066: Politics to PR to Philanthropy: The Path to Creating a Cause-Driven Marketing Agency with Aimee Woodall

C: Podcast




Join us as we uncover the transformative power of mentorship and cause-driven marketing with Aimee Woodall, founder of The Black Sheep Agency. Amy unpacks her public relations experience for political initiatives and the pivotal role that her academic journey played in shaping her passion for politics and communication. She fondly recalls some of her most influential mentorship experiences and highlights the evolution of mentorship in business. Finally, we journey through Aimee’s establishment of a cause-driven agency, discussing the challenges and rewards of prioritizing social responsibility in marketing. 

Key Points + Topics

  • [1:30] Aimee studied at the University of Texas at Austin and graduated with a degree in Public Relations. It was there she met her first mentor, Professor Bob Mann. He exposed her to politics and where it intersects with communication.
  • [3:59] Aimee defines a mentor as anyone you learn from. She quickly points out that mentoring someone is not a ‘one-way street’ and that learning goes both ways. Some of Aimee’s most significant experiences have come from mentoring someone only to learn more about herself than she realized could happen.
  • [5:44] One of Aimee’s most significant mentors is Angela Blanchard, whom she defines as a ‘firecracker.’ Angela taught her about ‘appreciative inquiry,’ which asks a community what they need instead of delivering something they don’t. Aimee says her time with Angela ‘shifted the trajectory’ of her Black Sheep Agency.
  • [8:14] Angela illuminated Aimee’s path and demonstrated to her there could be meaning behind her agency work. Angela’s capacity to be a deep thinker and listener from an appreciative and community-driven perspective is something Aimee still carries with her to this day.
  • [10:51] A third mentor for Aimee helped her with the brass tacks of running a business: Ed Schipul. He was a dependable mentor; she experienced some of the most genuine mentorship moments when working with him.
  • [15:11] She fondly remembers writing her agency’s mission statement with a red pen on a restaurant cloth napkin, thanks to Ed’s encouragement.
  • [18:41] The mentor who had the most impact on Aimee wasn’t a single person but a group of people who were brought together to work on a project at The White House. What Aimee took from this group of mentors and her time in Washington has shaped how she conducts business within her Black Sheep agency.
  • [21:41] Today, Aimee is seeking mentors in a peer group setting. She says this is how she’s learning the most right now, and belongs to a few different groups.
  • [30:38] According to Aimee, to be a successful marketer in a cause-driven agency, you must keep the people on the receiving end’s best interests in mind.
  • [32:08] There isn’t one outstanding social issue Aimee would like to work on with her agency now. Instead, she enjoys that her team at Black Sheep ‘get to do a lot of different things that matter’ and can pivot their work to tackle the important things to them at that moment in time.
  • [36:09] One of the greatest gifts Aimee has been given with her work is the ongoing learning about various social challenges in our society.
  • [37:22] In today’s marketing environment, Aimee notices that many brands are regularly pressured to respond to worldwide events. According to Aimee, to be successful, a company must identify its core values or the things most important to it; this will help with its growth and evolution.   
  • [42:32] With the advent of AI, Aimee says it’s still too early to tell how it will affect human content. Instead, she wants to learn how to harness AI to use her time efficiently to impact her clients more while continuing to learn.

Guest + Episode Links

Full Episode Transcript

Danny Gavin Host

00:05

Hello everyone, I’m Danny Gavin, founder of Optidge and marketing professor. I’m pleased to introduce our guest, Aimee Woodall, CEO and founder of Black Sheep Agency, a branding agency that works primarily with philanthropic companies and organizations to motivate people around important issues and causes. She’s a former consultant to President Barack Obama and other clients, including the US Surgeon General, Warner Brothers, scholarship America, the San Francisco Federal Reserve, and many, many others. Today, we’re going to talk about mentorship and cause-driven marketing, as well as a bunch of other humanistic and marketing items. How are you, Aimee?

Aimee Woodall Guest

01:03

I’m great. It’s so good to see you after so many years. As you can see from my background, I’m in the jungles of Costa Rica, where I relocated last August to explore with my family and try something new.

Danny Gavin Host

01:19

It’s so brave of you but knowing you, it’s so up your alley, and we’ll definitely get to chat a little bit about it later on in the call. Let’s jump right in. Where did you go to school and what did you study?

Aimee Woodall Guest

01:30

It’s been a while. I went to the University of Texas and I studied in the Community College of Communications as a public relations major, which is where I started my career in the day.

Danny Gavin Host

01:43

A lot of who you are today is built up through, you know, a bunch of different experiences, but when you look back at that time, is there anything that jumps out, whether it’s in the classroom or outside the classroom in Austin, that kind of points to where you are today.

