This episode digs into rapid change and shows how branding – both personally and professionally, drives positive results in a world where the only constant is change. In this episode of Brand the Change, Bonnie Habyan chats with two of USA Today’s leaders, Kelly Andresen, President, USA Today National Sales, and Jenny Huang, Director, B2B Brand Marketing, to talk about the decades of innovation surrounding the country’s first national newspaper, the evolution of content consumption over the years, and how USA Today has strategically and successfully adapted to remain a strong and growing brand in the fiercely competitive news space.
About Kelly
Kelly Andresen is President of USA TODAY, National Sales, leading Gannett’s national sales division, inclusive of the USA TODAY Network, Gannett’s portfolio of over 250+ local and national sites. In this role, Andresen also oversees Gannett’s national revenue operations, with a mix of retail marketing, branded content, and programmatic advertising. In addition, she heads up Gannett’s Sports Media Group sales and strategy division. Andresen received an MBA from the Robert H. Smith School of Business at The University of Maryland and is a graduate of Goucher College in Maryland.
About Jenny
Jenny Huang is an innovative marketing executive with a unique blend of creativity and strategic insights. Honored in Campaign Magazine US’ “Inspiring Women” and CIO VIEWS’ “Most Innovative Leaders in Brand Marketing”, she holds multiple Cannes Lions and judges esteemed awards like the AAF American Advertising Awards. Currently Director of B2B Brand Marketing at Gannett USA TODAY Network, Jenny previously led marketing and communication initiatives for Fortune 500 clients at BBDO. Beyond marketing, she is a concert pianist, DEI advocate, and public speaker, with leadership roles at Omnicom Group’s Asian Leaders Circle. Jenny’s global influence spans 10+ countries as a classical pianist. Explore more at jennyhuangmusic.com.
Resources
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Transcript
Bonny Habyan:
Today, we’re having an insightful conversation about evolution in the news industry, how it has evolved, how it’s consumed, which is really interesting, and what the future looks like. With me today are two rock stars from Gannett USA Today Networks. We have Kelly Anderson, President of National Sales, and Jenny Huang, Director of B2B Marketing. Both are going to share some fascinating insights in their career development and the evolution of news. And I’m just really happy to have both of you. Together, we’re going to dive into some of the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead for news media and explore how professionals like Jenny and Kelly are navigating these dynamic, quick shifts. So let’s dive in and cover the latest trends, innovations, and best practices that are shaping the future of news and journalism. I’m going to start with you, Jenny. You have a master’s in music. You are an international performer, a concert pianist. How in the world, with a strong brand like that, did you come in and make a pivot into marketing? I’d love to understand how you’ve transferred some of those core principles from your background in music to a B2B marketing director at USA Today.
Jenny Huang: Hi, my name is Jenny Huang, and I’m the director of B2B brand marketing at USA Today Network. As Bonnie mentioned, I was a concert pianist before my marketing career. And believe it or not, the core principles of marketing and music are quite similar, which is creative storytelling.
Bonny Habyan: Yeah, yeah, they say that. Yeah, I mean, they’re saying, right, storytelling is the key today. I mean, if I hear that every day, every day, storytelling is where it is at, and especially now in B2B marketing. So get ahead, keep telling me.
Jenny Huang: Yeah. So firstly, discipline is the backbone of both music and marketing. To become a great musician requires countless hours of practice, attention to details, and continuous refinement. Similarly, in marketing, discipline means that you have to stay focused on long-term goals and the big picture. In the meantime, maintaining brand consistency, repeatedly communicating your brand messages, and constantly refining strategy based on data and feedback.
Bonny Habyan: Well, let me ask you, when you were a little girl studying to be a pianist, did you ever think you were one day going to be in marketing or it just kind of happened?
Jenny Huang: Well, that’s a great question. Never. The short answer is never. I never knew I will become a concert pianist. Well, my parents put me in piano when I was young, never knew I would become a professional pianist. And transitioning to marketing, that was completely by accident too.
Bonny Habyan: Oh my gosh. Okay. Give me one sentence about how that accidentally happened.
