Feelings Don't Drive Change

Most social impact campaigns are built on two ingredients: information and emotion. The data makes the case. The storytelling makes people care. But caring, on its own, has a shelf life. 

Saralynn Finn, founder of Sett & Sley Consulting, joins Eric in the studio fresh off a packed breakout session at Skoll World Forum to argue that the third ingredient, what she calls "the hands", is where campaigns succeed or quietly die. "the hands" are the actionable, attainable pathways that turn an informed, emotionally engaged audience into people who actually do something.

The conversation unpacks why "the hands" piece is so consistently missing, even in well-resourced organizations. Saralynn shares stories from her time at Represent Us, where a celebrity collaboration drove 30K new subscribers but didn't directly move the needle on healthcare reform, and a separate end-of-year fundraising campaign 5X'd year-over-year revenue by combining SMS reengagement, handwritten holiday cards, and a hope-driven impact reel. The pattern she keeps returning to: the campaigns that worked best had a finite window, a specific audience, and a clear action that wasn't just "join our list."

The conversation shifts toward what organizations can actually do differently. Together they land on reverse-engineering campaigns from the desired outcome, treating campaign tactics like experiments with real timelines, and resisting the urge to dump the entire "hands" problem on the comms team. Saralynn is emphatic that action planning needs to involve leadership, not just the person managing the content calendar. Comms needs a seat at the strategy table, and strategy needs to produce goals that are realistic, funded, and tied to mission.

The episode closes with a shared conviction that the social impact sector doesn't lack ambition or heart. What it lacks is the willingness to get specific about what audiences should do, fund the infrastructure to make those actions possible, and then communicate progress transparently enough to keep people invested. "the hands" work is harder than the head work or the heart work. That's exactly why most organizations skip it.

Episode Highlights:

[00:00:01] The head, heart, and hands framework for social impact campaigns 
[00:02:30] What the "head" really is: the 25-page white paper your program officer wants on the website 
[00:03:30] “Heart” as emotional storytelling, and the line between impact and poverty porn 
[00:05:00] “The hands”: actionable, attainable pathways that create real impact 
[00:06:00] Why "the hands" breakout at Skoll World Forum was the most well-attended 
[00:07:30] A leader who spent six years figuring out his audience before he could move the needle 
[00:10:00] The celebrity collaboration that drove 30K subscribers but didn't change healthcare 
[00:15:00] Vote by mail in 2020: same message, radically different messengers at national vs. local scale 
[00:19:00] Why documentary films end when the curtains close and nothing changes 
[00:22:00] Climate messaging, renewable energy, and making people feel like they can do something 
[00:26:00] The end-of-year fundraising campaign that 5X'd revenue through SMS, holiday cards, and impact reels 
[00:29:00] Reverse-engineering campaigns from the desired outcome 
[00:33:00] Treating campaign tactics like scientific experiments 
[00:34:00] Why action planning can't be a comms-only job 

Notable Quotes:

[00:06:00]: "It's the piece of most campaigns that's missing, that people are trying to break the nut of and figure out: how do I create a pathway?" Saralynn Finn 

[00:12:10]: "Awareness and then what? You have half a million followers now. Amazing. What do you want them to do?" Saralynn Finn 

[00:12:30]: "Once we understand the problem and then we have an emotion about it, we have to use our hands to do something. Otherwise, I think it's not a great outcome." Saralynn Finn 

[00:13:00]: "Campaigns need their own little mini theory of change." Eric Ressler 

[00:30:10]: "I see ambition that is unmatched by scale and funding, capacity and funding. I see just playing it real small and just sticking to what's worked before without imagining how we could adapt." Saralynn Finn 

[00:31:25]: "True supporters aren't going to hold you to account unless you're coming out with promises. They just want to see movement. They just want to see positive momentum." Eric Ressler 
 

Resources & Links:

• Skoll World Forum — where Eric and Saralynn co-hosted panels and "the hands" breakout session
• Represent Us — organization where Saralynn ran campaigns including the Sia collaboration and end-of-year fundraising
• Saralynn's LinkedIn article about the AI documentary in Rural America.

