Beyond the Seat at the Table: Leading Corporate Affairs at Scale - with Megan Noel

00:00
Daniel Nestle
Welcome or welcome back to the trending Communicator. I'm your host, Dan Nestle. You know, I've been around long enough that change in the PR and marketing world is only notable when it's absent. I mean, it's here all the time. It's table stakes, as we often say. And I, for one, am grateful for it. But the jaded curmudgeon that lives in my skull sometimes reminds me we've been down this road before. There's nothing new under the sun. Remember when social media was going to transform everything? Remember when big data was the answer? I don't know if anybody remembers those two words together anymore. When content marketing would solve all our problems? Well, you get the idea. Well, I'd argue with my inner curmudgeon that it's different this time because, well, do I have to say it? AI but maybe he's right.

00:53
Daniel Nestle
Maybe we're just slapping new labels on old problems. We talk about stakeholder ecosystems instead of audiences. We say data driven instead of measurement. Same circus, different clown. Except there's something happening that my curmudgeon, I don't think, can dismiss. The entire architecture of corporate communications is being rebuilt from the ground up. And I'm not talking about org charts or reporting structures. I'm talking about fundamental questions. What happens when the communications function stops only being about messaging and starts being about business transformation? When reputation management becomes inextricable from strategy? When your audiences are so fractured that traditional authority doesn't mean anything anymore? Well, today's guest has been at the center of this reconstruction. She took 75,000 people through a technology transformation while simultaneously rebuilding what communications even means at a Big Four firm.

01:48
Daniel Nestle
And the result was that her team won PR Week's Best Place to Work twice. She got recognized with the Page Society's Innovation Award, which you may see behind my shoulder there. Not for a campaign, but for fundamentally changing how the function operates. Then, as if that wasn't enough of a challenge, she took on the role of Global President of Corporate affairs at a major PR agency. To see the industry from the agency side again, you know, to complete what she calls her hybrid perspective. Well, then adtalem Global Education came calling with a very specific mandate. Take their chief Corporate affairs role, not chief communications officer, mind you, and unify an impossibly complex stakeholder landscape. We're talking 10,000 employees, 94,000 students, 350,000 alumni, plus investors, policymakers, and healthcare partners. PR News Top woman in PR Week. 40 under 40.

02:38
Daniel Nestle
Co creator of CEO Action for Diversity and inclusion page Society member. Look, those are just the credentials. What matters is she's one of the few people who can explain why the Chief Corporate Affairs Officer isn't just a fancy new title. It's a fundamental reimagining of what this function does. We're going to dig into that. We're going to dig into what that distinction really means, why it matters for the future of our profession. We're definitely going to talk AI at some point because it is the trending communicator, after all. While making her triumphant return to the trending communicator, this time as Chief Corporate Affairs Officer at adtalem Global Education, one of the few people who can make my inner curmudgeon admit that maybe, just maybe, this time really is different. Megan. Noel.

03:19
Megan Noel
Megan. Oh, wow. What an opening. Dan.

03:23
Daniel Nestle
I'm out of breath. It's crazy, you know, the amazing. Yeah, it's.

03:29
Megan Noel
It.

03:29
Daniel Nestle
They get. They get longer for some reason. I have to think this through. But you. Look, knowing you for as long as I've known you, 10 plus years, if you really go by the first time we met and, you know, when we first worked together, you've been on my show before, as we mentioned. I mean, the first time in a different role, talking about, really about AI organizational transformation and AI enablement implementation. Not that long ago, but like we. It's really the early days and it feels like it's years ago from where we are now, you know, and then you and I have worked together a little bit. I mean, you've been really supportive and a great advocate of my work since I went solo especially. And, you know, look, I mean, you deserve more than what I gave you in the intro.

04:14
Daniel Nestle
I wish everybody knew you as well as I did. And that only covers the surface. What can I say? You're stellar.

04:22
Megan Noel
Quite mutual. And I learned so much from you as well. So, you know, that.

04:27
Daniel Nestle
Oh, that's terrific. And, and look, I mean, that's partially friendship, partially this professional respect. And sometimes, you know, I'll. I'll say this again because a lot of people would not have heard your first episode. Although I do encourage people to go check that out when she was going by Megan Diulo, you know, professionally speaking. Anyway, we did talk on that episode a little bit about how we first met. And like, when I had. I was your. I was your. You were my client. Because I was at Edelman. I was a new guy at Edelman and I had this horrific project that it was a lot of lipsticks on pigs and whatnot. But it was really advanced. It's just a little ahead of our time with predictive analytics. And then I just remember the first time I met Megan.

05:13
Daniel Nestle
I was, I was presenting to her in this really small room and I could see the look on her face like, what the hell is this? She didn't say that exactly. Something close to it, but it made me think, all right, you know, if I ever see this, this woman again in my life, I mean, I'm sure she's going to turn around, walk the other way. But nothing of the sort ever happened. I mean what you had compassion and understanding and empathy for my situation, as it turns out, and didn't do any harm to our relationship because we've been chummy for a long time.

05:47
Megan Noel
Oh, and I learn a lot from you. I think your forward looking view on technology and AI in the communications and corporate affairs space is invaluable to our profession and you are making a big name for yourself in that way.

06:02
Daniel Nestle
That's our audiogram folks. There it is. But anyway, I think, I think there's a lot to talk about. So much has happened since, over the last couple years since we last spoke. Now you're a ccao. I mean it's even hardest, like hard to get out of the CCO mindset and move into the CCAO Chief Corporate Affairs Officer. So why don't we start there? Because we did talk about it in the intro. What is the evolution of this newish role? And like what, where does it land you? What's the position like compared to the CCO and what does that evolution look like?

