Keyana Corliss: [00:00:04] Welcome to Just Checking In.
Rebecca Buckman: [00:00:06] I'm Becky Buckman.
Keyana Corliss: [00:00:07] And I'm Keyana Corliss. Each week we'll use humor, a little irony, and definitely some self-deprecation to dive into the world of high-tech corporate comms.
Rebecca Buckman: [00:00:16] We'll use our expertise and less-than-serious take on the tech news cycle to bring you the best in the business, across comms and media, for one-of-a-kind insights and perspectives you won't hear anywhere else.
Keyana Corliss: [00:00:27] Get ready to laugh.
Rebecca Buckman: [00:00:30] This is...
Keyana Corliss: [00:00:31] ...Just Checking In.
Rebecca Buckman: [00:00:35] So we are extremely excited to have with us today Lisa Poulson, who is a veteran technology comms executive who now runs her own communications coaching practice, poseycorp, which focuses on molding innovators into great communicators. Lisa's current work at posey is informed by three decades of working with some of the biggest innovators in technology on storytelling and communications, ranging from the team that created Java, you young folks might not know what that is, but we can talk about that.
Keyana Corliss: [00:01:04] It's coffee, right?
Rebecca Buckman: [00:01:04] ... to AI leaders. It's not coffee.
Keyana Corliss: [00:01:08] Sorry. Continue.
Rebecca Buckman: [00:01:09] Yeah, it's not coffee. So she's also been training AI leaders at companies from the Magnificent Seven and lots of other clients. Prior to striking out on her own, Lisa ran the global technology practice at Burson-Marsteller and also ran comms for a couple of startups. And she cut her teeth in the valley at Sun Microsystems fighting the Java wars. It's that word again. So we're going to have to explain that. So welcome, Lisa.
Lisa Poulson: [00:01:32] Hi. It's great to see you guys.
Keyana Corliss: [00:01:35] Let me ask you a question, Lisa, right off the bat.
Lisa Poulson: [00:01:37] Yeah.
Keyana Corliss: [00:01:38] Is cut your teeth still allowed to be used in communications?
Lisa Poulson: [00:01:43] Oh I don't know, I don't know. I mean, I think the derivation of that word is like with an animal who has to sharpen their teeth so they can learn how to eat bigger meat, which I think with PR that kind of applies.
Rebecca Buckman: [00:02:00] That's true. That's true. That was a very incisive question.
Keyana Corliss: [00:02:04] You got a fan, fine. I was hoping she would roast you for it like I would, but I guess not.
Rebecca Buckman: [00:02:10] No.
Keyana Corliss: [00:02:11] You live to see another day, Becky.
Rebecca Buckman: [00:02:13] All right, well, Lisa, listen, we have known each other for at least a couple of decades. We'll try not to date ourselves, but I'm really excited to talk to you, because I think we've got a couple of big areas to cover that I'm hopeful that our listeners will really enjoy. One is probably kind of a nitty-gritty discussion about a topic that we all face, which is preparing executives for interviews, because this is always harder than people think, and many people think they don't have to prepare. And of course, they do and should. And then one of your other specialties, which we can talk about, is you are really gifted at training, especially techie executives, you know, engineers, other people who are, you know, maybe not native to the C-suite in storytelling. And I want to delve into that, but maybe we can just start with a more general issue, which is, you know, about the PR landscape today. You know, you've really seen it all, and you've got such a great historical perspective. Just generally speaking, what are your clients focused on today? What do they need help with and how is that maybe different than, you know, 10, 15 years ago?
Lisa Poulson: [00:03:13] Well, I think it's what's so interesting is I feel like today we're right back where we were almost 30 years ago when we first had the web launched. So it was in 1994/95 that people could actually type into a thing and go to a website, ordinary humans. The internet had been around for 40 years, but ordinary humans couldn't use it. Same thing is true of AI. AI has been around theoretically for 50 years, but it's been shipping for 10. It wasn't until ordinary humans could type into ChatGPT that the whole world exploded because we started to see all these use cases. So the thing that I think is the same is no one really knows what new technology is going to do until it hits the market. For me, so Java was a software programming language that allowed people to program to the web rather than programming for like Windows or Apple or Unix. It was a very big disruption of the way software was created. And with Java and Netscape and HTML all happening at the same time, it completely changed what software looks like and what people can do in a connected internet. Our biggest problem back then was we didn't have any idea what the internet of the web was going to become. We didn't know how people were going to be using Java even six months ahead. And so here I was the PR person, I was like, I have to create the most elastic message I possibly can so that six months from now it will still be true. And I can look back after Java's doing something completely different than we anticipated and say, yeah, that's what we always expected. I think the exact same thing is going on right now. No one really knows what's going to happen with generative AI. We have theories, but two-thirds of those theories will be wrong.
Keyana Corliss: [00:05:03] While you were talking about it, I was thinking to myself, I think I just had a conversation about, is this going to sound right in six months? We're still having this conversation today.
Lisa Poulson: [00:05:13] Exactly.
Keyana Corliss: [00:05:14] Is this going to be my whole life? Could you just tell me now, this is my life? I want to know.
