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Hello and welcome. You're listening to Marketing Matters on the Wharton podcast
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network. This is our weekly podcast where we analyze the latest in advertising, marketing, customer
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behavior, new product launches, retailing, branding. I'm Barbara Khan, the Patty and JH Baker Professor of
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Marketing, and I'm joined by my co-host, Americus Reed, the Whitney M. Young Jr.
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Professor of Marketing and the brand identity theorist. Hello, Americus. >> Hi, Barbara. So, you know, they call you
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the wizard of the Wharton marketing department and uh the reason why they call you this is that you wave your
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wisdom wand and magical things happen because we just get smarter about very specific topics. So, I was thinking
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about this and I was imagining the last two thought scenarios that we've been
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sort of discussing, which is what if you're the CMO of Cracker Barrel and things are going haywire online and you
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got to be able to communicate. You gota be able to come up with a strategy to be
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able to understand the right ways to persuade people of your particular position or let's say you are seuite
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leadership at Disney and you're sort of trying to struggle to figure out should
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we bring Kimmel back should we not bring him back what's going on in this ecosystem you need a strategy Barbara so
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I'm coming to you today to see if we can somehow find some insight around communication comms how to say the right
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things what to say when how what have you got for me today wizard How about the author of a book called Think
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Faster, Talk Smarter. Wouldn't that be a good solution to that problem, Americas?
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>> Amazing. >> So, we're so lucky today to have with us the author of that book, Think Faster,
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Talk Smarter, and the host of a podcast with the same name, Think Fast, Talk Smart, Matt Abrahams. Thank you, Matt,
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so much for being here. >> Hi, Matt. >> I am thrilled to be with you, America.
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Barbara, I wish you guys had more energy. Would you please dial it up a little bit?
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>> Yes, we're full of caffeine, sir. That might be one of your one of your
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protocols. I don't know. We'll see. >> We are so happy to talk to you. Not Not
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only are you a podcast, an author, but you also are teach at Stanford Graduate School of Business, so you're one of us.
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So, we're really happy to have you with us. Can you tell us like a little bit
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about your background, how you managed to accumulate all these accolades? >> Well, thank you. and and there's nothing
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more wonderful than being faculty at a business school. You know that the students are amazingly bright. The
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opportunities are fantastic and and I love learning. So, it's it's an opportunity to learn to teach. Uh you
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know, my background is I I've always been passionate about communication. My
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mother was a teacher, an elementary school teacher. My father was a lawyer. So, words and communication were always
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really important. My father was always, "How do we structure this, make this
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clear and concise?" And my mother was, "How do we make this engaging and
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interesting?" And so from a very young age I was always fascinated by communication. Uh with the last name
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Abrahams, I always went first in school. So so the my latest work has been on what I call spontaneous speaking. How do
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you communicate in the moment when you're put on the spot? And my whole life has been that way because I always
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knew where I sat. I always knew I was going to go first. So I was always put on the spot. So I think that that
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interest early in my life and the experience I had growing up really had me focus on communication. and I was
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fortunate enough to to study it in grad school and then I worked in the corporate world for over a decade. I ran
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learning and development for companies and clearly saw how critical communication is to success not just for
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organizations but for individuals within those organizations. So I've been teaching strategic communication now at
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Stanford's Graduate School of Business for this is my 16th year. We just started recently and uh I love helping
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students understand how they can hone and develop their communication skills. You know, I have a couple reactions to
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what you just said. One of them reminded me of Malcolm Gladwell's book, I forget
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which book it was, where he talked about like whether you were born in the beginning of the year or the end of the
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year, you're going to have some advantage in school or that's a really interesting thing to think about where
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you are in the alphabet because it does follow you um throughout your whole >> Absolutely.
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>> So much so that that I was I actually feel a little offended uh at Stanford's
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business school and you might know her given that you're in marketing. Jennifer
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Oer is aa and and so it is it is one of the very first times in my life where I have not been first and so uh well I I
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adore Jennifer and her work is phenomenal. It it is funny that I >> America's thinking fast.
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>> Yeah, exactly. >> I didn't even hear the question before you came up with the answer.
