2024 was a transformative year in the communications business, from incorporating artificial intelligence into the daily rhythm of business to dealing with an onslaught of misinformation and disinformation. Join “Can You Hear Me?” co-hosts Eileen Rochford and Rob Johnson as they recap the big lessons of 2024 and share what we believe will be the most critical communications themes for 2025.
Rob Johnson: [00:00:01] Hello again, everyone, and welcome to our final edition of the Can You Hear Me? Podcast for 2024. I'm Rob Johnson, president of Rob Johnson Communications, and I. [00:00:26][25.4]
Eileen Rochford: [00:00:26] Am Eileen Rochford CEO of The Harbinger Group, a marketing and strategy firm. So today's episode is a special one. We're closing out the year with a look back and more importantly, a look ahead. We'll recap the big lessons of 2024 and share what we believe will be the most critical communications themes of 2025. 2025 will be a transformative year for the communications profession. There's no doubt about that. We all agree. And understanding the trends and themes is going to be vital to helping consultants and agencies deliver the best for their clients, as well as for C-suite executives of all types. To do the best by their organizations. So let's let's dive in and talk about the various themes that Rob and I think you guys should have at the top of your list. [00:01:17][50.7]
Rob Johnson: [00:01:17] That's right. So the first thing we have to discuss is ai-powered personalization. So air tools have been a hot topic. We've talked about it on this podcast multiple times, but in 2025 they're going to become essential not just for efficiency, but also for creating really hyper, specifically personalized communications at scale. So it's not just about plugging in an AI tool and letting it run. It's about using AI to deeply understand your audience, what they want, when they want it and how they want to engage. All very important. And communications. Professional professionals will need to master tools that provide insights from vast data pools like social listening, predictive analytics. But you also have to balance that with a human touch. Overreliance on air. I can feel robotic. And authenticity is still king. We've talked about it over and over, Eileen, about yes, I remember back in the day when we first started doing those episodes on air and we said we think this is going to take over the whole world and it's front and center. [00:02:13][55.5]
Eileen Rochford: [00:02:14] But it is. [00:02:14][0.6]
Rob Johnson: [00:02:15] It has to be. The old grain of salt needs to be included in this whole thing. [00:02:18][3.6]
Eileen Rochford: [00:02:18] Definitely. It's been an interesting year watching the use of AI evolve, specifically in the marketing communications agency world and just in marketing communications in general. Any organization that runs paid campaigns is now benefiting from kind of embedded in A.I. in whatever tool that they're using. Honestly, whether they realize it or not, I sure hope they realize it. Well, they should, yeah, because the ability to personalize is increasing at an extraordinary rate. I genuinely didn't think a year ago that we would be where we are right now. So, so. Well, it's people have adopted this at a at a faster rate than I thought was going to happen. The the agencies in particular are figuring it out. It's not A.I. isn't the enemy. In fact, I can very possibly be our our best friend, our super hero, you know, if it's used correctly and responsibly, genuinely, that's the key. So I attended the Marketing Artificial Intelligence Institute's summit a couple of weeks ago, I think it was in early November of 2024. And again, I'll just say, if you want to learn about the potential or artificial intelligence in marketing, the marketing Artificial Intelligence Institute is one of the resources that you should know about and dive into deeply quickly. It's a it's a vast resource of courses that you can take, mastermind groups that you can join, things like that. It's really so, so helpful. And that's for anybody, whether your agency marketing team inside of your organization or nonprofit or for profit doesn't matter. Awesome, awesome resource. But what I learned was people are are just beyond the whole, the template of how do you use A.I.? They're now integrating A.I. tools of their choice that they've vetted into their workflows and processes. So it's content creation, creating of digital advertising that's super personalized to their target audiences using AI to figure out where are those audiences, which is a very important thing in 2025, and I can tell you why. So media shrinkage, number one reason media disengagement. Number two reason consciously disengaging from news media information. I think that's the statistic that we cited recently on another episode was more than 40% of Americans who are consciously disengaging. So you have to figure out where are your people? And I various tools that exist that you can learn about probably through the Marketing Artificial Intelligence Institute. They can help those tools can help you figure out where are your people. So that personalization bit is useless if you don't know where to find them, right? So anyway, there's just so many resources now that exist to help you get on board. Master at quick. And really understand the potential, whether it's in the data mining side of things or in the writing in a much more personalized, engaging way to your various audiences. The resources have evolved so well and quickly in the past year that I can't say anything. But you should be learning about these things and taking advantage of them. [00:05:37][198.9]
