Larry Light shares marketing and business expertise from his days as Chief Marketing Officer with McDonald’s and its incredible brand recovery. He shares key insights about what works in brand journalism and why as well as vital tips from his new book, “Six Rules For Brand Revitalization.”
Larry Light is the Chief Executive Officer of Arcature, a marketing consulting company that has advised a wide variety of marketers in packaged goods, technology, retail, hospitality, automotive, corporate and business-to-business, as well as not-for-profit organizations. Among other challenges, Larry was CMO of McDonald’s from 2002-2005 as part of the turnaround leadership team. From 2011 to 2104, Larry was the interim Chief Brands Officer of IHG, a consulting role with line authority. IHG is a global hotels group with more than 4,400 hotels in over 100 countries.
Along with Joan Kiddon, Larry Light authored a book, “Six Rules for Brand Revitalization,” describing Arcature’s approach to re-energizing brands and highlighting his McDonald’s experience. In its report on Best Marketers of the Decade, AdWeek reported that “Larry Light, who turned around McDonald’s as CMO from 2002 to 2005 finished second to Steve Jobs.” In summarizing the top ten ideas of the decade, Ad Age selected “Brand Journalism” introduced by Larry Light as “arguably the most realistic description of marketing today — perhaps ever.”
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Think Like A Journalist Quote
“To become the resource, we have to become the influencer.” Advocate of brand journalism Brian Solis
Success Tip
Be more opportunistic and risk-taking.
Fitness Habit
Expose yourself to things that challenge your mind.
Career Highlight
How teaching statistics created the opportunity to later become the CMO for McDonald’s and turn around an ailing brand.
Brand Journalism Advice
Larry Light’s Success Principles:
- To be a leader you must act like a leader.
- Manage through influence not through command and control.
- Educate the organization about what to do and how it will be different. Make them understand the why.
- Create support within the organization. Involve the employees and inspire them.
The Plan To Win from Larry Light’s book, “Six Rules For Brand Revitalization”
- Purpose
- Brand Promise: brands that succeed promise a relevant differentiator experience.
- People, Product/Service, Place, Price, and Promotion
- Inspire, Influence, Educate, and Support
Multimedia Resource
Mobile phone Flight Aware; Flight Stats
Multimedia Book, Documentary, Internet Channel
Building Strong Brands, David Aaker
Resource Links
Six Rules For Brand Revitalization by Larry Light
Phil Kotler: The Four Ps of Marketing
Contact
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Transcript Epiosde 014
Note: Below you’ll find timecodes and the transcript for this episode. To get the most value out of the podcast, I encourage you to listen to the complete episode. However, there are times when you want to skip ahead or repeat a particular section. By clicking on the timecode, you’ll be able to jump to that specific section of the podcast. Here’s to getting a Competitive Advantage!
Announcer: [00:00] The brand journalism advantage, episode 14.
Larry Light : [00:03] Our advertising wasn’t working. That’s pretty clear. So doing more of the same, wasn’t going to produce a different result. And the challenge was that even though it wasn’t working, it was winning creative awards. So the ad agencies were saying we’re producing advertising, that’s winning industry acknowledgment and creative awards and that at con festival. And why isn’t it working with consumers?
Announcer: [00:38] The Brand Journalism Advantage, the podcast that teaches the power of storytelling to increase business by attracting, engaging, and influencing consumers. Now it’s time to think like a journalist with your host brand journalist, Phoebe Chongchua.
Phoebe Chongchua: [00:54] Hello, Brand journalism community I’m Phoebe Chongchua. Thanks for tuning into The Brand Journalism Advantage podcast. Here we go with the inside scoop on today’s show. Larry Light. Larry is the chief executive officer of Arcature a marketing consulting company that has advised a wide variety of marketers in packaged goods, technology, retail, hospitality, automotive, corporate, and business to business, as well as not-for-profit organizations among other challenges. Larry was COO of McDonald’s from 2002 to 2005 as part of the turnaround leadership team from 2011 to 2014. Larry was interim chief brands, officer of IHG, a consulting role with line authority. IHG is a global hotels group with more than 4,400 hotels in over 100 countries. Along with John kitten, Larry Light authored a book six rules for brand revitalization describing Arcature’s approach to reenergizing brands and highlighting his McDonald’s experience in its report on best marketers of the decade ad week reported that quote Larry light, who turned around McDonald’s as CMO from 2002 to 2005. Finished second to Steve jobs in summarizing the top 10 ideas of the decade at age selected brand journalism introduced by Larry Light as quote, arguably the most realistic description of marketing today, perhaps ever welcome. Larry.