06:41
Megan Noel
One of the reasons I took the role is because I believe in the corporate affairs model. And so I think that's really important when you're looking at whether you take a CCO role or a chief Corporate Affairs Officer role. I love communications, I love the profession. I love the evolution of the profession from a downstream tactics based function to very much sitting at the center of all your stakeholders and the center of business strategy. I think the most interesting evolution that we continue to see with our profession is that when the world gets harder, we continue to be valued and we continue to evolve our function and how we show up and show up during really critical moments.

07:30
Megan Noel
Whether it's crisis of confidence from your stakeholders, whether it's an external crisis that's happen, whether it is a transition from administrations, whether it's geopolitical concerns, we continue to be agile as a function to meet the business and business leaders, especially The CEO at that top of the house to help solve problems and be in the bunker. And I think the corporate affairs model is just the next step in that evolution. For us as communicators, we used to just communicate what the business wanted. And I think we've done a really good job of showing additional value, whether that's through business acumen or through data or through having your finger on the pulse of the different stakeholders, that we're more than just a channel strategy to push things to different audiences.

08:31
Megan Noel
The best thing about the role that I'm in now is that I get to see beyond the communications function. I have government relations that reports to me. I have public affairs, I have investor relations, I have impact and sustainability. And I have it in our case because we're an education company. We have, as you mentioned, 350,000 alumni. So I have alumni. And so I often see myself as our chief DOT connector across the business and the one that's sitting with our CEO and saying, okay, if we do this stakeholder is going to have this reaction and this stakeholder is going to have that reaction. And you know, here's the trade off or here's how a policy decision can impact our investor audience or impact our faculty audience.

09:25
Megan Noel
And so really helping him understand those nuances and that is absolutely fascinating from a personal and professional standpoint. It's also extremely challenging in the pace that we are in. But I think all of us are a bit gluttons for punishment when it comes to our careers. And so I am certainly in that camp. And that is what has certainly attracted me to this job. I think the last thing is that it's rare that you get to be in a place where I'm in now where you could blend purpose and profit so seamlessly. Often you have to make those choices. And Adtellum is the largest healthcare education company in the country. We are the largest supplier of nurses to the United States. We're the largest supplier of black doctors.

10:24
Megan Noel
We have, you know, we are educating thousands upon thousands of nurses, doctors, mental health professionals, social services providers, and really making a strong impact in the health care world, especially with the health care worker shortage within small communities, rural communities, underserved communities. So it's great that you get to wake up every single day and serve a purpose that is so front and center of why people are there, while also having a healthy return to our financial stakeholders who invest in us to run a smart and profitable business. And so the gem of that is just something totally special.

11:12
Daniel Nestle
It's like having your cake and eating it too.

11:15
Megan Noel
Totally.

11:16
Daniel Nestle
It's interesting. There's a couple of points that came up as you were talking that I, I kind of want to peel away a little bit and like, first, the first thing, let's. Let's go back to this whole idea of corporate affairs. I think a lot of communicators, certainly a lot of the audience that aren't in the comm space, they're more marketers, et cetera. But even a lot of communicators who are working for smaller companies or solo, they might not understand, like the, where the different. Where the wall is, if there is a wall, or where they're kind of differentiator is between corporate affairs, public affairs, corporate communications, and the way your role is packaged up, where you're leading not only, you know, corporate communications, but also gr. Ir, alumni. You said alumni communications.

12:06
Daniel Nestle
Is it alumni relations or is it alumni communications or all of the above relations?

12:10
Megan Noel
Alumni relations, beyond communications as well.

12:14
Daniel Nestle
Yeah, yep. And then impact, which is often not part of the comms umbrella. Right. But you know, I think a. Let's call it, let's say a. A party who might not understand this, the way that we've operated, might say, well, isn't that all communications? Right. Isn't that all part of the comms function? So what's the difference? Why would you label it something different? You know, you have a very good handle on corporate affairs, and I'd like to just kind of have a better understanding, like corporate affairs versus communications or versus traditional communications, let's say. And you know, does it matter? Like, is it just different based on your company size, for example, or based on where you are in the number of stakeholders you have? You can just elucidate just a bit.

13:06
Megan Noel
So let me take out a little differently when I talk to my corporate affairs team, which is made up of lobbyists, alumni engagement specialists, sustainability specialists, IR and finance specialists, and traditional communicators. But that realm is obviously there's specialties within that. Employee communications, change management, practitioners, public affairs, as you say. One of the things I say to them is that reputation is the banner that unites us. So every single day we get up to build and protect our brand, to drive our business strategy into the marketplace in the right way, with the right stakeholder, and to support, you know, company culture and transfer transformation. That all has a reputation banner. And each one of us, whether we're communicating to investors, to the Hill, to alumni, or to our employee base, we're all storytellers. And so reputation and storytelling are the common denominators for us.

14:16
Megan Noel
But the how an IR professional does his or her job is different than how a lobbyist is going to go and work the hill and policymakers to advocate for our positioning. And so there are common skill sets that will unite us across our function and then there's unique things that will make us different, that will make us super special and relevant for the jobs that we do. But in each case we're storytelling, we're talking about the great things that we're doing for our business in communities to the healthcare profession. And so I don't think the roles are as different as we think. I think there's natural overlap and in a really good way. But I think that the corporate affairs model is a larger remit with our stakeholder group and a larger exercise in duck connecting across those various different groups.

15:19
Megan Noel
Take for example the One Big Beautiful Bill act that was passed over July 4th weekend. Many tentacles into that. From a public policy and a public affairs perspective, there was obviously some things that were material to us as a higher education organization, but it goes well beyond that. Right. And every company was looking at how what's the impacts as the insiders say in D.C. oB3 on our business. But it also had relevant impact for employees. Right? What does this mean? Where do we invest? Where do we not invest? Where do we have to do things differently? It also had relevance to our investors. Does this mean a slowdown, a speed up? Is this going to make it harder or easier to be able to support and drive your business through your strategy?

