Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studio in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Atlanta Business Radio, brought to you by Kennesaw State University’s Executive MBA program. The accelerated degree program for working professionals looking to advance their career and enhance their leadership skills. And now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here, another episode of Atlanta Business Radio. And this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor, Kennesaw State University’s Executive MBA program. Without them, we wouldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today on the show, we have the president of the American Marketing Association Atlanta chapter, Paul Carpenter. Welcome.

Paul Carpenter: Hey, Lee, how are you?

Lee Kantor: I am doing well for folks who aren’t familiar. You mind sharing a little bit about the AMA? How are you serving folks?

Paul Carpenter: Yeah, absolutely. Well, first off, thank you for having me on the show. The American Marketing Association is a nationwide association. It happens to be the largest marketing organization in the country. Atlanta is actually the second largest chapter out of about 70 professional chapters across the US. And again, Atlanta being number two in that category. And we basically serve as AMA National serves as really the thought leader, the best practices, the marketing journal that really fuels a lot of our collegiate students that come up through marketing. So as a local chapter, it’s one of our goals to not just only serve the Brands that are here in Atlanta, the agencies and the marketers, but also to, as I like to put it, leave it better than we found it for our Deca high school students that are coming up as emerging marketers and are collegiate marketers that are with our chapters like Kennesaw State, UGA, Georgia State, the HBCUs. We have a Clark Atlanta chapter. So it’s pretty amazing. And so we yeah, we kind of cover the gamut. If it’s if it’s marketing or advertising, we’re in it.

Lee Kantor: Now. How are you addressing kind of the blurring of the lines between marketing, advertising, PR, you know, and you throw in social media in there, digital and all that stuff, like where does it begin and end or does it or is it all just one, you know, Kumbaya?

Paul Carpenter: I, I, I’m laughing at it because I think back in the day, everybody used to have swim lanes. And I do believe that there are there are definitely disciplines between each of those things that you mentioned in today’s day and age, with the way media consumption is and the proliferation of content. It almost doesn’t matter. You can put digital in front of marketing, and a lot of people do that. But at the. I mean, let’s face it, marketing is digital marketing is kind of the lifeblood of any business, honestly. So I think it’s I think I think the swim lanes, it’s actually a blue ocean and everybody’s trying to swim together. Some are drowning, but others are are really paddling. And, you know, kind of keeping the every the business afloat, if you will.

Lee Kantor: Now, are you finding that consumers are kind of inoculated from marketing that or suspicious of it or more suspicious of it today than they were in the past because of, like you’re saying that it is a blue ocean in that it’s everywhere. And now people don’t know what’s marketing, what’s real, what’s, you know, unbiased. That information and content is, is so is out there everywhere, so ubiquitous that you can’t discern between marketing or entertainment or or information.

Paul Carpenter: Well, Lee, you kind of took the words right out of my mouth there, and we haven’t even talked yet. So it’s kind of amazing. I do believe in many ways it’s hard to tell what is or isn’t marketing. The I do feel that there is a greater sense of mistrust, and it’s actually an event that we had recently with the likes of Newell, UPS and Edelman. We actually just had a had an event in mid-October that talked about trust in this, in this day and age and how winning trust is actually the thing that is unlocking, I think, a lot of potential for brands. It you know, we talk a lot about authenticity, but at the same time we’re talking about artificial intelligence. And I find that talking out of both sides of that mouth is really odd. How can you talk about artificial and authenticity at the same time? So yeah, I think the I think the worlds are blurring. And you mentioned entertainment. We’re watching brands right now go through, I think, a kind of a renaissance of what used to be way back in the day, probably way before I was born as well. But that style of advertorials, edutainment in a way that, you know, drink your Ovaltine and that sort of thing as it was a part of as it was a part of culture and storytelling and long form and brands kind of owned that for a little while. And then I think we got away from it and moved very much into a very pay to play paid media programmatic. You know, it’s out there, it’s not going anywhere. But we we lost a little bit of that, that, that moxie, if you will, of really good deep storytelling that drew the audience in and actually entertained the audience as much as it did push a product or service.