Full Transcript:

Eric Ressler [00:00:35]: So today we have a very special guest, Saralynn Finn, in the studio in Seymour Studios. I think you are our first non-Jonathan Designing Tomorrow podcast in the studio. Welcome, Saralynn.

Saralynn Finn [00:00:45]: Thank you so much. I'm really happy to be here. It's a beautiful day in Santa Cruz.

Eric Ressler [00:00:50]: It really is. So we have a really exciting topic today. A little background for our listeners. Saralynn and I just got back from Skoll World Forum. Ideas are buzzing. Saralynn co-hosted panels with me and others and came to me with this topic that I instantly gravitated towards. So today we're going to talk about why feelings don't drive change. Pretty controversial take, Saralynn. Can you back it up?

Saralynn Finn [00:01:15]: You don't shy away from these.

Eric Ressler [00:01:20]: So tell me a little bit about yourself and what drove you to this point of view and then we can break it down for our listeners.

Saralynn Finn [00:01:25]: Thank you. My career has spanned a number of different issue areas in mission-driven work. And one of the things that I got the opportunity to do at the forum was to speak on a panel about driving narrative change. The format that we chose as our metaphor for that discussion was the head, the heart, and "the hands" as aspects of driving campaigns. They're all important, right? A lot of campaigns tend to over-index on the head and the heart and instead we need to focus more on "the hands", which is action.

Eric Ressler [00:02:00]: Let's break that down. I love this metaphor, the head, the heart, and "the hands". And I have ideas around how I think about those different parts and how they relate to comms work and how they relate to brand. But let's try and break down what are the things that fit into those buckets a little bit. So let's start maybe with the head. What's in the head? Are we talking about stats? Are we talking about facts and figures? Is this the logical part? Is that what the head represents?

Saralynn Finn [00:02:25]: Yeah, the head is the logical part. It's probably your program officer who gives you a 25-page white paper and is like, "Could you put this on our website?"

Eric Ressler [00:02:35]: As a PDF you can download.

Saralynn Finn [00:02:40]: As a PDF. And of course that 25-page impact report or summary of activities is really important. It backs up the work that you're doing. It demonstrates that this is effective and is the grist of the work, but facts aren't enough to drive change.

Eric Ressler [00:03:10]: Yeah, right. So the head metaphor here is mostly about information, facts, statistics, even the scientific element of it. Let's talk about the heart. So the heart is the feeling organ, right? This is where the emotional element comes in. Is this where impact storytelling fits? Tell me about how you think about the heart.

Saralynn Finn [00:03:30]: Absolutely. The heart is the filmmaker who comes to you with an incredible piece of content about your issue area and says, "I think this is aligned and I'd love to do work like this with you to get information out about either the toll of your impact on communities or the opportunity to create the outcomes that we're all looking for."

Eric Ressler [00:04:00]: What about the emotional toll? For example, the worst part of this in social impact comms is, "Oh, look at these poor people we have to save," the poverty porn.

Saralynn Finn [00:04:10]: Yes. Or see turtles with soda can things around their neck.

Eric Ressler [00:04:15]: So when we're tugging on people's heartstrings, that's what we're talking about here.

Saralynn Finn [00:04:15]: Yes. And there's many methodologies that we use. Sometimes those are used responsibly, sometimes maybe overused or not used responsibly, but that's the second bucket. So what are "the hands"?

Saralynn Finn [00:04:30]: "the hands" are giving your audience, whoever your audience might be, and we can get into that more a little later, actual actionable pathways that create impact. So what is actionable? Attainable actions that can then create real impact in the issue area that you have. And so your audience may be broad. It could be asking a whole group of legislative constituents to contact their lawmaker to drive an action, or it could be much smaller. It could be a small group of donors who have the power to make an impact to act.

Eric Ressler [00:05:25]: So what I'm hearing here is that this is where the action actually happens. This is the modality or the methodology that will actually create the change in the world, which so many times does happen through government programs or change, but not always. You mentioned a dinner with 10 donors who might fund a new initiative could be the outcome. So when you did this panel, you shared with me that you did a breakout session afterwards and it broke into these three, and "the hands", which you led, was by far the most well attended. Why do you think that is?

