****Please forgive any and all transcription errors as this was transcribed by Otter.ai.****

Dan Nestle 0:00

Hi, I'm Dan Nestle and you're listening to A Shark's Perspective.

(Music - shark theme)

Kenneth Kinney 0:19

Welcome back and thank you for joining A Shark's Perspective. I am Kenneth Kinney, the friends call me shark. I am a keynote speaker, a strategist, a shark diver host of this show in your chief shark officer.

Kenneth Kinney 0:32

Your audiences whether it be your employees, consumers, corporate board shareholders, some international audiences even, expect brands to say something about darn near everything anymore, even when it may not have anything to do with the core of your brand. They don't want a communications team to be an announcement mechanism for the corporate brochure anymore. But when you get out there in the field, it becomes a bit of a landmine with too many opportunities to make a misstep. So what is the best way to communicate in today's corporate world, especially when all you want to do is to communicate to make an impact?

Kenneth Kinney 1:06

Dan Nestle is the leader of Communications at Lixil Americas, which is part of a global Japanese company, and he's also one of the 30 Plus coauthors, along with Mark Schaefer of "The Most Amazing Marketing Book Ever".

Kenneth Kinney 1:18

And on this episode, we will discuss American Standard and the Japanese toilets, internal and external corporate communications, writing a book with 30 something friends, communicating with social issues, ESG, corporate governance, creating a social impact water efficiency, basic sanitation, staying in your lane, some pelagic sharks, towns in Japan, Brad Pitt and Bullet Train, and a lot lot more.

Kenneth Kinney 1:41

So let's tune into a communications leader with a communicative shark on this episode of A Shark's Perspective.

[music]

Kenneth Kinney 1:51

Dan, welcome to A Shark's Perspective, if you will, tell us a little bit about your background and your career to date, please.

Dan Nestle 1:57

Well, thanks, Kenneth. It's really great to be here. And you know, I'm so glad that we connected a while back and and have been, you know, doing these things together I am. So my name is Dan Nestle, I am the leader of communications for Lixil Americas and Lixil is a global Japanese company specializes in water and home technology products and services. And you might recognize us from our main major brands in the Americas American Standard, grow sometimes pronounced grossly, incorrectly, and, and dxp. And, and our tile brand called inax. I am so I run communications. So all corporate communications for Lixil corporate responsibility while used to be called that now we call it impact and societal impact ESG related things, employee communications, external communications, the whole the whole, I guess, the whole spectrum. But my background is in marketing and communications for many, many years. I've been worked in I worked in Japan lived and worked in Japan for 16 years in my formative days in my 20s and 30s, then moved to Australia for a year with a global company, then moved to the back to my home in the states here in New Jersey, about 12 or 13 years ago. And you know, I've just been I've been making my way through what I think is a really wonderful career in communications and marketing since

Kenneth Kinney 3:20

then, what an obvious transition to your career. Japan, Australia, jersey.

Dan Nestle 3:24

Yeah, yeah, the way the or the way to, to New Jersey is through Australia or something like that. It's taken a lot of securities paths that that was a that was a literally literally circuitous one. But But yeah, I sometimes, you know, early on went where life just took me and a little bit of impulsivity, perhaps in my career choices, but I have no regrets. I think it was a I've had some wonderful experiences all the way through my families loved it. And, you know, here we are today. Well, last time

Kenneth Kinney 3:55

we spoke and you probably don't remember this, or I hope I helped you forget it since then. But I remembered as we were talking about the brands that you've worked with, it was like, Oh, I've got one of those toilets. And people don't realize how big of a name and American Standard is. You see them everywhere.

Dan Nestle 4:09

billion a billion people we reckon have American Standard have have American Standard toilets or have sat on them at one point or another. And that's a global brand brand. You know, we also have an incredible global brand called sotto sotto toilet, which, which is our our social business, let's call it it is a for profit business. But it is. It is aimed at uplifting hundreds of millions of people out of the most abject sanitary conditions that you could imagine. So the primary markets are Africa and Southeast Asia, and you know, other other areas of the world where there is no sanitation. So it's basically a $5 toilet that gets you know we teach the communities how to not only be more sanitary, but also build the enclosures so we bring masonry to the area we bring A fundamental construction capabilities, and it builds a whole new supply chain and value chain for those local communities in those countries. So we're really happy about that.