Jenny Huang: I was full-time professional pianist and I was traveling around the world, but to a certain point that I realized that I wanted to make bigger impact to the world. And I see that the way to make bigger impact to the world is through the business world,
Bonny Habyan: Yeah, you’re right. It is, right? You don’t realize that sometimes when people say, what’s your career? I’ll say, oh, you know, I’m a CMO. But then I say, wait a minute, my business is making impact because that’s really what it’s all about and making a connection. And I would imagine music is all about making a connection. So I can see those parallels there for you. So you stumbled upon somebody who said, hey, come to USA Today and help us out. And that’s one big stumble.
Jenny Huang: Well, I started my marketing career in the agency side. I started at one of the most awarded advertising agency, which is BBDO at the Omnicom Group. I was there for two years and tried out several different roles there. a wonderful opportunity at USA Today presented itself and I took the opportunity and it has been a great time to be here.
Bonny Habyan: So tell me a little bit about what you’re doing B2B, you know, explain to us a little bit about what your role is.
Jenny Huang: Yeah, so I joined USA Today Network in 2023 as the first director of B2B brand marketing for the national business. In this role, I increase USA Today’s brand awareness and drive brand transformation among advertisers and marketers by launching a series of effective marketing campaigns and initiatives.
Bonny Habyan: Okay, so what are you seeing? What are you seeing in terms of, I mean, B2B is becoming a lot more like B2C in everything that we do. So is there a few nuggets of advice or guidance you can give to folks when they’re kind of looking at B2B in 2024 and maybe, you know, align one or two things that you’re seeing and doing?
Jenny Huang: I think B2B has often been misunderstood that is being purely rational, but the truth is it’s never purely rational. B2B is highly emotional.
Bonny Habyan: Ah, very interesting. I think you’re right. It’s highly emotional. Why are we just realizing that now? Tell me what you’re seeing with respect to that. That’s so fascinating.
Jenny Huang: In recent years, B2B marketers started to realize that in order to make any kinds of B2B purchasing decisions, there has to be an emotional connection. And that’s why B2B marketers start to launch more interesting and interacting B2B marketing campaigns that could even be as parallel as B2C marketing campaigns that has different colors, sound, and even characters to draw those emotional connections between B2B consumers and brand.
Bonny Habyan: When we all think of USA Today, we’re thinking about the paper. I’m thinking about it 20 years ago. I used to love, you know, that strong brand on the front, you know, reading about everything you can do, a little entertainment, right? Sports, whatever. Explain to me a little bit about when we’re talking B2B and what you’re doing, who are you, which businesses are you targeting? How does that work within, you know, the organization?
Jenny Huang: So my role is I increase brand awareness and drive brand transformation among advertisers and marketers who are interested in advertising or partnered with USA Today. And over the past decade, USA Today has strategically enhanced its focus on B2B to adapt to the changing dynamic of media and marketing landscape. And this shift has been driven by several factors, market demands and digital transformation and diverse offering and customer centric approach.
Bonny Habyan: All right, well, I’m going to bring in Kelly here a little bit. Kelly Anderson, who is in charge of national sales for USA Today. And that’s a tall job. And I’m talking with her a little bit prior to us kind of starting here. And she is a Maryland girl. And I am a Maryland girl, too. She went to Goucher College and University of Maryland, so we have a little bit of a connection there. But one of the things we were talking about is how quickly things are changing and evolving. I want to ask you from the news perspective, if you can give us a couple of insights over the last 10 years pre-post pandemic that you’re seeing from a news perspective, and then we’re going to ask you both. I’m going to talk to you both about how they’re consuming it, but give me a little bit of a state of the state of news.
Kelly Andresen: Yeah, absolutely. I think a couple things. So USA Today Network, we own USA Today, which is our biggest flagship national brand, and over 200 local news sports lifestyle sites. And I say sites because on the national side of our business, almost 90% of our business is digital.
Bonny Habyan: That’s crazy. What was that 25 years ago?
