The Ryan Hanley Show - RHS 012 - Jeff Fromm: Why Brand Action Trumps Brand Communication

Episode Date: October 28, 2019

Became a Master of the Close: https://masteroftheclose.comJeff Fromm, author, speaker and millennial marketing strategist joins the show to explain why purpose is MUST be a verb for successful organizations. Get more here: https://ryanhanley.comLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Brand action trumps brand communication. Today's guest, Jeff Fromm, teaches us why purpose must become a verb inside our business. And beyond being a best-selling author and strategist for some of the largest brands in the world, Jeff is an incredible guy and breaks down case study after case study of why purpose and the actions that we take around that purpose are going to be the differentiators in who consumers choose and who they ignore in the coming economy. You do not want to miss this episode. I thank you for being here. I thank you for listening to The Ryan Hanley Show. And guys, just one quick ask before we get to the meat and potatoes today. If you haven't already,

please subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you listen on iTunes or Stitcher, I would love for you to leave a rating and review of the show. It plays a big role in helping more people find this show, engage in and become part of our community, the community of listeners of this show. It would mean a ton to me.

And if you have any questions, comments, hit me up on Twitter. I'm Ryan Hanley underscore C-O-M or just search Ryan Hanley. You'll find me. And I would love to have a conversation about what you hear here, your ideas, if things work, if they don't. Twitter is where I'm spending most of my time in communicating with people. And I'd love to connect with you there. And as always, you can hit me up privately, Ryan at Ryan Hanley.com. All right. With that, thank you for being part of the show. Let's get to Jeff Fromm. I guess if you're ready, we can formally start. It always feels weird to me saying that since we've been talking already. But no, that's great. Sounds great. All right, cool. So, uh, I want to jump into, um, there's, there's a really your area of expertise is, uh, an area that I would not say is

my area of primary expertise, but it is something that I enjoy. And I love talking to people who, you know, kind of this area, particularly kind of some of the things around brand, that I just find it so intriguing. And so, so many companies, and this is a sweeping stroke, so I forgive me, but I feel like so many companies do this wrong. And in particular brand, like I just feel like they attack it from a from a place. They don't take it as seriously as maybe I feel like they should some some obviously do but but I don't think as many do as should, particularly middle market and smaller, smaller sized businesses. And so I just enjoy this topic. I'd like to start with probably out of all the research that I did in preparing

for our conversation today, a line or a general concept that kept coming out over and over again. It was in your sizzle reel. I've seen it in a bunch of your articles and different versions. And it's this idea of brand action, trumping brand communication. I just want to start there because that to me is so meaningful and so important. So if you could just start in that place, we can go from there. Tell me, do you want to do the intro and stuff or do you want me to dive into that now? No, go right ahead, man. Okay. So yeah, I just published a book on the purpose advantage. And in there, I argue that the high-performing

brands are going to have functional, emotional, and societal benefits. And in addition to functional, emotional, and societal benefits, metaphorically, they must use purpose as a verb, which means they must take actions that their internal and later external stakeholders can see. And in the absence of action, even if you have a great strategy, you're going to probably get accused of purpose washing. And we see that happening time and again with brands like Gillette on toxic masculinity, Starbucks, Race Together, Kendall Jenner, et cetera, et cetera, with Pepsi. So the key part of what consumers expect today and what we learned in our Gen Z research is they look at actions. And as leaders in companies, they also look at your actions. And if your actions are inconsistent with what you say, then you have hello yeah did i just lost there for a sec

um okay so um i just was saying if your actions are inconsistent with what you say or whatnot then you know you're going to have a problem. And so, you know, the best brands on the planet understand that they must think of brand purpose as a verb. So the thing that, um, so for a long time, your brand was, I think I shouldn't say for a long time, the misunderstanding of brand for so long in so long and the cliche is like your logo is not your brand and that kind of thing and and the way you represent yourself um you know to me it feels like this step from brand is simply your messaging and and you know your your three words for that year or your value proposition or whatever kind of marketing pieces you come out to the actual actions you take, that feels like a leap a lot of people are going to

