Responsible Marketing is Good for Business: w/ Chad Hickey and Lauren Burke

Responsible Marketing; Sustainability; Eco-friendly business practices. Whatever you call it, companies are increasingly exploring how to “do better.” And on this episode, we explore how businesses can embed Responsibility directly into their marketing strategies.

Chad Hickey, CEO of Givsly; and Lauren Burke of Ljs Advisory, share their experience in integrating these practices into B2B events and campaigns. Reducing unnecessary tradeshow swag; creating thoughtful event activations; and showcasing company values in advertising and outreach. There are many ways that Responsible Marketing can be embedded in the strategy.

We also discuss the motivation for companies to adopt this approach - to reflect their internal values; appeal to an increasingly tuned-in customer base (we’re looking at you, Gen Z); or respond to their employees’ expectations. And provide some guideposts for marketers and business owners who are looking to get started.

Key Takeaways:

•  Responsible Marketing is a valuable part of building brand reputation
•  Any initiative should be an integral part of your marketing strategy
•  A senior marketer has to be the internal champion for this to succeed
•  Take time to educate the Sales team on the benefits to the sales process
•  KPIs should ideally align with existing metrics, to ensure buy-in across the company

Resources:

Connect with Lauren here
Connect with Chad here 

Transcript

S2 Ep 6 Transcript

Steve:

Since Earth Day is celebrated in the middle of April, this seems like a good time to think about Sustainability- and doing good -  in Marketing. Whether it’s reducing the pile of swag given out – and thrown away – at tradeshows; making events more environmentally friendly; or finding ways to support charities as part of your campaigns. On this episode, we’re talking about building Responsible Marketing techniques into your overall marketing strategy

[Intro Music]

Steve: Today is a first for The Marketing Mix. I don't have a marketer on the show. I'm fortunate to have two accomplished marketers who are going to share their experience with us today. 

I'm talking with Chad Hickey, who is founder and CEO at Givsly and Lauren Burke, owner and chief marketer at LJS advisory, and the focus of our discussion today is around sustainable marketing practices, particularly how it can be applied to B2B campaigns, B2B programs.

And the reason I'm talking with both of them is so we can dig into some joint projects they've had success with in the last year or so. Lauren, Chad, welcome to the Marketing Mix. 

Lauren Burke: Thanks so much. 

Chad Hickey: Thanks for having us. 

Steve: So Chad, you founded Givsly a few years ago. It's a platform that provides responsible marketing advertising solutions.

I used the term sustainable in the intro, which I think is, is widely accepted, probably some variation in the definitions But I think you tend to think in broader terms around this idea of responsible marketing. So can you explain what that term means to you and where it came from? 

Chad Hickey: Yeah, I mean, look, I think that the industry is in a moment where we are really understanding that there are things that need to be fixed, right?

And sustainability is one of those things. Where digital supply chain is emitting a lot of carbon from a Givsly standpoint we look more at marketing materials, swag, things like that, that we've all had the bags of things that we leave in our hotel room at the end of the conference that people don't want and all of those things end up in landfills.

And so at Givsly, we try to help marketers understand that you can incorporate values. So whether you say values, whether you say responsible marketing to us, it's the same thing. We provide tools that really automate and make it very turnkey for a marketer like Lauren, where she can incorporate different strategies to move people through the marketing funnel quicker.

So for us, that could be events that could be B2B demand gen and it can even be your media campaign, you know showing your values in a way that gets people to pay more attention to your digital ads. So that's really the broad view of where we try to provide solutions to our customers.

Steve: I was just at a trade show this week up in Toronto, and it is, it is painful, honestly, when you see these people walking around with bags of stuff. You know half of it's going to get left in the, the hotel room, but everybody wants it, right? And, and actually the company I was working with, we decided we were not going to have giveaways, and you could see people were disappointed.

You know, they would come by, what have you got? 

Chad Hickey: I would question if people really do want it. I think that people are acting in habit. Like what I said earlier, where we've all been in that situation where we leave the bag in the hotel room, you were shaking your heads, everybody shakes their head when I say that.

And for us, I think the thing, when it specifically comes to swag, that's important to call out is, we are not saying swag is bad. We definitely think swag has a place. And there are people that we see that do want swag, but there are also people. And it's a majority of people that are further in their career.

