Quinn Harrington (01:19.192)
Welcome to Now and Here in the Future. I’m Quinn Harrington. Today we’re joined by Kimber McAfee, a broadcaster and marketing innovator.
Naila Mir (01:27.751)
And I’m Naila Meh. Hi. Today’s topic is the power of voice. Brand authenticity drives both employee and customer engagement.
Kimber (01:31.105)
Hi.
Quinn Harrington (01:41.967)
Kimber, we’re so happy to have you here. You’ve moved from broadcast to brand building. How has that journey shaped your view of authentic communications?
Kimber (01:44.964)
Thank you.
Kimber (01:53.039)
Well, I segued from broadcasting into building brands essentially in marketing because the one common thread was driving consumer behavior and
you know, on stage in front of somewhat around 100 million people when you do live TV, there’s this energy and this power to driving that consumer behavior. So the authenticity that you really do need to possess for people to be motivated to spend on your product or service, it’s kind of real time and you kind of feel that real time. So as I segued into marketing, I always wanted to keep that thread.
kind of as the main vein in everything that I did. What I realized in the power of driving consumer behavior on live television in front of people is that as much as they’re interested in the product, they’re interested in the person pitching the product as well. And so I always used to tell people, can’t go on in front of 100 million people like a deer in headlights. It lacks credibility. There really has to be this authentic seasoning, honestly, in some sort of broadcast arena.
But then when you translate that over to marketing and building a brand, it’s kind of the same vibe that you want to carry through in terms of you do what you say, and you say what you do, and you kind of apply this across all points of access, all internal and external communications, when it comes to successfully driving consumer behavior.
Quinn Harrington (03:24.546)
That’s impressive.
Naila Mir (03:27.175)
Yeah. And they’re touching upon the internal experience. So you’ve moved into working for marketing and you’ve dealt with employee engagement. There’s a lot about employee empowerment driving internal engagement. And again, authenticity within the internal communication and how you engage employees. In your experience, how does that show up in terms of
Kimber (03:27.332)
Thank you.
Naila Mir (03:56.079)
authenticity of communication and how that motivates employees in the business.
Kimber (04:03.046)
Well, you can’t market something that’s broken. So if there’s a breakdown in internal communications, it does translate externally, right? A good marketer comes in, a company is looking at SOP, standard operating procedures, logistics, everything that needs to be running in sync behind scenes for you to flawlessly and effectively be able to.
pitch a product or bring a product or service to market. If those things aren’t kind of buttoned up on the back end, it actually makes it very, very challenging for a marketer to come into that organization, look at the things that you’re bringing to market, whether it a product or a service, and know how to flawlessly execute that if they know that say there’s some fires in the kitchen that kind of need to be put out or implementation processes that need to be put in place in terms of how people communicate. If I bring to market
a new product, I’m coming off a run in fiber optics, internet service provider. We also added more products while I was there. If the entire product team is not in alignment with the sales and marketing team, when we bring something to market and everything’s being talked about in terms of even the rollout, that’s a really big deficit for that organization that could leave a lot of things up for ambiguity. What is sales saying to the customer, to the particular vendor? Is marketing speaking the same language?
is the operations in alignment for those things to flawlessly flow. Because at the end of the day, the consumer can feel all of that. And I have a big philosophy in that we work for the consumer. It’s great to get up for us every day and do what we’re doing, but I’m a huge consumer advocate. And so having all of those things streamlined internally in a launch or a relaunch or right now rebrands are very, very popular across the board.
You really do have to have all your internal communications in sync for all of that to translate to a flawless execution for something consumer facing.
Naila Mir (06:04.231)
I mean, at the end in pl…
Quinn Harrington (06:04.624)
think that’s especially true in the B2B space.
Kimber (06:07.836)
It is true in the B2B space. Now we came from, we did business to business, but then also business to consumer.
Naila Mir (06:10.407)
Yeah.
Kimber (06:15.198)
You want that consumer to be able to call in and get the customer support that they need. But if customer support isn’t in sync with sales and marketing and all of the other pillars that support an organization, you could be saying something inaccurate to a consumer. in today’s time, the one thing, if a customer is motivated enough to pick up the phone and call you, the last thing they want is inaccuracies.
Naila Mir (06:43.09)
and I
Kimber (06:43.177)
Especially since everything’s gone so digital and online these days when we can actually escape the salesperson in the process should we choose to do so. So I think having all of that internal and external communications really line up is optimal. It’s of the utmost importance.
Naila Mir (07:01.021)
I was saying that it’s like employees are your brand ambassadors as well. And often at Unilever, we used to talk about really focusing on employees because what would happen is marketing would go out with new advertisements and the employee wasn’t even aware that a new brand had been launched, a new product had been launched. So really making sure that the internal environment and the external were aligned in terms of timing as well. So as informed as you would be.
