The Rise of the Multidimensional Communicator - with Jim O'Leary

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Daniel Nestle: Welcome or welcome back to the trending Communicator. I'm your host, Dan Nestle. In one of my recent episodes, it might have been the last one, I said that the word of the year for 2024 should have been fractured. I kind of want to double down on that and run with it some more because I'm not entirely sure everyone gets it. Mass media has been losing ground audiences year after year to independents, upstarts, podcasters, teenagers. The monolith that once captured the attention of nearly every adult is no more. Instead, audiences go where they want, hear what they want, when they want to, which isn't a bad thing, but it sure makes it hard to reach them. You all know this. We've talked about it, I've written about it, blah, blah blah.

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Daniel Nestle: So why are so many companies and organizations and people and leaders out there still trying to use the same old playbook? Nevermind the fracturing of audiences and all those challenges? Think about the daily deluge of AI advancements, the consequences of building a distributed workforce and then trying to reconsolidate. Think about generational differences. Think about the issues that we've had in the economy. Think about society at large. The world we live in demands different and innovative approaches, not just for communications and marketing, but for leadership and business writ large. I bring all this up because my guest today is the kind of leader who gets all this and has rocketed to the top of the communications profession, largely because he knows how to help brands and people deal with all of it.

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Daniel Nestle: With a career that includes both client and agency leadership roles, he advises CEOs on how to navigate complex challenges at the intersection of business, society, culture and policy. During his 15 years at Edelman, where, by the way, I met him, he led several key global accounts, built the firm's B2B marketing capabilities, led their impact in ESG practice, and ultimately became their US Chief Operating Officer. Now he's the CEO of the Weber Sandwich Collective, North America and global President with oversight of all major global markets. I'm excited to get into the evolution of communications and our place in the future of business and more with my dear friend, the indomitable Jim O'Leary.

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Jim O'Leary: Hey Dan, how you doing?

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Daniel Nestle: How's it going, man?

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Jim O'Leary: Delighted. How's it going? Thanks for having me.

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Daniel Nestle: Well, it's great to be here. And you know, I. I am. I should tell my listeners or our listeners that I've been trying to get Jim on the show for like, I don't know, nine months, very long time reschedules.

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Jim O'Leary: But we're here now, Dan. We're here now.

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Daniel Nestle: We're here now. I mean, and, and, you know, granted, you are the CEO of one of the largest PR firms in the United States, certainly in the world. And, you know, I'm sure that takes a little bit of your time.

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Jim O'Leary: Yeah, you know, we got a few clients that we're focused on taking care of. But I'm glad to be here. I thought in your lead up, you were going to drop a, like an Elon Musk, you know, telling his followers you are the media now with that, with the media democratization kind of feel you had going on there.

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Daniel Nestle: Well, it's kind of, you know, that's the landscape we're dealing with. I tend to, I tend to not like, mention these really controversial people because, you know, yeah, I have listeners from all over the spectrum. But, but you're right, Musk. You know, Elon's onto something there and he's right. He's, he's reflecting the reality that we live in this whole fractured world we live in. And that makes it even more critical, I think, to have a, you know, to have somebody on your side, to have somebody that supports you, who gets it and could shepherd you through that crazy world we live in to shepherd you through these changes. It's one of the reasons why I started the show and why I'm so passionate about talking about the future of communications and about AI and about these things because our profession needs help.

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Daniel Nestle: And look, your role as the CEO of one of the major players in the industry puts you in a very interesting and unique position to have a bird's eye view of all these changes. And you're dealing with clients and you're dealing with leaders all over the world, really, who have perspectives to share. And, you know, you are, you're taking it all in and making recommendations to your people.

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Jim O'Leary: So really what I feel, really, I feel really fortunate, to be honest, that I guess I just talked to so many smart people. It's part of my job. Right. I guess by the time this, this runs, I'll have been returned from Davos from the World Economic Forum in Davos, which is the, you know, the one time each year that I get to hear from, you know, dozens of really smart CEOs, and then the comms and corporate affairs and public affairs teams that support them. So, yeah, one of the best parts of my job, I guess, is That I get to, you know, take it all in and then have some perspective. That, quite frankly, is, you know, probably why I get to have so many more additional meetings with other clients to talk about it.

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Daniel Nestle: Well, you know, it's. We, We. We always bandy this term thought leader about all the time. And, you know, it's. Sometimes it's. It's really meaningless. Yeah. Just like any other thing. But it's kind of true for you. Like, you are out there, you're sharing perspectives. You are on panels, you're in. In industry magazines, you're in. You're in leading financial publications and mass publications. Look, I mean, you know, I was gonna, you know, ask you to talk a little bit about your meteoric career, but to be honest, anybody who's got an Internet connection can. Can figure all that stuff out. And, you know, I'm really more. More kind of keen to use our time to just hear your perspectives on things. So, you know, I.

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Jim O'Leary: Happy to do that.

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Daniel Nestle: I will shut the hell up as soon as I can, but I want to kind of lead into this.

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Jim O'Leary: Your show, Dan.

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Daniel Nestle: You just, you keep going.

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Jim O'Leary: This is great.