16:12
Megan Noel
And so taking that as a micro example, which is a real life one that many of us were dealing with over the July 4th break, that is a great way. Where the corporate affairs model comes to life is so seamlessly and so beneficial to help serve a business, especially our business stakeholders who are all looking at it through various different lenses in the right way. The other thing is being in this role, you have to it's almost like a mini MBA in every function. I have to be smart enough to interact with our gc. I have to be savvy enough with numbers to be able to stand tall with our cfo. I have to be really empathetic and curious about our employee population to have a solid conversation with our chro.

17:00
Megan Noel
And so in each of these places, you are the business acumen around our different functions becomes so critical to be able to give that correct, thoughtful, sound advice to that business leader.

17:19
Daniel Nestle
Business acumen, those are tough Words to swallow sometimes for communicators, I think. And, and it's interesting. There's been, you know, you're not the first person on the show has talked about the importance of business acumen. And you know, you see these thought pieces, you know, I should probably put that in scare quotes thought pieces. Now that I do video, I have to remember that people can see my fingers. That you have these thought pieces out there that we've been saying, seeing for, you know, as long as I've been in PR and communications and certainly as long as you have, if that's the case for me, that we need a seat at the table.

17:57
Daniel Nestle
We have to, you know, how do you, how are going to people pay attention to comms and poor comms and you know, we've lost our way or, you know, there's, there's whiny pieces, then there's like real legitimately, like, hey, look, there's. Here's a value and it's the, the executive suite is the executives are missing something big if they're not inviting us to the table. So it's coming from different perspectives, but I find a lot of winery and winery in the whole thing. Sometimes what you're demonstrating here is that you don't have to have that conversation because you're at the table, you know, in a big way. And that raises the stakes for the need to understand the business more and more. Right.

18:40
Daniel Nestle
I'm, you know, it's still difficult, I think, to understand why a CCO and a ccao, like where the kind of why CCO or CCO would be different in that respect anyway. But I under, you know, I'm getting a better understanding of, you know, the entire, entire universe of corporate affairs and you know, the necessity of having that business acumen to make it all make sense. You know, it's, it just seems like a huge challenge. But you've picked that up over your years of paying attention and learning. Right. But how difficult is it to stay on top of that now? And you know, what could our listeners really, I think those of us especially who are in these senior roles, like what do they need to keep in mind every day when they go into work or deal with a client?

19:40
Megan Noel
So the CCAO or the CCO is the only one absent to the CEO that sees a bird's eye view of the company. Everyone else is Sort of seeing it up and down very linearly. We are seeing it across. And I think for years were saying because we're across, we could only go an inch deep. I think the expectation now is to go much deeper, and it's on that CCAO or CCO to have the curiosity, the tenacity to want to learn that business not just at the top surface level, but much deeper down. I certainly don't need to be as sophisticated in our numbers as our cfo. I certainly don't need to be as sophisticated in the law as our gc.

20:29
Megan Noel
But I need to be dangerous enough in all of them to be able to sit down at a very senior level and have a thoughtful conversation. Well, they will say, well, Megan gets it and she understands her perspective on this based on where she's coming from and what she knows about our business. Makes sense. And so the onus is really on us to be curious. I say that to my team. I'm in a new job in a new profession, in a new industry, and I'm learning a ton about a new business and asking a ton of questions. And some of that curiosity has to come through in order for you to be successful. I also think that in my experience, business leaders want to teach and they want people to be curious about their business.

21:17
Megan Noel
And so they're willing to spend the time getting you up to speed, teaching about how we make money, where the potential problems are, if they think that'll help sort of benefit the reputation and storytelling in the long term. But I think the onus starts on us, not just at a senior level, at all levels. We have to be curious about the business that we're communicating or advocating or writing about. And so that. That, to me, is so imperative as we all continue our own journey throughout our careers.

21:50
Daniel Nestle
Yeah, gaining the knowledge is one thing, but that curiosity is, you know, some people have it, some people. I. I think in our profession, the vast, like, the tendency is for people to be curious. And I always feel bad for the people who aren't, or I just feel like they need to go look for something else to do. But to really, you know, being curious isn't enough though, right? You have to have, like, solid critical thinking to be able to ask the right questions and flag the bravery, I guess, to flag things that you're not quite getting or that you know, you. If you get some knowledge, like you said, you could be dangerous. Say something. You could be in a meeting and say something like, I don't know if that strategy is going to work.

22:35
Daniel Nestle
And then the CSO will be like, why isn't it going to work? And then you can talk about it, or you can back yourself into a corner and say, oh, no, you're the strategy person. I'm sorry, stepping over my skis, right? The both of those things happen. So you need to have the curiosity, but you also have to have that critical thinking and a smidgen of confidence and bravery, especially the way you're courage and bravery.

23:01
Megan Noel
I think you have to be the one that says sort of the voice of reason in. In the room, right? The one that's got a head tilt and say, what do you think about this? What do you think about that? One of the things that I've learned throughout my career, though, is that you should be really surgical about when you use that skill, because if you do it too often, then you just become negative, Nancy. And then you're not sort of talking about, okay, I hear you, yes, how. Or you just become the no person. Right? And nobody, whether you're in a corporate affairs or communications role or in any role, wants to be involved with a new no person.

23:39
Megan Noel
They want to be involved with someone that, if it's going to question things, can also offer solutions or alternatives or options to move forward. So I have tried to with my team is when you're working with me or you're working with business leaders, instead of saying no, but right, offer alternatives or other options so that we could potentially get to yes, it just might be a different path because our job is to enable the business to do what it wants, not just to shut things down. And then when you do have to say the no and just no, period, it feels like you're using that really thoughtfully and people will take you seriously.

