A Utility Wins Trust by Telling Its Story Before Critics Do

Freddie Carmichael has been the center of marketing power for the past decade. Learn how Georgia Power and Southern Company have been doing good for the communities they serve for all of that time, how Plant Vogtle has become the largest source of clean energy in this country, and how a collegiate athletic career helped influence his way of marketing. All that and more today, all that and more on today's episode of the Marketing MadMen. They say marketing is a madman's game. So now we turn it over to the Marketing MadMen with Nick Constantino and Trip Jobe.

Happy Saturday and welcome to the Marketing MadMen. Nick Constantino here and we have a fun episode. We are going to get you lit. We're going to energize you. We're going to get you all powered up. All the puns. Let's get them all out of the way now. But I have with me Mr. Freddie Carmichael, VP of Corporate Affairs for Georgia Power. Freddie, how you doing, brother?

Good, man. It's good to be here. It's always good to be in Braves Country.

It is always good to be. We are directly across the street from all of the hub of Braves country. So before we start, you've told me you've had some experience in radio. Talk a little bit about the radio experience you have, because that will help everyone gauge how well you do at this.

Oh, great. Awesome. That was a long time ago. Yeah, I did radio actually in college, started doing a radio show. and did play by play for a community college that I went to that I attended basketball. I think I did a little soccer, even though I didn't know enough about soccer. And then later when I was in the newspaper industry, I had a weekly two hour Sunday mornings with the editor was the name of the radio program.

Oh, sexy. You know, it's sexy when you're bringing the editor into it. The editor. Well, this show will be a little different. We're here to have some fun. We're here to talk some marketing. So let's start with a hard question because that's what I like to do. So you've seen in the news cycle probably. Plant Vogtle has been talked about in this market and in this country for weeks, years. Everyone's got a different story. Everyone's got a different political sling. I don't care about any of that crap, to be honest with you, because everybody's got an opinion and we know what they're all like and they all stink. So here's my thing. So if you can look back and say how you could have marketed Plant Vogtle differently to both the internal and external parts. So your internal people and external and your customers and everybody, how would you, and you can't take the easy answer as would have said it would have taken longer than we did because that's the easy way out. So talk about as a communications, as corporate affairs, how would you have marketed it differently internally and externally than what you saw? And again, hindsight's 20/20, but what would you have done differently?

I mean, honestly, Nick, looking back on it, because there were points in time where I was not at Georgia Power. But when I came here, almost 10 years ago, I relocated my family from Mississippi to Georgia because of this project. And it was, I was in love with the story from day one. I mean, building the first new nuclear units in the United States in 30 years was just super appealing as a storyteller. You know, but man, looking back on that experience and then going different places within Southern Company, I think hindsight's 20-20. But if you look back at it, sometimes in marketing, communications, whatever, we tend to sometimes be a little on the defensive or reactive. And we're driven or sometimes motivated by what the opposition is saying or whatever the headwinds are. And it hamstrings us to actually play offense and talk about it. This is an incredible project. And so full circle moment for me looking at it now, now is now we get to the finish line of this race. Everybody wants to celebrate it, right? So your regret is looking back of, did I do a good enough job telling the story on the front end, why we were doing this, what it means to Georgia? And did we take all those opportunities of telling that positive story all along the way? And I think, again, there's some great people that were involved in marketing all the way around with Plant Vogtle from the beginning to the end. But I would say all of them collectively would probably say, I wish we could have done a better job of telling that proactive story instead of sort of being, trying to block and tackle.

Yeah, and just from externally, I will say that that's almost impossible when it's a narrative that you can't control. and think about how quickly the political tide has changed in this state and in this city. I mean, what we were doing 20 years ago to what we're doing now almost feels like light years and eons. When you initiated a project to where it is now, the political climate changed so much, the population changed so much. I think ultimately, and it's a story that we're trying to tell together, but like what do you think is going to power the growth of this state? You think that we just magically grow by the percentages we're growing overnight? You think all these people that are leaving these states like New York and California to come here, you think that the power is just magical that we can just one day wake up and it's there? So I think I agree with you. I think proactive marketing, but I also think that there's only so much you can control and the political inclinations and the whims of other people are impossible to predict or control. So you're right. You don't want to be on the defensive, but at the same time, you almost have to brush those off because everyone's got an opinion.

What you can control is your story. And again, I mean, I think looking back to the very beginning of this, what was appealing to me coming from Mississippi is the American ingenuity involved in this. And again, building what eventually is now the largest generator of clean energy in the US. I mean, again, you look back on it, one of the things you can't control is that story, the why behind the fact that we are looking to provide clean, safe, reliable, and affordable energy to Georgians for decades. You know, not just, you know, my kids are here now and they've been in Georgia for over 10 years and I want something that is going to be reliable for them.