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Daniel Nestle: I appreciate it, but really, like, look, you've had this great career. You, You've. You have, you know, you've. You've got to the top of our profession. Maybe just a little bit about any, like, pivotal moments that have happened where anybody who's listening, who's in our, you know, in our world, in marketing, communications, you know, what are like. What are like the pivotal moments that you've seized on. You think in retrospect, that kind of were game changers for you, if you're at liberty to talk.

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Jim O'Leary: Yeah, well, you know, I mean, it's funny because I actually, my thing is that I always talk to people who are starting in their career and tell them the main thing is you just got to create your own opportunity. Right. And so it's less of like, you know, these three. It would make for a nice narrative if I were to say these were the three moments that really changed the trajectory of my career. And maybe at some point I'll package it up quite nicely like that for the book. But the reality of as everyone, who everyone probably knows is it's actually just a series of like, of micro moments. Right. And you're just creating opportunity in all of those. And so, you know, I. I started as an intern at Burson in New York. It was great. I loved it.

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Jim O'Leary: I went in house after that. You know, that could be a pivotal Moment I was at Honeywell, that was also a really great experience. I was at Honeywell Global headquarters and then I was, you know, running PR for one of the divisions. The biggest division is aerospace division. Right. Then I went to Edelman and I, you know, I did a number of jobs at Edelman and, you know, again, loved that experience. Going from, you know, being in public affairs at Edelman to being running some of Edelman's largest accounts for a number of years, then running the corporate affairs practice globally, as you mentioned in the lead up, impact in ESG practice globally to build a bunch of businesses along the way. B2B marketing business that, you know, you mentioned, business transformation, business, all these other things. Right.

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Jim O'Leary: And every single one of those was its own unique and quite enjoyable moment. And then of course, by the end, I was doing those jobs and I was also the US Chief Operating Officer. So I got to run the business. It was great experience. And then, you know, even better, I come here to Weber and now I start as a North America CEO. Great company, great people, great clients. And then most recently, as you said, I'm. I'm also, you know, have. The other regions are coming into me. So I get to be in London next week with our leadership team there for emea. Really excited. I'll be in APEC in short order and Louisiana. LATAM similarly. So, you know, I think it's been really fun. And then of course, you know, a great experience all along the way.

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Jim O'Leary: I don't know, maybe it's because maybe growing up in like, in South America, which is where I grew up, Latin America, as you. As, you know. But, you know, I've always. I've always kind of been on the move a bit, and so in some ways maybe that helped influence me later on. And, you know, now I just get to spend time with all the, you know, of our smart clients and the CEOs of some of the. The best companies out there. So I'm having a blast.

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Daniel Nestle: Yeah, some of it, I think has. And. And look, full transparency. Anybody who's listening, I was Jim's client at some point, right. Not that long ago when Jim was leading.

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Jim O'Leary: That was great. Dan, you and I had some. I'm sure we'll talk about it at some point. We. Well, it's up for memories and, you know, a nice ski trip or two in Japan. Right?

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Daniel Nestle: Yeah, for sure. But, you know, and that was a really nice perk of working with your team, but I think you really elevated our game, you know, and that is that. That is really what agencies are there for. Right. Is to elevate the game and to smooth out the bumps ahead for teams, you know, and your team, you know, easily one of the best collection of people that I've ever worked with, you know, and I was going to start mentioning names, but I won't because otherwise I'll forget someone and that'll. And then they'll call me.

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Jim O'Leary: But then that when you were. That was when you were, of course, Mitsubishi heavy mhi. And I agree, the team that we built together on both sides just ultimately became kind of one team. That team. I'll never forget the strength and quality of. And also just good energy that team brought to the table. I wonder how I'd love to say hi to our friend Sakaya over at some point.

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Daniel Nestle: Oh, yeah. Our folks over there. But what I was thinking about that when you talk about pivotal moments in your career, and I was surely hoping that meeting Dan at. Meeting the two Dans or three Dans, because there were three of us at mhi, was certainly a pivotal moment in your career. I'm going to write that down. However, what I really kind of reflected on as I was thinking about, you know, talking to you today is that I don't think I've ever seen you frustrated, upset or, you know, or angry or emotional, like, emotional in a bad way. I've seen you extremely positive all the time, meet challenges with a kind of abundance mentality rather than, you know, oh, gosh, what are we going to do about this?

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Jim O'Leary: Right.

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Daniel Nestle: You know, and it's, it's stuck in my mind as, you know, when you became the CEO of Weber. It doesn't surprise me that you've become a CEO of anything. But I feel like that positivity and that approach always coming to your client or to whoever you're leading at the time with solutions or with open kind of understanding. Look, I don't know the answer yet. We'll get there. And it's a rare thing to find somebody who can do that but still maintain influence. Right. It's a kind of combination of things that I think always made you know, not only fun and rewarding to work with, but also really kind of on top of the game, you know.

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Jim O'Leary: Thank you for the flattery, Dan. It was very kind of you. I will assure you that I do, even though I try to mask it, maybe I get frustrated just like everybody else at times, and I'm sure all of the other range of emotions that you walk through, I experience all of them, just like everybody else. Look, I think there's a couple of things, right? One is our jobs as leaders. You know this. You're a leader too, but, you know, it's our jobs as leaders to. To lead. Right. And like. And that's part of leadership. I also think, you know, like, in terms of the clients, like you and you're my client, or all the clients that I'm interacting with now, it's really hard being a Chief Corporate Affairs Officer or a CCO right now, right? It could. Arguably.

