Podcast

Peter Jacobs, Lay of the Brand:  

Welcome to Lay of the Brand, where we talk with the experts on tech, marketing, creative and PR to learn what’s new, what’s working and what’s next. I’m Peter Jacobs with Merritt Group. Two words impacting the government and the government, contracting community: efficiency and uncertainty. With everyone under the microscope, the GovCon community is looking for ways to stay relevant. How can B2G companies position themselves as important elements of the solution, and how can they get that message across when things are so up in the air? Well, that’s why I’m talking with Brian Chidester, who heads up Global Strategy and Innovation for Public Sector with Adobe and hosts “The Government Huddle with Brian Chidester” podcast. Thanks for joining us, Brian.

Brian Chidester, Adobe:  

Thanks so much for having   me looking forward to this.

Peter Jacobs:  

Brian, business as usual is over, not everywhere or for everything the government does or buys, but enough to put a bunch of new speed bumps in the way. So after don’t panic, what’s the first thing B2G companies should do?

Brian Chidester:  

I mean, this is an opportunity to, I don’t want to say, reinvent yourself, but it’s an opportunity to really go through and scrutinize the value that you can bring to government. I think what we’re seeing right now, and I’m probably going to state a few things that are fairly obvious, but I mean, we’re seeing a lot of cutting, but from from the cuts, what they’re really looking to do is is make sure that they are really doing what the business of government is intended to do by law, right? They’re trying to get down to the nuts and bolts of things like that. So I think it’s an opportunity for companies to take a look at their portfolio and say, how do we really align? Where do we drive the most efficacy, around what government does operationally and as as a as a mission service to citizens, and really get down to kind of brass tacks around those things. I was having a conversation the other day with with a friend of mine who, he’s a, he’s a global executive for EY. He’s over in the Middle East, and I do a lot of global government stuff, but one of the things that we are talking about is the idea around how government needs to necessarily reimagine how they do digital government. I think we’ve for a long time looked at layering maybe new strategies and then new technology on top of those strategies. But we haven’t really taken a hard look to say, are these things that government should be even doing anymore, no matter what side of the party line you are on, making sure that we are doing things that are needed, and then on top of that, what are more strategic ways of delivering those values to the citizens, right? Totally re imagining it, and then bring in technology to facilitate that. I think we’re in the process of doing that right now. I think it’s what we’re all experiencing, and there’s going to be pain along the way. I think that’s you talked about uncertainty. There’s a lot of ambiguity, but it’s, it’s it’s stressful, right? I mean, there’s some pain here, but just like when you go to the gym and you’re working out, I mean, there’s pain there too, but then there’s, there’s going to be gain opportunities. And I think making sure you’re aligning yourself to where you can really support this re imagination of government is, to me, the first thing that you should be doing,

Peter Jacobs:  

Something that’s struck me throughout all this discussion is that some of the vague terms, or the the huge umbrella terms that govcons tend to use to try and mimic what government is saying just don’t seem to have they don’t seem to getting the traction anymore saying things like digital transformation, it’s so broad that it doesn’t have enough of a meaning. You need something tangible to come out of this.

Brian Chidester:  

Yeah, I agree. I think there’s things. And let’s be clear, I work for Adobe, so I’m a strong advocate around the importance of customer experience in CX. But customer experience became that that kind of buzz term as well, just like digital transformation and really boiling it down to, what exactly is it that you’re doing, which is really the modernization of service delivery across a number of different aspects, and customer experience just became that umbrella term. So how can you narrow the aperture around what you’re actually trying to do? I mean, across those things, you have content development, deployment, you have website optimization. There’s a lot of areas, and I think they’re this administration at the federal level, is really taking a very intentional look at all of these different things and not looking at just like you said that umbrella term, but they want to, they want to go very specifically into these programs and understand exactly what’s needed in a very nuanced  way.

Peter Jacobs:  

You know, there seems to be a very focused effort to figure out what is the business of government. What are things that are inherently governmental? The question for B2G companies, of course, is, if it’s not inherently governmental, will it still be something that you want a vendor to provide? And that goes back to that whole positioning idea, how can we provide value to help improve that service delivery?

Brian Chidester:  

Yeah, I totally agree, I think. And that’s why I started off the show by saying, really taking an intentional look at where you as a company, you as a business, can support, what the actual business of government is and where you think it’s going to be going. And I will tell you somebody that I really respect, I respect their opinion a lot. Said, Anyone who tells you right now that they know exactly what’s going to happen, do not trust them. And I’m sitting here telling you right now, none of us know exactly where this is going to land, how long this sort of ambiguous state is going to be or to say what the business of government is going to look like in five or six months, right? But I think making sure that you understand your business in a very strategic way, and being ready to position to the key indicators that this administration has shown they prioritize is exactly what I would be doing. It’s exactly what I am doing.

