About : standard furniture jessica collection
Title : standard furniture jessica collection
standard furniture jessica collection
welcome to episode number 189 of cxotalk. i’m michael krigsman and what an interestingshow we have today. we’re talking with sharon feder, who isthe chief digital officer for rachael ray, and rachael ray’s business, you can sayholding company, watch entertainment. and i’m so thrilled because today we havea guest host, or guest hostess, jessica gotley. jessica, let’s start with you, how are you? i’m very good, how are you? i’m doing great, and thanks so much forjoining us today, and of course, sharon feder from rachael ray, how are you?
i’m doing very well, thanks for having metoday. well this is really awesome, sharon, why notjump in and start telling us about rachael ray and watch entertainment and what do youguys do. sure, so at rachael ray i work for our holdingcompany watch entertainment, which manages rachael’s businesses, twelve major businessesacross three major media, manufacturer and and those businesses span tv, magazines, books,our amazing music and food event, feedback, which is heading 10 years in austin this march. we have our cookware, our now furniture launchingthis coming month nationally. we have our pantry items, and in additionour pet food, nutrish.
and then we work very hard on things thatare near and dear to rachael’s heart, our philanthropy. so we have a nonprofit called yum-o, whichis focused on eliminating hunger and obesity in children and also funds programming forwhen those kids grow up, so they can get an education in the culinary arts at the communitycollege level, and also we work hand-in-hand with rescues across the country, to fund rescueefforts for cats and dogs. and that is a mechanism with our pet foodwhere a percentage of rachael’s proceeds then go to organizations like aspca, northshore animal league, best friends animal society etc.
and we work really closely with them to makesure the core needs are being met. so i have been in this role for for threeyears, and i’ll give you some quick background on me if you’re interested. so i work here with our team and our partners. partnership is a huge part of the way we dobusiness. we were partners with large corporations likemeredith, who produce our magazine, cbs distribution television for our daytime show for food networkfor example. but we also work with a lot of family ownedbusinesses which are really important to us, like ainsworth which produces our pet food.
those partnerships, our true partnershipsare true collaboration, we sit on calls with them probably multiple times a week, and rachaelis incredibly involved in that process, creatively and you know i think one of the misconceptionsof a brand like ours is that we are celebrity licensing, and that is exactly what we arenot. we are all about creating things that addvalue to our community life , and really work really hard to ensure that that value is there,both innovation and in product, accessibility and price point and authenticity in rachael’sneeds. so my background is i come from the startup and publishing world. i was one of the early employees at mashableand i helped build that company over the course
of five years and eventually becoming coobefore i came here. i’m also a start-up advisor i still adviseorganizations like mashable, muse, arc, and philanthropy is incredibly important to me. over the years at mashable, i worked withthe united nations foundation, as well as the 92nd street (ridable?) program like thesocial good summit as well as (the muse?) which i still advise. so those are the kinds of things that areincredibly important to me, and are really interesting because we do so much in thisspace here at rachael ray. wow, jessica sharon certainly has a lot that’sgoing on.
her resume fascinates me and we talked aboutthis briefly a little bit earlier is the cdo, the chief digital officer title is doesn’troll off the tongue like cdo and it means a lot of different things for a lot of differentorganizations. so when you walk and show the role as cdohow do you even define it and what’s the difference between digital and the rest ofthe company or is there a difference. yeah, i think so much of where we are in theindustry and where so many industries are everything touches digital. and there is so much that i work on that it’snot necessarily a digital first business that we think about.
you know how can i come in and lend valueand think about building our business there or supporting digital, or thinking about theaudience differently. you mentioned the cdo role is maybe differenthere than in other places. i think the chief digital role is in a lotof ways transitional. so you know it’s coming into business andthinking about how do we make it digital and whether that’s digital intelligence, youknow the transformation in efficiencies in business and you know utilizing digital toolsfor collaboration, and building out digital businesses whether that’s in publishingor data. there’s so many variations of things thatcan be accomplished in this world and in the
role it you know lends digital. but i think you know as organizations becomemore and more optimized and efficient in the digital world and have sort of built it intotheir dna this is not necessarily a long term title, though there are pieces of this wherewe are going to be baked into other people’s titles and that’s hopefully having moreand more ceos, coos and cmos as well as the cios of course who sort of like can take responsibilityfor these kinds of things that need to be core to businesses. i’ve heard other people say that the cdorole may be a temporary role, but you mentioned earlier everything touches digital.