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Jim O'Leary: It's harder than it's ever been. I mean, I think it. So, like, let's take it from the top. It's certainly harder to be a CEO, right, Than it's ever been. There's data to support that statement. The CEO topple rate, which is. Is a fancy way of saying the rate at which CEOs are being pushed out or resigning or fired, right? Yeah, it's like as high as it's ever been. I just saw something in Axios. I don't remember. Was it 26, 36 CEO departures in. In recent. You'll have to look it up. It's one of Eleanor's pieces. Eleanor Friend. She's great. You know her. But anyways, I don't remember the precise latest round of data, but the long and short of it is CEOs are toppling at a rate that is higher than it's ever been.

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Jim O'Leary: And they're doing that because their jobs are harder and they got to do everything that they've always had to do. But in addition to that, they got to do all the new stuff, too. Right. Much of the new stuff is in our territory. And so as a result of that, you know, they got to navigate all this complexity at the intersection of business and culture, business and politics. Right. Business and society, and all the issues that go along with that and the pushback against all of the issues that go along with that. Yeah, sure, we'll talk about all of this, but later in this podcast if you want to.

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Jim O'Leary: But the, you know, the impact of that is that then it's harder to be a Chief Corporate affairs officer or Chief Communications officer because one, arguably your role, the role is more important because you're. You're the advice that. That you provide and the work that you do is more materially important. I think that's certainly the case. And I think Most of the CCOs and chief corporate affairs officers I talk to believe that in the old days, it was like trying to get a seat at the table And I believe that the best in our business have a seat at the table, but it's more like keeping that seat in the wake of all of the pressure that comes with it. And there is an enormous amount of pressure.

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Jim O'Leary: And so this is a long winded way of me saying that when I'm engaging with them, like what they don't need me to add to the, you know, that in any way by, you know, not bringing a degree of positivity and energy and solutions orientation. Because, you know, I very much approach the positivity in a solutions orientation kind of way. Right. So like, I'm not trying to bring like a false sense of the positive in a way that is artificial, right. Or like performative, because then I'm going to not have the credibility that I have and I need to help advise or lead. But I do think that if I'm showing up and trying to bring a solutions orientation and do so in a positive way, then like you and you, or my client or others, when they're my clients, they appreciate that.

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Jim O'Leary: And it goes the same with my teams internally here, right here at Weber, the thousands of employees that we have here. I mean, you know, if a leader can't bring, you know, the degree of positivity and energy to the table, then how do you expect the rest of the team to do so?

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Daniel Nestle: Yeah, it's such a refreshing thing when you're, you know, when your leader can be, can bring that kind of energy that you might not have seeing the problems of your day to day, you know, only seeing kind of what's at your desk level. And then you're, you know, you're, you have a visionary or a, you know, practically a practical visionary, let's say, who can come in and, and basically say, hey, look, it's not bleak. Yeah, right? Things are not bleak. It's challenge. We got challenges. We got things to do.

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Jim O'Leary: Everyone. It's, it's more like, where are you going despite those challenges or because of those challenges? I mean, so, you know, the advantage that I have right now here at Weber Shandwick, right, is that we have many. But like, we got killer client portfolio, you know, best in the business. We got best people in the business. We got, we have a trajectory right now, a growth trajectory that is very atypical of our largest agency competitors. Right. We're growing more than twice at the rate that we grew last year. And you know, I don't want to name any of my competitors, but you can, or you Know what they're growing, I mean it's pretty public size, you know, what rate they're not growing at or they're contracting at more than one of them.

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Jim O'Leary: And so I feel really good about all of those if those are kind of the main, you know, some of the main metrics. But then beyond that I, I also think about some of the, you know, people oriented, you know, things that you measure and you know, we have, you know, the number of people who within our organization are like proficient with, you know, using our sandbox, which is of course loaded with all sorts of AI tools at tech and all of the rest. The number of people that we have here who are thinking about the future of media, right? The future of comms tech, the future of AI across the entire profession or within our business, the future of corporate affairs and what that looks like or future of Earn Creative.

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Jim O'Leary: I mean, I have people across this organization who can talk to those topics in a way that if I look across the industry, I just don't see any other organization that has, you know, that level of talent that we can bring to the table for clients. And I will tell you, I just this week, I can't believe it's, you know, this week because this was very early in the week. But I was with a client who is the head, the chief communications officer, you know, him, he used to work with us at a former place and we had this kind of inspiration session focused on the future of all those topics that I just ran through. And it was, it was the most fun I, I had all week.

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Jim O'Leary: And I think it was, you know, potentially the, you know, some of the most fun that he had all week. And then the team around the table as well because were just having, were very intentionally having a conversation that wasn't about us at Weber Shamwick. We weren't trying to sell anything. You know, I never like to come to a table like that and it just doesn't feel good. And then, you know, it wasn't about them, it wasn't about solving their specific problems. It was like the smart people from their side and our side all just talking about the future of media, the future of, you know, all the things that I just kind of ran through.

