Jeremy Weisz 16:39
We talked about or before you hit record, and you said something really interesting, which is about storytelling and engagement, and going beyond the benefits in the features. So talk about what you mean by that? How do people go beyond the benefits and features?
Laura Bergheim 16:58
So when you think about the things that resonate with us as human beings, and all customers, or consumers, all consumers are human beings, we don’t go out into the world wanting to buy something, we go out into the world, needing something, something that will help us live our lives better, do our jobs better, protect our families, keep our pets healthy, you name it, right. And so the best way that you connect with people isn’t just a list of things that will meet those needs. Because yes, that may be what they’re looking for. But that doesn’t necessarily differentiate or help them see themselves using the product. That’s where storytelling comes in. That’s where it connecting people with their audiences at a very granular level is so important. And many of the people on my team are former journalists. And so we’re naturally storytellers, we’re great interviewers, we know how to really extract the story behind a product or service or a company, and then put that out into the world. When I talk about reaching audiences, where they are, it’s not just showing them someone that has a similar challenge. But increasingly, thankfully, companies are really recognizing the importance of inclusive marketing. Inclusive marketing is also known as DEI. And that’s really just being able to recognize that everybody is a potential customer. But not everybody is the same, each person is unique. And they have different backgrounds and experiences. And so if you’re talking to a black woman, raising a child, but also starting her own company, she’s very different needs from a white guy in California who’s retired and living on a golf course, right? You can say at the high level, some of the same benefits, but you really want to help connect with these individuals, whoever they are, wherever they are, in their own place, which is one reason why our team is very DEI-centric. We actually helped Google create an inclusive marketing website, which talks about how you reach these audiences include these audiences in your marketing in a way that’s meaningful, and doesn’t rely on stereotypes and connects people truly with the individuals that you’re trying to reach. And not just with the big picture of personas or subcategories, we try to avoid numbering people, or just saying this percentage of people is this, this percentage of marketing goes to them. It’s much more humane and human, to connect with people on that personal level.
Jeremy Weisz 19:24
I love what you said there about people need to see themselves using the product. And back in the day you mentioned when we were chatting about clicking mortar, and it reminds me when you say that it reminds me of watching a commercial and seeing like a tide commercial and seeing a grass saying and like you can actually see the people using the product. You did work with companies like Victoria’s Secret and Walmart very early on. What kind of things were they doing early on when they were starting to get online and use content?
Laura Bergheim 20:00
Well, it was very funny because I was fortunate to be a creative director at the very first digital agency, a company called Resource, which is now IBM X Labs. I believe they were acquired by IBM a while back. But they were the ones that kind of invented click-and-mortar, they brought Limited Brands online. They were the ones that broke the internet in 1999 by running a Victoria’s Secret webcast ad during the Superbowl. There had never been such things webcast really and. And so when they ran the Superbowl ad, even though the actual webcast was going to take place on Valentine’s Day, so many people went to Victoria’ssecret.com to try to watch the webcast during the Superbowl that literally the internet seized up and kind of collapsed, infamously broke the internet. And this was 99. So there was not a lot of stuff going on beyond Amazon. But when the big click and mortars came on, it was a little bit of a wild west, we were trying to figure out how do you create content at scale? How do you take catalog company and content and in store content for Victoria’s Secret, and put that online and make sure that people can click through and get the product details and experience, get the assortment of information that they wanted easily and effectively? And a lot of brands in the early ought’s when I was doing this, at first, were really struggling because they didn’t know the difference between what in store customers wanted and what people want it online. And so I actually helped create write a book called The Ten Demandments, which I co-authored with Kelly Mooney, who was the president of Resource at the time, which was all about how people are taking their online experiences, and applying those to their offline experiences. And how companies needed to see those two is not distinct. Online, you could get way more assortment of offerings, versus an in store, stores need to provide more offerings, more options, more services, all of those things, finding all the things that people were experiencing online, helping all brands bring that to what we now call multichannel, but at the time, you really are omni channel. At the time, you only had online and stores and there was no blur. There was no blend, there was no social. So a lot of that side kind of wild west states was just figuring out, how do you invent a new way of connecting with customers in the digital era when they’re just starting to get online. At the time, people weren’t even using cell phones yet. So it was a really fun time. It was basically kind of inventing content on the internet and a lot of ways.
Jeremy Weisz 22:37
I have to check out The Ten Demandments, it will also talk about I mean, you have a number of books. One of them that stuck out to me when I was doing research was Weird Wonderful America. So we’ll talk about that later. It’s basically the nation’s most offbeat and off-the-beaten-path tourist attractions. So I don’t know if you want to mention a few now, what are some of the most off-the-beaten-path tourist attractions?