Peter Jacobs:  

Right. Agencies have no idea what’s coming next either. Clearly, they’re being surprised almost every day. So what kind of messages from GovCons are going to resonate at this point? What can you say to an agency customer as you’re doing that face to face, or as you’re doing some kind of outreach that’s actually going to break through and make somebody say, yeah, that actually fits with what I feel I need to do.

Brian Chidester:  

One of the things I would say before I get into like, specific messages, because I think those, those are all out there, right? I think we know the importance of efficiency and effectiveness and all of those. I think you and I will probably sit down and do another podcast in a year, and those will be the umbrella terms that we reference. But I think the private sector, and I say this as a collective, we has been saying that we have all these different commercial best practices that we think would work within government. And now government, I think, is really looking at leveraging some private sector type of methodology and strategy to be able to deploy within government. We just haven’t seen that before in as aggressive a way as we are right now. So it’s the same things we’ve been saying government should be doing they’re doing it, and I think it’s an opportunity for us to be part of that by showing the, this administration, these departments, these agencies, some of the commercial use cases and best practices that we’re finding to be effective across some of the largest and smallest brands all over our businesses. So that, to me, is something that as we look at messaging, we should be rethinking exactly how we go to market, down to the use case. I mean, we’ve heard for a long time maybe government only wants to see government use cases right. And I think it’s slowly changed. It depends who you talk to, but now I think everything is open, and being able to show how you’re driving a use case that is important to this administration. What was it, whether it is like workforce optimization and productivity, how you’re able to leverage AI to drive efficiency? I think the adoption of some of these technologies that maybe were slower to gain traction despite the value they bring, I think the adoption is going to be much more rapid, and we should not be afraid to be able to position some of those technologies that we thought maybe we’re going to be slower to drive that adoption. AI is one of them. I mean, we’ve, we’ve heard for a long time, hey, and let’s be clear, I’m not saying we shouldn’t be adopting it safely, but we should. We should be doing things slowly, right? And and I think this administration, everything’s on the table. I think they’re looking to find ways to become more effective in in whatever programmatic outcomes they’re looking to drive, and if that is through AI driven efficiency, then you need to position yourself to show Hey, we could do this, and we could do it for you, at speed, at scale. And those are the types of messages that I would be aligning to right now.

Peter Jacobs:  

Well, let’s, let’s follow up on on that, because, AI, of course, you hear it everywhere that, hey, this is going to change everything. It’s going to make everything better. At the same time, people are afraid, you know, is it? Are we moving too fast? The ethics issue is obviously something that that needs to be always measured and attended to, but using AI as an example, how bold and outspoken should GovCons be with new ideas?

Brian Chidester:  

I mean, you’re you’re talking to somebody who tends to be default aggressive. So take this with a grain of salt. I mean, I wouldn’t be afraid to put those messages out there, because it is going to have an impact. My mother in law was in town over the weekend, and she hadn’t downloaded ChatGPT to her phone yet. It just wasn’t anything that she thought to do. She had heard of it. She didn’t know exactly what it was, or really how to use it. And we we walked her through it, and then I got a text message from her on Monday saying, this ChatGPT thing is awesome. It took something, it takes me, like, an hour, and did it in like 15. Seconds, and she said it’s probably even better than what I was doing before. So I think that shows you. I mean, Gartner has their hype cycle. I mean, ChatGPT is certainly mainstream, and it’s been mainstream, and that’s just one area of artificial intelligence that we’re seeing drive value across all industries. Let’s not just say government. I mean, it’s having a massive impact. Now we’re seeing the rise of agentic AI, and I think that’s going to be the next kind of component that can drive huge efficiencies within government, especially as you’re seeing the workforce get cold down more and more, you’re going to need to still have the same impact with less resources. So how do you do that? And I think AI is a natural technology to put its hand up and say, Hey, we could do this. And I think agentic AI is the next piece of that evolution.

Peter Jacobs:  

Well, how careful should the vendor community be about overselling their use of AI? Because so AI washing is just too easy to do, and it’s like we’ve seen things in the past with cloud-washing and any other new technology, we got to jump on the bandwagon even before we’re ready?