so in an organization like yours can you definewhat does that mean, everything touches digital tell us what does that mean in practice. yeah, we think about how our brand is perceived,how people connect with it so for example, if i want to buy a set of pots and pans imay go and research it, and what am i going to find when i google. if i want to find a recipe, unless i’m goingout to buy a book which i might buy online, i’m going to go to a website to get it,probably through my mobile device. you know there’s so many touchpoints forthe brand that are digitally focused and we often think about how we connect with thoseconsumers, connect with those audiences.
and continue to make their journey with usa really good one and continue to find reasons for them to interact with us as a brand andgrow with us. so for example i think about the expansionof our own brand. you know we started out with rachael’s cookingshows and her pots and pans and her books. and now we’ve expanded into our furniturecollection, rachael ray home. there is maybe a different interaction pointwhen you’re shopping for furniture and when you’re looking for inspiration for yourhome than when you are looking for a recipe. and so we have to think about you know, continuingto develop our audience, and continuing to answer their questions an addressing customerservice you know all in new ways.
and for us you know there’s this other sideof our brand that’s incredibly interesting which i mentioned earlier which is feedback,which is a music and food festival which is rachael’s passion in austin every year andwe’re approaching our tenth year. so we think about how do we build our brandin a really consistent way. and you know build experiences that are amazingand food and you know your home. but also when you’re going to a concertand listening to music and what does that mean. so i think i lost track of the initial question. let me ask you this so you’re kind of balancinga whole bunch of different stuff.
you have a lot of masters to feed here andwhen i look at rachael i’m like i just have to admit i’m like a complete fangirl. so i’m not even going to pretend like i’mnot. you have these cookbooks that so many of usthought that just normalized dinners instead of making them either something that camefrom a can or you know there’s usually something with a child and like you know swilling wineand like chopping onions on tv. so all of a sudden there’s a cookbook bysomeone like me for someone like me and that’s a very very old media. fast forward a bunch of years.
now we are launching a furniture company wheredigital is going to be part of the very beginning of it. so how do you take your day to day work andgo okay, i’m going to take the furniture company and view it with digital from thevery beginning, and meanwhile kind of drag these books into the digital realm with usto and how do we transfer this. like how many generations are you dealingwith like companies of people? i think that’s a really incredible thingthat there’s such a variety of stories to tell and points of interaction. you know one of the things that i think isso fun is that you know when rachael puts
her heart into a book we have various waysof telling a story. well this is her journey in italy. you know this is her favorite recipe and wecan ensure that in some ways online to drive, and her fan base become so excited about beingable to interact with that. you know i think as we think about furnitureit’s really interesting. we’re about to relaunch some of our digitalassets, our websites and we are thinking about furniture. furniture is a really big part of that ofhow do we visually tell the story of furniture and how do we connect people to what it meansto her.
and because she’s a person, and becauseshe is designed this and there are these very personal storiesone of the things that we did in sort of anticipation of that is think about what are the thingsthat we can do that are accessible to people, you note that our audiences can come alongon this journey with us. because they have been with us in buying thebook, in watching the video, and tuning into our daytime show, buying the magazines. and we want them to continue on this journeybecause they are the core of what we do. so we actually had a townhouse designed withher new lines, and we created a 3-d model of it, so that our community could go explorewith us.
and that’s actually something that we aregoing to be launching in a few weeks that we’re really excited about. because it literally allows you to see andinteract with the pieces, but it doesn’t require you to have a vr headset. you know, it doesn’t require you to ownan oculus. so these are the kinds of things we thinkabout, you know, we don’t want to leave these older pieces of our brand necessarilybehind, because they are still a huge part of who we are. and i would add that you know i think oneof the things i still love is i still love
having my books at home. i still love being able to show off the brandthat i’m really passionate about in a physical way, and i can see that you know is a verylarge part of our community to feel the same way. you spoke about stories and telling the storyand brining the audience with you. how do you tell a story that is compellingin this way as you’re describing. i mean you guys are the consonant storytellers. yeah you know i think that one of the of thesethings. that’s really wonderful is that we are notmaking this stuff up.
