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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 00:01
Welcome to Attention Shift. We unpack where communication and communications is headed. I'm Sean Garrett and we’re supported by Delve with 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 shortened attention spans. Let's dive in.
Allison 00:28
Today on Attention Shift, we are talking about crises, and crises are prevalent. There are current ones happening, you know, right now or just happened that we'll get into with our frequent co host Hani Durzy, who's joining us today, but later in the podcast, we will talk to Nick Shapiro, who has had a really interesting career, both on the government side, handling tons of crises during his time working with the White House and the CIA, and he then went to Airbnb, where he managed crises galore there, and now has his own consultancy, where I actually worked with him on a recent project. You may have heard about… Astronomer. But let's get into what's going on in the news now. You know Cracker Barrel. Let's talk about it. Growing up in Virginia, I have been inside a Cracker Barrel. I will admit that. I'll own that on this podcast.
Sean 01:16
Like, I mean, like, was it a thing like, you went to once? Or it was, like a weekly thing?
Allison 01:21
Once. I think there was one in like, Manassas or something, sort of like near my house. And it's like a for those of you who don't live in Cracker Barrel dense areas, it is a place where you go to sort of like LARP, at being old-timey and country. And there's even, like a little shop in there. And it's all sort of just very Americana kind of, kind of vibes. They redid their logo if you, if you didn't see, if you didn't go on the internet this week, or you were, like, at an ashram, everyone was talking about it. But they redid their logo to go from sort of like an old man with an actual barrel to something much more, sort of neutral. And yeah. And people had feelings about that.
Sean 01:57
Important people had feelings, right? Yeah.
Hani 02:00
Well, people who like to really think about their level of importance, and I suppose, because of that, they are important. I mean, my take look, first of all, you grew up in Virginia, Allison. I grew up in New Hampshire, which has exactly one Cracker Barrel in the entire state. I don't believe it was there when I was young and growing up there, but it doesn't surprise me, because New Hampshire is basically the deep south of New England, and so I would imagine that there are certain people in my old state who both enjoy it and had strong feelings about it. Look, I think, I'm kind of torn about this. It's fascinating in many ways, but first of all, the redesign of their logo. And I'm not a design expert, but I pay attention to design in all sorts of different formats, and the first thing I thought when I saw the redesign was, this is about as antiseptic and minimalist and sort of early 21st century corporate as possible and super, super boring. Like I'm not Cracker Barrel’s constituency, but I can respect the meaning that the previous logo had for people. Not my cup of tea. But I get it. I think what's really interesting though, is the fact that Cracker Barrel actually apologized and turned the clock back, which, look, I thought in this day and age that the first rule of crisis communications was to never apologize. But apparently, when you piss off a largely MAGA contingent, I think you sort of have to apologize, now. I don't know what any of that means. It's a little frightening, but that's my take.
Allison 03:46
It reminded me a little of the Jaguar thing where, I guess I thought, Who are you marketing to Now? Like you took Jaguar which had at least texture to it and some sort of identity, and then you sort of strip that away and tried to turn it into something else, and with no evidence, at least to me, that that audience wants your product. And so the Cracker Barrel thing felt a little like that to me, like maybe we're trying to go more, you know, let's be like Chili's. Let's be like Applebee's. Let's get this type of customer into the store with no, maybe, evidence that that customer actually wants to come, and all you end up doing is alienating your existing customer. But the stock price was interesting to watch, and the almighty dollar obviously has a lot to say about these things. It dipped when they did the new logo, and it popped right back up when they reverted, so.
Sean 04:31
So, I guess the cynic would say, And I, and I know…
Hani 04:37
I’m sitting right here, Sean.
Sean 04:41
I'm just a skeptic, and Hani's full on cynic. The cynic would say that this was all just a big operation to get attention. You know, it's outrage marketing 2025 vibes. Like, let's just go, like, blow some shit up and, like, get everyone talking about us. And who cares? Like. We anger, because actually, anger is currency today. Like, what's your take on that?
Allison 05:05
Yeah, I don't think you're wrong about that. That's very possible. I wouldn't be surprised if there were some mastermind who did that, because it's a way to alienate these people and then say, basically, Oh, we're back. We still love you. And then they come back in droves because they're thinking about you again.
Sean 05:20
When's the last time you guys were talking about Cracker Barrel over, over dinner, or ever?
Hani 05:25
Or gone to Cracker Barrel for dinner? Never, to answer your question and Sean.
Sean 05:29
And yeah, but you're like, what, 12?
Allison 05:34
I was probably in high school. We sort of, like laughed about it, like it was fun. It was sort of, it's sort of like a weird little, like, Little House on the Prairie style experience that you do.
Hani 05:42
I'm gonna make a point of going to the one in Hookset, New Hampshire the next time I'm back there visiting family. But I think, to your point, Sean…
Allison 05:50
See? It worked. Very effective.