Love it. And I think what I think, and I texted you last night, I think one of the best things is going to be the validation when you see how many plants of this and these kind of things are taken up in the next couple of years across the country. and to know that you took it on the chin for all of these people and for all of the people that are like, all right, so let's look at sheer facts. Okay, the net good outweighs the net bad. Let's move forward. And they're going to do that because you guys had the nerve and the gumption to take it on first. So I applaud you for that. It's a big thing. Let's segue into just the general space. So let's call it what it is. You are a commodity. You are providing something that most people need. That's a hard thing to market. How do you differentiate yourself? How does your corporate voice sound? I mean, it's so tell us just about yourself and your theory behind this and what company as a whole has influenced you and how you think about marketing something that people need. Like let's be clear, you don't have to market it, right? Everybody needs it. You don't have to market it, but your relationship with the consumer is so important and how you market is so much different than someone who's selling, you know, Apple versus Android. Like those are hyper competitive. You're in an industry where you're more about your messaging. Talk about your thought process there.

Yeah, absolutely. Because I think the average person out there would look at it and say, you know, what are you advertising for? I mean, it is a regulated utility. I think that our obligation goes beyond just delivering energy to your house. It's explaining why and it's explaining the planning that we're doing for the next 60 to 80 years for something like a Plant Vogtle. But it's also making sure people understand how to use their energy properly, making sure all the energy efficiency tips, like it's not, we're not selling a product, but we are making sure that our customers are using it in a way that is best for them.

Do you think it's off-putting for a consumer for someone who's selling them something saying, hey, we want you to buy less of this? Because I think the thought process behind marketing is always buy more stuff you don't need.

That's why the why I think is so important. Like I think when people understand our role in the community and I mean, look, when you go back to the history of Southern Company, Atlanta doesn't become what Atlanta is without Georgia Power. Birmingham doesn't become what it is without Alabama power. And I think that there was so much, they're completely tied at the hip from the development and the explosion of growth in the South.

And it follows a pattern that doesn't exist. Most cities are built on harbors or waterways or places that Atlanta is built. There's no rhyme or reason other than I understand that the trains came in here as a boy, but the way this city built and how the airport came in here does not follow the logic of how cities are built in this country or in the world even. So think about you're of influence, but even that much more influence because there was no other point of growth that this city had other than the investment that came in the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, the airport. Otherwise, we wouldn't be sitting here as now the 6th largest media market in America is Atlanta.

And even going back again before that, I mean, if you look at people coming to the south, look at our climate. It's not California. And so you got to have, electricity was a big part of that. Being able to heat and cool your home, cool in particular at that time, electricity and making sure that it was available here was a big deal. And so harnessing the power of the rivers and the lakes and the dams that were created for hydro power at the infancy of Southern Company is such a cool story.

It's crazy. And all the lakes here are fake. All man-made lakes. Most people don't even understand these things. They don't just, lakes just don't just pop up for no reason. So all the lakes that you take your boat on and everything were made by the Army Corps of Engineers, if I understand it, for a reason. And again, if you think about it, how much manpower, time, investment was put in by your four founders and people before you to put this city where it is? When you think about it in that grand scale, it's almost unbelievable.

Yeah, honestly, to you going back to your original question about like the marketing side of it is it's the why behind it, you know? We had some early executives who used to say that our role as a company was to make our communities better off because we're there. And that plays out in so many different ways, but that's just beyond just delivering clean, safe, reliable, affordable energy to your house. And so there's so much more from a communications standpoint that we are trying to convey and tell. Because again, the average consumer, they don't know, but they do know this.

The power goes out.

When they flip that switch, they want it to come on. When it's hot in the summer, they want their air conditioner to work. They want all of this.

And of course, they don't want the personal responsibility that goes along with it. Like your house is terrible, your insulation is bad, your windows are bad. They don't want that part of it, but they want their thing to go on. So personal responsibility would be damned. They just want everything to go on. And I think it's one of the things, if you look just in reviews in general, anything, right? It's never the people in the middle that talk. It's the people with the worst experience most of the times and the people with the best experience. That bell curve is not a representation of what really goes on. Realistically, you're serving how many people in Georgia Power?

2.7 million customers.

2.7 million out of that many people. How many complaints do you really get a year?

Oh yeah, that's very minimal.

Right, that's what I'm saying. So again, but somehow in society, we've given them the loudest voices. And I will keep politics out of this. I don't want to have that conversation. But I'm saying, is it fair that an entity that is serving 2.7 million people is the loudest people or the [expletive] people of the 25 to 35, 40, 50, 100 people? It just doesn't make any sense. So I know how hard your job is. And now that we've had that conversation, now we can have some fun. Because I just wanted to meet you up on that and see where you went with that. So we got about a minute and a half left in this segment. So talk about how you into the industry and what you like most about what you do.

So I was a journalist. I mean, I was in print journalism for 10 years. I was actually a broadcast major. I failed at that. So I ended up doing journalism, but I also liked to write. Honestly, it's a true story. My grandfather was an area operator at Mississippi Power. He always told me to go work for Southern Company. And I thought, man, that's really boring. I had to work for the power company. I had a great aunt that worked at Alabama Power. But when I was involved in the community back in Mississippi, and trying to make it better, the folks from Mississippi Power were the ones who were there making a difference. And I was like, I want to go work for that company.

And so you got it at the ground level. The bureaucracy is much bigger in Atlanta than it is in Mississippi and Mississippi back. So you got in at the level where you're seeing the impact that it's made with your own eyes. It's not just conjecture or you're seeing with your own eyes.

