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The Science Marketer brings you inside the world of science marketing and communication. Every two weeks, I sit down with industry-leading marketers, communicators, and founders to unpack the strategies behind their biggest wins—and lessons from their hardest challenges. Expect actionable advice and exclusive insights to sharpen your own approach in every episode.
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Kat Arney (00:00)
well, you, you can be a thought leader because you just get gen AI to write your content for you. All right. Cool. Good luck with that.
I do see a lot of basically, for want of a better word, like slop out there that's passing for thought leadership and you can clearly see it's been
written by AI because it's not original, it's very generic, it doesn't quite make sense, and it doesn't seem authentic and specific
Joachim Eeckhout (00:27)
How can science organization be recognized as thought leader in their space? Where do you even start? What resources does it take to become recognized as an expert? Today on the Science Marketer podcast, I'm answering those questions with Kat Arney Kat is the founder and chief creative officer of First Create the Media, a multi award-winning science communications agency specializing
in Life Sciences and Health Tech. Kat is an expert science communicator with two decades of experience. She's a multi award-winning science writer, public speaker, broadcaster and author of the popular genetic books, Herding Hemingway's Cat, How to Code a Human and Rebel Cell Hey Kat, welcome to the Science Marketer Podcast.
Kat Arney (01:14)
Hello, thank you very much for having me.
Joachim Eeckhout (01:16)
So I will start with the first question, which is maybe tough. Thought leadership is a term we hear a lot in science communication, but
can differ widely depending on the person. So could you explain what thought leadership means to you?
Kat Arney (01:34)
It is a many and varied thing. It's almost like one of these things. There's a very famous definition of pornography, whereas I can't define it, but I know it when I see it, right? So I think we'll start with that, It's very hard to pin an exact definition. If you look at the two words of it, you have thought. So you need to have thoughts. These thoughts should be original. They should be insightful.
And then you have leadership, which is that you kind of have to put yourself out there. So for me, it is encouraging organizations, the organizations that we work with, the companies, they are really innovative, pioneering. They're doing stuff in different ways. They're using really cutting edge technologies. They're doing stuff where maybe at first you hear about it and it's a bit like mind blown. So how do you...
get that out there, communicate their insights, their science, or in the cases of some organizations, maybe their expertise, and communicate that in a way that people will sit up and notice, ideally share, ideally then come to that company or organization for their expertise, their science, their insights. So you first need to have thoughts, and then you need to get out there and lead with them. So that's...
kind of how I see it. And exactly what form that takes may depend on many things like your budget, the channels you have, who you're trying to reach. I mean, as you know, with all communications, it starts with audience, right? So you start with that and then figure out how you're going to reach that audience with what you want to say.
Joachim Eeckhout (03:13)
Yeah, I guess it's always a form of content, right? But then can be really, yeah, based on many formats and many channels.
Kat Arney (03:23)
Exactly. And I think it's moving away from, it's not that kind of technical content. This is not app notes, tech notes. The term like white paper, I think is an interesting one. I don't know whether you think white papers are thought leadership. Some of the white papers I've been involved in have been more like a brochure. I think really with thought leadership, it should be tied to a person. So it's...
someone having a thought rather than a corporate communication as well. So I think that also makes the distinction.
Joachim Eeckhout (03:57)
Yeah,
there is a bit of personal branding with thought It's linked to one leader in particular, I guess, or maybe a series of people, but then they each have their own expertise.
Kat Arney (04:11)
Yeah, exactly. And I think this is really interesting when you start to talk to clients about trying to do this, because we work with a lot of clients where they, there's a lot of thought leadership on LinkedIn, for example. And so they say, can you just do our LinkedIn? That's fine. We just want to put stuff out on LinkedIn under the company name and trying to encourage them to put their personalities a bit more forward.
LinkedIn likes people so saying are you prepared to to Put yourself into that thought leadership role and some of them are like, yeah, you know, where do I sign? Give me the podium and some of them like I'm not sure about that. I don't have the time for that. So there's a negotiation about what do people feel comfortable with and particularly on LinkedIn where your thought leadership has to be tied to your personal LinkedIn account and you know, and you shouldn't be
letting someone else do that, it does need to be you to be authentic, as opposed to things like articles you might put out on a company's blog or on their website that are bylined by someone that may have had some help to write it or even placing them in other outlets, where again, you know, it's the person's thoughts, but it's maybe been mediated and supported by a content writer,
Joachim Eeckhout (05:22)
this is leading me to my next question. When you start working with a new organization, you know, that you're helping with thought leadership, where do you start? What's the first step?