Laura Bergheim 23:03
There’s so many and there been so many since I wrote that book. I read that back that in I think 1988. And so there are plenty that have come out plenty of these attractions and look at it on sale for dollar 95 It’s such a bargain, I should buy some for myself, because I think…
Jeremy Weisz 23:18
There’s a collectible from 1796.
Laura Bergheim 23:22
But there’s so many places out there out. Actually the way I ended up writing this book is kind of funny. I was working on a book called The Map Catalog. And it was my very first book. I just graduated from college. And I was looking it was a collection a catalogue of every kind of map in the world. And I kept looking at these amazing roadmaps and seeing all these crazy attractions. And I just couldn’t help it. I started writing to them and calling them up. This was before there was really an internet research. So that’s I ended up pitching this idea for this book. I mean, the Garden of Eden in Kansas is fascinating. There’s a lot of folk art installations, the Orange Show in Houston, another one of my favorites. One of my favorites is actually right here in my little hometown of Rockport. Really, I didn’t grew up here, but it’s my hometown now, Massachusetts on the coast. It’s a little house made entirely out of newspapers. It’s called the Paper House. And this guy in the 1920s made a cot out of World War One reporting. I don’t know how anybody slept on it, because it wasn’t exactly give you sweet dreams. I believe there’s a grandfather clock made that completely of rolled-up reports of Lindbergh’s flight across the Atlantic is really a time capsule of the history of America in the 1920s. And this guy who’s a Swedish immigrant, he collected I think he got like 20 newspapers a day back in the day when you read multiple papers. And instead he was the ultimate recycler. He rolled them all up. And he made them into little, basically little logs and things and built this entire house and all the furnishings out of newspaper. I grew up going to that place right? And I saw I Have a natural bent toward the weird and the wonderful. And when I ended up as a travel writer, and I ended up doing a travel column from Rand McNally, not sorry, I worked for Rand McNally as their travel spokesperson, after that book that was I was my title was the Rand McNally adventure traveler, which was a total who did a big road map on route 66. And then I ended up doing a syndicated column for King features called Weevil America. So I read the gravy train on that for a while, but then I fell in love with the Internet. And that’s how I ended up here.
Jeremy Weisz 25:30
Love it, it reminds me of one of the interviews I did with the founder of TerraCycle. And they basically take waste and create actual products out of it. And you can probably see, like snack foods, like a lot of the packaging, I have found TerraCycle makes I know, when I talked to the founder, Tom, they were making whatever, like, benches out of plastic bags that they recycled. So it’s kind of a cool company. You not only work with companies like Google and Facebook, and Stripe and Plantronics, but you also help a leadership conference.
Laura Bergheim 26:08
Yeah, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, we do pro-bono work with them. And so what that means is, well, first, we help them launch their e-commerce site they have, I think it’s shop civil rights.org as a URL. And so we wrote all the content for that great swag, great, cool stuff on there. And since then, we’ve worked with them, creating video scripts and social media, and other sort of outbound communications, around various topics, we work with them, we meet every other week with their content team as part of a larger group. They also work with some paying agencies, but we just do this out of our hearts, because it’s something that we care so deeply about.
Jeremy Weisz 26:48
I was gonna say, go on what you’re saying. I just would love to hear any stories that stick out from the organization.
Laura Bergheim 26:56
So I think the favorite Well, the one that we did that we got the most traction on, we did a really fun, I wouldn’t call it fun, interesting video script, on tipped minimum wage, which hasn’t been raised in 23 years. And that was actually their number one social post and all of q2 21. So we love it when the work that we do really reaches an audience and the word spreads. And if you don’t know about the leadership conference, my Wiley runs it. And it’s one of the oldest civil rights organizations in the country and Sunbrella. So all of the other organizations are part of this coalition that they run. And it inspired us, when we were trying to find an organization we wanted to partner with. One of the things we wanted to do is to help other people become writers in this space, tell stories and become communicators, for social justice for progressive causes. So a small group of my talent and I are launching a website called humansright.org WRITE, which will go live probably in May, or maybe June, we’ve been working on it for a couple of years. It’s designed to be a resource center for people who want to be communicators in the space to give them the training guidelines and resources and tips and tools on how to do this kind of work, how to find a job in a career as a communicator in the space or how to volunteer. Because what we found was there was very little out there for people who wanted to communicate in the space. And so we want to be that go to place to get everybody that’s interested in communicating in this area. Give them the skills they need to succeed in that space.
