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“Delve is an insight engine that transforms how brands understand their world.”
With every story, thread and meme battling for our attention, what do we focus on and care about? Communications pros Sean Garrett and Allison Braley—trusted by Twitter, Amazon, Meta, Slack, Bain Capital Ventures, and more—talk with those shifting the future of communications and who pays attention to what.
Sean 00:00
Welcome to Attention Shift. We unpack where communication and communications is headed. I'm Sean Garrett and supported by Delve, the top level context engine for comms. My co host, Allison Braley, and I talk to industry experts about how we show up and get our message across in an era of limited time and shorten attention spans. Let's dive in.
Allison 00:26
Welcome to Attention Shift Episode One.
Sean 00:28
Woah.
Allison 00:29
It’s finally happening.
Sean 00:30
It's all happening, and that's actually what we'll talk a lot about. But this week, we're interviewing Cody Keenan, who is President Obama's chief speech writer and now leads speechwriting at the firm Fenway strategy, and teaches what has become Northwestern University's most popular course. That's a big deal. He also wrote Grace President Obama in 10 days in the battle for America, which is a New York Times bestseller. It takes us behind the scenes at the White House for 10 tense, pivotal days leading up to Obama singing Amazing Grace at a very solemn moment.
Allison 01:08
And before we get into it with Cody, we should talk about what's capturing our attention right now, given that's the point of the podcast. But more importantly, we should talk about why we're even here. Why did we decide to do this podcast?
Sean 01:19
Why did we? There are so many, so many questions.
Allison 01:21
We were the first ones to ever think of having a podcast, right, Sean?
Sean 01:25
Especially about comms.
Allison 01:27
No one could ever think of that idea. But, but why do we think it's important to do this?
Sean 01:31
I think the reason why, and I mean this is obviously, you know, I found a mixing board, which is a community of communications leaders. And I did that for a reason. I kind of grew tired of the like, “we need a seat at the boardroom table” thing. And I'm more kind of a person of action versus like, you know
Allison 01:46
Show, don’t tell.
Sean 01:47
Yeah, exactly, show, don't tell. I think there's that part of it. But I also think that this is a role in a sector that has gone through incredible change, is evolving almost daily, and I think we all know that as practitioners, but we still kind of like… I think it's under hyped, to be honest with you, how much change has occurred in this industry, and if I were entering this field, some would say, “Well, why would you do that?” It's hardly reporters any… you know. And be like, well, the job has changed, and so much of us has changed. And one thing I like to think about is removing the “s” on communications. And what I mean by that is communications as this field or this job, our real job is like communication writ large, and it's just communication like, what happens within an organization? Like, how do you communicate? Period. Like, part of our job should be about how leaders talk to their teams, how people write emails, how Slack works within a company. And obviously, like, how you interview potential candidates, how you think about talking to investors. And all those things have job titles and things associated with it, but I think it's breaking down so quickly and evolving so quickly that as communicators, if you can think much more broadly about the work that you do, you're going to be so much better off. And just think about all the stuff that comes under the communication bucket.
Allison 3:24
And comms about our industry. Ironically, communication about communication often devolves into tactics so quickly that it loses the plot on strategy. And I often think about my role, both in terms of the VC firm I work for, being capital ventures, and the startups we work with as being “let's figure out what our core message is. Let's make that message sticky, memorable, portable, and then let's figure out how to cascade that to every important audience.” And if you're just thinking about communications as PR or just thinking about communication as social media or internal comms, you're not doing your company a service by looking at it that way. And there's such a range of perceptions of our industry, among the founders that I work with, that this podcast hopefully is a place to shine a light on people who are doing great work in our industry, in places that aren't always as noticeable, and really make the case for viewing communication as a core function in the organization without having to whine and complain about it, like so many people do.
Sean 4:27
And by the way, like the communications, like work, like the outbound work that you do to influence a specific audience—obviously, those things have changed, too. But like, I'm all for that. Like, let's be clear. I think there could be way more creativity when it comes to communicating messages, it could be way more creativity now like that we live in this world where anyone can have a voice, obviously. And that doesn't just disrupt what you do from a media relations perspective, but it disrupts what you do from a $30 million advertising perspective as well.
Allison 5:00
Your pitch deck. Your… whatever it is.
Sean 5:02
Yeah, everything. And so like, but like, what are the conditions needed for that success? What are the things that you need to drive to do that? And a lot of those conditions that you need to drive that kind of success are all the same conditions you need to drive to be successful from a product perspective, successful from a sales perspective, successful from a biz dev perspective, and that generally, are things like, “are we aligned as an organization? Are we rowing in the same direction? Are we on the same page about, like, where we're trying to get to, and what kind of change we can like, you know, foretell and then, you know, bring to bear?” If you can do those things, you can be successful at a lot of things, including great communications. But if you don't have that alignment, and you don't have that structure, especially in the world is moving as fast as we're moving right now, at the speed of culture, you will always be reactive. You will always be like, “Should we do this? I don't know. Should we Allison, should we do it? I don't…” Maybe guidelines, so there's no answer. Yeah, exactly. And like, but if you have structure, and if you have the ability to do those, to basically create filters for that kind of opportunity, then you can move really, really fast and be really, super creative at all tactical levels.