Kat Arney (05:31)
So we work with a lot of startups and scale-ups and also consultancies as well. We have a couple of CROs and technology providers on our books as well. And the first thing really is stepping back and saying, well, what are you trying to achieve as an organization? So doing that first strategic bit, we have a sort five questions framework. Everyone's got their own strategic framework, right? But ours is, who are you trying to reach and why?
What do they need to know about you? How are you going to reach them? And what do you want them to do about it? So we work through those questions with people we don't automatically say, well, you know, we're, an agency that does content. So of course you just want this kind of content. It's really about what are your company strategic aims? Are you trying to establish yourselves as experts? Do you have something to say?
to the ecosystem in which you work about the way that we're doing something is not working, is wrong. There's a fundamental misconception. So what are you trying to achieve? And then do you actually have something worth saying that is worth really going out with more of a program of thought leadership, of challenge, of putting out your expertise, as opposed to perhaps a more technical company where it's okay, you actually just need a program of assets that explain your technology.
rather than building that thought leadership, those personalities, people who have thoughts about where we're going as an industry, what we need to do, those kinds of things. So starting with the strategic goals, who you're trying to talk to, what you're trying to say to them, and as part of that, is there a place for this more personality-led content there?
Joachim Eeckhout (07:13)
And once you identify this, is there maybe a common step? Do you start writing a draft or what's coming after?
Kat Arney (07:20)
Yeah, there's a lot of steps after that. And the way we work with our clients, we don't just do one thing for them. With a lot of the startups and scale ups we work with, they need a lot of different stuff. So thought leadership is part of that. Maybe there's the more conventional PR media outreach. Maybe there's just the regular corporate communications through LinkedIn, So it's all what's the mix of stuff you need.
But if it is, yes, we have something interesting or cool to say, who's going to say it? In terms of delivering that, if they don't have the time or the bandwidth to write that, or they're not maybe a hugely gifted writer, and I'd like to think writing is a skill, you know, not everyone can write, we would sit down, it's usually for sort of a half hour call with that person.
Usually there's an idea of what this is going to be about. Maybe it's just a broad theme about we just want your vision for the next year or where do you think this technology is heading or what can we say about this thing? How what's the the aspect of your company or technology that we really want to highlight? And then get their thoughts. I mean, this is it should be their thoughts.
I often say, you know, we're not mind readers. So you do need to tell us what you think. Often all those thoughts will come tumbling out with a whole lot more beside and trying to then make sense of that, turn that into a coherent piece of writing that has a structure, a beginning, a middle and an end, checking whether we've got references if we need those. You said that fact, where did that come from? All that kind of stuff. But it usually all just starts with a conversation.
as if someone is explaining their thoughts and then we turn that into coherent words to support them.
Joachim Eeckhout (09:05)
And I guess with time you can go deeper into the thought. You will identify maybe a few ideas they have and then you can in one content go into this idea and then the next into this idea, etc.
Kat Arney (09:19)
yeah, I mean, I just love sitting down with leaders, people who do think deeply about their company, their place in the world, where this technology is heading. And you know, all right, we've got enough for that conversation for that piece, but my goodness, you've given me like four other ideas of what we should be talking about in the future. And I'm that's interesting, that's interesting. So I've always got my story antennae tuned. So like, yeah, that's a cool thing, can talk about that.
Did you see that in the news? Let's see how we can bounce off that announcement.
Joachim Eeckhout (09:50)
What are the biggest challenges these companies face when they start really implementing thought leadership?
Kat Arney (09:58)
I don't think it's a lack of thought. So that's always a good start.
There's a little bit, it's like creating any content. I remember back in the day I started a blog and you sit there and go like, I don't know what I'm going to talk about and I'm sure you found this with your fantastic newsletter. You you sit down at the beginning and go, well, crumbs, I've got like one idea, but then you get going and then you have a million ideas and there's not enough time in the world to talk about everything you think you could do something about. So there's never a lack of thoughts once you start getting people to think about it.
Joachim Eeckhout (10:17)
Yeah.
