In this week's episode of What's At Stake, hosts Bryan DeAngelis and Tucker Warren, partners from Penta's Washington, D.C. office, welcome special guest Eleanor Hawkins, reporter and author of the Axios Communicators newsletter. The discussion explores the origins and success of Axios Communicators, Eleanor's newsletter that offers insights on the latest communication trends impacting businesses, leaders, and communicators.
Eleanor shares her perspectives on emerging topics influencing corporate communications, such as the increasing value placed on soft skills by executives, the impact of AI and emerging technologies on the C-suite, and how culture wars have affected communication strategies. She also provides advice for early-career professionals on developing and leveraging soft skills and offers book recommendations for aspiring communicators.
Bryan, Tucker, and Eleanor also dive into the "shrinking sidelines" in national discourse, and discuss how communicators are preparing for the upcoming election season. Eleanor also asks Bryan and Tucker for their perspective on what makes a powerful communicator and to unpack the significance of data-driven communications throughout their careers.
The episode offers valuable insights for professionals in the communications field, covering key trends, strategies, and resources to enhance their understanding and approach to effective communication. Tune in!
In this week's episode of What's At Stake, hosts Bryan DeAngelis and Tucker Warren, partners from Penta's Washington, D.C. office, welcome special guest Eleanor Hawkins, reporter and author of the Axios Communicators newsletter. The discussion explores the origins and success of Axios Communicators, Eleanor's newsletter that offers insights on the latest communication trends impacting businesses, leaders, and communicators.
Eleanor shares her perspectives on emerging topics influencing corporate communications, such as the increasing value placed on soft skills by executives, the impact of AI and emerging technologies on the C-suite, and how culture wars have affected communication strategies. She also provides advice for early-career professionals on developing and leveraging soft skills and offers book recommendations for aspiring communicators.
Bryan, Tucker, and Eleanor also dive into the "shrinking sidelines" in national discourse, and discuss how communicators are preparing for the upcoming election season. Eleanor also asks Bryan and Tucker for their perspective on what makes a powerful communicator and to unpack the significance of data-driven communications throughout their careers.
The episode offers valuable insights for professionals in the communications field, covering key trends, strategies, and resources to enhance their understanding and approach to effective communication. Tune in!
Welcome to this week's episode of what's at Stake. I'm your host, brian DeAngeles, a partner here at PENTA. I'm joined today by my fellow DC-based PENTA partner, tucker Warren, and today our special guest is Eleanor Hawkins, reporter and author of Axios Communicators. Eleanor joined Axios from PBS, where she supported executive positioning, coaching, crisis comms, public affairs and media relations a lot of the work we discuss and talk about here at PENTA and previously served in various capacities as a comms strategist focused on defense policy and politics. She now has a awesome must read newsletter. I'm happy to say that I've enjoyed it every week since she launched about, I think, two years ago. So, eleanor, really excited to have you joining us today.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.
Speaker 1:Why don't you just give us a little history lesson, maybe first? I think you are about two years into the newsletter now. How did this come together? How's it going? Are you liking it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, the newsletter turns two in July, so we're still very much in the toddler phase, but it's going well. The Axios Communicator idea concept came from Axios founders, mike Allen and Jim Vandehi, I think, when they first launched Axios. They obviously launched it with the idea of communicating differently to readers and to audiences, and they heard pretty quickly from their peers, both in the media but also their peers in leadership roles and C-suite roles, that communicating this way was really hard and getting the attention of your audiences was really hard, and I think we saw the importance of communication come to the forefront in 2020. And the leaders at Axios were like wait a second. The needs of leaders are changing. Their communicating is changing, the way that audiences want to receive information is changing and nobody's there to really cover that. Nobody's covering this transformation.
Speaker 2:And so Axios communicators was born and they were very intentional about finding somebody who worked in communications to cover this. Because of all the nuances and because of all of the subject matter expertise that is required, they wanted somebody who had been in the room when these discussions were taking place, who knew the background. I also think that the way that we report at Axios is very subject matter expertise focused. Every reporter is an expert in what they cover. Let's just put it that way. So I am part of that, I'm probably part of that newsroom and it's been really exciting to build this out, and I'm just really excited about how we're continuing to evolve Axios communicators, whether it's in person events, but it's been wonderful to see the reception, so thank you.