Allison 6:14
I love that point. And when I talk to founders again, just to make that real, I would say two thirds of them who've never worked with me and come to me, say, “I have this announcement. Can you get it out there in media, and in the press?” And it's, again, such a limited view of what we do. And so our response is always, “let's back up the train here. What are you trying to do at a business level? Let's go back. Let's do a narrative workshop. Let's figure out what your story is. Let's figure out why we need to communicate to this audience, what business lever is that going to pull for you? And then let's back into what the strategy should be.” Maybe the strategy is to say nothing at all. Maybe the strategy is to be incredibly exclusive with this piece of information and only share it with a very small, relevant audience. Maybe we need to go incredibly broad. Maybe it's a niche group, but it's not a one size fits all set of tactics, because every company is trying to accomplish something different, and I think a lot of companies and even communicators get tripped up by sort of jumping straight to what we do instead of why. Why are we doing it?
Sean 7:15
So we'd love to hear from folks on what they'd like to hear from us on the show, and how we can explore communications in a much more broad, abundant way. But, you know, I think we're also going to cover like, what's on our minds right now, right?
Allison 7:26
Yeah, the podcast is Attention Shift, so let's use what's going on in the world today to talk about how communication and communications are shifting. So one thing that we'll talk about with Cody later in our podcast today is about political communications, which is the world he grew up in, and his conversation is really on a global and national scale, but on a local level, where we're sitting right now in San Francisco, things have gotten very interesting.
Sean 7:52
It’s always interesting in San Francisco.
Allison 7:53
It is sort of a bellwether, right for how people feel about the tech industry, and that's been really interesting to watch, but Delve, the AI powered insight engine for communicators, did some research for us, and 73% of articles in the last month are showing Mayor Lurie leadership in a positive light. And 65% indicate that San Francisco is trending in a positive direction, a far cry from where we were a couple of years ago, sort of during and post pandemic, where there was this narrative that San Francisco was destroyed, and, oh, the liberals ruined it, and so on and so forth. The tech industry is this terrible steward of this city. And so we'd love to have a conversation about where we think that narrative is.
Sean 8:35
So five years ago, I guess March 20, because I put this on my calendar. I tweeted, which I can't like reference, because I blew up my Twitter account for issues that I'm sure we'll talk about. But I tweeted basically that in five years, I guarantee you, people will be saying San Francisco is having a comeback. Like, I guarantee it. It's so freaking predictable. Like, right? And so, like, I think that Mayor Lurie is doing some really smart things. I think he has been listening. He obviously has seen the narrative, heard it, felt it, et cetera. And he's out on the streets actively, like, you know, communicating with homeless people and like…. and finding services, cleaning up, like, the corners of the city that you know really, really need help, right? And we all can identify those places. They have been issues, literally, like, since the 50s. Like, my problem Allison is, like, I'm a San Francisco historian. Like, I'd read old herb Kane columns for fun, Herb Kane used to write a column for the San Francisco Chronicle and the San Francisco Examiner for like, 40 plus years. And so I have watched this narrative ebb and flow for a really long time. And you know beyond that, it literally has been ebbing and flowing since the gold rush. The New York Times made fun of San Francisco during the gold rush for being like this speculative place where everyone's just trying to get rich.
Allison 10:09
It's always been a boom and bust kind of.
Sean 10:10
100% but it's always, always created like grist for, like, East Coast paper mills.
Let's bring on Cody to discuss the makings of a great speech, how to get inside an executive's head and why The Kids Are All Right.
Sean 10:23
As a long time speech writer for President Obama, and now a speech writer for Fenway Strategies—one of the fantastic groups who does speech writing out there in the world—you've got a lot of touch points to the writing process and what's important to it. But something that you've talked about is, like, how a great speech is just kind of more than just words. It's about the whole story that you want to convey. You know, when you're in the heat of things and you're like, “Oh, I gotta write something really fast about this thing.” How do you infuse a bigger story into what you write? Like, that broader narrative?