Kimber (07:30.465)
And it’s also building a culture that…
gets people jazzed about a launch. You can go through the rigmarole of the formality of disseminating this information. The truth is they’re not always gonna grab it. Not all salespeople or customer service support or anybody working in logistics is always excited about the marketing portion, which to me really brings together that part of making sure communications are in sync. And so what are you gonna do culturally to get everybody in your organization excited about?
this movement, this movement forward, this product launch. And so really paying attention to the culture and the morale of the organization and celebrating the wins, you know, and doing the things that keep people and morale at an all-time high is super important. If people aren’t happy, you feel that too.
Quinn Harrington (08:23.325)
You know, it’s interesting that kind of dovetails into a lot of what I’m doing these days and have for the past 10 years or so is creating these keynote videos for the CEO or the CMO before they come out on stage and for their big leadership meeting. And often I’m tasked with taking an idea and turning that into a way to empower and to motivate and inform the leadership.
team within a company, be it Nielsen or CoreLogic or TransUnion or any of these types of companies. It’s a huge responsibility, but I love doing it because it’s kind of like creating a corporate music video where we get to really get the crowd excited about what’s coming up, to celebrate our wins, to talk about what’s going to be happening over the next coming year and really set the CEO or the CMO up for success when they come out to
Kimber (09:08.404)
Mm-hmm.
Quinn Harrington (09:21.838)
share their message.
Kimber (09:23.772)
I got to work on one of these videos with you. I don’t know how many years ago it’s been. Yeah, I remember working on one of these videos with you. And they’re also, when you do these type of videos too, I think it’s a way to show an organization that you’re investing internally as well. We run around and we’re always looking at the things that are going to make us money. What’s our ROI? But if you’re not taking a portion of that and giving it back to your own people and highlighting the good things and doing,
Quinn Harrington (09:25.936)
You did, you did the voice for it. Yeah.
Naila Mir (09:27.059)
Yeah.
Quinn Harrington (09:39.868)
Mm-hmm.
Kimber (09:53.686)
events I’m big on incentivizing internal staff as well for their goals for their wins and also highlighting that for the entire organization to see whether it’s through a newsletter something also that’s become very popular these podcasts like we’re doing now when I first started doing my own podcast a few years back to find the companies that were investing in audio for newsletters so that people actually because people don’t read we all know this it’s that you know they just don’t but
If we can give them a five minute newsletter to listen to on their way home in the car in the form of a podcast, perhaps they may listen, especially if it’s engaging and it holds those nuggets of information that they’re waiting to find out about what’s next for the company or how good we did in one set of sales or ad campaigns. That type of stuff I find very, very motivating for cultures.
Quinn Harrington (10:47.795)
That’s really interesting. Let’s properly introduce our guest, Kimber McCafferty.
Kimber (10:49.621)
Mm-hmm.
Kimber (10:53.29)
Thank you for having me.
Quinn Harrington (10:54.452)
Kimber is a veteran broadcast journalist turned marketing innovator. Kimber transforms brand stories into measurable business success. Her expertise spans broadcast and digital channels. Known for cultivating authentic brands, she combines strategic storytelling with data-driven results to help businesses build genuine consumer connections that drive behavior, sales, and loyalty. So Kimber.
I want to shift and have you tell us about one of your favorite stories from when you were, from your days in TV and radio.
Kimber (11:29.648)
goodness. Do I need to keep it PG rated? No. Let’s see. I mean, there are really so many stories from my days in radio and TV.
Naila Mir (11:30.759)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
Quinn Harrington (11:32.453)
No? This is a podcast, not the radio.
Kimber (11:42.186)
you know, approaching 50. I’ve been on air consecutively since I was 18 years old. I think, you know, this is light, but I was on a nationally syndicated radio talk show, Lex and Terry, they came from Jacksonville, and we had moved to Dallas, which we moved to Dallas in 2006. Dallas at the time, I haven’t paid attention to a lot of the markets in the last couple of years, but it was number five in radio, top five market, and radio is a great place to be.
were there nationally syndicated. If you know the two guys I work with, they have very polar opposite personalities, but a synergy when they get behind the mic that I feel so humbled and lucky to have been a part of. But we worked crazy. yeah, they are.
Quinn Harrington (12:24.859)
And a real joy for off-color humor. So this is when I first met, not met Kimber, but you came onto the scene. I used to listen to you on the radio on my way to work in the late 90s, mid 2000s. so Kimber just started out, she did traffic, but then eventually became a full-fledged co-host. And I just loved all your interactions and how you as the female voice would balance out the sort of…
Naila Mir (12:27.763)
you
Quinn Harrington (12:54.919)
the big personalities of Lex and Terry, so.
Kimber (12:58.154)
Well, not that I have anything against traffic. never did traffic. News. No, I was there. I did news. I had a degree. It’s OK. No.
Quinn Harrington (13:00.615)
You didn’t… You did news. I apologize. Again, this was almost 30 years ago, so… Yeah.
Kimber (13:06.834)
It was so long ago, but I actually had a degree in broadcast journalism and I was a reporter and anchor for a local station. And how I ended up was they wanted someone who actually had like journalistic integrity. It was right after the 2000 election to your point. It’s been a while. We were on the map. so they said, Hey, if we’re going to be able to have, they had a lot of listeners many, many years ago. Right. And they still do. These guys have done great. But I did come in as
that is a news girl, if you will, like the Robin on Howard Stern. And so one morning, we’re in Dallas. When we moved from the East Coast to Central Standard Time, it really affected us, because we were getting up and going to work at 2 AM. So 3 AM.