Speaker 1:That last point is one that I often think about. For years there's been PR, trades and comings and goings in the industry or some thought leadership opportunities, but this was really the first time, I think very much an Axios smile, that style, that smart brevity of why is this actually going on? What's happening behind these issues? Why are these such big comms, challenges, whether it's COVID, whether it's a lot of the ESG debates that you and I have talked about before? So give me a sense. Is that what you thought going into it, or what has kind of surprised you the most about doing the newsletter now for almost two years?
Speaker 2:I feel silly saying this, because it shouldn't be so surprising to me.
Speaker 1:No silly answers. Yeah, go for it.
Speaker 2:What's been the most surprising is just that there is a comms angle in everything, and I think I really benefit from sitting in a very active newsroom because I have my colleagues. Whether they cover business or tech or health or environment, there's always some sort of comms angle, and so it's been really rewarding to get to partner with them. But that has been the most surprising thing. When I first took this on, I was like how many times can I talk about different communication trends? But it's so much deeper than that and there are no shortage of communication crises happening on a daily basis. So, yeah, that's been probably been the most surprising thing is just that comms really does touch everything and I sit in a privileged position that I'm not expected to necessarily report on breaking news, but I'm expected to peel back the curtain and kind of show where the comms went right or where it went wrong and the impact that it has on the business because of it.
Speaker 3:Talk to us a little bit about what trends you are seeing in the folks that you're talking to as part of putting the weekly together. I mean, brian mentioned ESG a minute ago. That's certainly been an issue. That's top of mind, I think. But when you're out talking to communicators, what are the most common themes that you hear them talking about right now?
Speaker 2:It's not a new trend, but I think it's one that continues to evolve, and it is just the way that audiences are so segmented. It really has changed the way that leaders, brands, employers have to communicate and have to think about communication. So it's no longer just getting the message right, it's making sure that you're then deploying the message in the right places at the right time and finding that right audience. One thing I think about a lot is the PNPR stands for public. Does the public really matter? Is that really who you're trying to reach, or do you want to find this hyper-engaged, super focused audience? And that's becoming more and more possible with all of the technology that we have, and so seeing communicators think about that in that way has been a really interesting trend. It's made the job trickier, right, because you can't just place a story in the New York Times and expect to reach everybody. You have to be much more strategic about it. So it's made the job harder, but I also think there's more opportunity because of it, because, like I said, you're able to find those really niche, really engaged audiences.
Speaker 2:I think an added layer of that comes with AI, which is obviously another trend that we're watching really closely and how that could continue to disrupt the way that we receive information or trust information or think about the information that we have. The way that you discover news could continue to change. So those are really the things that I'm hearing from folks as I'm reporting. And just to circle back to that first point, I think COM's teams are relying more and more on data and analytics, and so that's one thing that I'm hearing is, when they're thinking about their team five years from now, they're thinking about a very data-focused team and makeup, and so that would be interesting. I'd love to hear from you all. I know that Penta spends a lot of time working in data. How have you seen these trends impact your work?
Speaker 3:I totally agree with both of your points, but the first one in particular.
Speaker 3:Maybe I'll pull on that thread a bit, because I do think that, as communicators, being a bit obsessed about understanding your audience is so critical in doing it well, today, the tools that we use at PENTA to have a deep understanding of one, spending the time to figure out who we want to reach and then what are their preconceived notions about a given issue, what are their values, what are the things that might compel them to potentially take action. That's in the environment that we're all in, with as much information around us, that's a difficult thing to get people to stop for a second and even give your thing a read, and so the more obsessed you can be with understanding your audience and then figuring out, of course, where they are to actually reach them, is so critical, and it's one of the things that, at PENTA, half of our business is data analytics and analysis about stakeholders, and it's why we've built the business that we have, because we've just found, over years of doing this, that the more you understand your audience, the more likely you are to be successful.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I'll just add I agree with all of that. I'll add kind of maybe one or two points, but that ability and that data then frees you up to really understand how to target those audiences and who are the influencers around the audiences. So it's not a strategy anymore of let's go to the New York Times or let's get as many press hits as we can to try to to your earlier point blanket the public and hope it's getting the portion of the public that we actually care about. But now and I think AI is gonna have a lot of value here too it's unlocking more around own content or some niche publications or what we're seeing explode and kind of influencers online reaching them, knowing they can then reach your audience. You're removing some of that more broad-based approach and really starting to get into some precision targeting, which is work, but also like really interesting and a lot of fun to get right to that point.