They're, look, I don't need a bottle of wine. I don't need another Swell water bottle with a logo on it. I don't need another notebook with a logo on it. it's more for us about the duplication. The fact that these companies tend to provide the same things rather than if people should cut swag completely out.

Givsly has swag, but we are very. thoughtful in where we incorporate that swag and we always make sure that it's going to be used. 

Steve: That makes sense. And I do want to get more into the events later on in the call. But first on this idea of responsible marketing. So Lauren, when I first talked to you about coming on the podcast to talk about sustainable marketing, it was your idea to, to include Chad in the conversation.

And I know the two of you've worked together for, for some time on, and you've collaborated on some pretty exciting projects which again, we'll dig into later on. I know at the time you were in a corporate role, was it difficult to sell this idea of responsible marketing internally in that organization?

Lauren Burke: Fortunately, I have found that responsible marketing has not been a hard sell. Now, I can't say that's going to be the case for everyone, but I do think the tide is changing when it comes to being more responsible, overall from a corporate perspective. So naturally for marketing, that has to kind of be the case as well.

I think companies are finding that being ethical, morally and socially responsible are kind of a must at this point, if you're going to succeed, people are starting to demand more whether you're a consumer or a corporate employee or a leader having strong values to Chad's point and actually embodying them.

You can't just say, Oh yeah, we're sustainable. I want to know exactly the measures that you take holistically. Right. If I'm going  to work with you or if I'm going to buy from you. So given marketing is the face of the company and the voice of the company to the marketplace, I feel like marketers should feel comfortable, Trying to sell it in assuming the company's values are kind of aligned with, with what you're proposing 

Steve: For sure. And did you find that it came from sort of the top of the company and was pushed down or was it more of a, an internal thing where people are saying, “Hey, we want to be an ethical organization” and it's sort of built up naturally from that, 

Lauren Burke: I would say it comes from all over. Right. I think if your leaders understand the importance of it and then you have employees who are kind of aligned with that You know, that's sort of the best case scenario, right?

When all the stars are aligned. But I do think not everybody is going to be in that kind of situation, right? So if you're sitting in a marketing role and you're like, I really feel strongly about this. I want to sell this in, we have to sell ideas and as marketers all the time, right?

This is just another idea. So You know, maybe you're, you go to your company, you're like our values are just not strong enough. Right. So let's rethink our values from a corporate perspective. And then everything else kind of falls in line. So I think there's ways around it. And  I don't think marketers should be discouraged if they find themselves not being successful in this space right now.

Think about What baby steps you can take in the short term, and then obviously look to scale those out and make it just kind of part of your DNA as a company. 

Chad Hickey: And can I say something about working with Lauren too, from my own perspective is she is being very humble in her answer on how pivotal she was to driving that within the organization that we have worked together on.

And I think that what. We see it gives Lee from a broader perspective of working with over 60 marketers now in different companies is that you do need that champion and Lauren was that champion for us. Right? And I believe that every marketer should be that champion because marketers understand how to track ROI, which I know we're going to talk about purpose to profit.

You know, they know how to track ROI and they are the tip of the spear of telling the story to the public, which the public now expects this of every company. And so the marketer, in my view, really has to be confident that they are that person to turn the ship. And the thing that I see, and I say this with love, cause I've been a CRO or in sales, most of my life, what I see as the biggest mistake of the marketer is they listen too much to people who want to do more of the same. And I would say sales is a big driver of that. You know, salespeople I've managed them all my life. They're emotional people. I'm an emotional person cause I'm wired that way. So I'm putting myself in that bucket, but you know, salespeople want really extravagant experiences with their clients.

They want things to take in. And I think the marketer needs to say, look guys, to Lauren's point, this is changing and we have to change the way we do business and thank you for your feedback, but I'm going to go based on what I'm seeing as the macro trend, because a sales organization is going to be more resistant than, I think other departments.

Lauren Burke: Chad, that is a really good point. I think again, working for a company where this was a little bit more ingrained. I don't think I had maybe that intense pushback that you've seen in the past, Chad, but it definitely does take some coaching and we'll say storytelling and like, say, Hey guys, be comfortable with the uncomfortable.You know what I mean? 