One morning Lex comes in really really tired I think he had popped an ambient the night before and was still very very groggy and he would talk about this live on the air so I’m not calling out any of his secrets when you work those kind of hours you got to do what you got to do and we’re sitting there one morning and Terry goes wait wait we’re all looking around for it but he could see Lex’s head started going like this he just passes out in the middle of the show and his head falls forward and you could hear the gunk
on the mic, you know, so that’s that was just a typical day for us. But it’s definitely one that I mean, I just sat there with my coffee like waiting for it, waiting for it. But doom, he never woke up either. He just stayed there. So we just decided to let him sit and see. I think he slept for 45 minutes. So Terry and I just carried on with the show and it was it was made for fun banner for sure. Yes.
Naila Mir (14:21.437)
You
Naila Mir (14:30.513)
no!
Quinn Harrington (14:40.946)
Wow. Wow. Well, no one’s falling asleep in this podcast, that’s for sure. Nailah, do you want to introduce Across the Pond?
Naila Mir (14:43.868)
That is it.
Kimber (14:46.942)
No.
Naila Mir (14:47.899)
No. Yes! Across the pond, which is a segment we bring in and I’ve got something to ask you both. And this is probably a British thing so you know those things that you wear around your waist, the the bags, why do you call it the fanny pack?
Quinn Harrington (15:09.256)
Well, because it’s around your waist and usually where it’s behind you, like on your bum. So some people turn it around for stylish, but we just call it fanny pack. mean.
Kimber (15:15.935)
Mm-hmm.
Naila Mir (15:22.833)
Over here.
Kimber (15:22.848)
And that’s been what we’ve called it since, like, I can remember, the 70s and 80s.
Naila Mir (15:28.979)
You know I’m not going to go into what the word because we call it a bum back literally it’s called a bum back but fanny means something else in British English so you might want to google that later but I won’t say on the podcast yeah no no
Kimber (15:34.426)
okay.
Kimber (15:41.736)
Okay.
Quinn Harrington (15:42.386)
I’ll give you a hint.
Kimber (15:45.118)
Hahaha
Quinn Harrington (15:48.158)
So yeah, so whenever she hears that word fanny pack, she just cracks up laughing because it means something totally different.
Kimber (15:48.277)
You
Naila Mir (15:52.475)
I start that.
Kimber (15:54.465)
that’s fantastic. Sure. Sure. I did a little stint across the pond. I worked in Chiswick Park for a few years over in London and I loved it.
Naila Mir (15:58.717)
you
Naila Mir (16:05.659)
It was such a nice area, is Chiswick. It’s so nice, the restaurants, it’s nice to walk around. My friend used to live there, she’s moved to LA. So yeah, she’s across the pond over there.
Kimber (16:15.488)
Okay.
To your point with words though, my stomach got upset. I was told that the water that flows through the pipes of London, they’ve been there a long time, so the levels of whatever is in it is different for us. And we do struggle a little bit, say, if we drink the local water, which I did. And so I went down to ask for oatmeal because I needed something to eat and something substantial. And I kept saying oatmeal. And I don’t know why the word porridge had completely slipped my mind. It was definitely in my childhood story.
books and so I’m standing there in the interchange I was like no like oats that you put in a bowl and you add water or milk to and you heat up they’re like mom I’m sorry I have no idea what you’re talking about and I was like I mean you do I know you do they were in my storybooks you do eat it and finally I turned around and we looked at each other at the same time and we said porridge yes this is what I want it was great
Naila Mir (16:53.544)
Yeah.
Naila Mir (16:58.099)
you
Naila Mir (17:07.539)
you
Well, well I’ve just learned something I didn’t know you call it oats only we call it porridge for sure.
Kimber (17:15.988)
Yeah, oatmeal. Mm-hmm. That’s what we call it over here. Yeah, steel oats. Mm-hmm. It is! Yeah. Yeah.
Quinn Harrington (17:17.373)
Mm-hmm. Yep. Porridge is more fun, though. It’s a much more fun word. Well, thank you for sharing that segment across the pond. Let’s move into the near future. And Naila, you have a question for Kimber.
Naila Mir (17:18.296)
Mmm, I will.
Naila Mir (17:25.531)
Yeah.
Naila Mir (17:34.343)
Yes, I do, do. So, Kimber, there’s a lot of talk around sustainability and there’s a term that everyone uses, which is ESG, environment, social and governance. Don’t know how much of your experience has been because you’ve been in marketing and working with brands and we know that today consumers are looking for more ethical, you know, moral, socially good, environmental brands, but also employees are.
Kimber (17:37.633)
Yes, ma’am.
Kimber (17:41.451)
Mm-hmm.
Kimber (17:46.607)
Mm-hmm.
Naila Mir (18:01.905)
What has been your experience and where do you see this in terms of marketing and communication in the next like three to five years?
