Unfiltered Marketing with Stephen Denny

Welcome to Brainfluence, where author and international keynote speaker Roger Dooley has weekly conversations with thought leaders and world class experts. Every episode shows you how to improve your business with advice based on science or data.

Roger’s new book, Friction, is published by McGraw Hill and is now available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and bookstores everywhere. Dr Robert Cialdini described the book as, “Blinding insight,” and Nobel winner Dr. Richard Claimer said, “Reading Friction will arm any manager with a mental can of WD40.”

To learn more, go to RogerDooley.com/Friction, or just visit the book seller of your choice.

Now, here’s Roger.

Roger Dooley:     Welcome to Brainfluence. I’m Roger Dooley.

Today’s guest, Stephen Denny, is a strategy marketing consultant and the author of Killing Giants: 10 Strategies to Topple the Goliath In Your Industry. Previously, he worked for brands like Sony, OnStar, Iomega and Plantronics. His newest book, coauthored with Paul Leinberger, is Unfiltered Marketing: 5 Rules to Win Back Trust, Credibility and Customers. And I will let him describe a little bit about his current venture that also involves Paul, and some very interesting study results. Welcome Steven.

Stephen Denny:  Roger, thank you very much for having me on. It’s great to finally meet you face to face.

Roger Dooley:     Indeed, indeed. Tell me about your current business and in particular, the study that you guys have been working on.

Stephen Denny:  Sure. Unfiltered Marketing is the results, really, the culmination of four years of research that Paul Leinberger and I have done at Denny Leinberger Strategy. In short, in brief, Danny Leinberger Strategy is a strategy consulting firm. We are consultants who lean heavily on research, rather than researchers who dabble in consulting. We both come from line management roles in our respective pasts. Paul’s a 30 year, 40 year veteran in consumer sentiment tracking. I come from the marketing world, as those brands you just mentioned would reflect. And together, we began offering the culture and technology intersection study, which as the name implies, studies the impact of technology on culture. And brands that participate in that study are able to answer some complex questions that typically come up in what their marketing footing is and how they’re going about doing what they’re doing. That’s the short answer. We basically use macro trends and proprietary research to help brands make better decisions, spot opportunities that aren’t necessarily visible, very often hidden in plain sight and everything is driving towards real world, tangible financial, good outcomes.

Roger Dooley:     In the years that you’ve been conducting this study, what’s surprised you about it?

Stephen Denny:  What surprised me the most, so look back across four years, since 2016. So we’re heading into our fifth year right now, we’re hopefully momentarily about to be back in the field. What’s surprised me most, is the nuances between some of these major macro trends and how some of them have been rock solid and extremely steady over over the years and how others have fractured and moved in different directions. And as one would suggest, I mean, these are macro trends. These are not micro trends. These are not anecdotes that we ask. If you look back over the sweep of history, typically trends are good for a couple of years, two years, three years, before they begin to appreciably change.

What we’re seeing now, and this is a statement that we can make, is the impact of technology on culture, on behavior, is pervasive enough that sentiment is moving faster now than it ever has before. And this is critically important. I mean, this is sort of the Petri dish now of consumer behavior, because we are connected to these devices at all times. And as a result, we’re exchanging information, we’re getting information, we’re rebroadcasting information, we’re learning things at a faster rate. So as a result, our opinions are shifting very quickly. So I think that’s one of the more profound things that we’ve mined out of this last four years.

Roger Dooley:     What would an example be of something that has changed rapidly or much more rapidly than you anticipated, in this relatively short period of years?

Stephen Denny:  Well, I’ll give you both sides. The first big macro trend that we pulled out of the data, and this was 2016. As a quick digression, my first book that you mentioned, Killing Giants, came out in 2011 and it was very ethnographic, very story-driven. And it was really from that body of work, that we derived the survey instrument that became the culture technology intersection study. We were looking at three big areas. Two of them are focused in unfiltered marketing, but the first one was what’s the future of the brand consumer relationship, which I think is quite important to everyone listening and watching. The second equally important is, what’s the future of the digital footprint? How do we manage our own affairs digitally? The third was very much focused on future of work. A lot of my personal consulting work is in the technology world. So kind of an important thing to set up.

We started from that basis. We did not have trends. We were looking to backfill. The survey was developed in such a way that, fingers are crossed and with all best intentions, we would let the data speak for itself. And we did. In 2016, interestingly enough, the last time we had a, previous to 2020, the last election, we saw one big macro trend emerge, which became very foundational, which was what we call, seeking control in and out of control world. And that felt good to us because others have been published on this subject. The Edelman Trust Barometer is a magnificent piece of work, and it talks about the collapse of trust.