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Jim O'Leary: And that when you leave a several hour session like that, you can't help but, you know, feeling, you know, the energy and the excitement around where our profession is going. Because I don't know about you, Dan. Actually I kind of do know about you. But what I was going to say, is like, you know, I don't know about everybody else, but I'm certainly very excited about where we're going as a profession. I'm certainly very excited about where Webergenic and the Collective is going as an agency. And, you know, sure, there's a lot of trickiness out in the world right now is not lost on me or you or anybody else. But look, I think it's going to be in the past two years.

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Jim O'Leary: What we've seen in AI, for example, like, if what has happened in the past two years is prologue for what's gonna happen in the next two, which it is. Right. Like, it's gonna be. It's gonna be really fun.

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Daniel Nestle: Is a great way to describe it. And yeah, of course, you know me, I think it's fun too. But look, we're kind of geeks on this. We're sort of nerds are in this little world we live in. Not so little world, but it's still, you know, it's still a very interesting, like, kind of angle on the perspective, like, of the things that are changing in the world today. And I kind of wanted to, you know, talk about that a little bit about these conversations you're having about the future and what you're thinking is about the future. You said, you said earlier, one of the first things you said when you talk about your own pivotal moments in the career, you said that it's all, you know, you were always looking at how to create your own opportunity. Right?

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Jim O'Leary: Yeah.

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Daniel Nestle: And I, I get the feeling that I think every comms professional, every agency person, every marketer needs to write that down and put it like on a. Post it or on a poster on their wall. Now it's your Ted Blaso believe right sign. Because there's no, there's no future, I think, in being one of the many and being one of the masses.

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Jim O'Leary: Right.

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Daniel Nestle: In complacency. So one of the.

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Jim O'Leary: No future in complacency. Yeah. And, you know, you're a perfect example of creating your own opportunity. We're doing, we're right now on your, you know, your fancy show, which I'm sure, you know, not that long ago was just an idea in your mind that you could very much have, you know, told everybody that you wanted to do and then never have done it Right. Which is what happens with some people. And what, you know, when I talk about creating your own opportunity. And you know this, of course, because you've already kind of reflected this. But I don't just Mean it like in terms of your personal career, though, it's that too. But it's like that's actually how you're a good client person.

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Jim O'Leary: If you're, if you're like, you're thinking about your, you know, your client in the shower in the morning, and then you bring ideas to the table to help them create up to create opportunity for your client, right. Or your team, right. Your, your next time you're doing your set of reviews with your people or just even check ins over coffee and you're like sprinkling opportunities in front of them that have nothing to do with you but are, you know, like, it's just, I don't know, it's kind of like a, you know, in football, when they're always talking, when you're talking about like the best quarterbacks, right. Like the best quarterbacks just create, right. Lamar Jackson, I don't know if he's the best quarterback this year or, you know, Josh Allen or, you know, Mahomes or.

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Jim O'Leary: But anyway, like, you know, the Mahomes and Lamar Jackson and Josh Allen, they create Lamar Jackson and Mahomes may create more than, you know, any quarterback in memory. And Josh, obviously, excellent quarterback, too. Yeah.

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Daniel Nestle: So you're looking at the, you know, it's a great analogy. You're looking at the field in front of them. They're seeing those openings. You know, my friend Mark Schaefer calls that the seam. You look for the seam and you go find the seam, go straight for the scene, right?

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Jim O'Leary: And, and this is why the football analogy is so good. You look for the seams and you find it, you go for it. But also, like, you got like five reads. And so like, you know, you got your game plan and you got themes that you think you're seeing, and you go for them. But then if they're not open, you got the next seam and you got to go through your progression, as they say in football, right? But you got to do it all in a split second and then you got to make them call and you got to go for it. And then you got to just do that again over and over. Back to the point earlier that were talking about less like major pivotal career moments, more like a bunch of micro ones, right?

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Jim O'Leary: I mean, essentially, you know, similar to football. And I do think that you got to find your team and you got to go for it, but you also got to be ready. The team that you're planning for is not there to go to the Next one in terms of your progression because you know, a game plan in football or in business is no different than what was the military saying back in the day was like no battle plan survives contact with the enemy. Well, no business plan survives contact with reality. No football, no game plan of football. Contact with the defense.

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Daniel Nestle: Yeah, I would say that's even more true now, you know, with the advent of AI especially and with the kind of challenges that we're seeing with even, you know, the talent pool that we have is better and worse in a lot of different ways. I mean it's not, you know, you don't make any, I don't, you can't make a broad brush qualitative judgment. But you know, there's a, there's certainly a decline in critical thinking for I think a lot of folks entering the workforce, but there's an vast increase in technical capabilities and comfort with discomfort. Maybe, I, I don't know. But there's. There.

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Jim O'Leary: Well, I don't know if there is comfort with discomfort, but I think that is definitely a skill and differentiator for people who are successful and even more so in today's world. So the message. How about another piece of advice that Dan Nestle has just given us all which is be comfortable. Like put that up on your TED Lasso board. Be comfortable, you know, while discomfort. Ted. Yeah, I do think, I mean like so, you know, I love to see the acceptance of much more technical skills in our profession. I, you know, in this meeting I was telling you about earlier with cco, former colleague of ours, much people on my team, I mean I'm introducing our team and it's like the difference between that and me introducing a team 10 years ago is that it's mind blowing.