Kelly Andresen: Zero. Zero, right, didn’t exist. Yeah, so a lot of people, I love, you know, traveling and meeting people and everyone recognizes the iconic USA Today brand and think about the actual paper. You see it in a lot of movies, like, you know, people will reference it. You’ll, you know, think about it as you’ve seen it across the nation, the first nationwide newspaper. So it very much was ahead of its time, and that innovative spirit has continued as we’ve transitioned our business to be where audiences are, which naturally is the web. And we’ve increasingly seen that continually change, then going into social media over the past decade, and then into newcomers, and then very strong in video and different platforms like TikTok and the rise of search. I think a lot of publishers and other content creators and storytellers have seen that same journey of following where audiences are going. I don’t think anybody has the crystal ball of what’s next. We have seen the landscape become so fractured. Or I should say there’s more options, right? There’s more options to consume content in many different ways, whether it’s like this in an audio format that you can actually also consume online or on your phone in so many different ways. I love the opportunity for consumers having so much choice. to consume content for us is making sure that we’re meeting audiences where they are and being flexible enough of an organization to be able to test out new things in new ways and building content where they are. So what tomorrow looks like, I don’t know. I don’t think anybody knows. It will definitely be different than it was for the last 10 years. The next two years, 10 years will look different from that. I think the important thing is being able to test out new things and being able to be nimble enough to go where audiences are going.
Bonny Habyan: So let’s dive into that a little bit. 10, 20 years ago, you’d have reporters that worked probably whatever, I don’t know, certain hours, but they, maybe they’re somewhere working overnight, but it was in a totally different atmosphere. It was in office. It was, you know, very kind of structured. You had certain times of the day that you would have to make sure you hit a deadline. How has that all changed with respect to delivering the product to America?
Kelly Andresen: I think one of the biggest impacts to that was Twitter. Twitter became a, you know, to break whole news stories like the Spring Awakening, like huge stories across the whole world and having stories told in small bits and seeing that audiences really liked that. Like they like to consume a developing story, meaning you didn’t have to have the complete story in one. unified article that was perfectly put together. I think that pattern and consumption changed a lot of how other publishing companies started to cover stories where you would have iterative stories over time. It’s okay if they only have a couple of sentences and have them over time because people are also consuming all the time, right? And then particularly with mobile phones, it’s with us all the time. People will consume a few while they’re doing 10 other things. Or at all hours of the day when I don’t think there’s an expectation that everything be Perfect and finite that there’s an understanding of stories are ongoing Yeah, and and so it’s changed the operational business model probably the entire business model and has opened up opportunities this show is sponsored by a better help and
Bonny Habyan: One of the things you had said to me prior to us hopping on this was being adaptive, nimble, and able to change has never been more critical, especially in the landscaping industry you work in. I do want to talk a little bit about that consumption. What are you seeing with respect to the habits of consumption of information currently?
Kelly Andresen: We’ve certainly found to the breadth of content and topics that we cover has definitely changed over the years, really listening to what audiences are passionate about. Certainly people also probably a lot of people don’t know that over half of our traffic that comes to our sites never consume any news content. What are they consuming? all of the other things that we cover that they are very passionate about, like travel, personal finance, personal technology, sports, it’s huge, entertainment, lifestyle, wellness, totally different topics outside of breaking news headlines. That’s still important, but a lot of people, so understanding what people are passionate about and making sure that we are providing quality information to help them live their best lives.
Bonny Habyan: That doesn’t shock me so much and you kind of sharing with me what they like to look at because that’s kind of how I used to embrace USA Today years ago. I would go there really for the sports, some of the entertainment, they had great entertainment pages. So that’s interesting to me. But do you have any sort of stats as to consuming? I imagine the majority is mobile versus desktop versus what are people using to consume?
Kelly Andresen: Yeah, a hundred percent. So as I said, the majority of consumption is digital and then, or excuse me, web. And then an increasingly year over year over year over year, mobile continues to take a bigger, mobile web takes a bigger share, which I think is very consistent with people being with their phones all the time, whether they’re consuming content on mobile app or mobile web.
Bonny Habyan: What are you seeing or what are you looking to see in the next five years and anything that you see coming down the pike from a trend that you’re like, we’ve got our eye on this because we’re seeing people doing more voice, we’re seeing more virtual, we’re seeing more, I’m just curious from a digital landscape, what you project?