Yeah, no, I got in the company doing energy audits. I mean, at the lowest level, doing energy audits in Mississippi, where it's, you know, it's a poor state. You're going in helping people try to lower their bills. all the way to messaging Vogtle in its infancy 10 years ago and spent some time at Southern Company, did a lot of work with the PGA Tour and what we were trying to communicate there and then spent five years at the gas company. So yeah, I've been around a little less than 12 years now at Southern Company total.

That's great. And we'll get into what you like most after the break. But you've been listening to the Marketing MadMen on Xtra 106.3 and we will be right back.

Now back to the Marketing MadMen on Xtra 106.3 FM.

Welcome back to the Marketing MadMen on Xtra 106.3. With me I have a young Tom Glavine, at least that's according to Flounder, our producer, who looked through the glass and said that. Now, I don't know if he has a curveball, but I do know that our real guest, Freddie Carmichael, was an NCAA golfer, and I actually got to see that in action out at the Ritz-Carlton. So Freddie, let's segue a little bit. Let's have some fun. Talk about playing golf. Talk about my understanding is you wanted a basketball scholarship and you realized that We were not 6 foot 11 or black, so we went with a golf scholarship. So talk a little bit about how that happened, because I have to imagine that even playing golf and the discipline and what it takes to be an individual sport has helped with a lot of things in life. So talk about golf, talk about college.

Well, point of clarification though, it was in the NJCAA, so it was junior college, but look, it was.

Bro, you're still one of the best in the world. You're still in the top 2% in the world and light years better than I will ever be. So I'll call a spade a spade and give you the credit where it's deserved.

Well, I will say this. Yeah, my father introduced me to the game and he didn't know anything about golf, but you're right. I played all sports growing up and, you know, several different parts. I may have wanted to be a Tom Glavine or I may have wanted to certainly be like an Isiah Thomas playing basketball. I was a gym rat. My dad was a basketball coach and that's all I wanted to do. But I took the junior college scholarship to play golf with the full intent that I was going to play on their basketball team. And I didn't really, I think I had like natural given ability to hit the ball. I never fully loved the game. I loved to compete. I didn't love to practice and in golf, that's something that you have to devote to it. But about the first semester I realized I was not going to make the team. my whole plan to try to get on and let them let me at least get fouled and shoot free throws didn't work out. And they were top five in the country at the time. But the golf team had finished second in the nation my senior year in high school. And so finally it hit me like, look, I'm good at this. If I really kind of focus on it, then I feel like I can do a good job and represent my junior college, Meridian Community College, where my father had played on their first baseball team, coincidentally. But yeah, it was a great experience. I focused hard that sophomore year, barely made it into regionals, and then I had to win in three playoff holes to make it to the national championship.

That's the competitiveness. That's the competitiveness. The training means nothing. That's the competitiveness.

But I don't know how good I was. I probably finished 50th in the country that year, but it was such a great experience. And you're right, golf, my dad told me that the reason that I should play is that it was a game that I could play the rest of my life and it would help me in business, which I thought was crazy at the time. And I remember getting in newspapers and there was a room, we were at Ross Bridge in Birmingham, which is a great golf course over there. And there were about 80 editors in the room. And the guy said, who wants to play golf at Ross Bridge? And so I was one of like 5. I mean, newspaper people just didn't play golf. But the muscle memory's there. I think I broke 80. The guy thought I was a pro. And again, from that point forward.

Doors were just opening.

They remembered me. And I remember calling my dad and saying, you were right. Like this game has so much power. And look, I love all sports. I don't play golf as much as I used to. But even like when we went out and played, it's…

You still enjoy it?

Yeah. And I definitely still love to compete.

Yeah. I will tell you to make you feel better about not playing basketball. I will tell you my collegiate basketball story because it's way more embarrassing than what yours is. So I was a freshman at the University of Maryland and I had a buddy who was trying to play on the team and I didn't have I didn't have the nerve to tell him you have no chance of making the team. So I trained with him and I was running. And I mean, I partied quite a bit in college, but I was running 6 minute miles. We were in shape and this dude was not going to go to try out. So I lost on him. I'm like, you're going. He's like, I don't want to go. I'm like, you're going. He goes, you have to come with me. So I tried out for the Maryland men's basketball team. Mind you, this is 2000. They won the national championship in 2003. Gary Williams was the coach. Gary Williams was leading the tryout. I was the worst player. It wasn't even close, honestly. And I can play some ball. So I finally, I don't get a basket. I'm just the worst player. I finally get to get a layup and I'm going to take a layup and I think I'm Jordan tongue out. Someone comes underneath me, hits me under the chin. I bit a hole straight through my tongue and I had bled through to my socks in 6 seconds. And Gary Williams looks at me because everyone's like, I have blood. He goes, son, are you in or you out? I'm like, in. Finished the whole tryout with blood dripping through my socks. I finished the tryout. So my story is way more very embarrassing. I have to go to the infirmary to get stitches in my tongue to this day. I still have not fixed. I have a hole in my tongue from that. But that's just making you feel more comfortable now with your story.

That's actually a good story.

I tried.

So today's generation would not do that.