Kat Arney (10:31)
Because people have thoughts all the time, they're like, yeah, yeah, that's interesting. They're like, yeah, no, capture that, capture that, tell us about it, and we can do something with it. So I think that's the biggest challenge is getting them to see that the thoughts that they're having could be useful. If someone will just mention in passing, yeah, I saw this article and I thought this about it. Could that be anything? Like, yes, you have seen something and had a thought. So once that...
gets going, think that that does help. Building people's confidence, especially if you're asking people to put their names on things or trying to encourage people to start sharing their own thoughts on their LinkedIn, even if it's not, you know, big articles or anything. It's like, great, you've had that thought. You can share that. That's fine. So building that confidence. And then the other two big ones as always are budget and bandwidth. So if you're going to hire people to help you with it, you need some budget.
If you're not going to hire people to help you with it, you need bandwidth. So, you you can, you can buy bandwidth or you have to provide it. Because I think the important thing is, is if you're going to do this and get that flywheel of thoughts going, you know, the narrative that you're building, the thoughts that you're having, thoughts generating more thoughts, it does need to be consistent. Whatever cadence it is, if it's, if it's weekly, daily, fortnightly, monthly, it's committing to that.
cadence because it also makes you think and it makes you do that on a regular basis and with content, things like LinkedIn, one and done is not enough. You do need to be building up this narrative about your organisation, your expertise, your thoughts, how you fit into the world.
Joachim Eeckhout (12:13)
Yeah, and I think this consistency is really important in anything related to content. I think that's one of the, really the key to success. And within organizations, and I feel like especially in life sciences, they often start with an initiative like this. one day they decide to become foot leader without necessarily knowing. And they will do this for maybe like a few weeks, a few months, right?
But then the effort will drop because they don't have, as you said, the time, the money, et cetera. So
you build this kind of this muscle within the organization?
Kat Arney (12:48)
Yeah, mean, signing a long-term contract helps. It's like you're paying for it, you've got to do it now. But when we work with our clients, we do work with a lot of them on this ongoing basis. And so we have what we call editorial calls every two weeks. So we view this as a, you know, like a publication. I've come from the background of journalism and content production. So it's like, it's an editorial call where we are going to sit down and say, right, what are we doing? What's on the docket?
What's coming next? What ideas do we have? Let's discuss. we could do this. We could do that. Okay. Let's set up a call with your, chief scientific officer to see what they think about this thing. so that's that fortnightly cadence jobs to do. We use a project management system called Trello. There are many other similar ones. So it's actually, it's them just making it a project that happens. So you've got the ideation, you've got the thoughts coming in. This is cool. Bit of space for reactive stuff as well, you know.
Nobel Prize announcements about LLMs or that kind of thing. But you are then just getting into this cadence of content production so that there's never something that you don't know is coming next. So it's just turning it into a really effective process and then project managing it. And we pride ourselves on a project management and pushing things through. I think it can be hard if you're trying to do that.
in-house without someone whose responsibility it is and a tool like that to be keeping track of what you said you would do when you said you would do it and keeping to that cadence that you've promised yourselves. So yeah, if someone's doing it in-house, you definitely need to commit the bandwidth, commit someone to be in charge of it. Even if they're not the person writing it all, it needs project managing for sure.
Joachim Eeckhout (14:31)
how do you help organizations define what they want to be known for? So kind of their niche, right?
Kat Arney (14:38)
Yeah, so to me this this comes back to those five questions is the who are you trying to reach and why and As scientists were always really good at talking about the what's like this is this is the what of my technology This is what it does. This is what we know about it. This is the data that we have We find always when we start working with clients, it's really digging into that why like why should anyone actually sit up and notice or give a
stuff about it. But like, why should anyone actually care about this? Because really that's what you want. You want people to notice whether that's investors, partners, new hires. If you've got revenue generation, it's clients or customers. Maybe it's the wider world. You just want some buzz because you want to be big, right? So it's the defining your audience and then what do they need to know and why. So when you've got
that why. It's like, we really think that this is important because, you know, why are we doing this? We're doing this because we actually want to change the way that something is done. We believe that the way that conventional drug discovery has a massive flaw and we address that. So it's going beyond the just what you do. That really helps to drill into exactly what you do, but why do you do?