We saw this to, however, importantly, what we took away from that is not so much that trust is collapsed, it’s that we, and when I say we I’m referring to most countries around the world, 2016, we did 12 countries. We saw a wide selection almost across the board of, of cultures and countries that said, we feel this collapse of trust, some more than others, but importantly, we’re not willing to let it stay the way it is. We’re not willing to surrender. We’re looking for ways to rest back some sense of control over our lives. That trend has remained remarkably stable over four years. And by stable, I mean, it’s moved a point or two within, this may be 15, 20, 30 data points that make up that trend. Some of them have moved a little bit, but when you pan back and look at them altogether, it’s been very stable.

Now the second macro trend however, is very interesting. It’s one we called raw, because we’re living in a nature collapsing trust, because we’re trying to rest control back over our lives, digital and offline. One of the only things we’re willing to trust now, is ourselves. What we can see with our own eyes, here with our own ears, what our judgment tells us is correct. We want to see the raw feed. We want to see the data dump. If we’re asked by a brand or a candidate to believe something, we want to see the data ourselves before we’re willing to follow. That began in a very two dimensional fashion in 2016. And we saw things like, ask the question. I would rather see an executive live on screen during a crisis, even if they don’t have all the answers at their fingertips, rather than wait for tomorrow, right, when they know what’s going on and it’s a little bit more produced. Four years ago, the vast majority of people, 70 plus percent would say, “I want to see the executive right now.”

And we think of someone like Ed Bastian of Delta Airlines. You remember back, I think it was 2016 actually, the big IT failure. And here’s the Ed on camera, tie askew, frenetic activity going on behind him, and he’s saying, “Listen, we’re not quite sure what’s going on right now, but I want you to know that we’re working on it and I’ll get back to you shortly.” And he was, I think rightfully, held up as a hero for that kind of executive action. Fast forward a couple of years, 2019 or so, you look at the data from 2019, and all of a sudden you see that softening and you see consumer sentiment saying, “You know what, it’s okay. I don’t need to hear from you today. I would rather hear what’s right, rather than just hear it quickly.” So why is that? Why did that trend, the polarity, flip on that one?

And anytime you see a shift in sentiment broadly on a category like that, you can always find reasons to explain it. I think there was a proliferation of, what I like to call, high guys videos on social media. You’re scrolling through LinkedIn and you see all these people waving at you and talking at you and you have to unmute them. I think after 10 or 15 of those, you kind of want to stop. It’s okay, I don’t need to be a consumer of all of this. We also had a rather tumultuous, iconoclastic President in the White House who also was very much at the fore of quick communication, not necessarily with all the facts in hands, but he’s floating an idea. And maybe we had a little bit of that too. So we can find examples that could possibly explain things, but that’s an example of one that’s shifted rather dramatically.

Roger Dooley:     Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Stephen Denny:  So I think those two were very important.

Roger Dooley:     Over the last few years too, the whole trust in media has been reduced in variety of ways. We had a president who basically dismissed just about all of the media as being bogus. At the same time, certainly folks from the other party dismissed various other news outlets as being mostly bogus. And for the average consumer, all they’re hearing is everything is fake. So that’s an issue, but I want to jump back to the control issue for a second, then they wouldn’t get to more, get some more on raw. But on the control thing, it seems like there’s this tension that exists where I love Google. I mean I use Google, I don’t know, maybe dozens of times a day on a busy day.

Stephen Denny:  It’s hard not too.

Roger Dooley:     They do, legitimately, such a good job. They are better than anything else out there. I mean, I’ve tried other search engines, but they do not provide information that is as useful or as accurate as Google, that understands what I’m looking for as well as Google does. But of course the tool that they use, or some of the tools they use to do this, are invading my privacy. And that’s also how they monetize this great free service. So there’s this tension that exists. Now of the big tech companies, it seems like Apple is moving in a different direction than the others, where they’re actually trying to say, “We will give you, our customer, control” very overtly by saying, “Okay, now all these so-called free services you get, you’re going to have to opt in to give them your information.” And Facebook is telling them all, we’ll collapse if you do that because nobody would willingly give us that information. Do you see this as a reaction to that whole control issue? How is this going to play out, do you think?

Stephen Denny:  I think this is a really important point. You look at Apple as a counter cultural icon, dating back to the early days for those of your readers and watchers who have been in the business long enough to remember when…

Roger Dooley:     We remember those early days, I think.

Stephen Denny:  Yes we do. Yes we do. Some of us do. As a counter culture alert or sort of countervailing trend, look at what Apple has done in terms of voice search. And voice search, is obviously devastating to a company like Google, as a competitor. But to your point here from a basic software with the device standpoint, anything that they do that pushes control back into the hands of its users, is on trend, as far as I’m concerned.

From our framework, we do see consumers across the spectrum saying that they have taken concrete, tangible steps to use encrypted browsers, not all the time necessarily, but sometimes. We still see, in the United States, half of all consumers say they cover the camera on their laptop when they’re not using it. My business card as a matter of fact, I still give out business cards. I started, you know, when you gave that very kind intro in the beginning, you said, I used to work for Sony. I began my career with the Japanese, of course I still use business cards.