Well, today's generation's coaches would not be allowed to let a kid bleeding through the floor or stay on the court. Like, it's unbelievable that even happened. But so now, father of three kids. So your kids are in sports. So before we go to the business side, my daughter's 6, my son is 3. They're just getting into that phase of their life. So I see a lot of parents that take this very seriously, that have their kids doing travel six days a week. As a person, as a business community leader in this, what advice do you have? What are you doing with your kids? What do you advise other people about their kids? Because I think your upbringing and what you learn gives a little bit more clarity than what most people think. What are you telling your kids now?

I mean, I think the biggest thing is, and I think Chipper Jones made a comment about this pretty fairly recently that made me, I actually shared it with a lot of folks, is You play the sport that you want to play in that season, like have fun with it. I think the specialization is sports and is taking over. And it's really the adults, not the kids. The kids don't want to specialize. And look, on a certain.

You specialize in junior year of high school. If you really want to specialize, it's junior year of high school when you really know you can be something otherwise.

But they're going to get to your kids at six, seven years old and start to, which again, it's ridiculous to even have those conversations before you hit puberty. I mean, there's a lot, there's so much development that happens even there. But no, I think from a minute, I told my kids, whatever you want to play, it. You know, I told you my youngest, my 11 year old is now playing lacrosse, which you know all about, I know nothing about.

It's a good sport for kids, man. You learn a lot, you're playing with a team, but the most important thing that hand-eye coordination is unlike any other sport that you could do to cradle a stick when someone's whacking away play at you. The discipline for that is unbelievable.

Yeah, but again, play all of them because even today, in my mid-40s now, there is something that I take from a little league baseball game or something from my high school basketball. I think about everything of who I became as a person in those formative years on playing team sports. And they're all different. You learn, golf, you're kind of on an island, but you're a part of a team. You learn so much throughout around baseball. So again, my place is to do everything.

Let's take the mental, the skill sets are so different, right? The lateral movement that comes along with basketball, the just straight running that comes from soccer, right? The explosiveness of football. I mean, when you're trying to make an athlete, the ideal athlete would have a little bit of all of those things. That's where I think the flaw is, right? So my only advice, my daughter is She was five when she started playing soccer, really started playing. And my only thing was I had watched nieces and nephews grow up. And if the girls especially are afraid to get hit, they cannot be athletes if they're afraid of contact. So I told my little daughter, I'm like, look, I go, I'm not saying to hit people for no reason, but I'm saying when that ball's around you, I go, you lower your shoulder and you go in. I don't care how big the girl is. And my daughter is a heat seeking missile. She's little and she will just, and the coach is like, I've never seen anything like it. And the reason I told her that is because Forget, let's not talk about what you're going to be right now. In the future, if you're afraid of contact, you can't play sports, any sport. Like you could play golf, right? But I'm saying you can't play baseball, basketball, football if you're afraid to get hit or if you're afraid of the ball. So I tried to get that out of the way early. Other than that, what she plays, if she wants to do ballet, do you know how much we were trained when we were young, hit the gym, go do workout? You know what we should have been trained? Pilates and how to be flexible and have movement. We were trained the wrong thing. So now ballet, telling a kid to play ballet is not going to affect, negatively affect her soccer career. That's probably the best thing that she can do.

Yeah, look, and again, I just go back to, there's so many different things that all those different sports teach you. And so when you start this whole specialization path, then you are robbing kids of those opportunities. And maybe they're going to be the best baseball player ever, but there's something they're going to learn in football or something they're going to learn in track.

And their habits change. You just said puberty, right? What if all of a sudden in puberty, these kids grow up and are [expletive] because they're moving, they grow up and they're 13 teens are, they can't move as well. What if they grow up and they become these stud athletes that grew? I mean, Shaq grew to 7 foot one when he was like 22 years old. And I'm always told, especially baseball, but you could be the best baseball player. You don't know until you can throw or catch an off-speed pitch or a curveball. You have no idea what you are. So I agree with you. I think it's a shame, but I think you can provide some context. One, because your dad was a coach. Two, your dad was a collegiate baseball player in the beginning. And then three, you had the collegiate experience. So I think you have a little bit more context than most do. I was supposed to, my goal was to walk on at Maryland. It was number one school in the country. I got scholarships for Albany and a couple other D3 schools. My goal was I would walk on at Maryland. I joined a fraternity 2 days later and everything's been downhill since there. So I don't have that same, was I a good athlete? Pretty damn good athlete. But I think that pedigree you have, and I hope people heed the advice, like, guys, I don't want to do this, but I'm going to do it anyway. It's like marketing, guys. You got to diversify what you do. If you think these days of specializing are over, if you don't have a diversity in what you approach in business, the world just doesn't work that way anymore. There's not time for specialization anymore. And if there is, it's when you've already established the fundamentals of everything else. So let's take that very natural transition. And now let's talk a little bit of marketing. So you grew up as a journalist, which really means you were, when you talk about knowing the old school mediums, journalism is an old school media. And if you want my honest opinion, it is dead. Social media has killed it. There's no one writing a story actually for the intent of getting stories out there. They're writing stories for corporate over gods or they're writing stories for the reason. So Talk about a little bit of how you've seen the transition from that old school method of journalism to nowadays where we are in a fractured marketing community like no other.