This isn't your obvious client entertainment experience, but for example we're going to, you're going to get FaceTime 15 clients and prospects, and you're going to package up boxes of fresh food to bring to homeless shelters. Like there, you can't put a price tag on that.

That is truly unique and different. So I agree. I think responsible marketing really can exist across this, like the sales funnel, right? From a brand building perspective, of course, but also on a more tactical sales level, right? You know, instead of giving folks an Amazon gift card for their time encourage them or ask them if, if you can make a donation to a charity of their choice on their behalf.

I think things like that make all the difference and hopefully we'll keep seeing more and more of that. 

Steve: Yeah. And I think a lot of those points come back to this idea of having an internal champion, right? Because if it's just something that comes down from the top and they say, we're going to do this and then nobody's really selling it internally, It'll get brushed to one side and you go back to it, right?

Whereas if you do have someone like a Lauren internally who's saying, okay, I understand, but you know, let's talk through this. And I think metrics is another part of it, right? Cause sometimes it can be, let's just try this one time, right? And let's see what happens with it. Maybe it's a case of, Hey, the money we've saved here, we can invest in other things that you've been asking for right, because it's a zero sum game and you know, I often have this discussion with sales teams and I say, should we go to this event again? And they say, well, if I, if I close one deal, it pays for itself. It's like, yeah, but instead of doing that, we could be investing the money in something else.

So I think it's a similar argument here of, well, let's try this and then let's see what, what else we can do. That's on your wish list to, to balance it out.

So Lauren, you mentioned something about aligning the values. Chad, you, you, you came up with this phrase purpose drives profit.

You know, those, those are nice things that you hear in company meetings. Maybe they are HR driven mantras. But oftentimes they don't become core, right? So how do you convince companies maybe they're engaging with Givsly and they say, Hey, what do you guys do? How do you convince them that, yeah, this isn't just a nice to have, but this is truly something that can help drive business value.

Chad Hickey: First of all, I would love to say I came up with purpose to profit, but I'm not that wise. Other people have used it

Steve: Take credit for it!

Chad Hickey: But I think that from our conversation, Steve, my belief, and it's kind of going back to my earlier comment that the quicker you can show an organization how these approaches actually close more business, I think the whether that B two B2B or B2C, that is the moment that the light bulb goes off for everybody.

And that is why we have intentionally built tools for marketers. We rarely work with HR departments or even CSR departments. Now, when I say that, I mean they will be involved because obviously these, these marketing products ladder up to their overall objectives of how they wanna support communities. So we're not working in a silo by any means, 

But it is typically the marketer where I am having conversations going, Hey, Lauren gave some great examples. You typically hand out a gift card. It's the same thing. It's the same budget. You just have to think differently about how you're using it. 

And listen, the reason why I started this company is when I was a sales leader, my sales team would go and volunteer with our clients rather than always doing these super extravagant things. And when we talk to clients that do something, or they're thinking about doing something and we're like, yeah, this isn't really going to work, I don't believe it at all because I've seen it myself. 

I have gone with McDonald's and volunteered. I've gone with the Home Depot and volunteered. And those brands and the people that were in those experiences where we were connecting on a human level - we see it firsthand and I've lived in this world and I know how much those things cost. You've just got to think differently about how you're using those budgets. 

Lauren Burke: 100%. And, and I think sophisticated marketers, hopefully they have some level of tracking, right? So as simple as things like email open rates and click through rates, if there's a purpose driven component of that email, your open rates, your click through rates are going to be higher.

Right. But then thinking even bottom of the funnel, right? If you. Are tracking the ROI against opportunities, right? I, I mean, I think the numbers speak for themselves, right? And to Chad's point, you don't need a massive budget, right? And if you're, if you're trying to start small, have a small test and learn budget that you kind of allocate towards these kinds of initiatives and then prove your point.

Right. So hopefully quarter after quarter. Yeah. You can start investing more and more in responsible marketing, and you're not compromising on results. 

Chad Hickey: And the other thing that I would say to that, too, and, you know Steve, you were talking about values. If I was to ask you, Steve, what are your values, you wouldn't say, Oh, Chad, I don't have values today.

