, helping to drive and communicate those stories out to the public.

A Clip-On Tie and a Notepad

JEREMY: Yeah, absolutely. And it's great to be with you, Vernon. Thank you so much. So you're right. I started in daily newspaper journalism. I like to say if I was born 50 years ago, I would've been in newspapers from day one until the very end.

In third grade, we had a career day, and people were dressing up as doctors and astronauts. I wanted to be an author. My dad had a little clip-on tie from a Halloween costume. I put that on. I had a notepad. I mean, how do you dress as an author?

But as I got older, I like to say I realized that all the great authors went through some kind of personal tragedy. They had to fight in a world war, or they had something like that. I had a cat die. That was hard. So I realized very quickly that there was a great passion for telling other people's stories, and that led me into journalism.

And obviously it's nothing unusual for a former journalist to be in communications. But what was different for me is I was on the editing side. I was a copy editor, and I think a lot of people probably don't fully understand what that role entails. Basically, let's say you have a state government story that's being written. That beat writer knows that beat inside and out. That story's first step is it goes to an editor who knows that inside and out. It is a state government editor. Then it comes to the copy desk. And sure, part of my job is style and grammar and all of those things, but I have to edit it and read it like a reader would. I was putting myself in my audience's shoes, both the ones who have followed every twist and turn of this story and the ones who are coming into it cold, and making sure that it serves all of those purposes.

My Mom, My Partner, and My Best Friend

JEREMY: And then I was also the headline writer. So it was a situation of both the technical and the creative. And it was something I landed on when I was writing headlines, because it is such an art, and you see really clichéd headlines. It's really easy to come up with a pun or a play on words. But for it to have real impact, I just started saying to myself, "What is it about this story that would make my mom, my partner, and my best friend care about this?" And then I would put creative around that. It was sort of the way that I was able to focus and pressure test what really mattered within that.

And like a lot of people, I saw where the newspaper industry was going. I felt like I needed a plan B before the industry gave me a plan B and forced me into it. So I left newspapers for marketing copywriting, and that eventually led into communications. But that foundational element of really digging into what it is about something that is gonna make people care, really switching it from the "we" to the "me," as one of my former bosses liked to say, is something that was so important to me, because that's where I found not just success, but where the best work happened. And I've taken that throughout my entire career.

So it was just there. Yes, it's a hook, but being a headline writer, it's also the best distillation of what I do in a few words.

From 0.1 to 26.1 (Make That 26.2)

VERNON: Right. It's super interesting. As I was looking at some of the stuff that you did, and we were on the GoProfiles podcast, or webinar, together, and that was awesome, I was looking at the stuff that you do at Nike, writing in-store copy for Nike Basketball, and how impactful those advertisements are, because some of the things that you're writing are for some of the most iconic names in basketball. And Nike in particular is emotional for a lot of people. When you're doing that, and you're having to inform executives on narrative, and then having to flip the script and literally figure out what's going to catch the eye of a consumer, how do you do that? Walk me through a little bit of that, because that is super interesting to me.

JEREMY: Yeah, and this is again where those headline writing skills come into play, because Nike is... I mean, I would argue that Nike has the number one brand voice in all of the world, and at various times is right up there with a 1, 1A from a brand standpoint, maybe with Apple. But that is such a specific moment, because again, you put yourself in the audience's shoes. They are in the store. They are staring at the product. The game there is to engage them, yes, on an emotional level, but it's not a Just Do It kind of moment. It's not a headline moment, because your goal is to get them to pick that item off the shelf or off the rack, and hopefully buy it, or try it on and buy it. There's no shipping time. It's not like buying online. It's so immediate.

And thankfully, I was able to have a lot of source material to work from. Again, this is where being an editor came in handy. I wasn't starting with a blank page. I saw all of these different product pieces, and I was able to think about, "Okay, what is it that this product does, and what does it allow you to do?" Especially for signature basketball shoes: how does it allow you to embody the specific game style of that player? What Kobe Bryant did versus what Giannis does versus what Sabrina Ionescu does is very, very different.