Cody 11:01
Yep, great question, because there are a few different ways to think about it. But as you kind of mentioned, every speech should tell a story with a beginning, a middle and an end, is the way we always approached it. Whenever President Obama and I sat down, or whenever he sat down with any of our other speechwriters, the first question we asked each other was always, what's the story we're trying to tell? And it's become a little cliche now, because I feel like everyone's kind of in on it, right? You know, there are companies that have chief storytelling officers, and brands will even read the instructions out loud in commercials, and be like our story as a company. So it's sort of universal now… Which, which is good, you know, because, because we gravitate to stories as human beings, you know? We always have. We read bedtime stories to our kids, we tell narratives about ourselves. So it's, you know, I got my start as a speechwriter in politics, obviously, and that's all about storytelling. You know, you… When, when Barack Obama became famous, not just overnight, but in 19 minutes, maybe 17—however long that speech in 2004 was—you know, he walked into the Fleet Center in Boston, anonymous and walked out the next great hope in American politics. And it was because he told a story about himself and about America, and wove those two things together. You know, he even said, “Only in America could a story like mine be possible.” And so, he did it in a way that people could see themselves and their own hopes, in this guy who was, you know, half Kenyan and half Kansan by birth. So it's crucial to politics. One of the things I instill in my students, you know that their first assignment is to write their presidential announcement speech about themselves. You know, who are you, right? I want, and I actually, by doing that, I want them to think about their own personal story, not just like a resume format or, you know, a Wikipedia type thing, but infuse it with values. What do you believe in? Why are you running for this office? You know what? Why should we vote for you? So politics is all about telling stories, and how we would, we would do it together. You know, there's, there's a story of the days, sort of, right? Whatever the message event is, let's go out and tell a story about why we need to do X. But you're also rooting that in the larger story of the year that you would kind of kick off in the State of the Union address. Here's what this year is going to look like. And there would be a story, an eight year story of a presidency. You know, we, if we did our jobs well, and there were 3444 speeches on the shelf, like books, you could pull out any one of them, and it would connect to the broader story of the Obama presidency, and ideally to the longer story of America. Now I'm getting all very dramatic here, but… But if you're doing it right, everything you write tells a story by itself, but it also fits in a larger story about you, your candidacy, your company, this country, whatever it is.
Sean 13:43
But in reality, I mean, you have some speeches that are a little bit more utilitarian, and some speeches that are like, Whoa, this is the moment, right? And so, like, you know, there's those utilitarian, professorial ones—in the President Obama's case—is, like, it's not the same emotional resonance as the one of, like, walking on the stage in 2004 or, as we'll get into, like, the Selma speech. So you got to do both. How are you thinking through like, you know, there's the ones I got to crank out, and then there's the ones that are like, “the ones.”
Cody 14:14
On a daily message event. You know, that's what probably most of the speeches were. It's, we want to drive the news cycle for a day on clean energy or student loans or what have you. And you're just kind of going through the motions there and the President is too. We'd find that he would, he'd do fewer edits by hand to those speeches than he would to the big ones he cares about. But you know, I learned an important lesson early on in grad school. A professor of mine told me, you know, if you're, if you're ever writing a speech, just write it as if this audience is… It's the only time they're ever going to hear you speak. And it's the way I was. I approached and told my team to approach every Obama speech, you know, just assume this audience is only going to hear from him once in their lives, and write it that way. So, you know, we'd still knock ourselves out on, you know, your boring tax speech. You know, we know those aren't going to sing. We know they're not going to end up on the side of a monument or something, but we'd still try to infuse them with, you know, not just facts and logic, but emotion and anecdote and color. You know, if you can make people laugh in a speech about taxes, if you can make people laugh at a eulogy, you're an expert speechwriter.
Allison 15:27
Talking about emotion a little bit. There's lots of different types of emotions that can come through in any speech. And Obama's speeches often inspired hope. Yet, as you pointed out, some speeches inspire laughter or sort of joy. There's been a trend towards speeches politically inspiring anger, I think, in recent years. Is all emotion created equal? How do you think about what emotion you want to imbue into a speech?
Cody 15:51
Anger, stoking anger can be useful, beneficial politically, depending on who you are and what you're trying to get out of it. You know, if you're just trying to feed your base voters and stoke division, that can be powerful. Resentment is a powerful force in politics. You know, we chose the other path. We tried to inspire people to reach for something better, to believe in something better, to always believe that, you know, it is not somehow talking down America, to say that we can always be better. I mean, isn't that the point that we're always trying to be the best version of ourselves? So and that's the way I'll always write. That's the way I try to teach my students to write. I do have a student who is, who's in a former student who's in the administration now, you know, obviously we disagree fiercely on politics, but I like to think I made him a better writer, and therefore at least one member of the administration is delivering good speeches. But emotions are powerful, you know, and sometimes you have to, you have to work at it a little bit, and sometimes you don't. One of the things we never thought we'd have to do when we entered the White House was write all these eulogies after mass shootings. And you know, the President was moved to tears a few times, not by any language that we put on the page, but by reality. And you know, some of his critics would mock him for it, but I honestly if, if 20 murdered children in their classrooms doesn't move you as a person, what is wrong with you? That wasn't obviously my favorite emotion to write about. I love, you know, commencements, right? We're in commencement season right now. It's like tax season for accountants. If you're a speechwriter, you know, we just, we're writing a bunch of them. They're awesome because you get to inspire, even for students who are just graduating into into a tough hand, which, which seems to, you know, be increasing by the year, you can still have some fun and and help people see a future for themselves that hasn't necessarily come about yet. You know, it's all aspirational. That's why campaign speech writing is so much fun. That's why commencement is so much fun. Anytime you can be not just inspirational, but aspirational. That really lends itself to some fun writing.