You know what I'm saying? Like when people go, Oh, this isn't the right fit. I'm like, how are you communicating your values, which is inherent to your DNA, not a fit in everything you do. It's kind of a very strange comment that we hear sometimes we'll find the right fit. It's like, okay, climate change, us being able to have a world for our children to live in.

How is that not, you know, values that everyone should fundamentally believe in, you know what I mean? It's kind of a. How do I say it nicely? I mean, it's a, it's a pretty ridiculous for lack of a better word response in my opinion, when I hear that. 

Steve: I think, I think that's fair. And, and, and Lauren, something you were saying a few minutes ago caught my attention. You treat this, it's an integrated part of your marketing mix, right? So I can imagine a lot of people will say, Oh yeah, we spend 5 percent of our marketing budget on responsible marketing, right?

It's this little thing we do over here, right? What, once a year we, we take people off and do this, but really you're saying the approach is to embed it in the overall marketing strategy. 

Lauren Burke: Absolutely. And I mean, I think at this point where I'm at is it's not Oh, let's just try this thing one time. 

This is our marketing plan for the year. I know that I have these various, we'll say tools and tactics that I've used or that I haven't used. Right. Cause. I haven't done every possible, we'll say sustainable or responsible marketing thing that you can do. Right. But if you have an understanding of what's at your disposal, and obviously you have a plan for a year, you can kind of marry the two up.

And I think the more and more you do it, the more natural it becomes and you're not having to, to sell anything in you're like, right, we're doing this integrated experience at Cannes, for example, Chad, you know, this is how responsible marketing fits into it. 

Steve: Yeah, that makes sense. So we've, we've already mentioned a couple of specifics, right?

We talked a little bit about swag. There's some volunteering going on there. So, so let's dive into that. And, and Lauren, since you were the corporate marketer, I'm curious from your perspective, you have one or two projects you could sort of describe to us and how it worked and the benefit that came from it.

Lauren Burke: Yeah, so we can start with events. I mean, I feel like we could spend an hour talking about just events. So I'll try to, to keep to the highlights here. 

One thing that I did with Ogury that we we're very happy with when I was leading America's field marketing was At advertising week in New York, we did this cookie list cafe activation.

So the company, it’s an ad tech company delivering cookie list and idealist solution. So we were like, how can we bring this to life in a fun way that communicates our value prop, but also is sustainable in certain ways. So rather than building out this whole elaborate booth, we actually rented a vending machine.

We branded it. And instead of giving out swag we gave out treats that were tied to guests will say personas, it all sort of tied into the, the, the technology as well. But we gave, we, we gave people that surprise and delight moment that swag provides but we gave it to them in this tree that was from a local bakery made with sustainable ingredients, right?

These are all very small decisions that all laddered up to us being more sustainable with our activation. Another thing that we, we try to do is kind of avoid printed items as often as possible. You know, there's always a place, of course, to have maybe one pamphlet or brochure, right?

But you don't need to go and invest a ton of money in that space either. And then in terms of signage, we try to use signage where we can take that and either put it in our offices or reuse it for another event or keep it in storage for a rainy day versus just disposing of it.

But there are, of course, ways to recycle and dispose of things sustainably as well. So there's so many ways that you can do it. 

Another thing that we found successful playing off the cookieless cafe activation is we actually brought that on the road then to our clients. So instead of doing all these one off events where we're having to create new branding, we actually branded a cart and brought sustainable goodies.

We did have some swag, but it was highly curated. highly relevant swag that we felt was not going to end up in a landfill. Right. So that was a way that we sort of gave this ideal legs. And we were able to sort of maintain the sustainable approach throughout it as well. 

Steve: Yeah. And I think the so you, you mentioned the thing about not having literature at trade shows.

And that, that flagged up to me a few years ago. I was doing a big trade show in Barcelona. And I think in Europe, in some ways they're ahead on at least some of these things. Yeah. It was actively discouraged by the organizers to even have any giveaways. And what they wanted you to do was have a QR code at the booth so that somebody could scan it.

And then they just encouraged us to send out PDFs or whatever afterwards. And I find it funny because they were very worried about that. And then they also, at the same time, were selling effectively disposable booths. You know, one time use booths at the same event. So, we're not quite there.