Saralynn Finn [00:06:00]: I think that it's the piece of most campaigns that's missing, that people are trying to break the nut of and figure out: how do I create a pathway? Because this is going to be unique to your organization and its size and its influence. It's going to be unique to your overall organizational budget, but also to specifically this campaign or this issue area's budget. And we need the facts, we need the emotion, and those are somewhat written into the fabric of what most social impact organizations are already doing. They understand those pieces because they're often programmatic. But then it's the action, and how does the communications team and the communications functions fit into driving the action?

Eric Ressler [00:06:55]: So your point of view at the end of the day is that the head and the heart are known entities and people are mostly doing that, maybe not always well, but they expect that that's going to be part of a campaign. But "the hands" is where people are falling the most short in the space, generally speaking.

Saralynn Finn [00:07:10]: Yes. And have so many questions and failures, frankly. It was really humbling. I felt really moved and humbled by the fact that people were willing to share their failures. One leader shared that he finally, after six years, figured out that his organization needed to get really clear on his audience so that then he could target them with the action. And he said he spent six years struggling to figure out how to move the needle ultimately.

Eric Ressler [00:07:50]: I hear a lot of orgs say they need to make their communications better. And what does that mean? Communications or marketing, choose your term, but your organization's ability to have some narrative, create some change, run some campaign, reach the people that you need to reach with your story. And what I'd like to spend a little bit of time talking about, because I think you have a unique vantage point on this. You've worked at a number of different orgs in the social impact space and outside of the social impact space, but always in some communications seat. So you have a vantage point that I don't have in that you've been the insider working with agencies or just working with the internal team to try and figure out, okay, leadership wants this, but we have to at some point actually turn that into a campaign, into an action that we're accountable for.

So give me a glimpse into your vantage point from various organizations and how does that happen on the inside? Give me some stories, give me some examples.

Saralynn Finn [00:09:05]: Well, I think there's always the evergreen, "We should do some socials about this."

Eric Ressler [00:09:10]: Yes.

Saralynn Finn [00:09:10]: I think you've probably been approached by brands who have had that as the answer to why they're engaging you, right?

Eric Ressler [00:09:20]: Yeah, all the time. "Oh, we want to just boost our social presence." Or oftentimes because we do so many identity and branding projects that then of course should inform the social plan, and we find that so much it's just so reactive. "Oh, this thing's happening. Make sure that goes out on socials too." And I'm actually not a huge fan of just super dialed editorial calendar style socials. I think it's good to have some play and opportunistic approach to social. But if it's always reactive all the time, there's no coherent strategy. And again, to your point, there's no "what's the point of this even?" Is it awareness? Is it vanity metrics, more followers, more engagement? There's some value in that inherently, but at the end of the day, for what point, what's the reason?

Saralynn Finn [00:10:10]: I think back to some of my work at Represent Us. I was brought on to help launch a short film with the pop icon Sia, which was a really exciting opportunity. And the goal for that campaign was to use healthcare and people's experience with the broken healthcare system in the United States as an entry point to fighting corruption and demanding that we get money out of politics, which I think we can all agree is necessary. But at the time the organization didn't have a real strong call to action beyond "just join our list."

And we had a really exciting campaign. We had the organization's best-performing post in Instagram history up to that point because we did the first collab post with someone who has a lot of followers. Huge platform. I don't keep numbers in my brain, but I want to say at least 14 million. And it was super exciting. We ended up getting 30K new to list, which I think most organizations would be thrilled about as an outcome. And it was successful. That was a successful campaign in terms of it had an impact in growing the audience, growing awareness. But it wasn't helping healthcare in America. Not directly. And not at that point.

Eric Ressler [00:11:50]: So we just did an episode a couple episodes back about me making a case for visibility being really important. And I don't think you're saying visibility isn't important here, but are you saying awareness campaigns are just bullshit?