And it's in those areas that it starts to become really obvious like, you've got something to say about how do we apply structural modeling to this challenge? Because yes, you do structural modeling, but actually you're doing it because you think that this is a better way of drug discovery. Okay, let's unpick that. What are the flaws that we see in the world? What are the things that you see that you like people doing? What are the things you see that aren't being done great?
it's drilling into those questions of why should anyone actually sit up and pay attention and that's where you start to get these ideas.
Joachim Eeckhout (16:26)
And how do you balance thought leadership content with other kinds of content, like more promotional
Kat Arney (16:33)
Yeah, that's always the mix and it of comes back to the strategic aims of the organization. So comms should always support the aims and goals of the business, right? So what are you trying to achieve? Are you actually trying to in this this year's cycles that you're trying to land investment? Okay, so what are the comms activities that are going to help you land investment? That might be a bit of some media stuff, you know, maybe you've got a paper coming out or
some results, let's do some PR around that. Maybe it is you actually want to stake your claim that you are doing something different in a different way. So that would be a place for thought leadership, maybe getting some placed features, either paid, advertorial, or actually, I think is brilliant if you can get free placements, because you've just got something really compelling to say. So getting that mix of...
the different types of activities. it's similar if you're looking for partnerships, you're trying to get your thoughts, your outputs under the nose of those people. So thought leadership will have a place there. But really, it's per client to decide what that mix is that's going to support their strategic aims. We don't have just a standard package that's like, you get 10 blogs and you get this and a bit of that.
we'll always put together a mix of what's gonna support your needs and based on, know, is this a company that's churning out results? Do you have a lot of case studies or what have you got for us to play with? And then what are you trying to achieve?
Joachim Eeckhout (18:05)
do you think that thought leadership in life sciences is different from other sectors?
Kat Arney (18:11)
that's an interesting one. The main other sector that I do read a lot of thought leadership is in the world of like AI. And there's some cool stuff there and some interesting stuff there. And there's also a lot of hype and bullshit as well.
I think in the life sciences, it's trying to really encourage people to not shirk from drilling into the science stuff.
the details, but then making sure they're communicating that with clarity. So with really complex scientific concepts, I don't think we should dumb down science. You we're not saying just like a thing that sticks to a thing and that cures cancer, right? That's not thought leadership. That's not helpful at all.
So let's really get into as much as you can say publicly about what you are actually doing and what you see as the real challenges. So I think not shirking the technical stuff, but then making sure that you're communicating that clearly and appropriately to the audiences that you're trying to reach and really drilling it down to that kind of that hook.
let's sum this up, right? You know, get to the nub of this that you could grab someone's attention with and then back it up with evidence, data, explanation, but again, it doesn't have to be thick, technical.
you can write about complex concepts clearly and back it up with evidence as well. we did a wonderful piece. I interviewed the CEO of Bionosis, one of our clients. They're a mass spectrometry service and product provider. And they do really cool stuff. Like they're right on the cutting edge of biomarker analysis and discovery and all sorts of cool things.
the hook was you you've heard of the $1 genome, are we ready for the one cent proteome? That is a hook. Now let's explain what we mean by that and how we're actually going to get to that. And I'm like, I still think it's one of the better ones I've ever written. really enjoyed that. It was such a great conversation with him. Like, what does this actually mean? Like, where are the costs? Where are you reducing the costs? And he sort of spun all this idea of...
what they were doing strategically, where the company was going, and then to distill that into a really sweet kind of headline and a nice piece of writing. That was really fun to do.
Joachim Eeckhout (20:24)
Yes,
as soon as you say mass spectrometry, you it sounds very technical, you can actually make this entertaining. that's what I like also with content in this area that you can really go deep in the technology, but at the same time, bring it closer to why people should matter about it. So yeah, I really like this kind of examples.
Kat Arney (20:29)
god, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, the hook is the why. Why should someone care about this and work backwards from there, right?
Joachim Eeckhout (20:52)
And how do you measure the success with your customers?
Kat Arney (20:57)
So, I mean, metrics are always a fun thing to discuss. Is that when you've got engagement on LinkedIn, that kind of thing. There's an interesting one with placing thought leadership in external outlets, because quite often, unless you've paid for it, I'm not gonna tell you how many people ever looked at it. they keep their figures fairly close to their chest.
you have to define metrics that are important to you. And it's also about what you then do with these pieces of thought leadership. I really do think it's not enough just to publish it. You need to kind of sweat your assets. Can you keep recycling it, keep reminding people, use it in a different way? And when you've got, if you're making something like a podcast or a bigger report, you can slice and dice that up into different.
different bits of content. there's kind of making that content live longer. And then also if you do manage to publish things in external outlets, then that's just a nice bit of external validation and again, making sure you're repurposing and republishing that. It is generally going beyond the clicks and the metrics. It depends on the organization and what their strategic goals are, but it...