Kimber (18:10.167)
So I just mentioned that I came off a almost two year run in private equity. We did have an entire, I don’t wanna say department, but we had five people that focused solely on ESG. I don’t promote ESG as part of our philanthropy, nor did I include it in our marketing efforts. I felt like it was our responsibility in moving into these areas to promote sustainability. And so we would vote as an organization
On select causes in both markets that we were serving that we all mutually agreed would benefit from our donations we were required each month to set aside a portion of our budgets and and
put this towards our ESG efforts. And I really did appreciate the formality. Now, for our efforts, if we say decided to support the turtles along the eastern coast here, we get a lot of the sea turtles, they actually come ashore, they hatch here, it’s a big deal. If the organization that we chose decided to mention the fact that we were the one pouring thousands of dollars into it, then at that point, I would allow that content
to be reshared, but I just felt that from a moral standpoint, I did not put this in any of our marketing efforts because I considered it part of our philanthropy, and I personally think it’s gross to promote philanthropy. I think that that’s the little stuff you keep in your back pocket, and if people know and it’s conversations that are had, that’s kind of your viral, you know.
play on your marketing that you’ve done. But I actually did not allow any of it to be promoted as in alignment with our business.
Naila Mir (19:55.763)
Yeah, yeah, because people say, you’re only doing it for your reputation, you know, instead of for the cause that you’re really getting involved in. And I think people and organizations are really moving on as well. So it’s not just about what you donate, but it’s actually how you operate and how you really take care of your consumers. So what are you doing in that space from a product innovation or bringing the right products to the market?
Kimber (20:01.526)
Mm-mm. Yeah. Yeah.
Kimber (20:14.191)
Mm-hmm.
Naila Mir (20:22.683)
So I think we’re moving on as well in terms of being a bit mature about what does sustainability mean. But maybe Quinn, we should do a whole segment on this as well.
Kimber (20:32.954)
It’s good. And to your point, not only did we talk about ESG from an external standpoint, but internally, no plastic bottles, recycle. We did all we could as an organization to limit our carbon footprint, if you will. we looked at it as a whole, as a brand, and as a company in complete infiltration and implementation, if that makes sense to you. Any place that we could be green, we were.
Quinn Harrington (20:32.973)
I think so.
Naila Mir (20:40.872)
yet.
Naila Mir (21:01.811)
Good, yeah.
Quinn Harrington (21:02.946)
You know, I do a lot of work with Nielsen Consumer and they’re the leading company that measures consumer packaged goods sales, trending, forecasting, all kinds of data analytics tools. And Nielsen also does a lot of research in this space. A couple of years ago, I did a presentation for Consumer 360, which is one of their annual events where they invite all of the leading brands, you know, from Walmart to
Kimber (21:26.385)
you
Quinn Harrington (21:32.859)
target to all your manufacturers, Unilever, P &G, all these huge companies. And they share what they’ve learned over the last couple of years and what’s trending. And one of the things that is really transforming, and you probably notice this when you go to the grocery store, is the signaling of the products that you’re buying. Because they found that if your product is
gluten-free but you don’t tell anyone, that will hinder your sales if your animals are raised in an ethical manner, if you have a certain carbon neutral footprint or a platform that you work towards signaling those items on your product and your POP and your other methods of
marketing to the consumer makes a dramatic increase in the sale to the audiences that want to have that kind of product. Another interesting trend I saw recently is that the term vegan is kind of going out of vogue, that they’re changing it to animal-free because vegan represents a certain mindset.
to a consumer and if that consumer is not vegan, maybe they just eat less meat than they normally do or they’re trying to change their diet but don’t necessarily want to identify as vegan. Changing those words and nuances can lead to a real lift in sales.
Kimber (23:19.382)
nice. I am not aware of this. was vegan for very long time. I don’t know if you remember that. But it was, it’s been…
Quinn Harrington (23:25.305)
I do.
Kimber (23:28.562)
Over 10 years ago that I kind of transitioned and just eat what feels right But no, I wasn’t aware that vegan had a negative connotation. I had heard it was going away Not really wondering why I feel like to points of access and resources like there’s apps now to check if all the products are all the Ingredients even in face products to what you eat are clean I think the human being is just taking a more conscientious approach to to how they live and so whatever
Quinn Harrington (23:55.621)
Mm-hmm.
Kimber (23:58.475)
resource they need to make sure that they’re buying the right products that align with their choices is really the most popular route these days, right?
Quinn Harrington (24:10.854)
Yeah, and health and beauty is a huge category where that signaling is taking place, and not just on the products, but like you said, in the apps and then on the websites and other materials that people are accessing when they’re trying to get information. It’s become a major driver.
What challenges do you foresee in integrating sustainability goals into the marketing metrics side? Do you have any experience or thoughts about how do we measure the impact of that sustainability? And that question could be either for you or Naila.
Kimber (24:52.968)
Naila, I’m going to let you take it. can’t say, you know, when you bring it, sustainability is so broad.
I guess that I do see a place in the metrics. I can’t say that I’ve worked for an organization or had a client yet where it was the most paramount, especially coming off the last couple of years. Most people were more interested in their ROI or inflation or a down market rather than segueing this part in as a pillar, but I do foresee it only opening up and being a more pivotal player in the future.