Rob Johnson: [00:05:38] And that had to have been fascinating to attend that and to just your brain's probably exploding with all these great ideas and you heard them give ideas and then all of a sudden you were thinking about how you're going to implement it in your The Harbinger Group. And for me, it's the thing that's so exciting and yet so daunting sometimes is I try to imagine new ways to use it on my own. Let me try this on for size. Let me try that on for size. And that's the exciting part, is I really feel like as a marketer and as a person that runs his own communications firm, I'm just scratching the surface and I don't know what I don't know, but I have so much intellectual curiosity and you and I always talk about being lifelong learners, and that's one of the many things we have in common, is I'm excited by it. You know, the whole day of everybody's jobs is going to be replaced. And, you know, robots are going to do everything. And then we're like, Nope, that's not going to happen. And I think we realized that early on, some of those early AI discussions we had when you so aptly said one time about we get paid for our ideas, they need us. Yeah, but we can use help to be more efficient to, to, to find out where that audience is. Because truly, you know that my whole business is it's a tough it's a tough slide right now because of the reasons you've expressed and to watch it from a little bit from afar. Now I'm not I don't say, that's great, but it's like there's no turning back that clock back. That's what's happening to them. And how are we as professionals, communications professionals going to be able to to kind of leverage that and figure out how we can be useful, most useful to our clients when they're trying to not only create the content, but also figure out where the audience is. [00:07:20][102.0]
Eileen Rochford: [00:07:21] I just want to go back to one of the things you said when you set this up for us so well, and that was that the overreliance on I can feel robotic. And that authenticity is still critical to your marketing success. I can't underscore that enough because I know I came across as this, I'm 1,000% in on, you know, use of ideals and marketing. It's true. I it does excite me. I certainly see the potential. There's so many ways to benefit. It's almost like you can operate at warp speed in a way by taking advantage of the tools. However, you have to slow that down consciously and review everything that you create for a number of things. But first and foremost, using your bullshit meter. Is this really us, right? This this. You know, you can set up great props with that. Understand your brand voice and the keywords that you use and all kinds of things. But at the end of the day, when you read that back, a human being needs to read that back. I should say, you know, intimately familiar with your organization's brand, voice, personality, tone, all of the, you know, elements of your brand to decide what do I need to fix there to actually help this to bring true more for us? So always the word of caution, the human being, critical thinking aspect and the creative aspects that will never go away. You have to, in fact insert that even more so in any of the content that you might be generating through some of these tools. So I just wanted to close this part out by saying, don't ever forget that you will not sound authentic. In fact, there are so. [00:08:52][91.5]
Rob Johnson: [00:08:52] Many, you never miss an opportunity to remind people of that, have we? [00:08:55][2.5]
Eileen Rochford: [00:08:55] Right, right. Yeah. And that's I think it's really, really important. [00:08:58][3.0]
Rob Johnson: [00:08:58] Can I can I just add one more thing? I know we're closing out. [00:09:00][2.0]
Eileen Rochford: [00:09:01] You bet. [00:09:01][0.2]
Rob Johnson: [00:09:02] These welcome The I've had so many people say, my gosh, I hate writing. I hate doing all this. I so awesome because I just plug it in and it goes great. And I'm like, Well, that's good for you. I actually love content creating. I love writing scripts, I love writing copy. I love this. I just love it. And so whenever I need help in that regard with a I, I can take something and then I'm going to go in there and, you know, being an old news anchor, you're an editor. All right. You know, we couldn't write a lot of our stories because of, you know, union rules. But I could go edit everything. And so I'm that's my thing I've been doing for years. So I'm going to take it, make sure it's authentic to the voice I want it to have with the client and and to make sure it's good. And I have enough confidence in my ability to do that, that it's like, yeah, the human voice does matter. So we say it all the time. And that's one of the illustrations I just wanted to provide. [00:09:47][45.4]
Eileen Rochford: [00:09:48] Yeah, excellent point. The, the generic kind of feel that you get a lot, even if you're great at writing prompts, there are just phrases that get used over and over, over such as? So it's such and such is not just this, it's also blah blah. It drives me. But you're seeing it. You hear. [00:10:05][17.8]