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Jim O'Leary: And it's funny because, you know, I literally just thinking about this as we speak, I hadn't even thought about it in the moment, but I'm going around the table, right? Let me introduce you to this person. This person is head of product. This person is a, you know, has a software development team underneath them. What are they doing? They're doing, you know, they're doing builds for clients. They're doing our own AI stack, right? They're doing our own core AI platform so that everyone has access to it. Like, like a co pilot, right? And, and so that's personal. The first person I introduced, then I introduced our global intelligence, right? Then I introduce our head of data science. Then I introduce our head of Innovation and commercialization.

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Jim O'Leary: I mean I'M literally going around the table and you know, I'm like, oh, well, good thing I have a me1 media person in the room. And by the way, the media person that I introduced is brilliant. And you know, she's sitting there talking, not about, you know, kind of the old school stuff.

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Daniel Nestle: I know this person. I know that person. I know this person, not that one.

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Jim O'Leary: Yeah, right. No, she's talking about, you know, how media democratization is accelerating. Right. And how, you know, we believe in the media network effect, whether it's legacy media or meme accounts, and how it's, you know, shaping narrative in a way but much different than ever before. How, you know, with media diets being personalized, like Dan Nestle said earlier on this call. Right. Or the need to engage with creators and communities and then AI's role, you know, what's the future of media? Machine readability. What's the role of machine readability and all of that. Right. What do you do in a polarized media world? Right. And then what do you do in an algorithm driven media world? I mean, there's just so much more to it.

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Daniel Nestle: Yeah.

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Jim O'Leary: And it's, by the way, it's not that the relationship game is any less important. It's just like one of a much broader set of things now. Right. And so there's still people who have very high level media relationships and our clients love and need that and those people are just as important. But then there's also people who bring a different perspective to it. And so it's just the evolution of the overall integrated media ecosystem requires kind of a much broader set of skills now.

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Daniel Nestle: I think it's an expansion. It's not, I mean, the media environment for sure, like what we used to call, what we still call top tier media.

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Jim O'Leary: Yeah.

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Daniel Nestle: Has, has contracted in terms of, you know, maybe the reach, maybe in terms of the number of journalists out there, you know, the number of those media platforms, for sure. And even influence in a lot of ways. But because of the fracturing and the rising of so many different smaller channels with smaller followings, you know, you're not going to necessarily, like even two, three years ago you would say, you know, I'm going to try to pitch this story to this, this and this. And now you're like, I'm going to pitch the story this, and then we're trying to get the free press on board and then we're going to try to get, you know, this person's substack on board. Then we're Trying this person like it is an expansion of.

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Jim O'Leary: Right.

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Daniel Nestle: The universe that you need to build.

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Jim O'Leary: It's just one big network and you might not even pitch the media first. You may actually use something that you've generated on social to pitch the media after and or you may not even pitch the media at all as part of it. But yeah, no, you're absolutely right. It's interesting because it's very audience based. Right. Because there's still a very high level CEO and what surrounds the CEO audience that is consuming a media diet. That's not, that's not dramatically dissimilar than in the past. Maybe it's online versus in the print edition, though in some cases that's not even the case itself but it's just, you know, depending on who you're trying to reach. Right. Like if you're trying to reach Gen Z. I don't know.

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Jim O'Leary: But I would venture a guess that you know, some of the major daily mainstream media newspapers are not the best way to reach Gen Z. Though in some instances it might be. But again that's the whole point of why you have data and why you have, you know, budget tool is in tech to build custom audiences in ways that were previously impossible. And then target.

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Daniel Nestle: Yeah, yeah. And I like what your description of the people around the table talking about the various skill. It's like it's in, it's very different than you write than it would have been five, 10 years ago. Every one of the people that you mentioned is essentially like a one person operation. It's not, it's no longer. This is my role, this is my function. It seems to me and especially with AI now there's no excuse not to be this way. In fact, the reason that I'm even out on my own now, I mean apart from the fact that it wasn't 100% my choice, but the reason that I'm making a go of it and trying to move forward is because I am able to be a one person company. I have so much more at my disposal.

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Daniel Nestle: I have a, I have an ecosystem of, you know, of research tools of analysis tools of creative. Creative tools.

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Jim O'Leary: Right.

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Daniel Nestle: For like, for like almost no money that give me, you know, the ability to create output that just a few years ago you would need six people at an agency.

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Jim O'Leary: Yeah. Previously would have been impossible even a year ago and maybe the tools were all available a year ago but you know, the what the output would have been wouldn't have been good enough for the quality that your clients are going to require. But you know, two years from now, imagine what all that, what you're, what the stack that you have at your disposal as a one man band is going to be able to produce. Yeah, that's very interesting. I mean it's really, you know, I was even having this conversation earlier this week in the meeting that I referred to. I was, I, I posed, I was at the table, I said how many people around here now go to either like Chat GPT or Perplexity or whatever first before Google?