struggle with. So what are some of the maybe tangible steps that someone can take to get from, okay, we've written down this statement as something we stand for. Now, we need to figure out the actions that are going to mirror that statement. And I mean this in a pure sense, in a good sense. What are some of the things we can do? Yeah, let's look at a couple of examples, maybe, and then sort of dissect. And we can start with Nike, which has always thought about using sport for the betterment of society. And they're pretty well known around making a formal arrangement with Colin Kaepernick. He's a very polarizing figure, but it's consistent with their brand's editorial authority. It's consistent with their view on the role of sport on moving things forward.

And it's consistent with what they've done for a long time and will do in the future with other people and other events. Or we could look at Ben & Jerry's, which they've got a big focus right now on prison reform. Now, if they only made mediocre ice cream, their focus on prison reform would not be relevant. But they make great ice cream, like many other brands who have great ice cream. So what separates Ben & Jerry's isn't the quality of their flavors, in my view, which are great, but so are the other brands. It's that there are people who align to the values of Ben & Jerry's. And we see it again and again, even with brands that might be lesser known that are growing very rapidly. I'll give you a couple of examples of maybe a little lesser known brands.

I love chocolate. And I think there are a few other people out there who probably love chocolate. And the fastest growing chocolate brand in Europe is called Tony's Chocolony. And what they did as a young company is look at the supply chain. 70% of the cow beans in the world come from West Africa, 70%. 2% of the $100 billion chocolate economy go back to the people who grow beans. So there's a disequilibrium between 70% and 2%. And what that means is many of the workers are literally slave laborers. And Tony finds that unacceptable. So do most people when they hear that. And so as long

as they have great flavors of chocolate and the price of the chocolate is only a modest premium to other choices, consumers will, once they know that, often choose Tony's Chocolony. Now, if they don't have great tasting chocolate, or if the price is an extra $50 a bar, consumers are not going to use Tony's. But when they have all of those things together and you understand the story, that's how they become probably the fastest growing chocolate bar in Europe and starting to make headway here in the US. And so their actions are remarkably consistent. I think the best brands on the planet don't think about purpose as part of their marketing strategy. They make it part of their business strategy. So I'm going to tell a quick David and Goliath story, if that's okay. You tell as many stories as you want to tell. All right. So Tide is one of the strongest

brands on the planet. If I say, let's go into the grocery store, we're in the laundry detergent aisle, and I'm going to show you an orange bottle. What am I showing you? Most consumers would immediately say Tide without actually seeing the bottle. And they've done an amazing job of building that brand. And they have a world-class cause marketing program called Tide Loads of Hope. But they are losing share to a lesser known brand called Seventh Generation. And Seventh Generation charges an extra buck a bottle on shelf at the grocery. So how is the smaller, lesser known brand able to charge an extra buck and win consumers over? Because consumers assume that it cleans just as well as Tide. That's price of admission in the category.

And everyone listening competes in a different category where they have price of admission. But at the end of the day, the consumer doesn't write a check to the environment. They write a check to seventh generation and they assume the actions taken by that brand are worth the extra buck. And if you were to dig in deeper, you would find that they take a lot of brand actions, very consistent with their brand, which is around the law of the Iroquois, and thinking forward seven generations about the actions we take, which is why you do not find pods from seventh generation, because that product would be wildly accepted and a risk analysis would suggest they should introduce it, but it's inconsistent with their moral compass. And so at the end of the day, what we're seeing is a radical

shift. And we're seeing the shift on Wall Street. The biggest player on Wall Street, BlackRock, a $6 trillion, and I said trillion, not billion, dollar investor, sent a letter to the CEOs of public companies. And that letter basically said Milton Friedman was wrong. Yes, you must make profits, but it's not your sole job. You must make profits, and you must do good for society. And if you don't do both, we will disinvest in your brand. No one wants to get a letter as the CEO of a public company from BlackRock telling them that they're going to disinvest in their brand if they fail to