Saralynn Finn [00:12:00]: No, no, no. Awareness campaigns are so important. But once you get awareness, what are you doing with it?

Eric Ressler [00:12:10]: Then what? Awareness and then what?

Saralynn Finn [00:12:10]: Awareness and then what? Okay. So you have half a million followers now. Amazing. What do you want them to do? What did you do with that? Why are they there? Are they there to get angry about a topic? Are they there to get excited about a topic? And then what are they doing with those emotions? So we can't stop at the ... Once we understand the problem and then we have an emotion about it, we have to use our hands to do something. Otherwise, I think it's not a great outcome.

Eric Ressler [00:12:45]: I think that's fair. And I do see this a lot of times when people approach us and they're like, "Hey, we want to make our comms better or we want to do a campaign about this." And I'm always like, "Great, let's hear about it. Tell me about what are the outcomes that you're hoping for in this campaign?" It's almost like campaigns need their own little mini theory of change.

Saralynn Finn [00:13:00]: Absolutely.

Eric Ressler [00:13:00]: And I think oftentimes that is very lacking. I've been very lucky to work on campaigns and alongside campaigns that have had incredible outcomes where bills have been passed, real social impact has happened. And unfortunately, I've also been part of campaigns where we get to do really cool creative and strategic work, even foundational work, but because our focus as an agency is not on running campaigns and the nuts and bolts that really are important, "the hands" work, even sometimes, and I don't think these are exactly the same, I call it the lever-pulling work. There are levers that have to be pulled and there's strategy that those levers need to lead to, and all this time, energy, effort, money goes into these campaigns and there was never a clear outcome or goal in the first place. Or the goal is there, it's very aspirational, but there's no logical plan to get there.

Saralynn Finn [00:14:00]: Right. There's no logical plan. And what I see fail in the logical plan often is either the budget is approximately 50% what it should be to reach that goal, and that can be an organic budget. It doesn't have to be a paid budget. And I am someone who believes in the power of organic social and I've seen incredible things happen with absolutely zero ad spend. Or there is a misunderstanding of where the influence actually lies to create that lever to pull.

Eric Ressler [00:14:35]: That part I think is really important. One thing that I've noticed is that certain types of orgs are well fit or have the right conditions for the mix of luck and skill and all of that to come together for a campaign to be successful. And some orgs want to do a type of campaign that they're just not very well suited for. So I'm curious to hear, you've been in a number of different situations, number of different types of orgs from very grassroots to grasstops to behind-the-scenes advocacy. Is there a right-sized or right approach campaign for different types of orgs? How do you think about that when you're consulting or when you're in house? What are the conditions and the raw ingredients that you're looking for to put together?

Saralynn Finn [00:15:25]: Oh my gosh, there's so many options here. And I'm thinking about the 2020 election because at that time I was both running a national social campaign, organic social campaign, to get the word out about the integrity of vote by mail. And I was also working with election officials in local jurisdictions to run their own campaigns and advising them about best practices in reaching voters. So we had really different scales and scopes of those campaigns and really different tactics worked.

At the national level, we worked with coalitions who were engaging celebrities. That wasn't our role. Our role was to be the nerds and the wonks of, "Yeah, vote by mail has been happening since the 1800s, the Pony Express. This is not a new thing. Trust us. We know how to do this." And then it was the same message, but with really different messengers at the local level.

Saralynn Finn [00:16:30]: So folks at the local level wanted to see their election official that they had known for a long time. She'd probably been doing that job for 15, 20 years. They wanted her to say, "Folks, come on, I've been doing this for a long time. I know how to get your ballot and I know how to count it and everything's going to be safe." So I think of that as an example of it's the same message, but with really different types of narratives around it and different ingredients. We didn't have a US Postmaster come out and talk about vote by mail. We had some snazzy national 2020 hip graphics. And then for the election officials, it was really important that that person be someone that they recognize from their community, from church, from the grocery store, right out in front and representing that message.

Eric Ressler [00:18:15]: So the messenger specifically matters a lot.

Saralynn Finn [00:18:20]: Yeah.