Aimee Woodall Guest

01:58

Sure, I mean so many things, right, our lives are such a collection of things.

02:03

But what comes to mind right away when you ask that is a professor that I had, uh, in my senior year PR, uh, studying PR at UT.

02:13

Uh, his name is Bob Mann and he was a political junkie and he was uh, teaching at UT, teaching campaigns, and I fell in love with his class. It was the first time I ever had experience working on a campaign. We had to have a semester-long process to build our own campaign and he was a speechwriter for Bobby Kennedy and he was the first person who ever really pushed me to start paying attention to politics and how they intersected with communication. And he took me along to a lot of political fundraisers, me and several other people from our class, a lot of political fundraisers, me and several other people from our class and it just kind of opened me up to this whole new world and this new way of thinking. It was like beyond advertising, but more how what’s happening culturally, politically, what’s happening in the world, can intersect with communication, and to rise and do all the gravity in terms of what the work is about and what it is.

Danny Gavin Host

03:27

Very cool.

Aimee Woodall Guest

03:27

I miss that guy. I have tried so many times to find him. If he happens to stumble upon your podcast, I would love to talk to him again and thank him. We kept in touch for the first, say, 10 years of my career. I think I even talked to him right when I started Black Sheep, but it’s been a while and I haven’t been able to reach him, so I just want to keep telling him how much he impacted my life.

Danny Gavin Host

03:53

Yeah, maybe we can try to find him through the podcast. That would be really cool. So, Aimee, how would you define a mentor?

Aimee Woodall Guest

03:59

I think a mentor is anyone who you learn from. Mentor is anyone who you learn from intentionally. You both walk into the relationship with an expectation of learning. I think that’s one thing that I’m so passionate about when it comes to mentorship is understanding that it’s not a one-way learning experience. Mentorship is about maybe one person teaching a bit more than the other, but about both people going in with an open mind to listen and learn and be in a relationship together. That is about learning.

Danny Gavin Host

04:39

Yeah, and I love how you are stressing the point where it’s really a relationship. It’s really two sides. The more I delve into the topic, the more I see Typically people think that it’s a one-way relationship, but it really is two ways and if you embrace it that way, then you gain the most out of it.

Aimee Woodall Guest

04:57

Some of my greatest lessons have come from relationships where people were looking to me for my experiences and what I had learned and and like kind of taking a moment to hear their questions, and I mean just the act of that causes reflection that you are learning from, not just from the other person, but you’re stopping to kind of pay attention to the lessons that you’ve learned yourself, which is kind of like a meta lesson in the process. I love it.

Danny Gavin Host

05:32

So I’d love to jump into some of those amazing mentorship relationships that you’ve had. Let’s talk about Angela Blanchard, who you’ve said is, or was, your most significant mentor.

Aimee Woodall Guest

05:44

Angela Blanchard. I met this incredible firecracker of a woman in my first year of running our agency. Right after I got started, I met someone at Social Media Breakfast who said I think you need to be working with our organization. We really need to try new things. This was 2009. It was in the middle of the recession. It was sort of I don’t know if you remember the days when flash mobs were emerging and like there were a lot of. It was sort of like the rise in experiential marketing and disruption and, because of the recession, everyone really needed to try something different to connect with their audience. And I spoke at a social media breakfast about this and this woman came up to me afterwards and said you know, we need to be thinking differently. I want you to meet our CEO.

06:39

And so a few weeks later, I met Angela Blanchard, who at the time, was the CEO of an organization called Neighborhood Centers, now called Baker Ripley, and anyone who’s listening who has met this woman, I’m sure she’s left an impression on you. She is such an incredible leader. She is unapologetically original and determined and changing the lives of the people around her. You know she and I ended up working together. We ended up meeting and hitting it off very quickly and ended up working together and, in the relationship, actually turned into almost a decade-long relationship, a client relationship but also a friendship. And I learned so much from this woman, starting with just really thinking about the people around me and especially the people that we are trying to reach through our work. She has this process called appreciative inquiry, which she’s not necessarily the founder of, but she leads, uh, she led the baker ripley organization with appreciative inquiry, which is really asking of the community what the community needs, and not coming into the community with the answers, you know, letting the community itself, um, tell you what they need. And so there’s like a deep listening at the heart of that.

08:09

And I think I was always a pretty good listener.