Lisa Poulson: [00:05:18] Yes. Yes, it's going to be two years, because in two years, we'll have a much better sense of what works, what doesn't work, what people will tolerate. Then we'll move ahead and it'll be more predictable. But for the next two years, yes, this is going to be your life because we don't know.
Keyana Corliss: [00:05:38] Won't I find a new technology in two years? Is that the whole point?
Lisa Poulson: [00:05:41] I mean, I don't know. Well, but if you think about it like in terms of, like, true hardcore disruptions, it was the internet, it was mobile, and it's this. So 95 to 2008, 2008 to now. So you know, no, not in another two years.
Rebecca Buckman: [00:05:56] Okay.
Lisa Poulson: [00:05:57] So but we are living with this. Sorry, Becky. Go ahead.
Rebecca Buckman: [00:06:00] Oh no, no no no no, I was just, I was going to pivot and create a bridge, you know, because that's what we're so good at doing.
Keyana Corliss: [00:06:05] I was still wallowing in my two years of this left.
Rebecca Buckman: [00:06:07] I know, I know.
Keyana Corliss: [00:06:08] So you can create your bridge.
Rebecca Buckman: [00:06:10] I'm gonna create my bridge and say--
Keyana Corliss: [00:06:11] -- I might jump off of it but you create it.
Rebecca Buckman: [00:06:13] That was good. That was good. That all these really brilliant people, right, are creating these amazing generative AI technologies. And many of them are not very skilled storytellers by default. They may not even be very social or good at talking to people in general. And what's great about you, Lisa, is that you've worked with these types of people a lot, and I think you have a lot of strategies for better preparing these executives, you know, technical executives who often are the CEOs of small companies, you know, that many of our listeners might be working for. So what are some of the special challenges there, just at a high level, and what are some of the strategies that work? And maybe they're no different than training anybody. But I would think that maybe they're different.
Lisa Poulson: [00:06:56] Oh no, they're different. It's funny, there are two species in the world of technology that are challenging. Salespeople can be super challenging.
Rebecca Buckman: [00:07:06] Yeah. Why? Why are salespeople challenging?
Keyana Corliss: [00:07:07] I have no comment here.
Rebecca Buckman: [00:07:08] I know. Why is that? Why is that?
Lisa Poulson: [00:07:10] Salespeople are challenging because they spend all day, every day selling to customers in a particular way. And so that's the only way they know how to talk. So they're either pitching and they can sound smarmy, or they're repeating what the customer said, which you would never want to do with a journalist. You don't repeat the question. They're letting themselves be interrupted and follow the flow of the conversation. They will ramble and talk for six paragraphs when there should just be a sound bite. So that's salespeople, but that's not what you asked. That's, so I really love engineers. At Java, we had one marketing person, so I had to go talk to all the engineers directly, and I had to learn how they think. I had to learn what they can tolerate as communicators. Like, there's nothing that makes a person with an engineering mindset more frustrated than reductive simplicity. But the problem is, there is not any reporter anywhere who wants, who will print a three-paragraph answer to a question. And so one of the things that we had to do was get them to understand, all right you guys, I know you want to answer this in 12 sentences, and I know you want to give me every use case and every nuance and every exception, but a reporter needs a sound bite. The thing that's tricky is that that reductive sound bite has to be technically true because their peers are going to be reading, like, if you're an AI expert and you're talking about regenerative algorithms like you can't go around saying something that isn't technically accurate. So we have to find a way to compromise. So it just takes more time investment. Like all right, I think I heard you say this. Is that true? I think I heard you say this. Is that true? So part of it is knowing the technology well enough that you can even have that conversation with them. Part of it is--
Keyana Corliss: [00:09:07] I never let facts ruin a good story. I never let facts ruin a good story.
Rebecca Buckman: [00:09:13] It's true enough. True enough.
Lisa Poulson: [00:09:15] Yeah, well part of the problem, it's hard to get them to be willing to participate if they feel like they're being turned into P.T. Barnum. So, like, okay, 2% P.T. Barnum, 98% engineer. But let's distill it to a place where normal people can understand it, and I will, this is such a tried and true method, I'll be like, how would you explain this to your grandmother? Like, uhhh. And sometimes in media training, this is my favorite thing to do is just to pretend to be really, really stupid and ill-informed. And then they go through the experience, at least in a contained environment, to understand, oh, I'm not talking to one of my peers. I need to figure out how to do this differently. So another thing that they do, and in a way it's sort of charming, but it's also kind of laughable, they think when they do an interview that they're supposed to be just human Wikipedia. Like, I will sit here and you reporter will ask me and I will just explain everything I know about whatever you said. No. A media interview is all about curation. A media interview takes place for a specific business purpose for a specific business outcome. So we're not interested in you talking for 27 minutes about your history with, like, what happened at the IETF conference two years ago. We want to hear about this particular API that you're shipping right now and why it matters right now. And getting them to understand that is significant. And once they embrace the idea of curation and they embrace the idea of curation and distillation, then we're halfway there.
Rebecca Buckman: [00:10:50] Who's good at this? Like, who have you, are there, I guess maybe you don't have to name names.