Brian Chidester:  

No, that’s a great question, and I don’t think this situation is the driver of that. Of my thoughts on this, I’ve thought this for a long time. You should never be overselling what you’re doing, right? If it is not something that you can stand behind as a strength and show exactly the value and stand on data to show why, or if you don’t know how to articulate the use cases and the value realization that you’re going to bring to your customer, you shouldn’t just be throwing things against the wall and see if it’ll stick. There has to be efficacy behind the marketing that you’re putting out there. I I don’t think for a second that we have marketers within within this community that do that, by the way, I think from from what I’ve seen, especially within government, we’ve seen marketers be very prescriptive and intentional about how they put their messaging out, because, you know, it’s going to get scrutinized. But I think it’s just another reminder, just because everyone’s throwing AI against the wall everywhere, doesn’t mean that you need to follow suit. You need to make sure that in this situation, this type of climate, you don’t over rotate, you stick to where your strengths are, and you drive value realization around those strengths. That, to me, is very important.

Peter Jacobs:  

So thinking about this, from a marketing, media outreach, communicating with agencies perspective, where should GovCons be focusing their efforts right now? Is it more? Let’s do those one on one, face to face things. Is it general marketing or targeted digital marketing? Is it events? Is it thought leadership, pieces in the trades, what’s

Brian Chidester:  

going to work? It’s the million dollar question, right? I think that you have to diversify your message, because you’re going to have people out there that are interested to see what you have to say, but they’re all over the place. You mentioned events. I honestly I don’t know what the events schedule is going to look like over the next few months, over the next 12 months, how much impact those are going to drive, just based on participation, based on kind of the value that you can get from a from agencies, it might be great. It might not be great. So I don’t really have a strong, a strong answer for that one, but what I do know, if you have customers engaging, make sure that you have messages that you can tell so that you can help them as they’re being put on the spot too. I think that just like we’re feeling anxiety and we’re feeling the ambiguity, so are agencies, and I think helping them align to what the indicators are within this administration, the priorities around this administration are, how do you help them become more efficient? How do you help them consolidate? How do you help them not be, not be put into the spotlight in a negative way? That’s what I would be trying to focus on, on the one to one interactions, and kind of helping there in terms of thought leadership. This is where I go back to where you have brand alignment, right? Taking a look at through your through your portfolio, and understanding exactly what value you’re bringing around those strategic imperatives within the administration, as well as to what the business climate of government is, right? If it’s not mission critical, then it’s not something that I would be necessarily pushing out there. I think aligning to mission criticality is another important piece, but different to me, it’s still diversify, making sure that you are in all the places that these individuals are going to find more information. Because I will tell you, they are looking. They’re absolutely looking. They’re looking to get educated. And this is an opportunity for for us to be able to help educate them on on what they can do to become a more efficient governing body.

Peter Jacobs:  

As a long time marketer, like yourself, the thing that’s striking me most about this is all it seems like all of a sudden people are waking up and saying, “Hey, maybe we should be focusing on outcomes.” Not just on what the thing does, but people who have been in our position have been saying this for ever. Basically, it’s not, “Hey, wow. It’s a thing that accomplishes a task.” It’s “why do you need that task done in the first place?” And we’re helping you do it more efficiently.

Brian Chidester:  

Yeah, I agree. I have this conversation with people all the time. I think government has inherently been really bad at storytelling, right? And I think that’s been part of the challenge. We’re living in a in a situation right now where perception is reality, and the perception is government isn’t doing what they’re supposed to be doing. Now, we as a industry understand that isn’t necessarily the case, but we also know that government doesn’t tell stories as as efficiently as they should and effectively as they should to show what they’re really doing, because they’re doing incredible work right at the largest scale, and being able to tell those stories, to me, leaning on the private sector to help them do that is absolutely vital, and I think it’s an opportunity for us to help them. This is a long way for me to say we as marketers within the public sector have always been driving towards outcomes. We’ve always wanted to get case studies and tell stories around how we’re helping them do things and showcase the great work that they’re doing, we just haven’t been able to generally convert all of those because of an unwillingness for government to show any favoritism to brands, and a myriad of reasons why right bandwidth, not the least of it is bandwidth on their side to be able to facilitate it. I think it’s an opportunity now for commercial vendors to come in and help government tell that story. And I think that could be a great way for us as a community to show outcomes especially aligned to our brands.

Peter Jacobs:  

Brands generally like to say we’re a partner to government. And of course, there’s a partnership element to it, but you’re getting paid for that. Still, it’s not just “you need the latest thing so that you can say you have the latest thing.” You have to deliver a service. You’ve got to do it more, not only efficiently, but securely and accurately and at a huge scale.