24:26
Megan Noel
And I think you'll get a lot more allies and folks that will bring you in to bounce things off and be an idea generator and an innovator instead of a compliance organization, for lack of a better word.

24:39
Daniel Nestle
Sounds like we need to add diplomacy and political savvy. I don't necessarily mean like, you know, Republican, Democrat type politics. I mean, internal politics, how. How to sway and persuade people and know what. What cards to play when to that skill set. Right? So everything we're talking about is what used to be called the soft skills. And I don't think they're soft at all. I mean, these are extremely critical business skills and if backed by acumen and fact.

25:14
Megan Noel
Sally Sussman, who was legendary chief corporate affairs officer, really pioneered in this space for PFIZER wrote a book a couple years ago about how communications is now a hard skill and I love her. I see her as a sort of ultimate mentor to many of us and sort of paving the way for this profession to get not only the credibility that deserves in the C suite, but sort of shaping what the modern corporate affairs function is. But she said in her book that it is no longer a soft skill, that communications is a hard skill. And that is one that it's worth honing, it's worth practicing, it's worth refining. And so that has been something that I think has been refreshing to us who sit in this profession and really believe in it.

26:01
Megan Noel
But it also is something that is not static and you have to continue to work at it because every situation is going to be different and knowing how to navigate internal politics and relationships, but also then to translate that to an external realm is a true skill.

26:24
Daniel Nestle
Yeah, and that reminds me from something you said earlier about, you know, the like, if comms is a hard skill and the way that we are translating what we see into action for our clients and for our companies. You know, the one piece that jumped out at me a little bit was the idea of brand. And you know, you mentioned earlier very briefly that when you're talking about reputation, talk about brand reputation, etc. A lot of communicators are also, you know, wearing a couple hats and sort of mucking around in the marketing space or there's a, or it's a gray line. And at certain organizations where you're, you know, you're doing both of those things, you just don't know when you're doing marketing, you don't know when you're doing comms necessarily. You know, there's ways to figure that out.

27:19
Daniel Nestle
But, but do you have any connection or like what is your connection say? Because as an executive and an advisor, you certainly, I'm sure that you have some connection to what's going on with brand and marketing for your company. But what is, what do you think the role is of the communicator under, especially in the corporate affairs function in your new world when it comes to marketing a brand? Yeah.

27:46
Megan Noel
In both of my in house roles the CMO has been a peer and sometimes it's a different relationship, but in both of those they've been a peer. And I have so appreciated that in both roles they. My last role, my CMO was one of my closest friends. We didn't always see Eye to eye. And I don't think we need to, but it was one of my closest friends and allies. And the more we understood about what each other did, better we could become partners and that our team can become partners. And the same is here in my current role. I talk to my CMO all day, every day about different things and we're sharing different insights that we're learning. We're both tackling the impact of AI on the business from different realms. Right.

28:32
Megan Noel
But still sort of sharing ideas of what you're hearing and what he's hearing and sort of. And how do we build upon. And we're both responsible for the enterprise brand, the health and wellness of it, the evolution of it, how we show up to different stakeholders, where we show up and you know, and so it's been an amazing partnership. I think that when you find a CMO that you get along with, that you respect and that you value knowing that you will always see eye to eye. That's okay. Those sort of, that, that natural tension point can build better and get an end product that's better. But I think you have to have a natural respect that you're doing two different things for the organization. His role demand gen. Right. And my role is reputation. Together we take care of the enterprise brand.

29:31
Megan Noel
And so when we both take our strengths, that's when the magic happens. But it's that mutual respect instead of the mutual competition that I think is so important. And frankly, what the CEO wants.

29:45
Daniel Nestle
Yeah, I think every CEO would want that. Right? Every CEO wants to have a, you know, a council of advisors that work well and offer great advice. Right. And you don't want infighting in that. It's the last thing they want. But sometimes it happens. You know, I thought it was. It's pretty interesting because, you know, there have been times in my professional career where, you know, marketing, the marketing leadership would consider the communications function to be like subservient in a way, even if it wasn't so on an org chart, you know, it's different. If it's on an org chart and comms reports into a cmo, it's a little different story. But you see that happen a lot. You know, I don't think there's like a solve for this. I think you would, I think actually a solve is exactly what you said. But.

30:42
Daniel Nestle
Or, and you know, there's this whole kind of avoidance of friction. You mentioned something really important that you have to understand that you're not going to Agree with everybody that there's, you have to agree to disagree. I feel like communications especially is a world full of client, of very service oriented people who have a very difficult time dealing with disagreement. I do. I mean, I always have grown up a little bit over time, but still, like every time somebody disagrees with me, part of me dies inside. It just happens like, what am I going to do if I disagree with somebody 45 times? I'm literally a skeleton walking dead. You know, it's. But you need to have that. You need to be able to disagree. Need friction.

31:28
Megan Noel
Yeah. And I don't think disagree means that there's, you know, ultimately you can't get to the right answer. I think you're representing different viewpoints or different stakeholders or different approaches. And I think those builds can make things better. I also think we have to be curious about the marketing profession. There's a lot the communications profession can learn from marketing and vice versa. And so the professions are only colliding. And I think the most savvy CMOs recognize that corporate affairs or comms could be an asset to them. Not just as a amplifier of their marketing programs, but as a builder and protector of reputations with a lot of different audiences in a very authentic way. So for those CMOs that are still sort of stuck in that old world, there's an opportunity to sort of pull them out and bring them along.

32:24
Megan Noel
But for those that have recognized that value, my view is partner, hard, partner, fast. It's because I think the end product is going to be way better. I use my CMO as a sounding board for so much beyond that, where we're required to collaborate because I trust where his view is and I think he's got a smart perspective. And even if I don't end up taking it, I value the input every single time.