Eric Ressler [00:18:20]: And so when we're talking about hands here, this is in "the hands" category at some level. What I'm hearing you say is that to take it back to our metaphor at a high level, we're not saying head and heart don't matter at all. Those things are actually probably really crucial to get well. But if all you have is a strong head, then all it is is just facts, facts, facts, and facts don't change minds. They don't move people. If all you have is emotion, you can get people to feel something, but then they just go back to their everyday lives and no change happens. If you combine both of those things, now they're informed and emotive and still not doing anything. So "the hands" part really matters.

And I think you mentioned at one point early in our conversation documentary films. This is a proven way to inform and engage people emotionally on a topic, to get them to have empathy for someone who's not like them or someone who is like them going through something, and to get people to really even be heavily primed to take action. But then so many documentary films end when the curtains close and you go back home and nothing changes.

Saralynn Finn [00:19:25]: Yeah. Or I saw a documentary film in the theaters recently and I wrote a LinkedIn article about it. It ended with a QR code that took you to a website to join a list to eventually take an action.

Eric Ressler [00:19:40]: Have you gotten an action email yet?

Saralynn Finn [00:19:45]: I have gotten an email. There was not action.

Eric Ressler [00:19:45]: Oh no.

Saralynn Finn [00:19:50]: Which we all need to grow our base. We all need to grow our list. But I just see so many times that I want to do something about what is messed up in this world and I love that I get to do that with my job, but I want to do more. My neighbors want to do more, my friends want to do more. And I think climate's the best example of this. I mean, you've worked with some organizations that are really trying to move the needle on climate with their brands. Can you tell me about how you've seen that go and are they moving towards action, actionable, impactful action for their audiences?

Eric Ressler [00:20:30]: Well, I would say any systems-level issue, climate being a classic case, this is hard, right? Because change happens in decades or centuries even at times. That's incremental, and incremental change isn't sexy. People don't want to fund it. And with climate specifically, this is starting to change, but it's this "first of all" looming thing that's not here yet. That's the meta narrative around climate. It's coming, it's coming. Trust us, it's coming. But now we're starting to see, no, it's here. Natural disasters. The data and the science is not just theoretical and hasn't been for quite a while. More and more people are feeling the lived negative consequences and impacts of climate change. So maybe that's going to change things.

And we're talking right now in the midst, not to make this political, of a major geopolitical event where the world's oil supply is held up between two regimes. I was actually just talking with someone in the climate space today who's like, "That sucks." And there's a window of opportunity to remind people why renewable energy and clean energy and clean tech is so important. It's not even just about climate change, it's also about resiliency and about affordability. And the good news, and it's unfortunate we had to get here, is that the economics are going to win here and it's going to happen.

Saralynn Finn [00:22:00]: Quickly.

Eric Ressler [00:22:00]: Quickly. It's just a shame that it got to this point. And I'm a climate optimist amongst all, and I say that knowing that there's still a lot of work to do and a lot of people are going to suffer before we're on the other side of this, whatever that even looks like. To answer your question directly though, yes, I've worked on many brands in the climate space and helped them with identity work, with messaging work, with campaign work as well. And I think the thing that can be hard, and I feel this as a major supporter of climate, is what can I as Eric do for climate? I can sign petitions, I can vote blue in California. I can choose who I vote for. So it's like, what agency do we have? And I think part of the job of a campaign, especially for an issue like climate, is to make people feel like they can do something and it's going to actually matter. And can we even just start there?

Saralynn Finn [00:23:00]: Yes. I think that's true for any of these big systemic issues that we're facing: our crisis in democracy and the fact that our government doesn't feel representative for most people, healthcare and a myriad of health issues where people feel like their healthcare isn't really working in their benefit, international development. I would add economic equity, having opportunity be equally available to people. So do we think there are actions people can take? I mean, I've designed some pathways that feel important. You've probably been a part of being a thought partner on some pathways that feel important.

