Fixing what ails consumer businesses

At Forecast Labs, an investment group within Comcast, we help B2Cs and SMBs grow their customer base via TV advertising. We have spearheaded TV as a performance channel; we can prove that you're getting customers there, far more affordably than what you're used to spending on popular acquisition channels.

If you’d like to connect, please email Daniel_Groner@comcast.com.

I attend all of the shivas that are announced in my local area. Last night, I sat for 30 minutes with a man who lost his mother, age 96. I didn't realize until I sat down that I recognized him and his wife from a class I've been attending on occasion of late. 

As he was telling me about his mother, he mentioned that she was extremely close with her aide, whom she lived with for the final 11 years of her life. After his mother passed, the aide asked if she could speak at the funeral. He and his siblings agreed. I told him how much that gesture says about all of them: his mother, the aide, and the siblings.

I leave every shiva with a little something unavailable otherwise.

Danny Groner

My give: I will be a dependable sounding board as you work through and consider the next steps in your career. I can help you shape the story you tell and broaden the scope of what you apply for - and how. I encourage you not to use a spray-and-pray approach for your applications; improve your thinking about where you truly belong, then go find it or create it.

My ask: I work for a venture capital group called Forecast Labs. We invest way more than capital. Currently, I am seeking to identify B2Cs that would benefit from growing their customer base via TV advertising and other marketing channels outside of the same digital platforms that everyone else has oversaturated for more than a decade and, as a result, have drive customer acquisition costs way up. You can learn more about us by listening to this podcast interview: https://www.adexchanger.com/adexchanger-talks/can-tv-be-a-performance-channel/.

If you’d like to connect for a call, please send me an email to Daniel_Groner@comcast.com.

When I moved back to NYC just ahead of the 2008 financial crisis, I didn't anticipate how long it would take to find steady work. Over the course of the year that followed, I did everything I could to remain active, relevant, and motivated. Still, there was plenty of downtime throughout the day. I looked for opportunities to occupy myself, so I'd have something to talk about while I looked for any kind of traction.

A friend of a friend was a producer for "Rachael Ray," and they required people to stack the studio audience. During this period, I attended lots of show tapings like that one, to get a behind-the-scenes look and to burn the clock for a few hours while I waited for word. When the warmup comedian came out, I didn't expect to be spotted. But because I was one of the only men on hand, his eyes fixated on me toward the back of my section. He asked what I do for work. I said I was a writer. That should've been enough to go on, I thought. I could laugh about the pains of writing.

Then he asked, to my surprise, who I wrote for. The truth was at that moment I didn't have anything in the hopper. Now, I realize I should have just blurted something out, but the shame I carried in my mid-twenties interfered. I said probably the worst thing to respond to his suggestion for banter: "I'd prefer not to say." That threw him off for the rest of the morning, making reference countless times to my comment from earlier, treating me as if I was there to review his set. In truth, his career and my career at that juncture were running in parallel. I wish I had said, "Waiter."

While watching a clip from "Shark Tank" the other day, I saw a founder respond to Mark Cuban by saying he'd prefer to speak privately about what it costs to make his products. It was a strange answer to a common question from the sharks, and something this founder should've been ready to talk about in detail. Immediately, Cuban said he was out. The job is never to make it weird.

We can and should anticipate the same 5-8 questions people inevitably ask in certain settings, not to rehearse answers ahead, rather to arrive prepared. That's a lesson I gleaned the hard way amid a time of vulnerability, how to finesse and maneuver, even when someone poses a question I feel ill-prepared to tackle because I feel inadequate or incomplete. 

Show the work, whether at a networking event, during a job interview, or while participating in a casual conversation with a well-meaning individual. When we shy away, fearful of being labeled or, worse, misunderstood, we wind up making more mistakes, not fewer. 

By 2019, while in between things again, I got so skilled at anticipating the 5-8 questions I'd get asked at job interviews, that a CMO complimented me on how well I'd prepared and presented myself. He decided to throw me a curveball, asking, "How does someone like you with the enthusiasm you clearly bring every day deal with it when someone like me says 'No' to you?" I won a job offer on my reply.

I went long in my newsletter this weekend about what plagues the PR industry these days. A long excerpt from that column appears below:

"This isn’t how many PRs think about their roles, though, as they prefer to remain removed from the bottom line of those who pay them. That plan can work out for only so long, in my opinion, since eventually someone performing exclusively brand work will become too expensive to carry ahead. Not because they stopped being good at what they do, only because they’re no longer the same value they used to be. As times grew tougher, and people have had to weigh more difficult options in the wake of consolidation and cutbacks, it’s critical to pay attention to how the game is played. And what’s been going on around you. And to get as close as you can to how the business actually makes money.