And I started putting together, through trial and error, a formula of the use, the performance, and then that little bit of swagger. That's where the Nike voice came in. I grabbed that off the shelf and put it in there, and it's more about taking the description of how you do something and taking it up a notch. For a distance racing shoe, saying something like, "It will take you from 0.1 to 26.1," because we are assuming if you're in the store looking at that, we speak athlete to athlete. They're gonna understand that that's a marathon. You don't have to say "for marathon distances."

So being able to combine those things together creates a unique experience, because it has to be, versus if you are looking at it online, or it's the rollout for a new sneaker and there's bigger storytelling in that. I've always liked the puzzle of communications: the what to say, the how to say it. That goes back to newspaper editing and writing. You have a certain space for a headline, and it has to play with the images and everything. It's a challenge, and I love that challenge. So it was something that I really have enjoyed sinking my teeth into, because it's so specific, and when it hits, it just really hits just right.

VERNON: I mean, you just riffed about the 26.1, and I immediately started thinking, "Oh, the elusive 26.1." I've got all these badges over there, and one is from one of those races that you run. I forget which one it is, and I'm like, "Oh, that was only 5.1. I never did get that 26.1." I don't think I probably ever will, because I'm not a runner. But it just speaks to how you've understood the craft of it.

JEREMY: Yeah, and sorry, I said 26.1. I was thinking 13.1. 26.2. I should correct myself and get it right.

VERNON: There we go. As you can all tell, I have not gotten a marathon yet.

JEREMY: Yes. I'm sure anybody who's listening to this has been screaming, going, "What is he talking about?"

VERNON: Yeah, yeah, 26.2.

How Do We Make Money?

VERNON: So that does bring me to this. You've worked inside other places other than sportswear. You've worked inside tech, you've worked inside healthcare and banking. When you walk into a new organization, and you're coming in from the outside, what's the first thing that you look at that really tells you where their communications is? What's the tell, where you can walk in and say, "Yeah, these guys know exactly what they're doing," or, "There's some opportunities here for me to help guide the situation into a place where it's better informing the audience that they wanna reach"?

JEREMY: Yeah. I actually take it a step back, and maybe this takes it in a weird direction, but I think it's so important, and something that not everybody does, which is actually to take it to a business place and ask: how do we make money?

And I'll tell you why. My first job out of newspapers was for a bank brand here on the West Coast called Umpqua, and they had this amazing brand. It had gotten written up in The New York Times. It had been featured on NPR. There was a CEO, Ray Davis, who really came in and completely reimagined the in-person banking experience. Basically: how do you take it from being a chore to being delightful? And that personal banking experience was the public face of the entire multi-billion dollar financial company, which included business banking, commercial lending, home lending, private banking, the full suite.

And when I got into it, I'm trying to learn all the things that everybody else learned working in various companies over 10 years while I was in a newsroom. There was this tension between the in-house marketing and creative department that I sat on and the business stakeholders. And it's really easy to just go, "Okay, they're bankers. They don't understand marketing. They don't understand the magic that we do."

VERNON: Been there.

Put a Bird on It

JEREMY: But through a number of different projects, I started poking at it, and I started realizing that the personal banking element of the company, a publicly traded financial company, was not the main financial driver. It was the tip of the spear. And so these other business units, who recognize the value that they are bringing to the bottom line in a public company where your shareholders are number one, are going, "We don't want this cutesy Portlandia, put-a-bird-on-it kind of thing, because our customers are going to go running away."

And that was such a light bulb moment for me, where I was able to shift the way that I was working and go, "Okay, yes, you are only seeing a small sliver of what I can bring. Our brand voice contains multitudes. You are seeing this, and you are assuming that that's where we will go. So let me sit down with you and understand what that differentiator is. Let me understand how you do things better than somebody else, and show you how I can take the elements of our brand voice and say we're gonna use 30% of this, 50% of this, and only 20% of this, because that fits what you need."

