Many founders or CEOs dreams of a big, earned media hit in The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal. But are these big wins really the best target for outbound communications? That depends, says Eleanor Hawkins who leads the Axios Communicators newsletter.

Hawkins covers communications trends, future uses of AI in marketing communications, and explains why smaller networks and niche audiences may be a better choice for your overall marketing strategy. If you're in marketing or communications and want to make your operation more efficient, listen!

See the full show notes here: https://justinkbrady.com/eleanor-hawkins

Psy was a psyop created to make South Korea cool. Soap operas were created to sell soap. And the Grand Ole Opry, the longest running radio show in history, was a marketing play for insurance. Joah Santos, founder of Warhol is a tribalism nerd who consulted for Unilever, ABInBev, Airbnb and others. He tells me underlying structure of how information spreads.

"The majority of decisions are made by following other people we trust," says Santos. He's right. We offload the intellectual hard work of finding new ideas and products that will benefit our lives to various influencers and opinion leaders. "We couldn't survive if we didn't," he says. Listen to the interview to understand how founders, CMOs, and inventive people can tap into this to disrupt the big brands.

See the full show notes: https://justinkbrady.com/joah-santos

If you're an X user (fka Twitter) you know the name Mario Nawfal. Nawfal hosts the largest spaces on X, and his guests include Elon Musk, Michael Bay, Mark Cuban, Andrew Yang, and many others. After taking a break from interviews, he shares his thoughts on the future of X, CEO Linda Yaccarino, his new show Killer Whales, and a media hit piece about him.

Nawfal got his start creating a blender company, but today he's the Founder of IBC Group, and the King of Spaces on X/Twitter. He explains how his spaces caught on and his secret sauce and explains why other tech founders and startups should be doubling down on X. 

We also discuss his personal life, background, and the state of citizen journalism and corporate journalism. Plus, he shares his frustration at the constant attacks against X, and their odd obsession with it's founder Elon Musk. 

See the full show notes at: https://justinkbrady.com/mario-nawfal

As the state of the economy looks shakier by the day, Allison Braley head of marketing at Bain Capital Ventures gives founders critical advice on where to spend their marketing dollars. She explains the value earned media, and how to balance spend on brand and product. 

It's a whole new world and although there's plenty of cash for early stage founders, late stage founders are feeling the crunch as VCs prioritize earlier profitabaility and low burn. Braley explaind the new marcom flywheel and where to focus as a founder.

See the full show notes at https://justinkbrady.com/notes/allison-braley-bain-capital 

Jake Slatnick, CEO of FreePower discusses the process in creating Tesla's new free position device charger and overcoming engineering hurdles—how did he succeed where Apple failed? I also ask the direction question everyone wants to know: will this charger be on the new Cybertruck?

We also discuss how he captured massive amounts of earned media and press attention. Not to mention top YouTubers like Marques Brownlee, known as MKBHD, and Justine Ezarik, known as iJustine. Was it just luck? No. Turns out he took specific steps to get the right journalist's attention. 

See the full show notes at https://justinkbrady.com/jake-slatnick-freepower 

David Allison is creator of the Valuegraphics database, and as of recording this interview, is closing in on his one millionth in-depth survey making his dataset iron clad. Allison is the first person in history to have built a tool allowing us to precisely communicate and position our message in a way others are neurologically wired to hear and understand. 

Much of failed startups, wars, and broken relationships stem from bad communication resulting from misalignment and misunderstanding of others' values. Allison believes the valuegraphics databse is a great tool for marketers, allowing them to tap into new markets in a way not possible historically, but also believes this can change the world. 

Traditionally, we've relied on poor demographic data to understand groups. But demographic groups rarely agree on anything. What groups do agree? Groups identified by values. 

See the full show notes and a video message from Allison to listeners of the show at https://justinkbrady.com/david-allison-death-of-demographics 

Today is a special episode. Matt McFarland is a respected journalist with The Washington Post and most recently CNN discusses how to get press and pitch the right way, and media relevance in the 21st century. Has the media gone too hard on polarizing and political topics has that hurt them?

McFarland also discusses the value of content strategy not just for sales but attracting media attention. In the same way, prospects are opening less pitch email, journalists are also ignoring pitches in favor of self-created content.

We also dig into AI-writing. Representing both the writing and tech communities, does McFarland see this as a force that will replace writers like himself or a force that will give writers like himself a valuable edge?

Matthew E. May and Pablo Dominguez co-wrote "What A Unicorn Knows" and explain there is nothing random about becoming a unicorn. Growth-focused companies think about small steps, make experimentation part of the job, and most importantly, put the time and commitment into forming a strategy. 

May and Dominguez are operators at Insight Partners. They joined forces to create a light book that's dense in value and detail. The book strikes the balance between something easy-to-consume but thorough and detailed enough to take your executive team through to put your company on a growth trajectory. 

They discuss

• why strategy is vital to growth, every step you can take to build a strategy, and why even well-established companies skip this part due to their inaccurate belief it limits flexibility or is a waste of time.
• why companies resist focusing on "where to play" but why they can't grow without it. 
• how lack of experimentation kills your company

Check out the shows notes, buy the book, and connect with Dominguez and May: https://justinkbrady.com/matthew-may-pablo-dominguez