Larry Light : [02:29] Well welcome. Thank you so much, Phoebe, for inviting me to participate. Oh,
Phoebe Chongchua: [02:33] I just love this. I have actually been waiting to interview you. I am so excited to hear all the juicy bits of nuggets of information that I know you’re going to share with the brand journalism community on today’s podcast. Before we get started, though, let’s start with the think like a journalist quote, and this one goes like this. We have to become the resource. We have to become the influencer short and sweet. That quote is from Brian Solis, who is an advocate of using brand journalism. He even pushes the idea of creating the role CEO, chief editorial officer within companies and Larry I’m sure you can agree with that.
Larry Light : [03:12] Well, I absolutely do. I mean, marketing communications has gone through a radical change, a radical from the old view of marketing and communications, where we pushed ideas on to consumers. In fact, you’ve probably remember a quote from the brand positioning era where we were told the goal of marketing communications is to own a word in the customer’s mind today. The idea of owning anything in the customer’s mind is marketing arrogance. So what we now manage through communication persuasion and of course influence, but we don’t own the brand. Our customers own the brand and our job is to communicate, interact and engage them by coming up with communications that are intriguing, interesting and evolving, just like journalism.
Phoebe Chongchua: [04:16] Love it. I couldn’t agree with you more. I especially love how you say that it’s so important to engage and we are of course, going to go so much further into this in our brand journalism discussion. But first let’s start with that success tip or quote.
Larry Light : [04:33] I teach in university as well. I’ve taught in executive programs and in graduate programs and in undergraduate programs at various places like Indiana university, Ohio state university, Northwestern, Kellogg school, and most recently at Wharton and the common pattern of people in business schools, especially the younger students is to worry about their career path. But I don’t think career has a path anymore. I think the idea of trying to plan your life down a path is rarely what will really happen in your life. I think we need to develop student mindsets to be more opportunistic and more risk-taking. And when an opportunity comes up evaluated for what it is and take advantage of it and without worrying what it leads to. So I think we young people over-planned their career instead of optimizing what is in front of them. I mean, life, I think no longer follows a linear journey. It’s a zigzag, unpredictable life in business. I predict what the consumer will be like 10 years from now. So if we can’t forecast the future of our life in business, why do the students spend so much energy trying to forecast their own life for the next 10 years, but they can plan ahead. But without being linear and not what I tell the students, life is not a path. It’s a Zig Zack.
Phoebe Chongchua: [06:26] I agree with you completely. And sometimes over-planning people think that that’s the way to go. They think that that is going to create the most success, but I really believe in being resilient, being able to thrive in various situations. And actually that’s quite like what a journalist does because the story, when I was out in the field news reporting, my story could change, you know, half a dozen times and I would have to figure out, oh, we’re dropping that interview. We’re running over and getting this city council member or this, you know dignitary and we’re picking up the story and changing direction. So it teaches you that flexibility. That’s so important in life learning how to recover from say your mistakes or what I always like to say is when you have a correction in your path, it provides new direction to go a different way and try something new. So too much over-planning can certainly create some obstacles and lack of ability to try things that might create greater success. Larry, what is a fitness habit? And I love how you put a spin on this because we’re talking about fitness habits for companies. So give us your fitness habit.
Larry Light : [07:44] Well, I interpreted the question bigger than physical fitness. I interpreted the question, how do you keep your mind fit? And I think too often in business, we lose the fitness of our mind. And the last time we read a challenging book that really challenged our mind was when we graduated from university, that we look, we avoid friction in meetings. We say, boy, that was a great meeting. Everybody agreed when the truth is, that’s a terrible meeting because of everybody agreed then everybody, but you was redundant or waste presentation and say that speaker was fantastic. What he said is exactly what I think. Well then isn’t that a waste of mine out of your mind? Why did you bother attending the meeting? That’s more of an ego trip. He confirmed what on a genius I am. When what we really want to do is expose ourselves to things that challenge our mind and that’s how keep our creative mind energy fit.