08:13

But being next to her and watching her lead and watching her practice every day, in the way that we would talk about the work we were doing together, uh, it has stuck with me. I mean it shifted the trajectory of our agency working with her, because I realized the intersection of that impact and communication, um, maybe for a second time. I kind of talked about that a little bit with my college professor. But this was the second moment where I really met someone who showed me how, kind of illuminated my path and showed me how meaningful the work could be if I went in that direction. That practice of her deep listening and thinking from an appreciative perspective, a community-driven perspective, has been with me every single day since then. So for the last 15 years, that that practice she’s, she kind of passed that down to me and it has made such an impact on the way I lead and on the way we intersect with our clients and the relationships that we have there and then, beyond our clients, the audiences that our clients are serving.

Danny Gavin Host

09:34

Yeah, I think it’s fascinating to have such a special client that actually helps you push your agency in a better direction, a very unique relationship. And whenever I see Baker Ripley and think about it, I think about Black Sheep, so I feel like for a long time those two brands were synonymous.

Aimee Woodall Guest

09:52

Oh my gosh, it was the shape-checking of our relationship with that organization and Angela’s priorities over the nine plus years. It was just, you know, over the nine plus years it was just you know, it was the greatest mentorship that one can ask for, especially because of the way it changed over time. You know, we’ve been through a lot over the past few years and I mean that happens over a decade with a pandemic or without a pandemic, and so being in a relationship like that, you know it’s similar to a marriage. The ways you adapt together and learn from each other over time changes so much and means so much.

Danny Gavin Host

10:34

So let’s talk about another mentor, Ed Schippel, who I would say is kind of like agency royalty back in the day in Houston, but you’ve mentioned that he helped you with the brass tacks of business. Love to know how Ed mentored you and helped you out?

Aimee Woodall Guest

10:51

Yeah, in the first couple of years of my business, without Ed, who I haven’t talked to at any ages, I wouldn’t have made it. He was there for in really clutch moments in that first year or two. Uh, I didn’t go to the business school we talked about. I studied PR, and so starting this business was a little bit unexpected. It wasn’t something I was dreaming of or longing for as I studied or grew up. It was something that I just sort of fell into out of frustration with the way that agencies worked and a desire to do things differently. And so I had the good fortune of having been in an agency setting where my responsibilities grew and showed me the business side of things. But even so, even with maybe eight or nine years of that kind of experience, I got into situations in the first year or two where I just didn’t quite know what to do, and Ed was such a dependable mentor. I remember one specific instance where I needed legal advice and it was timely, and Ed dropped everything and drove to my office and worked through something with me that was really important to me and important to the future of our business and you know just the selflessness and the. It was like the truest moment of mentorship that I’ve ever witnessed. You know, just like totally perfectly packaged mentorship, um, from someone who had been through so much and just knew what to do, knew how to protect me in that moment and I will never forget it.

12:50

In another instance, he helped me. We were at lunch one day and we were talking about why we were here, why we were doing the things we were doing, and he asked me what our mission statement was. And this is hilarious because now I help other companies create their mission statements. But this was maybe, I don’t know six or seven months into starting my business and I was flying by the seat of my pants and he said what is your mission statement? And I think I had something at the time and I’m pretty sure I couldn’t remember what it was, you know like the exact wording. And Ed made me write my mission statement at the orange table and it’s the same mission statement that we have today, with one minor adjustment that kind of grew with us, that I added later and I still have the napkin. You know, ed, if anyone who’s listening knows Ed, that I added later and I still have the napkin.

13:49

You know, if anyone who’s listening knows Ed he’s a little bit of a rule breaker, which is maybe why we got along so well in the early days.

13:59

He said I didn’t have anything to write on and we were at a pretty nice restaurant and he handed me the white cloth napkin and a red pencil that he had in his briefcase or whatever he carried, and he was like writing it on the napkin.

14:20

Uh, so I have a claw, a white fancy cloth napkin with our mission statement written in red pencil and and honestly, it was like he in the conversation got me down to the core of really why I was showing up and doing the work every day, which is the way the best mission statements are developed, and now I probably talk about our mission statement every day. I preach our mission statement when I’m trying to help other people write their mission statements because it resonates with me so deeply. And so, if you look at those two things in the way that he taught and the way that he showed up, mentor, one of them is still a gift that’s given 15 years later, and it was just fundamental. It was just these fundamental business lessons that were so important to making the ground sturdy underneath the work that we’re doing.

Danny Gavin Host

15:11

And it’s so cool that you’re telling me these stories because, knowing you and kind of watching from afar, at least the past couple of years, just amazing to see these certain individuals who really shaped who you are and what you do and and, yeah, and I think that’s why it’s so important to surround yourself with people like that, who can help you know, who are aligned with you, push you in the right direction. That’s so awesome. So let’s talk about one last group. You know, not everyone gets to hang out at the White House, but you’ve mentioned a team of mentors Heidi, Sean I think it’s Jason and Kara. We’d love to talk about them, why you would put them down as, like your list of, like top mentors.