Hani 05:52
Yeah, exactly. They'll get my, whatever, $19. To your point, Sean, I think it's certainly possible the one element of this that I think makes it either unlikely or if it happened that way, on purpose, is extremely risky, is what happened to the stock price. Like you can, you can manufacture outrage to raise brand awareness all you want, and I don't think anyone internally is really going to have a negative reaction to that if it gets more brand awareness, until you start to lose millions, hundreds of millions, even billions of dollars, of market cap.
Sean 06:26
Personally, and personally, if I would say, I would say, I doubt that they actually did only because, like, the result was so antiseptic. Like, if they had done like a rainbow flag logo, like, then I'd be like, Oh, well… well played. But right? But they came up with something that was so freaking boring.
Allison 06:45
What it's worth though, the stock price is back to where it was.
Sean 06:49
I know. I'm just… Yeah, it's now it is. But like, to Hani's point, like, you never know. And would you advise a company who's like, you know, let's try this outrage thing? Like, how would that like work? Like, how would that conversation go and what would be actually an effective strategy?
Hani 07:08
I mean, I don't think that I would advise a company to… Let me put it this way. I would advise a company to go down the outrage path if the people that they were outraging weren't their core customers to begin with, because I think there's a lot of value in creating an us versus them environment. That's not what Cracker Barrel did here. The other interesting element of this is to the point of the stock price went down and then rebounded back up. There's no guarantee that that was going to happen. I'm happy for the shareholders that that did happen, but it raises an interesting point about how investor relations, I think, and legal, needs to pay even more attention to what's happening in the zeitgeist, because all of a sudden, these cultural things that have nothing to do with business outcomes can move the stock price more than a bad earnings report can. And so how do you, if you're a comms person, how do you sit down? Or should you? And I think the answer is yes—should you sit down with your investor relations people, saying, Yeah, you know, top line, bottom line, cost of goods sold, all that stuff that has an impact on the stock price. You know what's going to have the biggest impact on this? Impact on the stock price, whether a large segment of the population that is buying, interested in buying stocks, or bean stocks, or whatever, is going to react to what what it is we're doing?
Allison 08:34
Yeah. It’ll be interesting to see if revenue on the quarter actually goes up for Cracker Barrel too. Like, do they get in new customers? Do they bring in old customers who maybe had moved away from the brand? That'll be a good one to revisit on a future episode, just because I think if you carry the current comms moment to its inevitable conclusion, where attention is the only currency that matters, you will potentially see more brands manufacturing outrage. And is there a right and a wrong way to do it? What else has been capturing our attention this week, folks? Anything else?
Hani 09:06
I mean, Allison, it was something that you had mentioned a little bit earlier, before we started recording. But there's a lot of stuff going on, it seems like, with internal communication and setting employee expectations in terms of workplace culture, right? There's… I just saw today that Microsoft has fired a number of employees who have been protesting over the company's sale of its technology to the Israeli government. Leaving aside what you think of that conflict and both sides of it, it's interesting to see executives and leadership really kind of tossing their weight around with employees. It's… I think this has been happening for a few years, but it really seems to be coming to a head.
Sean 09:58
Yeah, and then you have, obviously just the kind of growing trend of companies where it's well advertised that you're going to work here every single day of the week, and you're going to work for this long, and it's going to be a freaking brutal job, and you may make a lot of money out of it, but it's going to be super, you know, forget hardcore—whatever the 10x version of that is—this is what this job is. So you also have that kind of vibe thing going on too, and curious your take on this Allison, but the my general take on all these things is, as long as you're accurate with who you are as an organization and what your values are, and what you believe in and how you operate and what the role will be like, people can then choose to decide where they want to work. Like people for a very long time, decided to go work on Wall Street and still continue to knowing that, like it is a total grind and it's going to suck, and I got to get up super early in the morning, but I'm going to make a, you know, a boatload of money, hopefully, and but that's just gonna be the trade-off I'm gonna make. And so these things are all about trade-offs. And if you're just super clear with people, then great. However, if you are, like, this place is gonna change the world. We're all about like, you know, evolving humanity. We're all about, like, all these wonderful things, and then you're not that, then people are gonna be really angry. Also, if you go into a situation where you work really hard, but it's not clear, like, what your job is, or what you roll roll up into, or like, you know, even what the vision of the company is, or why you're working so hard, like, that also sucks. So like, you know, if you're telling people to work really hard, you’ve got to be pretty definitive about, like, what you do, why you do it, and what the outcome could be for you. Like, you know, that's like, why Wall Street works is because it's just really clear. You meet some certain goals, you get this bonus, right? It's just really obvious. And I think, like, the tech industry, frankly, is big enough now to to include that within it. But I don't think that should be the whole thing. And I also don't think, you know, there's obviously this always a trend to like, point, like at seven companies and say Silicon Valley is doing this, like, this is Silicon Valley today. Well, no, it's not. There's plenty of companies that are more than normal, right? Yeah, so there's a lot in there at once.