Sean 17:46
Given the name of this podcast, which is Attention Shift, how has the attention span for speeches changed since you started writing them? You know, we're originally maybe way back when, yes, you can have this super long State of the Union speech. I mean, Trump, had the longest speech ever, most recently. But like, what's your thoughts on, like, attention and what people may capture, because obviously, for the commencement speech now it's like, there's a 30-second grab on Instagram that all the students are like, posting. They’re like, “Whoa. That was crazy,” and it goes viral. That may be what you're shooting for, but like, you know that's a lot different than trying to get, like, a thoughtful two minute thing on CNN 15 years ago.
Cody 18:30
Yeah it's the most frustrating aspect of our jobs. But it's not like it's a new phenomenon. You know, the back in the 60s, right? You've got three nightly newscasts that 10s of millions of people would tune into. Someone crunched the numbers on this once, I think Cronkite would show like, seven minutes of a presidential speech on the nightly news like imagine that happening now. That's crazy. Now you're lucky to get you know seven seconds. But there also aren't just three places to get your news. We've already blown through the cable era. Now it's infinite, right? You can create your own silo on social media so that you you only see the voices that you want to hear from so the algorithm is trained to just give you what you want. Never hear anything from the other side. Never hear anything that might make your blood boil. So I've always found it kind of folly to try to optimize reach for a speech like that. You know, I've never enjoyed sitting down and saying, all right, what is the one viral line here? What is the one viral section here that's at odds with with a lot of people in comms, and that's fine, but I think President Obama and us, we always trusted the American people to be able to consume a longer argument, a more nuanced argument. You know, that doesn't mean we've necessarily won that battle in the long run, but he would often excise what we would insert in there to try to be the sound bite. He'd find it and pull it out because he wanted people to think more deeply about things than just, than just a slogan. So it is a real challenge, because everybody wants, even when clients come to us that, you know, how can we, how can we get this speech out there? First of all, you have to be willing to say something interesting, you know, that matters a lot. Let us focus on the speech, you know, and then we'll help you kind of get it out there. But so I may be an old fuddy duddy now in my in my advancing early 40s. But I prefer, you know, to write a longer, more thoughtful story that tries to move people, if someone's not going to see it, while flipping through reels that every two seconds, I’ll put up with that but, but Sean, you know this firsthand too, when you came to work in the White House briefly. And what was that, 2014? We were thinking about it even then, and we were realizing that the White House press corps was outdated. You know, it served a really important purpose, but people weren't tuning in to those outlets anymore. So, you know, you helped us create the first Office of Digital Strategy that intentionally. You know, it didn't, it didn't turn speeches into viral snippets or just tweet out every line, but it actually went to every outlet that was out there so that we could go to where people were actually getting their news from. Like a classic example is when Obama went on Between Two Ferns, right? The press corps was furious about it. You know, you're not going to give us an interview about Obamacare, but you'll give one to Zach Galifianakis. Well, that ended up being like, the single biggest sign up day for young people to get health care ever because of that. So when you and your whole little SWAT team came in, you really helped us rethink the way we did that.
Sean 21:16
And look what we brought by 2025 like, it's all our fault.
Cody 21:21
Yeah. Doge is actually, like, legally based on the Office of Digital Strategy that you set up, so thanks a lot.
Allison 21:29
No.
Sean 21:30
It's actually probably literally true.
Cody 21:32
It is.
Sean 21:34
To that point, like the too much part, which is, like, there's a happy medium, right? And you have to be modern, you have to be out there, you have to be in conversation, not just like, delivering something. And then there's a point of, like, where we are now potentially, which some may say is too much, too much, too much all the time. How do you balance that? And you have, do you have clients who say, like, “Hey, Cody, what is the viral what's the viral line in here?” And like, how do you manage that?
Cody 22:04
Yeah, you know, because they're not Obama, who recoiled at that, if they want that, I will still, you know, kind of make the same argument that's like, listen, the scope of what you're saying here is more important. And I do think that your reporters, who follow your company and what your CEO has to say are capable of consuming a large argument, spitting it out. But if you really want something that's viral and clever, then, yeah, I'll, you know, I have a team of 14 writers. I'll put all their heads together, and we'll get you some good stuff.
Sean 22:29
One random thing just came up, just thought I was like, how do you pull in actually, like, funny lines to a speech, like, you know, that how hard it is. And I there's, like, the whole thing which I learned, like, with the White House of, like, you know, the comedians that you pull into, like, what is like, you know, which could be like, the thing that actually does go viral... Like, what's the process for, like comedy in a speech?
Cody 22:52
Comedy is really hard. It is, and you have to have a thick skin too when you submit jokes, because a lot of your jokes aren't going to get picked. Again, we're in commencement season. I'm personally writing three—one for myself—and jokes are tricky, but so in the White House, I would actually reach out to, you know, the writers on Colbert, the writers on The Daily Show, funny people on Twitter, even, you know? You got to make sure you trust these people who aren't going to like leak what they're doing, but they were always so happy to help. And and not every joke hit, not every joke was even one that Obama could tell. Even he has standards. But we'd go through and then we'd try to pick maybe 20, you know, that really worked, were really funny together, and if you… And again, even then, we'd try to tell a story with them. We'd wheel them together. It's not just like random jokes, it's kind of a longer arc. You always begin by making fun of yourself; self deprecation warms up the audience, they're willing to accept getting skewered later on, once you've skewered yourself. You'll notice our current president doesn't do that. He has never told a joke at his own expense. But you gotta have a thick skin. You know, if I could get one or two per… if I could get two into a Correspondence Dinner, I'd be really proud of myself. But, but you gotta have a thick skin. Because even when you think a joke is really good, other people might be like, Dude, it sucks, and you have to move on.