Rob Johnson: [00:10:06] That? You hear. [00:10:06][0.4]
Eileen Rochford: [00:10:06] That over and. [00:10:06][0.4]
Rob Johnson: [00:10:06] Over. Other times you're like, Yeah. [00:10:08][1.6]
Eileen Rochford: [00:10:09] So stupid phrases like that that, you know, just, you know, smack of this was something was, you know, smashed in. To an AI tool, and it generated this content, which is why, folks, when you're listening to our scripts that never go through, I, you know, that's not what you're getting. It's it's human thought for sure. [00:10:30][21.1]
Rob Johnson: [00:10:30] He's authentic and unique. I wonder why. That's because I had enough. You know, we have enough confidence that, you know, we don't. We don't for this. We don't need. [00:10:39][8.9]
Eileen Rochford: [00:10:39] It. No, we have, you know, veteran news anchor, Rob Johnson creating our scripts. So there you go. Just so you know. [00:10:45][5.8]
Rob Johnson: [00:10:46] All our secrets. They're coming. [00:10:47][1.0]
Eileen Rochford: [00:10:47] All our secrets. Yes. So, okay, so the second big theme is purpose driven communications. We've seen this trend kind of building and evolving for several years, probably 4 or 5, I would say. But in 2025, it's obviously no longer optional. Today's audiences, consumers, employees, investors, you know, insert your favorite audience, whoever they may be, they want they want to align with brands and organizations that just genuinely stand for something and certainly fit their own personal values. It's not just about talking the talk. They have to walk the walk. Communications is going to play a pivotal role in ensuring that organizations aren't just claiming values like sustainability, anything related to DIY or community impact. Take your pick. There's so many that are kind of rated importance on the trust of an organization scale right now. The communications folks, we're going to be responsible for embedding those values into actions by the organizations, making sure does does our walk match the talk as well as any messaging that we create genuinely all communications. So internal messaging, external messaging across any kind of platform that's going to be our really important job is making sure that everything matches up and we ring true wherever we are. And we're not pretending to be one thing to one audience and a different thing to another audience, even marginally, like you just we need to tighten that up quite a bit in 2025 because that the microscope on organizations of all types and leaders in organizations of all types is really being tightened and tightened. So one more thought, though, on this, is that increasingly this is a delicate balance because even on DUI, as an example, there's been quite a bit of pushback just in the last year on that whole concept. So, you know, really understanding your audience and how much different values that are yours, your organizations are important to them, and it helps to discern what should we be maximizing here in our communications about our various values and how they align with our actions, and what should we be dialing back in? You know, it depends on the organization and the choice of the leadership, frankly. But that's a big trend, isn't it, Rob It's Olympic in 2025. It's super important to be paying even more attention to it. [00:13:18][150.5]
Rob Johnson: [00:13:18] You've raised such an interesting juxtaposition here, Eileen, because, you know, when we first started talking about millennials and Gen Zers and they want to be attached to a brand that's purpose driven, the things that you just said that was full steam ahead. Got to stand for something. We have to do this. And then people started standing for things and sometimes it might have been sustainable or it might be die or whatever the case was. And then all of a sudden there's been pushback. The political landscape landscape has shifted, right? And so and the effort to make sure that you are standing for something, people, brands in particular, are having to figure out, okay, do I need to dial that down a bit? So you brought up a really brilliant point because it's not just like stand for something you're the consumers are going to love it. Some consumers are going to love when you stand for something. And I'm not pitting the politics of today with, you know, generations. I'm saying they're kind of two separate things, but they both have to keep your eye on both balls, though. There's two balls in the air. Now. There might have been one for a while. Now there's two. And the thing is, you see a lot of these companies dialing back their know. They're saying, we were in on that. And we got a lot of pushback and now we're not so much in on that. So it is truly a delicate balance, as you said. And I think it's for that particular reason because you have to they're not always aligned competing interests or kind of different competing interests here. And if you're a brand or you don't want to get on the wrong side of that and then all of a sudden have your brand harmed in a, you know, catastrophic way. [00:14:46][87.6]