Allison 12:28
There's been this trend among founders I work with of pushing for 996 which is this originally Chinese idea of working 9am to 9pm six days a week. And I think as long as you're clear about that, to your point, Sean, not just what the expectation is, but what is the, what is the potential outcome here for everyone, and what are we working for? You have a strong mission. You have a strong, you know, shot at making this economically viable for people, then it's good to establish, you know, hey, this is the norm here. And if you can't live with that, maybe, maybe you should work somewhere else. But I do think the downside of that is it does discourage people at our age from going to work for those companies. Like I think it is a very deliberate, you know, attempt to get younger, maybe hungrier people to work there. At my advanced 45 years of age, I'm… with two young kids. That's not, that's not for me. I had dinner this week with one of our… a marketer who I think very highly of within our portfolio, who's new to Silicon Valley and young and she, you know, I asked her, you know, what do you think of the Bay Area? And she said, it's great. You know, the couple times I've gotten out, but mostly I am here to work. And so I do think there is a cadre of young people who view AI as the next great big revolution, and being here, part of, you know, being a part of that is was really important to them, and knowing that they came here to work and not to live and not to have fun and to look at this portion of their life as very singularly focused on work.
Sean 13:55
I hate to break it to people, like, but that's pretty normal. Like when we did that, when we were in our 20s.
Allison 14:01
we did
Hani 14:02
In New York, right? Yeah, when we had energy.
Sean 14:05
Yeah, no, no. I mean, we don't... We didn't need, like, a, you know, a set of numerics to, like, guide us, just like what you did.
Hani 14:13
I agree with both of you that that, look, there's nothing wrong inherently with a company saying these are our expectations. And I agree with you, Allison, that if you match those expectations with what the reward is, and you consider your job to be a tour of duty—great. The problem is, I think where founders fall down. They say, We want everyone to work 996 but they don't do a good job of saying what the rewards are going to be, and that's going to blow up in their face at some point.
Sean 14:42
Yeah, exactly. And that you can only do that for so long. Like, you can only…
Allison 14:46
Yeah, that has a shelf life. Yeah, exactly. But one person who doesn't have a shelf life… You like my really awkward…?
Sean 14:53
Is that a good thing or a bad thing?
Allison 14:55
No, shelf life's a bad thing. You want to, you want to be like, vibrant and new for… Forever, but he has reinvented himself. Nick Shapiro will join us now. He is the founder and CEO of 10th Avenue Consulting, which is a premier crisis management and strategic comms firm. And so with over 15 years of experience in national security and crisis response, he served in the CIA as Deputy Chief of Staff and a senior advisor within leading roles in the White House. He's guided responses to lots of major crises, suffice to say. So let's welcome Nick to the show. Nick, welcome to Attention Shift. We're so happy to have you today.
Nick 15:39
Thanks so much. Appreciate you having me on.
Allison 15:43
Yeah, it's great to have you here. You've done a lot of things in your career, and so we'll get into those more as we talk. But ex-CIA, ex-White House and then pivoted really, to tech, ex-Airbnb, and then, you know, you've been out on your own now for about six years. How did you first find your way to this work?
Nick 16:00
I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. Like most kids in high school or college, I was obsessed with hockey, and that was the only thing I cared about. I went to Tulane University. I took a course at Tulane my freshman year, named something to do with speech writing.
Sean 16:17
Tulane that great hockey school.
Nick 16:19
Yeah, it's… My hockey dream died right then. Exactly. It was a class on speech writing for the American presidency, and it was a great professor, and I remember being in that class just being fascinated with the idea of communications and how it can play such an important role in really big decisions, and this whole course was how speeches of the presidency changed history. And I wound up taking every comms class that professor had, and kind of realized, I guess, I was going to be a Communications major. And from there, my first role was at a crisis PR firm. And so, crisis kind of started with me back when I was, you know, an intern in college, and here I am, 45 years old, still doing crisis work.
Allison 17:07
Wow, crazy. And, you know, you obviously had those, those roles in the CIA and, you know, and for the government, and then you moved over to the private sector. What big changes did you feel in that transition? Or was there more similarity than difference?
Nick 17:23
What was most similar is both sides talking down about each other. I remember being in government and the tech sector constantly hearing the tech… Silicon Valley and tech sector being like, “Government has no idea what it's doing. They don't know how to run anything.” And then I was in Silicon Valley and in the tech sector thinking, you know, there were a lot of things government did a lot better than this. And the truth is, both industries can help each other. And you know, when tech and government kind of partner up, you've seen some really fascinating results, right? And I think that's the way forward.
Allison 17:59
What are some examples of that, where it's worked?
Nick 18:03
You know, where you, you're… all the efforts by really, all of the last few administrations—put politics aside—just to streamline and modernize government infrastructure and benefits. And the way you can get things done by cutting through the red tape on the technology. The Silicon Valley and the tech sector is excellent at teaching county government how to get that done. And I think government is there and needs to rightfully say when there needs to be some yellow lights and when there needs to be some pauses. And when that works together, I think it works very well.