it’s originating from a real-life person,and you know we have collected over many years of the stories that continue to be a partof our storytelling. but we are adding to it based on you knownew things that are happening in her world, new creative journeys. you know, in storytelling i think one of thethings that is really exciting is you know i said i had some things for show and tell,we have our magazines and we can tell the stories here utilizing paper, and that’sreally enjoyable experience. but then we also have something new like facebooklive. and you know, we think about how do we engageour audiences and tell them stories, and then
invite them into our home utilizing this newreally really shiny thing. and so one of the examples that i love iswhat our daytime show is doing. we have two of our show co’s grant and jeanetteare filming facebook live multiple times a week, where they are telling stories in workingwith rachel. telling stories of you know, their personalfavorite recipes, and they are cooking live for this audience. and again, like i said, bringing them alongon the journey and engaging them, and asking them to participate, whether by asking themto help pick out the recipes or asking them for their feedback as you are cooking.
as to say it like you know, i think one ofmy favorite examples was you know we’re baking a pie, blueberries or raspberries. it was such a simple question but people werereally passionate and they wanted their voices heard. so you know, those viewers were able to participatewith our brand as a whole by participating in that facebook live show. jessica any questions. so many questions. she’s like taking notes and tweeting, okay.
i do a little tweeting because i can’t believei’m in on this discussion. facebook live is so interesting and so new,so you have the distinct advantage of being rachael ray. yeah i was going to say i’m not quite there. so you work closely together but there’sstill this separation you’re not rachael ray. totally fast friends, so how does a companywithout or a startup even as you advise startups, you use these same tools. we all have essentially the same tool kitright.
she probably has more text support and thename recognition, but what do you do if you don’t have the name recognition? how do we recreate this is our own companies. so i think with regard to the new shiny things. i think one of the things that’s reallyexciting about the new shiny things is that many of them are really accessible. facebook live you can get on right now andstart recording. it’s really about experimenting to figureout you know, how does this work for you. because you may try to replicate grant andjeanette, but you might not have any cooking
skills, and you might not get very far. so there are a number of ways to do this. i think there is seeing the best practicesin the industry. this is what we do, and this is what our partnersdo, and what many of the companies that i speak with regularly do. it’s finally not just the fact that thereis this feature launch or product launch, but who’s doing it right and what are theydoing that makes it right. and how can you adapt that, and learn fromthat in your own offering. so you know, one of the things that i wasjust watching and i was just fascinated by
john steinberg’s new last shutter and theyhave set up shop i believe in flatiron where they are recording these facebook lives, andthey have street performers performing, and they have ceos coming in for interviews andit looks like a very very established set up. and looking at that you know your sort oflooking at, well why is this working, what is interesting about it and similarly, ifyou look at our own set up, what’s interesting about it and there’s certain things thatwork. so at a base level, as a viewer, what’sinteresting to me? well, the lighting works, the sound works,and it’s funny because michael knows this
because we do multiple times a week. you know, there’s lighting, there’s sound,there’s video quality. you know, getting those basics, right. but then there’s the program. so what am i actually going to do on thisfacebook live that’s going to make people not want to turn off? you know, and that’s like you just can’tbore people can this is like anything in business, you have to give them something of value thatwill be interesting. and i think that it’s like figuring outwhat you as a start-up or a brand do that
can engage and can add value, versus thanjust doing it for the sake of doing it. that doesn’t mean that you can’t messup. of course you can mess up and you can experiment. but i think you want to be thoughtful, becauseas a business or as a start-up. no matter how many people work at a company,you only have so much time. you can only develop so much resources. and so really worth trying and putting inthe time to figuring out you know what is it you did really well and how to executeon it in a way that sort of meets the acceptable standard for the industry.
you hit what i thought was a very importantpoint which is yes, you can’t bore your audience. you have to make sure that all the technicalstuff is all in place and working right. but you also have to know what are you tryingto achieve, so you’re not just doing this for the sake of effect, but you’re doingsomething that actually adds to the audience experience. i think you know if we are to look at facebooklive as an example, but if you take a look at instagram story, i think this is the perfectexample. like snapchat has been around for a while,and brands have experimented.