Aimee Woodall Guest

15:50

Yeah, this was my first experience, I think. I think, you know, entrepreneurship is so lonely and oftentimes when you’re the CEO, you know, depending on your environment, are the CEO depending on your environment? It’s isolating and it can be hard to find new ways to push yourself that aren’t coming just from your own motivation. And so I guess it was eight or nine years ago now, or maybe a little bit longer than that I went to work on a white house project for three weeks, uh, and I was put together with a SWAT team of individuals that I’d never met before to work on this project and we basically just, you know, got up in the morning and went to the white house and then spent the entire day there and sometimes the evenings together, and we basically had three weeks to sprint on this project. And so, you know, I wasn’t locked in a room with them, but I was kind of locked in a room with them most of the time, and it was just this deep immersion with, you know, three and then ultimately four uh strangers that I had to get to know really quickly and collaborate with really quickly, and they came from very different walks of life and you know experiences and career paths, and, and so it was just this rapid immersion, learning from these other people who, as you can imagine, were curated by incredible people working next to the president, and so they were incredible people.

17:34

Heidi had an agency at the time. She’s since gone on to do a lot of other incredible things. Sean was one of the first team members at Twitter and headed up communications there in the very, very early days. Jason also came from a twitter kind of tech background. And kara is just like this civic servant who has done so many things. I can’t even round them all up to summarize. She’s just. Her diversity of her service is mind-blowing, uh, and so I was just out with all these people to learn from them, and they were so giving and there’s just such a genuine mindset of figuring things out and just being in the room with them and working on this project, which all of us were intimidated by and you know it was politics were not any of our worst line of experience. So you know we were all vulnerable and wanted to do a great job.

18:41

So the learning that I got from that it’s just. It’s been. You know, it changed my mind about how our agency would work in so many ways and and you know, I could see that as another like bend in the road for who Black Sheep became. So I don’t know if my mentorship is actually like Angela and and actually Angela and Ed are two more traditional examples of the mentorship that I’ve experienced but my favorite kind of mentorship is the mentorship I’m describing. That’s the kind of mentorship that I even have within the walls of Black Sheep.

19:27

It’s just an incredible curation of individuals who are showing up every day, prioritizing the impact that we’re making over everything else, and so there’s this willingness to be vulnerable in the work and to just want to figure out the best way forward, and that’s my favorite when I’m around those kinds of people, um, so that’s the kind of people I look for in aligning either, you know, hiring a team member or hiring a client. Like it’s pretty cool that I could also say that our clients are mentors to me and to the people on my team. They teach us things all the time and that’s the kind of relationship that we like to get into with our clients. So we spend a lot of time talking to them up front about how we want to be in partnership with each other and we have a community agreement for how we kind of respect and honor what they can teach us and what we can teach them when we go into these things, and I think all of that sort of was birthed in that White House configuration.

Danny Gavin Host

20:35

I mean, I don’t know what to say, but it’s basically, it’s like a dream. It’s a dream of mentorship, right? Because I think you are. You’re hiring people and thinking like, how are these going to be mentors to the rest of the team, how are they going to be mentors to me? And then, exactly, that’s what clients are clients as well. How can we teach them, how can they teach us? It’s such a positive, wonderful environment that you’re trying to create for yourself, your employees, and your clients.

Aimee Woodall Guest

21:01

It’s awesome for your employees and for your clients. It’s awesome. Thanks, thanks. You know it is kind of a dream and you know I think I look at the world that way in all ways. You know, I want to hang out with people that are interesting and have things to teach and want to learn, and want to listen and have a mutually beneficial existence together.

Danny Gavin Host

21:24

So one topic that I recently covered in a previous podcast with Will Reynolds was about how not every mentor lasts forever. I know you’ve also mentioned that just because a mentor has been suitable for you in one chapter of your life doesn’t mean they’re a good fit for the next. I’d love it if you could expound on that a bit.