Sean 18:39
Before we get into, like, the future state and all this, and in their transition, like, I just have to ask like, and I think most listeners would be curious… When we hear CIA and Nick Shapiro, like, tell us about, tell us about that role, and what you were doing there after the White House and before you got into the private sector.
Nick 18:57
Yeah, I think a lot of people think I was doing comms work at the CIA, but in fact, I was not. I was a national security spokesperson for President Obama in the first term of the White House. That was the first two years. Then I transitioned to a role where I was advising an incredible guy named John Brennan, who was at that time, the head of Counterterrorism and Homeland Security. So I was basically like his chief of staff in the White House, the director of the CIA at that time was David Petraeus, and he left his role there—we'll just keep it at that. And President Obama asked John Brennan if he would go lead the CIA. Director Brennan very quickly said, If I can help get him confirmed through the Senate that he was going to bring him with me, and that's exactly what happened. So I came in as his deputy chief of staff and his senior advisor, and my job was basically to make sure that the head of the CIA had all the information at the right time in the right way to make the very important decisions the head of the CIA has to make. So it's everything from teeing up the meetings that he needs to be in, getting things ready to ensure that his very important approval happens when it needs to happen, being the first person in the room with him to discuss the meeting, being the last person in the room with him to give advice and opine on whether we should or shouldn't do certain things. And then working to implement the director's decision, I found myself traveling all over the world with him, which was just such a privilege and an opportunity to see the kind of sacrifice and the hard work that the women and men of the intelligence community are doing every single day to keep us safe. And I learned a ton of lessons there that I've taken with me and hope to continue.
Allison 20:43
I would imagine, like making quick decisions, helping senior leaders make sure they have all the right information at their fingertips, probably skills that translate really well to your to your role now where so much of crisis comms is, you know, being in the room where the decision happens, and making sure people are armed to make a good choice. I know you probably can't talk about a lot of your clients, given the type of work that you do, but are there clients you can talk about? I know your work has such an interesting overlap between public sector, private sector, but also like Hollywood, all of that. So I think you know for our listener base, the types of work you do could be really interesting for them, because our listeners come from a whole bunch of different parts of comms.
Nick 21:23
I've done everything from celebrities to high-net-worth individuals to tech companies, financial firms, healthcare organizations, nonprofits. I often joke, you know, I don't think I can be surprised at this point, but when I do get a client in an industry that I don't know, you know? Well, it is appealing to me, because I get to learn something new, too. I launched a crisis management firm a few months before the entire world was in crisis. My company launched right before the Covid pandemic. So it was interesting timing, and Governor Newsom hired me literally day one of the pandemic, meaning, like the day the NBA shut down and travel stopped, I will never forget the date, because it was also my 40th birthday. I tend to have a history of interesting things happening on my birthday in terms of world developments. So March 11, 2020, Newsom became a client, and at that point, Newsom was like, 36% approval rating. And for the first four months I was in Sacramento. For the next four months, I was in Sacramento with him every day as his kind of Covid crisis advisor. And at that time, the nation really was depending on, you know, Governor Newsom—California was leading the way in the beginning of the covid crisis response. His popularity shot up to like 92% I think he was by… he was the nation's most popular governor. We were out there every single day holding a press conference talking about what we were doing to help people. And after that happened four months in, I'm with him every single day, he goes from 36 to like 92% approval rating nationwide governor. My company is getting all sorts of clients, and I need to get back to running my company. And so I tell him, I have to leave. I'm heading back to San Francisco. I'm leaving Sacramento. And shortly thereafter, he goes to the dinner. The race riots. There's wildfires. He goes through a recall election, and so I joke with him all the time that I will constantly be telling this story, because it is the greatest case study for a communications professional, whether I did anything or not to help. Just the sheer timing of me being there, him going from 36 to 92 and then me leaving and him going down a little bit is a funny story and a great case study, but for all seriousness, the way he communicated those first four months of Covid, being available, giving actionable information to people, is why his approval shot up so high, and he was a very effective leader, especially in those beginning months when everyone was really, really scared.
Sean 24:02
Yeah, it's a great point.
Nick 24:04
To be fair, everyone needs to leave Sacramento at some point, so…
Sean 24:05
Excellent.
Allison 24:06
Our Sacramento listeners are gonna have a riot in the comments.
Sean 24:13
I lived there and left there once too.
Allison 24:19
There you go. There you go. Let's get into Astronomer quickly, since that's obviously been in the news in the last few months, and you and I got to work together on it. I woke up in a hotel room in New York at 8am and, you know, I'm surrounded by my family who I had brought to New York on this trip, and I sat straight up in bed and started dealing out a lot of curse words. And my kids were like, what's going on, Mom? What's wrong? I had about 50 inbound messages from people with a TikTok link to one of our CEOs in the portfolio at a concert in sort of a compromising situation. And so I raced into the office to try to figure out what to do. And you were someone who I called immediately because I'd worked with you on another project. And it was clear, kind of from moment one, that there was something proactive we could do here, but first we had to solve the very real challenge of figuring out leadership going forward. So when you get a call like that, what's your first course of action, and how do you think about digging in on a problem like this?