To me, that's a simple one, right? 

If somebody is like, how do I get started with this? Well, do away with literature. It's going to save you money. Nobody really wants this stuff anywhere. They think they do, they throw it away. So, so I think that's good. And then I think your point about using swag that people want, maybe higher value that somebody is going to keep rather than all these giveaways, I, I think is, is really smart.

Chad Hickey: Can I make just another suggestion is. Start measuring even before you make a strategy in place and I think that to Lauren's point, there are like, really easy things that come to mind, like printed material that sort of thing. Serving meat, you know, if there's food at the event there are there are these simple things that you can do that will make an impact. 

But I think that one of the things that Givsly did is we partnered with a company that measures the carbon footprint of the event space. And we started doing that measurement six months before we even started implementing even more strategies on our events, because we wanted to see a baseline and what was really super interesting and the one that comes to mind is Cannes because.

Givsly goes to Cannes and we have a sustainability space and we have rules for people who have their meetings in our space, they cannot bring printed materials; we do not serve meat. And I have the same quality meetings. We see the same ROI. 

Start your baseline, see where you have the biggest opportunities to change. And then I think to Lauren's point, start to implement those strategies and know that you don't have to be perfect.

You know you’ve just got to start the process. No one has it fully figured out. And if they sit here, it's typically the people who sit on a stage and they act like they've got it all done and all figured out that actually do more damage than, than, than good. And one of the things that I am very bullish on is saying like, Hey, I've been the worst offender.

Pretty much most of my career until I started to kind of wake up around 2016 and say, I've got to start doing something to impact people in a different way, because it was just a desire I had. So, yeah, 

Steve: well, and it's so it's always great to have a company with your own mission, right?

And your own values that you can then and. Put out there 

So I could talk about events for another two hours. It's, it's one of my sort of favorite subjects. I suspect the both of you could as well, but let's be honest, responsible marketing. Isn't just about events. So maybe chat from your experience, give us a few other examples of where responsible marketing is, is it's sort of getting out there and becoming more adopted.

Chad Hickey: Yeah. I think one of the most exciting things we're seeing is about two and a half years ago, we rolled out an ad product. That incorporated brands showcasing their values to actually get more attention and engagement on any ad campaign that they were running and what I say to marketers all the time, and we kind of talked about these cause marketing budgets or these budgets set aside for CSR or whatever it's being defined as by that organization.

Data today shows, especially for Gen Z and earlier millennials that nine out of 10 consumers now align purchase decisions with values. People are not brand loyal. They will abandon you quickly. We have seen it in the press, you know? And I go back to last June with several brands that got some backlash.

And what I say to, what I say to these marketers is that should only reinforce how important this is to your consumer. It isn't something that you have to be afraid of. And the example that I always use is Chick fil A. You know what? Don’t align with my values. I don't frequent there often, but you know what?

It is a good chicken sandwich. And sometimes I drive through the drive through and I hate my head in shame. Like I have to, I have to admit that, you know but this is a decision that the consumers now make. And if they don't align with their values, then they are going to go somewhere else.

And guess what? Brands need to lean into it and get over it and say, Hey, yeah, I can't be all things to all people because the consumer is smart enough to know that's why we have words like greenwashing that sort of thing. 

And so kind of going back to your question, Steve, to make a long story longer is in our ad campaigns we've had so many conversations with massive brands that will say, Oh, we put 5 percent over here, or we have 10 percent over here. And I'm like, if 90 percent of your consumer is looking for this signal to decide if they're going to buy your product, why is that only in five to 10 percent of your strategy?

This should be incorporated into your product campaigns so that people lean into that. And so we have a solution for advertising where, where brands can incorporate that values message through our technology. And we see that click through rates double - now click through rates or click through rates, but, you know, click through rates, double, we have seen that brand awareness and brand recall are four times what brands see, you know what I mean?

When they see this type of messaging, we've seen video completion rates, 15 second pre rolls, 30 second pre rolls increase 18%. And so these marketers, then the light bulb goes off and they go, okay, wait a minute. I've been doing these kind of fluffy ads where people are walking on the beach, picking up bottles of plastic water bottles and all that.