but there has been a lot brands that has heldback from snapchat for any variety of reasons. one of which is that they already have somany social networks to populate. there’s only so much they can do. and so to have instagram stories pop-up, andthat’s a whole other conversation. but to have instagram stories pop-up in aplace where they have already devoted the time and resources where they already havea following became such an opportunity, and continues to be an opportunityso interestingly, we now see the snapchat like environment and brands starting to experiment,because it really is still pretty early and so now i’m looking at what is wholefoodsdoing, what is food 52 doing.
you know, what are all these brands doing,and what is this going to become. because you know what i think we see now isnot necessarily what we are going to continue to see over the coming months. i think we are going to start to see somereally interesting, creative things, and we are going to start to see some innovationthere. and i think this is the time when brands andstart-ups can jump in and really figure things out. and better to do this now than maybe laterwhen there’s so many brands doing it that it’s harder to get noticed.
so you came from mashable which i would argueis a very leading edge company or was, certainly at the time you were there and they’re doing some very cool thingsright now. okay i’m not as current on it as i was thenand i don’t know, maybe i just have a short attention span. but rachael ray is more thought leader andcutting edge as opposed to you know first in. and so is there a sense that you haveto pull back and behave like a brand than a startup at the same time you’re launchingthe company. like is there a push and pull for you thereon a personal level.
there’s a mix. you know i think there’s a lot more calculateddecisions about where we start early. so i think the example i gave earlier aboutsnapchat, at mashable, mashable was very early to snapchat you know, they have clearly quitea resource there. for us, strategically, it just doesn’t makethe same kind of sense for us to put the investment in you know a network that is so so young,when we have really so much strategically that we currently have to build on instagram,facebook, pinterest etc. and i love snapchat and our team love snapchat. but we look at snapchat differently, whichis to say you know, there is a time and a
place currently in our portfolio and withregards to the work that i do for snapchat. so we have our music and food event feedback,we make snapchat filter, because it makes total sense that we have you know young millennial’sat our events, who are avid snapchat users utilizing that. but we sort of say, okay, well the rest ofthe year, it doesn’t make as much sense for us to try to be as innovative there, becausewe’ll really working to do that in other areas where our community and the communitiesthat we want to attract currently live. and so examples of that is food videos. well, we live in a food vertical, and partnersdo incredible work there.
some of the stuff that i am really proud ofwhat our brand is doing is our daytime show team is producing some really cool video inthis space that is rachael ray’s show facebook page. they also do some great work on instagram,and you know a lot of that is they are experimenting with stop motion and i think it’s so cooland really fun. that’s what our audience wants. they want to not just learning new things,but we want to have fun and they want entertained. some other stuff i think you know is reallyagain really cool, and really fun, but again very strategic for our brand is that our partnersand our brand nutrish have done this incredible,
hysterical video series of buzby. and it has been so fun to watch this seriesevolve, because it’s on youtube and you have these people who don’t love cats, it’sthe first episode, living with cats for a week. and i watched it, and i thought this is reallyreally funny, and i love that kind of storytelling that our brand is doing, because it reallyties strongly to the things we feel so strongly about. you know, we do love cats, we love pet ownersand we are part of that community. but this video series also has parts of animalrescue, and animal adoption, and that is a
huge part in what we believe in. so you know, these are the kinds of thingsthat we’ve been experimenting with and you can tell again, you know, we’re not doingthe i’m jumping first to the new technology and i want to try it for the sake of tryingit. but we are doing a lot of new stuff that’sreally cool, and that i think our team is proud of and our community is really enjoying. so this…please jessica go ahead. how do you just make the decision that you’regoing to partner with ? as opposed to you know any of the other places, and how do thosepartnerships evolve
yes so i think you know we work with ainsworthand the team over there and they have a fantastic agency partner (maxie?) and together theydo incredible work. so you know i think these decisions are largelyresearched and calculated and really understand not just what’s happening in the industrybut also sort of how we target the audiences we want to be in front of so ultimately getresults for the business. do you do all of your measurement in-houseto kind of subscribe to a million different things that you know is measuring what doesand doesn’t work, because that’s the magic right. you know, i think it really varies from businessto business and i think especially because
we are in different industries. it really varies from industry to industry. so what we have is some of our partners subscribingto similar research, but you know, the amount of research that they subscribe to is a lot. and it’s amazing and it’s fascinating. i think one of the things that is so interestingabout this brand is that we do live in these different industries, and overall are experiencingyou know, much like every other business in this period of time where there is so muchinnovation, there’s so much happening. and you know, the social media landscape,the web landscape, the digital landscape,
whatever we want to call it is constantlyevolving. and so looking at all those things and howwe as a business continue to build, to grow, and evolve, and do things that add value tothe lives of our consumers and audience. i want to remind everybody that you are watchingepisode number 189. you’ve been busy. i’ve been really busy. i’m like busy all the time. this is like i am really busy, but so areyou guys. but i want to remind everybody that you’rewatching episode number 189 of cxotalk.