Nick 25:15
Yeah, so the way the Astronomer engagement happened, you know, your email to me, that's how almost all of my engagements are. They're never something that's like, Hey, can we have you help with this thing in a couple of weeks or month, and you get time to get up to speed and learn about it? No, it is 10am you know, Pacific, and I happen to be looking at my phone during another meeting and learn that there is this big thing happening, and if I don't call back instantly, you know, the whole world's gonna fall apart. So that's the way I get all clients. And I often have to very quickly assure clients that no matter what the pressing deadline is, no matter what the problem is, even the most viral story on the planet, which is what the Astronomer issue was, is we've got to take a step back and walk me through what's happened, and, more importantly, walk me through who your stakeholders are, right? And so I try to do that in a way that is as reassuring and calm as possible, because I meet all clients on pretty much the worst day of their life. If they're having a great day, they're not calling me, right? So I get clients when a person or a company’s facing a really challenging situation, and I very quickly need to, again, let them know that I'm here to help. I'm going to have some basic questions about the different stakeholders that they care about, and what communications have gone out to those stakeholders so far, and then we'll get into the actual problem and talk through a solution.
Allison 26:45
So with Astronomer, one of the key stakeholder groups we dealt with was employees, and we kept that front of mind in the communication. And something I think you did a really good job on was from the beginning right up to the end in the Gwyneth Paltrow video, you know, addressing employees’ needs and wants and their morale. What kinds of groups have you, have you dealt with in the past, and do you consider the internet mob to be one of those groups? Because it certainly was in this situation, and it's so hard to predict what that group will do. How do you think about sort of the collective internet, for lack of a better term, as a stakeholder group?
Nick 27:22
Yeah, that's a great question. So two parts to this. One, the beginning of every engagement, the first thing I do, even when a client wants to talk about the big, shiny object—the problem—I always take a step back and say, walk me through who the stakeholders are that you care about. Who are the important stakeholders, and everyone wants to jump to the solution and defend themselves and tell me very quickly why the thing is not accurate, you know, that is being alleged. And I again have to tell them, I got you. We'll cut there. Walk me through the stakeholders you care about are. I then keep that list, and from every moment on, in an engagement with a client, whenever there's a key decision, I bring up that list, and I say, Hey, if this is what we're deciding, let's talk about how we're going to communicate this to our employees, your board, the investors, partners, customers, the media, social media, right? And often that almost changes the decisions sometimes, because people realize that while they might be focused on this solution set, we have to communicate this to a whole host of other stakeholders. So that's the first part. Second part is the internet, writ large, has become a stakeholder. And when I say the internet, sometimes clients don't even understand what I'm saying. But what I mean by that is gone are the days where we're really catering communications specifically to the mainstream media. And more, we're catering communications to quote/unquote, the internet. And you still need to do public relations work, and you need to talk to reporters, and you need to to conduct appropriate media relations, but making sure your message is something that the quote “internet” is going to understand is becoming credibly important. It used to be something where you got out your message in media, and then you know, it trickled down to social media, and you post it on your own. You know, social media handles now, you know, my advice to most companies is, think about how the internet's going to respond to your message. It's a different kind of communications, frankly.
Sean 29:35
So like, what's the ramification of like, what happens when they think about that?
Nick 29:39
You know, it tends to… you need to be quicker. You need to be faster. The internet does not wait for 10 levels of approvals to get information out. The information has to be way more concise. What you're communicating. You're dealing with an attention span of a feed that people are scrolling. So you have to make sure that you're, you're… getting your message out in the most concise and the most compelling way to… people go online, mostly for education and entertainment, right? And if you are trying to get out a message in a serious topic, you're going to have to do it in a way that is going to get people's attention, hold their attention, and ensure that they give you a fair shot at what you're trying to get across.
Sean 30:27
Obviously, Astronomer was just a total false flag operation. But getting beyond that, I'm kidding… Getting beyond that, like, how should companies think about this, if, like, if you're involved in a story that is even slightly viral, and there's gunna be this element of misinformation that's just naturally going to occur around it. Well, how do you… how do you even plan or think that through?
Nick 30:53
Yeah, I think the best thing for folks to do is the the… it's almost like some of the old methods have to come back, right? A one source of truth place, right, where you're just putting out facts. And nowadays it's less a website and more going to be on, you know, Twitter, X, or on various social media sites, but making sure everyone knows that this is where the factual information is. Now, even that is hard to do, right? You can do that with the media. You can make sure the media knows to go to your website or to go to your social media handle, but again, you're dealing with an intention issue, where if people are just scrolling their phone, they don't necessarily want or care to even know the factual information. They're scrolling a feed, they see a story that looks like a story. It's not even a story. It's just someone who put up a social media post to make it look like a story. And it's connected to this viral thing, and they spend two seconds on it and then they go down and they continue scrolling. But that person now thinks that this thing happened, and you don't really have a chance to say, Well, did you go to our company's Twitter page? Did you go to our website to fact check that? No, of course not, right? So the next step is, how do you get your information out there in a way that people are going to see it? Which brings us back to making sure you're communicating where the internet understands. If you're not going to be showing up in the same places where people are scrolling and finding maybe some fake information, then you're never going to get a chance to give them the accurate information.