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Jim O'Leary: And I think that you know, like around that table of I don't know, half or something. But I have to imagine in a month, a year, five years, whatever it is, like the answer's gonna be everybody, right? Yeah, like everyone's gonna. Because even the, even if you're doing a Google search, it's building an AI in the response anyway. But I still think that most people, increasingly more and more people are going to ChatGPT or Perplexity first. Or if you're like me and maybe you Dan, like I'm going to both. Right. And then I'm cross referencing what I get from ChatGPT and perplexity.

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Daniel Nestle: I'm not going to tell you how many, I tell me how many tabs I have open on my browser at any given time.

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Jim O'Leary: Right? You're, and you're having one right. Prompts for the other to help you ask the question better, et cetera. So I can only imagine because you're, it's.

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Daniel Nestle: It, yeah, it's a, it's a mix and match kind of integrated approach and I think the more that we know, the more tools that we're comfortable with, you know, the, the more diluted our attention may become, but the more proficient we become at answering the problems of that are around us. Yeah, there's by the way, one.

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Jim O'Leary: Of the things because again you want to go on. But one of the things that I think that one of the implications of all of this that I think clients are our smartest clients are starting to grasp is the need to just do things in a way that's much more intentionally machine readable than they have in the past. Right. And so I think that's like the future of the corporate newsroom, but I actually think that's the future of essentially much of you know, all of corporate communications. Right. And so you know, like we have, we have optimized websites or we built stuff that is very intentionally machine readable so that when you're going to chat GPT or Flexi or wherever it is to pull information on things. We've done this for crisis clients a lot like that.

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Jim O'Leary: The, the right information is coming up, which is, you know, and then if someone were to say, wasn't that essentially this a contemporary version of SEO? I would say no. I say like, they're sure there's some like, similarities, but SEO, you're just, you're influencing the results of a search versus like the single result of a search. Yeah, right, yes. Because obviously if you're doing a query against Perplexity or chatgpt, you're usually getting a result.

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Daniel Nestle: Yeah, I mean you want to influence everything. Yeah. You want to influence the results. And then you also want to have enough credibility, enough authority, enough like some of the same things with SEO but presented in a much different way. So that, so that when the, the LLMs, the large language models learn your information.

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Jim O'Leary: Yeah.

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Daniel Nestle: It will be, it will rise in the probability that they will use it in answer, you know.

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Jim O'Leary: Right.

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Daniel Nestle: Because you know, and you have to do that with conversational language. You have to do that with, you know, with a lot more kind of, it's not backlinks, but you have, there have to be more people talking about you because it's probability engine.

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Jim O'Leary: Right? Yeah.

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Daniel Nestle: My friend, my friend Mark, I brought Mark Schaefer before he, you know, I'll bring him up again. He was talking about how, and this is before ChatGPT introduced search necessarily, but he's talking about how he got a client because somebody asked Chad GPT, who the top marketing consultants were and his name was in the list. Right. And it's not because he has good SEO, it's because a lot of people out there are talking about Mark Schaefer as a great marketing consultant. And the engine said, well, the probability is that he's one. You know, he's one of the best ones out there and that's getting better and better over time. Like it's, there's nuance being added in and training happens. But you know what I was, what I really wanted to talk about, I'm sorry I got distracted with that just a little bit.

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Daniel Nestle: But what I really wanted to ask you, when you went around those, that table and you have all these different people with the, with these incredible kind of one person operation, you know, kind of people, I guess, or skills, you know, is that what everybody's going to need now? Like, do you need to have this? Okay. Yes, I'm I, and I've talked about this before on the show, people will know that I'm very kind of, I'm not gonna say pessimistic is the wrong word, but basically I think job descriptions are a load of crap. Like they're just not gonna work in the future like your standard job descriptions.

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Jim O'Leary: Certainly the. What the approach to job descriptions is a bit dated, right? It's dated. And, and yeah. Are those people what everyone is gonna need in the near future? I think certainly that the answer is yes in terms of our clients. Like, does every client need to hire one of each of those people? I don't think so. But does every client want to have access to those people? Definitely. Right. And so, you know, like, if I'm going to credibly show up to a meeting with a serious client who might be bringing some people from his or her side to the table, from a data science team, an in house data science team at an Amazon or a Google or you know, a meta or whatever it is, then like I can't show up without a, my own data science person or data science team.

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Jim O'Leary: How am I going to have a, you know, meaningful conversation? Similarly, like if I know that we're gonna have to, you know, build something in the wake of the meeting or in the lead up to the meeting if I'm gonna, you know, need to create a series of synthetic audiences to test something against or.

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Daniel Nestle: Of course, let me reframe that just a little bit. What, what I mean is the. Yes, you need a data scientist, Right? And maybe that's not, maybe that's the best example because a scientist is fairly, you know, there's certain things they need to do. But let's say, you know, you need it. Let's go with the data scientist. You know, you create a job description for the data scientist to hire this person. Right. But the fact of the matter is that there's going to be a lot of people out there who don't necessarily, may not necessarily have those like, you know, checkboxes off, right. But because of the tools that they have available to them now, they can produce just as good work as any data scientist.