Keyana Corliss: [00:10:54] Not academic founders, for the record. Not naming any names, but the academics.
Rebecca Buckman: [00:11:01] That's hard.
Lisa Poulson: [00:11:02] So I've worked with, so there's a company who everybody knows now with a gigantic market cap that just had their big user conference, and I'm not naming their name, but their labs, everybody in their AI labs, also has an academic position. I've also worked with people who have been deans at computer science schools and people who have been at Stanford who are academics. It's really a question of willingness, like, are they willing to? It's like learning a new language. Are you willing to learn this new language? Are you willing to come to this new planet and go beep, beep, boop, boop, and speak in this new language? And if you are, then they do learn. A lot of them are so excited to share. Like, they want a broader audience to understand what they understand and they'll do the work.
Rebecca Buckman: [00:11:48] Yeah, maybe part of the trick of the comms professional is figuring out sometimes there might be a super techie person that's not willing to do that. And maybe you just need to cut bait and be like, this is not going to be my spokesperson. I'm going to have to find somebody else.
Keyana Corliss: [00:12:01] We use that for bylines.
Lisa Poulson: [00:12:04] Well, or let them if they want to write the 27-page white paper instead. Okay. You go do that.
Keyana Corliss: [00:12:11] That's what we use them for. Find people's strengths, guys.
Rebecca Buckman: [00:12:14] Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
Lisa Poulson: [00:12:16] That is absolutely true. Their minds are so fascinating. And I do think some of them do gamify the process. They're like, oh, I see what this is. This is, I'm going to treat this like a video game and I'm going to advance to the next level. And they embrace the soundbites and they embrace talking about like the hero's journey stories that they've been through. They can do it. And yeah, part of it is also truth-telling. Like, I'll just interrupt someone. I'm like, no, no no no no, no, no, no one's going to quote that. No. Start over. And when they're pushed, they try harder.
Rebecca Buckman: [00:12:54] They have to respect you, and you're coming at this in a position of you're going to listen to me, right? And I think that's the challenge sometimes.
Lisa Poulson: [00:13:01] Okay. So I tend to show up like 80% cheerleader, 20% dominatrix. So I'm going to say, yay, you're doing great. Yay, you're doing great. Then I'm like, no, stop that right now.
Keyana Corliss: [00:13:11] This is the first time dominatrix has been mentioned on Just Checking In.
Rebecca Buckman: [00:13:15] It's true. There's a first time for everything. Right.
Keyana Corliss: [00:13:17] Here we go.
Rebecca Buckman: [00:13:18] Okay.
Lisa Poulson: [00:13:19] Hey. It's a critical component of getting people to do what needs to be done. In my experience as a communications professional working in the Valley, it's just like sometimes you got to put the hammer down. But a big part of it is really actively engaging with them. Yes. Good. No. Not good. Yes. Try it again. No. Try it again. Until they start to get it. But if they're not willing, as Keyana says, if they're not willing, you got, you have to choose someone else.
Rebecca Buckman: [00:13:46] What are your best practices as far as prep? You know, because this is often challenging because sometimes it's hard enough, right, to get the executive to agree to do the interview, whether it's a super techie person or not. And then the prep is so important. What are some of your best practices that you've seen work?
Lisa Poulson: [00:14:05] First is please don't give them the 27-page, one-pager document. I mean, how many times have you guys seen a one-pager that has 17 pages of Q&A? Nobody has time to read that.
Keyana Corliss: [00:14:16] Ain't nobody got time for that.
Lisa Poulson: [00:14:18] Right, exactly. So, very short. Very very, like 1 or 2 pages, the top questions they're going to get. And then a couple of sound bites that you workshop with them and the basic messages. So that's vital. And then I think requiring them to get on the phone with you 15 to 30 minutes before the interview, just in case they didn't do any of their reading.
Keyana Corliss: [00:14:45] I always tell my team, what would you want to know doing this interview? Put that in there.
Lisa Poulson: [00:14:51] And I will say to them, hey, when's the last time you read an article that included this? When's the last time you read an article that included this? And they're like, oh, you're right. Nobody puts that kind of stuff in articles. Okay. The prep is dialled up or down, depending on the person's capacity, depending on how much time they do or don't have. It's always nice to do a fundamental level setting about, look, this is what a media interview is, separate from an actual interview. You can't do it five minutes before an interview because they have to think about their mindset. Then, before each interview, you got to get them into media mode. Because, you know, another critical thing is a media interview is not like a normal conversation in any way. They, you know, going from meeting to meeting to meeting to meeting to meeting, they've got to get out of that mode and get into media mode. It's an investment in time for them and for us. You know, every once in a while you get a CEO who's just so fluent and so fabulous, you're like, oh my gosh, this is amazing. I can just let her go. Boom, she's going to be great. And you'll get CTOs and VPs of Engineering that it takes like three months. You can still get great stuff out of them, but it takes a lot more time sometimes.
Rebecca Buckman: [00:15:57] You know, you've talked a lot about how this is a, it's important to prep your interview subjects by saying, this is a business meeting. There is a business goal here. Talk us through that. And some strategies for working through that, because I find that's often difficult to relay.
