Between the Lines April 2023: It's the Story, Stupid

April 2023

In this issue of Between The Lines:

🎙️ In our Client Spotlight, LogicMark CEO Chia-Lin Simmons shares why leading with kindness led her to LogicMark.

🗞️ Scott Sutherland examines how James Carville's 1992 presidential campaign slogan "It's the economy, stupid" highlights the importance of crafting a compelling story.

💡 In this month’s Light Bulb Moment, we explore why the Easter candy space hasn’t had any disruptors in decades.

🐰 Plus, a peek at how SGers feel about Easter candies and which treats reign supreme.

Client Wins

Sila Nanotechnologies, Inc. announced the commercial availability of Titan Silicon, the first full graphite anode replacement engineered for mass scale to dramatically boost EV performance. Read more about the breakthrough in Bloomberg. Titan Silicon also addresses key consumer pain points identified in a survey from Sila—read more about the findings in PCMag.

CoderPad CEO Amanda Richardson shares why both recruiters and candidates should embrace ChatGPT in the interview process and their day-to-day work in The Wall Street Journal.

In a panel hosted by The Information, Forethought CEO and Co-Founder Deon Nicholas shared what’s next for generative AI and how new technologies like ChatGPT are pushing the limits of science.

R-Zero CEO Jennifer Nuckles joined the Behind Company Lines podcast to chat through her entrepreneurial journey and how R-Zero is dedicated to improving shared indoor spaces.

Client Spotlight

With more than 25 years of experience in the industry, Chia-Lin Simmons is the CEO of LogicMark, a provider of personal emergency response systems, health communications devices, and technology for the growing care economy. Prior to LogicMark, she was an executive at a number of high visibility technology companies including Google, Samsung and AOL, and led Audible to be acquired by Amazon. In this month’s client spotlight, Chia-Lin shares what drew her to LogicMark and her philosophies on leadership.

Before joining LogicMark, Chia-Lin noticed her mother-in-law had an outdated medical alert necklace that was loud and improperly detecting falls:

“That really drove my passion to say, ‘somebody needs to change this industry because nobody is truly innovating around this category space.’ And if they were innovating, they weren’t putting that human-centric look at it. They’re looking at how to advance the technology, but how do you best implement that? It’s a shocking statistic to think that of Americans 65 and over, one in four will experience a fall. We all have personal stories of people we know who fall into cascading health issues once they experience a fall. LogicMark’s mission is to help those people, and our loved ones as well.”

On building human-centric technology and leading with kindness:

“At LogicMark, we try to put our customer at the center of everything we do. We don’t build until we understand what their needs look like not just now, but what their needs are going to look like in two, five, or ten years from now. By putting customers at the center of everything we build, it allows us to meet those needs versus trying to build a technology and then look for product market fit. I think that’s really crucial in terms of how we launch new technologies in the future because there are many audiences that aren’t served that way in the tech industry.”

On the need for more diversity & inclusion across the tech industry and how action needs to be taken:

“We don’t see enough funding for diverse founders and women. You cannot bring more diversity and inclusion into the industry if you don’t change what’s also happening with leadership and who allocates money. I’m a believer in not just talking about things, but actually taking action. When I first came to LogicMark, I was the only woman on the board. As the company was pivoting, we also started to be more thoughtful about who we brought onto our board. It’s probably a bit less comfortable for some people to invest in people who don’t look and act like them, so the more people there are at the top, we’re going to see that change cascade down.”

For the past seven years, she’s been implementing a “one kindness a day” exercise: 

“I think of kindness as a muscle that we need to work on and flex every day. By flexing that muscle, it allows us to approach things in a way that’s more empathetic, both towards our customers and the people we work with. The “one kindness a day” method gives me the leeway to deliberately and thoughtfully practice kindness every day. It could be something as small as buying the person behind me a coffee at Starbucks, or it could be taking a decent chunk of time to mentor somebody to move into their next career goal. Then you actually lead with empathy every day because you’re constantly thinking about being empathetic and kind.”

Watch the full interview here.