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Daniel Nestle: And if they're doing that as part of what they do anyway, and that maybe they don't even realize they're now an armchair data scientist. You know, I'm not saying you should hire that person. What I am saying though is that person's traditional role didn't include data science, but now they're doing data science. So we need to be very. Or I think we're going to have to become, rather than put the job description in a box, it's more like a permeable membrane of some kind where you have a couple of core things that have to be true, but then you have to leave room for people to grow and expand and become that one person operations center in the directions that they want.

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Jim O'Leary: I definitely think that you have to be much more multidimensional as a practitioner or the. And so I'm very much agreeing with that. I do think that there's like, there's two things that are happening and it would be a false choice to choose a one or the other. So one, you need just the practitioner to be much more multidimensional. You also need specialists who are the opposite of that can be drawn on by the multidimensional practitioner to do very specialized tasks. Or you need to have an agency or a partner who can do that for you. Right. Because I don't want everybody to be like an almost data scientist. I want the person who is.

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Jim O'Leary: If I'm a client, I want the person who's running my account to be able to know enough to bring in the right data scientist or the right, you know, corporate affairs strategist or the right, you know, AI kind of like, you know, maybe like, I don't know what would be the most recent example that. I thought that was quite interesting. Someone who has, wants to essentially, you know, build a custom audience, set, target it, but then before doing so, test a bunch of stuff on a synthetic group of the exact same audience they're going to be targeting, optimize their results based on it and do all that in three. Three days.

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Daniel Nestle: Yeah, yeah. And then, and then on the flip side of that, right, so you. I hunt, I'm on the same page, but on the flip side of that you have your generalists. Yeah, Maybe this applies a far more to the people like us or the people who come up as, you know, strategists or you know, communications. You know, whether they're coming in as an account exec and moving all the way up through vp, Us, vp in an agency. Or they rise to the role of manager, senior manager, you know, CCO eventually or you know, director, whatever that's traditionally been. This kind of, you know. All right, now I have media relations. I'm going to add media relations. All right, now I have, now I understand investor relations. Okay, so you're adding to the boxes. Yeah, definitely. All valuable all important.

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Daniel Nestle: But now with, you know, with these kind of, with the tools in your pocket, with the amount of knowledge that you have at your disposal, right. Some people will continue along that path, but many, I think, or more or increasingly more people like me, and I'm certainly a focus group of one, but will say, yes, I see that there's media relations that has to get done. However, strategically I don't think it's as important for my company. So you know, I'm going to downgrade that. Not going to, not going to kill it, but I'm just going to kind of turn the volume down on that instead. I'm going to focus my energy, right. On developing an owned content strategy where I can now without much help, build out an audience profile, do some research, do all this kind of stuff, right?

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Daniel Nestle: And then I can take it to the experts to validate all that stuff.

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Jim O'Leary: Right.

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Daniel Nestle: But I'm doing all this pre work or all this kind of thinking and strategizing and kind of building out a program that I would not have been able to do without four people before.

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Jim O'Leary: Right.

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Daniel Nestle: You know, and therefore my job description should sort of expand or change to kind of account for that, you know, so I'm not, I would not raise my hand and say, hey, I have run, you know, 300 analyses of charts and information on ChatGPT. I am now a data scientist. No, definitely not. But what I would say is I know how to run charts and data on ChatGPT. And I also know that I'm going to go to my friend over there who is the head of intelligence and I'm going to say, can you validate this? Is this the right approach? Does this help you at all? You know, so, you know, point is.

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Jim O'Leary: That role and that certainly changes the speed at which you can operate, right? The amount of, I mean were talking about this earlier in the week too, but the speed at which you can do many of these things is just dramatically changed and the ability to do so to your point earlier, as a one man band with a bunch of tools versus as an entire team.

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Daniel Nestle: Of people, do you think that. So do you think this kind of, this army or people get on me for saying army, I don't know. But this kind of cadre of almost entrepreneurs, let's say, even though they may not have that entrepreneur mindset, they have this kind of multi capabilities, is that the agency team of the future? Is that where you're going with keeping in mind what you said earlier about having specialists?

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Jim O'Leary: Yeah, well, No, I think again, that would be a false choice. I think that there's a role for people like that. I think that there's dramatic client demand for specialists. Yeah, I think, you know, it all depends on ultimately what our clients want. Yeah. Right. And so if our clients wanted us to do in a quick and dirty inexpensive publishing program like you were just describing.

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Daniel Nestle: Yeah.

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Jim O'Leary: Then, then maybe that would be the. Then I'd say yes, but like, that's not what they want. Maybe some might want that, but, you know, that's not what our clients typically would come to us for. Right, right. And so, you know, if our clients come to us and they want to break through into culture and the way that we do so is like the Pop Tarts edible mascot. Like, you know, maybe in the future, I don't see that being something that, you know, is that AI is going to conceive of. Do we use AI tools in order to do so? Sure. In fact, we use AI for creative, you know, a lot these days. Right. But not like in that, not in that kind of way. So I guess it depends on what clients want.