Larry Light : [08:59] So I I’d like to just quote a friend of mine, Jerry Hirshberg, he, he was a creative designer of automobiles. He worked at general motors and then became head of Nissan design. And I worked with Jerry on the relaunch of the of the Nissan brand and the Nissan design philosophy. And he said a very interesting thought. He, he said, avoid frictionless meetings. A good meeting is when different minds debate, argue and fight for their ideas. And we don’t try to seek compromise. We look for passion, but passion causes friction, but he said, without friction, there can never be a creative spark.
Phoebe Chongchua: [09:52] Love that. So important to get those ideas flowing because you’re absolutely right. If you sit around and everybody agrees, there is redundancy and you’re there isn’t that growth. It’s sort of like in the valleys. And in the struggles, that’s when you’re really seeking out new challenges and new ways to grow and finding new solutions.
Larry Light : [10:14] I think another client of mine made a point that, that the word argue evolved from the English definition. He was from England when it crossed the Atlantic, it, the definition changed in England. The word argument means to strongly represent your point of view. You’re arguing your case when it crossed the Atlantic argue became a negative, why are you arguing with me? And I think we need more. So what happens is when people disagree, they don’t argue in the meeting, they don’t debate, they stay silent. And then after the meeting they say to their cohorts, boy, I can’t believe that people want to do that. I’m not going to do it. And you end up with a wasted meeting unproductive, but that’s the culture. Unfortunately, we’ve developed a good meeting is a frictionless meeting. I think the exact opposite is true. Larry,
Phoebe Chongchua: [11:17] Tell us a little bit about your career highlight. I’m curious to know, I think a lot of people might have ideas in their heads about what would be your career highlight, but from Larry light’s perspective, what is your career highlight and how did you achieve it?
Larry Light : [11:34] Well, I don’t know how I achieved it, but I can tell you, there were two, one is I’m Canadian. I would came from Montreal and an opportunity came up at Ohio state university for a fellowship in what at the time was called human engineering, which is a horrible brand name for a career. Sounds like you engineer humans. It got rebranded a few decades later, but they and is now known as ergonomics. But I decided I was curious, I’d come to America, see what that was all about. And that was a significant opportunity. And part of the zigzag life that I left the lead when I was in human engineering, I was offered an opportunity to teach statistics in the business school. And that was another highlight. I didn’t even know where the business school was on the campus, but the professor, my advisor said, statistics are subject in different mathematics is mathematics and it doesn’t matter what the subject is.
Larry Light : [12:47] You apply to, it’s a good application of statistical knowledge or it isn’t. So why not take this job and see where it leads? And I did. And that was my introduction to marketing. And I got fascinated by that. And then I got enough job offers in various places. And suddenly I, while I came to America to be a human engineer, I ended up being in marketing research. And of course the highlight of my career and what people know me most as is the CMO that was part of the turnaround team at McDonald’s. And some recognize that as one of the most amazing turnarounds of its time you just have to look at the stock price. When I joined the stock was $13. The company declared its first ever loss. Three years later, the stock was 65. And it was certainly an amazing, amazing experience. But I think if I had not taken that opportunity to teach statistics and the business school, I would not have been in McDonald’s 25 years later, take
Phoebe Chongchua: [14:09] Us back to 2002. What were your first steps when you landed the job with McDonald’s and you’re in this situation, you said their stock was at $13 first loss. Certainly things couldn’t have been very happy there. Tell us about it.
Larry Light : [14:30] It was a sad time. No question about it. Sales were down fortune magazine, ran a cover story. Mcdonald’s is living in hamburger. Hell people were forecasting. The demise of McDonald’s franchisee morale was terrible. Investors of course were exiting the brand. And that’s why the stock cratered from in one year, from a record high to a record low and internally, the media was just so critical and people read these articles and start to believe it. So employee morale was terrible. And then McDonald’s decided to do a restructuring, which you know, is a fancy word for saying you’re, many of you are going to be fired and it was a demoralizing time at best.
Larry Light : [15:27] So the number one approach in a turnaround, and I say that a lot is internal marketing preceded, external marketing first priority is internal marketing. And we stuck to it. The board of directors asked Larry, what is the new advertising going to be? And my answer to the board was I have absolutely no idea and I’m not focusing on it. And I don’t care. The important thing is what is the new cultural attitude going to be? And we now have an attitude of not losing and we’ve got to have an attitude of winning, and I’m going to focus on that first. So we will not launch new advertising until we reinspire the organization. I have four principles in a turnaround of internal marketing. I call them leadership principles. But number one is to be like a leader. You must act like a leader.