PR is not essential just because you said so, even if you scream it loudly, routinely in promoted posts. Instead, position the work as yet another growth lever proven out by the business’s other employees - especially by executives - vouching and validating that none of what was achieved at large would have been possible without the entire task force, including the person supervising the PR function. You work together, not apart. You are included, never separated. You’re understood because you have made it so. I’ve had software engineers contact me months after we no longer work together telling me that upon learning how others at new companies are leading PR efforts they saw that much more value from how I’d discussed and assessed the same function. They didn’t know my direction was unique or unusual until they witnessed a more traditional approach, to be standoffish, to be alienating.

Most PRs start out at agencies, where they’re trained up on keeping clients happy, not on how to do daily work in-house at a company. The business model for agencies is the start of the problem: When they get a new, big account, they staff up. As clients slowly back away, given enough time, the same agencies will cut roles. It’s impossible to anticipate what the next months will look like for any agency, which, ironically, are less stable than the startups they claim to work closely with. And that’s why so many who began careers at agencies and hope to leave agencies will struggle as they look to leap, as they can’t find the jobs they feel deserving of and ready for at that juncture because they don’t know anything about how businesses operate."

The fuller column is linked in the comments below.

People sometimes give me a hard time for leaving long voice notes when I have something to say, but I still swear that for in-between ideas that shouldn’t be emails and likewise shouldn’t be phone calls that these long voice notes are a suitable substitute. The goal of a good voice note is to pass along a small, smart nugget that came to mind unexpectedly, attached to the appropriate party, or to suggest two people you know to connect independently - with proper context.

This morning, while waiting for a bus, I left two voice notes, offering to connect one person to the other. Once the first approved of an introduction, I reached out to the second about next steps. Her reply to me began with, “I’m so happy you’re in my life.” In my vast experience pulling from 30 years of emails and phone calls, I don’t recall people expressing that sentiment around and about mutual connectivity. Voice notes bring to life a vibrant middle option and deliver access to a broader scope of sentimentality from those close at heart, if the mission with these surprising notes is to be kind for no reason other than someone popped to mind. 

Most, in the absence of these voice notes, aren’t reaching out at all. On the receiving side of voice notes are rewards you didn’t deem eligible, people who are happy early on a Monday morning to be considered and thought of and presented with opportunity. Your mileage may vary, but the utility of long voice notes is evident, if geared toward service and support.

Even amid an era largely defined by AI transformation, if you speak with PRs about what keeps them active and what awards them an edge they'll point to longstanding relationships they possess with reporters. And yet when those same reporters, facing consolidation and uncertainty in their own field, announce that they've been let go from their full-time roles, you'll see PRs pour into the comments expressing how fortunate any other publication will be to hire them and to have them. And that those devoted PRs are rooting for them from the sidelines. It's remarkable how quickly those otherwise two-way streets dissolve into dead-ends.

There are any number of business reasons to remain in touch with reporters who are looking, but what supersedes all is that you can't morally boast you harbor and harness relationships only when the other party has something to give you, that you need. That's not a relationship; it's a complimentary service provider. While I don't believe that PR should adjust its language to be more precise to match better the insinuation, I do hope that more practitioners than I know about are doing their part, not just giving lip service to those embarking on a difficult transition that likely finds its way unexpectedly to each and every one of us at some point.

During Climate Week, I attended a few short hours of a much larger event, where I sat in on a media panel. I'll acknowledge that this event was off my regular beats, and these were reporters I didn't know. But one of the panelists was a real highlight to hear from, since she actually answered the questions. See, reporters more than other panelists at events like these rise to the occasion, which itself is reason to attend panels that feature them, even if you don't approach anyone on the stage afterward.

Leaving the event for another commitment, I connected on LinkedIn with that reporter. I left a voice note indicating how impressed I was by what she had to offer. I never pitched. A few weeks on, I saw her announce that she'd been let go. So I reached out to schedule time. We spoke yesterday. She began by asking how we knew one another. I reminded her of the panel earlier this season, and what she shared with us - and that this was the first occasion we were communicating. We spoke for 30 minutes. She took notes. I sent some job postings afterward that matched to what she can master next.

Later in the evening, I messaged that if there's anything else I could shed some light on, she should ask. Her reply: "You've no idea how much I appreciated our conversation today. I'll definitely be in touch."

My suspicion is that many became aware of her circumstance at the same time I did, yet few, if any, thought to reach out as a resource. It's a terrible stain on PR that so many veterans refuse to be of any assistance to anyone, only chatter among themselves about how outsiders don't appreciate them enough. We should alter the reputation for what's expected and what's typical.