Naila Mir (25:28.071)
Yeah, I think, look, when you talk about the marketing, so I might talk about more around the brand or the business as well, because we know that consumers are getting more aware about products that are more healthy or more friendly, environmentally friendly, and by choice, they’re choosing products.
certain amount of products over others. But we also know from a regulation point of view, we’re getting more and more regulated around the environmental impact we have and how do we use product innovation to reduce the plastics that we use in our the brands or the products and are we actually doing our role in reducing carbon emission or making it carbon positive? So I think it’s getting more and more important and
People, like you said, it’s a broad topic, sustainability. You’ve got environmental impact. How do you impact society? How do you impact your employees? All of that forms sustainability. And I think more and more it’s about treating it as part of your business, right? It’s just the right way to operate. Rather than thinking it’s a separate goal, it really needs to be integrated into the whole product life cycle, how you market. I know back in the days we had all these
Kimber (26:18.731)
Mm-hmm.
Naila Mir (26:45.043)
billboards. So I was in Pakistan for 24 years of my life and where their billboards were obviously a lot more of the marketing strategy, but no one really thought about where they actually go after you’ve used it and how much you churn out. So all of these just impact how we operate. So for me, think it’s the future is thinking about sustainability as part of the product cycle rather than, I’m going to do it. I’m going to think about environment.
or my products because consumer products go into the bin so are we creating more than less? So yeah it’s more integration. I can’t talk to marketing because I’ve not been in the marketing side. I’ve always been in sustainability but I’m sure there are metrics as a business that they’re now integrating when it comes to sustainability.
Kimber (27:37.087)
And I think that there definitely needs to be a larger level of transparency when it comes to where we are with sustainability, right? Like we all…
put our recycle cans out, but are we really recycling because there’s a lot of discrepancies around all of that right now as to where it’s really going, if it’s really being done. I’ve been told it’s not by government officials, that it’s a great play for society to think they’re doing their part. Then I’ve heard we’ve outsourced it to China, so we’re literally taking all of this, putting it on a ship, shipping it over. So there’s a lot of things like, where are we with it? And can we start from the top down and be transparent globally so that we can actually
Naila Mir (27:54.717)
Yeah.
Kimber (28:16.02)
initiate change for the greater good of having sustainability as a pillar in each organization. I think a lot of people honestly are confused about it, to tell you the truth. Yeah, where are we in the world of sustainability? We’ve got all of these little bits of information, but I don’t feel that it’s at all cohesive.
for us as humans personally and then professionally to know exactly where we stand in this arena.
Naila Mir (28:46.291)
It gets complicated. Now I was just going to say it does get complicated because at the end everyone has a part and a role and they’re connected and this whole value chain that we need to think about and sometimes it gets difficult because you don’t have the influence on it. Like you said, I do my part in recycling and putting the right segment out but if the infrastructure is not there then it’s not really falling through and there’s still an impact. So there’s a lot more to think about when it comes to
Quinn Harrington (28:46.431)
You know, it’s interesting that you bring up the go ahead, Naila.
Kimber (29:04.251)
Right.
Naila Mir (29:16.219)
working together more so industries and industries working together. Quinn?
Kimber (29:20.591)
Mm-hmm to streamline the entire sustainability, you know silo that we’re all very interested in but I do feel like it’s become somewhat convoluted and that we all want to do our part Where is this working in synchronicity with everything and every component that leads to a true sustainability? You know or sustainable culture if you will
Quinn Harrington (29:43.883)
Yeah, Kamber, I think you hit the nail on the head when you were talking about the transparency aspect of it because as, you know, the US government and the UK government and then our individual state governments begin to increase regulation, there’s been a lot of companies that have been really slammed for making claims that weren’t true. You know, for example, plastic products that they claim are biodegradable, but they’re really not.
Naila Mir (29:49.395)
you
Quinn Harrington (30:14.34)
you know, or they’re compostable, but they’re only industrial compostable. So it’s interesting, we’re going to have a guest coming on in the next few weeks who has invented and patented this soil and marine biodegradable plastic. So, and he developed it as an agricultural product, but the applications are huge and wide. So I think that…
Kimber (30:14.459)
Mm-hmm.
Kimber (30:30.341)
Okay.
Quinn Harrington (30:42.524)
if and when that takes off, that will help companies throughout the whole value chain begin to make it easier for consumers to make good choices when it comes to sustainability and to reduce that impact into the landfill and even carbon footprint.
Kimber (31:02.885)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I mean, I think it’s a goal. I think it’s what we all want, but I think there does need to be deeper conversations, more transparency. Almost set the record straight so we know which way to move, you know? But it’s an area that does interest me, and we definitely do our part as conscientious humans that care.
Naila Mir (31:24.529)
Yeah, it is.
Quinn Harrington (31:25.025)
So Nile, are you ready to take us into the future?