32:54
Daniel Nestle
Yeah, the intel itself, I mean, just the intel alone is, is worth that relationship. I mean, it's worth making sure that relationship is solid. You're hearing so many different things from your audiences, from your stakeholders, which are often more than like, more often than not. Also customer audiences just at different stages of the game. And you know, the marketing funnel is a little oversimplified, but if you think about it, all these people are on an ultimate journey to contribute to your company in some way. And whether it's financially or reputationally, it's a similar process. And the more you understand about these people, the better, I mean, the better job you can possibly do. And I don't, I think it's a no brainer to me, you know.

33:40
Megan Noel
Yeah. Let me give you an example. Like we're deep right now, sort of unpacking the ChatGPT of the world. The clods, the proximity is, right, how they are. These platforms are transcending SEO as a search mechanism more and it continues to leapfrog. I see in my personal and professional life, people are using sort of said AI platform of choice to search and find information that they need for their personal and professional life. And so we are trying to unpack that and learn that together. What makes the Claude platform tick is different than what makes the ChatGPT platform tick, which is different than proximity and all the tools. Right. Yeah. And equally, as we look at sort of the evolution of SEO and how our websites were really big feeders for that and paid search play the whole formula around, that is changing. Right.

34:39
Megan Noel
And so I am learning a lot from my marketing colleagues on how to reshape how we communicate to help support the LLMs so we get better search results on those AI platforms. And that is something that I am so grateful for because it doesn't matter who comes up with the trick to the answer first. It's that we're all getting to the right place. So that when a student goes and asks should I go to Chamberlain University for nursing school or is Ad Telum a good company? They get a response that we not only like, but we are proud of. And that is a sophisticated marketing and communications challenge in of itself. And so those are places where, yeah, very clearly we can learn because the environment is moving so quickly that it doesn't. Yeah, it's not discriminating who's getting that information first.

35:41
Daniel Nestle
Yeah. Let the record show here that you're the first person to bring up AI in this conversation. So being that you've done that, it does bring up a few things that I think we should talk about and we'll continue on the generative engine optimization, or AI search, whatever you want to call it, stuff as well. I mean, as I mentioned in the intro, you and I actually reconnected several years back very in relation to what's going on with AI and comtech. And that's, it's been a boon. I think it's been a boon to both of our, you know, kind of views of the capabilities that we have and the potential of communications. And it's also been an eye opener for some of the things that we can do now that we couldn't do before.

36:29
Daniel Nestle
But looking at like where it's going and well, let's specifically look at this at Geo. It's interesting that you, and that your, how your company is looking at this because I think there's the, there's really no answer yet. Nobody knows exactly how to look at it. But that's a very wise approach to look at. You know, what are the marketing triggers? What are the, what are they? I'd say marketing triggers and communication triggers. What are the triggers that come from the company in your owned and earned and shared media kind of areas. Right. That that's what we need to be looking at and you know, it's whoever owns those customer relationships etc. That's kind of, you know, where it goes. And a lot of the great measurement stuff is happening on the marketing side as always happens.

37:17
Daniel Nestle
But it's kind of interesting to me because there's a lot of talk now about comms is back baby, this is our thing. GEO is going to like, you know, make sure that comms is like we can actually quantify our value and oh, media relations, blah, blah. I think there's some cart before the horse happening. But I think like on the whole, yes, on the whole this really plays into the comm skill set because it's. Where do you get rich context and storytelling. You get it from our people.

37:50
Megan Noel
Yes. I mean, but I guess what we're learning is that certain outlets, media outlets matter more than others and those that are playing the, you know, GEO LLM search better are having more success. So it's not media relations or storytelling for storytelling sake. It's doing it really surgically in the outlets that are shaping those LLMs. It's reshaping your website to be not only SEO optimized but GEO optimized. It's looking at other third party sites like Wikipedia, which I think many people don't pay a lot of attention to for their corporate websites but is usually and often the number two or number three or sort of at least in the top five of in those GEO or LLM searches of dictating that.

38:39
Megan Noel
So if that content is not what you would appreciate or if it's flat out wrong, then that is being carried at weight into those algorithms. And so it is forcing us to have and I think you and I have talked a lot about this, the data conversation, but data in a super surgical way. For example, beyond Axios or Reuters, not in Time magazine. Right. And like those are real conversations that we are having inside my organization to Shape the, what we know is where consumer behavior will only continue to go, if not continue to go at a faster pace than it is now. And so how do we continue to influence those places that are right to be influenced?

39:25
Daniel Nestle
Yeah. And then you, then we're at the mercy sometimes of the, you know, the relationships between the LLMs and the media organizations. You never know when the media organization is, or the publisher is going to be raise their cost of information and data and the LLM is going to say, well no thank you. And then suddenly all your work in the New York Times is gone from the. You know what I mean? It can happen any moment. Which is why Owned Content in my mind is the place to be the most strategic and the most, or well the most where you want to concentrate your funds really for the most part. Like if there's a kind of punch pie chart there, it's really. But it's interesting that the, that your company's doing like really seems to be ahead of the game.

40:14
Daniel Nestle
That's not the case for most companies, you know. And something you said about Wikipedia, you know back to, just to bring this back a little bit, my inner cur is always like, yeah, I've seen this before, right. This is, this is everything old is new again. You. Do you remember the 20 in the mid-2010s 2014. Wikipedia page. We need a Wikipedia page. Get your Wikipedia page up, write your Wikipedia page. I mean and then it just went by the wayside because people were like, you can't trust Wikipedia. Right. And plus you'd start a Wikipedia page and if you were a high profile company, well the activists were going to come and get you and you know, not worth the effort. Well, there's a lot of tune changing right now. Get me a Wikipedia page. It's crazy. I don't, I mean I don't have one.