Lee Kantor: Now, is it part of The Amaz! I mean, values or maybe it’s mission to create a sense of, okay, we have certain rules that we’re going to follow. If you’re a member, then, you know, you can’t not disclose that this is marketing material. Like you can’t like you said, there’s so much pay to play out there, and this is one of my pet peeves, just in media that a lot of times the the consumer of the media doesn’t realize that the media has been paid for by somebody and that maybe that restaurant didn’t just kind of randomly appear on that show, that they paid to be on that show. And unless you are got a magnifying glass, you may not be able to discern that that really happened.

Paul Carpenter: Yeah. I don’t know if I have a great answer for you on this as much as a word that popped in as you were saying that. And I think about relevancy if if it’s relevant and it’s a part of the story and I and again, I’m this is not dating myself, but I do watch a lot of documentaries. I am fascinated by cooking and the and I go back to one of the I feel like one of the early adopters Was in this. And then she pushed back. And that was Julia Child. You know, she she had such a great audience. She was very authentic. She cooked, she tried to educate as she was educating people on how to cook meals instead of, you know, you know, whipping something together or eventually going into a microwave. She she attracted a lot of brands, but those brands were very relevant to what she was trying to do. Ultimately, she ended up kicking those brands out because it it took over from what she was trying to do. And so I think that there’s a correlation here to what you were saying or asking and how it how it applies today to a brand or a service being relevant to the story and the audience that they’re serving. Does that help?

Lee Kantor: Yeah. I mean, I think relevance is important, but I also think full disclosure is important. Yeah, well, it’s like, for example, this show is sponsored by CSU’s executive MBA program. If all of a sudden I don’t mention that at all at the beginning, and we just talk and I’m like, you know, who has a good marketing program, CSU’s executive MBA program. That’s the go to place for, you know, marketing. Like, if I do that and I’m not telling anyone, you know, that the show is sponsored by them, then they don’t know that it’s not fair. I have information they don’t have, and I just find a lot of marketing has information the consumer doesn’t have and isn’t disclosing it. And that’s creating this level of distrust where people just blow by commercials and they don’t even want to hear it because they don’t want to be sold to they don’t trust the brand.

Paul Carpenter: Now, I think you and I can talk about this for for a while, and I think a lot of your listeners probably feel this way as well. And, you know, again, not not to bring up the two letters of the year, but AI is only making that even worse, if you will. If you’re not disclosing that you created this ad or this visual using AI. You know what’s funny is I have a 2019 and 18 year old or 2019 and 16 and they can they can spot it from a mile away. And, you know, I do think that it goes back to this relevancy, your trust. I do think if you are disclosing it, that automatically elevates that level of trust. And and I think it has I think it’s eroded over the years primarily due to what was once and it still kind of is a black box of digital, everything being kind of behind a bot. And it makes it really hard for the for the end user or consumer to go, hey, you know what? Why did I get served this? A lot of people don’t understand it. And I, I get I crack up when I’m scrolling through feeds and going or, you know, on YouTube, and suddenly I get an ad for, you know, something that my wife buys. I’m like, yeah, that makes sense, I get it. But it’s like, I do wish that there was a better level of disclosure, but we gave up that right back in probably between 2004 and 2008, when we all checked the box on Facebook or Twitter back then and said, sure, you can have our data. And yeah, I want relevant ads. That’s what we were asking for back then. And how has that turned out today? It’s like now it’s just a bucket of noise.

Lee Kantor: Right? And the people are just not looking at it anymore. I mean. Correct. So I mean, it was a double edged sword. So it is, you know, you one, you can get to feed me an ad because my wife and I had a conversation about something and all of a sudden the ad pops up in her feed. But you lose me caring or paying attention. I mean, you might get to count that as an impression. And, you know, somebody high fiving in some boardroom because they got a lot of impressions. But, you know, is it really translating into revenue down the line or just people not even seeing it anymore?

Paul Carpenter: That’s right. That’s right.

Lee Kantor: Now, recently, Brandweek came to town. Can you talk about why that was important for the AMA to have bring the folks at Brandweek here?