Keyana Corliss: [00:16:17] Besides sharing this podcast, Becky and I have a bunch of things in common. For example, we both love a good train wreck of a PR story, and I'm assuming we both like a good glass of wine. Actually, this podcast was created over a drink, you know, we both share that. And we're both members of a comms and brand marketing expert community called Mixing Board.
Rebecca Buckman: [00:16:36] Yes. And thank you very much to Mixing Board for working to raise the value of our industry and for producing this podcast.
Keyana Corliss: [00:16:43] So Mixing Board has a very cool, savvy way of tapping the collective networks of their super connected community so that organizations can find right senior comms and marketing talent fast. If you are hiring for a full-time role or trying to find the exact right consultant and want the expert guidance for an extremely reasonable price, I could not recommend Mixing Board's talent network more. The way it works is that Mixing Boards share the opportunity with the community - and this community is incredible, you guys, it is a who's who - and ask their members to submit candidates that they think would be perfect for the position. Most of the time, these are folks they've worked with or they've directly known for years, and they will quickly share back a super-qualified list of candidates and make connections where there's interest. Go to the Talent Network page at MixingBoard.com for more info and mention Just Checking In for a special rate. The talent that comes out of Mixing Board is incredible. It is a really great way to find top-notch talent. So I encourage you guys all to go.
Lisa Poulson: [00:17:42] And I think also there's a mismatch sometimes. Sometimes the person thinks that a media interview is just visibility for them.
Rebecca Buckman: [00:17:50] Yes, that's what I mean. Exactly. Exactly.
Lisa Poulson: [00:17:52] Yeah. Or that it's just like fun. No. We're doing this media interview because it's part of the company's overall business objective. So here's the company's business objective, here's our marketing objective, here's our communications objective. And that's how this interview fits into it. And you've got to ladder everything up and down and then you use that communications objective which is informed by the business objective as your litmus test for whether a sound bite or a message gets in or doesn't get in. No. This interview is about this product launch. I don't want you talking about last year's thing. I don't want you talking about the plan for what you want to do in the next 36 months. We're doing this interview about this thing. Another client who works in an industry, gaming, not Microsoft, but another client, a fabulous gaming company.
Keyana Corliss: [00:18:39] Is it GameStop?
Rebecca Buckman: [00:18:42] Did they make a movie about that starring Paul Dano?
Keyana Corliss: [00:18:45] Blink twice if it's a yes.
Lisa Poulson: [00:18:47] You know what? I love that movie so much.
Keyana Corliss: [00:18:49] That was a good movie.
Lisa Poulson: [00:18:51] It was a great movie. It was a great movie. So these people, when they're doing media, it's to promote a game. Like they're so clear, they're so good at it. Not here to talk about what the studio is going to build in the future. Not here to talk about what happened in the past, not here to speculate about anything else. It's just no, we know that they're so clear that all the media they're doing is in support of getting people to try and buy the game. The discipline that they have is a fantastic thing for us in the tech industry to bring to our people, which is we're doing this interview for a business reason. You need to be super clear on what that business reason is, spokesperson, and that's what you're delivering and not anything else.
Keyana Corliss: [00:19:34] It's almost like a cultural thing, though, in tech, because egos may be a harsh word, but there is a sense of ego and, you know, ownership of things, despite the fact that you might work for a company in tech where I don't think you see it as much in other industries.
Lisa Poulson: [00:19:53] Well, that's fair. And what I will often say to people, and it's a little bit harsh, this is the dominatrix side, I will say--.
Keyana Corliss: [00:20:00] -- yes, dominatrix time--
Lisa Poulson: [00:20:00] -- right? The purpose of this interview is not to demonstrate the quality and depth of your thinking. So if you want to do that, we're going to put you on a panel. Or you can go be on a long-form podcast for two hours and talk about all your philosophies. But for this media interview... So it's partly about educating them about channels. And in my long years of being an agency person, literally, every product marketing person and every product manager thought that their product deserved like a big press release and a big media push. And why weren't we pitching the Wall Street Journal, like every single one? And I started to realize it was like The Lion King. You know how when, I think it's Rafiki, he, like, holds up baby Simba and everyone goes, ohhh and they applaud. Everybody wants that feeling like they want their Simba moment. And whether they're conscious of it or not, they feel like the press release and the media interviews, this is either my Simba moment for my company, it's my Simba moment for my product, it's my Simba moment for my thought leadership platform and my career. Exactly.
Rebecca Buckman: [00:21:05] My brand. My personal brand.
Lisa Poulson: [00:21:06] Yeah, exactly, exactly. And so what I always said to my people was, you know, it's that classic cliché. Closed door, open window. No, you're not getting a press release for widget 7.2, but you can have a microsite for widget 7.2, or you can have like an extra fact sheet in the, you know, at the back of the press release for widget 7.2. So I would always find a way to address the unspoken and unmet emotional and ego need, often without even saying it out loud.
Lisa Poulson: [00:21:40] I mean, that's another way to do it.
Keyana Corliss: [00:21:42] No one cares about your baby that you've spent three years and sleepless nights and, you know, you, like, lost your house over because you, you know, you lived in the office. Whatever. I don't know. But like. I just called their baby ugly and move on.