Yeah, it's fascinating for me because I came along at a time where that the convergence of media was happening, which again, for me was cool because I was a broadcast major. And so the stories were great. Yeah, if you want to, I can now use multimedia. we were doing podcasts before they were cool. They're still not cool.

It depends. Don't sell yourself too short. Better marketing.

But I think that part of it was exciting to see. But I started to see sort of the slow death of print. Now I still think there are applications. It's got more niche. Community journalism is still important. Absolutely. And I think there is a strong role for newspapers to play in that. But But what happened, you're right, is when social media came along, I mean, I was in newspapers when I was pushing for us to start a YouTube channel and pushing for us to do Facebook and all of those things without thinking through the revenue application of it. How are you going to make money off of it? And so just what has happened in the past 20 years? I made this comment the other day that when I was a journalist, a print journalist, I would have never wanted, you see articles now that are brought to you by a certain organization and they ask you to.

It waters it down on them immediately.

Right, and so now you have people who have to be discerning about the information that they're getting. Even in what they would consider traditional news, they have to question, or not maybe question, but just they have to use some discernment and see who is behind the article, who's paying for the reporter's salary. That would have been hard for me to stomach as a true journalist.

But I also think the way it used to be a headline was to entice you to read the article. Now a headline is to grab your attention. And then the facts are tucked so far away in the article that you don't even read them that you're taking everything out of context.

It's a headline. It's all about the clicks. And again, a lot of that is you see the analytics all the time. I mean, people's attention spans are so short now. And so long form journalism. And again, I would say podcasts is an area, radio in particular is an area where long form

It reigns supreme, dude. You have no idea. I mean, you're talking our app will get 28 to 40 minutes every time someone opens our app. Do you know what the average time some of that app is? 30 seconds, 40 seconds? Our stream is doing 56 minutes every time someone opens a session. And what I tell people all the time, we are fascinated with content right now. Everybody wants to make content, okay? So all these people are spending all this money to make these videos because they think they have to make content. The problem is, who is going to watch your video? Nobody. Radio has a captive audience of 20,000 and are listening for 50 minutes of time. Story tell better in your methods that are reaching people. I think you're right. It's broken. I think when it comes to articles, you look at a recipe and all I want is the recipe. But there's 64 pages of the story of how the third albino cousin of this person wrote a recipe and found it in a mountain and that's why they have a recipe. I'm not looking for the recipe. I'm looking for the recipe. You're right because they're trying to trick you into spending more time with it so they have glamour mediums. When meanwhile all you're trying to do is find the recipe. You're not reading any of that stuff. It's all fluff.

And again, it has just changed so dramatically. And I even look back in the early 2000s when I was in newspapers. And again, I was a, I love newspapers and I still love the idea of the 4th estate and for accountability standpoint, I just think that the erosion started to happen when the business side couldn't figure out how to monetize it. And so then what ends up happening slowly over time, those lines start to get blurred. So it's no longer, it used to be, was it an opinion piece? piece versus a news piece. And now I think that people are just distrustable in nature anyway. So you got short attention spans, like dwindling attention spans, then the trust aspect to go in there and it just muddies, muddies the water.

Yeah, and again, I think it's also you wrote newspapers for the masses, right? Because if you didn't agree and part of it, and you want to read politics, there was the sports there. was everyone was reading a newspaper. Now we've been so segregated that you're speaking to the sides of the bell curve as opposed to the middle. So you have to be super liberal or have to to be super progressive or you have to be neighborhood or you have to be this. We've made a niche, which means you're never going to make the money because the money is with the masses. So I think that was one of the things. I also think that the newspaper industry got so fat and happy for so long. These guys were just cashing checks and checks that they didn't want to see the change coming. And they purposely chose to because realistically, most of the people, they made their money. some way or another, they made their money, which is why we just left it open for. I mean, Facebook's intention was to kick news spaces out years before it started happening, to be in the journal. Now, that being said, every person has an opinion. You were a journalist. You took pride in being a journalist. You went through school, you went through experience, you were out in the field, you probably took crap jobs for us taking stories to get your, right now, you can write an article with 0 experience. Actually, you'd have AI write an article. Say, I want to be sensationalist and I want headlines. Here's what I had to write. Read it. slap your name on it and they will print it as an actual journalism article.

No doubt.

Which is broken. There's no one to trust. There's no trust there and ironically you bring up trust. The irony is they don't trust social media. They trust social media less than they do the newspapers. So we've sat here and if I'm the government I'm [expletive] because now they don't trust their senators or anybody because of the stories are being spun. So who do you trust? When you talk about marketing, what is your advice to people? Because you're in an industry where you're feeling that more than anybody. The stories are crazy that you're seeing.

Yeah, I think you just kind of back to where we started originally on this.

That's what I meant to do. I meant to go full circle, of course.

Yeah, exactly. But you're looking when you sort of look back and you kind of not being reactive, right? So in the very beginning, when we were talking about Vogtle, like, hey, just focus on telling the story and not all the headwinds, so to speak. And so I think the same thing with this is you just have to have focus. And at the end of the day, focus should be on transparency. The more vulnerable and transparent you are, that becomes as authentic. That's what people are starved for. It's that authentic side.