Aimee Woodall Guest

21:41

I guess, with everything that we’ve been through over the past four or five years with the pandemic, and the way that the workplace is changing and the way we’re all evolving as humans, and the way I don’t know I’m in my forties, I have two kids, so all of these things are adding up to this desire to really continue to explore what this should look like. I think there’s a second chapter or second act to black sheep that we’re kind of in the middle of, um, the metamorphosis, uh, figuring out what that next act is, and so all of these things together have I’ve had to be a little bit more contrived about the mentorship that I’m seeking. It’s, it’s like it came naturally at certain times, as it does, you know, you just meet the right people at the right time, and I was never afraid to ask to have more of a relationship with any of those people, and now I’m pursuing that in more of a relationship with any of those people. And now I’m pursuing that in more of a peer group mentorship setting, which I guess I’ve talked about a little bit how. That’s the way I love to learn, where there are lots of perspectives represented. So I’ve joined a couple of peer groups that are agency leaders from all over the country, or another one that’s communicators who are embedded with brands and agencies and things like that all over the world, and we meet monthly and there are different topics, and we’re in Slack channels together and I don’t know. It’s just kind of this group, these groups of people that have raised their hands and said I want to teach you and I want to learn from you, and so I’m kind of exploring that format right now. I joined one of those groups last year and didn’t have the capacity to really commit to it, so this year I’m really focused on making more space for that. And then I’m also looking at more official coaching relationships.

23:48

It’s like I need to go deeper and the kind of depth that I need. I don’t have the right mentor for right now and also I need more structure to it. So I don’t know, I’m just trying some new things and I think that’s so true for everyone. Right, it’s like you need different things at different times in your life, at different times in your career, and you outgrow some of the others. That doesn’t mean they’re any less special or the relationship can’t change, but I really do think that we have to be aware of what we need and not be afraid to change something.

24:33

You know it’s a lot of people maybe. If you see a therapist or something like, the right therapist for you might not always be the right therapist for you. It’s just like friendships. Truthfully, you know it’s a sadder thing to accept, but we outgrow friends too, depending on where we are in our lives and and you know how much we have going on and all of that. So I think it’s just something that’s important to be, to be thinking about as you, as you search and search and try to find the right alignment in mentorship relationships.

Danny Gavin Host

25:12

It’s so real. So thank you for taking us down that path because it’s so true. It evokes my memory of, like I remember eighth grade in middle school and some of these people I was with for I don’t know 12, 13, 14 years, literally from like preschool, and we’re like, yeah, we’re going to stay friends forever and nothing’s going to change. And like, as soon as, like it’s like the day after, it’s like you don’t hear from them anymore, but it just reminds you of that concept. Yeah, like it’s okay, that’s part of life. Things change and and, and I think what’s important is to look at yourself in the mirror and realize, okay, what do I need now? What’s going to help me be the best person I can be, move my business to the next level? So, yeah, that was great, thank you.

Aimee Woodall Guest

25:55

Yeah.

Danny Gavin Host

25:58

So Black Sheep focused primarily on mission-driven organizations and, funnily enough, I remember in the meeting with my dad when Blacksheep was working with my parents’ company, and I remember you basically said, well, we’ve got to tell you, but we’re actually moving forward, we’re only going to work with mission-driven business. I remember when that was kind of like the mic drop moment. So I know that was a big deal and I understand as well that you already worked with these types of organizations. But what can you say? What was that pivoting point where it was like man, we’re going to move forward; we’re going to work with a certain type of company. We’d love to know what was that final thing that said, okay, we’re going to make that change.

Aimee Woodall Guest

26:36

As you may or may not expect, it’s not something that’s totally glamorous. So Angela actually plays into this. When Angela Blanchard and I started working together, we were about six months old as a company and I distinctly remember being at the office pretty late into the wee hours and working on our first campaign for neighborhood centers at the time. And the energy in the room working late you know, usually there’s no energy in the room you have to work late the energy in the room working late was tangible. I mean, we were just having fun and we were excited and we couldn’t wait to present in the morning and, and you know, we were like getting all the finishing touches on the campaign. And I said out loud wouldn’t it be great if we could do this kind of work all the time? And that moment, you know, I still remember it coming out of my mouth like it was yesterday, and so that was the moment that that pursuit began. And so that was about six months in. I think we were close to maybe the two-year mark or maybe around a year and a half.

27:58

It took about another 12 to 14 months to get to a place where we had attracted clients of that nature, so much so that we were financially stable and we could have those hard conversations with people like you to say we’re going in this direction, do you want to come with us? Is there a way that you can come with us, or should we help you find another agency, or is this a good time to find new paths for both of us? And it was we were working with, with you all, and we were working with one other client that really wasn’t in that category and I, I, I this part’s a little hazier for me, but I’m pretty sure we sort of wrapped things up through like kind of an endpoint with you guys, and then the other client said oh, we want to do that, we want to come with you. And so it was a restaurant organization, and we went down the path with them talking about social responsibility and we built a community-based social responsibility program and rolled that out with them, which was really cool. And then we parted ways because it wasn’t really a match, but we got to do a little bit more good work with them before we separated.

