Navigating Uncertainty with Jessica Whidt

I am Jennifer Karpis-Romain , executive Director of the Transportation Marketing and Sales Association , which is a trade nonprofit educating and connecting marketing and sales professionals in transportation and logistics , and today on the show I have Jessica Witt , who is the Managing Director at Warner Communications . Welcome to the show . How are you doing today , jessica ?

So that's everything from you know , beginning with the raw materials renewable energy to all the way down to last mile delivery , even recycling and waste management . So , and everything in between , of course , I joined Warner in 2022 . Before that , I was in-house at commercial airlines , for commercial passenger airlines , for about 10 years .

So how do you advise your clients to communicate effectively when the rules are still unclear ?

You know companies , executives , thought leaders , just like you know . I don't want to put anything out there in case I'm wrong , but we really see it as an opportunity for supply chain and transportation organizations because it's an opportunity to position their executives as real thought leaders in their space , the key to doing it well and doing it safely .

And yeah , I hate to say right , because I don't know that there's any necessarily right way to do it , but what we've seen be successful is acknowledge the known unknowns . Don't try to predict the future . Don't try to predict the future . None of us have a magic ball we can see into the future .

But focus on communicating your company or your executives' awareness of all the possible scenarios your clients could face and then communicating how your company , your executives , your thought leaders are prepared to address it , because by exhibiting that you've thought through , you're being thoughtful as an organization around .

What are all the possible outcomes and then how can we support clients in any of these outcomes ? It'll really exhibit preparedness , agility and ultimately lead to trust and credibility amongst your current clients as well as prospects .

I love everything that you're talking about , because I do think people are inclined to be a little nervous , to not want to say anything , but if you're not saying anything , you can really appear like you're not following the trends and you're not paying attention to what's going on , and so you don't have to , like you said , you don't have to like predict the

future , but just have a conversation about it . This is what we're seeing , this is what we think it could mean , this is how we're responding to what we're seeing right now . All of those things are just being truthful and transparent and building that trust , like you said , which I think is incredibly important .

But again , none of us are fortune tellers and so hard line predictions can sometimes put you in a sticky situation after the fact . And we also advise clients to be really thoughtful and deliberate before taking a hard stance in support or opposition of any particular regulation or other issue .

If an organization or a leader is going to do so , we really encourage them to make sure it serves their business . And you know you'll see particularly some of the really big enterprise brands in the supply chain , you know , being vocal about their position on , for instance , tariffs .

Or , you know , in my background , in aviation , regulatory issues regarding the FAA or airspace and and those are , you know from my observation I don't have inside knowledge , but I can assume that those are things that deeply impact their business , their organizations that have a significant voice in DC and do have influence , and so I assume they're being quite

thoughtful about what they , you know , take a hard line on . And so you know that's the other thing particular leaders , particularly . You know we see this a lot with founders , ceos . They have personal opinions that they want to voice . They have a platform to do so and if it's something they're really passionate about , you know by all means .

But ultimately , we advise , make sure it is right for your business and that it's something they're really passionate about , you know by all means . But ultimately , we advise , make sure it is right for your business and that it's an . It is a message that's going to resonate with your audience and serve your business in the long run .

you learn ? And I think the number one step of that , um , whenever I did anything like marketing , pr , stuff like this is like makes you have a crisis communication plan before you need it .

And so we have to , as communicators , particularly in transportation , also remember that .

You know , and I like to use reputation management a lot , because I do think we need to make sure we're thinking about , not , of course , being prepared for the catastrophic , but also being prepared for the what may seem to transportation communicators like the not so catastrophic . You know , everyone's spectrum is different .

If you're a consumer brand , what is catastrophic to you may be quite different than what it is in transportation . But yes , number one is having a plan in advance . I've had the opportunity to work on a number of crisis communication plans , many of them in the aviation sector . You know mistakes I've made , one not having one .

So I've been there , learned that lesson real quick and didn't do that again . But sort of second time around was being too high level in the plan , so writing the plan as if I would be the one who would be executing it or that I would have even have time to interpret what I meant . You know years ago when I wrote it right .

So you know , be as prescriptive as possible . That is what I learned . Even if you are confident , you will be the one personally . You know you're writing it and you're the one personally executing it . But the stakes are high in those situations . It doesn't matter if it's a brand crisis , you know , a business crisis or an operational crisis .

Minutes count , seconds count . Sometimes Stress levels are high . Stress levels are high . You don't have the time to use , to be spending the brain power on . What did I mean by this ? Or let me explain this to you .