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Jim O'Leary: And then similarly, like, is a corporate affairs client going to come to us? And if a corporate affairs client comes to us and they want us to help them navigate through the biggest crisis of the year or biggest labor union negotiation of the year, or the biggest M and a transaction of the year or board level stuff, that's not what they're going to even prioritize. Doesn't mean that we might not have people on our team who are using that kind of stuff to help do the work. But a lot of times, you know, with the, as you're well aware, because you were my client, but like, you know, you didn't say, I want Jim here because he can do those things or have access to those things. Right. You, you and, and you know, the other Dans that you mentioned. Right.

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Jim O'Leary: Like we would have a conversation about, you know, like what are we going to do at the highest strategic level in order to make sure that we're successful. MHI is successful. You know, who at the time, I guess was me and Naga San successful. Right. Like those are the conversations we're having.

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Daniel Nestle: Yeah, exactly. I, I just, you know, I feel like there's a whole lot more that can be done, you know, at the base level or sort of once you have your strategy in mind, once you have all this stuff in mind, you know, even with crisis, you know, the ability, the capability to, I think Boost your strength. Like, it's not about. I'm going to delegate this to a tool or to whatever. It's about enhancing my capabilities to deliver better work.

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Jim O'Leary: Yeah, well, and I, from a crisis perspective, being able to identify the crisis proactively or, you know, see around corners like those. That's where we're using AI in a way previously impossible track narrative, you know, like kind of cut through the noise of the narrative of all the various narratives due to the complex media environment you're describing earlier. So, yeah, I think that's one place that we're definitely. Yeah, we're definitely using a lot of tech.

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Daniel Nestle: Yeah. Well, listen, I am just, I can continue talking with you forever, but I know that you're on the clock. You are a CEO after all.

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Jim O'Leary: Indeed. Though, Dan, I will say that if you want to, we can do. I'd be happy to do like a quick, you know, live from Davos.

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Daniel Nestle: Live from Davos. Well, I might take you up on that. You know, believe it or not, I have a schedule as well, but.

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Jim O'Leary: I'm sure you do.

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Daniel Nestle: What I want to do before you go is just simply give you, like, just one last words. Any big picture advice for folks struggling with the future. You know, understanding our audiences, PR communications, those folks, people that you like to talk to. You know, big picture. Any last words?

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Jim O'Leary: Yeah, I mean, big picture. Okay, well, let's see. What do we, what is the future of our profession is like what I, you know, is one of the things that I was excited to talk to you about today. And I think we touched on it, but like we only scratched the surface of it. Right?

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Daniel Nestle: Yeah.

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Jim O'Leary: So since we just touched on it, here's one of the things I would say is I think that there's a couple different camps of people. Different camps people typically fall into when they think about the future of our profession. And one of those camps is maybe more of like one that is defined by fear. Fear of much of what you're talking about. Right. There's fear of where things are going. There's fear of what AI is going to do. There's fear of the complexity of the world we're living in and what that means for people and companies and brands and those who work for all of them. Then there's another camp. Right. And that, and the defining characteristic of that is more around excitement. Right?

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Daniel Nestle: Yeah.

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Jim O'Leary: And it's, you know, excitement for what, you know, the machines and the robots are going to help enable versus take over. It's excitement about the increasing importance of communications and corporate affairs in the mix. The fact that, you know, there's not to be at the table anymore because a lot of these, of us and people in these senior roles are at the table, but it's more about, you know, delivering value while there. And, and my one piece of advice to everybody is, is be in the excitement camp, right? Be in the excitement camp. Dan Nessel was in the excitement camp.

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Jim O'Leary: And I encourage everyone to be in excitement camp because sure, there's a lot of unknowns about where all of this is headed, but I think in terms of what we can do as practitioners, what we, what our function is going to be able to do in terms of delivering value is there's more upside than there has ever been before, certainly in my entire career and lifetime. And so I'm excited and I hope everyone else is too.

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Daniel Nestle: Well, I certainly am and I'm super excited that you joined me today. You know, this, the excitement around our profession, around the technology changes, even though some of us need to be the handholders to bring people through that fear. I've. I will raise my hand and say, I will hold your hand. I'm good. I'm. That's what I'm good for. I think that we have a very positive future ahead and especially folks like you, Jim, are leading the way. So thank you so much. Anybody who wants to find Jim, you can find him on LinkedIn. Jim O'Leary. There's quite a few. O'Leary is out there, but there's only one CEO of Weber Shandwick. So find Jim O'Leary. There's. Look, go to webershamwet.com anyplace else people can find you, Jim.

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Jim O'Leary: Yeah, I think that's the best place. And you know, back to Dan Nestle. Thank you for having me on the show. And Dan Nestle is your guy if you need some help navigating this complexity. You heard it, you heard it here.

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Daniel Nestle: You heard it first, right from the CEO. That's an endorsement. I love it. I'm going to take it put on my website. Thank you very much. Jim. Was good to see you.

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Jim O'Leary: Thanks Dan. Take care.

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Daniel Nestle: Right on. Thanks for taking the time to listen in on today's conversation. If you enjoyed it, please be sure to subscribe through the podcast player of your choice. Share with your friends and colleagues and leave me a review. Five stars would be preferred, but it's up to you. Do you have ideas for future guests or you want to be on the show? Let me know at dantrendingcommunicator. Com. Thanks again for listening to the trending Communicator.