Speaker 2:Are you finding that the folks you work with, your clients are really open and receptive to that strategy, or are they slowly getting there? Like, what is the appetite for this more targeted niche outreach?
Speaker 1:It varies, I think when they have a need, like especially here sitting in DC, when you are about to run an advocacy campaign, when you are about to push back or promote legislation, regulation, whatever it may be you've got a good idea of the audience and seeing those tools that allow you to very effectively and efficiently it's often a lot cheaper in many ways reach those audiences then yes there's an easy path to clients being open to that, being excited about that.
Speaker 1:Where I think there's still some learning curve for the industry at large is understanding that having that data and knowing where I stand with the audience three months, six months, a year, before the issue even starts to bubble up, is so critical to being prepared and maybe mitigating the actual issue becoming a reputational threat for you.
Speaker 3:It wasn't that long ago when clients were still hyper-focused on landing something in the journal or the times and feeling as though that was it, that was the finish line.
Speaker 3:And for a while there it did feel like we were trying to get clients around to the idea of how you target off of that kind of content, delivering that content right to where people are, rather than just assuming that well, if you place an op-ed in the journal, everyone is gonna see it, and that's not necessarily the case today, and so it is. We've seen a real progression from clients on it. It also makes the metrics more meaningful. I mean again, once upon a time, getting something in the paper, your only metrics were circulation numbers, and the circulation numbers are based off of a projection of who was gonna read that newspaper that day. It was never a very good metric and many of us ended up doing those kinds of metrics for clients because it's what clients were accustomed to. And now, with the ability to target and see engagement rates, you have a much more real conversation about. Are we moving the needle or and reaching the right to the one-a-ranger?
Speaker 2:Yeah you bring up such a good point is that's another question that I get all the time when I'm talking to these folks is how do we measure our success?
Speaker 2:What can we take to the C-suite to show our ROI? And I feel like If you have these micro targeted campaigns, you know how to gauge the success of them, right, or you know how to move the needle and then you can tie it back to the real business strategy. So that's really, really fascinating and that is something that I'm paying a lot of attention to. And you guys are kind of talking too about reaching external audiences. I'm finding that even some of the comms leaders that I talked to are becoming more and more targeted with their internal comms as well and thinking more strategically about that, right, because you know, just because somebody's on payroll doesn't mean they're going to read your emails. So I think that's something that a lot of internal communicators are thinking through, and then they're also trying to find those metrics of how to how to measure the success of their internal communications and the culture that they're able to cultivate. So it's it's it's fascinating to see kind of data at the heart of comms.
Speaker 1:It is and that's, and that's interesting to see in two ways. There's there's kind of the internal comms of you know for lack of a better description the higher ups speaking to their kind of rank and file employees. We're also seeing it a lot and I know you've written on this as, as communicators and CCOs and others, they get deeper and deeper into the management of the organization, because we're just in a world probably post 2020, but maybe even sometime before that where you can't have those silos anymore of this is the marketing team, this is the IR team, this is employment comms Like you need those folks in the data that really understands how all of this ripples through the whole organization.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's a really great point and we are seeing more and more of that there. There was a report that came out recently that said and I reported on it a couple of weeks ago but you know, the discussion of having a seat at the table is is no longer a discussion at all Like it is just now expected that communicators are part of the business decision, and this, this report, found that 90% of communication leaders are either brought in at the beginning or during a major business decision. Only 10% have been left to, just you know, execute, which I think is a positive sign.