Paul Carpenter: Yeah, absolutely. And to be honest, Brandweek is one of the major activations for Adweek, which is one of the largest publications that anybody in the marketing and advertising space probably has a subscription to in some way, shape or form. Them coming into Atlanta this year, really, we found out about it kind of through through circles and talking, probably back in May or June. And when? When I heard about it and, and went to the website and started to look about look at last year’s activations, which was it was in Scottsdale, Arizona, I believe. And then the previous year it was in Miami. They, you know, there was Advertising Week just up in New York prior them coming to Atlanta and bringing the level of brand leaders, entertainers. Uh, Elizabeth Banks was there, Sanjay Gupta, Wyclef Jean, it was it was star studded, uh, star studded event. It was a three day conference downtown Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, them coming here to me and to the board for AMA. It it signaled that wait a second, what we’ve been talking about and the reason why AMA Atlanta probably sits at that number two spot, only behind Chicago, by the way, which is the ad capital. It it it really elevated something in our minds that said, all right, Atlanta is not just the home of, you know, some of the best sporting organizations on the planet, the the home for film and television for the past 12 to 15 years, some would say the home of hip hop, the home of southern hospitality and the home of all of these amazing brands that we have in this town.

Paul Carpenter: It’s advertising is coming here. They’re almost doing their little Super Bowl of of ads here. And we said, we’ve got to get involved somehow. And I don’t think there’s ever been that correlation between the American Marketing Association and Adweek to this level, and we just interjected ourselves. And I have to give a shout out to Sharon Harris on this. She really did a lot of, a lot of work to help getting us within the programing in which we did. And we brought to the table heads of brands for Georgia-Pacific, IHG and Coca-Cola. And we really showcased how those three brands are not just Atlanta based brands and household brands, but they are they are doing things that are creatively that are leaning into a new level of creation. Georgia-pacific showed their Angel soft ad that was right before the halftime show for the Super Bowl called Party Tonight, and the the creative strategy that was born out of Atlanta To to come up with that idea, to tell the entire country, go take a bathroom bathroom break right now before the Super Bowl, before the halftime show comes on was ingenious, and it absolutely poured in the types of impressions and and media mentions and things like that. And then with Coca-Cola, we showed some really good work that they have done where they are bleeding into entertainment.

Paul Carpenter: One that is one of my favorites was something called The New Guy, and it was a minute and a half spot, and it was done in collaboration with an Atlanta agency here called majority. And it was also done in collaboration with Christopher Storer, who is the writer and creator of The Bear. And so they ended up doing a bear esque type of commercial featuring Coca-Cola, obviously, within this holiday gathering. And for anyone that’s a fan of the bear and they watch this spot, you immediately see the intentionality and the style and the pacing. And oh, by the way, that ad was aired right after Jeremy Allen White won his Emmy for Best actor for The Bear. And so it’s, you know, you’re starting to see these worlds of entertainment and brand and marketing and advertising just all kind of mashing up because we’re looking for I feel like the audiences are looking for something more right now. We’ve gone through a 25 years of digital diet of of content. And I think we’re sitting at a point where a lot of audiences want a little bit more. They want something a little deeper. And so yeah, having Brand Week here really signified something for us and me personally, that Advertising and marketing in this town can actually help make up some of the deficit that we’ve been feeling in the film and television community for the past two years, since the writers strike in 2023. So yeah.

Lee Kantor: Now, as the leader of the AMA, what kind of is your vision of the next few years here in Atlanta? It sounds like you’re really leaning into this kind of Atlanta creative economy and trying to position Atlanta more as that creative center when it comes to innovation, leadership and marketing. Now, how what what are wins for you? Like, what are you going to be high fiving with your team at the end of your tenure as president?