Allison 24:03
When you're working on humor, obviously, that's like Black Belt tier that a lot of people can't pull off. What about just general sort of you're writing a speech for someone who, you know, isn't necessarily the strongest speaker. How do you kind of help them get up to par? How do you adjust the type of speech you write for someone based on their level?
Cody 24:26
It’s such a good question. I'll back up even further to say, you know, with Obama, I wrote, I wrote with him for 14 years, so you get to know everything about that person. You see them every day, you talk to them every day. You know what they're reading. You read it, too. With clients, we just, we don't have that same relationship. And it's not that we don't want it. It's that we live in different cities, right? It's just impossible. The CEO is off doing a bunch of different stuff, and my office was underneath the Oval Office. It was a five second trip to see the boss. So I will take pains to… if it's somebody who's not a natural speaker—and let's be honest, a lot of CEOs just aren't. My one demand, my one diva-esque demand, is that I want FaceTime with a person I'm writing for. This is not just going to be filtered through comms team and then filtered back, right? Because it's just not going to work. So if the most powerful man in the world could meet with his speechwriters every single day, your boss can for, I don't know, 15 minutes a month. I need some time to talk to the person, find out what they're thinking about, what they're reading. You know, what's on their mind, what's their world view? And building that trust actually helps make somebody a better speaker, because they're more confident in what's on the page. That's really, really important. And then, of course, you can do training too, right? Nobody is a born speaker. Nobody, not even Barack Obama. He's talked about how the first speech he ever gave was terrible. He paid for media training. You know, I think anyone, any politician, any corporate leader, any thought leader, should consider doing the same thing. Or at minimum, you know, everybody's got a video camera in their pocket. Record yourself. Watch it back. You will cringe, but you'll get better at it. I also tell people, you know, think of somebody who you admire as a speaker, and watch some YouTubes of that person giving a speech. There's no shame in you know, you don't want to rip off their mannerisms completely, but, but watch what they do. Watch how they move their body. Watch what they do with their eyes. Everybody's got their own kind of tricks to it, and it'll make you a more comfortable speaker, if you, if you practice and if you emulate somebody that you admire.
Allison 26:29
What do bad speeches have in common? What separates the good from the bad for you?
Cody 26:31
Several things. First of all, there is such a thing as bad content—cruelty, barbarism, you know?
Allison 26:40 Punching down.
Cody 26:42
Like, yeah, punching down. That's a good example. Poorly organized thoughts. I mean, speech writing is really just, it's thinking before you speak. You know, Tweeting is speaking before you think. Good speech, and this is why you should hire speech writers, is because we take the time to take your argument, turn it into a logical, linear structure, support it with facts, logic, reason, color, anecdote, emotion—all that is important. Bad speeches don't have those things. Bad speeches are just stream of thought consciousness. They don't have any generosity in them. They don't have any emotion in them. They don't have, you know, not just facts, but actually illuminating facts. You can just, you can just beat people over the head with numbers. But what's going to stick. A good speech does have all those things, you know, and a good speech takes time. This is not a fast and easy process. There are plenty of times in the White House where we had to write something quick, you know, usually to respond to fast moving news in the world. But the reason I like speech writing… There are several reasons. One is that it's a luxury to be able to take this much time to write something and really think on it. You know, what makes it hard is the precision, and that's what I love about it too, is you have to be precise with your ideas. You have to be precise with your word choice, connecting senses, connecting paragraphs. It requires a lot of work and effort. You know, 90%... It's an old, old saying, but 90% of any good speech is actually rewriting. You know, you spend 10% your time writing and 90% rewriting. And that's where I love to live. I don't ever like writing the first draft. I like working through the 10th draft, you know, down to the point where you're just, you're not just playing with words. You can actually hear whether a sentence needs an extra syllable or one syllable less. And that's what I love about it. It's almost sheet music in a way, because you really do get to conduct a live audience. That's what makes speech writing so different than newspaper writing, opinion writing, any other kind of writing. You've got a live audience in front of you. You know, it's hard to, it's hard to change people's minds. That's, that's the highest measure of a good speech, is if you actually change somebody's minds. But you can tell people, you know when to applaud, when to laugh, maybe when to cry, when to jeer, if it's useful to your cause. But you've got this live audience, you get to conduct them. And so, you know, the sheet music takes up 99.5% of your time, the 0.5% is actually going out and delivering it.