And that's the best entry point. I know that's more of a creative and copywriting kind of thing, but it's the same thing with communications, because that's your first step to being able to do the second hard thing, which is truly set goals. If you are going to run a communications program, you can say it got this many views, this many clicks, this many whatever. But being able to say there's an opportunity to shift opinion on this, or make more people aware of that, and we are going to use this communications campaign and leverage these channels for these reasons: it all ties back to that, and you have a North Star. And obviously, the more that we as communicators are able to tie our work back to the business, or even just show that we are thinking about it and understanding it, the more that we become trusted advisors, and we get that seat at the table that we're always asking for, because we're showing that we understand that real end goal.

Option C

VERNON: You know, taking that approach... I often hear communicators talk about not having a seat at the table, and they're more trying to just deploy their craft inside whatever organization they're in. They're like, "No, no, no, I know how you should communicate this message," without understanding what that real business driver is, that you dove into to understand. So now you're not just saying, "I know what's best because I know how to communicate and you don't." It's, "Let me understand what your goals actually are from a business perspective. What's gonna pay the bills? What's keeping the lights on? And let's make sure we partner on communicating that in a way that, number one, you're going to get behind, and where I'm not just doing what you say, but I'm actually guiding you in the direction that you need to go in."

That is an approach that I often don't see communicators taking. And then there's the, "I don't know why I don't have a seat at the table, and they're just giving me these directives, and okay, we got the views," or, "We got the reads or the clicks." But very often I'm not hearing what you just said, which I think is just a short little masterclass in how to approach communications, in a way that might seem different to people. But I think it is really a very advisable way to go about approaching it, because it takes the real part of business and brings communications into it in a way that can make real impact.

JEREMY: Yeah. And what it also allows is, when it gets down to the actual work, you as a communicator might say option A, and your leaders, your stakeholders, whoever, might say, "No, option B." When you are able to come in at the very beginning and have those conversations, and it's about understanding what they care about, then you're able to find an option C that serves both needs, and sometimes might even be better than what you were originally thinking, because you have that extra clarity and context. Because that's what we are amazing at as communicators. We are able to craft stories. We are able to take seven different points where two of them conflict against each other and build a cohesive understanding around that. So the more information we have, the better partners we're going to be, and they're gonna see that work.

One of my favorite quotes that I come back to over and over is actually from Bill Hader, from Saturday Night Live and Barry. He was on a panel, talking about script writing, and he said, "If you give your script over to somebody else and they give you notes, so often the note is right, but the suggestion is wrong." That's that intersection between communications and stakeholder knowledge. They're seeing that something is wrong, and because we are all gifted with the ability of language, they are suggesting a way to fix it. And we have the expertise to see, oh, that's not necessarily the right fix. But let me not throw out the idea just because the fix is silly. Let me poke at that and see if there's something where I'm able to use my abilities to say, "Oh, okay, I get it, so let's switch it up like this."

The Intranet Nobody Had Built

VERNON: That is super interesting. That takes me to a quote that I found. You were talking about LinkedIn, and often comms departments and folks within internal communications are responsible for the LinkedIn channel and monitoring the things that happen on LinkedIn. And you said you approach LinkedIn as an externally managed internal communications channel, and more of your employees are gonna be on there than on Slack or Viva Engage or whatever you're using. And you actually owned a 350,000-person intranet, so it's not like you don't know what you're talking about. I wanna sit with that with you for a minute. Where did that approach come from? Because I think it also informs the conversation that we're having.

JEREMY: Yeah. So I was recruited to Cognizant, which is a 350,000-employee global Fortune 200 tech and IT services company. They're doing a lot of really interesting things right now, going all in on AI adoption and integration. When I was there, they were just about to celebrate their 25th anniversary as a company. They had never had a proper internal communications team. They had just started to build one, and they had never had a proper intranet. Yeah, I know, it's wild. It's absolutely wild.

Basically, everybody went out into the world, they pitched people, clients came in, the money came in. And eventually, it doesn't matter what company you are or what culture you have, you get big enough that the messages get muddied, things start bumping up against each other. Your efficiency, your culture starts to suffer. You need that ability to inform and engage your employees. So I was essentially recruited to be the editor-in-chief of the homepage of this newly launched intranet. And because nothing had been there before, part of what I was doing was trying to establish benchmarks and stats for what good looks like.