Kelly Andresen: 100%. I would say in the short term, we would expect to see more consumption of video content. People are just looking for this audio and video more than having to read something or wanting to read something, or giving people the option to consume a story in multiple ways. You can listen to this story, you can read this story, or you can view this story. So people consuming content in different formats. I think the other one that we’re keeping our eye on is how people discover contents. I definitely see just a shift in my use case of one of… Yeah. Team members that are on our team that are just out of college, the way that they consume content is very different from me. I know. I know. My 10-year-old consumes content very different from me and from them. I don’t know if it’s so much age range or if it’s just experience. I think it’s just very different of how people are discovering and consuming and knowing that audiences are not going to like individual websites and typing in a name to specifically consume it, right?
Bonny Habyan: It’s all through search engines, right? How do you rank where that’s, I mean, again, totally different of what you looked at 20 years ago. Correct.
Kelly Andresen: Correct. So spending time thinking about being very, very smart about search, where do you want to appear? How do you appear? Under what topics and terms do you really want to be aligned with? I think it is, which is important about what audiences you’re going after and on what platforms or methodologies do you want to be discovered? How do you get new audiences to discover your brands and eventually as a brand marketer, bring them back?
Bonny Habyan: Yeah, so this question’s for both of you. How do you leverage your position sort of as an innovator of news and information to really stay ahead? And you answered some of that, right? You really have to figure out where people are searching, and it becomes almost like a psychological… demographic, device, I mean, so much more, I’m sure very, very data-driven, but maybe the both of you can tell me a little bit about how you leverage the ability to be so innovative to stay at the forefront and be very competitive in delivering that product. Jenny.
Jenny Huang: I think future marketers will need to master digital proficiency and data literacy and customer-centric approaches. they also must excel in storytelling, as we mentioned earlier, and leveraging creativity while being adept with emerging technologies like AI. And there are some other key elements, which I also think are important, such as collaborations, ethical responsibilities, and a commitment to lifelong learning are also so crucial. for navigating the evolving media landscape and driving brand and innovation success.
Bonny Habyan: So you’re saying USA Today, their commitment to doing the collaborations, the lifelong learning, they’re the types of things that if they continue to do, they’re really kind of leveraging that innovation to keep people engaged?
Jenny Huang: Absolutely. Absolutely.
Kelly Andresen: What do you see, Kelly? The USA Today as a brand has always been committed to innovation. I mean from its earliest inception of trying out new things and having the conviction to do it. So things like color. Whoa.
Bonny Habyan: Right. Right. Right. You know, you’re right.
Kelly Andresen: And it’s funny, but it was a big deal when the brand first, um, was launched and being the first, uh, national brand is really exciting all the way to investing in VR and trying out new technologies and delivery methods through technology like VR and AI, excuse me, AR, and then continually now really building building teams who are very much focused on, I think, which is universal for marketing and really listening to the audience, really looking at what are they looking for and being able to deliver on that, quickly test to see what’s working and what’s not, and then being able to pivot off that. So it is not about making giant investments in one area. It’s about continually trying tiny little things to continually refine, to achieve what you’re, to really to reach the audience that you’re looking for. And I think both of you have mentioned a really important thing about connection. So how do you do that? Particularly like in a, in a news content, right? How do you make a connection with your brand that is different from other news providers?
Bonny Habyan: Well, you just said so much. First, I did not realize it was the first national publication, right? That it really, I mean, that’s interesting me. And I’m sure that use of color was probably a several-month, several-week discussion. That had to be expensive as well. So I do commend them for that sort of innovative approach. And I think what I’m hearing you say, and tell me if I’m wrong, but it sounds to me that your organization must be somewhat nimble to empower those people who are down there looking, studying to make quick changes. That has to come from the top. So to be able to make those changes to stay on top of market share, that speaks a little bit to the importance in this day and age of being able to have a little bit of that autonomy.