I don't know, I'd be interested to see what you think, but measuring the impact of like that top of funnel stuff, because this is really like, this is brand awareness, this is establishing your expertise, it's the very top of funnel things, where it's really hard to determine ROI on it. So I think that's there, it's being really clear what you're trying to strategically achieve as a business. And then is this helping you?
get closer to it. You are people coming up to you at a conference and going like, hey, saw that article, you're looking really good, or I'd like to talk to you about that thing, or just responding to what you've put out there. So I think that's important and making sure that the client is also happy that you are putting their best face out to the world as well for them.
Joachim Eeckhout (22:50)
Yeah, I totally agree. it's actually a struggle because a lot of companies, they want this kind of measurable result. And they will ask, how many clicks do we get? How many impressions? But sometimes it doesn't necessarily make sense, especially with this kind of more brand awareness oriented content. You have to look at the data.
Kat Arney (22:55)
you
Joachim Eeckhout (23:11)
sure. But in my opinion, success is measured in kind of
way. Yeah, like are people recognizing you at events? Like this is a really good example, I think. Is your brand recognized do you receive a phone call, know, someone just reaching out out of nowhere and because they just read about you or they read your piece? I think that's really how you measure it.
Kat Arney (23:33)
Yeah, and there's an interesting one as well. So I judged the ABN awards last year, I think And when you're judging like startups and scale ups, one of the thing is, do you have like news flow? So this is sort of part of it. It's like, are you putting yourself and your ideas out into the world? So that's a bit of a win as well. There's not ever going to be like, you
You can't have a regular big PR story every month, you know, because you're not going to get people interested in a story unless it's actually a good story. But this is a way of getting yourself out there, generating things that people could respond to, could talk to, building, like building your kind of territory of what you do and your expertise and what you're good at and what you want to be known for. So I think it does all contribute to that. You're almost staking out your turf.
in terms of the technology, the ideas, your philosophy, your manifesto and thought leadership all helps to sort of stake out that territory.
Joachim Eeckhout (24:32)
And something related to the statistics is also the timeframe. A lot of companies have wild expectations. They think they will publish something and get immediately famous. So for you, what's the realistic timeframe for a company who is starting to produce content?
Kat Arney (24:34)
you
I think it again depends on what you're doing. it's, it's got to be a mix of, of the different activities. So if you're like just starting on LinkedIn, it's going to take quite a while just to even get to a critical mass of people, even seeing your company account, which is why think it is really important to try and engage the leadership.
people who are in your organization are prepared to put their head above the parapet and go like, I have some thoughts, I'd quite like to do this. And then you can support them to do that. it depends where you're starting from, but content marketing as a lead generation strategy, it does take time to manifest. If you want really, really quick results, like.
Hit the phones, just do like outbound work your way through a list and phone up people until they tell you to go away. But the more sustainable, like building that base of expertise and thought and content and staking your territory, your domain of expertise, that will reap benefits in the long run because it is all building your brand up,
And sometimes it's really hard to pin a particular lead down to like, hey, I saw that article. We had that once. We had a client come in because they're like, I saw it that you posted your case study about doing videos at a conference. We're having a conference. Would you like to make our videos? Like, brilliant. That worked. But yeah, it's often a lot harder to tell.
Joachim Eeckhout (26:21)
So let's look at an example from one of the case studies you have on your website. You helped the company ERS Genomics And according to your case studies, they saved £55,000 in the process, which sounds amazing for any company.