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>> No doubt. This is awesome. Very very cool. Yes. But, you know, this idea of
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of communication and the way America has put it out there with like CEOs seriously having to be on the spot to
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answer really quickly, what are your big takeaways, your big ahas on that? >> Absolutely. So, first and foremost, this
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is a skill that needs to be worked on. Many people feel I'm either born with it
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or I'm not. And that's not true. It is a skill you can learn and you develop. You
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can develop it. I always use the analogy of athletes. If you think about it, athletes in whatever their sport is,
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they are being spontaneous. They are responding to what's demanded in the moment, but they do a lot of drills and
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practice. So, we have to practice for this. That's number one. When it comes
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to doing that work, we have to take a two-pronged approach. It's about mindset
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and messaging. >> And with mindset, there are a lot of things we have to do. We have to get
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present. We have to listen deeply. We have to remember that these situations are actually opportunities, not threats
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and challenges. So, mindset is really important. And you have colleagues, I have colleagues that study mindset that
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really share how important the way you approach life, but particularly communication matters, but also how we
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craft our messages. Messages need structure. Structure is a logical connection of ideas. And if you train
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yourself on some of these structures, they actually give you road mapaps to help. We all know structure. If you've
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ever seen a television ad, you've seen the structure problem, solution, benefit, issue, challenge in the world.
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the product or service helps remedy it and we benefit. If you can get the right mindset, develop the right structures,
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it becomes much easier to manage in the moment. >> Let me let me pick apart a little bit of
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what you said because um and let's start with the first part before we get to the
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structure. One of the things that struck me that you said and it sounds like kind
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of obvious but it's not my experience that people do do this >> which is you said you got to do active
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listening. Um, I find in a lot of these conversations, especially with people who really know them, their stuff,
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they're real experts, that they're not really listening. They're waiting.
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They're waiting until you're done so they can say what comes next. Yes. >> And one of the best advice I ever got
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for teaching really and you know when you're a young teacher or you're in
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there like you're so anxious to prove yourself that I think this idea of active listening. I mean right there in
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my opinion I don't know if you agree with me on this but that's like an incredibly important piece of advice
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that I don't think people necessarily hear. >> 100% listening. You know as somebody who
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teaches communication people are often surprised that I spend a lot of time talking about listening. Most of us see
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communication as putting information out, broadcasting. But listening is critical, especially in spontaneous
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situations because if you don't listen astutely, you might miss what's really
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being asked. If it's Q&A, what's really needed, if it's feedback, I have a
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situation where in my life, this actually I screwed it up. So we I came out of a meeting with a colleague. The
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meeting did not go well. And the colleague turned to me and said, "Hey, what do you think? What what's what do
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you think? How'd we do?" I immediately heard feedback. What I missed was that
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he came out of the room the back door. He was speaking quietly, looking down. He did not want feedback. He wanted
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support. And when I itemized all the things we did wrong, I damaged the relationship.
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>> And you're exactly right. Active listening is important. But more so than
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active listening. We actually have to repeat back what we've heard. I teach people and train people, and my wife
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gets really upset when I teach listening skills because she thinks I'm a fraud.
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She thinks I need to do some work on this. But I I >> Wow. >> I teach
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>> You're being quite transparent, sir. It's We love We love honesty.
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>> You know, authenticity and being candid are critical. Um I teach people when I
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teach listening skills to listen to paraphrase. Most of us listen just for the top line of what we hear and then we
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begin rehearsing, planning, and and judging. You need to listen for the bottom line. So, I'm listening. If I had
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to summarize everything you're saying, what would I say? That causes me to listen more deeply and completely and
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then what we know from some of our colleagues who teach at Harvard just, you know, a little bit away from you all
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that if you actually pair it back, if you do that paraphrasing, not only do you demonstrate listening, but you
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actually begin to foster trust and connection. >> So listening is critical. Not only does
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it make sure you respond appropriately, but it makes sure that you connect to the person. I love the notion of a
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shared reality and we shared reality. I'll say it again and we miss that a lot. We we we'll be talking to each
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other and it'll be landing on each other totally differently and we'll have no
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idea. So I love this point Barbara and please jump in and continue what you were going to uh you know build on that
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it's just trying to get to a shared reality and that understanding of listening active listening like Barbara
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said as opposed to waiting for the silence to end. I love that point. >> You know, I mean, the other thing about
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this thinking just in the way America set it up, you know, we are a marketing um podcast, so thinking about how these
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skills are useful for marketers and in particular, as he set it up, in crisis situations where communication is
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critical. Another advantage of what you just said, not only are you really listening and forcing yourself to
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listen, but it gives you time. Like I don't know how important you think that
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is, but like you you know if you're you're talking about speaking fast. I
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forget thinking I forget. >> Think fast, talk smart. Yeah. Think. All right. Let's Barbara, let's practice
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together. Think fast, talk smart. There you go. >> But like I mean that almost implies I
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should think really fast. But like what you just said is if you actively listen and then take the time to repeat what
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you just said, you're actually giving yourself time. It's not like a race, you
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know. >> Yeah. So, two things I want to highlight based on what you said. First, think
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fast and think faster is all about pattern recognition. >> If you train yourself to recognize the
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patterns, you can respond better. So, you actually become faster. Expertise is often defined as pattern recognition.