Naila Mir (31:28.683)
It’s kind of linked to point about transparency and mean it’s kind of linked to in sustainability. So we’re talking about the future now. So love to get your thoughts and what you think about the future of the employee experience and the customer experience evolving because you talked about the fact that you know we need to have the internal environment as connected and informed.
as it is to the external environment. So where do you see that relationship evolving between the employee experience and the customer experience?
Kimber (32:04.745)
Just in general.
Quinn Harrington (32:06.634)
over the next 10, 15 years. Put your crystal ball, look into your crystal ball.
Naila Mir (32:06.672)
in general.
Kimber (32:09.957)
I think, yeah, so I think right now, and I hate to say post pandemic, but I’m going to, I think industries are changing all the way across the board, okay? I have a 25 year expertise in something. You’re probably not gonna bring me back into an office nine to five. I mean, unless you pay me so much, I can’t say no. I do believe that in the last couple of years,
Naila Mir (32:17.17)
Okay.
Kimber (32:36.957)
after we lived through what we lived through, the pandemic and things of this nature. Our eyes did open in a different way. Transparency there would have been amazing. Not that we ever got it and probably never will. Our kids get to read about it 100 years from now, right? That’s the beauty of it all. But I do think the relationship between say the employer and the employee is going to shift significantly. Most people I talked to of late have
lived through the weirdest year ever this past year. I got a phone call from a recruitment company that wanted to rebrand and the way we started the conversation was this has been the most bizarre year in my 25 years, about my age of working. Why? I think across the board you’re going to see more positions go fractional. I think that people are done devoting.
Copious amounts of time that aren’t yielding them a return on their time investment either We all have the right to say free enterprise and to make money and to to to feed our livelihood and live in these ways that we value But we also have different a different generation coming up behind us You know a generation of very digitally and technologically savvy humans that have learned how to make 150 grand in high school off their Instagram account
which keeps them autonomous from this labor intensive plight of who am I gonna be and what am I gonna become? Like a lot of people lived and thought of most of their youth and on into their adult life. And I just think the human being saying, hey enough, enough, we’re gonna kind of take back the reins. All of these systems are completely flawed and broken in terms of how people are moving human capital. I just came off a run where I
I’m blown away at the level of lack of respect for humans, I think, that was shown just in that hasty American, we got lots of money, we’re going to move you through the way we want. It lacks conscience, if I could be honest. So I think in the next three to five years, a new playing field of how professionals are going to be able to operate is going to be kind of set.
Kimber (35:01.643)
I think it’s going to be nimble and agile and it’s not going to be for a good another decade that we’re really going to know, hey, this is how we’re going to operate until another day decide to.
give the world another pandemic and flip everybody upside down and, you know, let us, right? I don’t know that we’ll be here. If you study history, right, we may not be, but our kids will. And that’s when, you know, you start pulling at my heartstrings is, you know, it’s really what we’re building for our future and what is that gonna look like? And I just think that we’re all kind of going, the systems are broken.
Quinn Harrington (35:17.879)
I’m not signing up for that one.
Naila Mir (35:20.11)
Yeah.
Kimber (35:43.029)
We’re tired of it. No, we’re not going back. And there’s a lot of uncertainty, Quinn and Nyla, to your point. I can only look into it so much because I think there’s going to be so many other variables that pop up. AI has been one of them. You know, I think we’ve had a weird year. A lot of people want to dive right in, cut costs, make everything fake. I don’t think it’s going to work like that. Personally, it’s going to.
calibrate and it’s gonna find its place. It’s a great tool, especially in marketing, but it’s not gonna be my only tool. And I think that that’s what a lot of people are gonna find. As awesome as it is at cutting costs, it’s gonna be flawed like everything else in terms of some of those auto responses probably shouldn’t have been sent out like that, correct?
And so I think we’re just in an interesting time of uncertainty too, as other things and other pivotal players will kind of come into play for this to settle down. So I know it’s happening. I’m okay with it. But I don’t quite know how it’s all gonna play out, say, past the 36 month peripheral at this point. Because we’re all kind of tossing our balls in the air like, okay.
All right, okay, that was a flawless one. We’ll go for that this right now, but I think it’s all made us all a lot more nimble, which I think we need to stay that way. Okay.
Quinn Harrington (37:06.447)
Yeah, I second that. Since we’re on the AI topic, and we have a couple people we’re bringing in to talk about AI and design and communications and so forth, one of the things that is really interesting is that right now, AI is basically, there’s a lot of them out there, but most of them are…
managed by a large corporation and huge technical teams and server farms and everything. I just bought the new Mac M4 Mini and it hasn’t arrived yet but I’m excited to get it. It’s about the size of an Apple TV, a little bit bigger. It’s got twice the processing power of this iMac that I have. It’s only maybe five, six years old and you can
Kimber (37:44.996)
Yeah.
Quinn Harrington (38:02.702)
it’s powerful enough that you can run your own LLM on it, which is a large language model. point being is that, especially when we’re talking about these tech savvy kids, you know, as they’re going from 18 to 25 to 30, they will be creating their own large language models and their own AIs that are tuned to themselves, their preferences, how they want to communicate, how they want to express themselves to the world.