Eileen Rochford: [00:14:46] Yeah, yeah. No question. And how to avoid that is a really good question and frankly, one that we get asked a lot. Should we be out in front and standing side by side on this issue? Should we either put out a statement or should we? This is something that's important to our constituents. Should we make sure that they know where we stand? And it doesn't have to be political. It could be any kind of issue, frankly. Yeah, but we get asked that a lot. And the answer, those counselors that we typically give just pulls them, pulls any organization and their leadership team back to an examination of their values. [00:15:24][38.2]
Rob Johnson: [00:15:25] Let's go back to you. [00:15:26][1.1]
Eileen Rochford: [00:15:26] You value to them? Yeah. And does it serve the audiences you seek to serve? Standing against standing with this issue, Standing against this situation. Does it serve them? Is it in service to your service to them? Is a question we often asked. Ask. So it's almost impossible to go wrong when you go back to your organizational values as even coupled with your culture. That's that lens is so strong. If you've put in the work to make sure that you have as clearly identified, super true north values for your organization. And if you haven't, well, gosh, maybe that's your top thing to do in 2025, because how the heck else are you making decisions other than profit, which I guess plenty of organizations might just make that their deciding factor or not? Yeah, certainly nothing wrong with that. If that's your value. If your value is wealth accumulation. Okay. Got it. That's cool. So that's your mechanism by which you make your decisions. But you have to have some kind of mechanism by which you can choose. Yeah. [00:16:31][65.0]
Rob Johnson: [00:16:32] Agreed. All right. So the next thing we want to talk about is crisis readiness. Not we're not sitting here saying, crisis communications. It's a new thing on the blog. It's been around for a million years. But the way that it's conveyed, the way that it is prepared for it needs you need to be even more nimble than maybe you were in the past. So the past few years have shown us how quickly the landscape can shift from pandemics to social movements to geopolitical conflicts. Bunch of those right now in 2025. Being proactive about crisis planning is a must, I would say, fill in whatever year you want to and it's a must. And the key word here is proactive. Communications professionals will need to help clients map out potential crises. We're talking about things from data breaches to reputational risks and prepare messaging for multiple contingencies. And this is something that we've talked about a little bit here and there about making sure that you have various scenarios plan because the information travels so quickly, and if you're reactive, you will never, ever get in front of it. And this is not a new idea either. We've shared this on multiple occasions. [00:17:34][62.4]
Eileen Rochford: [00:17:35] So asking yourself the question, have I continued to kick the can on investing time and effort into crisis planning? If the answer is yes, then this is your public service announcement yet. And Eileen, it's time to say I am ready to do this and commit the resources and help your team to at least have the semblance of a plan. So Rob's point about the spread, the the pace, the rapid nature of the spread of misinformation, disinformation in particular, that's probably your number one reason why, if you haven't done even the rudimentary elements of crisis planning to do, you need to be able to get a hold of in the instance of where all of your your technology systems have been shut down. Do you know how can do you know the phone numbers for the critical people on your team? Simple things like that. I mean, I'm talking at the base level here. That's that's kind of funny. But do you know who they are? Do you know who your partners are who can help you? Reputationally speak up on your behalf. Have you have you established solid relationships with those partner organizations and other influencers in your business sphere of life, as I call it? Yeah. And could you reach them if you couldn't get into your email? So have you taken all the steps to take it? If it's on your laptop, if it's in your systems and kind of owned by your organization and if your organizations you had ransomware embedded and you couldn't access anything, what's on your phone? Is it enough? Do you have the semblance of a crisis plan, the steps that you take, meaning who do you have to convene? Where are your essential basic messaging scenarios stored? If they're just on that, that not drive, but if it's if it's in the sphere of your organization that's under a ransomware attack, that's that's pretty dumb. So make sure that you have another means to access those documents in a highly confidential safe place. So these are the kinds of questions that you have to ask yourself. And it takes a little bit of time to go through these different scenarios. But if you haven't done it by now, you sure as heck better do it right away. So that's your public service announcement? I don't I don't really know what else. [00:19:45][130.2]
Rob Johnson: [00:19:47] We. [00:19:47][0.0]
Eileen Rochford: [00:19:47] Have up to this topic. [00:19:48][0.5]