Sean 28:50
Speaking of other types of writing, I mean, you're the ultimate guy behind the guy, and yet you now have a personal brand. So, congratulations. You wrote a New York Times bestseller, a book called Grace that was very well received by critics and readers alike, obviously. It's about some really seminal moments that happened in a 10-day time frame, you know, 10 years ago, June 2015, and then you sat down and wrote a book about that experience. You know, after the administration, how do you reflect on, like, the difference between writing a book and writing a speech? And you know, what did you take away from that entire process, including the process of having to go out and promote a book?
Cody 29:37
Yeah, well, the biggest difference is you have a theoretically infinite word count. I didn't have to cut as I went along, which was kind of awesome and freeing. You know, I wrote the book in early pandemic, pre-vaccine, and we had just had our first child, so I was basically just cooped up with a nursing newborn for a few months writing this book. And I, I look back on it with a lot of nostalgia, and then my wife looks at me and goes, Are you crazy? You were miserable while you were writing that book. But I, you know, it's just it gave me the opportunity to. Write a 250 page story instead of just a three page story. And it was a story about, really, the character of our country. I was helped out by reality, and that it unfolded over exactly 10 days. So that lent itself to 10 chapters in the book. It's just a nice, rounder number than nine or 11. I didn't want to write a memoir or a tell all, because I just, I just didn't want to. This was a story that I wanted my children to know about, that I wanted future generations to know about, that. It's a story about, again, trying to become a better version of America. And, you know, people forget all these things happened in the same 10 days. It reads like fanfic now, 10 years later, but, but, you know, they began with a mass shooting in Charleston, South Carolina, which was not just racially motivated, but the killer, you know, said he wanted to spark a race a racial Civil War. He was obsessed with Confederate iconography. He purposely went into black church and murdered nine black people. But the country responded in you know, ways that were unique after a mass shooting. I think that probably because it was just so abhorrent, and there were mature debates about what the Confederate flag meant, and ultimately it came down over the South Carolina State Capitol a month later. Also that week, you had the Supreme Court ruling on Obamacare, for the second time, ruling on marriage equality, and both of these getting questions of who we are as Americans. If you're gay, are you a second class citizen, or are you able to get a vote like the rest of us? If you work two jobs and still can't afford health care, is your country going to help you? Because it's something that matters to all of us. And so, you know, we're writing all these speeches over these 10 days, not knowing how anything is going to go, you know, not knowing if the country's going to tear itself apart, not knowing if, if Obamacare is going to get struck down, or if marriage equality will get struck down at the end of the week. You know, Obama, of course, has to speak on all these things. We find out the Supreme Court ruling in real time, like everyone else. And then on the 10th day, he went down to Charleston and gave a eulogy, tying all this together into a question of who we are as a country and who we want to be. And then he just sort of drops the mic and sings Amazing Grace, without telling anyone, except for maybe five of us, that he was going to do it. And it just it felt, I remember the moment we were exhausted because I for like, four nights in a row writing, but there was something scary about it, in that it felt like we were breaching new territory for the first time, like we were actually writing a future, you know, like at a timeline that didn't exist yet, where America was better, but I can also see how a lot of that, how half the country would feel very, very different about it, and saying, This is a timeline I don't want to be a part of. And so, you know, we're living through the backlash to a lot of that right now. But I wrote the book because I wanted it to kind of show a pathway, not just for where we've been, but where we can go from here, even if, even if, things look pretty bleak right now, I wanted it to, you know, I wrote it for my students too. I wanted to blow up cynicism and convince young people that they can go out and do what we did almost 20 years ago, and just sort of, if you're not happy with your political options, manifest your own candidate and ride that person to the White House and do what you can knowing that it'll never be enough. Because that's the story of America too.
Sean 33:09
It's beautiful. Speaking of your students, you, so we mentioned that you're teaching at Northwestern teaching, speech writing, I think probably, I think it's neat that you work for President Obama for 14 years. It's pretty cool that you have a New York Time bestseller. But I think the biggest like, I think what you should put on your like LinkedIn profile, like, right up top there is, like, you have the number one most popular class at Northwestern.
Allison 33:34
What would we say about that? Like, Gen Zs have decided I am not cringe and like that is, that's a win, because certainly my Gen Alpha kids find me very cringe.
Cody 33:45
I got Riz man, I am not chewgie whatsoever.
Allison 33:46
You're the rizzler. You’re the rizzler of Oz.
Cody 33:50
I love my kids. I really do it's my favorite thing that I do. I love it so much that, God bless my wife, we're actually moving from New York to Chicago so that I can teach year round, because I want to teach at my alma mater, Northwestern. I love it. I love teaching my students. I've got a couple of my former students are here at NYU Law now, and they babysit the kids, so I still get to see them all the time, but they're… You know, it's so rewarding. I do. I have, I've got a bunch who've worked in government at every level. I've had one who's worked in the White House. I've had one who is a speechwriter for a big, big state governor for her first three years out of college. I mean, it's just nothing is more rewarding than watching them go out there and do this. You know that was… it's just so validating.
Allison 34:33
Do most of them want to become speech writers, or is there an additional, incremental value too? Like when you were talking about the presidential speech process, I wish my whole team would do that, because I imagine it would help them introduce themselves better in meetings and I mean, generally, have more of a narrative about their career and lives. Do most of your kids kind of follow in that your footsteps? Or do they utilize it in different ways?