Allison 32:19
One of the things we did on Astronomer on that front, that I thought was helpful and that I felt the sorriest about, was given all of all the misinformation that was out there. And there was a lot… Fake statements, fake, this fake that. One of the most damaging ones I felt was the one that had alleged that one of the other employees on the HR team at Astronomer was in attendance at that concert, and in fact, she was not. And so we were able to address that in one of the statements that went out. And again, I think it helped that that statement, to your point, lived on social media and so on and so forth. But at the volume of that misinformation, I think a little bit about deep fakes. And AI is really close to being able to not just drum up some sort of funny written statement, or pretend that I'm the daughter of this CEO. You could actually drum up a video pretending to be this HR woman, confirming that you were at the concert, and that would just make things worse. I feel like we're living in a worse and worse disinformation environment. And you know, how do you keep tabs on what the latest kind of tactics are on that front, Nick?
Nick 33:20
Yeah, sadly, it is only going to get worse. Which is a scary thing, because it's not great right now. But I think what's also going to happen is technology will advance, where there's going to be other services that can spot the fake information and have a ready-made tool to file whatever's needed to file to get it removed or flagged or put up there. You know, when the social media sites, you know, kind of stopped doing a lot of the fact-checking, it's kind of like been a perfect storm of timing where a lot of that responsibility has lapsed while at the same time, the ability to create fake information at a large scale, and have it go viral, multiply, is happening at that exact moment. So my hope, and I've already heard, and I even spoke to some companies recently, where there is going to be solutions, hopefully, that come online that track these fake accounts and track the fake information to the point where they can be removed a little quicker. None of us are strangers to disinformation online or misinformation… and misinformation. But the amount that came out over the week with Astronomer and just the brazenness of people who were willing to just flat out lie and grift from the situation, I think really should serve as a warning for every company, because the fact is, now the President's been set that when there's a viral story out there, there's a whole host of people that want to connect to that viralness and get you to buy their product. Or get you to pay attention to them. And what we saw was astounding, frankly. I mean, people were just flat out lying about relationships that they have. There was someone who said that they were the daughter of the former CEO and was selling something. The former CEO didn't even have a daughter. And it's very hard in real time to fact check these things, nor was it the job of Astronomer, frankly. So this is kind of the new frontier out there, and it is something that is going to be very hard to solve, because once there's a viral story, and other kind of people latch on that viral story, are willing to just put out false information to get attention. It's really hard to put that back in the box.
Allison 35:45
Yeah, right now it relies on users flagging it, right, and we're not always quick enough, and the teams aren't quick enough to review it. So that, like a more automated world would be really nice.
Nick 35:54
If you’re a celebrity, you know, or a politician, you know, the deep fake thing where there was of you saying things that you never said and compelling way where people are just gonna be scrolling through they're not gonna take two seconds to think about whether or not it's real or not, is a real, real hard challenge, and that's why some of these services that can spot that information and flag it is gonna become really important.
Sean 36:17
So Nick, you know, obviously, anyone who's doing comms for a while, knows well that crisis response is one thing, but crisis preparedness is an entirely different thing. And I mean, you obviously spent a lot of time at Airbnb, basically creating a systematic approach to how that company handles, you know, issues that pop up around the world. And when you were talking about the CIA, I was like, and also your experience in the White House is kind of mentally nodding that it's like one of the very few jobs are actually pretty equivalent, where you just don't know in the morning what's going to be happening that day. Like, Wait, what just happened in the Philippines? Wait, this happened in Japan. Like, holy like, and suddenly you have to be an expert in local culture and understand what's going on there and the nuances. But, but that was, like, why that job you had at Airbnb, it was probably so complex and interesting, is because you had to really think through how you basically brought that to bear now, thinking now to how companies need to be prepared in an era of misinformation, era of deep fakes. Like, I'm like… Like, how do you do that? Like, how should, how should the people who are running communications for you know, mid to large companies, like, think through what crisis preparedness is in 2026?
Nick 37:32
Yeah, great. The biggest lesson I think I learned in the White House and the CIA was the old adage, fail to plan, plan to fail. And it can't be more true today. While you can't think of anything… Like if Astronomer hired me six months ago to do a crisis preparedness plan…
Allison 37:52
Jumbotron makeout wasn't on your list?