41:05
Daniel Nestle
I'm thinking do I rate a Wikipedia page? How do I make a Wikipedia page? I'm even thinking about it and I hope one day I do. But I'll tell you like, it's just crazy how it just, it's the same shit different day.

41:21
Megan Noel
Well, it's also like but, but.

41:23
Daniel Nestle
With, with different metrics.

41:24
Megan Noel
Yeah, I do think it then, you know, because AI search has been prioritizing it. It's something that we're paying attention to. Right. I don't think it's like, oh, it's just in vogue because what's old is new. Again, I think that there is something that is driving that. And any good communicator corporate affairs professional will say, okay, if this is, and you know, an agency helped us sort of figure out what is dictating, and if this is coming up in the top five and it's something that we can influence pretty easily, why should we think about that beyond, obviously, your website, which is completely owned and you have to just write differently and present differently than you would on a Google search or a traditional SEO.

42:05
Megan Noel
And so there's those things that are happening and you need to sort of look at the places that you can influence that matter.

42:12
Daniel Nestle
Yeah.

42:13
Megan Noel
And so I think that's the. It's. It's less about the Wikipedia page, it's more about the skill of using the data to inform. What you need is for reputation. There's not a week that goes by that I don't go across all of the AI search tools and put in what is adtellum. Is Adtellum a good company? And I see how, if we're making any progress on our reputation metrics, it's very simple. It's not something I give to anyone, but it's my own barometer to say, is the work that I'm doing driving the impact and the outcome that I would like, which is whatever shows up as my answer. Am I okay with that? One, is it truthful and honest and correct baseline? And if it's not, we need to fix that.

43:01
Megan Noel
Two, does it present us in a way that we want to be presented? And three, is it missing something that perhaps would be really important to an audience member that we would like?

43:13
Daniel Nestle
Yeah.

43:13
Megan Noel
And so constantly sort of going through that. I think that's like the core of reputation.

43:19
Daniel Nestle
Oh, 100. You know, like there was a reputational, what turns out to be, I think a reputational call to action in a conference I went to earlier this week. The. It's called the Content Entrepreneur Expo, but really killer conference. Great go every year. And a lot of the advancements in marketing and communications just sort of bubble up during these things. And now everybody's talking about AI. They have been for the last three years. But the last speaker at the conference, the closer, was this gentleman named Will Reynolds. Right. So shout out to Will. Will is a futurist and works for this company called Sear Interactive in Philly. But like uber genius. Like one of these people who you want to come in and talk about what the heck's going on.

44:09
Daniel Nestle
Well, he highlighted this really interesting thing in AI Search Geo, where There are players out there who are using almost like old black hat SEO tactics to raise their search profiles. And knowing that the AI search does depend a lot on their, on the Google search, just which sources are they choosing? This is the kind of interesting part. Like what's, you know, that's there some sort of prioritization going on there. But, but there is a, a lot of room for the short, in the short term anyway for companies with a lot of time on their hands or certainly a lot of nefarious intent, let's say to put up loads and loads and loads of web pages that are geared towards conversational content and like AI favored types of content and they're starting to game the system.

45:18
Daniel Nestle
So he's doing this by searching his firm versus others on a certain line of business and the other, the competitors or the so called competitors that were surfacing were like link farms and well, that set him into motion. So he started this whole thing and did some experiments and started to figure out how they could counter that. But that is a reputational problem that's out there.

45:46
Megan Noel
With every innovation there becomes someone that wants to take advantage of it from a nefarious way. So, so it becomes a proactive reputation and a, you know, sort of reputational risk exercise.

45:59
Daniel Nestle
Yep. And you said something important like it's not only are you showing up in the search, it's what is the information that is being transmitted as a result of that search. Because it's not a meta tag, like those days are over. It's not a meta tag. They're pulling in, you know, what it sees as what you do represent. So his firm was showing up with like it was saying his firm plus a statistic about their hiring and employee retention program. Like that was the thing. But that's, they're not an employee or hire, they're not a hiring company, they're not an employee retention company. They're a strategic technology consulting firm. So you don't want to be seen for that in a list of competitors.

46:42
Daniel Nestle
So they, you know, they did some work on their website as a result and it took about a week, but the results starting to kick in. So this is the kind of things that we need to work very closely with the marketers on or the web people and really watch the data very carefully.

46:56
Megan Noel
I think especially because AI is seen as unbiased. Right. So there is a perception that whatever question you get in, they are, you know, it is unbiased when in Fact, I think the group of us that have been sort of living in this know that it's not unbiased, it's pulling information through just a different algorithm to serve it up to you. But for the average consumer of should I buy this soap? Is this a good product? Is this company have a good reputation? Like all the sort of inherent questions that require an we'll come back with a qualified opinion. Most people think it is unbiased. So it's giving them not a PR answer. Right. Or a company corporate answer, but a real answer, but when in fact it could be just as biased with other bad data.

47:50
Megan Noel
And so as arbiters of reputation, to me it's like a huge opportunity to then look in and say, okay, how do we create the story that again is one factually correct? Yeah, but showcases the benefits of said soap or said clothing or said education that we want it to be so that the consumer ultimately knows whatever product they're buying or service they're buying, exactly what they're getting.

48:21
Daniel Nestle
Yeah, they're getting a fair share. You know, AI will give you a buyer's guide. You ask, you know, hey, I'm, I'm looking, this is my situation, I'm looking for this. I've got this much money, you know, help me out, it's beyond me. And then you'll get a buyer's guide, you know, because if you want to just say where's the, you know, where is the, the nearest and cheapest, you know, patio furniture store or whatever it is, the people will use Google for that for the most part. But when it's like, hey, help me out with something, help me make a decision, then you're going to AI and you're trusting what you're seeing, you know, which is you start to play around with the word trust and start to play around things like that.