It's the Story, Stupid

Over the past 20 years of helping technology innovators drive successful communications programs, almost monthly we are approached by companies that believe the secret to comms success is jumping on the phones or on email and connecting with reporters. And we are met with blank stares when we ask them what they want us to tell reporters when we connect with them.

It’s the old putting the cart before the horse dilemma, because even the strongest relationship we have with a reporter won’t allow us to close the deal if that reporter doesn’t believe our company has a compelling story. And I’m reminded of an episode in my early comms career that crystallized the importance of telling a compelling story. 

The iconic James Carville was running the 1992 presidential campaign for an upstart young governor from Arkansas named Bill Clinton. Carville looked out across his vast communications network and got out the vote resources. And he wondered how all this effort and investment could be maximized so that every dollar and every ounce of energy would deliver voters to the cause.

And in the vein of Keep it Simple Stupid, he realized all the campaign’s energy needed to be focused solely on the one compelling message that resonated across regions, demographics and political persuasion. And so he said to himself, It’s the economy, Stupid! And it was like a thunderclap. Carville posted “It’s the economy, stupid."

The word went out across the vast communications network of this national campaign that any and all communications must focus on this simple message that a President Clinton would make real changes that made a real difference for people.

It was 1992 and families across the country were suffering the ravages of a major recession that many blamed on an out-of-touch president who’d spent his entire career working in Washington. I think most presidential historians would agree that no four words have had as much impact as this slogan in helping a candidate win the presidency.

But there’s a lesson to be learned from this that extends beyond election comms. Most companies aren’t going to be able to summarize their story in four powerful words. But there is no company that can’t build a compelling story.

And story is absolutely the critical first step in any communications effort. Just like any good book, every company’s story has to have compelling characters in pursuit of a disruptive or paradigm shifting mission. 

Tesla isn’t just building cars. It’s a company run by a mad genius who's hellbent on changing transportation as we know it. 

Creating that compelling story takes courage. It takes a willingness to maybe even show some rough edges. But every company has to get that story right before anyone picks up a phone or types an email.

— Scott Sutherland

💡 Light Bulb Moment: Why we keep coming back to the (Easter) classics

Picture this: you’re walking into the grocery store in search of Easter candy, expecting to find a new player this season. But the usual suspects stare back at you from the shelves — the hollowed-out milk chocolate Easter bunny and its crew of Peeps, Cadbury Creme Eggs, Reese’s Peanut Butter Eggs, and jelly beans. So why haven’t we moved on?

It turns out we have a sweet tooth for nostalgia. Peeps, the adorable marshmallow chicks that look like they stepped out of a 1950s cartoon, have been around since…the 1950s. Cadbury Creme Eggs hatched in 1963, followed by another classic, the Cadbury Mini Eggs, in 1967. Reese’s Peanut Butter Eggs hopped into popularity in 1966, and jelly beans date back to the late 1800s.

With some candy dating back hundreds of years, is it time for a disruptor in the Easter candy space? So many new creative confections hit the market every year, so it’s not unthinkable that a newcomer could shake up the traditional Easter treat landscape. But honestly, it’s probably not going to happen anytime soon. Consumers are suckers for nostalgia, and it’s keeping them brand loyal. In fact, a survey from the National Retail Federation estimated that this year, Americans planned to purchase $3.3 billion in candy for Easter Sunday.

For most Americans, the Easter candy classics evoke childhood memories of hunting for eggs in the backyard and overdosing on sugar with your siblings. And to put it simply, we humans are creatures of habit. We find comfort in the familiar. For many of us (especially the 81% of Americans the NRF says will celebrate Easter this year), indulging in the same old Easter treats is simply part of the tradition.

While there may be room for innovation in the world of Easter candies, it’s unlikely the classics will be replaced anytime soon. The food industry is constantly evolving, but some things never change. Classic Easter candy is just one of those things.

SG Culture

We asked SGers how they felt about different Easter candies and chocolates, and the data doesn’t lie—our team is egg-stra passionate about their favorite Easter treats. Here’s a look at how we voted.