Rob Johnson: [00:19:48] Around the edges there. And you went in pretty deep. And that's that's as well as we slash. You have articulated it because people look, I think from a macro standpoint, crisis management, whenever I have discussions with people about doing crisis management, they view crisis management as, okay, the crisis happened, now what what do we do? And I'm always like, if you're waiting for the crisis to happen before you do any planning. And I feel like sometimes you feel like. Gosh. This, you know, this communications person's trying to, you know, the length of the engagement or this or that or, you know, charge us more or whatever. For them, it's a money thing. And I'm like, well, it is a money thing because crisis management is not about what we do after the crisis happens. It's about what we do before the crisis happens to make sure that any major reputational or financial risk that you're going to face as a brand and a company doesn't destroy you after a crisis happens. And I know that. And maybe that's the best way I've articulated it, because people I was like, I'll just hire you. You know, a few hours after, I'm like, We're never we're going to be under the, the, the whole time. [00:20:54][65.6]
Eileen Rochford: [00:20:54] Yeah, Every minute can cost Millions are going to. [00:20:56][1.6]
Rob Johnson: [00:20:56] Get killed on messaging. We're going to get killed on just being clunky. And what if the ransomware attack scenario that you just presented is real and then like, what do I get a hold of somebody, you know, carrier pigeon or, you know, node or whatever, you know? And it's so funny when we have all this technology at our fingertips. And yet I've seen it happen, you know, it's like, you know, banking information or things like that which aren't exactly related to this. But, but, but for example, purposes it is you got to go old school. You got to have stuff written out. You got to maybe make a phone call instead of ACH or whatever the case is. But as it relates to crisis, what you brought up some great points. How are you going to handle it? And if you haven't gone through preparation on the front end, man, there is no you could hire the best Google look up on Google, you know, greatest crisis management firm in the history of communications, and they're not going to be able to help you the way they could possibly. [00:21:48][52.3]
Eileen Rochford: [00:21:49] Help you now. That's right. It's the speed you have to build to match the speed of the spread with your speed of action. And the only way that you can do that is by being prepared ahead of time. Amen. That's pretty much it. Okay, guys, moving on. All right. So let's shift to something on the creative side. Next thing that we're going to talk about is cross-platform storytelling. So imagine it's obvious. Write a campaign on Tic TAC needs to complement what's happening on LinkedIn, Instagram, even on your client or your blog, your website has to be complementary. But more than that, it's platform also has to feel unique while still connected to your overarching brand narrative. That's kind of hard to do, but it's really important these days because different consumers with different needs, desires for engagement are on all of those platforms. So you want to be able to, you know, work effectively, reach them effectively no matter where you are. So let's not overlook the final thing here, which is video content, which we adore. And we talk about tons here because it's it's just it's a huge bang for your buck. First of all, producing great video content and then, you know, slicing and dicing into a million bits of effective content for your content marketing strategy. Super. Because like I said, bang for your buck. It's really a great value but short form videos. So that's why I said the cutting up part. Shorter, shorter, shorter. It's become the name of the game. It just keeps getting shorter, which is fascinating. So it's almost like the like combination of the creative message. And sometimes, you know, that's, that's words. But the impact of the message or the imagery that you choose and the bringing together of both of those and being able to do it, getting your message across as quickly in a visual environment as possible. But the quick is the key. It's got to be super, super, super fast. All right. I think there we just teed it up. [00:23:55][126.5]
Rob Johnson: [00:23:56] But I think the point you were raising here that you may have a message and let's say the message is our product or our service is great and you want to go to all those places. The way that you express it on tik-tok is different than how LinkedIn is an Instagram. I mean, you have to understand each one of those platforms well enough to understand You can't put the same exact message on all of those. You could still have the overarching message, but it needs to be delivered in different ways. How do I get through to people on TikTok versus how I get through to people on LinkedIn versus Facebook versus Instagram? Whatever the case is, you have to make sure that they're different enough that they're giving that platform and the analytics, that platform has it giving you the greatest chance to be seen and to be heard. And the video thing, I mean, there are certain things that we talk about a lot. We talk about video a lot. And if I could just braze one quick point to illustrate what you were saying. Powering Chicago, which is a client of both of ours, and you brought me under this project, we created this the Power Better program. And and the great thing is we created it out of, you know, from, from nothing. It was like, all right, here's we just want to start doing this. We started doing two stories per episode, 10 to 12 minute episodes and putting it on YouTube. And then thanks to Tony