I love it. I'm going to add one thing and I'm bringing it back to golf. So golf needs two things. It needs focus and discipline. You need to be focused and you need to be disciplined. You cannot go off path because some person screams at you to go off path. You have to be focused and disciplined. And if you are focused and disciplined, I still think that there is medium out there and I think people will slowly gravitate back. We're seeing it. We're seeing it with what's going on with Bally's now. You know what? People don't watch it on TV. You know what they want to listen to? They listen to it on radio. And they have the nostalgic, you know what? This is not Do I really want to watch 162 games on television for three hours a night if I could have my headphones in and clean the kitchen and do all this stuff? So I am certainly seeing a resurgence of these mediums. I'm seeing people put their phones down. You know, one of the best parts about going out and playing golf really is 4 hours your way. The phone is tucked away. The Masters, the best part about the Masters was not having a phone. And the time went so fast. We're afraid that if we're not busy, time will go slow. But not being busy made time in the Masters, I mean, it felt like 10 minutes. I was there for six hours. I completely agree with you. What advice do you give marketers or people that are trying to come up in this space about how to really cut through the clutter and how to get messaging out there that resonates with people?

Well, I think people have to do the hard work. You have to get to know what it is.

You already lost half the audience. Hard work. What?

Do the hard work. There are no shortcuts to this. And you know, look, back in the day as a journalist, I mean, I had to do things like manually go into the jail cells, like the book, the holding cells. and write down the names of the people who got arrested as they are screaming at me behind, like giving me death threats, behind, I'm gonna come out and find you and all that kind of stuff. I mean, now look, now technology has allowed us to be able to get those type of reports, but that taught me something, right? And so I think that, you know, I tell our team all the time, like to be able to communicate about our business, you gotta get out and learn the business. And you have to constantly be a student of the business. And this is not a goal that you are ever going to attain. This is something you are going to chase throughout your career.

And so you've got to be happy with that. You should be the thrill of the hunt. And that's the competitiveness. Like you should never think you're there and you've reached it. Because if you do, you're just going to become complacent.

But there are no shortcuts. And I think sometimes in AI, look, I think AI is an incredible tool. You know, it's something that we have to figure out a way to use and interact with, just like we have everything else. I don't view it any differently than anything else that's coming.

It's the assembly line, man. Technology, industrial revolution, any of these things, they've all been huge changes that we're going to change the world. All that changes was our job sets and our skill sets. We're pretty resilient people.

But you can't use that to shortcut knowledge. And I think that people sometimes, my advice again would be whatever you're doing, whatever industry you're in, whatever, if you're product marketing or whatever, get to know the people that designed it. Why did they design it? What was behind it? What were they trying to accomplish? That's where the passion lies. Yeah, I mean, that's how you start to find those stories. And I think that's sort of one of the things that I see that's lost today. Everybody's looking to, how can I get, how can I duplicate the success of this video on Facebook or whatever?

The sense of, the concept of virality exists, so you cannot duplicate it. Because if you're able to duplicate it, then it wouldn't be viral because everyone would just have that same content in front of them. I also think it's ironic when you say about the contact, like You can't contact Google. There's no way to get a human being on the phone. You don't go out and meet people about in the streets that are doing it. They have no connection to their communities whatsoever. They are in their ivory castles. One of the things I love about radio, man, I am everywhere. I host a show. I've had now 90 episodes. I've met 90 people, just the most random things. There's no connection that Google has to the communities it serves whatsoever, and they want it that way. Facebook, even worse. There's no connection. There's no one to talk to that can walk you through a problem. There are plenty of people that'll take your orders and get you to spend more money, but there's nobody. Do you know how many calls a week we get from people asking about calling sales and asking about the radio station and they want to advertise and the poor people, they have $500. And you have to explain to them, guys, save it, please. It's not the right medium, but they're interested. They want to talk to you. Those things don't exist. Even the old newspapers, the editors, they would be on the phone, the journalists, they would be there. They would be in the public's eye talking to them in jail cells. The disconnect between people and the communities is just getting greater. And if my advice is I'm not going to give the old fashioned get your hands dirty, but my advice is just listen to people. Whether or not the stories are things you want to hear, listen, because perspective is really important and we are lacking perspective. And you need to market by having perspective, but also seeing other sides. Because how many times have you looked at your life and said, oh my God, this company, this website is atrocious. It's the worst company, $30 million company. And how many times have you looked at a company with the most flashy website? $1 million company. We are built in this world to draw, to put a facade on of all this stuff, right? Like I run a sales department. I pretend to be a marketing host. Like we all put on this facade. But for me, the experience is really important. So I think it was a great segment. What advice would you go back and give your past self? So what advice would you give to yourself when you were 12 years old, 13 years old about the future? What advice would you give? We got about a minute and a half. I know you didn't expect this one coming.

I don't know. The only thing that comes to mind is my dad had this saying where he was always like, look, son, you're not going to be, you may not always be the fastest, the smartest, whatever, but you better not let anybody outwork you. Like that was his thing is you're not always going to be the best at everything you do. Sometimes you may be average, below average, but just make sure you outwork the other person. And so that advice, I didn't listen to at age 12. It became real.

It sounds like you got more of it than you thought you did.