And of course, that's not going to sell more of your product at a level of something. If you were saying, Hey, I have the best. You know, soda or I have the best butter product, whatever it is like, that is where marketers need to start thinking, how do I incorporate this in everything? 

Because Bombas doesn't go, Hey, the number one thing that homeless people need is socks, and that's the focal point of their ads.

They say, Hey, we've got really great socks that anyone can buy and pay. Consumer, when you buy it, just know something good comes out of it. And we also donate one. The, the, the, the focus of their campaign is selling their product. And every brand needs to start thinking that way. 

Steve: Yeah, and that, I think there you've combined two nice things, right?

Because you were talking about metrics that marketers already use and are already familiar with. So you're not trying to bring in a new language or a new dashboard. You know, click through rates and pre rolls and all of that good stuff. And again, you're back to this idea of it being an integrated part of the business.

It's not an add on. It is sort of central to what you do. 

So one last thing I want to dig into here. So, so this is April. It's Earth Month. I'm in New Jersey, so in the last week, we've had an earthquake, we've had a solar eclipse I'm just waiting for the locusts to arrive. So, so I think we're all paying more attention, hopefully, to, to the earth in some of these campaigns.

So Earth Month and Lauren, I think this is actually how you and I first got talking about this whole subject and, and you ran a campaign around Earth Month.

So maybe just walk us through that a little bit and tell us how it went and, and how you put it together. 

Lauren Burke: Yeah. So I think similar to kind of what I was saying before is like it's not just another month to get behind if you, if you're not practicing what you preach, right. And you don't have a grander sustainability approach.

But you know, thankfully we were able to work with Givsly to put something together. Pretty, pretty impactful and low lift, but high reward we'll say. So we created a client engagement program. We'll call it mid to lower funnel for earth month. So you know, we crafted a very nicely written email for sales to send to their clients saying, Hey, in case you weren't aware, it's earth month.

Because you are a valued client and because we care about the environment we would love to donate to your charity of choice on your behalf. So working with Givsly, super turnkey, we basically scan their list of charities and chose three environmentally focused charities that were most aligned with our brand.

And then we let the customer choose which charity they wanted. So then having that element of control as well, I think makes them feel good. And back to what Chad was saying about what consumers want, what customers want, we got endless. messages back directly saying, thank you for this. This is wonderful. This makes me feel good. 

All of that feel good, having that association with your brand, again, you can't put a price on that. And you know, thankfully you know, not only did we feel good about this, but it did drive results not only for the business, but also on the environment. So Givsly provided us with an impact report post campaign. And I have the numbers in front of me cause to me they feel so good. Right? 

It's 97, 000 square feet of plastic shoreline to be clean this year. I mean, wow. You know, 325 acres of forest saved 80 trees planted in the rainforest. These are hard numbers. So I think you know, again, there's, you really can't go wrong with implementing programs like this because of the results we'll say holistically, both on the planet for the company and then for the person that you're making the donation on behalf of, like, we're just here to make people feel good at the end of the day.

Steve: And Chad, I'm curious. So you provide those data points to Lauren and to your other clients. Do they then use that in a marketing campaign to go back out and say Hey, look, look what you have helped us to do is that, is that part of the pitch? 

Chad Hickey: Yeah, I mean, definitely. We definitely encourage people to do that for sure, because everyone has an impact report and you know, these strategies can, can really achieve two goals at one time.

You know what I'm saying? Because to Lauren's point. She could have easily said, Hey, the Amazon gift card example. And then can you imagine if she would have said, Hey, we work with Givsly and we were able to distribute 20 Amazon gift cards, how different that feels based on what she just said, you know what I'm saying?

And so I think in that example, she's able to show an everyday behavior of sales outreach of trying to get people into the pipeline and move them through the pipeline to then convert that they were able to do in a way that merged those two goals into one. And I think it's just a great example. And I'll say this.

I think that again, going to Lauren’s credit, this was one of the first times that even for us, we had tried some different strategies with people in client outreach, and this was by far successful. So that success from us, it, I would not be it wouldn't be right for me not to acknowledge it, we learned from their approach just as much as they were learning from our technology.