Kelly Andresen: Yeah, 100%. So I think like internally, it’s having the structure of like, to your point, like having the data teams. So listening to like, where is the audience? What are they consuming, understanding what they’re looking for, informing a team of We have a special team that is set up, that started very small of nimble writers writing about topics and cranking it out pretty quickly and doing it for search optimization. What are people looking for right now that we are experts in to serve that? Because it’s a totally different way, to your point, to creating content than an older traditional model of writing a full article. So it’s a different methodology and seeing, does it resonate with the audience or not? Like, do they like, turns out, yes, they like to receive quality fact checks results quickly from a trusted brand. That’s good. And then slowly built on that team. So it’s a much bigger team now and then have iterated that team across other sites too. So really working on that model. it could change tomorrow. Audience behaviors could say, thanks, but I’m on to something new. I don’t really appreciate that anymore. And what I like about this model, and I think USA Today is doing a fantastic job, is continuing to listen and to having the infrastructure inside to say like, okay, let’s pivot again. Let’s try something else while maintaining that trusted brand.
Bonny Habyan: So that data has become very important, obviously. And you would think 30 years ago, it may have been how many papers are you selling? What is that point now that businesses like USA Today look for to say, hey, you know what, we’re, I imagine it’s advertising or partnerships or where it is kind of that, I would say that pivotal business model, core business model that is, is looked at now for success.
Kelly Andresen: Yes, we have several success metrics. One is just overall uniques, right? Our reach. How many Americans are we reaching and striving to grow that number? We are reaching now one in two American adults, 18 plus. That’s big. That’s awesome. And it’s steadily growing. through great content creation and delivery, and really very excited for the team for those results. From a success metric, yeah, obviously we need to continue to grow audience. We need to continue to monetize that audience. And I think one of the challenges that a lot of publishers are facing is really finding that right balance between having multiple revenue sources. I think that’s pretty clear. And even from the description of newspapers way, way, way back when, hundreds of years ago, there was always subscription, there was always advertising, there’s multiple forms of revenue. We still see that today. You still need multiple forms of revenue and curiosity to try out additional new ones that may not exist today.
Bonny Habyan: Okay, Jenny, what are you seeing a little bit with respect when you’re talking about B2B and really kind of partnering with larger companies to do advertising and things of that sort? What’s working? What are the successful partnerships or the successful partnerships looking like? What makes that say, hey, you know what? We’re able to, you know, pitch X, Y, and Z and ascertain X, Y, Z because our company or USA Today is doing this right.
Jenny Huang: So let me give you an example. Earlier this year, we hosted a health equity summit that was hosted in partnership with blackdoctor.org, an Omnicom group. it was hosted at USA Today’s office. And USA Today has always had a strong focus in the health industry. And wellness is given the fact that we reach half of the American adult. And those are the day-to-day Americans who care about their health. So we leveraged that and developed a health equity summit that invite health industry leaders to discuss health equities, discuss health, discuss different topics in the health industry, and it reassure and rebuilding and continuing to rebuilding our brand as the leader of the health industry and also increase our brand awareness in the health industry.
Bonny Habyan: Yeah, no, that makes sense, right? That makes sense because then it continues to position you as a credible health leader. And then people want to start whoever you expose them to. They want to read more, learn more, and you’d be the go to resource where that’s concerned.
Kelly Andresen: Yeah, I think one of the really awesome strategies that Jenny has brought to the team is something that both of you addressed earlier in the show, was really about making a connection. So obviously, publishing is a highly competitive space for ad dollars, especially as ad dollars are going to non-publishers. And one of the things that we were seeing is it’s really hard to increase brand awareness and differentiation, right? There’s just so many publishers out there all talking to the same marketers, to the same agencies. How do you really differentiate yourself when it’s such a competitive market? And our sales team alone can’t do that, which is really why we were so excited to hire for Jenny’s role and then having her specifically come on. who had had experience in the space speaking to advertisers and really have developed a strategy that is about connection. And that connection is people. So how? Yes, we obviously still have to do advertising ourselves, for sure. But where do we have opportunity to prioritize face-to-face connections and face-to-face communications? So being on panels, doing things like this, where it first gets our word out, but also get to hear from the people themselves. So it’s not just the brand. Oh, I saw an ad from you, but really hearing from thought leaders on the team in this case, very specific to the topic of health and wellness, but really using that as a strategy. Where can we buy, build personal connection opportunities with marketers and agencies. And for that, I think it’s very similar to B2C marketing, just that we can do it on a much smaller scale. We can still do one-to-one communications because we’re not talking to the whole of the US, just a very specific subset of decision makers within marketing and advertising.