take the right actions. So there is a sea change happening. And I think it's because discerning consumers can decide to pay a small premium for brands that they like that align to their values. And discerning investors can separate companies who make a profit from companies who make a profit and, in addition to making a profit, do good for society. And they're not mutually exclusive. I want to ask your opinion about a conversation that I got into the other day with someone who was, they brought up another marketing professional, and they brought up the idea of CEO activism. And the conversation started because I saw them hashtagging CEO activism on Twitter. And then I reached out to him and said, I'd love to just chat about this because I have some of my own feelings about CEO activism. And I guess my question for you is, at least my first question on this particular topic is, is there a difference between a company building purpose into their business as you've discussed so far and ceo activism and what do you do you think these things are similar do you think ceo activism is a natural derivative of a brand with a purpose like where does this fall in the idea of the purpose advantage?

So I'm not sure if I understand the exact language around CEO activism. Yeah, no problem. CEOs represent brands. And so when I think of CEO activism, for example, I think of Levi Strauss' CEO, who started a conversation on gun violence and gun policy reform and has managed to get hundreds of other CEOs of companies to sign a pledge that that's something that the vast majority of Americans want and the vast majority of large companies also want. But he's doing that on behalf of his brand, Levi Strauss, right? Not as a CEO, you know, personal, personal kind of thing.

Yeah, that was my, so the take that I had on CEO activism from my standpoint was the, the position of the person that I was, that I was talking to was that every CEO should, as a way to separate their company, almost as a tactic, have positions, either purpose-driven, political, or otherwise, that define them as individuals and as leaders and relate to the company. And the pushback that I gave was, to me, a company building purpose into their business, although I did not articulate it this way, and maybe not even close to exactly the same way. But, you know, the idea of building purpose into their business, that to me makes a tremendous amount of sense. Standing for something makes a tremendous amount of sense. I guess my concern was for anyone in a leadership position, whether title CEO or otherwise, for them to step forward individually and take specifically political

stances on topics as a tactic feels like a very slippery slope to me versus, you know, a cultural idea inside a company. I guess for some reason, the individualistic nature of it versus the organization as a whole, it felt different and potentially more hazardous because it's great to be an activist when everyone agrees with you. But if your position is some, when people stop agreeing with you, you could have a mob running against your business, I guess, was kind of where I was coming from. Yeah, I haven't looked at the topic specifically of ceo activism but from where i sit for most companies particularly larger brands certainly public companies you know uh i can't really separate the ceo of levi strauss from the company that much and so so when he gets the ceos of other

companies to sign a pledge on a gun policy issue, he's doing that on behalf of his brand. His personal views may or may not be the same. That's not really relevant to me because he's running that company and his company as CEO has made a decision that that's important. And by the way, it's important to the employees who work there because what happened is a customer was trying on jeans and their gun accidentally went off and the customer shot themselves in the foot and no one was hurt. And we've seen employees get very upset at Walmart and bring up issues in their private internal portals around gun policy. And so the CEO of Walmart sent a letter to both Republican and Democrat leaders of both sides of Congress, so Senate and House of Representatives, and all four

of those individuals got the same letter. It said, do your job. And the reason it said do your job is because they're not. And so what we have going on in this country is a failure. And when I say Volvo, you'll think safety. But when I say government, how many people think collaboration? I don't think very many. Yet they are being paid to collaborate to solve issues on behalf of constituents. And fundamentally, they're not doing their job. They're failing. And last I checked, an F on your report card got you fired, except if you're in the Senate or Congress, where it might not. Yeah. Don't listen to Joe Rogan's new podcast with Edward Snowden. That'll take you even farther down that path. Yeah.