Brian Chidester:  

Yeah. I mean, one thing I would say, I would push back a little bit on the on the partner nomenclature. And the reason why I say that is yes, there, there are absolutely government, vendor government to vendor relationships, right? But I think if you as a brand are going to be successful in this industry, you have to be a true partner. I will say you have to jump into that fox hole with them and be willing to put yourself out there for them, because that’s how you build relationships, and this is very much a trust and relationship driven business. The reason why I say that is some of the people within government are putting their careers on the line with some of these procurements, especially at the size and scale at which some of these procurements exist. So they have to trust you that they’re not going to be on the front page of the Washington Post because they made a poor decision, because that’s their career on the line. And I think the more that an organization can be seen as a trusted partner and kind of align around those types of principles with with a government organization, the more effective you’re going to be in being able to help them. We saw that during COVID, right? What did government do when they were struggling to do some of these things? They went to their partners. They didn’t just open up to the vendor community. They went to the people that they trusted. And that’s what you’re seeing now. So I think making sure that you are a true partner to government, it will absolutely pay dividends on the backside, but I think you have to really go into it with that “We want to help” ment ality

Peter Jacobs:  

Right. Being able to tell that agency customer that “We’ve actually gotten ahead of this problem. We know that you’re that you’re dealing with things, but rather than wait for you to come to us, we’ve already made the investment to try and solve it, because it’s good for you, it’s good for us, it’s good for the American people.”

Brian Chidester:  

Yeah, I mean, I mean, government’s smart. They understand that it has to be a win win, or it’s the way you put it, a win, win, win, right? We want to ultimately be successful. We want them to be successful. And how are they successful? If their citizens are happy and their their programs are being delivered on time, at scale, at cost, that’s how we help them, and if it’s a win, win, win, that’s the way business should be done.

Peter Jacobs:  

I’m I’m interested in your thoughts about over committing to the short term way of talking about this situation, as opposed to that bigger picture, longer term investment in speaking about efficiency and effectiveness. Do you respond immediately to what’s going on? Put out blog posts, make public statements, run a digital marketing campaign saying we solved that issue. Right now, or is this more of a marathon?

Brian Chidester:  

One of the things I will say, I think it’s always a marathon, but I will say that we are seeing things done a little bit differently right now. So I might have my opinions. Other people may have their opinions, but at the end of the day, we also know that we don’t necessarily have to look back at what we’ve done empirically to get to find the answer. I think we have to figure this out, what’s right for our brand, what’s right for our message, and do we see opportunity now? And do we see opportunity in the future? I think this, this goes back to kind of how we started the conversation around really understanding what your brand offers and making sure that you’re building a strategy around that if there aren’t near term wins to be had right now, let’s just talk hypothetically for your brand or you don’t see them prioritizing certain things that your brand delivers, then maybe putting yourself out there on a massive messaging campaign isn’t The thing to do. But if you see opportunity over the next 612, 18 months in terms of how you’re reading the tea leaves, that I would build a strategy around that, I think it’s ultimately, it really comes back to understanding, understanding your house, understanding your brand, and kind of how you can bring value and then build that strategy around it.

Peter Jacobs:  

Where we started was, of course, with uncertainty. And obviously the GovCon community is dealing with a whole lot of risk right now. As you said, One thing they need to do is make sure that their brand stands for something that has a tangible relationship to what’s going on right now, and also looking at what are we offering? How are we offering it? We can’t get into the whole how acquisition works discussion right now. That’s a totally separate conversation. We would need a few hours for that one. Peter, but marketing, media outreach, the messaging and positioning that can help them get through this.

Brian Chidester:  

Yeah, I think again, the thing that I would do is everybody in this community, and when I say this community, I mean the industry, I mean the marketers, the strategists, the sales people, I would lean on people that you trust, and I would ask questions and see if they’re seeing the same things. I think ultimately, as a collective, we have a strong enough community that we can share information, share ideas, because ultimately what we want, right is we want government to be re imagined in a way that does make it more effective and make it more efficient, right? I think that’s what we all want. And I think our responsibility within the GovCon community is to be able to help show where our brands can help them reimagine and help them do that. So if, if that’s something that you haven’t started doing, which I mean by kind of leading on some of your friends, some of your peers, to understand kind of how they’re addressing certain things, I would, I would recommend doing that, because I think knowledge sharing is absolutely important. I know I’m I’m talking to people all the time. I’m very curious to understand kind of what they’re seeing, what they’re hearing, how they’re positioning certain things, to make sure that that I’m on point with what I’m putting out. So it’s definitely something I would recommend everyone doing as a collective.

Peter Jacobs:

You know, I wonder, and no way to know, but I’m curious if you have any thoughts about any market segments that are going to remain stable despite this uncertainty.