and we’re speaking with sharon feder, whois the chief digital officer for rachel ray. and my guest co-host today is jessica gotley. and so sharon, i know that partnerships arevery important to you and the work that you do, and so can you tell us about those partnerships,and how do you use partnerships to amplify and extend your own brand building efforts. so i promise i wasn’t getting distracted,i was just looking at tweets. so partnership, you know, we have incrediblepartnerships that allow us to build these businesses together and to take a step back. you know i’m a big believer in partnershipwhether it’s business development and the
conflict of doing one-off programs that addvalue to your community, or if it’s a longer term endeavor and at national i did this bycreating a syndication relationships, and working with other publishers. and here it’s been a variety of differenttasks. so it’s our business partners who we runbusinesses with, but also you know trying and testing different kinds of relationships. you know, across all of my experience andone of the things that i really enjoyed is sort of learning about what makes a successfulpartnership. and you know, here we have spent so much timesort of thinking through the businesses we
want to be in. really thinking through for example, furniture,rachel has wanted to be in furniture for a long time. she loves designing. and you know, we didn’t just go to marketand say, okay, we are doing this tomorrow, and we spent, and this is what furniture isgoing to look like. so you know i think our approach to partnershipis really strategic, calculated, and thinking through you know, what do we want this tolook like and who are the players in this space.
and largely you know thinking very proactively,about what it is we want to to build and understand before we get to the point of and listeningto our partner in this. and you know, in all of my experiences i thinkthe thing with both short-term and long-term partnership is really understanding the valuethat everybody brings to the table. really sort of over, communicating and thinkingthrough this, you know, how do you make this what we wanted to be. and it’s been really nice. you know, my partners and businesses are co-workersin effectively, and we have created things that i think are really really incredibletogether.
so you know i think for us it’s a very specificthing that we’ve done. wondering where you would like me to go withthis michael. well i think there’s a number of differentplaces. you mentioned that the partnerships are reallycolleagues and they’re friends, they’re co-workers, and how do you decide where andwith which partners are you going to invest this time and these resources. well i think things specifically it reallyvaries from partner to partner. so for example, it may be the case that weare devoting a greater percentage of our time to new business, to make sure it’s accepted,so for example my team is heavily focused
on rachel ray homeware right now. and it’s been really fun because our teamis very focused on digital but it’s gotten to learn all about this new industry. and have spent time in photo shoots thinkingabout not just how we get things like social media assets, but how we help to sort of learningsome of that social dna and digital dna into the architecture of things that are goingto exist in print. so you know, how do we take our lifestyleshots and our photography, and ensure that everything is effectively digitally friendly,and really sort of educated across-the-board so that our partners feel honored and confident.
you know in their ability to continue to buildthe business digitally as well. and i think you know, across our businessand also like other businesses there are some areas of our brand that has incredible digitaltalent, you know who are really doing amazing work in this space. so you know, for example, our pet food brandhas people in their team who runs these incredible campaigns and our influences in the advocacyspace. and you know, while we wish we could put moretime in there, they don’t really need us. and you know it’s fun to be able to collaboratewhen we can, but they certainly have a good deal of expertise and are really doing coolwork.