Bonny Habyan: Well, I think you’re right. And I think because of the digital landscape, it has allowed us to really make more of those connections. If you think about it, 20, 30 years ago, there were no websites. USA Today was just some advert, you know, some location somewhere. I don’t know where they even were. You need to get the paper and you really didn’t know people. Maybe you’d see a photo of a writer or something of that respect, but you didn’t know much about them. Now, the digital landscape has allowed us to touch, feel, see the people who are part of the brand and say, hey, you know what? They’re really smart. They get it. They understand it. And that makes you feel, you know, okay, I trust them. And it’s that whole trust connection scenario. I do want to ask both of you this, and maybe you both have different perspectives, but given what happened with the pandemic, I am sure at that time, you probably learned a ton, but also did you have to pivot and did it accelerate some of the strategies you may have thought about five, 10 years ahead?
Kelly Andresen: Yeah, 100%. From a advertising sales perspective, I think we’re not alone where it just fell off a cliff. I mean, everybody saw it. Like, what is happening with the world? Where is everybody going? A lot of advertisers just stopped spending altogether because they just didn’t know what… Well, nobody did. We didn’t know what was happening, so it’d be silly to just run campaigns and waste money if you’re not actually reaching everybody. followed by a steep growth curve because it turns out everybody’s online. Everybody is at home, but still yearning for connections and meeting people, the rise of video conference platforms and e-commerce and delivery of any type of product you can imagine. So it came back strong from a sales perspective. And I think that really then informed Okay, what’s the new norm? We don’t expect everyone to stay at home and for sales to be this high. What does the new norm look like and how should advertisers change their media mix of how they’re spending? And for us internally, how does that inform our ad product map? What should we be doing from an advertising perspective? Display advertising as a standalone is probably not going to be enough. What other advertising products should we be developing? what should we be prioritizing? So I think it accelerated a lot of those conversations of, whoa, how do we respond to what our audience wants now? Because it’s completely different than what it was pre-pandemic.
Bonny Habyan: And you lived through that. So that had to be in some respects scary, but what a learning opportunity. So I, I imagine in hindsight, you look back and say, Oh my God, I imagined the sleep and remember the sleepless nights I had, but also, wow, I survived it. And I only survived it, but thrived. Right. And then that’s a kind of a cool thing to say where other publications or other businesses went belly up, being able to adapt and pivot and say, okay, wow, look at this journey ahead for us. And I think we all have seen some good stories, the winners and the losers that came out of those situations. So obviously you guys were a winner.
Jenny Huang: To answer your question, Bonnie, what are the key adaptions I made since COVID? I think one key adaption I made was building a personal brand digitally. Yes. After COVID. I started that the month after COVID actually. Back then I was still a full-time pianist. And COVID hit and obviously I can no longer perform anymore. No longer a performing person.
Bonny Habyan: You know what? Okay, so that’s really fascinating. So up until that time you were out there still performing and then all of a sudden your world falls apart.
Jenny Huang: Yes, and that’s the time when I was locked down, like everyone else, and realized that, oh, I really should start building some digital presence. Because before that, I didn’t have a YouTube channel, I didn’t have a website, and I didn’t even have a social media or any kind to tell the story of who I am and what matters to me and what am I contributing to the world. And so during COVID time, that’s when I started building a personal brand, specifically more focused on digital. And I started learning how to code, code a website for myself and build a LinkedIn profile and also start brainstorming and tell a story of how my skill set as a concert pianist benefit me as a marketer and how do these two worlds emerge together. Well, you did a good job. You did a good job. Thank you.
Bonny Habyan: You did. And you’re not the first I’ve heard, but I mean, this and that, do you believe in doing that? It helped lead you to this position?