And that wasn't a comment toward Republicans or Democrats. That was a comment toward collaboration, which is why brands have stepped in. Patagonia is one of the most purpose driven brands on the planet. They were built on a foundation of do no harm. Patagonia decided to reimagine their purpose in light of changing consumer views. Their new purpose is protect and defend. Here you have one of the most successful brands on the planet reimagining from do no harm to protect and defend. That is a radical transformation. And Patagonia has built their business on that kind of thinking, just like many of the other brands I've mentioned. Again, purpose in combination with something else is really what drives performance. If you don't have great flavors,

you can be all about prison reform, but Ben & Jerry's is not going to get bought by anyone because someone else will pick someone else's flavor. Same with Tony's Chocolony. It's the combination of purpose and another strategic choice, whether that's innovation, whether that's access, convenience. It could be any number of factors, but it's the combination of factors around purpose that really drives consumer preference. What are the reasons that a company would choose not to align a purpose or some segment of purposes to their business? Well, first of all, there are companies who haven't sort of seen this movie yet. So they haven't gone through an awakening, right? There are companies that don't know how to get there, which is part of what I get into in the Purpose Advantage book is a workshop laid out in the book after you get through reading the stories.

And you have to have a path because the purpose can't be a marketing scheme. It needs to be related to your supply chain and your business model. So you have to think about your flywheel. Is your flywheel aligned to that purpose? Is it going to work in a win-win way? Seventh generation charges an extra bottle. They invest that money more efficiently than consumers in making a positive impact on the environment. So consumers are willing to spend that dollar. As soon as they invest it less efficiently, consumers will no longer be willing to buy seventh generation because Tide is a very strong, very reputable brand. So it's important to understand this has got to be based on business model thinking and making your flywheel better and stronger and faster, right? And some companies

haven't had a reason to sit down and look at it, but most will because they're going to find disruption is around the corner when they don't. What are some of the pitfalls of this being marketing driven and not aligned to your core principles? How would you recognize that, how would you recognize that if you, you know, how would you recognize maybe as a, as someone inside a company or even a leader of a company, if somehow you came out with a purpose driven campaign, campaigns, the wrong word, you, you, you, you made this a priority in your business, having a purpose, but it was misaligned or if it was driven more by marketing,

like how would you know you missed, I guess? Or what are some indicators that you missed? Well, the starting point for me is it has to start with your internal culture and you have to make sure the purpose is lived and breathed. If you don't live your purpose, you're going to be called out as a phony. People figure it out. And so, you know, what are the rituals inside your company and what are the things you're doing? The people who work for the company have to love the company.

If they don't, consumers figure that out. Assuming you do a great job internally, then you have to make sure your purpose is well aligned to the history and future of the company. The best purpose-driven brands have a history that they lean back into when they think about their purpose strategy, and then they refine and reinvent it to make it relevant for future consumers. And that's what I lay out in the book. It's sort of a combination of looking backward to look forward. You don't want to just come out of nowhere and come out with a point of view on toxic masculinity, have not taken strides internally to communicate that, and by the way, charge millions of women a pink tax

on razors because women aren't stupid. They know they're paying for the same product and they're paying more because it's pink. Come on. So it's like, is the topic a good topic? Yes. Was it smart for Gillette to look at that topic? Yes. Do I think they did the right thing in terms of moving forward without ingraining it in their internal culture. No, I think it was a mistake. Now, there might be people at Gillette who said, no, it was a big win. Great. Glad it was a big win for you. I think it was the wrong approach.

And I think what companies have to think about is how they make sure they make purpose of before they move forward and make sure it's not a marketing scheme. And when you introduce an idea like toxic masculinity around the Super Bowl, it sure smells like a marketing scheme to me. So one of the things that you had said very early on was, and this is an area that you've done a tremendous amount of research on, is Gen Z, and as much as you care to elaborate into how this impacts millennials as well, that this tying purpose into your business, making purpose a verb, which is a tremendous slogan,

it's very important to those generations and the people in them and the individuals making those buying decisions. You know, why is that the case? What are the characteristics, maybe, of these generations that make purpose more important in their buying decision? Sure. I think it's becoming cross-generational. So I think youth culture informs a lot of decision making, whether we're talking about entertainment, technology, food trends, yoga trends, what have you. I think it often starts with young people, but there are plenty of people over 50 who use technology and participate in yoga and pay for their Starbucks coffee with a mobile device.