I did. But if I could go back, I would be like, listen, to what your mom is telling you about this part. Listen to what your dad is telling you about this part. And maybe that's because right now I'm trying to convince. I've got a 19 year old who probably listens to me much more now than she ever did before. And my 11 and 13 year old, they think I'm an idiot half the time.

Well, puberty will do that, especially that 13 year old. That's going to get into that wacky phase. Yeah, dude, I would follow that suit and I would just say, I want everyone to work hard, but don't work too hard at that one thing that you're distracted from the other things. Take on tasks, build with your hands, learn. Don't just be stuck in a book. Learn the other side of it. See the street smarts. Because again, it's that specialization. Yeah, you could be really good, but the chances are there's going to be something that's equally better than you. But you know what? If you're good at this, but you're also good at this, learn creative, be a musician. Don't just be an athlete. Do these things. I think that's the best advice anyone could give. So on that note, we'll end this segment. You listen to the Marketing MadMen on Xtra 106.3. and we'll be right back.

Now back to the Marketing MadMen on Xtra 106.3 FM.

Welcome back to the Marketing MadMen on Xtra 106.3. Freddie Carmichael and I are finishing up our conversation and you know, I think it's important to end. Let's talk about the changing space of business. So one of the things, you're a gigantic industry, like bring Southern Company into this, publicly traded, regulation in every direction, bureaucracy, oversight, all those things, but you're still at its core a people company. And you have a lot of people that work for you. And your actual job is corporate affairs, which means all of those people, you're messaging to them. And I think one of the things that's lost, we tend to think of marketing as your external messaging. I think people are starting to get smarter when you see all these B2B companies that they do internal marketing and they're trying to get a voice for that. Talk a little bit about what you've seen just in the past 10, 15 years of what the new recruits expect, what they want from a company. Because I know it's not just money anymore. So what are you seeing on your end?

Yeah, I mean, again, it's changed dramatically. And this is an issue that we deal with all the time because you're right, it's not what it used to be. I mean, Southern Company is a stable company. When I was looking, I was like, this is a place that I want to retire with. I remember leaving the newspaper industry, working in economic development, thinking this is where I want to retire. And that is just not what we see anymore. And I think that there are.

So you're telling me I'm in the wrong industry?

I mean, you think about it though.

I mean, people, I'm not disagreeing. I'm just asking for clarity.

I mean, they can't see past six months. And so I think it has made it difficult. I don't want to just be all like get off my lawn guy though. I think that there is a level of creativity and a level of innovative thinking that is there. We just have to figure out a way to tap it.

I agree.

They're thinking about solving problems much differently. They care about the future of the world a little bit more idealistic. And so that's all good. You got to harness that. But I think the hardest thing in terms of recruiting is people are just, they want like instant gratification. So we have people And you can call it whatever you want to. I've heard people say this participation trophy generation or whatever it is, they're just looking for like immediate return on whatever investment they're making with their time, with their money or whatever it is. And look, you're gonna have peaks and valleys. And I think that just one of the things that's different is sort of that longer term view sometimes is they're looking for the shorter term. And so that's good. There's a sense of urgency that you want to tap into and be able to harness. But just whether it's staying with your company or whether it's, hey, I may want to do this for five years and then I may want to do something else for five years.

Sure, but commit to five years. I mean, you joke like, because when I, when the only thing when I started doing the show that I wanted was to do 100 episodes. And the only reason is the only way you'll know if you're good at something is if you do it 100 times, right? You can't gauge on day one, you can't gauge on day 10 because you have not given yourself enough time to do something to see if you're good at it or not. You have people that they want to follow that path, but you tell them five years and a year, 1 1/2, I think I'm ready. And he's like, you don't even know what we do for a living. If I put you in a room with people, you would, and what is it you want? And you want, it's a participation trophy. I mean, I was joking when I was with my 17-year-old niece and it was a graduation party. And she goes, why are you not taking this seriously? I go, because we're celebrating something you're by law required to do. I go, you're graduating high school. By law, if you take out it's truancy. And I made fun of her because she lives in Monroe. And I go, that's not true. You can work on a farm. The rules are different here. But we're celebrating things that people are required by law or by society to do. And it's like, look, you gradu. I get it. I know it was hard. I know it was so hard to graduate college. But now the real world starts and people are paying you money to put outputs are. What are your outputs and are you measuring your outputs? Inputs don't matter anymore. Outputs matter.

Yeah, I mean, again, some of the first questions is, am I going to be able to work from home? It is. Again, there are a lot more, I would have never thought to say that in the first, I would not even think of that to say that now on the front end. But again, COVID did change a lot of that too, but that is, It is more about what are you going to do for me? And so I see a lot of that. Again, we got to figure out a way to tap into it and harness it, but there's definitely a difference in this issue.

So what are you messaging? So you're going for the same pool of talent that everybody else is in Atlanta. And it's a big city with lots of companies. And part of the reason that they can ask about working from home is there are lots of job openings right now that we are not fulfilling because we have not trained our people to be in these jobs. What are you guys offering at Southern Company? How are you messaging to internal and external internal to show the values because you believe in them, that's clear. Most of the people that work there, but also there's an older generation that's probably getting pensions and probably has different things, values that these people are not going to be able to get, which is for the sake of reality. So how are you messaging to these younger people and in recruitment?