Larry Light : [16:35] And that means defining the vision, defining the direction, why it’s important. And so on. Number two is managed through influence, not through command and control. Number three is educate the organization so they understand what to do and why it’s going to be different. If people just continue to do the same thing, they’re going to get the same results, but don’t just tell them what to do, have them understand why it’s important to do something different and then forth support too many times. New management comes in and tells people what to do and says, okay, good luck. I’m going to put in metrics. And in a year, I’m going to tell you whether you’ve done it. And if you haven’t, you’re fine. We spent a lot of time. For example, when we did finally come up with a new campaign called I’m loving it, I cut the advertising budget and gave it to HR with the objective. We had 1.6 million employees worldwide. I said, I want a hundred percent awareness. I want a hundred percent reach. I want 1.6 million people to see the advertising before the first ad runs on television, anywhere in the world. And the response to that was extraordinary. This had never happened to before at McDonald’s. And it’s just one example of achieving cultural alignment. So I think that’s a critical success factor when businesses and going well, Larry, tell me
Phoebe Chongchua: [18:11] A little bit about how you started to intertwine storytelling into all of this, because you really did change the approach to it, thus the term brand journalism. So tell us a little bit about that and how that was received because the style was so unique,
Larry Light : [18:29] Our advertising wasn’t working, that’s pretty clear. So doing more of the same, wasn’t going to produce a different result. And the challenge was that even though it wasn’t working, it was winning creative awards. So the ad agencies were saying we’re producing advertising, that’s winning industry acknowledgement and creative awards and that the con festival, and why isn’t it working with consumers? Then I thought at the time that the biggest mistake we made was adhering to an outdated outmoded view of how to create marketing communications. I didn’t know what the right way was, but I was convinced that the old approach to positioning of, like I said, owning a word in the customer’s mind is dad. And that in the new digital world that was growing, it wasn’t as big as today, but you could see it coming. The new consumer and their attitude of increased skepticism advertising was getting less attention, less interest research showed it was becoming less effective.
Larry Light : [19:46] So we started playing with the idea of communicate a brand story rather than repetitively communicating a brand word or position. And I, over time I decided that the way we had approached advertising by deciding here’s what we’re going to say, and we’re going to repeat it every day. Instead, we should answer the question. What’s the news about the brand this week? What’s the story we’re telling. And a friend of mine suggests that we think like a journalist instead of thinking like traditional marketing communication. So I develop this idea, what’s called think like a journalist. Well, a journalist would not, let’s say you were running a magazine and every edition of the magazine month after month, week after week issue after issue, article after article said the thing, but just with different words, people would get bored. So a good journalist is how do I develop an editorial policy that says here’s the point of view of time magazine, but the stories change in every edition, but over time there’s a coherence. So we started challenging our creative agencies to say, what’s the story we want to tell about McDonald’s over time and how does each message whether it’s in print or on radio or on TV or in any medium part of that story, but engaging and intriguing and interesting our customers so that they, each time learned something new about McDonald’s. And over time we branded that brand journalism.
Phoebe Chongchua: [21:43] I think that’s where a lot of companies that perhaps are learning about brand journalism, learning about this style of communicating with the consumers are missing it. They still want to cling to that outdated style of being repetitive. And if we say it enough times, if it’s a jingle it’ll catch on and they can sing it in their sleep as opposed to saying there are new things, I like to look at it from the perspective of once you’re attracting and engaging them, and you’re finding their, their points of pain or, or, or problems. And you begin to solve it through introducing new ideas and storytelling. You’ve created a real way to bond with your audience that has them coming back for more so that you don’t have these, for instance, static websites that don’t offer any solutions or anything beyond what they’ll see on day one, when the website was built and then five years later, it’s the same, the same site with nothing new and no reason to come back to it.