Kenneth Kinney 5:13

Yeah, we're going to talk a lot more about that later. I'm so glad you brought that up. But now you're an author as well. Yeah, that's right. What was that experience like you and

Dan Nestle 5:22

30, St. Three other people. So yes, I'm the author of one of the co authors of the most amazing marketing book ever, by Mark Schaefer and friends i am and friends, one of them. The book is just it's a, it was a delightful experience. And I know that a lot of authors don't say that about writing. But the reason is, you know, when you have 35, people, you have to, you have to write in a sort of, you have to have a structure and, and a schedule, and, and you have a team of people, that's basically all you're all together, you're all in it together. So, you know, frankly, the whole thing was my idea to start with. And, you know, Mark said this in public. So I don't feel too bad about saying that I used to be too humble, but now, I'm taking I'm owning it. But we, you know, we have this great community of amazing marketing communications professionals, mostly marketers. And you know, I said, Why don't we try an experiment and do a community generate a book. So, you know, it wasn't quite that simple. But once we determined guidelines, like Each chapter has a certain length, each chapter follows a certain pattern, you know, you have to be in a conversation on offer up advice that people don't get in most other places. Once you've sorted all this stuff out, I think it was off to the races, we, I was also editor of the book, or at least for 1/3, I shared that with two other people. So of the, you know, of the 33 authors, I edited 12 or 13 of them. And in the process just really got deep into it. But we published in June, just a couple of weeks ago here as as at the time this podcast and it has been just a joyful ride. And you know, the audiobook is crazy great to might be unique in that each chapter is narrated by the author. So it's the only audio book that I know of, that has 34 voices from 10 different countries and various accent amazing

Kenneth Kinney 7:08

stuff. Yeah, I was gonna do something similar, but with two other people. This is maybe three years ago, and it just the coordination of it seems like such a hassle. It's hard enough when people work with one other author, which I've done, it's, but you start adding additional people in element to becomes very interesting. So because you're in both the US and the global role, what's the day in the life? It looks like? What do you do after a cup or tour of coffee? I'm assuming that's what you're drinking this one.

Dan Nestle 7:36

Exactly. Yeah, I can't get on my day without coffee. So A Day in the Life is never this, like, there's no such thing as a day. Like it's, it seems to blend, because, you know, I'm working across time zones, I'm working across teams. There's no very typical day, except that, you know, so I'll wake up, do my usual morning stuff and have my coffee. And then it's really jump into whatever the issues are of the day. You know, a lot of it is answering a lot of questions. You know, since I lead the team, I have to get on top of where everybody is, and what's happening. But I'm, too, I guess depends on who on my team, you'll ask whether this is a good thing or a bad thing. But I'm much more of a hands off kind of delegator, although, you know, I do jump in when I need to. And my team is just killer, they're such great, it's, they're an amazing group of professionals. So I'll check in on what's happening with the different business units and with and with our internal external programs, you'll meet with our agencies once or twice a week, I will, you know, on a given day, I'm, you know, probably checking in with, with Japan at least once or twice, I often have meetings in the evening to discuss, you know, some of our global issues. There's a lot of lot of writing and editing of what is happening, you know, around the world with Lixil. And I do some of that myself, but I, uh, more of the kind of further down the approvals, process checking, making sure we're in the right direction, a lot of ideation meetings, you know, so let's, we have a project, we have a, we have a campaign, we have something that we need to get off, get off the the block and, you know, wrap up within three months, what do we do, I mean, it's, you know, a lot of it is also bringing the some of the disciplines of marketing into the communications world. You know, so I find myself being almost unique in that respect among my among my team and my colleagues. So, you know, try to bring a little bit more of, I suppose, a campaign mentality and, and a, a more of a kind of, I guess, analytics and measurement practices into what we do. So every day I'll be checking to see what's going on with our with our on our on talkwalker to see what's happening, you know, try to find different trends. But the other great thing, that I think if it's, if it's coming across that my day seems kind of unstructured, when I don't have meetings, it kind of is unstructured. And I've spent probably 20%, maybe more, more or less of my time depends on what is happening in the profession, on trends in technology, that are going to affect my team and our jobs. But more like more that more than that, that we can take advantage of, and connect more connect closer to the business. And one of my kind of directives is to bring the communications function closer to the business so that we can add more value rather than be seen simply as an announcement mechanism throughout the organization. So these, you know, these things take time, and formulating different, I guess, thought pieces and strategies for how we're going to, for example, adapt AI or, you know, kind of incorporate larger communication strategies, visa vie, creating communities, communities around purpose, etc. And, you know, being a business with so many units and, and different, which all have sort of different audiences. There's always something happening. So I, you know, I, I know, that sounds a little bit, maybe out there and and a jumbled, but frankly, that's how I think so.