Cody 34:56
It's about half and half. You know, I try saying, there's always a long wait list not to toot my own horn. So I try saying, on the first day, “Look, please only take this class if you really want to be a political speechwriter.” You know, because there are a bunch of people on the waitlist who do. I say it's about half and half, but, but that's fine, still, I, you know, I tell them too, every profession can benefit from better writing and speaking. You know, lawyers, obviously, but doctors—anyone, I don't care. Just… I'm going to teach you how to write 10 different kinds of speeches. I'm going to teach you how to do it under pressure. I'm going to teach you how to do it with… About policy and and about emotion and and a speech about jokes. I'm gonna… You're gonna leave this class with a portfolio of 10 different speeches that you can go show somebody and get your foot in the door and to see that it's working is really, really rewarding.
Sean 35:45
Like, how are kids taking, I mean, is it kind of like, are you attracting the kids who are like, I just can't handle like, the short attention span that we have, or like this, the, you know, this culture that we're in? I would really love to go deeper and go more long form. It's like, what about kind of this moment makes them want to take this class so bad?
Cody 36:07
They're idealists. They really are, and that's been so much fun to watch. You know, they they make me feel better about everything. You know, it's easy. It's easy to get down about stuff and cynical about stuff. I don't they're like a little shot in the arm of optimism each week, because they care so deeply. You know, look, they grew up getting a bum rap. Things really are worse than they were when we were in college. You know, I was in college. I was at Northwestern in the 90s. Man, everything seemed great like, What could possibly go wrong? 911, happened my senior year, which answered that question. But, you know, they've grown up with everything going wrong and and they're still eager to make things better. You know, they're not in there on their phones. They're in class. It's three hours on Monday, and they're paying attention, they're engaged, they're turning in good work. You know, I just, I can't say it. I've never had a problem student. They're just great kids who make me feel better about everything. And in a way, I'm cheating, because I have, I have this incredible unfettered access to live data about Gen Z or alpha. I don't know when alpha starts, but I, you know, they can tell me what's going on in the world. They can tell me, you know, words like Riz, I get to ask them when I'm writing these commencement adresses, hey, what do you want to hear about? What do you not want to hear about? Right? I have my own little focus group that keeps me young. And, you know, I've literally hit twice their age. I'm 44 they're 22 but I don't feel that gap. They probably do. They're like, Nah, dude, you're old, but they're just, they're just wonderful. And I still hear from them all the time. I'll get, you know, an email update from a bunch of them every year. So just telling me what they're up to. And it's really fun.
Sean 38:49
How is like that kind of interplay changed the way you write speeches for Fenway?
Cody 38:53
Great question. They keep, they keep my knives sharp. You know, at Fenway, I'm just writing constantly with them. I am thinking about writing constantly and teaching them how to do it. And then I remember, oh, yeah, I haven't done that in a while. You know? I haven't followed my own advice. In a while I haven't sat down and, you know, kind of mapped out a speech in this way. So it's, for me, it's like going back to, you know, practice once a year before you come out and play the season. You know, it's great. I just, it's, you know, it's, it doesn't, it pays the least of anything I do, but I get the most reward out of it. And I just, I couldn't, I couldn't recommend teaching highly enough, you know, it's you don't have to be a speechwriter, but to be able to pass on what you've learned to other people and then watch them go out and do it better, ideally. That's the dream. You know, I've had a speechwriter in the White House at this point. But if I, I want to, I want to get to the point where, like, I have this army of 200 speech writers just out there in America, you know, making us a better place. That's that, then I can rest happy. And
Allison 39:57
How does AI play into their lives these days? I mean, I feel like, if I… I've asked AI to create speeches or content for me, obviously a ton in my role, and I find what it turns out, is often really kind of milk toast, mediocre, but at least it's a start. I mean, how do you advise kids to think about AI or use it? Don't use it? What's your take?
Cody 39:22
I'm a late adopter because I've been very curmudgeonly about it, and mostly it's because I think it is a direct threat to what I do… Someday, not now, but, you know, you're right, the stuff it turns out now is not good. I'll talk about students first and then, and then Fenway. With my students, I tell them on day one, and I put it in the syllabus and whatnot. Listen, if I catch you writing a speech with AI, I'm gonna fail you. That said, it's very difficult to catch someone doing it. There are tools there, you know, we have plagiarism tools we have access to as teachers. And there are AI detection tools, but they're not perfect. I'm probably a better detector of it, because it does turn in milk toast garbage that is not… That doesn't have emotion, that is not connected to the writer and their story. One very dangerous thing about it is I have tried it before, never for a client. I would never, ever do that. But to try to find, pull out some stories and research. Sometimes it just makes things up, and you have to be very careful of that. I don't think you know, AI has a conscience and that it's willfully doing this, but it pulls things off the internet that people have created, right? So if it finds something that someone else lied about, it doesn't know whether it's a lie or not. So you just have to be so careful with it. I have begun using it, grudgingly as a research tool, because it does a pretty good job. I've even asked it to plow through a transcript and pull out, you know, three themes. It's not bad at stuff like that. At writing, it's not great. I was with Sean once when he showed a group, you know, what it can do for a press release. And boy, it was good at that. Like, frighteningly good. But when it comes to a speech, they can't do it yet because, look, AI just doesn't have the full depth of human emotion and complexity yet.