Speaker 1:Yes, and a big swing. I mean, Tucker, you'll remember the days I I want to say those numbers were probably almost reversed five, six, 10 years ago.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. That's actually. I think it's a great segue into a piece that you wrote recently where you said communication remains the most wanted job skill on LinkedIn, and your findings were that, you know, executives value soft skills more than ever, which I think is a one. It's a, it's a welcome development, and I'd be interested in kind of how you're, how you're perceiving that shift where executives are not only valuing communications, colleagues and and kind of providing a seat at the table, but also paying very close attention to their own ability to communicate effectively internally and externally, and maybe that as a skill that is as in demand as other things in in sort of MBA grad school world.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I caught a little bit of flack for referring to communications as a soft skill, to be honest with you, because it is.
Speaker 2:It is a hard skill these days. It is something that everyone must have. So I think that that goes to the point of what you're saying. But it was a LinkedIn study. They do these studies annually and, for the second year in a row, communications was at the top of the list for both job descriptions and for those who had gotten placed over the last year. So people who had communication skills and jobs themselves with communication skills required remained at the top across LinkedIn for the second year in a row.
Speaker 2:And I think the reason is this right, like you can have the best strategy, the best product, the best idea in the world, but unless you can communicate it effectively, you're not going to be able to bring anybody along with you, right? And so I think I think leaders have realized that. I think part of it, too, comes back to the changing demands of audiences. Audiences, whether they're your current employees, potential employees, current consumers, potential consumers they want to know more about your company, they want to know more about your CEO, they want to understand you know where your values are and what your mission is, and there's more opportunity to engage with people in that way, and so I think that's something that we're going to continue to see more of is just the way that brands and leaders finesse their communication style.
Speaker 2:Gone are kind of the days of, like, the nameless, faceless brand voice on Twitter. I think, as we lean more into video first, visual communications, you're going to need that human form, that human connection, and I think that also gets back to what it's about is. It's about connecting. It's about connecting with your audiences and, like I said, kind of bringing them along. So, again, whether you're a CEO or a manager, or this is your first job, being able to communicate effectively will definitely give you a leg up, and that's the findings from those LinkedIn studies.
Speaker 1:I have to follow that with the AI question. So there's a lot of anxiety in our industry of AI will be able to do a lot of this work, whether it's producing content faster, using the data to understand audiences better. But I will say I'm skeptical of that anxiety. I actually think to your point. The communications part of this will always be so critical, but you've done a lot of reporting on this. I mean, where are you seeing AI start to impact some communicators in this sense? Is that anxiety real out there?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a great question. I think communicators are locking to these AI tools, but for right now we're seeing them use more for content creation kind of low hanging fruit. If you ask me, they're still very much playing around with it. I will say there was a Muck Rock study that found that the amount of people who were engaging with these AI tools has doubled since this time last year. So about 61% of PR professionals are using tools in some way, shape or form. But, as I said, it's more content generation, it's more brainstorming, maybe some message testing here or there.
Speaker 2:Based on my reporting and the experts that I've spoken with, I think in 2024, we'll see more AI use cases when it comes to predictive measures. So predicting how an audience might react to something, predicting just how something might land, how it kind of goes back to what you were saying earlier, tucker is like understanding three, six, nine months ahead of an issue where an audience might be so using AI for those predictive measures. But it's not unique to communications. I think every industry is going to have to grapple with AI. My hope, and I think the hope of a lot of communication leaders, is that AI will just be a tool that will free up time and allow for you to do more of that strategic work, more of that planning, more focused on that connection, that audience first mentality. That is really what we're seeing.
Speaker 2:I would also say that, like Everybody is, it's not just on the communicators to get comfortable with AI. I think they're in a unique position because not only do they need to understand the tools and be able to say wait a second, no, this can't replace me, but they also need to be able to explain if their company is using AI, how and how that's going to impact all of their audiences. So they not only need to be an expert for their own job security, they need to be able to explain how AI is incorporated and becoming part of the company itself. Because I guarantee you, if you look to my inbox right now, every pitch that I'm getting from every company out there is now billing itself as an AI company, right. So what does that mean? So communicators now need to be experts in that and to be able to speak to that. So I'm seeing more and more comms teams start to kind of cozy up to their CTOs and try to figure out all of these aspects of the job.