Kenneth Kinney 11:25

There you go. One of the things that, you know, to your point that that comes up, and you're trying to balance, Japan and the US in the world markets, if you will, and you know, I think as someone who's also lived overseas multiple times, and I think you probably have the same appreciation for this, and I've worked for and worked with Fortune 200, which have obviously much bigger audiences, when you think through a communication strategy for your company. How much of that is the balance of figuring out how much you get into the issue of the day me you talked about studying marketing trends, but sometimes, I think back off and have some advice somebody had asked me to give when George Floyd happened. Yeah. And now something's going on in France, and you start thinking about how much you comment. Not every company, though, and I've had this conversation with mutual friend needs to necessarily think of their communications as like Ben and Jerry's does. Ben and Jerry's is not the largest ice cream maker in the world, but you would think they were because of how they talk about every thing that happens in the news today. And that works for them. But it's a balance that you got to figure out with how much the corporate culture will stand up for or stand with, especially one that's overseas versus the issue that may be affecting them. And when you talk about getting closer to the business, there are a lot of people that are once you get closer to it, you start hearing the customers a lot louder. Yeah, an open ended nebulous question that I know and trying to talk about.

Dan Nestle 12:55

very timely, and sort of, you know, a little bit of a minefield there, Kenneth,

Kenneth Kinney 13:00

a little bit. Now this third rail inside of a minefield.

Dan Nestle 13:04

Yeah, I mean, especially something we all go through, it's something we all go through. And it is like I mean, as the communications lead, this is this is really falls right into my into my area. I will just say that we are, I come from the Lixil corporate communication side. So more of the work I do is on I would say it's b2b and b2b to see the brand communications like what what the American Standard teams are saying to their customers? Is Luma root more removed from my, from my remit, but of course, we're all connected. I think, think the end, you know, there's no answer to this, right? This is something that's that brands, and communicators are learning over time. And just like anything else, you know, there's, there's a human reaction, and then there's a market reaction. And sometimes those two things, those are two different things. And whenever you have people involved, it's almost impossible to for those people to separate their own stance or their own bias from the approach that they wish to take at work. And, you know, I think we're seeing that with some of the backlash to some of the brand moves that we've seen recently, you know, with, with Bud Light with Ben and Jerry's with target, etc. And, you know, none of those issues are of any concern to be in Lixil to be frank with you, I mean, you know, we're a company everybody needs to go to the bathroom, everybody's got a kitchen, everybody's gotta got a shower. So, you know, we, I think are you know, we're trying to just, I wouldn't say stay in our lane, but I would say that the issues that are important to us are we've that we've gone out with our you know, sanitation, hygiene, you know, there's 100 million people that need to stop basically, pooping in open fields right and have clean drinking water. We also are very big on gender diversity and gender, gender equality and To working towards uplifting, uplifting, I hate saying that where it says to Darwinists, you know, but, but more about, you know, giving opportunity or, or providing the opportunity for women to rise in within the company and even in the communities we work with. So, you know, these are, these are the important goals to us. And that's what we're focused on. Brands that feel like they need to wade into these very contentious, you know, kind of discussions, look, sometimes, like your employees kind of demand it, right. You're, you have employees, and we forget that employees are a major audience and what you say internally, and how you talk to your employees, I'm not saying it should be different than what you say externally, because you should be aligned on your values. But there's, you know, there's a time and a place for different discussions to happen, right. So not everything should be your, you know, essentially your room, your your bedroom, where you're hoping to say whatever you want,

Kenneth Kinney 15:50

well, to your point, and that's what I what I loved about what you just said is that nobody knows. And it's true. I mean, none of this stuff, we have a crystal ball can figure out what's going to happen next. But one of the things I find so often, and I love how you tailor this the end, talking about not necessarily staying in your lane, but you know, your values. And a lot of people always ask is something, should I react to this situation that has nothing to do with me? And then it's, that's a whole open ended discussion, because that is a minefield, but if it's part of your values, or if it's part of your core DNA, absolutely. I mean, I it's what I love about how Lixil has leaned into with helping the world with clean water and toilets in desolate communities that don't have any good running water and how bad that is in so many third world countries, that gives you a lane to talk about that without necessarily thinking you've got to over communicate on what happened on the news today,

Dan Nestle 16:46

there's plenty for us to focus on in the areas that make sense for us to focus on. That's not to say that we don't care about a lot of the issues out there today. But you know, what we're seeing, especially now, like I said, it's sort of there's there's blowback, and it's like a, it's like a pendulum that swings. And you know, my personal opinion not Not, not necessarily that of my company, but my personal opinion is that is that things have things are coming back to a more kind of quiet mean, where brands need to be careful. And, you know, where the, especially the the up and coming generation of consumers and our future business leaders, the Gen Zers, even the Gen alphas, they don't have patience for what we call performative activism, right. They, they can see through, they can see through bullshit, if you don't mind me saying that Kenneth like they can just see through it and you know, it's not going to be you can you can put a you can change your logo, you can you can put words on a on a social media feed, if you don't have the action to back that up, if you if you know, as a brand, even if, you know, hey, you know, this is the way we feel. But if you can't act to back it up, then it's sometimes it's just best to take a seat and focus in on the areas that you can act and, and focus in there. In there. Yeah, I