I don't think mobile pay started with people over the age of 50. So young people are the canary in the coal mine on trends. That's why we spend our time paying attention to what they're thinking about. But I think a cross-generational theme is that consumers are very discerning. And when the cost of doing good is small, consumers will often choose to do good as long as there's other strong benefits. If Bombas doesn't make better socks, I'm not going to pay for those socks. They're too too expensive but I've tried them on and they're amazing and they're better and it's worth it and so the key part here is there are consumers who shop on low price for sure and that's a market and there are brands that compete on low price and that's fine if your

strategy is to compete on low price you're probably going to not follow a purpose and sustainability model most of the time sometimes you will because Walmart actually does a very good job of thinking about sustainability, and they do compete on more price. But many brands won't. And so as a result, what I think is, as companies are thinking about, hey, we have to retain our employees, we have to engage our employees, it's going to have a positive impact on employees, and consumers are going to be willing to pay a small incremental amount. Not a large incremental amount, a small incremental amount, as long as we deliver on a great product or a great experience. And if it's really, really that great and they understand your purpose,

then the extra couple of couple cents or 50 cents or whatever it is. And the different, you know, different products have different amounts is going to be okay. And if the brand isn't that strong or they don't understand your purpose, then I'm not going to pay an extra quarter. What was the impetus for this? Because it doesn't feel like this has always been the way that buying decisions were made. What was the impetus for this? Yeah, I think what's happened is we have a fundamental shift happening in the way of

sort of macro trends. So lack of government collaboration creates a purpose void. Lack of innovation in religion, organized religion, creates a purpose void. And when I say organized religion, not too many people think innovation. And so historically, people got a dose of purpose through organized religion, but they're not joining organized religion at the same rate. And historically, government dealt with societal issues, whether it's the environment, whether it's equal rights,

whether it's equal pay, whether it's whatever. But between lack of collaboration in government and lack of participation in organized realism, you have a purpose white space. And part of the purpose white space, not all of it, is being filled by brands that understand people still have a fundamental human need to feel good about the decisions they make. And when the cost of feeling good about that decision is small, it's not too hard to decide to do it.

When the cost is greater, it's not too hard to decide to do it. When the cost is greater, it's hard. And so I think what we see is that in combination, we have the CEO of the largest investor on Wall Street telling the CEOs of public companies, Milton Friedman was wrong. The objective you have is to both make profit for shareholders and do good for society. When the biggest dog on Wall Street says that in a public letter to public company CEOs, and the other factors I've just described happen in the same C time period, right, all happening in the same window, what you see is a fundamental shift. And consumers make choices, and sometimes they choose the low-priced brand. But when they

understand the purpose and they value the quality of the brand, they'll pay an extra couple cents for it. You know, that extra few cents times millions of purchases is the difference between success and failure. You know, it's a close fight. So I work with a lot of middle market and small market businesses and brands and, you know, some of the pushback that I've gotten, and I won't say this is, um, I don't want to classify it as the majority of the feedback that I get, but I, but I have gotten this enough to mention it to you here that, um, that these, these businesses are concerned that they don't want to pump the charity that

they, that they, they don't want people to think that they are somehow, and these are actually terms I've heard, pimping a charity in order to get their business. And what I'm hearing is that if that was ever a concern, it feels like it's no longer a concern, especially if the action of aligning with a specific charity. I'll give you a case in point. My wife owns an independent insurance agency. She's owned part of family business. They're heavily aligned with the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. And they, for a very long time, did not publicize their fairly strong connection to this organization because they didn't want people to think that somehow they were doing that simply to get their business. And they didn't publicize it, and it's only been in the last year or so that they've started to talk more about it. And is there a concern there? How would you, in your position,