Eric Ressler [00:23:50]: Yeah. I mean, I'd say sometimes, and I'm speaking now from the vantage point of a creative partner, not an individual. Because I actually feel the way that I contribute back most to the world is through my clients. I'm very grateful to be able to say that and do that. I don't do as much individual action and activism. I do a little bit, but not as much as I would if I didn't already work in this space. The times that I've felt our work has made the biggest difference on an issue is when a bill has been passed or a meaningful bill has even been co-sponsored or introduced when we're talking about politics. But also even when fundraising is more successful is huge, because most of the clients we work with are not funded at the cost that they need to be to truly make a difference.

Saralynn Finn [00:24:40]: Absolutely.

Eric Ressler [00:24:40]: And so for me, a lot of our work is focused on identity and clarity and strategy and these really fundamental upstream things that make comms better, make fundraising better. But often the outcomes that I'm looking for, and this is just one way of thinking about hands work and making change, is my clients can afford a comms person for the first time, or their comms team of one, which is a bit of a fallacy we can get into, is now a team of three, or their annual budget is up 30% that year instead of 10% and they've been stuck. Those are leading signs of success for me. And does that directly create change? Not in that moment, but I know that it is creating a ripple effect of change. So those are the things. It's a weird way of answering the question, but that's how I think about it.

Saralynn Finn [00:25:30]: Okay. So your answers made me realize a pattern in my work, that the campaigns that have been, I think, the most effective in "the hands" and the calls to action have been extraordinarily timely. So the vote by mail campaign during the 2020 election had a very finite end date of success, of whether or not people felt safe to vote by mail, that their vote was going to be counted and all of that.

And then when I worked with Represent Us, I also did an end-of-year fundraising campaign, and that was a really exciting thing to be a part of because democracy was not being well funded leading up to 2024, and I got to be a part of making sure that the organization had the reserves that it needed to do the coalition work that it had set up to do. And so we ended up 5Xing year-over-year revenue from that campaign, which was really exciting. And we did it in a few ways. It was a really broad integrated campaign. We tried things that failed.

Eric Ressler [00:26:50]: As you should.

Saralynn Finn [00:26:50]: Facebook fundraisers were not happening at that time for this topic with our audience. It was our first go. But the SMS campaign was wildly successful. It reengaged a crazy amount of lapsed supporters, I think around 11,000, became people who opened our emails and texts and obviously had a big impact on the fundraising revenue. We also did holiday cards, which was so much fun. It was a thank you for your support this year. It was to some high-touch folks and we divided the labor amongst all of the staff, which was really fun that everyone got the opportunity to participate in thanking the donors for their contribution.

And then we did a really snazzy impact reel for what we had accomplished that year. And then another reel. I had been building up the content for this for quite a while. We did a reel about what was giving democracy leaders all over the country hope for the future.

Eric Ressler [00:28:10]: Love that.

Saralynn Finn [00:28:10]: And wrapped that up into what the 2024 goals were, with the ask implicit in that: we need your help to accomplish these goals and to fuel this hope, right? Because we know that hope is not a strategy.

Eric Ressler [00:28:30]: But it can be part of one. And should be.

Saralynn Finn [00:28:30]: It can be part of one.

Eric Ressler [00:28:30]: Okay. So a couple threads I want to pick up on there. I want to try and wrap this up for our listeners and give them some good takeaways who are like, "Okay, I'm convinced Eric and Saralynn, I need to pay attention to "the hands" in my campaigns, but aren't I already doing that? I'm asking people to donate all the time. Isn't that a hand movement?"

What are your thoughts around what, and this is obviously going to be really context dependent, if you're an advocacy-based org, you have a whole set of motions that make sense that don't make sense if you're not an advocacy-based org. But I'm wondering if we can maybe spend a little bit of time trying to clarify, if someone's walking away from our episode and saying, "Okay, I understand that all these parts are important, but what do I need to do to make "the hands" work better?"

Let's break that down a little bit. Maybe let me start with one and have you confirm or deny it. I think we need to be thinking about this in a reverse engineering or reverse design motion. What I mean by that is, let's define success for this campaign. What is the desired state? This campaign would be successful if ... And let's write a page out and start big picture and even throw away constraints for a second, and we can rein them in. Is that a good approach? Does that make sense for you?