Bylsma, one of your genius digital marketers at The Harbinger Group who I work with frequently on this. He's. I think it's going to be better if we do five minutes. Let's do one story in five minutes. And we did that. And boom. Engagement went through the roof, especially on we were creating it through LinkedIn as well. We were learning things about this, these the cross-platform storytelling. We were learning things and we weren't adhering to just one way of doing it. And then most recently, we have the 4 to 5 minute stories that we've been doing and he's like, Hey, on YouTube shorts, these things are like a minute longer killing it we need to do. And so we adjusted and we're and we're and we're, you know, breaking out little bits and pieces of those stories to be able to adhere to what that platform wants or the people that are consuming it want need. So I hope you don't mind me giving a specific example of something that we work on all the time. But that's a great example of not there's not one way to, to, to, to, you know, skin that. I mean, there's a lot of different ways to get there. And if you see that it is shorter, that it is more nimble, that we should change and do whatever you have to be able to do it. And that's what that's what I'm really proud about our groups, you know, being able to do. [00:26:21][145.7]
Eileen Rochford: [00:26:22] Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, I can never talk about or be involved in a conversation about the power of Better Show or the YouTube channel without acknowledging the genius of Eric Nixon. It was his vision from the get go. And we all kind of, you know, evolved together. But genuinely, Eric Nixon is the guy who would bring this up. So. [00:26:42][20.4]
Rob Johnson: [00:26:43] Marin Electric. Yes. And and he himself is a content creator. So he has you know, he's got the electrical background, but he is and very high up in the 80 Electrical Contractors Association here in Chicago and Cook County. But he he really made it happen. And he and it was the biggest challenge, I think, for all of us, you and I and everybody working on it was like to adhere to that vision. And once we once we understood the vision and then we were able to incorporate our expertise, I think it's I'm really proud that it's one of the professional things I'm most proud of the see the growth, to see the quality of work and to see the innovation that continues. And that is a lot of times the cross-platform issue that we're just bringing up. [00:27:24][41.6]
Eileen Rochford: [00:27:24] Yeah, definitely. One more thing on video that I'll mention. So the, you know, testimonials, right? That word that like the bane of all marketers existence, particularly in certain industries that are highly regulated, it's it's so hard to get people to do them and particularly to get them done on video it just seems like and people just abandon left and right. Any initiatives that involve testimonials or the even the let's let's move that word to the to the parking lot for a second. Testimonials. Let's just say it's procuring quotes, experience stories captured on video from people they serve from their target audiences, from those who buy their products, etc., etc., etc. because it's just so hard. And recently I learned about this tool which we have started using, so I can speak about it from firsthand experience. It's called Mahalo Hub. M a h a. L o h u b Mahalo Hub. It's Patrick Rooney is the founder real brains behind the creation of this organization. But somehow he figured out how to make it easy to send a link to the person whom you want to get on video, have them do it from their desktop by and going through a series of questions that you have pre-populated and then that video gets saved in your portal. You then get to go into it, edit it right there. You don't have to download it nothing you can edit. All the tools you need are right there to edit and even to publish if you connect your social platforms. I think LinkedIn may be the only one that you can connect because LinkedIn just refuses to play nice with anybody. But the idea that you can do this now in one place is something that I know will be music to the ears of so many marketers who listen to this episode. It's really new. It's just on the scene this year, and so I'm trying to tell as many people as I can about it because it's so freaking great. It's value priced. Huge brands are using it and it's just changed things. Even for a nonprofit organization we've we do a ton of work with, It's made it possible to capture stories of people out in the field and for us, the marketing team to edit them. So it's a pretty neat way to get that video content that you can then make short, cha cha cha short and tell your powerful stories on whatever platform or as many platforms as you want. [00:29:53][148.4]