Rebecca Buckman: [00:21:55] But that's a super good point, because I was thinking when you were talking about the gaming company, Lisa, those products actually have broader consumer appeal and everyone can understand a new video game, whereas widget 7.2 Gen AI...
Lisa Poulson: [00:22:09] Maybe not.
Rebecca Buckman: [00:22:10] Freaking boring, you know what I mean? So like, I mean, that's the other thing. You both, Keyana and Lisa, you both have a lot of experience with this in kind of convincing executives that people don't really care about the product. It's the trends.
Keyana Corliss: [00:22:22] The baby is ugly.
Rebecca Buckman: [00:22:23] Right? Right, right, right. But what are some thoughts about what you've seen work to move away from that? Because at big tech companies, a lot of the PR is about the product. And in my experience, that is like if you're talking to the Wall Street Journal, that is the least interesting thing you can pitch them. Is the product.
Lisa Poulson: [00:22:40] Well, right. And what I would say to people, I would talk to them about the river of money, which is all anyone cares about, is how things move in the economy. So let's say I'm sitting down with someone.
Keyana Corliss: [00:22:49] Where is this river of money? I'm asking for a friend.
Rebecca Buckman: [00:22:52] Can we sail on it? Can we have a day?
Keyana Corliss: [00:22:54] Is there a boat? How do I, how do I get there? Is there like a ferry?
Lisa Poulson: [00:22:58] I'm gonna swim in the river of money. But you know what I would say to a certain person, depending on how old they are and how sophisticated they are, I would say, look, the only reason people cared to write about Java, it wasn't because it was an object-oriented programming language, it's because it blew up Microsoft's monopoly in software. It was not a technology story. It was a business story. Because it changed where money was being spent. So if you don't have a story that changes where money is being spent, and right now with generative AI, what are half the stories about? Who's going to lose jobs? What new companies are going to be incredibly successful every time Anthropic gets more money thrown at them out of a t-shirt cannon by Amazon or Google, that's a news story. So the money is what matters. And if I can get them to see that the money angle is the most important thing, well, also, you can't have a cookie but here's a nice tangerine. So, and by the way, no, you can't be in the Wall Street Journal, but you can be on this podcast.
Rebecca Buckman: [00:24:01] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Lisa, I will say--
Keyana Corliss: [00:24:03] -- not this podcast though.
Rebecca Buckman: [00:24:04] No, not this one.
Lisa Poulson: [00:24:05] No, not this one.
Rebecca Buckman: [00:24:06] We're way too fast-paced for that and way too interesting.
Rebecca Buckman: [00:24:09] But Lisa, on the river of money, I actually linked to that. That's a blog post you wrote several years ago, and I linked to that in, I have a deck that we give to companies on IPO comms, you know, pre-IPO comms readiness and one of them is exactly that. Like when you're getting ready to sell your stock to the public, it's all about how does your product and your company fit into these larger economic trends? Who's winning, who's losing, who's, you know.
Lisa Poulson: [00:24:34] Exactly.
Rebecca Buckman: [00:24:35] So it's a great piece. And we should, we can link to it in our show notes. That's what we can do.
Keyana Corliss: [00:24:39] Also, we're gonna link to directions to the river of money. And also where is this money t-shirt cannon? That sounds pretty good. Markets, the markets haven't opened yet. I've got a, I'm diversifying here.
Rebecca Buckman: [00:24:53] Oh my God.
Lisa Poulson: [00:24:55] The money t-shirt cannon is only getting directed at like four companies. That's what's so hilarious right now, yeah. I mean, if you're Anthropic, you can just sit there and go on the roof and catch the money from the money t-shirt cannon coming your way.
Rebecca Buckman: [00:25:07] Oh my God. All right. Another question for you, Lisa. When we were prepping for this, you told me something about the answer ratio in an interview and why your person should choose their answer ratio before opening. I don't know what this is. What is an answer ratio?
Lisa Poulson: [00:25:025 I just want to roll up my sleeves. Okay, here's the thing.
Rebecca Buckman: [00:25:27] Okay. This is nitty-gritty advice.
Lisa Poulson: [00:25:29] This is, well, okay. This is about pivoting and bridging. So let's just make up a scenario. Let's say I'm doing an interview about oranges and somebody asks me a question about my new car. Is that related to what I want to talk about? No, it is not. So at a certain point when your--
Keyana Corliss: [00:25:49] -- what if your new car is a lemon?
Lisa Poulson: [00:25:56] Or what if my new car is orange? What if my new car's orange? So, what I say so... Yeah, thank you. But what I say on bridging is the total jerk way to do a bridge, you know, I want to talk about oranges and someone says, tell me about your new car. And I say orange juice is, I think, the most nutritious beverage. And the person who asked the question is like, excuse me, I didn't ask you about oranges, I asked about your car. So I don't ever tell people to do that. I want them to at least acknowledge that a fellow human said words. It doesn't mean you ever have to answer the question. Like Jonathan Kanter does this great thing where he says, oh, I'll leave that to others, like Kara Swisher asking him six times on Pivot like, if Congress needs to do more aggressive legislation, he's like, I'll leave that to others.