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When you look at a chess master and a lot of the expertise research is done on people who play chess, uh it's really
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pattern recognition. So think faster is all about pattern recognition, not literally about thinking faster because
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that can cause you to stumble. But you're also right in situations of spontaneous communication, you can take
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some time. There are three ways I I coach and teach people to do this. One, ask for it. Say, "Let me think about
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that for a second." That's okay. In fact, there's some research that says
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when you deliberately pause to reflect, people see you as more credible because you're really trying to be present and
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give them what they need. >> Thoughtful. Second, you can ask a clarifying question. If you ask me a
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question, ask me to do something, I can ask for some clarity. That buys me some time. And then finally, what we talked
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about earlier is paraphrasing. Paraphrasing is a lower order cognitive skill, which means we can do it and be
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thinking of other things. So, it buys us some time. So, you're absolutely right.
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We have to buy time if we want to. And we can do so for by asking for it, by asking questions, or paraphrasing.
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I love this point. I you know something else that jumped into my mind Barbara as
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we were having this discussion with Matt and that's the idea of like how fundamental this is right anytime a
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human and another human is engaging Matt's work becomes relevant right so you can think about a million different
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marketing contexts where this might play out right a retail Matt uh Barbara is the retail guru at the Wharton school
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she knows everything about retail everything she's a wizard she's a guru
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that's great >> it's unbelievable I just love basking in her glory
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>> basking in her intellectual intellectual Matt, so so the idea of like customers,
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like how do you talk to customers? You know, we talked about seuite stuff, all of that stuff. But I want to put you in
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the hot seat, Matt, real quick. I want to go back to All right. So you are the Disney executives and you're starting to
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get some feedback from reactions to this situation with what Jimmy Kimmel said on
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the television show and there's licenses issues, blah blah blah. You're counseling Disney in the early days.
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Take us through the analysis. What do you tell them? how what pieces of additional advice, you know, above and
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beyond what you've talked about thus far would you give them and how would you
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help them not destroy things or keep things, you know, kind of under control if that's possible? Well, first, thank
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you for giving me a a situation that isn't inflammatory and have lots of challenges on it. I appreciate that.
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>> Don't say the wrong thing. >> Yeah. So my my advice in all of these
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types of crisis situations is first understand the situation. Often people react quickly and that actually can work
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against them. I'm not saying be slow. I'm saying take a moment to really
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understand what's an issue. First and foremost in all strategic communication
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you need to understand the audience and audiences you're speaking to. So what
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are what are the issues at play here? You have to lay them out in a dispassionate way to understand what's
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going on. Once you have that understanding, begin to think about what are the what are the potential solutions
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that we can deploy here. You know, they they pulled the plug very quickly. Okay.
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What then do we do with that situation? You know, now that we've made that rash
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or quick decision, what is it that we're going to do? So really think through the
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opportunities and and the problem solutions that you have and think then about the ramifications of action or no
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action. So if I were advising Disney, I would I would first say who are the constituents at play here? What are the
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issues involved? What are the possible solutions that you have? Look at that solution set. Think about the
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ramifications and then begin thinking about the scenarios and how they would plan out. So do some scenario planning.
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Think about the reactions. This takes a little bit of time, but it is time well spent.
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>> When you move very quickly, you then have to not only fix the mess that got
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you to that place in in the first place, but you often create another mess because you move so quickly. So, I
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really think people need to test step back, take time, think about who the audience is.