Jenny Huang: Oh, absolutely. I think without personal branding, I wouldn’t have gotten my first job, which was at BBDO, and would definitely not get my second job, which is now at USA Today. Personal branding really helped me to build trust and credibility in the marketing industry very quickly. and also helped me build a community and build much more deeper connections with key stakeholders within the industry and even outside of the industry.
Bonny Habyan: Yeah, you know what? And again, very interesting. I’m seeing more and more of this at larger companies that they are allowing, facilitating, encouraging their employees to do that. We all know that people engage 10 times more with a person than they will with a company handle. But you still have many companies that look at that as a threat. Are you going to get another job? What is your take? I’m just curious from a professional standpoint, because other women, men are listening to this. What is your take on the benefits and risks of creating a personal brand when you’re at a corporate, you know, in corporate America?
Jenny Huang: I think I’m very lucky that right now at this position, I’ve been really supported by leaders, my team and everyone in the company for some of the speaking engagements I’m doing and the personal branding messages I’m putting out there. And the benefit is By combining my personal brand and the company brand, it brings bigger voice and more credibility and more connections, more personal touch, personal connections with some of the audiences the company is trying to reach. The risk obviously includes that sometimes you’re not quite sure what to say, if that’s going to put myself in trouble and so on. But again, with the support and with some guideline from the company and also some continuous learning of what’s the best message to put out there personally. I think it all could be adapted and it all could be put out elegantly and efficiently and effectively and building meaningful connections.
Bonny Habyan: Yeah. Well, listen, that’s why I ended up reaching out to you because I saw you, you were attending the same conference I was attending, you spoke on a panel, I spoke on a panel, like, my gosh, you know, this is an interesting story. And that’s why I approached you. And so it does have some merit where that is concerned. Kelly, I don’t know if you have any thoughts on that as well. But again, it is cool to see a company and companies allowing employees to be authentic. And I think that that is probably you’re going to see more of that.
Kelly Andresen: A hundred percent. I think, you know, one of the questions that you had that we had talked about before was, you know, what advice would you give others who are building their career or even mid-career is really one. I would say two things to that question is one, be curious. about anything. So things don’t happen to you. And instead, you are gathering information and getting ahead of the curve. For the second piece of information, I would say is to have a point of view. And to bring it back, like in the example of Jenny’s story, I think it’s awesome when employees or even potential future employees are showcasing that point of view with their own brand. This is really important for, I see this as part of your job journey, right? Back in the day, it may have been you were just relegated to your resume and how you appeared on a piece of paper. And now there’s so much more opportunity to showcase your personality, your interests, your curiosities, your point of view in your personal brands and how they show up across digital platforms. I think it’s a huge plus.
Bonny Habyan: Yeah, and I think you’re right. I mean, I think, again, when people are trying to showcase their values from a skill perspective, just in saying, this is what I know about, so I can help you. It helps differentiate you in a really crowded marketplace. And again, digitally, we didn’t have that so much. 10, 15 years ago, where people were more afraid. And now it’s become a little bit more post-pandemic. I’m right there with you. You always want to now say, hey, listen, I am valuable. I can show my value and help others authentically. I don’t see a harm in that. I think it’s evolving, and I see more and more doing it. Well, did you have one more piece of advice? Because I always end on the three pieces of advice. You gave two. Is there anything else, Kelly, you want to add before I go to Jenny?
Kelly Andresen: No, I only have two.
Bonny Habyan: I like that. I’ll add one for you. I always say, you can never stop learning. That’s my biggest piece of advice.
Jenny Huang: I love that. It goes with the curiosity.
Bonny Habyan: I’ll take that. That’s my third. You got it. And that’s great. Jenny, give me your three. What would you tell people looking to launch a career, a brand, just kick butt in life?
Jenny Huang: I think my three pieces of advice are actually kind of a conclusion of the advice both of you have shared earlier. Number one is embrace change and adaptability. The change is constant. You just have to always be ready for it. And number two is cultivate a growth mindset and new challenges as opportunities to growth. And when I look back in my life, those challenging times are the time I grow fastest. And number three is building meaningful relationship. Just foster genuine connections and supportive community and take time to know people and offer your support, offer your value. These relationships sometimes could open doors to opportunities that you could never imagine.