Kat Arney (26:21)
you
Yeah,
So that was an interesting one. We were approached by ERS genomics and this is a couple of years ago. They are the license holders for the CRISPR Cas9 technology that's invented by, Charpentier and Doudna. so it's the particular family of patents and a lot of what they have is, the really fundamental enabling patents for CRISPR. And if you want to commercialize CRISPR.
you need to license this technology. It is a licensed patented technology. So you can't build a product that like uses CRISPR without licensing it. And there was a lot of confusion about their role. A lot of confusion about who needed to have a license and why and when. A lot of confusion around there's a big patent battle with the CVC, the Charpentier patents and the Broad Institute
in Massachusetts and people go well I've got I've got license from the Broad so I don't need a license from ERS and like they cover different things and actually the ERS ones are more fundamental so the Broad ones kind of build on top of it so wherever you're going to start from you need to start with this license
there was kind of twofold things there that we wanted to do for them. So one was to make them really known as like people who really cared about CRISPR being used, all the applications of it, like out there being excited about the kinds of things you could do with CRISPR. So getting their name into the spaces, the biotechnology spaces where people were reading articles about this kind of stuff. So it's kind of saying, hey, there's these cool things you can do with CRISPR.
By the way, it is a licensed technology, so you know, make sure you get licensed. That sort of message. We were also doing some articles aimed, for example, about more technical things like, know, it CAS CAS 9? If you're a startup, what do you need to know? What do you need to know about the patent battles? Those kinds of things.
they weren't specifically trying to generate leads. So it wasn't really aggressively PR-y. They were like, we just want to get our name out there and keep getting ourselves associated with the domains where people are talking about this technology. So we had a strategy of writing articles that we then got placed for free in a whole range of different outlets,
And because they weren't too spammy and PR-y, we got them all placed for free because they were really well written. And then also later on,
We worked with them when they were going out to conferences and saying like, hey, what's hot? What are you seeing in the CRISPR space that's really hot and cool and writing articles about that? So it's, it's also responding to what's going on in the environment and saying, yeah, we think this is cool. This is interesting. By the way, you can get a license. So it was associating them with the buzz around CRISPR and putting them out there in those places. And yeah, we had an incredible hit rate. I think we placed.
10 out of 11 or 11 out of 12 articles we managed to place for free for them. And so if you compare how much you would have to pay it's about, you know, four or five grand to place an advertorial in a decent outlet. And so we think we saved them quite a lot of money there.
Joachim Eeckhout (29:48)
I think that's a really good example of how you can get attention with good quality. You put the quality in and then you get rewarded because of this quality. it's really coming from this initial idea of first let's make good content and then let's put it out there.
Kat Arney (29:58)
Yeah.
Exactly. It's got to be good ideas, interesting things and well written. Make it good. Make it interesting. Find some cool stuff.
Joachim Eeckhout (30:16)
Do you see any trends in thought leadership? Maybe in life sciences but also maybe outside of it like any sort of new trends?
Kat Arney (30:26)
Well, I mean, the big, the big trend that people are talking about is generative AI. And again, I'm interested in your thoughts on this as a content person. this sort of, well, you, you can be a thought leader because you just get gen AI to write your content for you. All right. Cool. Good luck with that. because I think it has to get a lot better. I think it's interesting like how we can use when we're currently writing a blog about this, our own thought leadership.
writing a blog about how you can use gen.ai to support thought leadership and all these kinds of things. I don't think you can rely on it to completely do the job for you because you still have to have these thoughts. They should be interesting, original, authentic. I do see a lot of basically, for want of a better word, like slop out there that's passing for thought leadership and you can clearly see it's been
written by AI because it's not original, it's very generic, it doesn't quite make sense, and it doesn't seem authentic and specific to the person who's writing it. So yeah, don't do that, maybe?
Joachim Eeckhout (31:36)
I totally agree. The thing is those LLMs, are taking everything on the internet and making it some sort of an average. So if you use it to generate all of your content, you just sound average. And that's not enough in this kind of war for attention.
Kat Arney (31:47)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Joachim Eeckhout (31:58)
I like to use it to brainstorm. I think that's a really good use. Like when you're stuck, when you don't have ideas, when maybe you have different ideas and you're confused with them and trying to sort them out, that's good. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, totally. Like kind of criticizing your work. I like to do it because when I work for my...
Kat Arney (32:02)
Yes.
Yeah, like have we missed anything when we're talking about this thing? Yeah.
Joachim Eeckhout (32:23)
For my blog, I don't have an editorial team with me, so I need someone to criticize it a bit. So that's a good use. But I agree with you, generating entire thought leadership is a bad idea.