Larry Light : [22:45] Well, the analogy I used is think of a newspaper. The first syllable in newspaper is new and that’s because if there’s nothing new who would read the newspaper. So we developed, we actually wrote down if our marketing communications was a newspaper, what would our editorial policy be? And I said that as if we think like a journalist, I think that’s the most important phrase in brand journalism. We would say an article in rolling stone magazine might be on Bruce Springsteen. And an article in new Yorker might also be on Bruce Springsteen, but they would be written with a very different tone and style and manner, but the subject matter would be Bruce next month and next month. And the following month, we wouldn’t expect to see article after article, after article forever on Bruce Springsteen, it would be what’s new. And that’s what I would always challenge the creative process to say, think like a journalist what’s the editorial policy, is this message consistent with that? And what’s the news and I’m sure you apply the same thing to your own podcast. Yes,
Phoebe Chongchua: [24:21] That is definitely the key to thinking like a journalist. And I love that you’ve shared so much of that from your days at McDonald’s. I want to touch just briefly on your book that you co-authored. Can you give us just a brief run through of the six rules for brand revitalization? What are the things that corporations should think about when they’re trying to revitalize their brands?
Larry Light : [24:46] The most important concept in the book, we refer to it as the plan to win. And if people go on the internet, they’ll see that phrase used a lot. And you’re probably familiar with the four P’s made famous by various MBA programs, but most famous in Phil Kotler’s book on marketing. But my view was that there are actually eight piece and we built a whole revitalization program called the plan to win because, and why we call it that in revitalization, most business plans are not plans to win their plans, to not lose very much. And that’s never going to turn around anything. So we’d said we’ve got to develop a winning attitude. The plan to win has eight pillars, number one, purpose. And by that, I mean, what is the purpose of this business? And that McDonald’s our vision, our mission, some call it, that was to be our customer’s favorite place and way to eat and drink.
Larry Light : [26:06] And those words were picked for very specific reasons. For example, favorite, we had frequency and too many companies confuse frequency with favorite. If I use a brand frequently, I must prefer it. And that’s just not true. Just think of some, I used to be traveled to Detroit a lot for the automotive industry. And I flew Northwest airlines very frequently. And I got a letter that acknowledged that fact as one of their most frequent customers. And one of the lines was we appreciate that you prefer to fly Northwest airlines. I don’t prefer to fly Northwest. In fact, I hate them, but I frequently fly them because they’ve monopolized that route. Well, unfortunately we confuse loyalty programs with frequency programs and we reward frequency, but we don’t build loyalty. And that’s was, we could we’re killing McDonalds so much. So that 60% of our most frequent customers said they don’t like eating at McDonald’s, but they went there anyway and would say, but my kids make me do it.
Larry Light : [27:33] And we turned kids into co-conspirators and that’s not a happy brand relationship. So I could go through each word like that. Out of that new mission came things like MC cafe and snack wraps. It, it had a huge impact. Next came the brand promise. And obviously we had to change what is the experience we’re promising our guests and we educated the system that a brand promise is not about promising a thing, and that we’re not promising low price. We’re not promising a big Macs were brands that succeed promise of relevant, differentiated experience. And the things we do are the things that help us live up to that promise. So what is the experience? And then McDonald’s the experience was a great place to take my kids, but I wouldn’t like to eat there. So we had to address both of those and change radically.
Larry Light : [28:46] The brand story out of that came the salad lunch appealing to young adult women. And so that they had something to eat while their kids were there, as opposed to just drinking a cup of coffee and watching their kids eat. And then we changed the personality of the brand or what I call the brand framework, the editorial policy of the brand to a young adult strategy. And why, because our research showed that kids under 20 want to be older and people over 30, want to be younger. If you appeal to in brand character, to somebody around 25 you’ll appeal to both all ages simultaneously. So we, if you look at, there was a radical change in the character of the brand, the music that influenced the restaurant design. If you go into the new restaurants, we got rid of the Crail of colors, we changed the uniforms, changed the packaging, such a simple idea, had a huge impact, much bigger than any ad.
Larry Light : [29:58] We ran then came the five action feeds, and they’re not random they’re in a specific order, people, product, place, price, and promotion. And the reason they’re in that order is that, as I said earlier, people is the first P so how will we activate and align the organization? We will do it through inspire, influence, educate, and support, and develop cultural alignment, but help support people to be effective. So we invested a huge amount of effort in the people pay. You’ll never improve service in a service company without aligning and inspiring. The people next comes product and by product, I mean, product slash surface, the original definition of product was not a thing, but it was product of your efforts. So what are we going to do? Well, turns out to cut costs. We cut the quality of the big Mac. How do you do that with your iconic brand? But that’s obviously in a turnaround very time. Very often people go into cost management rather than brand strengthening. And we actually cut to quality of the big Mac. Well, that was a high priority. We are going to make the best, big Mac we’ve ever made in the history of McDonald’s, whatever it got.