Kenneth Kinney 18:01

saw I saw something on the news the other day, and I just thought it was timely half the people on one side, loved it half on the on the other hated it. And somebody that I'm friends with posted something on their social channels said, We gotta go tell the world this is bad, get put it on your website, make sure every business knows that you support this cause or that or don't support that cause I went looked at their website, because I know, days later, they hadn't done anything to it. And I just, it feels like it's just everything's a trigger now. But when you're in that role, where what happens here, that could trigger somebody, whether they're watching MSNBC, or Fox has nothing to do with what's going on in Osaka, Japan, with employees there. But it's such a balance of how we communicate to people all over the world. And we also,

Dan Nestle 18:48

you know, I've learned that some employees are much louder than others, right? And, and, you know, you can't, if you're a small company, and your office is like, all of your employees are in one specific geography, then you can probably take a very specific tact to the way that you respond to things. If you're a company like ours, where you have 5000 6000 people across the United States, Canada and Mexico, I will guarantee you that all views are represented internally. And that, you know, if you favor one, because of the world we live in, it's often interpreted as a zero sum game, if you favor one than the others think that maybe you're not favoring them. Or if you say one thing, maybe you're against the other. It's not. It's not that clear. So there are nuances to everything and we're in a world that doesn't quite understand nuance all the time. So I think it's very important to focus in on where you know, you can make a difference where your values are, and what makes sense, right, and address, address your employees as they need to be addressed whenever they come to you. There's no easy answer is the point right?

Kenneth Kinney 19:56

Describe a situation where internationally you had to use some of that nuance.

Dan Nestle 20:05

I can't refer to any specifics necessarily, but, but this happens sometimes with social media use within the company, right? So where, you know, here in the Americas, and you know, Legal Policy, like privacy policies, when you work for Corporation, global corporation, these are very important things to kind of, understand. And you, when you, whenever you do something externally, you need to always kind of obey the strictest level of, of whatever the privacy rules are, or the social policies are. So for example, you know, in, if you're communicating externally to like, if you're building an email list, you got to go by GDPR, they the EU version, or the California Rules, right? So you have even doesn't matter what the rules are in Mexico or in Japan, like it has to be the strictest with social media. So the example you're asking about, you know, there were a lot of contentious issues over the last several years. And we had something happen, or something had happened in, in the Middle East at one point where, you know, some of the employees in Europe, you know, decided to comment on it. And it wasn't even that it was a negative or positive comment, just the fact that they were commenting on it. And the European kind of approach is that, No, you shouldn't be commenting on anything without unless it goes through the proper approvals process, and etc. Whereas the first for for individual social media, and this was not corporate, this was an individual person using their social media account. In the States, it's different. We, you know, we, and it's not the same for every company, but we would tend to say, we'll trust you to represent the brand. And look, if you'd say something that's off kilter, or if there's something that might be reputation really difficult. Our first step is to just have a little private conversation with you and say, hey, you know, you realize that our logo is on your profile, you know, everything you say, can be interpreted, what do you say? Can you mind taking that down or making a change? And look, in every case, everybody's been like, oh, look, I didn't understand. I didn't know that that would happen. But, you know, that's the approach the the, the kind of assumption of what the employees role is, in that situation is different from region to region. You know, and Japan is like a completely different animal anyway, because Japan has, you know, that their way that they communicate externally about issues is different from their beginning, anyway. Yeah.

Kenneth Kinney 22:52

Well talk about structuring what you do with your stories with corporate responsibility, because I think that's one of the things that I've seen you guys do? Well, your company do well, is you're talking about making better homes reality for everyone. And I know, we've discussed this before about health, how hard it is to find good running water in places like India, I remember seeing it there, we take so much of this for granted, but corporate responsibility, a lot of that gets a very Frou Frou perspective often, because it doesn't always balance in with the DNA of the company and you guys, right? That really balances well with what Lixil does.