when you set up the digital teams, or whenyou walk in when there are digital teams that are kind of set up for you, is there likea bible that is created about you know, here’s the message, here’s the tone, here’s whatyou can do and say on your own personal timelines. i think that is something that is really gettingcreated over time, and you know 4+ that level of consistency is really important. i think that one of the things that what wetalked about earlier was you know what does branding look like here, and with so manydifferent brands, what does it mean to have these variations in brand? and i think it’s really interesting, becausewhether our physical product or digital sphere
you know, there is one rachel ray, and thereis one brand and there is consistency. but, each of our businesses has its own personalityand they are in variation. and so what is important to us is that thisconsistency when we think about the larger brand image, and things that are incrediblyimportant to us. but, each of our businesses shines with variationson that brand. so it’s very focused on the specific brand. we have about 10 minutes or so left, and gettingback to a point that was brought up earlier, what advice do you have to companies who areyounger companies that are trying to build their brand, but they don’t have the benefitsof major tv personality behind them.
how do you build a brand, and i guess whatare the elements of building that brand? i think so much of it starts with what shortvalue proposition. you know, i think that at the end of the daybusiness has to have a service or a good that is important to solving a person’s problem. and i think it’s about identifying whatis that differentiator, what is the value that you are providing. ultimately, who is your target audience thatyou are targeting. and i think one of the challenges that i oftensee that start-ups are faced with is, well, who is my audience, let’s go light as possible.
and i think that that possibly a very bigmistake, because especially as you start out one of the opportunities and benefits, especiallyif you are targeting audiences digitally, especially on social, is to sort of figurethings out by talking directly to audiences. and based on that early group of people, sortof figuring out what the next step is. and i think that’s so cool to be able tosay like we’re going to try this thing, we’re going to target this audience, weare going to see what they think of us and then we are going to build upon that, andi think that can be incremental. but it’s really cool because i look at exampleat facebook, where i’m targeted by all these start-ups and i have a home.
and i look at what i’m being targeted forand my home, and i think it’s really interesting. because a few years ago you know, we didn’thave these start-ups that were focused on providing you with your (mattress?), likeyour casper or many of the other competitors that there are in the space, and clearly theyhave grown significantly. but it’s really fun to see them you knowsucceeding by figuring out who their audience is, what be message is, and how they marketand tell their story. and there’s been a couple of campaigns thatspecifically i’ve seen them do that have been so interesting, that you see the reportingon them. you see people talking about it, because thissort of figured things out over time.
and so for many start-ups, i think it’sreally important to know that you’re not going to hit it out of the park you know inthe first 30 days. you know, it sort of takes time to figureout like, who is the audience, what do they want and then how do we build upon that audience. and ultimately, it drives itself. you’re talking about. like when you’re talking about casper, andevery start-up that i hear from, is the uber for whatever, it’s the uber for car washoff or dog grooming or whatever. but you know, not every business wants tobe disruptive and so how do we take what we
know and continue building on it. does the cdo role kind of compliment marketingor operations or where would that fit? i think a little of both, and i think it reallydepends on the organisation itself. and you know i don’t think that digitalfor start-ups need cdos, but yes, you’re not everyone needs to be transformational. you know, i think that the cdo role can goin different ways. i think it largely depends on the organisation. for example, here we talk about tools aboutcollaboration. we’ve talked about the cloud, we talkedabout you know how we create efficiencies
in the work that we do, but we’ve also talkedabout influencer marketing, and you know how we reach more people on our storytelling,and what that storytelling looks like and how i was style is consistent. you know, i think largely because of the kindof brand i’m in i get to do both of those things, but not everybody is a lifestyle brand. okay, you know what, here’s what’s interesting. the social good conference was your baby rightmy husband, my baby. it’s your husbands and you can take creditfor it. don’t worry.