You want a document , or you know a set of documents , that you can literally just hand over to whoever is in the room that can help you and they can follow instructions .

So just being very , very detailed with those decision trees , instructions you know , down to it may seem silly while you're doing it , but down to like , how do you log into you know LinkedIn to update things , as you don't know who you're going to have available to you in the moment to support you ?

Crisis never happens at two o'clock on a Tuesday while you're all sitting in the office together . It happens in the middle of the night or on a weekend . So you have to be ready to to use whoever you have to support you in those moments . And then the second lesson I've learned the hard way and these really go hand in hand is don't set it on the shelf .

Practice , practice , practice . Engage everyone in the organization you can to practice with you tabletop scenarios . Work through the kinks . Get everyone on board , your stakeholders , even your board members of . This is what we're going to do . This is what we're going to say . This is what we're not going to say in different scenarios .

Uh , again , stress levels are high , minutes count . You really want it to almost be um , you know and I by no means elevating communications professionals to first responders , but you know , taking from the first responder playbook when it matters . You want it to be muscle memory Again , not having to use that brain power , just really execute , execute , execute .

In my past I worked for PR Newswire and when you send in press releases , there are specific people who are allowed to approve them , and I worked the overnight shift and so I would have to call and confirm these press releases and a lot of times that person that was calling was not authorized on the account and they'd be like well , my boss is , it's like 8

pm on a saturday . I'm like that , like I understand how stressful that must be for you , but I you are not authorized on this account . We cannot send this press release unless if you have proper authorization .

So like that kind of stuff is the thing that I think people forget about is like the people yeah , the people who are making this , who are building this , who are putting this together , are not necessarily the people that are executing on it . What if somebody is ?

I very specifically remember the one person who was like crying because their boss was like at a remote cabin it . It was like that was like their boss's like one day that they got to like fully check out and she's like I literally cannot reach her and I'm like I'm sorry , but you're going to have to , or I was like there's other people that can do this .

You may have to try to reach them or whatever , but like those situations like come up and if it is something that needs to get sent out immediately , those things are really important .

So I love that you said that , and even just having all the stakeholders stakeholders understand and know what they're saying and also like who should be speaking and who should be like Nope , we're deferring that , that answer to so-and-so like those things are incredibly important .

on a smaller not life or death scale , and so having an understanding of what those things look like and how those differences are will help too in those moments when the pressure's on .

situations , how do you balance that like speed and accuracy in messaging ?

Prepare things in advance that are templates or shells that you can pop information into and then , in the moment , lots of eyeballs . You know , do not trust yourself that you typed what you thought you typed . Do not trust yourself that everyone will interpret the way you structured a sentence , the way you think you did , or what it means to you .

So , having you know as , as , without making it , you know , writing by committee , you want to have a really good core group of people , whether that and from different perspectives of the organization .

You know , I usually like to recommend someone from legal , someone from operations , someone from marketing you know marketing sales and then you know someone that could be considered . Maybe it's one of those people , but a senior leader that has committed to say I will review these , these pieces of information , in minutes , not hours , and I will be available .

And here's my backup and my backups backup if I'm not available , and I delegate to them the ability to review these things , not necessarily for approval , but just because you want different perspectives . You want , you know , you want that double check of did you use the right word , is there a typo ?

You know , could this be interpreted a way that you didn't think of ? And so just lots of eyeballs .

But if it's if we're announcing a new program , or like if there are award winners , that we're talking about anything that's like like super high level , then I want it to be my eyeballs , especially if it's the first time we're talking about something you know , because I know all of the pieces .

And so , even if it's not a crisis plan but just stuff that we're putting out , like no person , no matter how smart and capable they are , is infallible to make , not make a typo , like we all are capable of making those types of mistakes and so just getting a second pair of eyeballs .

but I was like but with that like because when we first started really utilizing that committee , more and more , they would send everything to me and I'm like you guys are all marketers Like I trust other people's eyeballs as much as mine to do that grammatic check .

But here are the high level things that , like , I want to make sure you know that we're doing so , even taking some of these cues in your crisis plan you can put on your regular marketing plans or anything like that , just to make sure that you're having these best practices and processes in place . Absolutely , absolutely .

And we talked at the beginning about , you know , thought leadership with this type of stuff is really important because it's going to set you apart from your competitors and it's going to show your customers , your prospects , that you are paying attention to trends and what's going on , which I think is incredibly important , especially in the space right now where we

have a saturated market . People are trying to stand out . But what makes for an effective thought leadership strategy ? Like , we know it's important , but how do we do it ? How can companies kind of avoid sounding just like everybody else when we're talking about things .