Brian Chidester:  

Yeah, you bring up a good point. I think, as we take a look and most of us listening, probably, I don’t want to say most of us, but I’m sure factions that are listening support broader public sector, right? So the federal government is one sub industry within the broader public sector, in my case, global government. So working with all different countries, so understanding kind of where you might see opportunity right now, I think, is also important. So you can start to build messaging. This goes back to what I would said earlier, around, not over, rotating, making sure that you’re you’re talking to all your segments, and you’re not losing track on kind of where you’re, where your business can provide value to the broader government at large, broader public sector at large. So definitely addressing those and making sure that you’re articulating what that value really is. But this is also, this is also an opportunity for you to really scrutinize your messaging. I think we often don’t get this opportunity to really do that very often, where you have, you have some opportunity to take a breath and really re evaluate how you want your brand to be seen in the market like this, is that opportunity. So I think I would, I would certainly put your arms around it and relish it and really take advantage of it.

Peter Jacobs:  

That’s a word we’ve been using a lot here when talking with our clients, and when thinking about what’s going on and how can we help our clients get to the next stage and continue to. Be relevant. It’s less than thinking about the risk and the threat. Obviously, if you’re in business, you’re always thinking about those kinds of forces. But this is an opportunity now to reshape things. Within government, there’s probably people in agencies saying, man, now we can fix those things we’ve always talked about fixing, and within the actual B to G companies, they’re thinking now we can realign and do the outreach that we should have been doing.

Brian Chidester:  

Yeah, I try to stay glass half full on a lot of things, on most things, and one of the things that I heard early on, I’ve really taken to heart, because I think it’s a great way to look at this that, as we’ve talked about for almost 30 minutes now, we are in a situation where things aren’t being done the way they normally have been done, right? And with that, some pain, some ambiguity. But how cool is it that we as a community will be part of this re imagination of government again, that no matter what side of the aisle you are on, I don’t think any of that matters. I think we can all agree that we all want a more efficient, a more effective government. I think we’ve all said for a long time that government has been hampered around certain things, including bureaucracy I’ve had, I’ve had multiple authors on my on my podcast that have talked about hacking your bureaucracy was one, and ways to ways to support government in a way, and how to navigate bureaucracy and all types of things. So we know government has been challenged around moving at the speed at which we all wish that it could so how cool is it that we are on the ground for and we have the ability to make an impact at a moment in time where we do get to reimagine government, we do get to really drive the meaningful change that we’ve all talked about wanting to do. This is an opportunity for us to be part of that. And I can’t think of a more cool thing to be able to say I got to do throughout my career than be part of something like this. So it’s an opportunity for us, and I just want to make sure we as a collective don’t miss it. Those who know me and I’m and I’m at gain most years and try to stay involved within the marketing community. Those who know me know that I really believe that this is a collective right. We are. We are a tight knit group. A lot of us are all friends and really making sure we’re all there for one another. Going back to what I was saying earlier, leaning on your friends, leaning on your peers, asking them questions, that’s what I would be doing right now too. Because, again, we will all get economies of scale from from doing that.

Peter Jacobs:  

Brian, any final thoughts?

Brian Chidester:  

The worst thing you could be doing right now is nothing, right? So making sure you’re not just sitting and waiting. Don’t wait for the market to impact you. Go and impact the market. And that’s what I’ve been trying to do with Adobe, is trying to position us as something that government needs moving forward. I mean, that’s the easiest way I can put it, but basically showing, hey, if you’re trying to do this, you can’t do this without us. This is why. And that’s really what companies should be looking at like, really get down. I think I’ve used term get down to brass tacks. Like, stop being superfluous with things like, be very direct and tell your story, because people are listening, and they’re only going to be listening for a certain period of time, and then they’re going to be going, and you don’t want to  miss that thing. So the worst thing you can be doing right now is absolutely nothing.

Peter Jacobs: 

Yeah, being paralyzed by all the options, all the possibilities and the uncertainty instead make a choice.

Brian Chidester:  

Yep. My last thought, I guess, would just be thank you for for having me on for having these types of discussions.

Peter Jacobs:  

I hope we can have more of these discussions in the near future. I really enjoyed this.

Brian Chidester:  

Likewise. Thanks so much for having me, Peter.

Peter Jacobs:  

Well, thank you for being here. I’ve been talking with Brian chitester, and thank all of you for joining us. Lay of the Brand is brought to you by Merritt Group, an integrated strategic communications firm that blends the best of PR, marketing and creative to help our clients tell their stories and build business. Got a topic suggestion or want to share feedback, subscribe to Lay of the Brand on your preferred podcast platform and leave us a review, and please spread the word and tell your friends and colleagues to tune in as well to learn more about Merritt Group and the show. Check out layofthebrand.com.