Yeah, I mean, look, I think we have fully embraced the hybrid model. So I mean, but we have also been very focused on the fact that there is, we are a relationship driven company. And so that in-person interaction is super important. And so like that's what we've done from I would say, look, at the end of the day, the one common thread is that people, this goes throughout generations, they want to be somewhere where they feel like they're going to make a difference in the world every single day. So if we can tie sort of their personal purpose to the company's purpose, that helps us a lot. That's what drew me into Southern Company. I didn't know what it was when I first saw it, but that was the difference in the people that I saw at Mississippi Power that drew me in. And I found a company that truly wanted to make the communities better off because they were there. And so I think the more that we can get this newer generation that's in the workforce right now connected and finding, connecting their personal, individual purpose and connecting those to the companies and sort of seeing that, I think we've got a better shot at it.

Yeah. I mean, again, like you said, you don't have to market, but you're sponsoring golf tours and all these programs and the teams. And I'm sure a lot of times you're doing that because there are probably those kids that are 21 year olds going to be like, hey, I got to go to the game. They sponsor the Falcons, my home team. This is something that I have take personally. When you look at it that way, right? Because keeping that employee base happy and proud about what they do is how you retain people. Because there's always someone that's going to be willing to pay more money. There's always a hot and coming trend that everyone on earth wants to get aboard all at the same time. I mean, AI is a great example. Everyone should just be a prompt writer for AI, right, until that next thing is gone. So I think that when you think about it that way, It makes more sense why you guys market the way that you do. And it makes more sense why you do that.

Well, we know that sports is an emotional thing. Like there's an emotional connection that people have. You have, there are no more passionate people than sports fans, whether it's Braves country or, you know, any other, the Atlanta, it could be their travel ball team that's going to LakePoint this weekend. They are very passionate.

I mean, my niece's parents, the girl, she didn't even make varsity basketball at Pius and they still watch the games on television. Like that's nuts, dude. You're watching girls high school basketball and your daughter didn't even play for that team. That is nuts. That is passion. You cannot even, you can't, you can't. I mean, it's unbelievable.

And it's different in Georgia. I will tell you, I love Mississippi. You know, I was very passionate about my home state. I love it. One of the biggest things I noticed here is like with sports. I told my son, he's in middle school, 7th grade quarterback and is in the battle right now to keep his starting job heading into the 8th grade year. But I told him last year, I said, look, You just played in front of a larger crowd than I ever played at in high school. And this is middle school. He's in the 7th grade. The passion for sports and definitely in the metro Atlanta area, but across the state is unlike anything I've ever seen.

Oh my God, New York was a joke, man. I'm not gonna lie. I mean, like our lacrosse in one, we had one playoff game at Hofstra and I think I was in front of 4,000 people. And like I go up, we did a broadcast at Buford. They were selling tickets on the aftermarket. They had a secondary market for high school tickets to a Buford high school football game. I mean, have you ever heard of anything crazier than that? I just, it's unfathomable. but I think the other thing about sports is, look, the more you get into the business, the dirtier you find the business to be, right? When you start talking about NIL and how the money really goes and sponsorship of high school sports and the athletes, but let me be clear, there's no greater net positive in the world than sports. The things that you instill in these kids, you take an athlete and a non-athlete and put them in the same set of skills, the athlete will almost always win because they've seen failure, they've seen success. They seem competitiveness and heartbreak. And it is really hard to fake those things. Video games. Yeah, I had great reflexes because I played video games. It was not teaching me any of that stuff. Nothing at all. Zero of those things. And I also think it is one of the only unifiers left in the world. We are built in a world that's built to divide. Sports brings people together.

Yeah.

From Chris Womack, who I've watched the game with, to the lowest level, entry level intern. You think they're going to have a political talk or a money talk or what are they going to talk about? Sports. And that you're at the Braves games together or you're at the PGA or any of these things. I think the grand unification of it, plus the fact that you're training kids essential skills, makes sports the net positive.

Oh yeah, and look, at all levels, I mean, there's one of the reasons that Southern Company has this connection to sports. And it's not something that just started recently. I mean, they were a big player in getting the Olympics to Atlanta. And I think that one of the things too, sports teaches you, if I look at every, how I view inclusion as an example, like how I learned to interact with people who were different than me is because I was around people who were different from me in a sports setting where we all had the same goal. Now we were all coming from different backgrounds.

The goal is the same.

The goal is the same. And I think there is a, that's one thing that sports has where it tends to unify people who come from all different backgrounds.

And those, you would never know more than watching those teammates. If those teammates were not teammates and they were just in high school together, they would never interact. And who knows what the interaction would be. But the way they're on a team, the way they bond together, and then you know what the best part is, the one that doesn't, that's who they kick off the team. They kick the one that doesn't. I don't care how good that person is. These days, it's about team, they're off the team. Well, Freddie, this has been freaking awesome. I appreciate your time. We covered a lot, but hopefully we helped open some eyes and let people know what's going down out there in the world. You've been listening to the Marketing MadMen on Xtra 106.3 and we will catch you next week.