Jeremy Weisz 28:33
Humansright.org.
Laura Bergheim 28:36
Will link it all the copy written. We’re just working on the site launch now I will I will ping you when it’s out there. I’ll let you know how it goes.
Jeremy Weisz 28:44
Awesome. One of the things I love to hear about Laura for you is attracting and hiring talent. Right. I was looking at some of the team members and you already mentioned a team members from Google their Emmy Award winners, talk about how you attract and hire amazing top-notch talent.
Laura Bergheim 29:07
So, a lot of our talent comes to us mainly by referral. Good people knows good people. The classic A’s hire A’s model in business. Same thing A’s referrals. Right. So a lot of the referrals we get come from people on our team. But a lot of unfortunately, with recent layoffs, especially in Silicon Valley, and since much of our many of our clients are tech clients that means is we know a lot of these people. We’ve also been kind of following the layoffs and checking in with people we’ve known for various careers. And if they’re available, seeing if they’re interested in partnering with us. So we do a little bit of headhunting that way. But I would say that the majority of folks that we work with are people we’ve historically worked with in prior careers or the amusing thing is some of our clients from Google and other client places have actually left those places and then come to work with us. So sometimes our clients become our teammates team members?
Jeremy Weisz 30:01
Well, that’s what I mean, I feel like it’d be Google would be a hard place to leave if you’re getting massages, and there’s cafeteria.
Laura Bergheim 30:10
But everybody, it’s always, especially with a lot of the younger hires, it’s a way station. Like anything else. During the layoffs, unfortunately, a lot of long-timers did lose their jobs. And that was brutal to see. But I think it’s actually very good for people to change jobs on a regular basis, not maybe every two years, but every five or 10, because otherwise, you just end up kind of doing the same thing over and over again, you may rise in the organization. But every time you go to a new place, you learn new skills and meet new people and have new adventures. And so what we look for in people that we hire are people who aren’t just a writer or a designer. They’re people who are that and a bag of chips. So our chief creative officer, Michael Gaylord used to be VP of Digital at MTV Networks for 12 years, brought them online. He’s also a composer. And our studio chief Alex Cannon, also runs an urban hiking company and writes hiking guides. And so are another Web Studio chiefs, there’s also a city of directors is also a Dinah Shore College. She’s also a meditation teacher, Marlene Tam, who runs our design team. She’s also a martial arts expert. And so we have these amazing, interesting people in the group. And that’s Michael, he splits his time between Madrid and San Francisco. And so the thing about our team is we just love to get together. And yes, that’s my brother, David. He lives in Tucson. And he’s my chief strategy officer. So we are literally like a family with all these family members. But we, we have a great time when we get together and one of the litmus test is sort of the smell test for our team is, is it somebody we like is somebody we have a fun time getting to know? Is it somebody that has a human heart? One of the ways to lose a role at Wordsmithie is by being unkind. Kindness and empathy are key attributes. Because if you don’t share those, if you don’t have those, you’re not a great writer, because you have to be empathetic to tell other people’s stories too. And of course, we like to be nice to each other. And that’s critical. That’s checker he’s our COO. So we’re totally distributed. Everybody works around the world. We have most people in the US but some people in Europe, but we do have a little office here in Massachusetts and Rockport, overlooking the ocean, and I brought everybody together in the office last year. And it was like a college reunion. It was so much fun.
Jeremy Weisz 32:37
What’s it like working with your brother?
Laura Bergheim 32:39
It’s great. I mean, he and I are best friends. It’s lovely. It’s a lot of fun. He’s much smarter than I am. So I rely on him for a lot of stuff. He’s got to a business deal. And I think the reason that Samoan guy underachiever, underachiever Alex Cannon has a Wharton MBA, we have a lot of MBAs on the team. I do not have an MBA. I just invented Wordsmithie after saves my pants and, and we’ve been making it out ever since. But I’m surrounded with really brilliant people who get the job done. And that’s key.
Jeremy Weisz 33:08
The initial start of Wordsmithie, what made you again, Google, like you said, great people great place to work. What made you decide to make the decision to venture off?