But that is first and foremost . Just read everything you can get your hands on . Be a news junkie , but in your space , in your vertical . It doesn't mean you have to ingest all the news that's happening in the world , but really focusing in on making sure that you are up to speed and what the conversation is , and for two reasons .

One is you know what are the media interested in discussing . You know what they're publishing is a good indication of what they find interesting . And you know publishing is a good indication of what they find interesting . And you know , taking that one step further , if they're publishing it it's because they think their readers will find it interesting .

And so you know that is a good cue to say , ok , what are my prospects , what do my clients want or customers want to know about right now , what are they interested in what ? And then you know being thoughtful about having an opinion on those topics .

So you know not just , oh , here's how my product solves for that , but what do I , you know what , as a company , what do we want , our leaders or what do I as an individual executive , want to exhibit to my clients that we are skilled in ?

Right , because you know , whether it's a piece of technology , a hardware , a service , your clients want to know in their decision-making process , in their consideration process . Your prospects , your clients want to know that you get them right .

That's ultimately what everybody wants from a product or service is like oh , you get what I'm facing as an individual in this organization or as an organization as a whole , and you're here to be my partner and help me solving my challenges and supporting my wins and thinking about the same things I'm thinking about .

So , really starting from a place of thought , leadership isn't about necessarily marketing , it's about contributing to the larger conversation .

And so if you , I , I believe , if organizations and if individuals come at it from that perspective of just being curious and wanting to engage in the conversation , the content flows through and is genuine and authentic and feels valuable to the reader .

And so , when you build stuff like this and this is why , like , I love talking about brand and pr and things like that , even when , when we are talking about sales , because a lot of times people are like you don't really need marketing and sales to be aligned .

But it's like you really , really do , because brand shouldn't just be a conversation that's being had in marketing . It flows through everything and it's positioning your company in a way that you're showcasing that you understand your specific customer needs and what they want .

And so in that thought leader strategy , it's like , hey , let's make sure you know , if we are really trying to get into the refrigerated market , that this is what we're talking about and this is what our you know leaders are talking about in the public space . Absolutely .

It's certainly not going to drive the in a , you know , a publication that they trust and that they read and look to for guidance and information and they say this company sounds really smart , they're doing really interesting things and they come to you and those are very , very qualified and valuable leads . So it's not so to your point .

It is an integral part of the sales process , I believe .

How do you balance all of those pieces out into like one full scope ?

You know where they're at when they come to us , and but it's , it's holistic and you know it is a build and you know if , if an organization comes to us and they say , okay , we have these four leaders , we want them to be thought leaders in the space , we want to get them published , um , in you know xyz magazines , and then you go to their linkedin

profile and it's blank . Um , well , we need to start there .

Um , because you know , we have to remember that reporters , journalists , publishers , the first thing they're going to do when they get a pitch or a piece that you want to publish with them is Google , the name of the author , and so there needs to be something out there , and LinkedIn is the best way to do that because it is an owned platform and you can

control it .

But if there's already a presence , if there's already an awareness about an individual or an organization , if there's already an awareness about an individual or an organization , then you can take more of a three prong approach where you're just , you know , parallel path , working to get things published as contributed articles , starting to pitch podcasts such as this one

to say , hey , we've got some interesting , we've got an interesting executive with some interesting thoughts on XYZ topic , but also backing that up with consistent posting on LinkedIn .

And you know , I think posting on LinkedIn helps sort of keep the train running a little bit , keeps the momentum going , because it shows that the individual , the organization is committed to thought leadership for the sake of kind of going back to , for the sake of contributing to the conversation and contributing to the industry , rather than just publicity .

I've had that experience where , like I contact the media contact and they either don't respond that person needs to be responsive and they need to be able to like if you're quoting somebody in that press release , they have to be , because I never wanted just to take the quote that was in the press release .

I want to talk to the person and get my own quote because it makes my story better , and so that's . You're building the press release , so people are interested in you and want to interact with you more and put people in articles and stuff like that , and I would always laugh . And then obviously I ended up switching to marketing .

I do journal is among the side and like other markets , but I would . They would always make me laugh , like why are you putting this is the media contact ? I'm contacting you , I'm a person of the media and I'm not able to get in contact with this executive , and that's .

That's the whole point of it so yeah sometimes it's the littlest things that can make you the most successful .