Dan Nestle 23:32

Yeah. And in fact, we realize that too, you know, corporate responsibility is on such a such a passive thing. Like you do it because you're responsible to do it, you do it because you know, it's going to get you your Dow Jones rating will go higher or your ESG rate, you know, the investors will like it. So, we've, we've pivoted away from even using the word corporate responsibility, I probably shouldn't even said it earlier, it's we're now talking more about impact and the impact that we make and that we want to make. And, you know, we have, we're fortunate to have the, you know, that the kind of the walked back the talk, especially when it comes to sanitation and hygiene, and advocacy for for water efficiency. And, you know, we so are for example, our people, and so like oops, sorry, let me back up. So we sanitation, hygiene, water efficiency, also labor shortage, right? This is a big, big issue, especially in the US with the skilled labor labor shortage, this is a major thing for us, because plumbers are critically important to not just us but to everybody. And, you know, we're we are doing a lot of programming in that respect. We, you asked about building stories, it's it's based on the experiences that we're having, not on, and on research too. So we, you know, we take, we take whatever elements that we know, and we put them together into the way that any journalist or any kind of researcher would put would build a story and You know, find the, the the topics that we think resonate most but also match that, that purpose of making better homes reality for everyone everywhere. And you know, when you think about better homes, a home doesn't necessarily mean the physical building that you're living in. Right? It's, it could be you know, your office is a home in some ways your, you know, your home could be it the what a home looks like is different for you know, a person renting an apartment in New York or in Amsterdam, or in Nairobi, right? versus somebody owning a palatial a palatial home and in the suburbs of New Jersey, or somebody owning a very small, you know, kind of, you know, pre prefab in, you know, somewhere else. So, home is very different thing to everybody. We owe it to our customers and to our employees to sort of live that out, okay, look, if we're actually making better homes, reality, whatever kind of home there is, it has to be get better. So that's, you know, if we have that behind us, we can create really good stories, but we're not creating anything out of hulk out of whole cloth. You know, we have the boots on the ground throughout the world to, you know, to see how this stuff is happening. We, our leaders are out there, you know, talking to customers talking to communities, we have a new, a new ish kind of division, I'd say and, you know, I can't really mention anything much about it now. But, you know, we had a really excellent experience and an ongoing experience in Towns County, Alabama, where many of the folks living there have a horrifying sanitation situation. It's, it's, you'd be surprised that this is happening in America, in America, there's over a million people who have who do not have access to proper sanitation, and pass you know, some of you couldn't you couldn't build septic tanks there because the geography you did geology, you couldn't bring in plumbing because the you know, the, the sewage lines weren't going there. So you had to figure out different ways in different solutions to get these folks into some manner of clean living. And we help them find something you know, we put some others some some different technologies together with some other partners, and running a pilot in 100 homes there where we've given them merican standard toilets and such. But really, that's not where the main thrust of this is, the main thrust of it is in the sanitation part where, you know, where there's no longer where we can build this solution. There's no longer essentially shit drop dripping into the front yard, back yard, right? Sewage, raw sewage everywhere. You don't want that. So, you know, we're that that itself, the watching this all happen? How it unfolds creates an amazing story. You know, frankly, because it's true, and because it really, really reflects our values. So we're doing a lot of those kinds of activities.

Kenneth Kinney 28:09

Well, first of all, when we say roll tide, and Alabama's not the entire state, it's not like that. No, no, no, no, but I know you didn't mean that

Dan Nestle 28:16

either. But it is Lounge's County, very specific area. Yeah,

Kenneth Kinney 28:19

I know what those communities look like in there. They need help. They need a lot. They need help. I mean, we take so much of this for granted. And then like basic drinking water, look at Flint, Michigan or Jackson, Mississippi. There's That's right. Not a toilet issue. But you'd be surprised how many issues are closer to home than you think but to you know,

Dan Nestle 28:36

those issues exist in so Laos County, Alabama is one place but right here Southern New Jersey, Hawaii has a horrifying issue going on. The the the Navajo Nation is having some issues like Michigan everywhere, like it's, it's in your backyard places that you wouldn't think it just it's there and here in America to compliment

Kenneth Kinney 28:56

you and your team. You know, one of the things that drives me bananas with a lot of communications people that I work with or provide counsel to is that they try to over communicate their role in the world with things that really aren't part of their company. They're not boots on the ground. They're not they maybe they give a little money to a charity, but they're not involved with it. And or they try to go all out on a social happening of the day and over communicate it but they're not part of that when the attentions not there. So to make this part of your core DNA, and it really fits perfectly into your brand, it's it's interesting, and I'm curious how this emerged with the team like where did this where did this corporate DNA, like you don't typically think of people in Japan at the corporate IT CEO level thinking about toilets in India or lower Alabama?

Dan Nestle 29:54

Well, I mean, having lived in Japan for you know, for 16 years I can See it, like I can see the how it how it how a Japanese executive team would really truly want to do good some elsewhere in the world. I mean, you know, there's it's almost part of their DNA to be a giving nation of people and you know, I have

Kenneth Kinney 30:18

gone Is that Is that wrong? Because I know that you're saying that the nicest people I've ever met in my entire life or when when I was in Japan, like it's Tokyo is one of the cleanest nicest people in a big city you'll ever meet. But maybe it's not necessarily Japan, Germany, wherever?