Speaker 1:There's an offense and defense component of this too. So I completely agree with what you just said. I think everyone wants to be an AI company. Now I'll put a plug in. Pent has been an AI company for almost 10 years now, but before it was cool. But everyone is heading that direction. Everyone's figuring out how to use that tools. It will save time, it'll save energy, it'll allow you to do a lot more. But there's also the flip side of that of and we've done some writing on this what happens in those scary hypotheticals where someone uses AI to doctor something your CEO said, or change a press release you did, or earn it? I mean, we saw what happened with a company just having a typo in a press release on their earnings. What happens when there's a bad actor that uses AI to try to act on that? That's going to fall to communicators on the front lines to respond to that.
Speaker 2:Totally, and what happens when AI inevitably becomes some sort of wedge issue? Right, that will happen at some point. What happens when it's politicized? And you've spent the past four years billing yourself as an AI company, so I think that's definitely fair to say. Another thing that I'm paying a lot of attention to, kind of on the defense, is how AI could impact ESG. That's something that companies are now starting to think about, and so I think that's why it's really important going back to an earlier piece of our conversation to have the communicators at the table, because they really are the ones who can see across the business and pull those pieces together. If we're saying this here, we need to make sure that we're able to back it up, or we need to make sure that it's not impacting this other messaging campaign that we're doing or this other initiative that we have, and so I think AI is just another huge transformative piece of a calm strategy because of it.
Speaker 3:You mentioned. Let's go back to ESG because that is, there's been a lot of political tension and kind of culture war. That ESG, I think, kicked off to a degree and now it's splintered into all kinds of other different elements and different labels. But how do you think that that issue and the political intensity around ESG has impacted communicators? We've seen some communications teams struggle over the last couple of years in various kind of rollouts and things like that. They've really gotten a lot of blowback on. What do you think communicators have taken away from those incidents and how are you finding communicators thinking about doing that effectively going forward in this environment?
Speaker 2:I'm finding now that everybody is much more focused on action-driven communication when it comes to ESG, which is, I think, a positive change. I'll also say they're being much more prescriptive and clinical in the way that they describe their ESG efforts, so using certain language that might not alienate certain audiences. I think messaging is really important when you're talking about these topics that could be politicized or could be weaponized. Even so, I'm seeing that companies are being much more intentional about how and when they talk about it, but I don't see the work itself stopping. It's more just how it's being messaged and when it's being messaged and why. And again, I think it's just given how politicized everything can become.
Speaker 2:We're seeing the same thing happen with DEI efforts. It's very, very similar in that the work itself might not be changing, but the way that it's being talked about is, and I think we're seeing that chief diversity officers and general councils are increasingly at odds over how and when these are being discussed. So, yeah, I think that will continue and I think it kind of goes back to what we're saying is AI isn't going to be able to help you make these decisions. Necessarily you need a human in the room who can understand the audiences and also help with the negotiation internally. Right, get everybody aligned internally on this strategy. I think that's where a lot of it comes into play and then also just making sure that employees understand where and how you're going to engage and maybe why you're changing your messaging. I think that's really, really important to make sure that everybody is aligned not only on the strategy but how it's being talked about.
Speaker 1:It's a really good point, and you and I did an event last fall together on rebranding ESG. It got kind of too political that folks stopped calling it ESG, but they were still doing a lot of the same work. I'm curious. We're in an election year. The culture wars are going to be pretty prominent, as we have quite a unique election in two incumbents, two unpopular incumbents that are very well-defined already. I mean, how much do you see that intentionality, folks not really maybe jumping on bandwagons of trends, but really trying to stick very closely to communicating what they're doing, why they're doing it, especially as the political sidelines just seem to shrink year after year?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a great question and that is something that we've seen is that companies are being much more prescriptive in how and when they weigh into things. I think we saw a shift from external statement, external pledges, to now internal problems. Like that is the priority of the internal comms leak. So be it, but I'm I'm seeing that shift right, there's always got to be some internal message when it comes to a social, social or geopolitical issue, but we're not seeing as many you know pledges and external statements, and I think a lot of the internal comms that we're also seeing are rooted back in action in some way. Right, whether it's a community initiative or a shift in their business strategy because of something that might be happening across the globe. That's really where I've I've seen the shift, but I would also be interested to hear from you guys, because y'all are really in the thick of it and DC advising these companies have you seen the sidelines shrink or are people starting to get back on like the bench ride the bench more?