Laura Bergheim 33:25
I well worked with he was a third agency I’d founded I started an agency when I was in Columbus, Ohio, called the Orchard Group. I think they may still be around. That was a very early distributed agency that was in like 2001 or 2002 I think and so I always believed in the power of bringing together great talents. And I loved my time at Google, but I was itching. I’m have an entrepreneurial spirit. And I was really itching to bring together kind of an Avengers of writers and designers. I kept having conversations with people at Google. Do you know a writer who can do this, I can’t find a writer for this. And people were like flipping through their mental Rolodexes and trying to create an agency where all of those people were in one place. So you didn’t have to look for an email writers, social media writer. And also, as much as I love the big agencies, I didn’t want to create an agency that would require people drilling down and paying top dollar for junior, junior copywriter. I wanted everybody to be seasoned professionals, great skills, great collaborators. And I think the greatest compliment we get often is that our clients tell us we just feel like we’re part of their team. They can’t often can’t tell the difference between us. And those are the people we look like look for. And so when I founded the company, that’s what I wanted to create a place where all these great talents could come together to create work for clients, and then also very importantly, have an outside life. I’m the only person in the company that works full 60 hours a week in my case, most people work well under 30 hours a week. I really believe that people, if you want to do great things in life and in work, you have to have separation that is to not working all the time is the best thing you can do for yourself and your family. So having outside interests, those are all the things I wanted to create the agency that I wanted to work for. And because we were writer created and writer run, we are very much creative focus. We do have business people on the team. But it allows us to really come at it from the writers perspective, be much more creative and entrepreneurial every step of the way.
Jeremy Weisz 35:29
Laura, I have one last question. Before I ask it, I want to point people to Wordsmithie. We’ve already seen if you watch the video, we’ve been pulling it up, wordsmithie.com, learn more what they’re doing, doing amazing work with some really amazing organizations. My last question, or is techstack, right, you’ve been virtual for a long time way before other companies were fully virtual. I love to know how you manage all of it, what’s kind of the tech stack look like behind the scenes.
Laura Bergheim 36:05
So we mainly rely on Google workspace, which at one point was called G-Suite. And we actually helped launch Meet. And so it’s undertaking to use some of the products that we literally helped put out into the market. So that’s probably the heart of what we use. But we use a lot of other resources we use Harvest for time tracking. And we have an accounting team, we have both contractors and staff that use Harvest so that we can keep all of our times in order. We use Rev for transcription. We just use a variety of sort of cobbled together things. We’re increasingly using Asana for project management. And we’re rolling that out across the team. Now we’ve been working on that for about eight months. So it varies, we try not to have so many apps that people don’t sort of keep an eye on them. So we were very careful about curating the apps that we have something like workspace is great, because it’s kind of an all-in-one app, you get your email calendar, the sharing, you’ve got everything you need all in one place. Video conferencing, that’s what we look for in tools. And they have to be easy to use. And obviously, they have to be agnostic. Most of our team are on Macs. But if you were on Chromebooks, we are also increasingly starting to use Microsoft products because some of our clients prefer not to use Google products, we understand that. So we can shift assets or resources if needed. Our team is very nimble that way. But every app that we use in our system, and we’re also working on an AI walled garden, to support some research and synthesis, and using AI’s and assistive technology, by the way, we view AI very much as a tool that can help you do great work, but shouldn’t do the work for you. And if you know about the world of creative, everyone’s concerned that AI is going to wipe out writers and creators. And I don’t think that will be the case. But we’re testing that theory by promising our clients. We’re not ever going to use AI to generate things. But our goal is that we do think it can help us improve synthesizing and large number of information from a research project and things like that. So we’re, it’s valuable. It’s great. So AI might be added to our tech stack as well.
Jeremy Weisz 38:06
What about from a communication standpoint internally? Because I know you’re like, I got to shut off all these pings. The teams, how are you communicating internally?
Laura Bergheim 38:14
We so again, part of workspace we use Google Chat and works at Google Spaces. For a few of our clients we will use, I’m already forgetting the name of it that thing that every with the brush, swipe, the little chunk sound that makes Slack Yeah, I like block on Slack, because it’s my least favorite app is when my clients need us to use Slack. So we do use Slack. For instance, one of our clients is using another we do a lot of zoom calls. So we can use the other platforms. But internal comms are often by chat by spaces, which is kind of a variation on Slack. And by email and by phone, we’ll just call each other. We’re constantly on meetings with each other, for better or worse, but we actually enjoy each other’s company so it’s not really a burden.
Jeremy Weisz 39:06
Laura, remember the first one a thank you. Thanks for sharing the story. Thanks for sharing your expertise. Everyone check out wordsmithie.com and we’re episodes of the podcast and Laura, thank you.
Laura Bergheim 39:15
Thank you so much, Jeremy take care.