talking most of the time to much larger companies, how would you quell that concern if there's someone listening here who's saying, I've never really wanted to talk about the reason I do this or the reason I'm so closely aligned with this organization? What advice would you give them? What console? Well, this isn't about your necessarily personal view. It's looking at the history of your company. Why was your company invented? Even if you're a small company, there's probably a reason it

was created. What was the reason the founder created that business? And if you can look at that history, then look to the future and then identify things that you're really good at that can make the world better. You could be a small local healthcare clinic. But if your employees are unhealthy, I have to say, are you really serving all of your stakeholders? You could be a small local bank. If your employees are in debt and don't know how to manage their finances, are you really serving all your stakeholders? I mean, there are, I promise you, small regional banks in this country where probably half of the employees live paycheck to paycheck. Why are the people who work in this bank not getting expertise from the other people who work in the bank? So I think, you know, there are not commodity products and there are not small brands they're only people who think that way you don't have to be small there are small companies making

big changes and growing quickly and I can pick any category so you can leverage your expertise in the category you're in to make a difference I mean if you're a bank I presume you have some financial expertise so you shouldn't have employees who don't understand finance well. It's your moral duty to make sure that your tellers don't live paycheck to paycheck, that they understand it. And I'm not saying that happens in every organization, but I would make a guess that in a lot of organizations, there are common problems. Walk into the local hospital and find a large number of employees fighting obesity and not with a good sense of what the right thing to do is in terms of taking care of themselves. That's a failure.

That's a failure of that local hospital. I want to be cognizant of your time, but I do have one more topic, which is inside your purview, but slightly off from from where we've talked so far. And in particular, it's a stat that that you have on your website related to millennials. And it's 53% of millennial households already have children. In the industry that I spend the majority of my time, which is the insurance industry, there is this ongoing a millennial, I'll turn 39 next year. Um, and you know, this, this, now that you have this generation, which was talked about for so long as being different and you know, all the things, and, um, I'll have a link to actually you, you do a very good job in your, your speaking sizzle reel of kind of breaking down all these stereotypes that we've believed about millennials for so long.

You know, the laziness and all that super cliche stuff, which I think hopefully most of us have proven isn't true. Unfortunately, I still run into quite a few people who have this preconceived notion that somehow millennials are intrinsically different. And maybe in certain aspects they are but i'm very interested and here's what the question comes in in how uh these millennial parents who now most likely have homes or or are in a more stable even if they're still renting more stable environment like what are their you know buying trends as parents as maybe versus what the common beliefs would be? What are you seeing in the market? What should brands be prepared for? Sure. I mean, first of all, I wrote two books on millennials. One was called Millennials with Kids. The myths about millennials,

the generational myths, are very counterproductive. In addition to being out and out wrong, it's a terrible way to think about a cohort that you're trying to win over. I mean, you can't think of a cohort as lazy and unemployed and then try to win them over. It's not effective. The fastest growing group of people making $100,000 or more in this country are millennials over the age of 30. And the reality is 10,000 women today are going to start a family and they're millennials. So we have to move past generational stereotypes. What I think is important and what I made a point of earlier is youth culture does set a lot of trends in this country. There are lots of people using mobile pay over the age of 50. Young people started the trend. There are lots of people

doing lots of things in terms of healthier living, work-life balance, including people well over the age of 50. Again, those trends come from young people. I think it's important not to get sucked into the generational myth world and to look at hard data and make good decisions. Macroeconomics and geopolitical things affect all of us. My father knows exactly where he was when John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and it's not relevant to me. And if you graduated college in 2008 and 2009, the economy was tough, and you might have had to live at home for a period of time because he couldn't find a job. So I think it's important that people pay attention to the reality of their opportunity and really sort of embrace culture change. And a lot of times it's just about that.