Speaker 1:I think you are seeing you're seeing a lot of anxiety about the shrinking sidelines that folks feel compelled to communicate things around their core values, to be able to respond, especially to internal pressures from employees or different pockets of employees, around some of these issues that you just you, just you know you can't escape anymore in your daily life.
Speaker 1:They're in the newspaper, they're talked about on every one of your podcasts, you a sinew, or television programs, whatever it may be. So it's, it's top of mind for everybody. And those lines in our worlds have blurred where I think companies feel a lot of pressure but I think they are getting much more comfortable, I guess I would say with different approaches to that. You don't have to be the CEO on SquawkBox staking a position on that. There's a lot you can do with better internal comms, as we talked about with you know some of the listening and data tools, that to know where your audiences stand, who are the right influencers to communicate to, so kind of coming full circle, taking a much more sort of precision approach to that without sort of trying to wade into the middle of the battlefield, if you will.
Speaker 3:I think also knowing your company is a critical part of figuring out what you need. It's no different than the sort of we were talking earlier about being obsessed about understanding audience. Half or more of some of those communications efforts are really oriented at internal stakeholders and understanding where your internal stakeholders are and what they need and expect from you, and also showing them that there's a process that's been well considered, that has multiple perspectives taken into account, so that you're able to say, OK, like here is our process for deciding do we or don't we? And if we do, then what does what does? Yes, we do look like it doesn't kind of Brian's point have to be. Doesn't have to be a tweet from the CEO.
Speaker 3:There's there's a lot of different ways people can impact Issues that that are happening in the world around us right now where your internal stakeholders want to see your company engaged. It doesn't always have to rise up to that level of this of the CEO tweet, which that's a let's let's be clear it's a. It's a. It's a high wire act to land well in this environment. We or in a situation we saw all of the university presidents come to Washington to testify, to try to have a conversation and boy that was, that was a bloodbath. So yeah, difficult to get right.
Speaker 2:And you attribute that to them just not understanding their audiences. Like it does kind of feel like our conversation is coming full circle, where it's like you have to know where your audience stands, you have to know how to reach them, you have to know what message to take to them and when and again, does does the public matter? I don't know, but these audiences certainly do. So focus. There Is that kind of what you're you're seeing when it comes to these hot button issues.
Speaker 1:I think that's absolutely right and the higher ed hearings are a great example. You know, if you think back, you had the CEOs of some of the largest financial services industry right in the day before, I believe, and all of them have become master communicators. They know what the politicians sitting up at the dais are going to ask and what they want. They know the positions of their companies. They have the answers. I was very sympathetic in some ways to the higher ed presidents who that's unfamiliar territory They've been pulled into. Now they're in front of a hearing. We can probably do a whole nother episode on prep and everything went wrong there. But very clear from the start that they were just didn't understand. The audience didn't understand what was at stake here and, as Tucker said, it kind of went off the rails pretty quickly.
Speaker 2:You, you talking about this gets me thinking about a book that I read recently and wrote about last week. It's called Super Communicators and it's by Charles Duhigg.
Speaker 1:Yes, this is where I wanted to wrap up the show, so perfect segue.
Speaker 2:Well, he, he, just he. He brings up a point that I think is fascinating, which is understanding the type of conversation. Your audience which could be a group of employees or, you know, your spouse Understanding the type of conversation they're trying to have. Are they trying to have a practical, solutions oriented conversation, or are they trying to have an emotional conversation? And if you go into a conversation with the wrong type of mentality, if you're trying to just come with a bunch of solutions when they just want, you know, to vent and talk about you know the emotional aspect that that will, that's a recipe for miscommunication. And so when I think about knowing your audience, it's not, it's not just knowing what they want to hear, it's knowing the type of conversation that they want to have. And I think that book did a really great job of pointing that out. And yeah, it's, it's one that I read in a day. It was very informative. Not many communication books are page turners and that one definitely is.