Keyana Corliss: [00:26:40] I'm going to use that writing my emails. I'm gonna leave that to others.
Lisa Poulson: [00:25:19] But it's genius because, well, it's an acknowledgment. At least it says, fellow human, it says two things. Fellow human, I heard that you said words, and it says, I'm not touching that with a ten-foot pole. So sometimes that's what we have to do. And what I want people to do is think about that before they open their mouths. So maybe only 5% of your answer is that I can't, I'll leave that to others. But what I can tell you, and then 95% of your time on your message. Now, what if someone asks me a question that I kind of want to answer? And maybe I want to spend half of my answer time talking about my new car? I still should bridge over and talk about oranges. Otherwise, all the rest of the questions are going to be about my new car. The interview is going to be over. I've been human. Wikipedia and Mazda public relations for the person that I'm talking to and not for the orange growers. So instead it's like, okay, I'm there to talk about oranges. Can you tell me about your new car? You know, I love my new car and actually, my favorite thing about it is I just bought four flats of oranges and it smells like a citrus grove. It's so fantastic. And here are all the things I'm going to do with these amazing oranges that I just bought, blah blah blah blah blah.
Keyana Corliss: [00:27:52] That was a pro transition. Wow. Bravo! On the spot.
Lisa Poulson: [00:27:58] Thank you. Well, and this is one of the things I say. I have people practice and sometimes I make them talk about bacon or I make them talk about ice cream. But something just really simple that has nothing to do with their jobs just so they can practice what it feels like to bridge. Because your intellectual energy should not be going to remembering your message. You should know your message cold. It should be going to figuring out how much of my time am I going to spend talking about what the reporter asked, and how much time am I going, how am I going to make my artful bridge? And then they need to know their message in their sleep. Then they can do a good job.
Keyana Corliss: [00:28:33] You know, I thought I was a good comms person until I sat through this and I was like, wow. I'm not.
Rebecca Buckman: [00:28:38] We've all got a lot to learn.
Keyana Corliss: [00:28:40] I'm okay.
Lisa Poulson: [00:28:44] Well, well first of all, first of all, I'm old. I've been doing this a long time. Second of all, I've had this communications coaching practice for ten years. So, day in and day out, I'm like, checking in with people like, don't do it that way and finding what works and what doesn't work.
Rebecca Buckman: [00:28:58] All right.
Keyana Corliss: [00:28:58] I'm only 25. So that makes sense.
Rebecca Buckman: [00:29:00] Right.
Keyana Corliss: [00:29:01] And no one can say otherwise because--
Rebecca Buckman: [00:29:03] -- just of school--
Keyana Corliss: [00:29:03] -- I'm on podcasts and you guys can't see me and--
Rebecca Buckman: [00:29:06] -- all right, because--
Keyana Corliss: [00:29:07] -- you have to take my word for it.
Rebecca Buckman: [00:29:08] You know we love to talk about, of course, we love to talk about good advice, but we love to talk about the mess ups. We love to talk about the PR disaster.
Keyana Corliss: [00:29:16] Love a good train wreck.
Rebecca Buckman: [00:29:17] So you, I'm sure, have seen many of these. Maybe you've been sitting in interviews where somebody says something and you just smack yourself in the head and you just think, oh my effing God.
Keyana Corliss: [00:29:27] Or did you smack them? Have you ever smacked...Yeah.
Rebecca Buckman: [00:29:29] You hit them with your dominatrix whip. You were like...
Keyana Corliss: [00:29:32] Have you ever smacked someone mid-interview?
Lisa Poulson: [00:29:36] First of all, yes, more than once.
Keyana Corliss: [00:29:37] Yes.
Rebecca Buckman: [00:29:38] Really?
Lisa Poulson: [00:29:39] Yes. More than once. I have kicked, I have kicked people under the table in interviews more than once. I did have one CEO who I would like shove notes at him because, I mean, listen, it's so hard to be a PR person. It's like, and I say this very often to spokespersons, I'm like, look, you're just the meat puppet for the PR people. Would you please just be a good meat puppet? Could you just please deliver the message?
Keyana Corliss: [00:30:02] Calling people meat puppets, this is the best. So when I get fired for all of this advice you're giving me, will you hire me?
Lisa Poulson: [00:30:12] The thing is, you just have to make sure you use it with someone who's got a sense of humor. Like with someone, like, for some people, they laugh so hard when I said meat puppet, they're like, okay, fine, I surrender. I understand my role here. Like, all right, I get it. But there are people who want you to be on Slack with them through the entire interview telling them what to say. And there are people whose brains can't handle it. And so, yes, I have smacked people. And yes, I don't think I've ever put someone on mute and said, what the eff are you doing? Because, you know, I don't want the reporter to know, but I've definitely gone like, you know, like slashed my hand against my throat a million times. But I have had a couple of CEOs who are like, could you please stop passing me notes? I can't stand it.
Rebecca Buckman: [00:30:56] Oh, God.
Lisa Poulson: [00:30:57] So then I would say, okay, but would you please stop saying this and then I won't do it anymore.