he said it’s cool, but that’s under yourtime in 10 years. see how that and you also have rachel ray,which immediately, as soon as i told my friends that i was going to be cohosting this, theirquestion was how do i get under the umbrella, how do i get into yum-o! how does my dog rescue benefit from this. and everybody knows and it’s really interestingthat you have two companies that you’ve been part of that have this altruistic scentto them, and we know that millennials really like cos marketing, but we also have moreof cos marketing gone bad from good because it can be profoundly offensive when when it’sdone wrong and it can be a thing of beauty
when it’s done right and empowering andbenefitting everyone on every side. so can you talk a little bit about how westep into this space without stepping on it? i think it’s really important and you hiton something that is really crucial, which is you have a younger audiences of millennial’swho make decisions based on where corporations spend their money, non-technically, and notthat that should be the one signal that drives a corporation to deploy it. but it’s really important. it’s important for the future of their businesses. and so i think there is a very clear distinctionhere, and you pointed it out very well which
is there are the organizations that do goodbecause it’s marketing and it feels and they all need to do it. and then there is organizations and maybethey really care, but the execution is not spot on. and then there is organizations that careddeeply, and there is authenticity in what they do, and they have deep roots. and they make sure to plant deep roots sothat there is future giving and future impact. and i think that’s really important. i think the authenticity here is incrediblyimportant, and for us it’s a huge part of
what we do. we are really talking you know with theseorganizations, making sure that nationally that we are creating a footprint that matchesthe people who are buying our products, reading our magazines, and watching our tv shows. and having impact on their communities, andthinking them not to stop, and what are the causes we are affecting, how is that happening. you know, there is a lot of thought and planningthat goes into those. and i think more organizations really do needto think through what is the thing i can do here, why is it important that i do this,and what is the impact i’m going to have.
i see this so much, and one of the thingsthat i love is organizations that not only make commitment in their local communities,but really empower their workforces to participate. and it’s something we see giving tuesday,which is can these organizations make their employees feel part of this. what is giving tuesday. let’s take a step back. so giving tuesday is an incredible day, itstarted by ( henry ? who was the head of) new york. and he was a british guy who lived in theus obviously.
and if you look at you know you have thanksgivingand then you have black friday, and cyber monday, and black friday and cyber mondaykind of have it figured out right. like all of these retailers have come togetherdespite the competition, and they are you know making bank. there’s more to that story, but they aremaking bank, so leave it there. but anyhow they figured out about the structureright, and that’s the important part. and we call you know the holidays the givingseason, which is for the most part true, but there is no structure there. so what henry and the team at 92nd street,and the un foundation and many others set
up to do was can we create the structure thatnot only empowers people and makes them feel part of their community and allows them togive back. but also helps nonprofit who you know, especiallywhen this was the standard a few years ago it was struggling to figure out. you know how do they continue to grow in adigital era, and how they communicate with their public. and so, what they set out to do was empowerboth. and what we did was we set up local events,and we have set out. you know webinars online and meetups to gathertogether and organizers and it became a grassroots
effort. it started out in the us and it is now global. and what we were able to show is year overyear we were creating a very significant increase in giving, which again has a really nice impactin the community. so as part of this what you had was organizations,big and small stepping up and making commitment. and that commitment didn’t end on givingtuesday, which is again the tuesday after thanksgiving; it continued throughout themonth. and so it began the opening day to the givingseason. and so this is again, this november, november/decembermaybe and the tuesday after thanksgiving 2060
it’s happening. and you know what it represent is an opportunityfor those nonprofit corporations. you know, cities get involved and really familiesand people to say, here’s the commitment i’m going to make and not only ally goingto make it an going to talk about. there’s this reality that you know whenwe think about philanthropy, i think about maybe older wealthy people who give away lotsof money and have lots of money to give. and i think what we are doing here is we’reopening up the conversation to say, well no, you can be philanthropic. you can give whatever you can, and maybe that’snot money.
maybe that’s volunteering or maybe that’sjust helping somebody. but let’s talk about it. let’s talk about online. let’s talk about it on social to encourageother people to replicate this behaviour as well. okay, and with that we are about out of timefor this episode of cxotalk, and what a fascinating conversation. we’ve been talking with sharon feder, whois the chief digital officer at rachel ray. and my guest co-host today has been jessicagotley.
so sharon and jessica, thank you both so muchfor participating on cxotalk thank youand we didn’t talk too much about puppies but a little bit. oh yeah, i missed that one. i guess i will you one, i’ll share a picture. all right, so puppies are coming, and youhave been watching episode number 189 of cxotalk. thank you so much. this friday we will be talking with the cioof coop italia which is the largest supermarket chain in italy and we’ll be talking aboutdigital transformation.
thank you ever so much everybody and havea great day and bye bye.