Rob Johnson: [00:29:53] That is a great as a wonderful idea. And because when we sit here and come up with ideas and tell you you should be doing things this way or that way, and then to be able to provide a solution right away is imperative. And because the biggest challenge is how do I get everybody on board here? How do I make it simpler? And you just provided an idea that makes it simple because truly, you know, as. As marketers, we go out there and tell everybody how great our clients product or service is and they can sit there and amplify it on the various platforms. But it's very important to have others speaking your praises, too. And so it is. You were talking about other, you know, testimonials. Gosh, that word interesting. Consumer experience, customer experience, whatever, whatever you want to call it. Like if we if we if we kind of go around, you know, through the side door there. But it's it's very it's very important. And I think that's an excellent idea. And I'd heard a little bit about it, but it's something that I'm going to go now. Hey, I need to go really dive in deep and, you know, take a look at this. So, so well done. [00:30:53][59.7]
Eileen Rochford: [00:30:53] Fantastic. Yeah. So I know many folks I've worked with for years and years have shown this and they're just like, my God, It's like rainbows, rainbows and unicorns everywhere. [00:31:02][9.3]
Rob Johnson: [00:31:03] That's what we need. That's why we're here. That's why we're here as we dive into 2025, almost. Okay, so finally, let's end on something that I know is near and dear to you. Internal communications, specifically the way workplace cultures changed so much with hybrid and remote models. We all know The Harbinger Group has been doing it for years, so you've certainly been a pioneer there. But organizations that invest in clear, empathetic communication with their teams are going to have the edge. And I think we've seen this time and time again things like creating a safe place and investing in mental health support. When employees feel aligned with their organization's mission and their values, they are going to become the best ambassadors for the brand externally. And again, you've talked about this before, but it's nice to think about, All right, where is the world heading in 2025? It's still heading here. And I know it's something that you have advocated for and something that you have invested in and something that you have put your money where your mouth is and and you're to be commended for that. But more so it's it's something that everybody needs to be thinking about. [00:32:07][64.0]
Eileen Rochford: [00:32:07] Yeah, that's true. I think the I don't even know if it's frustrations or people just not understanding why the human beings in the workplace kind of need so much more than perhaps they needed in the past. Maybe it's just because they're brave enough to to admit that they need it. And that's pretty awesome if you ask me, because we don't have to pretend and pretending that we're we're struggling, that we're suffering, that we need support. It gets us nowhere. So for employers, we just it's time to just accept that this is how it is and embrace it. Because when you do right by your people, when you give them a fair, truly fair compensation, fair Vto, fair benefits packages that include as much coverage of health care, health insurance, premium costs as you can cover, things like that. The more that you do that employers, the better kind of people you're going to have. They're going to have respect for your organization and for you. They're going to trust you more. They're going to go the extra mile when you really have to ask for that extra mile and you know that they're going to deliver on it. You're not it's going to be questionable like, great, that person I gave a 2% raise to, now I got to go ask them to do a huge, huge project in their favor. And you know, they're going to phone it in. Well, that's your own fault. Yeah. Ask me. So, yeah, it's. This is the year of just employer, you know, let's stop complaining that employees are too needy and just accept that it's it's on us to do the right thing. [00:33:42][94.6]
Rob Johnson: [00:33:42] Times have changed. And, you know, so much of the time, people, you know, fight it and they try to push back and that sort of thing and depends on the scenario where that might be worthwhile. But in this instance, you shouldn't be fighting it. You should just be acknowledging, yes, this is a reality and 20, 24, 2025 and on and on. I'm really I'm happy that you and I, some of the things that we're bringing up as priorities for 2025 are priorities that other people have identified as as the priorities as well. So I feel like we're on the right track when we talk about when we bring up discussions on this podcast. And I'm just I'm glad that, you know, that's something that we both recognize as a as a very important initiative. [00:34:23][41.4]
Eileen Rochford: [00:34:24] Yeah, the more we talk about it, the more we normalize it. So. All right. Hurray for being good and doing the right thing. Okay. Okay. 20, 25. The year of being nice. Yeah, I guess that's going to do it for another edition of Can you Hear Me? Am I right? I guess we're great episode. Okay, so I'm Eileen Rochford. If you would like to comment on the podcast or suggest a topic, please drop us a note on our Can you Hear Me podcast page? That's on LinkedIn. That's a great way to reach us. You can also send messages to me or Rob via LinkedIn. We'd love to hear from you. [00:34:58][34.6]
Rob Johnson: [00:34:59] Absolutely. Well, I'm Rob Johnson. If you like the show, please consider giving us a review on any of the platforms where you can find. Can you hear me? Apple, Spotify and More. Your reviews help other potential listeners find our show. We thank you for listening. We hope you have a happy holiday and we'll be back at it in. 25. Thanks a lot. [00:34:59][0.0]
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