Kat Arney (32:38)
Yeah, I think what we I would like to see more of is a bit more, yeah, just bravery and authenticity. I don't think, you know, everything doesn't have to be this heart wrenching, you know, let me tell you about when I lost my mother. And that's why I believe our platform is, you know, it's like, don't need to do that unless you really, want to. But I think like it doesn't have to be boring. Can we just have some like
you can have sparkling, interesting writing, even if we're scientists and we're talking to other scientists. It doesn't have to be boring, like...
you know, no one ever looked at something and was, I wish this was more complicated and technical. We all like reading interesting stuff that is sticky and memorable, you know, come back to that one cent proteome thing. I'm always, because I've worked as a science journalist and I've written for mainstream media outlets. Even though we don't write the headlines ourselves, if you're a journalist, we get to write the headlines for our own client content. It's always about like, what's the headline? What's the hook? What is going to get someone?
interested in reading about this. So I think paying attention to that, like, people still got to read it and make it readable. I I definitely want to see rather than endless AI generated slop.
Joachim Eeckhout (33:56)
So last question of our interview. I know you authored a few books yourself, so first we recommend that listeners read them. But are there any other science communication books you recommend?
Kat Arney (33:59)
you
So I've done a list because I knew asked me this question. So there's a couple of books that I think are, not about science communication, but I think they're really, really well communicated science books that I've read lately. One is a book called The Daughter of Family G and it's by a writer called Amy McKay. And it's just a really beautifully written.
biography with a lot of deep science in it. She's she has a hereditary genetic mutation that increases her risk of various types of cancer. And it's all about how her family are connected to discovering that mutation and all that kind of thing. So it's, it's just a beautiful, beautifully written novel. She writes other books as well, but this is like a really scientifically led one.
that's just like a lovely scientific detective story and a family story. And then also a book that just blew my socks off when I read it. And everyone knows the story now, but it's a book called Bad Blood by John Kerry Roo. And it's about the Theranos scandal and that, you know, people have made TV series and all this kind of thing. the book, like from the opening pages, and I've started reading it when I was really just starting to work a lot more with biotechs in this innovation sector. you're like, holy crap,
it's a great kind of sector story and the book is really really good. But if you want books about
science communication itself. There's two authors that I like. There's a guy called Randy Olson, who he wrote a book called Houston We Have a Narrative and it's a classic book in science communication and he teaches a framework for storytelling called like and but therefore and it's all about how you structure a story. The framework I teach is slightly different, it's based on fairy stories, that's what I like. But it's still the same thing, it's like you got your set up, you've got your action and then you've got your resolution or how the world is different now.
And so he's got a book called like the Narrative Gym, which is all about how you construct narratives and use this in storytelling, whether that's a little story or a broader corporate story. And then on the kind of the corporate storytelling side of things, there's a book called Storynomics by Robert McKee. And Robert McKee wrote a big book called Story a long time ago, and it's like all about,
that if you're going to write a story for anything. And then storynomics is more about corporate storytelling, how do you construct narratives about businesses and ideas. So I found that really interesting. I teach storytelling for startups. I teach on a lot of accelerators and things like that. it's not often that I read a book that completely changes how I teach something, but that completely.
like my god this this this idea of like at the heart of every story there is a switch and it's a switch in the change of state of the world and you know that's not what I teach that's not what I think about all the time when I'm considering something as a story so yeah it's one of those books like take out of it what you want because there's a lot of crazy diagrams and things but you know if you want to get your head a bit round storytelling and how we can apply that to corporate communications I think those books are quite interesting.
Joachim Eeckhout (37:16)
I will definitely have a look. So yeah, that brings us to the end of today's episode. huge thank you to you Kat for joining us and sharing your insights. So if you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts so you don't miss any updates. And for even more content on science marketing and communication, be sure to sign up for my newsletter at thesciencemarketer.com.
Kat Arney (37:26)
Thank you. It's been really fun.
Joachim Eeckhout (37:44)
Are you? Yes.
Kat Arney (37:45)
Can I just add, I love your newsletter. So definitely if you're not subscribed to it, subscribe to it. It's the one, or my team read it, we all love it. So definitely recommendation to subscribe.
Joachim Eeckhout (37:57)
Good advertising, thank you. So the transcript of this episode will also be on my website and in the newsletter. So if you want to catch up later with the transcript, you can also find it there and you will have all the links and the books we mentioned as well in the show notes. Thank you all for listening and see you next time.