49:00
Daniel Nestle
And then the reputation, you know, kind of warnings start to go off and we have to be on top of that. So in your team, you know, you cover a lot of the R's in the irgrpr. And you know, how much of your team is focused on like content creation, especially like for your owned properties or for your, you know, for your blogs and executives and so on.

49:28
Megan Noel
I'd say a portion of their time. I don't think we over engineer it any more than anyone else. I mean, we spend a whole host of our time on being out in the market, whether it's with media or investors. Or policymakers. That's a big portion and it still remains a big portion of our job and I want it to be. Or whether it's out in the field in universities with our faculty and our students. Like having that finger on the pulse. You don't get that from sitting in headquarters. You get that by being out in the field. And so that's I think, just as important as all the skills that we have on content generation for whatever said stakeholder we're developing that content for.

50:06
Daniel Nestle
Yeah, it's, there's a, I think a new balance. Not new balance the brand, but there's a new balance that we, I think will ultimately kind of figure out. Where, you know, how much are we, how much are we publishing? How much are we kind of announcing and communicating by those in person meetings? How much are we kind of discovering new by going to events and going to conferences, having these platforms that I know you and I have been talked about in the past. Such an important thing for not just executives, but for everybody who wants to really kind of stay on top of things. You want to go out there and be involved in person events. The in person events are of particular interest I think, because, you know, at least for the moment, you don't have like AI in the room with you.

50:58
Daniel Nestle
I mean, people are recording with AI. Like you have that. In that sense you do. But what you're hearing and what you're seeing in real time is real human content. You know, that's what they're taught. Like you're getting this conversation. Do you find your strategy tipping in any of those directions or do you find that, you know, you're seeing more of a demand for this at all in your corporate affairs function?

51:23
Megan Noel
I think we're in a profession where we're constantly inventing ourselves and that we need to constantly be sort of what's on the cusp of innovation. I started my career faxing press releases. I'm not faxing press releases anymore. I don't even know where a fax machine is. And I'm very grateful to that. But you know, we have to constantly be, especially as a C level title, thinking about what's next. I had listened to a video from Jeff Bezos when he was running Amazon, you know, years ago before Andy Jassy took over. And he said, my C suite is always working in the future. And if you sort of sit on that for a minute, it doesn't mean that you're not reviewing, helping, support, coaching things for your team in the present.

52:11
Megan Noel
But you are spending a lot of your brain space and your mental capacity thinking about what's next. And so you don't get that from sitting behind computers or sitting in your home office or like, you have to be out there talking, learning, listening. And it doesn't have to be new. It could just be new to your company or to your industry. So some of the best ideas have been tried and true from someone else, and you're taking it and applying it to your world and. But you don't get there by like, you know, only working in the present and backwards. You get there by pushing forward. And there's got to be some innate sense of urgency, lack of complacency.

52:55
Megan Noel
You know, there's sort of something that je ne sais quoi, a part of you that you are in this job that you want to push and push. I think that's what makes us good leaders because we're constantly thinking around what's next or peeking around corners to help bring that back to our teams, to coach them along. But that requires conversation, dialogue, being with people.

53:18
Daniel Nestle
That's like the other audiogram I'm going to save from this. I mean, because that's the rationale for this whole show. Like, that's thinking about the future. What's next. Let's think about where we're going. It's very Gretzky and of you to talk about those kinds of things. Like, you know, beware the, you know, be where the puck is. What? I always get it wrong. I'm terrible at memorization, but it's, you know, don't go where the puck is, Go where it's going to be, that kind of thing. I'm terrible at sports.

53:43
Megan Noel
It's a hallmark of my leadership style. I love it. I am curious. But I'm also anxious in not innovating. I like to innovate. It's one of the things that any job I'm taking, it's how do you change or lead or push forward an innovation process that can make something better. And so it's a, I think it's the most fun part of a job. Oh, for sure. And inevitably the most complex, but the also the most rewarding.

54:19
Daniel Nestle
I'm kind of glad you went in that direction because we're, I see we're like, we gotta wind down soon. And I like, this is typically where we gotta think big picture, a couple big picture things. Think about further for our listeners out there. But innovation you know, that's. Again, I'll remind our listeners, that's. That's how we reconnected, you and I. We were, we were both up for this, for the Page Society Innovation Award. Very first award I ever got in my professional career. Right there behind me.

54:47
Megan Noel
Amazing. I will lose to you any day.

54:50
Daniel Nestle
Yeah. So, like, it's crazy. The project that you did was outrageously great. But let's put that aside. The point, I'm saying the point is though, that was 2022, that, at the, I remember at the ceremony, the, or the. Whatever you want to call it at the page conference where they gave this thing out. It was like, just after some of the AI tools had come out and they. As a, as a gift or as a sort of like I got the 3D printed thingy, but like, you could see these wacky images behind me. And for our listeners out there are some very early AI generated images. One looks like, sort of like a trophy with a skiing mask on it with. Surrounded by pterodactyls. It's just, it's bizarre. But it was like Mid Journey V2, right?

55:45
Daniel Nestle
Like, we're talking a long time ago, but it was for innovation. And you know, think about where that was and where we are just three years later. And I was talking. This is going somewhere, trust me. I was going, I was talking with Chris Perry recently and I've mentioned him a few times on the show because he said something really, I don't think he coined this, but it's still an incredible thing to say where companies need to reckon with the fact that we all have a PhD in our pocket now, and that opens the door to an age of innovation that we've never seen before. But companies, a lot of organizations are having a lot of difficulty like incorporating this into their culture, into their values, and kind of reflexively quash too much innovation.