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>> Let me double down on something you said earlier about that. I complet I hear
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what you're saying and it's kind of like the structure that you're going to use
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to respond. Another thing I I heard you say in the beginning which I think is right especially in these kind of
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inflammatory situations is that you kind of have to train on these frameworks so
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that you can pull them up right away. I mean that's one of the things that we do
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in teaching core marketing is we try to give a a framework for immediately how to analyze. You know, we call it five
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C's, STP, four Ps, and we practice over and over. The answer to each situation
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is different. And then you need to think, you need to listen, do all those things. But there's some value in
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setting up these structures. I think that that's what you said beginning and
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I just want to like double down on that. >> Absolutely. So having having structures
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that you are familiar with, well practiced structures help you because they give you a place to go. You can
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make the choice to go there or not, but at least you have a direction. So when I
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teach people Q&A skills, Q&A is spontaneous speaking. I have a structure
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I like to teach people. I'm happy to share it with you in a moment. But by virtue of having that structure, you can
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fulfill one of the two obligations of spontaneous speaking. What to say and how to say it. The structure tells you
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how to say it. It's like a recipe. I am a lousy cook. Neither of you would ever
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like to eat a meal I make. But I am a better cook when I follow a recipe. Mhm. >> So I teach people a structure. It's
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three simple steps. A DD for adding value. Answer the question. Give a detailed example. Describe the relevance
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or value of the answer. So let if you don't mind, let's play this out. Imagine
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you are interviewing Americas though. >> I'm going to have you put me in the in
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the hot seat. I want both of you to imagine that you are the on faculty to hire somebody to teach strategic
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communication at your prestigious your prestigious business school my whichever it doesn't matter what is a reasonable
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interview question you would ask that doesn't just have a yes no answer to see
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if I'm qualified to teach MBA students strategic communication question just
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ask me a question and I'll try to answer it in the structure be kind that's good uh and so make sure I I'm
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going to ask another clarifying question to buy a little more time. >> To buy some time. I love what you're
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doing. And you're going to paraphrase. >> You see what I did there, Matt? Did you?
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>> I did. >> Uh, I did. >> Yeah. But so, we're interviewing
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someone. They're going to come in and they're going to start immediately,
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Barbara, teaching our uh, warden MBAs. So, I'm probably going to ask how what
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something to the effect of what is your philosophy on how the things that we study as an academic show up in the ways
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we need to teach in the classroom. >> I might ask a question like that. I I
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believe it is absolutely critical when teaching strategic communication skills to role model and demonstrate effective
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communication. In all of my teaching, everything from how my syllabus is put together through what I do in office
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hours to how the students metriculate and what I say as they're leaving class
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is all well thought out to demonstrate and role model what it is we teach in the class. So, if you were to hire me, I
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would make sure that our students not just learn the theory and practice, but they see it play out so they can take
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advantage of and understand what it looks like. So, you can tell me if that's a good answer or not, but it
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certainly followed the structure. It answered the question, >> gave a detailed example,
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>> and then it explained why that's important or what comes next. >> See, I need your help, Matt, because
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Barbara gets uh very high, you know, student ratings. I'm just I'm just trying to get get better. This is great
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advice, though. This is fantastic advice. >> But but you can see how having that
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structure. I didn't know what question you were going to ask you. That was a
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question I have was totally not knowing. I did not know it was coming, but I knew
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how I was going to answer it. I was going to give an answer, give an example, explain the relevance. So,
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because I had that path, it was easier for me to put that answer together. And that's what structure does. And back to
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what you said, Barbara, if you practice structure, not just in messaging, but in
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your approach to dealing with issues and challenges, you can more easily and readily do it. That's just like an
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athlete who does all these drills. when in the game the opportunity to deploy what they did the drill for comes up,
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they're at an advantage. >> Yeah. It's kind of like, you know, you're talking about thinking fast. I
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reminds me of the Conaman framework, system one, system two. >> That's exactly.