29:23

So the answer is really just that we knew we wanted to do it, we were determined, and then we built. We just started pursuing that kind of work and putting that out there. And then we had enough work at one point where we were like, okay, let’s hold our breath and let’s do this, and we announced it. And then, when we announced it,  you know, once you’re so clear on who you are and you can articulate that and say why and who you’re looking for, it’s so powerful. So then it just started multiplying, and I think we were the first cause-driven agency in Texas and maybe the first or second in the country. And now, thankfully, there are many other people doing impact-based work and orienting to a social responsibility model, which is great. People used to ask me what I would do when the competition starts doing this too? And I said I’ll be high-fiving them and thrilled because there’s a lot of work to do. We need more people thinking like that.

Danny Gavin Host

30:29

So, is the marketing approach to motivating people for good different from conventional marketing, and how do you ensure a company’s good values are reflected in its products or services?

Aimee Woodall Guest

30:38

I think the simple answer to that could be no, but I also haven’t been a conventional marketer in more than 15 years, so it’s hard to say. I think to do marketing right, what has to be at the root of your decisions and your strategies is the people’s best interests who are on the other end of the communication, and so my hope, whether it’s conventional or impactful communication or campaigns would be that we’re really trying to do the best thing possible for the people on the other end, trying to do the best thing possible for the people on the other end. We’re rooting in our values and anchoring in the purpose that drives us, and I think we need to think long and hard about what the world has been through over the past few years and where we are today, with so many things that are challenging us, and we need to make sure that what’s important is at the heart of the things that we’re marketing. I don’t know; that’s my altruistic answer to a big, big question.

Danny Gavin Host

32:02

So what is the most significant outstanding social issue you’d like to address with Black Sheep and do you have a unique strategy in mind?

Aimee Woodall Guest

32:08

and day after day, it is because I don’t have to put one thing to be aligned with exclusively. You know, if I went to work in-house at a nonprofit, I would have to make a choice on the thing that matters the most to me, and what is beautiful about the ecosystem that we’ve created is we get to kind of orient to the important priorities of the time, and so if you would have asked me this question four years ago or two weeks ago, I probably would have had a different answer than I do today, except for the fact that I care about the fact that I get to have my hands in lots of different things, that our team gets to have my hands in lots of different things, and that’s so important to why people choose to spend their time at Blacksheet. We love that. We get to do a lot of things that matter, and so that’s the real answer is that I can’t choose one. I’m incapable of choosing one.

33:29

Uh, in fact, angela Ransford, to bring this full circle, told me that one time I was talking to her about an episode of my so-called life which many people who are listening to this probably will have no idea what that show is, but that show was, uh, in its prime when I was a teenager. No idea what that show is, but that show was in its prime when I was a teenager and there was an episode where the main character, Claire Danes, her first big role was having this inner conflict about not being able to pick one thing. And I told Angela about this episode and how this kind of haunted me, because I feel the same. I feel like I can’t just go all in on one thing, and she said maybe that’s the gift, that’s how you ended up here, and that’s the beauty; you don’t have to pick one thing. And it was like such a revelation that was so simple and obvious, but it has stuck with me. It is such a gift that I don’t have to pick one thing.

34:27

However, I will answer your question a little bit more directly and say that we worked on an education initiative with Michelle Obama about nine years ago, and because of that, we’ve gotten really deeply embedded into educational causes around the country, and so education has a real deep and special place in my heart Teachers and early childhood education, people understanding how to learn based on who they are and things like that. So that’s really important. I think that’s, you know, that’s important to our future as humans. Public health is another area where we’ve deeply, deeply gone into multiple projects that have led to other projects and finding ways to communicate important health information is always so poorly done, so that has grown to be a really special vertical for us, because we know how to really communicate emotionally and specifically to different groups of humans, and presenting health care information in ways that’s really simple and easy to understand is so rare. And so those two areas although there are so many things um, there’s so much hate in our world right now and making sure that everyone feels a sense of belonging and has the rights that they deserve.

36:09

That is, social justice and human rights. It’s just like if we could do more of that work every day, we would. It’s really, really in our heart. So those are a few of the things, but honestly, I could. I could go on and on, and one of the most beautiful things that I have been given through this work is learning about new challenges that exist that I would have never known to prioritize or care about or even pay attention to, because someone comes to us and illuminates something new and then it becomes a passion of ours and we get to learn about it and we get to help other people learn about it so that’s also another area.

37:00

It’s like these obscure things that fly under the radar that more people need to know about. I love to activate and bring that to the surface.

Danny Gavin Host

37:12

Pivoting a bit. Where did this pressure on brands to constantly evolve come from? Is it a concept that you wrestle with, and how do you ensure your client’s brand stays relevant in this era of constant change?