Dan Nestle 30:37

No, but I think I think I was going to address but I think the part of your question that was really, like, I think we're spot on is that, you know, to get that into the DNA of a business is a very, is a very difficult task. And it takes, you know, it takes effort, and charisma and a lot of proving of models, and, you know, kind of pilots. And I think, in our case, Lixil is a new company. You know, technically speaking, so Lixil was only, you know, I want to say 1314 years, I should, I should know the number. But you know, it was founded not too long ago as a merger of five companies in Japan, and that I think, gave our CEO, central Sinai gave him this kind of incredible opportunity to, to achieve some of the visions that he wanted to achieve, right. And as, as he's learned, over time, as we've learned over time, about a lot of the problems that are out there in the world that we have the capacity to solve, we have a very strong culture of innovation that's, that seeks to solve those problems. And not every thing that we try is obviously gets out into the public. And, you know, but it is part of our one of our values, one of our behaviors, is called experiment and learn, right? And experiment and learn isn't always about, hey, let's just find a better spreadsheet program that's going to help us you know, get to the end of the day faster. It's really about, alright, what are the big issues facing the world now? The world in the business? How can we create something very new and very interesting, and it's different, that can take our business into different directions. And that can really kind of make a lasting impact, which, which, incidentally, is also self serving in some ways, because that guarantees the continuance of our of our business as well. So like doing good for others is doing good for us. There's no conflict there at all. And I think it takes a mindset to make that happen, too.

Kenneth Kinney 32:39

Well, one last question, before we cut to the close is sure how has this resonated with sales, not necessarily you, you talked about as a campaign, but all of the do good is great, up until the board meets and then sales are tough, but I don't mean just your company. But if you are giving advice for somebody stepping into this, in wanting to do more social responsibility, knowing that they also have to drive a lot of sales, what advice would you give them?

Dan Nestle 33:09

Well, as, as Mark Schaefer might say, the value of content that nobody sees is precisely zero, right. So if our salespeople aren't seeing this, aren't understanding that this is happening, it will not make it to the customer, it will not help them it will not help anything at the front end. Can't over communicate, but at the same time, you have to communicate, you know, you have to get this message out to your salespeople. I don't know what the what the right formula is, because you know, different market trends, different market cycles will take your salespersons mind in different directions, right, they need to sell they need to make, you know, earn revenue. And sometimes they have, they don't necessarily have the time or the personal, the personal space to you know, integrate messages about impact and responsibility that are that are preset perceived to be like miles and miles away from where they are or that are quite distant from the customer who needs this faucet now. So, you know, it's it's more about how do we fold it into all the messaging and educate our Salesforce so that it becomes part of what they do and what they say. And we're on that path. You know, we're not we're trying we're getting there. We will Okay, we have occasionally run like straight up campaigns where you know, if you buy if you buy an American Standard Toilet, somebody who you know, will donate a certain amount to Sato and or will move will will create some Sato toilets and then donate those to someplace in you know, in Africa or wherever or to it so it was a unit sorry, to UNICEF program. But that, you know, that was that was a while back. We do that as well. But generally speaking, you know, I think it's about making sure that that message is clear and then being able to you know, to bring it to the language Have that front line, like what matters most. So, giving a presenting, here's our impact strategy to somebody on the front lines is not really going to be helpful. Right. But on the other hand, if you say, here's the three things that that you need to know, that are matter that are important. And sort of, you know, treat, treat it like, like a marketing program, where you need to get in front of folks with the most important pieces of information and a hook. I think that probably has a little bit more power to get to the sales.

Kenneth Kinney 35:33

Fair enough. Dan, is this of everyone who appears on the show? What is your favorite kind of shark and why it's lots of sharks in the news showing up in your part of the world in the Jersey New York area right now.

Dan Nestle 35:47

So I you know, I I am a shark fear or shark lover? I don't know. But I always had this fascination for is it called the pelagic white tip?

Kenneth Kinney 36:03

Is that what oceanic white tips there planet sharks?

Dan Nestle 36:06

Yes. oceanic whitetip? You know, those are the ones that they say we're responsible for. You know, a lot of the hard death of like, you know, the the USS Indiana. I think it was an Indianapolis, Indiana. The Indianapolis? Yeah.

Kenneth Kinney 36:23

The Indianapolis USS Indianapolis.

Dan Nestle 36:25

Yeah. of jobs fame. Yeah, there's a Cushaw told that story. But you know, seeing Shark Week and seeing over many years. That's the one that kind of sticks with me. I love that one. I mean, I love I mean, that's, that's that one fascinates me. And also just the, just the Mako man. I mean, how can you not admire the beauty of a mako shark? And, you know, I mean, but fear. The bull shark is the thing that inspires the most fear in me having lived in Australia for a while I was like, I was always checking where, you know, is the water murky today? We're not going in.