It was an absolute blast, because it was just a total open sandbox. We could try anything, we could experiment, we could say, "Hey, let's see what this does," because there never had been anything before. And we were doing really good work. We felt like my team and I had built the secret sauce that worked, and we became a source of knowledge for the rest of the team. I was creating campaigns and content while also helping other teams and advising them on the right mix of channel and story for their own pieces.

Signed, Sealed, Delivered

JEREMY: But I was always saying, "How can we keep driving forward? How can we keep doing more?" And it made me realize that LinkedIn is where people were. It's one of those basic mantras of marketing: meet people where they are. There's never going to be one single place, but probably your most engaged employees are there on LinkedIn. If you are not thinking about that channel as a way to engage your employees, or as a way to identify your most engaged employees, who are saying things... How can you find those people who can help carry your message, so that it's coming from somebody other than the sort of corporate voice on high? It's an absolute goldmine.

And it's always going to be something that probably your marketing team is owning, and they want to use it to get their message out. They want to use it to generate leads if you're B2B, or drive sales if you're B2C. You don't wanna shift that. You don't wanna try to get in the way of that. But it was really easy to go to them and say, "Hey, you know that people-driven content performs well. It's essentially free value add. Here's a way that we can come and add it to the mix: signed, sealed, delivered, packaged up, ready to go. All you have to do is put it into your calendar and schedule it."

And of course, the same thing: be a partner. Say, "This is your area of expertise. I know enough to be dangerous. This is how we're thinking about leveraging it. What would you change?" And that's worked out even down into the nitty-gritty, because they're the ones that know: oh, LinkedIn changed the algorithm, so now you wanna do a carousel of photos, because that's gonna get the most reach. Or no, they killed that. Now it's two lines of copy. No, now it's a video. So that's such a wonderful way to expand your reach and meet people where they are, and to not just grow the culture, but also grow that employer brand at the same time.

Is Ten Thousand More Good?

VERNON: I recall when we were on the panel, we were talking about reach metrics, and you were like, "There is a focus on reach metrics. You don't necessarily have to throw them out, but maybe start thinking about more of a quarterly survey, essentially like an NPS, or a net promoter score, for people that don't know what an NPS is." And we ran out of time. I wanna hear what that whole thought was, because that one's been stuck in my mind. I'm like, I wanna know where that was gonna go. And you went right into it, because you were talking about reach and how LinkedIn is this other channel. Tell me a little bit about what you were thinking about when you started talking about reach metrics and a quarterly survey.

JEREMY: Yeah. I'll just tell you my experience. Because we were building something from scratch, we were able to get into it, and I was able to say, "Okay, our top content is reaching this many people, and this many people are clicking on it, so that's our engagement." And at first, you want the best, and so I'm going, "Okay, this is good. I wish it were more." But then my boss said this to me: okay, if it increased by 10,000, is that good? Does that mean we're doing good? It's an easy metric, and it is helpful, but it's not the most nutrient-dense meal, you know what I mean?

And so I just thought about, okay, what actually is the dot that we're connecting? In some ways it's the same as how does the company make money, but it's flipped. In this case, it's: why is the company paying me? What is the value that I bring? And what I came up with was, it is to create a better understanding of where the company is going, and my role in it.

And I thought, "Okay, how do I measure that?" Well, it's an opinion question. It's kinda gotta be a survey. And we were talking about this on the panel: everybody in the company wants to add five questions to the annual employee survey. If everybody got their way, it would take 45 minutes to completely fill out, and nobody would do it.

Now, part of this was the size of the company and a very entrepreneurial culture, but I decided to... I mean, not like I just went and did it. I got all the approvals. But I built a quarterly communication-specific survey, and I would send it out to a quarter of the employee base each quarter. So each employee only got it once a year, so we weren't spamming them. And, talking about an NPS, our NPS question was: rate on a scale of 1 to 10, "I feel like the internal communications that I receive give me a better understanding of the company strategy, where we're going, and the importance of my role in it."