Roger Dooley:     Right. Business cards are really important.

Stephen Denny:  I can’t not hand a business card over when I’m face-to-face with someone new. But Paul and I have both scored our cards so that they can be folded and neatly hang over the webcam, if you so desire. So it’s that kind of thing. It is taking these steps to rest back some control over a world that many people feel, in particularly in the digital realm and the technological realm, is spinning out of control. So Apple steps, getting back to your original question, absolutely positively on trend. I think the way it plays out reflect Apple’s acts as a brand, against the broader background right now of the collapse in trust in media, the collapse in trust of technology companies in general.

Look at the last 30 days. We’re seeing everyone around the world, even in forums that have generally been politically to the left, decry the censorship and de platforming that they’re seeing around them, so you see some of these trends happening. The way it plays out, I think that there’s a bigger future in our immediate future for more encryption, for more secure technology devices, and for brands, whether they’re emergent brands or whether they’re established players to say, “Look, here’s what I’m going to push into your hands. Here’s what I’m going to make available to you.” Whether it’s some variant of GrapheneOS for mobile phones, or whether it’s encrypted browsers for your laptop, how can it not?

That seems to be the direction that consumers have a great hunger for. And I think brands that really take advantage of this, who say security first, who say privacy first at your discretion dear customer, that you can take steps to do this. And for brands that are willing to say, “Let me push control into your hands, of the user experience, of the brand experience, of the product experience. Can I get information on demand at any time? Can I avoid having to ask you for something that I could readily get myself? Even at that level, which I think is quite non-technological, all of these steps together represent a dynamic shift, which many people talk about and very few brands actually do, which is how do I empower my users at the expense of maintaining the control of myself?

Roger Dooley:     Yeah, I see there’s a constant tension in customer experience between what’s good for the customer and what’s good for the company. Now in some cases, maybe you’ve got a win-win, but often there is something that is good for one side or for the other. Okay. If Amazon lets you return stuff for free, that’s good for you, not necessarily so good for them. If your cable company basically monitors all your traffic and sells that information to other people, that’s good for them. And you may not feel the pain, but it’s probably not that good for you either. I think that trying to make some of that stuff transparent for one, because I would guess that probably most normal people who aren’t techies or in our end of the business, don’t even realize that their internet company is selling everything that they do, to some third party data company who is on repackaging it various ways to sell to marketers. And the more it’s transparent, the more people have control.

But what I see happening too, I think like you Stephen, is that brands are going to be sensitive to that and they will give you those choices. One simple example again, getting back to that good for the customer or good for the company, I’ve used a couple of services on my television, my entertainment services. I’ve used DirecTV and I’ve used Amazon prime, both video streaming services or cable services, pretty similar concept in both cases. If you kick into a screensaver because you paused your program and it’s been 10 seconds or 30 seconds, DirecTV, which is an AT&T unit, will start showing you advertisements. Now that would be on the, good for the company and for the spectrum. Amazon will go into your photos and show you the cool trip you took five years ago, or your pictures, cute pictures of your kids that are in your photo album. And that is, I would say, good for you and maybe not that good, but it’s certainly better than seeing endless repetition of ads. And I think that’s the way of the future.

Stephen Denny:  I’m sure it’s quite jarring the first time it happened too. I’m sure it’s quite jarring the first time it happens too, you see your children, your photographs, showing on your television and you didn’t put them there, but yes.

Roger Dooley:     Right? Yeah. I mean it could creep some people out as well. How does Amazon know that? Well it’s because you stored those with Amazon photos. But to me, that is a conscious decision that somebody made. Yes, we could monetize this time. And actually, there are times when you pause a program because you got a phone call or something, and that screensaver is going to be on for 30 minutes. Selling 30 minutes worth of ads, even if they’re really low CPM, that’s that’s not too bad. Amazon consciously chose not to do that, which I think, speaks to the way newer companies, often disruptive companies, are taking on some of the legacy brands that still are trying to simply maximize profits in every little way they can.

Stephen Denny:  Yep. True enough.

Roger Dooley:     So get onto raw, talk a little bit more about that. Raw appears in three of your five principles, so clearly you guys think that’s pretty important.

Stephen Denny:  Yeah. Raw emerged, is really the one big macro trend that most business leaders, when we first present this to them in the earliest years of doing this research and we said, “Look, here’s what we’re seeing. We’re seeing this, we’re seeing this. We’re seeing that.” And when raw hits the table, people lean forward. It’s the one that resonates, I think, the loudest, because it is a little bit unusual. As the name implies, it’s a little bit raw, but this is one of those trends that we saw the nuances begin to emerge as we explore deeper. We broke it into three for the purposes of unfiltered marketing for the book, because each one needed its own treatment. Raw when it emerged in 2016, was really the first iteration of that, which in the books, has raw as unscripted.