Aimee Woodall Guest

37:22

Evolution is nothing new. I think because of technology and because the tools that we have to communicate and create evolution has become more front and center for us than ever before. You know, you can look at brands that are as old as we can remember brands ever being like Coca-Cola or Proctor and Gamble. You know, these very old, old brands have evolved. They’ve all started as one thing and then kind of gradually evolved to meet the world where it is or to stay current, and so that’s nothing new. It’s just that the creative tools and the communication tools are so much more advanced that that evolution can happen more quickly.

38:16

What I think people feel is newer than just an evolution of a brand is the pressure for a brand to respond to what’s happening in the world. We’ve seen a lot of pressure and a lot of opportunity in things like Pride Month, and you watch the varying degrees to which brands activate well during that time or, even better, activate year-round, not just during that time, or, even better, after the year round, not just during that month. When George Floyd was murdered, this became a huge focus for brands, for a lot of brands were really authentic. They wanted to, they felt they had to do something. They needed to do something. They needed to do something For others. They felt a sense of pressure, but they didn’t know what to do.

39:10

The spectrum in that space is challenging because, truthfully, there’s something that happens every day in the world that a brand can respond to, and so I think what’s so important now is that companies, brands or not, companies understand their values and then they work outward from that to the things that relate to their values that they need to care about in the world, they need to respond to in the world and they need to have a plan before these things happen. They need to have some structure around that before this happens because the pressure to respond to everything is immense and if you try to respond to everything, you won’t do it well, and there are things that you don’t need to respond to. So, like really anchoring into those core values and understanding. You know, here’s what I’m going to go all in on and here’s, you know, here are the things for this ecosystem that connect my values. That’s a really essential foundation that will help not only with your evolution, it will help with your day-to-day communication and give you that range to flex with what’s. It will help with your day-to-day communication and give you that range to evolve with what’s happening in the world.

40:31

What’s happening in the world you keep the thread as a value is what makes you familiar and trustworthy through it all. And then, when things do happen in the world that you just don’t understand and you want to speak out, you want to take a stand, you can do it in a real way, in a true way. That means something and you can do it well and not feel like you’re scrambling to figure out what to do at this moment. I mean, there’s still always some of that when something tragic happens or when something you know, when a stand needs to be taken, there’s usually some degree of high emotion and timeliness and when those things intersect you know. Just really knowing who you are and what you’re, the tracks that you’re going to run on is really critical.

Danny Gavin Host

41:26

We touched upon AI before. There’s been much intense debate and questioning in the marketing world around the role of AI in human content. How are you able to reconcile the two?

Aimee Woodall Guest

41:35

Well, it’s a work in progress, Dmmy. Ai still feels really early and new and it’s moving so fast you can see just in iteration. So what’s happened, um, what’s come out in the last, I don’t know, three weeks or whatever and we’re in the stage now. Well, we are certainly experimenting with it. We are using it in certain key ways for efficiency, distillation of research, double checking the content of a plan, things like that, just to see what else comes up, uh. But it’s still really the early days for us as an agency in terms of using the tech, and what we know now is that it’s a part of our lives, and the more we know, the more powerfully we can use it, the more office-fully we can use it.

42:32

I think that I saw this meme yesterday on Instagram that said I want AI to do my laundry and my dishes so that I can spend more time writing. I don’t want AI to do my writing so that I can spend more time writing. I don’t want AI to do my writing so that I can spend more time doing my laundry and washing my dishes, and I was like, amen, amen. And so you know what I’m spending my time thinking about is how can we use this to be smart about how we spend our time, to make more of an impact for our clients? And then, how do we keep learning?

43:12

But through all of that, how do we stay really true to what we know about the humans that we’re working with and the humans that we’re trying to support and serve to support and serve, and how do we make sure that the nuances of those humans and all their life experiences and their values don’t get removed through deficiency? So the answer really is it’s a work in progress and we’re free. There is no replacement for the emotional intelligence that comes with our work, and so what we have to do is figure out how the pieces fit together and how we use this to our advantage to take care and make forward progress, and we need to really be having a lot of conversation about it so that we can see this in lots of different angles, because it’s still so early and can be so dangerous.

Danny Gavin Host

44:23

So, Aimee, it’s time for our lightning round. Getting up from Texas and moving down to Costa Rica, I’m sure there are some crazy things or just interesting things, that you’ve experienced. We’d love to know the top three to five things that you’ve recently experienced in this amazing journey in Costa Rica.

Aimee Woodall Guest

44:37

So my family moved here. We were planning on being here for a year. We commute back to Houston quite often. We just signed up for a year.  So our kids are in school here. We’ll be here for a little longer.