Nick 37:55
I admit, I might not have said we should plan for Chris Martin, Coldplay concert…
Allison 38:00
Yeah, that was a new one,
Nick 38:01
But there is planning that everyone can do in it. And again, I, you know, I really come down to stakeholder management. I tell everybody that 90% of crisis management is making sure you communicate the right information at the right time to the right people from the right messenger in the right way. 10% is the Gwyneth Paltrow video, right? 10% is like the solution to the problem itself. It's the… or the sound bite or the right message that's going to help a company respond. 90% is making sure you're doing bread and butter stakeholder communications the right way. And you do not need to wait until you have a crisis to get that 90% of the work done. Meaning everyone should have a very good understanding of who the stakeholders are that are most important to them. What are the right channels to communicate to them? Who are the right people or messengers who normally communicate to those folks? And what are the most common things that you're going to be communicating to them about? Because if you get that work done, you've done 90% of a crisis plan.
Allison 39:15
Frankly, what are those, like common crises that you tell companies to prepare for? Because, like, I've done a few data breaches in my day. You know, what else?
Nick 39:25
Yeah, you know, I feel like I've seen everything, but…
Allison 39:29
I believe that, sir,
Nick 39:31
But data breaches, obviously, you know, corporate misconduct, you know, where maybe a senior leader has done something inappropriate, and the rest of the company is left to hold the bag and to respond. People saying something that gets them in a lot of trouble, the whole cancel thing. It's really anything that people have become upset about, and a lot of people become upset about a lot of things, right? And so if you're a brand, you know, you need to think through… Less about… This is where I counsel people. It's less about coming up with the 100 different scenarios we can get in trouble in and more about if anything we do gets us in trouble, how are we going to respond? And what I mean by that is, do we know who our stakeholders are? Do we have a plan for how we're going to communicate with them? Because even when you have a bad story, you have a bad issue, and not everything can have a quick solve, right? The Astronomer thing was very unique. Most of the time, you're going to want to be communicating with stakeholders about what is happening, about what's being reported online or about what's being reported in the media. And the biggest decision I think most companies go through, that I'm always involved in, is, do we communicate to them proactively or reactively? That's really the crux of every single engagement, right? Something has happened. Maybe it's publicly known on the scale Astronomer, right? That's an easy decision. Everyone in the world knows it, so you might as well communicate about it.
Allison 41:04
It's on CNN in Japan. Like, yeah, it’s done.
Nick 41:07
When you've got, you know, an engagement, when you've got a company that has an issue, and maybe there's one or two news stories about it, you're in that weird place of, does alerting our stakeholders bring more attention to it?
Allison 41:04
Right. Streisand effect.
Nick 41:04
Yep, exactly. Or not. That's hard to plan. That's a lot more art and science. That's where you know, I like to think I bring some value to those decisions. But having a plan for who the stakeholders are, who normally talks to them, how to get in touch with them. Get all that work done ahead of time, because once we make that decision, yes or no, we're going to communicate proactively or reactively, we need to have all the bread and butter stuff done.
Sean 41:49
I remember way, way long ago, early in my career, we got pulled into this company that will… shall remain nameless, that provides beverages in a glass bottle. And basically they found out that one of their plants, the glass, was kind of disintegrating at the top and going into people's stomachs, because people were drinking from the bottle, and the glass would get into their stomachs, and we'd be like, this is terrible, like, You should do something. And basically they decided that they talked to a doctor. The doctor said, you know, it's such a, at such a microscopic level that, you know, it's actually can't really cause that much damage to people, so we're never going to disclose anything. And obviously, we were like, That's a terrible idea. It just shows that there's a lot of crises out there that have also never been talked about, that have stayed in the boardroom. And you know, these companies, companies have got off by the skin of their teeth. And I think in many situations, there's this very real moment where I don't think this is a bad company with bad people, but they had to make a decision on so many different levels, like, do we disclose this or not when we actually have, like, science on our side saying, like, this actually isn't a problem, but if you heard about it, it would sound horrible, and you would never want to buy a drink from this company. So there's this real kind of, like, you know thing when they call you in, or the very first conversation, but people are trying to go through this moment of, how do we even, like, go about this? And that will always stick with me forever, because I always thought it was like a, not a good, ethical decision that I feel like even bad for being in a room like there. LIke hearing this and not be able to get…
Nick 43:29
That one's like a public safety thing so that, yeah, it is frightening to hear that. You know, by and large, the way I kind of tend to counsel folks on this is I kind of make sure the framing of the question is the right framing. And what I mean by that is, if by communicating this thing, are more people going to hear what you don't want them to hear as a result or not? Or by communicating this thing, are we adding necessary context to something people either have heard or we think will hear, and if we don't communicate it, then all they're going to be left with is the thing you don't want them to know, right? So that is kind of the way to think about adding the same old adage, if there's going to be bad news, you should deliver the bad news yourself to your stakeholders, right? So if you think they're going to hear about something, you should tell them yourself. If you think there's a chance in the world they don't ever hear about something and you think adding your two cents is going to you know, as Allison said, Streisand it, then those exceptions to the rule do matter, and maybe that's the best. But more often than not, if you've got something hard to communicate, you want to do it yourself to your stakeholders, and you don't want to risk, you know, maybe they won't find out it. Just it's not the right… and that leads to kind of the thing you're talking about with, sometimes feeling like there's an unethical situation.