Larry Light : [31:30] And there were other things we did in the product and service area then came place and place. Of course, the definition of place hasn’t changed, but the actual execution of place has changed, but it starts with the building. The most powerful add a company in this kind of business ever runs is the physical plant. Even if you drive by a McDonald’s and don’t go in, it’s still an outdoor ad. Why would we put a play place in front of every building and try to convince young adults that this is a great place to eat rather than Panera bread. We ended up not being a place that welcomes children. We ended up with an image of being a childish brand. So it meant redesigning the real estate, changing the decor, looking like a welcoming brand that welcomes the family, welcomes children, but welcomes everyone of every age.
Larry Light : [32:32] And that, but place has changed places. Now, also the place on the internet, right? It’s your homepage. It’s a place means every place where a customer interacts with the brand, how do we develop a coherent message? Well, at many companies, the, each of those places is in a different silo and they only talk to each other at an annual meeting of all employees to develop a coherent idea place. And interaction was a, also a big challenge. And that meant redesigning our whole digital world, which has continued to evolve of course, and only then came price. And we had to change the definition of price from being low price, to being extraordinary value. It developed, we develop the launch of the dollar menu, which was a huge success, but it didn’t mean we built the brand on price. For example, when I arrived in 2002, over 75% of all marketing communications was on the sale of the month when I left in 2005, 17% of McDonald’s advertising, including dollar menu was on price. And on top of that, McDonald’s went from loss to profit. Emphasizing discounting actually hurt the brand, but we still wanted to have offers that were good value for money, but that was a huge change and involved a change in mindset because unfortunately excessive discounting becomes addictive like cocaine.
Phoebe Chongchua: [34:22] Was there resistance when you first came in and you know, with these new concepts, even in fact saying that you’re going to focus internally first was there extreme resistance?
Larry Light : [34:34] There was huge resistance all the way up to, and including the board of directors. How did you get beyond that? The same way I approached the people in the front line, inspire, influence, educate, and support, make people into believers. If they don’t believe, then you don’t get permission to do anything. And but it, it won’t happen just because you say, this is what I want to do trust me. So we had to do a variety of things to inspire the board of directors, inspire the executive committee, influence their behavior. Educate, let me explain to you why I believe this new approach is better. Here’s some evidence, it never hurts to do some research and have some facts to support your case. Show why continuing down the road we’re going is we’re his brand. We’ll go over a cliff. So it’s one of the approaches like to use is fear, appeal.
Larry Light : [35:41] People will feel a need for change if they fear the course they’re on. And so sometimes people think, well, if I go back to basics, I’ll fix everything back to basics is a dangerous idea in a world that continually has new basics in 2002, it’s a different world than it was in 1992 and 2014 is different than it was in 2002. And we always need new basics, not, and going back to basics or let’s do what got us to where we are today, but where we are today is a terrible place. Why don’t we want to do that? So I think there were a lot of things like that, that added up to, okay, we’ll give you a chance, but it was permission. It was give you a chance, but I couldn’t remember it. A franchisee meeting, the head of the franchise group said, we’ll give you a chance, but Larry, you better well be successful or a year from now. You’re going to be fired. Good luck. I’m willing to take that chance because the alternative is to guarantee that I will be fired
Phoebe Chongchua: [37:05] For sharing that such a fascinating journey. And, and it provides a lot of insight. I’d certainly read a lot about it, but you brought up so many good points. And so many things for companies to think about that goes beyond just putting a fancy term on it, of brand journalism, just the fight that you had to do, the convincing, the inspiring. And, and I think that that’s really critical when, when our brand journalism community is listening. And they’re wondering, how can I move this type of a communication effort into our company? As we’re seeing with major brands that are actually becoming media outlets themselves, bypassing the media completely and telling their own stories and not being as redundant as they once were, but actually you know, sharing new information that provokes the audience to engage and trust them a little bit more with their brand, their product, their service. So really fascinating story. Larry, what is one piece of technology video or multimedia equipment, or even an app that you just can’t live without?