Paul Carpenter: First, I’ll be high fiving the fact that we did it, that we came, that we made it another year. You know, we are a volunteer led organization. And and everybody on the board really just steps up because they believe in the power of connection, Creativity and building a community so that we can, like I said earlier, leave it better than we found it. And so my two high fives, two hands. One is if we can double the amount of scholarships that we give out to our Deca and collegiate students, that’s number one. Everything that we do, we try to put back into a give back initiative that hands out scholarships. So that’s number one. The second hand of the high five is now at high ten would be if we started to see the state of Georgia market ourselves, market the state as a destination for commercial production. That would be my second high five because I there is an there is a major opportunity here sitting in front of us where a lot of our hometown brands don’t even know this, that if you end up shooting your commercial here in the state of Georgia. It’s the same incentive that film and television has. It extends over to commercial production. So that means you can get up to 20%, actually up to 30 with some other stipulations. But I like to start at 20 and go. If you are shooting that commercial here in the state of Georgia, you’re going to get back 20%. It’s a tax credit right there that can spark your next your next commercial or, you know, social media or whatever else. But that is a savings that enticed studios to move a lot of their productions to Atlanta over the last 15 years. Why can’t we use that same incentive which does exist? Use that same incentive to incentivize brands to come here and even our brands here in town. Why can’t our brands here in town leverage that ruled that exist for them now.

Lee Kantor: Any advice for leaders of associations that have different types of constituents? Like on one hand, you have these mega enterprise brands. On the other hand, you have, you know, a high school kid with a dream of being in marketing. And you have everything in between. You have agencies. You have, I’m sure, influencers, you have solopreneurs, you have big, big companies, little companies. How do you kind of create a community where they all feel welcome and that they want to create, you know, they want to engage and they want to collaborate?

Paul Carpenter: Yeah. Lee, that it’s again, it’s like it’s like we’ve met before. And we talked. We had a pre-interview on this. What’s what’s very interesting about that is at the beginning of my term, I really wanted to simplify something with our mission statement and our mission statement still ends up being very much around creativity, connection, and community. It’s a that’s what we’re trying to build and it’s to drive those creative aspirations. But it was it was a lot of C’s that actually kind of came to came to mind for me. And I went, wait a second, creative, if we think about it outside of pixels and pictures and things like that, it’s actually just the human spark, right? It’s our imagination that starts creating the creative process. And then when you are or are moving into that imaginative world, you look for those connections, other like minded or like valued folks that you can connect with. When you do that and you have that shared kind of purpose, you’re now creating a community. And so I took all of that and I said, wait a second. All of those combined is really nothing more than a giving people a sense that they can be long. And because marketing is so extremely diverse, from the creative side to the very analytical side, to project management, to account management, to age, you know, from somebody who is very new in their career and they’re very tapped into culture, to those who have some of the battle scars and the wisdom that help guide it is a very, very diverse industry.

Paul Carpenter: So I think we need to create a diverse community. And you can only do that by saying, listen, everybody’s welcome. And you and you just start there. And I think, you know, again, what better place than Atlanta where we we are, we exude southern hospitality. I interviewed Steve Koonin a about a year and a half ago. And one of the things that he he says that made him, I think, very successful is just to inject a little bit of that southern hospitality and then people don’t leave. And I think there’s a there are a lot of case studies out there where people moved here shortly after the Olympics or during the Olympics, and they couldn’t leave. And that’s a that’s another testament to, I think, the charm and the hospitality and the belongingness that we have in this city. So we start there, and then we end by giving back to our to our collegiate and Deca students.

Lee Kantor: So what do you need more of? How can we help?

Paul Carpenter: Oh, wow. I mean, just this amplification, having this platform, the shared vision that I think it sounds like you and I also have and going wait a second. Marketing doesn’t have to be this four letter word, and we’ve somehow turned it into one. It can actually be reputable. It should be reputable. That’s what brand stands for anyway. And it’s a place where everybody belongs and our creativity can flourish and we can use commerce for good. So I appreciate the opportunity. And yeah, just want to keep shouting out AMA Atlanta and getting involved because we want to leave it better than we found it.

Lee Kantor: And if somebody wants to learn more what’s the website? What’s the best way to connect?

Paul Carpenter: That’s thanks for asking. It would be a m a hyphen atlanta.com. Well Paul and also you can find us on LinkedIn. We’re very active on LinkedIn. So AMA Atlanta.

Lee Kantor: Well Paul, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Paul Carpenter: Thank you. Lee, I really appreciate you as well. Thanks for getting it out.

Lee Kantor: All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on Atlanta Business Radio.