Kenneth Kinney 37:03

So oceanic white tips, trivia, they're known as sea dogs, does have some behavior, but they're also nicknamed the dark night of the ocean, because they mostly hunt at night. But if there's an opportunity, opportunistic prey during the day, they're all over it. You will find them when you do there's they've been overfished, like a lot of shark species, but they've been overly fish, but they you'll often see him in packs, they hang around boats, which are annoying bull sharks. I see all the time. They're aggressive and annoying. Mako are fascinating just because of the speed. Yeah, but I love them all.

Dan Nestle 37:37

So yeah, and shark.

Kenneth Kinney 37:39

Exactly. Well, Dan, it's a special time the show. Are you ready for the five most interesting and important questions that you're going to be asked today?

Dan Nestle 37:46

Oh, my goodness. I hope so. Yes. All right. Surely, fire he worked

Kenneth Kinney 37:49

for a Japanese based company and you've visited and live there and travel there on occasion, your choice to visit Tokyo or Kyoto? Tokyo. Why? So?

Dan Nestle 38:02

It's just, it's just so much more exciting. I love Kyoto. I've been there a few times, you know, and apologies to anybody who's a huge, huge Kyoto fan, because I am, I'm a Kyoto fan. But, you know, if I'm gonna go to temple to temple and see the beautiful stuff, you know, I'll go to Kyoto but if I want to go and hang out and live and be my be my friends and my family and just enjoy, it's Tokyo.

Kenneth Kinney 38:24

Every time those beautiful, but yeah, you want to see where you live in New York. So we're close to it. So

Dan Nestle 38:29

it's enough but yeah, but I you know, I just I just there's something about the beating heart of Tokyo that is just like, like, 14 New York's put together. It's just,

Kenneth Kinney 38:38

yeah, it's it is what if New York could grow up and get clean and take a bath? That's kind of what kinda what it would look like maybe,

Dan Nestle 38:45

like, just I like to think that way.

Kenneth Kinney 38:47

Alright, so we've talked a lot about water. And you're a Nestle and not an S li guy, for those trying to say his name correctly. But let's talk about Nestle waters, which would you rather drink Nestle pure life or Perrier?

Dan Nestle 39:07

I would go with Nestle pure life, you know, just just just plain water is fine. You know, like, you make your your you're highlighting my inability to make decisions here because I do I also enjoy like, sparkling water if I don't, I'm not a huge fan of sparkling water by itself. But big giant Benjen big Gin Tonic guy, you know, like, like sparkling water drinks. I don't know if I'd use Perrier for that. Slugs. They

Kenneth Kinney 39:33

don't throw the bottles in the ocean or in you know, the plastic bottles. I'm good with it. So alright, this is a an odd experience question but using a toilet in Australia or using a toilet in Japan.

Speaker 3 39:48

Oh, Japan hands down. My gosh. It's so weird

Kenneth Kinney 39:52

to talk about but if you've been there, you'll you'll realize it's a much better and I think settle the myth. Yeah, that's the water flush backwards in Australia.

Dan Nestle 40:01

It does goes the other way. Because the Coriolis effects the other way. Yeah, Japan, toilets in Japan. I mean, has anybody seen the recent South Park with the Japanese toilet? It is hysterical episode, and not untrue at all. I mean, these things are amazing. And I will say that Lixil is one of the, you know, is the, is one of the big makers of the most space age, incredible toilet experiences you could possibly have in Japan. They're not huge here, of course, because we don't have electricity in our, in our next to the toilets, and they're expensive, but I would absolutely go up a day. If I could. Oh, yeah.

Kenneth Kinney 40:38

I think Brad Pitt even talked about it on the Bullet Train.

Dan Nestle 40:43

It gets getting I think it's I think we're onto sort of a secret, slowly building trend. Exactly. Exactly.

Kenneth Kinney 40:48

All right. So if you're writing a communications story for your company, and you're talking about another bathroom project, would you rather talk about showers and bathtubs, or toilets in today's?

Dan Nestle 41:04

Well, I we love all these products and all of our all of our categories. I would go with showers right now showers and faucets and tubs just because you know there's a lot more variety in them. And also actually if you're going to do you know look at your options for water efficiency and for for experience, you know, there's a lot more you can do I think with the fittings part of the whole business so this is great shower products coming out in the near future, but I personally am you know, I I am. The shower is my favorite time of the day almost. Right. So I would go shower over any of those other things.