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>> And what you're talking about system one is automatic thinking. And if you have
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these frameworks and rehearse it even though the answers are going to change in each time you have something you can
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immediately go to and you know you're going to try to answer the question you're going to try to give an example
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and then you're going to try to say why it's relevant. I think I was looking at
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some of the things that you have said in the media before just you know to see which questions you were asked that I
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was particularly interested in and one of them you were asked was like how do you overcome anxiety? Like that's an
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interesting thing because a lot of people are um anxious about public speaking or they're afraid some
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interview or something like this >> and I I think that I'm guessing one of
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the answers to that question is going to be to have these frameworks to rely on.
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I don't know is that is that an answer to your question? >> Uh so so having frameworks helps take
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away some of the pressure. You know I spent a lot of my time helping people feel more confident and less anxious
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around speaking. It is a ubiquitous fear. Those of us who study it believe it is just part of being human. We see
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it in every culture and we see it start to develop at certain times of in children's development as they become uh
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teenagers. So this is it's it's critical to work on and there are things you can
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do to manage the anxiety. Up to 85% of people report feeling nervous and high stakes communication situations.
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Personally, I think the other 15% are lying. I'm lying a situation. But there are many things
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you can do from managing symptoms. You know, the experiences we have, the the shakiness in our voice, in our bodies,
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the sweatiness on our brow, there are things we can do to manage that. Deep belly breathing is a great way to to
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reduce some of that. We have to deal with some of the sources as well. One of the sources of anxiety is wanting to
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communicate right to do it right. I have been doing this work for decades. There
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is no right way to communicate. There are better ways and worse ways. But here's where that structure piece comes
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in. Many of us believe that if I memorize what I'm going to say, then I'm
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going to do it right. So the problem there is when you memorize, you actually split your cognitive bandwidth, your
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precious limited cognitive bandwidth. So part of it is judging and evaluating. Am
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I saying it right? And only part of it is in the process of actually doing the communication. It's much like when you
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have a laptop open and you have lots of windows open. Each one of those is a little slower.
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Yeah. So this is where this this is where structure helps because if I don't
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memorize, what do I have to get through my material? I have a structure. So structure is the answer to avoiding that
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perfection memorization trap. It's a really quick story, Barbara. When I did
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a I did a TEDex talk many years ago and the organizers were really all over me about send the script, send the thing
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because they want to put it in the the confidence monitor. And the day of the practice, Barbara, it was a total
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disaster because I just don't operate like in reading stuff and things like that. To your point, Matt, I said,
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"Forget it." The next day, I kind of showed up and I said, "Here are my
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bullet points. Put the bullet points up. Let me work through this. Give me the timer and I'll fit into the timer." And
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I it made me realize the question, Barbara, I want to ask this. Can can you know are there heterogeneity differences
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in people who yes we can practice but are there certain types of personalities where this person is just you know maybe
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maybe they're born to be a an improv comic I mean they're just good with this
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stuff or or how talk and by the way I will share with you Matt Barbara has also completed a comedy course so she is
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a master master of uh improv comedy in addition to her wizardry and retail guru >> of course master is a is a leap I, you
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know, improv, I think, is one of the best skills to train people to be effective in the moment communicators.
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Most people think improv is about being funny. It's not. It's about being
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present. It's about being open to opportunity. Yeah. Exactly. And we have lots of I don't know if Wharton does,
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but here at the GSB, we have lots of classes that infuse improvisation because a manager, a leader needs to
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have those skills. That said, Barbara, I want you to invite me to an open mic night when you're performing and I will
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come and be in the audience. >> No problem. It's hard. I like stand up
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better, actually. >> Okay. Well, you still have in in standup, you have to respond to hecklers
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and what's happening in the room. So, there there's a lot of spontaneity. I
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have a cousin who is actually a very well-known comic. And uh it's wonderful
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to see him work a room. There's a lot of spontaneity in that. And all of us as
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leaders, as people need to have those skills. I I want to kind of switch gears. You're saying so many things and
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it's so interesting. What? No, it's wonderful. I love it. Uh and so relevant
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both to communications and to marketing, but one of the things we're also interested in just because we do this
00:24:07
too is not only are you at Stanford teaching and writing books, but you do have a very successful podcast. So I'm
00:24:14
curious, were you like a pioneer in the podcast world? Um how did you get to grow your podcast?