56:48
Daniel Nestle
Or they reflexively say, wait, wait, you have a job to do. Do your job. And you know, you have. So you're, you're a comms person. Why, you know, why do you want to get involved in, you know, supply chain stuff just because you had an interest in it and you were, you played with ChatGPT for a little while now you have an idea. Maybe they have a great idea. I don't know. People have the ability to color outside the lines like never before. And a lot of that leads to innovation. So how are you viewing innovation? Not just, you know, not just on your team, not just as adtown, but on your team or. And in the profession as a whole.

57:28
Daniel Nestle
Like how do we need to treat the, the up and coming innovators among us and does everybody need to be an innovator now?

57:41
Megan Noel
I think we all have to have curiosity for what's next. Whether it's curiosity in our business or curiosity for innovation or just curiosity. Right. I think that you won't succeed in this business. You may succeed at the junior level, but you certainly will not succeed as you go up the rom and you will not succeed at the sort of C level if you don't have curiosity and then therefore like an appetite to innovate. I think when it comes to innovations for teams, every company is at a different level. So even with my team right now, we're. The innovation that we're looking for is to show up more as a corporate affairs first as opposed to GR first or IR first or comps first. Right. As sort of, we're corporate affairs professionals first and then we're GR specialists or IR specialists or whatnot.

58:38
Megan Noel
So that feels like innovation with a little eye. But it's a big mindset shift for folks that would just say, well, that's my job over here and this is your job over here. And if we start to break down those silos, to me that's not just innovation, that's transformation for that function that will have a multiplier effect for our business. So I think we often think of innovation as like something next big. It's got to have technology embedded into it. But it could be as little as connecting dots, bringing people together and that, you know, shows up as something different or a better experience or it help spot risk, reputational, real risk earlier. All of that still matters. So, you know, it could be big and small, but I just think it has to be present in what we do.

59:35
Megan Noel
I was trying to help someone get a job who's just out of school this summer. And it's really hard. It's been written about, no one could get jobs. People are cutting entry level jobs because of AI. And this woman actually had she done an internship, she knew about AI. So that was a leg up. Like she was, I'm embracing, I'm knowing it, but it was still really hard. And she ended up landing a job, really premier agency. And when the feedback came down to her versus someone else, the hiring manager said it was because she showed an appetite to push and to learn and to innovate and like that Skill, like even at the very entry level matters. And it was the difference between her getting a job and not getting a job, not the AI, which was interesting.

01:00:22
Megan Noel
It was the mindset, well, the AI.

01:00:25
Daniel Nestle
Is just the tool, you know, and I think that's such an important point that some very, some smarter people than myself have been saying a lot lately, which is, it's not the AI. It's not the AI. It is the human. It is the human. You can give this great, the greatest innovation engine of all time to anybody, but it's not going to do anything unless the human decides to do something with it. And you know, to your point, it doesn't have to be like a big sea change.

01:00:57
Megan Noel
Yeah.

01:00:58
Daniel Nestle
You know, sometimes it starts with, man, I've been writing this thing for, I've been doing this thing every day for weeks. And let me just talk to Chat GPT and say, you know, is there a way to do this better? And then chatgpt say, sure, there's a hundred ways to do it better. Try this, try that. And then guess what? You come up with one little thing and then all of a sudden, you know, maybe you save some time, maybe do it more efficiently or maybe you just enjoy doing it more, who knows? But that's an innovation that's worth noting and worth keeping. And you know, when that, when those things, you know, incrementally accumulate, you're talking about change at the level that, you know that, well, it'll just sneak up on you.

01:01:39
Daniel Nestle
But it's something that's unprecedented and positive for the most part when we think of it that way and it's, it. I think you're right, it's mindset.

01:01:46
Megan Noel
Yeah. And, and I think just that like when I get to, I again, it's such a privilege to be in my role to sit with, you know, innovating with the Chro or innovating with our CDX leader or innovating with our cfo like around our different audience groups and what matters and they want us to do that. That's why we're at the table, because of our business acumen, because of that. But because we also, we're on the cusp of what's next, of how people consume information. And we're all now in the TikTok generation. Whether you're, you know, 20 years old or 60 years old or you're an investor or a consumer, you're all getting information in that sense, sort of type of short form video snippets. And so I'm starting to think, well, what's next? What's the next TikTok?

01:02:38
Megan Noel
What's the next way people are going to consume information? Is it through AI questions and answers? Is it. Is it through something else? And that's like part of where you sort of start to live in the future of like, how do you anticipate that and then build successfully around that to help support our business?

01:02:57
Daniel Nestle
It's all about asking those questions. It's all about that curiosity. It's crazy. It's crazy how that keeps. We keep coming back to that. I mean, wonder why that is.

01:03:05
Megan Noel
Yeah.

01:03:06
Daniel Nestle
So. So, Megan, I mean, we're just about out of time. Everybody out there, if you are, you know, if you want to know more about Megan Noel, you can find her on LinkedIn. Just look up Megan Noel. You can of course go to adtalem.com to learn about ADTALEM. Global health, global education. Sorry, ADT AL global education. Anything else out there, Megan, people should be looking at for you?

01:03:31
Megan Noel
Nope. I really appreciate you having me on. It's been lovely.

01:03:35
Daniel Nestle
Yeah. Any last words before we run?

01:03:38
Megan Noel
Thank you.

01:03:39
Daniel Nestle
Those are great last words. I love it. So much to learn from you, Megan. So much, everybody. I hope that you really picked up on this idea of, I'll say it again, curiosity. Thank you very much, Megan. I'll see you again soon.

01:03:53
Megan Noel
Awesome. Thank you.

01:04:01
Daniel Nestle
Thanks for taking the time to listen in on today's conversation. If you enjoyed it, please be sure to subscribe through the podcast player of your choice. Share with your friends and colleagues and leave me a review. Five stars would be preferred, but it's up to you. Do you have ideas for future guests or you want to be on the show? Let me know@dantrendingcommunicator.com thanks again for listening to the trending Communicator.