Rebecca Buckman: [00:31:02] But okay, but what happens if you were unable to stop it? They were sitting there, they were not experienced, they didn't take your advice and they just said a bunch of stuff that they shouldn't have said.
Keyana Corliss: [00:31:12] Then you should listen to our podcast about crisis comms.
Rebecca Buckman: [00:31:14] Oh yeah. That's right.
Lisa Poulson: [00:31:16] Yeah. I mean, I mean regret, regret. So I've done a lot of litigation PR.
Rebecca Buckman: [00:31:21] Mhm.
Lisa Poulson: [00:31:022] Sometimes, look, lawyers? Lawyers find themselves to be so intelligent. Lawyers find themselves to be so sophisticated. And yet lawyers will come to you and say, when do I get to review the draft of the article before it's published? I'm like, never. So they are spectacularly expert about some things and so naive about other things. And I have worked with, oh gosh, probably between 60 and 80 lawyers. Most of them learned and would do, would do what I would advise. But there were a couple who just wouldn't. And I'm like, okay. And then the bad article would come out and I would have to take it to them and go, what are you learning from this? And then they'd be like, okay, I understand, and they wouldn't do it again.
Keyana Corliss: [00:32:07] You know what I like there, by the way, I don't remember what podcast it was, Becky, that we talked about this, but that oftentimes the PR people are the fall guys for the systemic problems in a company. And then it's like, well, they have bad PR like, no, they're just a bad company. And, you know, you can only put so much lipstick on a pig. But I love that you said, what can you learn from this? This wasn't my fault. This was you not listening to me.
Lisa Poulson: [00:32:32] Yeah. Mhm.
Keyana Corliss: [00:32:34] Pay attention, kids.
Lisa Poulson: [00:32:34] So speaking of, so this is an ancient ancient story, so Harold Burson founded Burson-Marsteller in like 1954. I worked at Burson-Marsteller for a long time. You know, he's like 90 years old, flying by himself from New York, I'm picking him up at the airport, taking him down to a meeting at HP, and, like, delightful. So Harold and I are in the car, and it was at a time when George Bush White House had been caught wiretapping American citizens, which was illegal. And Harold had been, and this had just blown up, it was in the media everywhere, Harold had been at the White House the day before, and they'd asked for his advice. And Harold goes, well, I said to them, I don't think you have a PR problem. I think you have a behavior problem.
Keyana Corliss: [00:33:22] My advice is to stop wiretapping people.
Rebecca Buckman: [00:33:24] Yes, yes. Stop doing stupid shit.
Lisa Poulson: [00:33:27] Exactly.
Keyana Corliss: [00:33:28] Stop doing stupid shit.
Lisa Poulson: [00:33:30] Yeah, people get scared. And of course they think that if we can create this facade in front of the company, that whatever they're messing up about won't be visible. And I understand why that happens. I mean, I got fired from a company because I, okay, here's, I will not name the company's name, the company was out doing interviews for a secondary. The CEO, well, no, the CEO called me and said the stock has bad juju, I need you to call all the reporters because we're not doing as well. So I need you to call and I need you to do a media blitz. And I said, well, we missed our earnings by 50% last quarter.
Keyana Corliss: [00:34:10] That's, so that's the bad juju, by the way.
Lisa Poulson: [00:34:11] That's right. Exactly. So I said any reporter that I call who doesn't already know us, the first thing they're going to do is go look up our stock performance on Yahoo Finance. So all I'm going to do by calling these people is draw 400% more attention to the problem we had last quarter. So I don't think I should make those media calls. They didn't like that. Now, he didn't find me that minute, but they started looking for a new person and I left the company and that's okay. But sometimes that happens.
Rebecca Buckman: [00:34:42] Yeah. Yeah. All right. Who's good? We've talked about all the, we talked about some bad juju and some screw-ups. Who in tech, yeah let's talk about good juju. Who in tech today is a great communicator and is doing a great job or is doing a great job despite a difficult situation, which is the sign of a really great communicator. Right? If you're running, if you're running a magnificent seven right now or a magnificent four or whatever, like maybe it's not so hard, right?
Lisa Poulson: [00:35:11] Okay. Let me give you three examples. The sound bite king? Jensen Huang. So I was watching his, I hadn't seen the GTC keynote yet, but his Siggraph keynote from like, it was October 23. He said the more you buy, the more you save, comparing CPUs to GPUs, like six times in the presentation. And I was like, yay! You know, first he says it, explains the whole thing, bookends it, shows all the data. But then he says it over and over again, and by the end he's kind of joking. He's like, you know what I'm going to say now, the more you buy, the more you save. So Scott McNealy used to be a magnificent sound bite person. His were more snarky, but, so Jensen is a sound bite master. So that's one. And by the way, no, I have never worked with him. He's never asked. He doesn't need me. Number two, another person who I have never worked with directly, I think the calm and grace that Sundar Pichai shows, whether he's in Congress getting like, preposterously stupid questions, like it doesn't matter where he is, that guy brings the same gracious, chill vibe to literally everything he does. And I'm like, how, how, how do how do you do it? How do you do it? Like the questions.
Keyana Corliss: [00:36:27] I just assume they give him like a Valium before each of these things.