Kimber (38:09.251)
Mm-hmm.
Quinn Harrington (38:32.045)
And I also see over the next 10, 15 years, maybe even sooner, a convergence of how all these different AIs work together. Adobe’s got one, Google’s got one, Amazon has one. I’m going to, Nielsen and a couple of my other clients are rolling out new AIs as well, which are pretty exciting and amazing technology. But I’m going to, I want to see.
bet we’ll see a convergence of these where we will begin to be more managers, curators, tastemakers than doers. From the design side, I don’t know if we’ll be designing logos in 10 or 15 years. It might not make sense. I might just be a prompt engineer or draw a sketch of an idea, take a picture of it.
Kimber (39:12.486)
Mm-hmm.
Kimber (39:19.549)
I agree.
Quinn Harrington (39:29.997)
an illustrator completes it flawlessly better than I could and then gives me 15 variations and then asks me, would you like to create a website or social media? Yes. And then, you know, shall I do some product forecasting for you? And do you need internal communications to go along with that? And I can create a, you know, take your AI avatar and create a series of videos based on your voice. So.
That’s kind of where I see things going and to your point, there may come a point in time where people rebel against that and say, I’m sick of all this perfectly polished, you know, like the first round of The Matrix, which was too good. You know, they had to create the second round of The Matrix that had flaws and, you know, made life more realistic. So that’s kind of some of my thoughts around the…
Kimber (40:00.637)
Mm-hmm.
Quinn Harrington (40:27.234)
authenticity aspect of the future.
Kimber (40:31.133)
Yeah, I agree with all of it. But I still think, and tell me what you think. Like, I still love to drop a needle on a vinyl. Call me crazy. But there’s something about it that I thoroughly enjoy about it. I still pick up a newspaper from time to time.
Naila Mir (40:38.919)
You
Kimber (40:45.597)
just because I like to sit and have my coffee and my newspaper. And then another analogy I wanted to throw out psychologically is when Spider-Man came out, the one where they introduced Miles Morales and it had all the different strobing lights and all the different sound effects, a psychologist brought to my attention, know, when I was little, we had one, two, three frames in a movie and that’s what our brains had to process, right? Our brains could flow along seamlessly.
It wasn’t so overwhelming and overstimulating. And then I was told, hey, what age is he? He may not need to watch that talking about my son. Well, why? Have you seen the effects of the strobing lights? Have you heard the audio and the visuals and seen them all work together? It’s actually not safe for someone three to six years old to sit down and consume this because of all the overstimulation. And really what it does to the brain and then the patterns of thought as it tries to process this.
So I just wonder too, when everything turns AI, how superficial are we becoming to some degree because it’s really going to look so perfectly polished and flawless. I worry about what it’s gonna do to the human psyche a tad, not knowing it’s more of that uncertain, not that we’re not headed there, but that’s just an analogy that I’ve often thought of. I like a little grit.
You know, so I don’t know. I don’t know how I feel about it.
Quinn Harrington (42:15.183)
I’m really tempted to go into my chat bot, which allows some degree of personalization, and say, and tell it, never use the Oxford comma again. I would like an occasional misspelling.
Naila Mir (42:15.923)
you
Naila Mir (42:20.625)
Ha!
Kimber (42:21.642)
huh.
Kimber (42:26.451)
Yeah.
Quinn Harrington (42:33.265)
some bad grammar is okay every now and then because as I’m typing emails and I’m going into websites and everything, it’s constantly correcting me. I’m sending a text message. I can be informal. I don’t need to punctuate this. Don’t capitalize that. Just leave me alone when I need to write something formal. I’ll let you know.
Kimber (42:45.238)
Mm-hmm.
Kimber (42:49.682)
yeah.
Naila Mir (42:57.863)
Yeah, now I’m a bit like Kimber, I think I’m always looking at what the human aspect or human touch is because I don’t like to lose touch with that. I like to pick up and I’m not into AI as much. I’m still learning how it can help me, but it does worry me or scare me sometimes because it’s overwhelming for me at times. But yeah, I don’t know what that means for my my child who’s growing up and how they’re going to experience it.
But I think there’s something about being human and staying human and that goes with whether it’s the employee experience or your consumer experience. How do we ensure that authenticity and it’s not just all like fake or feels fake?
Kimber (43:41.482)
Well, and we’re just now moving through the time of, in the last 24 to 36 months, we’re finally seeing beautiful voluptuous women being used in ads, right? I’m just going to use that as an analogy for you. And I’ve welcomed the fact that we’re trying to airbrush a little bit less. We’re trying to be all encompassing with body images and things of that nature. So where does AI play in that?
Naila Mir (43:52.691)
you
Kimber (44:07.895)
Because if we’re looking at the human eye can discern and now we’re gonna take everything so flawless because I’m watching friends and peers post nothing but AI and it’s all bullshit. I mean I know they don’t look like that and I’m just gonna call it out. It’s fine, good for them, but at the end of the day, and I do it. I love a good filter, you know, but at the end of the day…
Naila Mir (44:27.111)
Yeah.