Allison 44:57
Yeah, when I think about your work, I think a lot about, you know, there's the external facing piece of it, did people find out about this crisis or not? And if they did, did the company end up in better shape? But there's also the internal piece of working with a whole bunch of internal stakeholders who, in my experience, often have wildly different opinions. Sometimes I've worked well with legal. In other situations, legal has been sort of adversarial in the way that we respond to it. How do you think about resolving that internal conflict that seems to accompany every crisis?
Nick 45:26
Yeah, that's such a good point. Allison, so I would say 99 out of 100 engagements I do are with my beloved friends who went to law school. So I am constantly working with lawyers. And I think earlier in my career, it was seen as an adversarial thing, when now at this stage and level, it is such a better result when you combine, you know, input from an excellent attorney in the legal team with a communications team and that compromise that almost has to get made by design, where each are taking on a little bit exposure from what they want, but that serves the client and the company so much better. And so whenever I'm involved in an engagement, I always just take that head on and tell the client that you want to hear from both your legal team, your communications team, and at the end of the day, everyone's doing their job to make sure that they serve you best. And this is why you are the client. You're going to have to make the hard decisions sometimes about, Do I want to err on the side of a little more exposure on this, a little less on that? And everyone should just be saluting at that point in going to work for you. But what I have found over the last couple of years is that engagement between lawyers and communication professionals make the message and the product much better at the end.
Allison 46:52
I feel like it helps a lot if a legal professional has spent some time on the internet writ large. Because sometimes those statements they want to put out, I'm like, that's not going to work on the internet, my friend. I love what you're trying to do there. I see what you're trying to do there, but we're going to have to make this tighter and just more internet native. And so it is really like, person-dependent. How do you help companies get to the right decisions quicker? I mean, we talked a little bit about speed internally, but sometimes I feel like that legal thing can slow it down. The board can slow it down. How do you think about that?
Nick 47:25
That's why having a crisis management professional involved in the response can make a huge difference. Because when I'm involved with the client, my only equity is to make sure that the client is well served, and when I come in, I don't have any of the political background in a company, right? Like, so normally, every company, even the best run companies, there's some politics, right? The legal team, the comms team, the product team, everyone kind of has history and are, you know, fighting for resources or this or that, and sometimes in a crisis, having someone who has absolutely no, you know, history in that organization, no background, no… none of yesterday's kind of resource fights or anything, no agenda other than we’ve got to get something out the door right now that is going to help the client communicate better in this time of need. And me being able to do that, to kind of bring people together to say, it's go time, like we've just got to make a decision, and then saying to the client, you know, look, your legal team is worried about X, Y or Z. Your comms team is worried about A, B or C. Here's what I think. At the end of the day, you know, you've got to make this decision. And for me, when a client I think is erring in that decision, I always tell clients, I'll go back at them one time, and I'll tell them, I don't think you're making the right decision, and here's why. But then I always say to clients, but this is your company. This is your reputation. I'm here just to advise you, and again, I'll tell you when I think you're making a mistake, but you've got to sign off on this, and as soon as you do, your whole team is going to, like I said, salute, and is going to get it done for you. But think real hard about this. And those conversations tend to work better one on one. Those conversations tend to help force a decision by the time you need it.
Allison 49:21
There were definitely people in the Astronomer situation who felt like we shouldn't have a crisis comms consultant. And again, I felt like, to your point, having that external voice who doesn't have a dog in the fight beyond the company doing really well ended up being very much the right choice. But I think Sean has, Sean has a question.
Sean 49:37
What's next for you? Like, are you gonna do the consulting thing for for a long time. You going to build, like, a huge, huge business out of this? Like, are you going to start hiring people? What's next?
Nick 49:48
I love my company. I love working with new clients every day. I have no plans to change the way this operates. 10th Avenue Consulting has been a real, real honor and privilege to have gotten. And to work with so many really great people and companies and to help them when they're facing a challenging situation. So hopefully this will continue on, because that's my hope.
Sean 50:10
Very cool. So, most importantly, what's keeping your attention these days in the midst of all this noise coming at you from all directions?
Nick 50:21
It is the shocking amount of brazenness people have to lie online and to put out, just flat-out false information to further their agendas. It's petrifying because it is really hard now to identify what's real and what's not real, given the fact that, again, people are only seeing things for a few seconds while they're scrolling on their phone. And that, I think, is a really hard thing for companies, celebrities, you know, anyone who is trying to communicate a message can fall victim to. And so thinking through, again, who the stakeholders you care about, how to get in touch with them, thinking through a message that's going to work on the internet, where you can, in a sense, compete with the fake information that can go viral very quickly is, is really where my head is at and where I think most clients are going to need help on.
Sean 51:17
Very cool, awesome to have you, Nick. Thanks so much.
Nick 51:19
Thank you guys so much. This was a lot of fun.
Allison 51:25
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.