And I was able to use that as a constant benchmark. I was also able to add in other specific questions, if we really were wanting to focus on increasing awareness of the learning and development program. I could put that question in at the beginning, before we do it, and then for the couple of them after that.

I will say also, I am not a data expert. Thankfully, Cognizant had an amazing data analytics team, and they could see that this wasn't just creating a survey for the sake of a survey. So that got them excited, and they jumped in and helped to make sure that... we weren't going to make any multimillion-dollar business decisions off of this, but we could go to our leadership or the chief marketing officer and say with confidence that this was statistically relevant information.

The Math Inside Our Heads

JEREMY: And that allowed for then building in more specific KPIs for individual programs or campaigns. So the bottom line is, when you are thinking about how you measure and you want to try to go beyond the basics, think about how you can build on that. Think about what you have right now, and then good, better, best, and that's your ladder. And that might be a two-year ladder. Hopefully it's not. But you can build and grow on that, while also being able to tell a story internally to the rest of communications and marketing, to be able to say, "We know there's this opportunity. This is something that every company struggles with." Be able to put it in that context, that it's not just a you thing, and this is how we're going to tackle it.

So that when you're in the moment, doing the specific thing, there's not somebody coming in and going, "Well, why didn't it reach more people?" Or, you talk about LinkedIn: "Well, why are you bothering with LinkedIn?" Well, because this is what we're measuring. This is why it's important. So we made a strategic choice.

I think so much of what we do as communicators is we do the math inside our heads. We're able to look at the algebra equation and come to Y equals 3X squared, and they think that that was a tactical decision, when really we've done all of that strategic element in our heads really quickly, because that's part of our superpower. And so if you're able to show that, then your partners are able to see, oh, there's a strategy behind this, and they have that understanding.

And again, it's like, how do you make people care? You bring them along on the journey. You let them see that you are taking things in a purposeful direction. And when you go, "Oh, okay, we tried that and it didn't work, and now we have to shift," they understand all of that, and they care, because they feel like they have been engaged on it.

Free Is Not the Same as Cheap

VERNON: Man, I am so glad you were able to give that answer, because I'm like, man, this would've been great on the panel. That really explains what you were talking about, and it brings it home, at least for me, to fully understand, getting a full picture of it.

And it leads me into this. You mentioned AI earlier. I had a conversation with an executive that was leaving a company and going into a new one, and they were sort of on the fringes of internal communication. They were gonna be one of the people driving where it was gonna go, and they made a statement. They were like, "Well, AI has basically made producing communications free." So it feels like that, but honestly, it doesn't seem any cheaper, and I don't understand why it's not. And so my question is, with someone having that kind of attitude, what kind of advice would you give for someone who's working in comms? They've got an AI tool. What could they take from your copywriting discipline to help them produce better content in the tool that's not going away?

JEREMY: Yeah. I can actually give you three quick things.

VERNON: Yeah, absolutely.

JEREMY: First of all, be unabashedly vulnerable that we don't know. I think there's so much with AI right now especially. There's this feeling, because it's so easy to produce something, that if you're not able to increase quality while decreasing effort, through time spent, whatever, then somehow it's a me problem. I don't know how to use the tool. And that can create such an environment of feeling like you have to have an answer, or make up an answer. It's okay to just go, "You know what? I don't know. Let me play around with that and figure it out," or, "Do you know somebody who's been poking at this too? Let me talk to them."

I'm gonna butcher the quote, but the great philosopher Lieutenant Commander Data from Star Trek said something to the effect of, "All scientific discovery starts with I don't know." So embrace it.

VERNON: I recall that. Yep. Good enough.

JEREMY: Number two is connected to that, which is: find a way to share information. If you don't have a small informal group that's getting together and sharing how they've used it, what worked, and most importantly what didn't work, that's one of the easiest things to do. Grab somebody from the meat-and-potatoes marketing side of things, grab somebody who's creative, grab a data analyst, grab another communicator. Just seeing the various things that work is so important.

And then the third thing. So many people talk about it: it's a tool, it's not a cure-all. But make sure that you are using it as a solution to a problem, as opposed to the starting point.