. So I'm curious what are you hoping to gain from the experience to take back to your team ?

Obviously , transportation , even though it's direct to consumer certainly a lot of overlap , but still I'm still learning kind of the intricacies of how transportation , particularly in freight , the area of freight , interact with the rest of the supply chain and interact with their customers and their shippers .

And so hopefully going to pick up some more insights there and really just kind of going back to all of this right with thought leadership and what I do supporting clients is . I'm a curious person and so I want to hear from the folks working in sales and marketing and transportation .

What are their challenges , what are they thinking about , what is top of mind for them ? And that allows me to come back and think about how can I , how can I support that and how can Warner ?

So I'm really really excited for that , happy to have you there , and I do think , like you said , the best way to be a thought leader is to read , to like absorb information , all of that kind of stuff .

And so I really do think events like Elevate that are designed for professional development , to let you sit in and meet your people and be able to absorb that information and have real conversations while you're learning , is incredibly important , and which is pretty much what you said . That was going to be . My .

One of my questions was , like how do you think that these events kind of strengthen that communication ? But that's what you answered yeah , like I want to do all those things and I want to learn .

Yeah , and I will add to that as far as how it strengthens the industry and strengthens each other , is that marketing and communications is a bit of a funny profession because all these other professions have these conferences where they get to come together , information , share , learn from each other .

We tend to be a little bit close to the best in marketing and sales , especially when we're talking about within our vertical or within our industry , because there's a competitiveness to it , right it's . You know , a little bit like you don't want to accidentally reveal your secret sauce to a competitor or an adjacent competitor .

So you know , unfortunately we don't have the benefit .

There are lots of associations and conferences that are broadly about marketing or broadly about communications , pulling in folks from different industries , different verticals , and those are great because it is fun to see , you know , how folks are thinking about it , what strategies people are using across different industries , and oftentimes there are things you can learn

from that .

But it is also great to just get together with folks that you have kind of , even strangers that you have an unspoken camaraderie with because you know my life , you know what I do , and so I think it's really good that these , that GMSA exists and that there's this opportunity to come together exists and that there's this opportunity to come together Absolutely , and

that's exactly what we're all about .

You were like , oh , we love to talk about like crisis management and what to talk about . I'm like , well , that's perfect because people need to know that and the industry is changing , things are moving really fast and there's misinformation all over the place , and so how do we really dive in ?

Be able to say what's going on , what we know , what we think is going to come down All of those things is incredibly important . So really excited to have Warner Communications as part of the show this year and that you get to come experience it firsthand . So super pumped about that and just , yeah , we're in go time here at TMSA headquarters for Elevate .

So I'm excited for everyone to be able to see what we're executing on . But last question for you and it's something I ask everybody who comes on the show and that's if you could go back in time and advise a younger Jessica . Anything

, and this could be personally or professionally when would you go back to and what would you say ?

They all somehow led me to where I am today , not quite the very beginning of my career , but right right after grad school , just a couple of years into you know , working at the airline and like it's going to be okay , like just not everything is life or death . You know , I think I've really , I'm really passionate about my work . I love it .

I'm probably I've been accused of being a workaholic many times , but it doesn't feel that way to me . But I definitely think when I was younger I took it all really personally and so as I've gotten older , I've been able to say , like I can care about this , I can be passionate about what I do , but it doesn't have to define me .

And I think that that would be what I would say is go back to maybe , you know , 25 year old Jessica and say , like this doesn't have to be everything that you are , it's a really of this , this question ?

I don't have , I'm allergic to dogs but like I think about like how many times I'm like , oh , I should go for a walk around the block and I feel like that having a dog must be like clutch for that , like for your own , like mental health and like going outside more because you have to like take care of somebody else when we don't really always do an

awesome job taking care of ourselves , but like that like caretaker , like oh , we have to take the dog for a walk . So I think about that all the time . I know my kid wants a dog . I'm sure I will fail at some point and accept that as a part of my life . But yeah , all great advice , excited to see you in Austin .

For people that want to check out our show next week , we have Christy Knitchell coming on the show .

She is a powerhouse and leader of Knitchell Logistics and she is one of our Elevate speakers and she's going to tell us her story and how she started out her career and how she took over her , her dad's company , but how she worked every place in the company before she did that and what power , how she is now so excited to kind of um , touch base with her

before the show and then see her at elevate . And jessica , thank you for coming on the show . It was great to have you here and I will see you in a few weeks and hope to see everyone else , thank you .