00:24:21
>> Yes. share some of that wisdom with us, Matt. So, as with many things in my
00:24:25
life, it's about serendipity and willingness to take risk. So, uh five five and a half years ago, almost six
00:24:31
years ago, the business school came to me and said, "Hey, we're interested in
00:24:37
trying a podcast. We the the Stanford has never had the business school had never had a true podcast. They had
00:24:42
classes that they would slice and dice and call podcasts, but those were courses that were made into podcasts."
00:24:48
And I uh like Americus I had done a uh a talk. The talk had done really well. It
00:24:53
was about communication. So they said, "We know that there's an audience for
00:24:56
communication. So do you mind?" And and I've learned in my career that when
00:25:00
opportunity comes, sure, say yes, why not? I'm I'm very driven to help people
00:25:04
with their communication skills. This seemed like a reasonable way to try. Well, this is where circumstance really
00:25:10
played out. And and I tell all my students, I tell my children, you can be really good at what you do, but luck
00:25:16
plays a big role in life. We came out with our first episodes end of January 2020. So here we are with six episodes
00:25:24
ahead of the curve >> on communication. >> Wow. >> And then the world shuts down, the
00:25:29
pandemic happens, everybody is sequestered, everybody starts listening to to podcasts and people are like, how
00:25:36
the heck do I communicate in this sequestered world? So here we were with content at a trusted source that was
00:25:43
relevant while people had time to listen. So I think we had good content, but I certainly am under no uh no
00:25:50
delusions that we were in the right place at the right time. And thankfully the audience started there and and
00:25:56
because hopefully of the value we provide, the audience has grown. But you know what Justin marketing if you have
00:26:02
an offering that people need then you can build a base. >> But you've been doing this now for six
00:26:08
years. I'm kind of and do you do an interview show also? Do you talk to people?
00:26:12
>> So how I'm just curious over the six years starting from precoid what are the
00:26:17
natures of the guests you get on and like what are some of the topics you've
00:26:20
talked about? So we we have academics. I've had several of your colleagues on
00:26:24
Katie Milkman, Jonah Burgerer. Uh we we recently talked to Wendy Dear Rosa. So a
00:26:30
lot of Wharton faculty, clearly a lot of Stanford faculty, but also practitioners, expert practitioners who
00:26:36
who have something to say around communication. You know, the nice thing about what I teach, similar to what you
00:26:41
teach, I mean, marketing and communication, those are big umbrellas. A lot of things fit under that those
00:26:46
umbrellas. So we bring people on. Uh, part of the key, I think, to our success is we're very brief. Our episodes are 20
00:26:52
minutes long. Our goal is at the end of every episode, you leave with at least two or three things you can implement
00:26:57
right away. We've won lots of fancy awards. The one I'm most proud of is
00:27:01
best dog walking podcast because we're 20 minutes. People walk their dogs for
00:27:05
20 minutes, they get value. Um, so, so yeah, I mean, you I mean, as marketing professionals, you understand you have
00:27:12
to have a good product. It has to have it has to fit into people's lives. People have to see value from it. And
00:27:17
that's what we've tried to to build. And we are very responsive to our audience.
00:27:21
You know, we believe in the agile development, rapid prototyping. We try lots of things. Some work, some don't,
00:27:27
but we're always in service of our audience. >> Well, Matt, in in in thinking of keeping
00:27:32
it short, we are at the end of our time. So, we'd like to thank you so much for
00:27:37
joining us today and tell our listeners where they can go to hear about your work, your podcast, etc.
00:27:43
>> Well, first, thank you so much. It was a true pleasure. I love talking to people
00:27:47
who are in the same world I am, both podcasting and academics. Uh, to find out more about what what I do and what
00:27:53
I'm up to, go to fastermarter.io and you can always link in with me at Matt Abrahams on LinkedIn. Those are two
00:27:59
great resources. Happy to connect and happy to share and continue the education that you all are providing to
00:28:05
your audience. >> And you gave them a good way to remember your last name, right? Right in the
00:28:09
>> Yes, exactly. There you go. >> Excellent. Love it. >> Anyway, thank you very much. That's all
00:28:14
we have time for today. Thank you all for listening. We'd like to thank our producers Deion Simpkins and Marissa
00:28:20
Rena. We'll be back next week. Till then, this has been Marketing Matters on
00:28:24
the Wharton Podcast Network. I'm Barbara Khan here with America Reed. [Music]