Empty Calories

JEREMY: I'll give you an example of what I mean. When I was at Iron Mountain, I kicked off an employee interview series. Obviously Iron Mountain has a huge frontline workforce, people who are driving trucks, people who are in warehouses, and it was specifically focused on people who had received promotions or moved up the ranks from that frontline. So it was a way, internally and externally, to show culture and employer brand. That, by the way, is a really good example of how you can leverage LinkedIn for something like that.

And so I ran this campaign soup to nuts. I did the interviews, and I gave the transcript to an LLM and tried giving it lots of different suggestions, parameters, everything, and what it kept spitting out was still so generic or clichéd or both. And that speaks to what you're saying about, it's free internal communications, but it's empty calories.

What I then tried: I said, "Okay, this is not working. Let me spend the time to write three of these really, really well." Step away from it and go, "This is a B+ to an A- level of the nuances of the story I wanna tell, the copywriting, all of those things." Then I fed that in as base information and started giving the machine the transcripts of the future ones, and then it started producing something that was 90 to 95% of the way there. I could spend 15 minutes on it, and I had it. That maintained quality while decreasing time.

So my first instinct was, I want to use AI, let me use AI, and it wasn't working. Then I thought about it as: here is a profile series, how can I use it to increase or maintain quality while bringing down time of creation? Okay, the best way to do that, I'm finding, is to give it some foundational pieces. And so that, to me, is where I see so much of the opportunity. Not just to say we have it, so we need it, because it's gonna work for some things, and it's not gonna work for others.

The Beach Lives

JEREMY: And I think especially in comms, people are seeing the dip in quality. I remember getting together with the first copywriter that I ever hired, for a burger and a beer, maybe a year or two ago, and we were talking about its impact on writing. And I compared it to Instagram, and how, when Instagram started being the spot for influencers, at first you're going, "Oh wow, they're all living these amazing beach lives." And then our brains caught up, and you could just feel like something was kind of off. You maybe couldn't put it into words, but it just didn't feel as authentic. And in internal communications especially, authenticity is everything.

And my prediction then was, I think people are going to feel that through AI-generated content as well. Yes, it can write, but is it serving a goal? And I think that's what we're seeing now. It's anecdotal, but the people I follow on LinkedIn who are talking about this, they're talking about how their teams or their executive leadership are saying, "Okay, we need to actually bring some of this writing skill back in." And again, it may be an editor mindset who can see those opportunities. It's like contractors always say... What is it they say?

VERNON: Oh, yeah. You can have it quick or you can have it fast, or something like that.

JEREMY: You can have it quick, you can have it good, but you can't have it both. That's essentially what AI for communicators is creating as well.

I find it super easy to use for creating outlines or initial brainstorming. I might say, "We need a comms campaign that does this. These are the goals. These are the channels. Give me an outline." You punch in your things, best practices, whatever, and it will give me something, and I will maybe keep 20% of it. But just reading through it helps me engage the parts in my brain where all of those other ideas are kept, and I'm going, "Oh, that super generic thing that I would never do reminded me of that other thing. Let me put that in." So that's where, again, the goal is: how can I create a quality comms plan the fastest? And I go, "Okay, let me use this as a brainstorm tool, knowing that I'm going to throw out 80% of it." And it doesn't mean that I don't know how to get the most out of the tool.

VERNON: Yeah, you can do it fast, but you can't do it really good if you do it fast. At least not all the time. Maybe sometimes. That is a really interesting way to look at it.

Acting Authentic Versus Being Authentic

VERNON: There's one more thing I wanted to ask you about. You made a post about Better Comms Through Basketball.

JEREMY: Yes. I've made a couple of posts on that. I've been playing around with this idea.

VERNON: And I thought about it, because, you know what? Watching what happened with New York and the Knicks. Every time, when the Knicks were leading up to winning the series, you were seeing all these New Yorkers in Knicks gear, and everybody was high-fiving everybody else on trains, all across New York. For the most part, outside of it just being New York, people were kind of together on the whole Knicks thing. And it reminds me of how sports and basketball really bring people together. What do you think basketball in and of itself understands that maybe some people are missing in the corporate space, about how to bring folks together through communications?