44:52

I think you know something that I was looking for when we made this move aside from, like, some basics like learning to speak Spanish and spending more time in nature. I wanted, I needed, I would say, any more time in nature. I wanted, I needed I would say desperately needed a change of scenery and to feel removed from the life that I had been routinely living, even though all of my routines were disrupted with the pandemic and there were new routines that started to form and I just needed to be removed from that for inspiration and to like, feel grounded again. So one thing is just like the bravery to do that, the adventure of doing that. I’ve talked a lot about core values in our conversation, but my core values, not the company’s, my core values are adventure and love, and I feel like those are the root of all the decisions I made, and so this is the first thing that I’ve done in a very long time. That just felt like it was all in on both of my values uh, to be more connected to my family and to have a sense of adventure in my day-to-day life, whether it’s driving my six-track truck through the dirt roads in Costa Rica or riding it. I have a four-wheeler, it is my second vehicle, so I frequently have four-wheelers getting to uh, they’ll pick up the kids somewhere or going to a class or something, um, so I don’t know. I think the summary would be living in a in my values, has been a really great root set for me as a, as a person, um, and then I don’t know three to five things. So I mentioned the quad, the four wheel, so that’s something new for me. I’m still learning to get around on it with, with, uh, without feeling afraid. I have been trying to learn surfing, um, which has been sustainable. I’ve also been really deepening my yoga practice and I started doing aerial yoga, which is like aerial slopes, so like turning upside down in the air with still ropes. I recently had this conversation with my friend, Karen Walron, who is writing a book about trying new things without the intent to be good at them, but just to try them, and I think that having that conversation with her made me realize I’m doing a lot of that really. Just you know, being an amateur and leaning into doing something new. So I’ve been doing that. It’s like taking a lot of different pathways and trying to shake up and learn new things. You know, you don’t see that as often as you get older, and I think it’s really helped me stay fresh in my thinking and so like not get too sedentary in the way that I think that the day should go. I’ve been.

48:06

This is kind of a random one, but I’m a gardener, I’m an avid gardener, I love gardening, I love spending time outside having my hands in the dirt, saying things and watching them grow, and so I’m jungle gardening now, which is wild. It’s like a whole different world of plants, different from Texas. It’s hot here but it’s humid here. So you might think, well, sounds the same if you couldn’t see right now, or maybe you can. It’s.

48:33

It’s raining now and it’s the rainy season in history and, just like the jungle, plants are in full bloom, and so I’m learning about that and I don’t know. It’s just I don’t know. I’ve just had more of a moment to try something on and learn differently. I’m always learning, but I have a very narrow focus of learning for the last 10 or so years. It’s more about leadership and social impact and creativity and agency and teams and culture, and now I’m um I like I’ll probably use the definition as an entrepreneur. It’s something that you really have to carve out time for and that’s new again for me. Well, Aimee, you’ve always been a special and inspirational person To me.

Danny Gavin Host

49:27

You’ve got this new glow aura around you where it’s like you’ve kind of peeled back the layers. You’re still the same person, but there’s something special about you even more now. So it’s so wonderful to see you in this new setting and I’m wishing you continued success and just an awesome, continuous journey.

Aimee Woodall Guest

49:45

Thank you for continued success and just an awesome, continuous journey, you know, thank you. I have one thing that I would say to people who are listening to this with the intent to seek out new mentorship. You know, it’s something that I have learned over the years is that oftentimes people don’t know how to ask for mentorship, and I think there’s something that’s very simple that people should say out loud more often to people who are in a period of trouble or young people who are just coming out into the world after they’ve finished their education, and that is, if you are fascinated by someone or you think someone is interesting or you admire someone, just ask them. Ask them if they will be. They’re willing to be a mentor to you, because people are flattered by that kind of thing and most of the time, more often than not, they’re willing.

50:47

And you know, I think something to be conscious about is time. You know a lot of people are busy, so that’s something that you can be very respectful around. So we meet for lunch once a quarter and try to learn from you, and I think most people will do that more often, because I think a lot of times that opportunity is missed because someone feels shy or embarrassed and doesn’t want to ask or I’m not friends with AJR. I would have missed out on so many incredible things in my life because I wouldn’t have been inspired and learned from them. So go for it. And it just means you have to follow up with me. Can I learn from you? Is there a way that I can lose my mood? I think this is a great way to do it.

Danny Gavin Host

51:42

Well, Aimee, that’s a powerful message to end off on. Thank you so much for joining me today and thank you, listeners, for tuning into the Digital Marketing Mentor. We’ll speak with you next time.

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