Kenneth Kinney 41:45

Yeah. And you got to drive to Canada to go get a high capacity toilet in your part of the world anyway.

Dan Nestle 41:51

Well, right. That's okay, though. We're, they're gonna get we're working on even lower gallons per flush as part of our march towards better efficiency. And you know, sometimes, sometimes that's a really a really great development. But not always the most popular. Nowadays most popular for some reason. Alright,

Kenneth Kinney 42:16

number five, and the most important question that you're going to be asked today is biscuits or cornbread.

Dan Nestle 42:23

Cornbread. Why so cornbread? I can eat more of it. Probably. I mean biscuits. Though maybe we're all good biscuits smothered in gravy, little sausage, yum. sausage gravy. But cornbread is just like, I think it's more versatile, a lot more a lot. You can have it more times you can have it. Actually you can do biscuits with breakfast as well. But I am

Kenneth Kinney 42:45

almost the same way you tried to answer Tokyo and Kyoto is like I don't want to offend biscuit people.

Dan Nestle 42:50

Oh I know. But I'm gonna I'm sticking with cornbread. The big corporate that my wife makes terrific cornbread. Fair enough.

Kenneth Kinney 42:55

All right. So Dan, where can people find out more about you? Listen to the damn Nestle show and much more and get a copy of the book.

Dan Nestle 43:02

Yeah, well, the den Nestle show, of course, is where you can hear me more and my guests. And you know, things, things keep developing there. So it's just Dan Nestle dot show or wherever you listen to podcasts, go look for the den Nestle show. The book is the most amazing marketing book ever available on Amazon, and Kindle and audible as well. And it is just a terrific but I hope that everybody out goes out goes out and picks one up right now. You can find me on LinkedIn. Of course just look for look for Daniel Nestle. But, you know, my my LinkedIn URL is is Nestle I was that's the only URL I was ever able to get this just Nestle. Obviously the some much more influential powers really grabbed nestle.com way before I could in the 90s. But, but I think I think you'll find it there and Nestle, Twitter, DS, Nestle everywhere else, Diaz Nestle. And I hope to interact with you connect with me. Anytime.

Kenneth Kinney 43:55

Awesome. Dan, thank you again for being with us today on A Shark's Perspective.

Dan Nestle 43:59

I appreciate it. Kenneth, thanks so much for having me.

[music]

Kenneth Kinney 44:07

So there was my conversation with Dan Nestle, the leader of Communications at Lixil Americas, which is part of a global Japanese company. And he's also one of the 30 Plus co authors, along with Mark Schaefer of "The Most Amazing Marketing Book Ever". Let's take a look at three key takeaways from a conversation with him.

Kenneth Kinney 44:24

First, love the conversation around sort of staying in your lane is a bit of a cynic. I cannot stand when corporations take a stance that you can tell they clearly don't believe in it's not part of their DNA. But it's not easy. When employees and consumers and corporate boards and shareholders all want something different from a company in the stance they take on a social issue. Throw in a multinational corporate layer to that equation, and that's a whole other minefield, especially considering when people hear may not know what horrible thing has happened there or vice versa. So what do you do? What do you say? What do you communicate? What I always suggest is first answer if it's part Out of your DNA. That doesn't mean it's not to stay away from it. It simply means that the audience's will make more sense of your stance if they understood and now understand who you as a brand were, and are, then communicate it loudly, it can be a minefield, but at least if you know where you stand, then you'll know how not to stick your corporate communications foot on a landmine, or at least in your mouth anyways.

Kenneth Kinney 45:22

Second, same goes with corporate governance. If you say you owe it to your customers and your employees, then make sure as Dan and team have done to ever reflect through their core DNA, his company screams water and plumbing and sanitation. And that's where their social responsibility is, as well. Love Dan's interpretation to on how to communicate not over communicated across the brand, he made a great point and that it will not make it to the customer unless you communicate it enough to your employees.

Kenneth Kinney 45:49

Third, I mentioned something about a different brand, taking a stance on something and screaming to the world via social media, of course, that you needed to take their stance to, you had to post it on your social as well as have it reflected on your own website. Their company, though didn't walk the talk and it was nowhere to be seen other than a couple of posts, and it was nowhere on their website. This is what people don't want you to communicate not execute. Smart brands know how to take a stance and make an impact by making it part of their core. We all need to do that more.

Kenneth Kinney 46:19

Got a question? Send me an email to Kenneth at a shark's perspective.com.

Kenneth Kinney 46:23

Thank you again for the privilege of your time and I'm so thankful to everyone who listens.

Kenneth Kinney 46:27

We talked a lot about water today and it's time for me to dive back into the water. So please join us on the next episode of A Shark's Perspective.

(Music - shark theme)