JEREMY: I don't know, and I don't know if there is something. I will say I've made some posts on LinkedIn, and I've been playing around with that, because so much of what you see on LinkedIn, whether you use something in AI to write 15 posts or not, it all feels very similar. So again, in trying to make people care, trying to have authenticity, I'm thinking about how you can zig when everybody else is zagging.

Maybe this is a good way to describe it: it feels like there's a lot of people on LinkedIn who are acting authentic versus being authentic, and that's a very fine line. And no shade to them. Again, if your goal is to use LinkedIn to drive whatever you are doing, by getting the reach and engagement that you want, and that is working, then awesome. Continue kicking ass.

But for me, I am a native Oregonian. I am a lifelong Portland Trail Blazers fan, which also is a very long-suffering franchise. And thoughts and prayers to all Portland Trail Blazers fans right now, with everything the team is going through. So I latched onto that, because it seemed like a way to take that thing that happens, where you take a real-life something and connect it to business and make a LinkedIn post about it, with something that I am so personally passionate about.

I think with the Knicks, it was the mix of factors. If that team had won a championship with Carmelo, then I don't think you have the same thing. Part of it was the drought of time since a championship. Honestly, if the country was in a better place, if the country in general was more like things were in the '90s, I don't know if you have that, because everybody was looking for something that they could share joy in as a community. And I don't know if that happens without the specifics of that fan base.

Could Your Mayor Do That?

JEREMY: So to me, the lesson, if anything, is not so much about basketball. It's about looking at the specific factors in your situation and figuring out how to leverage those. Again, it's about: what does this audience care about? How can we make them care? What are they experiencing? And then not forcing it, being really honest about that.

Mayor Mamdani had that great thing where he did a press conference and signed a proclamation that kids could stay up past their bedtime when the Knicks finals games were on.

VERNON: That was awesome.

JEREMY: Think about any other mayor in the country. As you are listening to this, think about your mayor. Could your mayor do that authentically? It's a phenomenal idea, but it fits him so perfectly. And so that's the secret sauce: when you're really honest with yourself about the situation, what makes your company unique, your communication situation unique, your audience unique, and the delivery options unique, and make sure that those are coming together authentically, then you're really going to have success.

VERNON: That was an awesome answer. When I saw that, I'm like, "Oh, this is interesting. This isn't the common thing that I see. It's no listicle article about some generic AI stuff. I wanna dig more into this." So thank you for that. I think that was a really good way to talk about how the way that you're authentic has more to do with whether it's an authentic action for you, like the thing with Mamdani. That was authentic to him, and I thought about my mayor when you said it. I'm like, "Nope, she couldn't pull it off."

JEREMY: Nope.

VERNON: There's no way she could. I'm thinking about some folks over in Illinois. I'm on the Missouri-Illinois border. I'm like, "Nope, that wouldn't work." But it worked for him, and I think that's a really good way to approach communications. Does it fit your company's voice? Does it fit you and how you execute? Will it work for you, or will it seem generic, like generic AI does?

JEREMY: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Put a Message in It

VERNON: So Jeremy, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. This was an awesome conversation. I really did enjoy it. I'm so glad that we got a chance to spend some time together. What's the best place that folks can find you, and that you want them to find you?

JEREMY: Yeah, me too. I am on LinkedIn as JeremyLang1. Pretty much if you punch in Jeremy Lang, I'm based in Portland, you will find me. I'm always happy to connect. I like to say I love when people send a connection request and they actually put some kind of message in it. That'll be more likely to get my attention. And if you want to geek out over my work in communications and writing, and even some of my favorite newspaper headlines from back in the day, you can go to jeremylangwrites.com.

VERNON: Awesome. Well, Jeremy, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I appreciate it, and hopefully this won't be the last time that you come back, because I really did enjoy this conversation.

JEREMY: Yeah. Me too. Thanks so much, Vernon.

VERNON: Awesome. Thank you.

JEREMY: Yeah. Take care.