Saralynn Finn [00:29:45]: Yes, absolutely. Reverse engineer. And reverse engineering for your audience is a really great idea. Here is the future that is possible with your action.

Eric Ressler [00:30:00]: Yes. So it's very visioning.

Saralynn Finn [00:30:00]: Right.

Eric Ressler [00:30:00]: There's a shortage of vision in this space.

Saralynn Finn [00:30:00]: There is. And a belief that it is possible to attain our vision. I see both things. I see ambition that is unmatched by scale and funding, capacity and funding. I see just playing it real small and just sticking to what's worked before without imagining, well, how could we adapt this now? What's this message that this moment and this audience wants to hear, and what's possible when we give them an action?

Eric Ressler [00:30:45]: Let's talk about the imagination part just for a minute because I think it's really important. What you said about ambition not being matched with action I think is true and a real problem. And I think it really comes down to, it's almost the Boy Who Cried Wolf story at the end of the day. You keep saying we can do this and we keep trying things, but I don't see any evidence that anything's actually happening. Maybe that's just bad comms. Things are actually happening, no one knows about it. But sometimes things aren't actually happening. So we have to be real about that.

At the same time, I would encourage people to think big, to have a bold vision. And I think that true supporters aren't going to hold you to account on, unless you're coming out with promises. They just want to see movement. They just want to see positive momentum. If you can have, in my opinion, a strong, ambitious, magnetic vision that makes people feel like they can do something and there's some proof that you're getting there, I think that's enough.

Saralynn Finn [00:31:45]: And this is the place where you and I really agree, that there is a lack of transparency. There is a hesitancy to share information that doesn't feel important enough or isn't verifiable enough. There's so many reasons that organizations decide to delay or ultimately not communicate things that are real opportunities to help their constituents, their audience, to feel invested and supported by your organization. "My dreams and values and goals are being supported. And I see that in these little updates that I get." Instead, we sanitize a lot of the facts, a lot of the stories out of our communications. So I think that it just goes back to being really specific about what is happening.

Eric Ressler [00:32:45]: I would say one other thing to leave listeners with before we wrap up, and we've talked about this before on the show, but it's worth repeating. I look at this work as almost science in the sense that we do need to experiment. We need to have a hypothesis. Let's start there. And I think what's hard about this work and why it's so important to have seasoned comms people on your team is it's hard to know when to end experiments, because you might start an experiment in good faith and then set an arbitrary "we're going to review in three months" and kill something that in month four was just primed for takeoff.

Saralynn Finn [00:33:20]: Yes.

Eric Ressler [00:33:20]: Maybe a good takeaway is think about it like experiments. Work with seasoned comms people, either in-house when you can and/or as consultants who can help you figure out how do you run experiments. What experiments do you run? What's the budget look like? How much is organic versus paid? All those fundamental handsy questions. But that you do need to try and that there is no playbook that you can just copy and paste, right?

Saralynn Finn [00:33:50]: If only there were. It's also context and audience specific. So I'm not saying that this is an easy nut to crack. Obviously that's why that aspect of the panel was so well attended, because so many people are struggling with this. And my message would be to vision with all of your leaders and don't ask comms to create this on their own, but to collaborate on how people can take action.

Eric Ressler [00:34:20]: Huge point as we wrap up. This should not be a comms-only job to determine what "the hands" or the actions are. It needs to bubble up all the way to deep strategic planning.

Saralynn Finn [00:34:35]: And comms needs to have a seat at that table in a meaningful way, which I see so often. I've been handed a campaign with outcomes that are maybe not tying back to what our mission is.

Eric Ressler [00:34:50]: Having goals is great, but not if they're the wrong goals or unattainable. So you have to be realistic about this. Well, Saralynn, we could go on forever about this. I'm sure we will have you back on the pod at some time to dig into all things comms and brand and social impact. But this has been a pleasure. Thank you for joining me today.

Saralynn Finn [00:35:05]: Thank you, Eric. It was great.