Every Summer I look to remind everyone willing to listen that we show who we really are with how we treat the interns. I've packaged up my thoughts on that subject matter into a column that I'll publish next weekend in my newsletter. But it was fresh on my mind last evening when the first two people I introduced myself to at an afterwork tech meetup were the interns working on behalf of a co-sponsor of this event. Here's what I did:

-I asked them, briefly, where they were in their studies and in their journeys.
-I commended them for doing the right thing in the current environment to go beyond the classroom since employers are bound to ask for more experience than what they could discover on campus.
-I gave them an overview of my ongoing work.
-I suggested we connect on LinkedIn so that we could remain in touch thereafter.
-I pinged both of them together on my route home to offer to grab coffee with them together or individually when they're available, should they wish to speak about careers. That window remains open to them for when they require it, however the best time to really gather is just after meeting, when there's momentum, at a time when they don't directly need anything.

I have nothing obvious to gain from knowing college students, yet I want to reward the ones who have taken active measures to engage with the world outside of what's assigned to them. I wasn't there at their age and stage, and now that I am twice their age, I can cite my inactivity during college terms as a contributing reason for why I struggled to get going after graduation.

Eventually, with enough time, through hard work, you can catch up to where you're supposed to be. But better when you're in college to have people who've long moved on from college to know who you are and to think of you when opportunity strikes. Hardly ever would someone ask, "Do you know anyone we can bring on as a temporary intern?" but more likely to arise down the line is a question about whether you can endorse anyone at the junior level to join. Keep up with all the levels, not just within your own cohort.

Networking at large has been vastly superior over the past three years than it was prior to a necessary pandemic reset. These interns were dealt a difficult hand overall, however we, the others who register for and make sure to attend events, can award the next generation a better experience and more focused follow-through than we witnessed or endured in similar spaces and periods. 

First, though, you must care about showing up and presenting yourself as a helper. The ones who attend events these days, I have found, they're more prone to be all others who they encounter, interns included. Every single person in those types of rooms has a certain motivation to be on hand rather than to remain at home. It needn't be they're out of work and in need of a lift. The kindest among us return when they aren't left wanting. And interns are a core constituency told to show up - and they do.

Last weekend, I ordered two sweaters - green and gray - from a major online retailer. Last night, my package arrived. Inside was the green sweater, no gray. So I headed to the email confirmation I'd gotten, from there to the website landing page catered to reporting missing items. There, I saw a strong suggestion to select Online Chat ahead of calling customer care; the hours for the second option remained open for quite some time.

The Online Chat straight away asked me if I had purchased from any of five preset categories, otherwise to choose Other. It was clear to me that those five categories are the higher-priced items listed on the website. I went with Other, after which I braced for impact, sensing how this would go.

The bot understood my predicament, that an item was missing from my order, that I wanted it sent to me, not refunded, however when it prompted to ask me which of my items was missing from the order, it didn't distinguish by color. It simply asked if I was missing one item or the other item, each listed with the same exact description. No way to tell which way was up. I had a 50-50 chance of getting it right. Alas, I guessed wrong. I received an email shortly thereafter letting me know that a replacement green sweater would be shipped in the next 48 hours.

So at that point I rang the customer service line. It took a few minutes to bypass the automated messages, shouting "operator" into my speaker phone as many times as I could, while taking my shoes off. Eventually, I was bridged to someone - how exciting to have the chance these days to speak to a real person while reporting an error. It was nearly 7 pm where I was, yet she picked up with a greeting of "Good morning." OK.

I explained to the representative what had happened, and how I just needed the gray sweater shipped separately. She put me on hold for five minutes. When she returned to the line, she told me that another one of her colleagues had already put in that order, and I should expect to receive confirmation the next day. I explained that it had been me through the chat, but it was inaccurate based on my receipt. Ah.

Mere seconds later, she told me that she'd fixed the request, and I'd be sent the gray sweater. I am not confident she did anything on her end. I am still 70 percent sure that when the package arrives later this week I'll be seeing a second green sweater. I must prepare myself emotionally for such a reality.

I would suspect that everyone has had a small saga like this one. If I'd purchased jewelry, one of the categories at the top of the Online Chat, I bet I would have had a different outcome, and no story to tell. Oversights in shipping and frustrations with customer service have defined online retail for quite some time. But in this era, you can actually tell when you're not a priority for the business to accommodate and to keep, especially when you did nothing to be labeled a nuisance, and when they'd sooner shoo you away because why bother.

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