Larry Light : [38:19] Well, the technology that I can’t live without is my mobile phone and the app that I can not live without is called flight aware. And I advise anybody who’s a frequent traveler to, to flight aware or flight stats. They’re both very similar. And the reason is that when you use the airline app, you’re flying on American or Delta or United, most people go to the airline app. And the problem with the airline app is they lie. So they’ll tell you the flight is on time. Pilots use flight aware and flight stats because they have the actual data. And many times I’ll see a gate change on flight aware that is not yet on Delta site or that the flight is delayed. I’ll see it on flight aware or flight stats before I see it on American site or even on the board, or I’ll be at the gate and the gate will say on time and I go to flight aware or flight stats. And I see that it’s actually not on time. Larry
Phoebe Chongchua: [39:27] What’s one book documentary, or even an internet channel that you like to watch.
Larry Light : [39:33] A friend of mine, David Acker was a professor at Berkeley. He’s a consultant now some think of him as a competitor. I think of him as a friend. And I would say in terms of knowledge of the literature, if you’re interested in branding, anything by David Acker is a must read, but to this day, the best he’s, he’s published a lot, he’s prolific, but the best book that David ever published was his first book on branding. And if you only read one book, I’d read David Acker year
Phoebe Chongchua: [40:16] Is 2025, and I’m really excited to hear your expert predictions. What is your prediction for the future of TV, news, media and brand journalism, and how will it affect businesses?
Larry Light : [40:29] Well, there are very few things we can predict about the future. So I don’t try to predict, but I do try to prepared and we can prepare for the future, but the only future you could predict in the end is the one you create for your brand. So instead of prediction, how would I prepare? I would prepare. And I always start with the one thing that we know will happen. We are a hundred percent certain that people alive today who will also be alive in a year, will be one year older. So demographics are and demographic forecasting while not perfect because people die in their variety of other challenges are still the fundamental energy that drives most marketing. What’s different about today than what we had in the sixties and seventies and eighties is we now have a demographic shape in the major countries of the world.
Larry Light : [41:41] That looks like a two humped camel. We have the growth of the baby boomers who will be in their late seventies and even older in 2025. And we have the amazing growth of the millennials who will actually be bigger in number than the baby boomers. This country is getting older and younger at the same time. Now just imagine the complexity, you’re running a hotel and you’ve got boomers in the hotel and you’ve got millennials in the hotel and they’re in the hotel at the same time, or they’re going to McDonald’s on the same day. How do we market to segments? And we can’t ignore either.
Larry Light : [42:29] So I think brand journalism is even more relevant in that environment because like constructing a magazine, I could have 20 articles in a magazine, but I don’t expect any individual reader to read every single article or read the New York times from front to back every article. So I can have messages that appeal to boomers that the millennials ignore. And I can have messages that the millennials will read that the boomers will ignore, but I still have to have a brand coherence that they don’t get confused and I don’t confuse the brand. And then the other, which we all know the future is the mobile mindset and that every year, the mobile and mobility, and we won’t recognize the mobile phone. It probably won’t be a phone and will be called a phone in 2025. It will be an appliance. And I call it a mobile appliance that happens to also make phone calls.
Larry Light : [43:40] And we see that already in the mobile mindset that more people use it for text messaging than for phone calls. For information, for making reservations, you may have seen that what Hilton has announced that you’ll be able to make our hotel reservation on your mobile phone, check in on your mobile phone, go directly to your room and not even have to get a key card and use your phone to open the door. You’ll be able to select the exact room that you want, the way you select a seat on an airplane, you will be able to select your check-in and check-out time all through your so-called phone or what I prefer to call your mobile appliance. One thing
Phoebe Chongchua: [44:28] Is for certain I’m in agreement with you, it will so many more things than simply make phone calls. Larry, it’s been so much fun. Thank you for being on the brand journalism advantage podcast. You’ve shed so much light on brand journalism. I am really honored to have you as a guest.
Larry Light : [44:46] Thank you so much. Phoebe brand
Phoebe Chongchua: [44:48] Brand Journalism community. You know, that you can find all of the valuable information in the show notes, just visit, think like a journalist.com and in the search box at the top right corner type in Larry Light. And you’ll find this interview and all the valuable resources mentioned in this episode.
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