Kimber (44:29.396)
I just think if it all transcends into this direction, are we all going to aspire for that? Because I mean, vanity is an industry that will continue to soar. It’s always the number one industry, always, always, always. So are we leaning back into this? Because I feel like we’ve finally broken through in the last few years and made things super.
Well, not super, but a little more realistic for the eye to consume. And to me, we’re just taking 1,000 steps back if we push everything into this IA space and call that what it needs to be as the new standard. I don’t know if that makes sense, but.
Quinn Harrington (45:08.97)
So just have one question. So when I take this into post-production, do you want me to put a filter on you or not? Because I can make you look as real as you want. Just a little bit, a little softening.
Naila Mir (45:15.793)
Ha ha ha.
Kimber (45:16.235)
well, mean if you think it…
No, mean, maybe just the color. Yeah, don’t really care. Yeah, I don’t. Whatever you think. I’ve actually, you know that. I’m no diva when it comes to that kind of stuff. Yeah, whatever.
Naila Mir (45:35.411)
you
Quinn Harrington (45:35.882)
and you both have a natural beauty, you don’t really need any of it anyways. Are we ready for around the room?
Kimber (45:39.746)
Hahaha.
Naila Mir (45:40.979)
Yeah.
Naila Mir (45:46.867)
Shall we? I was about to say, yeah, so we do this segment, the final segment, which is about around the room in 90 seconds. We all get 30 seconds to share our final thoughts with the audience. So Kimber, we can start with you if you’re ready. What near term? Yeah, I was thinking. No, what near term changes worry you the most?
Kimber (45:47.161)
Love it.
Kimber (45:54.265)
Okay.
Kimber (46:02.525)
Final thoughts on, are you gonna give me a question? Okay, I was like, final thoughts on what?
Kimber (46:12.944)
Near-term changes worry me the most. AI, what we were just talking about. And here’s simply why. For those seasoned professionals, it’s a space that’s unknown. And as Quinn just stated, what does it mean for the 45 to 55 professional who’s worked a certain way for decades to have
Naila Mir (46:15.025)
Yeah, things are going to, yeah, yes.
Kimber (46:41.14)
most of the things that would fall under their scope of work, say, be replaced by AI. You’ve got bad-ass graphic designers out there that have been doing this for a really long time that love to talk gradients and colors and fonts and customization that this could potentially impede upon any type of future for them. So for me, it’s really moving forward conscientiously.
Being super aware of all of these great new developments and evolution in the way we all work and operate. But I am a little bit of a traditionalist that’s going to say, also think it’s important that we texture our approach with a nice mix of tradition and evolution and bring it together as we kind of move into these uncharted paths. I would hate for someone to be sitting, say, in an organization that I
I run or I’m a part of and feel like they can become obsolete. So I think moving forward with true compassion too, I think it’s something that’s lacking. I think we talk about some of these things, but seeing real heart and compassion implemented through the transitions too can just kind of help segue the change, know, segue into the change because it’s coming. And I love change, right? But I think that we need to move forward with
with conscience.
Quinn Harrington (48:07.87)
Awesome. Yeah, so I would second that about AI, but as just another business tool, ensuring that businesses are using it in an ethical manner, because it’s very powerful and with that power comes great responsibility that we don’t abuse it. We don’t use it in a way that misleads our employees, misleads our investors.
that misleads our consumers. If we can use it responsibly and appropriately, I think it’ll be a great tool that will be a rising tide that lifts all boats.
Kimber (48:51.112)
I like that.
Naila Mir (48:53.679)
I might just not stay on the AI topic but that is one of my worries but I guess it is linked that I worry about the future because I have a six month old and I have nephews and nieces. Thank you. But what does the future look like for her because there’s a lot happening around us whether we’re an employee in an organization or we’re a consumer or we’re a mother there’s a lot happening around and I just want to make sure
Kimber (49:05.608)
Congratulations. That’s fun.
Naila Mir (49:22.769)
that the future for her is a bit more safer and secure. So yeah, the near term changes, I don’t know if they’re changes or no changes happening, but that’s one of my worries for the, for the near future.
Quinn Harrington (49:38.231)
Want to wrap this up, Naila?
Naila Mir (49:40.935)
Yes wrap up. So that’s the wrap up for our Now Near Future episode. As always you can find us on the web at nownearfuture.com or on YouTube and Instagram at nownearfuture.
Quinn Harrington (49:54.605)
Kemper, you want to tell us where we can find you on social?
Kimber (49:58.174)
Kimber McCafferty, that’s me. And I think there is another in the world, it’s, I tend to be on Instagram the most, but Kimber and I’ve got the handle. So Kimber McCafferty, if you wanna follow along, I’m gonna be doing some different stuff in the next 18 months. So I’m excited about it.
Quinn Harrington (50:18.189)
Well, we can’t wait to see it. Thank you again so much for joining us.
Naila Mir (50:20.145)
Yes. Thank you.
Kimber (50:22.128)
Anytime. Thank you.
Quinn Harrington (50:24.311)
So and as always, stay curious and keep dreaming.
Naila Mir (50:28.819)
and we shall see you in the future.
February 28, 2025