Speaker 1:And I mean that's advice for almost every aspect of communication, whether you're a CCO speaking to a big audience, a big audience of your customers, or you know, I've had those kind of conversations, as you know, head of the office in Washington, talking to a couple of our employees. Like you've got to understand exactly that point of what type of conversation you're having. But I did want to end on a light note of we have a lot of young and mid career listeners and always looking to give them good, practical advice. So it sounds like super communicators is one they should go read. But other advice you have for folks or other great books, something that jumped out of you.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So another great book for communication professionals is Breaking Through, which is by Sally Sussman. She's the Chief Corporate Affairs Officer at Pfizer. It's a phenomenal read and she kind of takes you through her career as a communicator in all of the different companies that she's worked for, all of the different challenges, whether it's communicating with humor or communicating during COVID. There are so many insights there to take away and it's a really nice read. And then, of course, I would be remiss if I didn't mention Smart Brevity by my boss Mike.
Speaker 2:Allen, roy Schwartz, jim Bandai. It's a great book. It's all about, you know, winning the war for attention and also kind of gives you some insight into how we write and how we report and our Axios style. I'll also say that all the proceeds for that book go to our fellowship program, so it's a great read and a worthwhile one. The other interesting piece anecdote about that book is, I want to say it's for you to publish a book you have to write like 200,000 words maybe, and they wrote 200,001. So they kept it as brief as possible.
Speaker 1:On brand Right on brand, yeah.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 3:I like both of those books and we were actually we had. Sally came to Penta and did a presentation and took questions, and Jim has done the same. We've actually, I think both of those books are sitting in our coffee table in our reception area. So those are good recommendations, brian, do you have one that springs to mind?
Speaker 1:Great question. Those are both good books and I'll have to read super communicators. I mean, very early on in my career, when I first became, I guess, a press assistant in, you know, my hometown congressman's office, my boss gave me SpinCycle by Howard Kurtz so it's a bit of an oldie, but really great read into controlling the media narrative. What was then a 24 hour news cycle we're probably down to a 24 second news cycle now. But really how the Clinton's second term team tried to really stay on top of a lot of breaking news around a lot of fronts that we all remember. How do you manage the media? How do you work with reporters? How do you try to control some of that narrative that? I find myself going back to that book every couple of years because it's a great read. How about you Tucker?
Speaker 3:I've been thinking, yeah, I don't know that if it's, I don't know that this one is a favorite. It's kind of like when someone asks you your favorite song or favorite movie or whatever. But one that I feel like I've been thinking about and I want to go back and read is a book called Getting to. Yes, it's by Roger Fisher and it's interesting to me because it's really actually a book about negotiation, but an old boss recommended I read it early in my career and it certainly feels as though it continues to get more and more relevant because, you know, in today's environment, we're coming back to audience again here.
Speaker 3:You know, in today's environment, with audiences as segmented as they are, as politically polarized as they are, with as much information as audiences have access to, they are coming to every single situation with some notion in their mind about almost anything. And so it's ultimately you are negotiating for their time and their interest and potentially trying to propel them to take action. That is, at the end of the day, a communication, and so when he talks about negotiating between two parties, some of those fundamentals are not much different than how we think about doing what we're doing. It talks about things like building trust and aiming for a win-win, not a win-lose dynamic, and understanding what the party, the other party, wants and needs from you and you know, focusing on issues or interests rather than positions Like those fundamental dynamics that are a part of a negotiation are, I think, highly applicable to communications in today's world.
Speaker 1:That's great. I'll have to check that one out, Eleanor, before we wrap any news you want to break. Do you have a book in you? Will we see a Axios communicators one soon?
Speaker 2:No, but you will see me in your inbox every Thursday, so feel free to subscribe to Axios communicators if you're not already. We cover these sort of topics, but everything that impacts how brands, leaders, employers communicate and the involving needs of audiences. It's not just for communicators, it's for everybody who's in business. So thank you for having me and letting me share more about Axios and about the vertical.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, great to have you on. We appreciate you joining and I do recommend everyone subscribe to the newsletter and you're doing more live events. We've done a couple with you. They're great conversations, so I encourage everyone to check that out as well. But, eleanor, thank you very much for joining us this week.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me.