Millennials work hard if they want to get ahead. And a lot of them do. And I know people who are lazy, who are older. I know people who are lazy, who are younger. I mean, it's like, come on, really? And people are like, millennials have a short attention span. I know plenty of people who are older have a short attention span too. All of us do. So I think what's important is that people really think about what the hard facts are. And then as they think about that, where are you

trying to go? And what is the history of your business that you can use? Some of that original history. You need to be a good historian to sometimes build a really strong, effective, powerful business strategy and brand model. Because that original history is likely part of the fabric of what your future is. Whether you're the world's smallest company or the world's biggest company, it's probably buried and you just have to dig it out and then use that as a springboard to think about how you move forward. Yeah, I could not agree more with that. Actually, while you were talking, I was looking up this piece of research that I found the other day, and it's not in my pocket,

so I can't pull it up right away. But it basically was this study that came out, and there was a whole paper around it, which basically described how every generation and they had records like back into the 1600s and then they had one um one uh essay that was written like back from like the days of like marcus aurelius and stuff where um every generation always believes the generations that follow them are lazy and do good in, you know, ruining the world. Like, like this has been the case, like literally the whole point of the paper was like, this has been

the case forever. And it, you know, it's just right now, the group of people who are of the age to complain about those ahead of us are the baby boomers. And then someday it'll be the millennials and they'll be complaining about, you know, whatever they're calling the generation two before them. And like, it was, it was really interesting set of research and around the idea that this is the, this idea that the generation once removed from us is always like ruining the world. Like that is, there's been people writing about that since, you know, recorded history began and that we shouldn't believe any of the nonsense that we read around, you know, millennials somehow being intrinsically different. I mean, they obviously have some different buying patterns, but that has little to do with them as people and more maybe the world that they grew up in. Yeah, you know, I think that's probably a fairly accurate statement. I'm sure that people thought my generation, and I'm an Xer, was lazy and entitled. Again, I think some of it is moving past the hype. The people who are usually hyping it the most have a reason for it. I'm trying to sell a magazine or a newspaper or whatever. I'm trying to get attention. So I try to make the headline more sort of off the charts to drive that. So yeah,

I think it's probably a very crude statement, but I haven't seen the research. So yeah, if I find it, I'll email it over to you just in case you find it interesting. There was also a really interesting podcast that Eric Weinstein did when he was interviewing Andrew Yang, the presidential candidate, how they were talking. The purpose of the interview was not really Andrew Yang's candidacy, although obviously he was there in small part to promote it. It was more about why Eric Weinstein believes that, like, save, you know, his words, he tends to be slightly provocative, but, you know, saving the cultural discourse in America has fallen to Gen Z. And that, you know, the quote, unquote, forgotten generation that that this is their time to shine and recapture, you know, logical and rational

conversations and stuff like that. It's really interesting. Just, you know, you mentioning that you're the yeah. Yeah. I think all interesting stuff, lots of moving parts, lots of change happening. What a great opportunity for business owners, whether you're small or large to lean into that change and, and, and you know, do better for your shareholders by doing better for society. Yeah. Well, Jeff, I appreciate you coming on the show. You've shared a tremendous amount. I've taken four and a half pages of notes. I'm sure the audience has gotten a lot out of it as well. And I encourage everyone to go out and we spent spend a lot of time on The Purpose Advantage.

You have three other books addressing Gen Z and millennials and marketing to them and some of the cultural things as well. Where are the best places for anyone listening to come and connect with you and the work that you do? You can email me if you want, jfromm at barclayus.com. I'm Jeff, J-E-F-F-R-O-M-M. So I have a you know, brand purpose and, and youth culture and innovation. So hopefully, uh, hopefully I can help. And, uh, all four of the books are on Amazon. Excellent. Thank you so much for your time, Jeff, and nothing but the best buddy.

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