Steve: Very cool. And Lauren, I'm curious from a sales perspective, how did the sales team react? And, did they take it as part of their program as well and say, okay, now I've done that now I'm going to follow up or was it just sort of. 

Lauren Burke: Absolutely. I mean, I think it's, there wasn't an initial, like, I think education that had to happen, right?

We've never done anything like this before. We partnered with this company. We feel very strongly that this is going to move the needle for you and for the company. But at the end of the day, it like, we let that them decide. And I want to say a hundred percent of them participated. If not, it was 99.9. 

But now we've done other similar programs. We did one with. Givsly around back to school. Back to school is a really, obviously big planning season big revenue driving season for a lot of companies, whether it's B2B or B2C. So we did a kind of a similar program around that where we donated to educationally focused charities.

So we have to use creativity and marketing. You can actually be very creative in this space. So which makes us feel obviously we're, we're doing our jobs at market as marketers, marrying the art and the science of marketing and doing it in a responsible way.

Steve: Very nice. Since you are corporate marketer on this, what, what is your advice to somebody who is thinking about taking responsible marketing seriously? And, and how would, how would you tell them to, to have at it? 

Lauren Burke: Yeah, I would say first kind of take a step back and look at what already exists holistically at the company.

Like I said, whether it's the values or other corp activities and kind of summarize all of that, have that in front of you. And then Have your marketing plan in front of you as well. Right. And try to marry the two. You know, sustainability was an important part of my previous company.

So that, that made a ton of sense. Right. You know, back to school, that was like, okay, we haven't done anything here before, but like, I feel strongly based on past successes that this is going to work really well. And I think. To what Chad was saying before, like, what is that quote? It perfection is the enemy of progress.

We're just here to make progress, right? You're not going to be knocking it out of the park on day one. Like, I can't say that I did every possible thing to be responsible as a marketer. Right. But my heart was in the right place. And. I think I got the overall team to feel that this will make an impact, right?

So I would say if you haven't done anything, start small look at your marketing plan, marry it to your values and find one program in the next quarter that you can execute that fits within your budget and that's not going to be too overwhelming. Of a lift for you as well. So and obviously just look at your event strategy because that's like fish in a barrel There's a lot of stuff you can do there 

Steve: 

Yeah, and i'm with you. I think it's true in in in all things marketing just get started Right. Just  do something And it won't be perfect and And you build up from there. 

So, so hey, I, I very much enjoyed this conversation. I always wish that we could do it face to face rather than through screens.

And one of the reasons I call it the marketing mix is because I enjoy a cocktail every so often. So if the three of us were lucky enough to have the next conversation at a bar i'm curious what we would be drinking. So lauren, let's start with you. What's your drink? 

Lauren Burke: This  is the hardest question that you've asked Yep so I would say just based on my current headspace that I would choose a mojito I just got back from south florida.

My family is cuban So we were down there drinking a good amount of mojitos. I had a delicious coconut mojito at a wedding, raspberry mojitos. You can't go wrong. So that would be my choice. Because it's just like joy in a glass for me.

Steve: And you're right. And it's not always the same drink, right? You have different flavors. You can play around with it. That's a good one. All right. I'm with you on the mojito. Let's see what Chad's got for us. 

Chad Hickey: Listen, I, here's the thing. I have actually cut back my drinking quite a bit because while it is  joy in the glass the night of the next morning. I literally cannot get out of bed. Getting older is…I miss the days of my twenties when I didn't get over. But when I do drink, it’s a vodka gimlet. That is my drink of choice.

Steve: You are the first person, I believe to mention a vodka gimlet on, on the marketing mix. So I think there's probably a trophy or something you should get for that. I actually have never had a vodka gimlet, but I'm gonna have to try one

Chad Hickey: Yeah. It's so good. They go down way too easy. They're very. It's dangerous. 

Steve: That's the problem. You pick the cocktail that you don't enjoy and then you'll only have one of them. Well again, thanks very much to, to both of you. Really interesting conversation.

I feel like there's also a ton more we could have dug into and, and maybe we'll get a chance to do that over a vodka gimlet or two at some point, but very nice talking to you and thanks for joining me on the Marketing Mix. Thanks so much, 

Lauren Burke: Steve. All right. Talk to you soon. Bye bye.