Allison 41:11
I've heard a lot of these folks are trying to train it on poetry. Now, it'll be interesting to see if it gets better with that. As a poetry writer in college myself.
Cody 41:20
I'll bet AI could write a great Limerick.
Allison 41:26
Cheek stuff. Yeah.
Cody 41:28
But I try to tell my students, I'm like, listen, I may not be able to catch you, but what's the point, then? We're like, why take this class if you're not going to learn how to do it? Someday you'll get caught, and that's going to be the worst day of your life. The worst thing you could possibly do is get your boss busted for plagiarism or for lying or for saying something wrong. You know, then you haven't just let down yourself. You've let down your boss, and you've let down the entire company or, you know, White House or the administration. Yeah, it is just not worth it.
Sean 41:59
You do not want to disappoint Cody Keenan. Professor Cody Keenan.
Cody 42:02
You do not.
Allison 42:04
I don't, personally, after this call.
Cody 42:06
Mike Tweed is going to be so mad at you.
Sean 42:10
Hey, Cody, we have a bonus question given the name Attention Shift. What is keeping your attention these days? Like, what, what draws you in and keeps you there?
Cody 42:20
It's such a cop out answer, but I have a four year old and a 10 month old. So they do. They do Bluey—big into Bluey. We're plowing through the Disney Worlds one on one. I know that the Disney movies one on one. We just did our first family trip to Disneyland last month. I know that's not what you're getting at.
Sean 42:41
It can be.
Cody 42:43
You know, what's funny, is everyone's always asking me what podcasts I listen to, and the answer is, Attention Shift. But besides that, I don't… Besides that, I don't have a commute. So like, “When do people have time to listen to podcasts?” You know, I've got, I've got to. I basically listen to my friends’ podcasts. That's all I've got time for. I crush a few morning newsletters, but that's about it. The kids and work keep me hopping. But I'm always looking to see if there's any good political talent out there giving good speeches. I'm always looking to see, too, if there are any, you know, corporate shops or nonprofits who are who are speaking differently. And by that, I mean speaking like humans, you know, speaking like the rest of us do, or is anything, does anything sound refreshing? And by that, it's usually just kind of honest and human-like.
Sean 43:33
When's the last time you actually watched a full speech all the way through of someone you weren't working for?
Cody 43:38
Probably during the last campaign season. You know, Fenway was actively involved in the writers room at the Democratic Convention, so I was consuming all of that and then up through the end, but, but not in a while. You know, I missed, I missed Trump's what, 90 minute State of the Union address. I missed that because I go to bed at like 9:30 now, just because the baby still keeps waking up. But I get to blame… Blaming kids—great way to get out of answering any question, honestly.
Allison 44:07
It really is no one, no one's gonna argue.
Sean 44:09
You have a lot of room to do. You have many years left, because Alice and I do it every day.
Allison 44:12
Yeah, as a parent myself, though, I just want to say I'm proud of you for keeping your standards high with Bluey and not backsliding into Cocomelon.
Cody 44:20
I'm not proud of lying to my daughter, but I have told her that we don't get Cocomelon. Or what's the pig one?
Allison 44:27
Peppa. Yeah, just don't have it!
Cody 44:29
Yeah, I just lie and I say, we don't get that here. I'm sorry.
Allison 44:31
My husband, my kids are a little older, but banned YouTube now at the domain level, at our house, like on the Wi Fi, because the kids were watching kids like open presents and play video games. But anyway, it's been, it's been detrimental to my work. As it turns out, I do have to access YouTube sometimes.
Cody 44:49
Yeah, that’s a whole thing. I have a friend whose kids just watch unboxings on YouTube and watch other people play video games. And I'm like, that's when I feel old fashioned. Like, boy, when I was your age, I actually played video games rather than just watching other people do it. Like, do you need a PlayStation or something? I'll set up a GoFundMe.
Sean 45:07
My kids went through a whole period where they watched people play Minecraft.
Allison 45:10
And that's what my son was doing. We had to ban it. We just don't have YouTube anymore. I'm sorry.
Cody 45:18
This part of the conversation right here is where my students are usually very helpful. They're like, “Dude, you sound really old, let’s move on.”
Sean 45:24
On that note. We'll move on, Cody, thank you so much. Thank you and thank you for Fenway to Fenway strategies for lending you to us today.
Allison 45:33
This was fun.
Cody 45:35
Thanks guys, thanks for having me.
Allison 45:38
Thank you for joining us today for Attention Shift for today's deep dive on communication strategy. Check out our sponsors, Delve, at Delve.news and Mike Worldwide at MW.com Please like and subscribe to attention shift on Apple, Spotify, or your podcast platform of choice, and we'll see you in a couple weeks for our next episode.