Lisa Poulson: [00:36:30] Well, I mean, I mean by contrast, like look at what you can see on Mark Zuckerberg's face.
Keyana Corliss: [00:36:35] Yeah--
Lisa Poulson: [00:36:36] -- and with Sundar--
Keyana Corliss: [00:36:37] -- he's like super annoyed. He's like, he's like, you know what he's like. He's like when you go to the IT guy and you're like, I can't get into my computer, and they're like, well, did you try to restart it? And they're like annoyed with you and you're like, yes, I tried to restart it. That is Mark Zuckerberg. He is Congress's IT guy.
Lisa Poulson: [00:36:54] Well he lets it show. So the third person is, and I have no relationship with this company at all in any way, is OpenAI. So, and I just wrote a newsletter about this, like Sam Altman interviewing Kara Swisher at City Arts and Lectures in March when she was on her book tour. So I think this was on a Thursday. I think Elon Musk had sued OpenAI, like, on Monday, so everyone knew that she was going to ask him that question. And so, you know, you know how City Arts and Lectures works, they have their whole conversation, then one of the last things she says before they go to the audience Q&A is she goes, so what about that lawsuit? And he just shrugged. It was like, not quotable. Didn't dignify it with a response. I was like, that is beeping genius. But then during the Q&A with the general audience, someone who was a teacher like raised her hand and asked a question about how AI is going to impact education, and he just turned into world ambassador of AI and gave a very gracious, reasoned, positive response. So I was sort of fascinated. It was like two sides of the same person. And I was like, oh, that's pretty freaking masterful. So I don't know anything about what he's like to work with. I don't, and maybe he does terrible jobs in many other interviews, but in that moment, in that evening, I was like, damn! I was impressed.
Keyana Corliss: [00:38:20] The newest comms strategy. Don't say no comment. Just quietly shrug.
Rebecca Buckman: [00:38:26] Quietly shrug. I know, and we, this is not a video podcast. So we could, Lisa did a nice visual shrug that we just had to tell you about.
Keyana Corliss: [00:38:34] She did. She just like rolled her shoulders back. Really got it.
Lisa Poulson: [00:38:37] I always tell everyone not to say no comment because I think it makes you look like a Bond villain.
Keyana Corliss: [00:38:42] There are no no comments in my world.
Rebecca Buckman: [00:38:44] Yeah.
Lisa Poulson: [00:38:44] Well, what I say is, you can just say, oh, I'm sorry, I can't speak to that, or oh no, I can't answer that.
Keyana Corliss: [00:38:49] I'll leave that for the others.
Lisa Poulson: [00:38:51] Exactly.
Rebecca Buckman: [00:38:52] I love that! Leave that for the others.
Keyana Corliss: [00:38:53] See how I brought it all full circle, guys. Here we go.
Lisa Poulson: [00:38:56] Yeah, yeah. I'm just telling you that was Jonathan, right, Jonathan Kanter. Like, oh I'll leave that to others. I'm like that is genius.
Rebecca Buckman: [00:39:04] All right. Well Lisa, we could talk for another hour. So we may have to have you back and find some other things to talk about. But great advice, great war stories, and the river of money. And we're going to offer people a seminal blog.
Lisa Poulson: [00:39:19] The river of money. The river of money is the only thing that reporters want to write about.
Keyana Corliss: [00:39:23] And the t-shirt gun.
Rebecca Buckman: [00:39:25] And the t-shirt gun, Simba moment.
Lisa Poulson: [00:39:27] Yeah, yeah.
Rebecca Buckman: [00:39:29] I feel like we had a lot of good soundbites on this pod. The Simba moment, the t-shirt gun. Like you can tell that you know what you're doing with the sound bite.
Keyana Corliss: [00:39:36] I love it. Amazing. Well, thanks for joining us, Lisa. This was amazing and thought I was good at my job, but here we are.
Lisa Poulson: [00:39:43] I'm sure you're, I'm sure you're great at your job. And this is an absolute pleasure. I really appreciate you guys inviting me. Thank you.
Rebecca Buckman: [00:39:50] All right. It's our pleasure.
Rebecca Buckman: [00:39:53] So if SBS Comms sounds familiar, it's because you might have seen them recently listed as a top five most innovative company in Fast Company's first ever PR and Brand Strategies category. They're one of the tech industry's hottest agencies that's attracted the attention of companies like American Express, Cloudflare, GitHub, Flexport, and more. SBS Comms embraces a modern ethos in technology comms, shedding outdated strategies for progress and results. SBS works across industries and with companies at all stages of growth, from industry leaders to those building tomorrow's consequential breakthroughs such as Air Company, Runway, Astro Forge, Versel, Light Matter, and more. You can learn more about SBS at SBSComms.com - that's a lot of comms - or by checking out their very active Instagram account, where they post weekly roundups of media hits at @SBSComms. Just Checking In is produced by Astronomic Audio and underwritten by Mixing Board, a curated community of the most sought-after communications and brand marketing leaders.
Keyana Corliss: [00:40:56] Thanks for listening to Just Checking In. Follow us at @KeyanaCorliss and @RebeccaBuckman.