Unscripted is sort of that definition of speaking off the cuff, of being clear and transparent and in the moment. Everything can be cleaned up in post-production. The PR team can sit the executive down and say, “Okay. We can’t say that. So let’s take that out of the script and let’s make sure we airbrush this out and clean that.” And by the time it hits the formal corporate video, all flaws, and in all likelihood all truth, has been wiped clean.

Roger Dooley:     Everything except this podcast.

Stephen Denny:  Exactly.

Roger Dooley:     If you say it raw, it’s going out there Stephen.

Stephen Denny:  That’s good. That’s good. That’s what I’m ready for, how could I not be. So raw is unscripted. I think, from a psychological standpoint, is I need to hear it directly from you. And by the way, I embrace the mistakes. I embrace the flaws. Let’s refer back to our, our mutual friend, Bob Cialdini and his principles of persuasion. There is a sense of liking when the performer, whether it’s an executive or an actual performer or somebody else, is imperfect because we relate to that. Because we know we are imperfect too. And it’s okay to hear them flub a line. It’s okay. We want them to succeed, but we react to the human side of that. That’s number one.

Number two is, there is that element of the lack of trust. And if I know I’m catching someone off guard or seemingly off guard, where they don’t have a prepared script, they’re not reading from a teleprompter. This hasn’t gone through layers and layers of corporate communication and glossing over. We get the feeling that we’re getting the truth. And in this day and age, getting the truth is critically important. So what does that mean for us? That means we are more apt to believe and trust in the live stream, the instant communication, the lack of a script, then we are the beautifully produced corporate piece.

That’s not to say that there isn’t a role for a beautifully produced corporate speech or video. And this is an important distinction to make at this point, because there are no absolutes in life, it isn’t that that everything goes to the left or everything goes to the right. It’s the emergence of this counterpoint to the beautifully produced communication piece. I still think that there’s a huge, this is my personal opinion, I think the role of raw, as it relates to beautifully produced corporate communication, is the rational versus emotional. Very much that the yin and yang. If I’m seeking to persuade someone, I’m going to be as raw as possible. If I’m seeking to move someone, to get to the emotional heart of the matter, I’m still going to produce something as beautiful as I possibly can, as stirring as, as attention grabbing as I can. So there’s a role for both.

But here we are in this age of collapsed trust, don’t even call it collapsing, that’s disingenuous at this point. An age of collapsed trust. How do we regain trust in this fallen world? Well, the first thing we’re going to have to do is A) push as much control back into the customer’s hands possible and B), as we’re just saying, we need to drop the pretense. We need to stop pretending to be heroes in our own story, which leads us to the second part of raw.

Let me just segue right into it because I think it’s important here. Talk about raw as unscripted. We also talk about raw as in-process. We want it to be part of the process. We like it when brands communicate with us frequently and say, “This is what we’re thinking. What do you think?” The easiest way for us to animate this in real life terms is co-development. I have a wonderful interview in the book with Paul Gaudio, who is the former chief creative of Adidas, or as my European friends will correct me, Adidas. And he talks about swimming in the culture, beyond voice of the customer, beyond infield research. He talks very eloquently about how a brand must swim in the culture, be in the culture, understand it from the inside out. I don’t know if any of your readers or listeners or viewers are sneakerheads.

Roger Dooley:     Probably a few at least.

Stephen Denny:  How do we end up with zippers on the side of athletic shoes? We ended up with zippers on the side of athletic shoes, because Gaudio and his team observed that people playing basketball out there in the street at high schools, afterschool, were cutting their own shoes and were modifying them. And as a result, instead of the way most companies would react. Most companies would say, “What the hell are they doing? Why are these kids mutilating my beautifully designed product that was made back in the design center in wherever?” And instead, much to his credit, he and others embraced this and said, “Ask a question. Let’s find out what’s going on here. Let’s invite some of these people to a design studio show. Why are you doing this? How are you doing this? What’s the advantage? Is it style? Is it function? Is it form? Is it comfort? What is it? Now everyone, you walk through a shoe retailer and you see them. So this is a wonderful example of being in process.

Roger Dooley:     Yeah. That brings two things. One is, you mentioned Bob Cialdini before, his unity principle, which you being Cialdini trained, know that him introducing principle number seven was like an earth shattering event. It didn’t register for most people, but for those of his students who all knew that there were six principles for 30 years, suddenly there was a seventh, it’s unity. And one of the ways of invoking that, is co-creation or co-development. So if you can let somebody play a role in developing your product or your service or whatever, and make them feel like they did it, as opposed to fill out a survey and then just goes into black nothingness forever. And that’s really important. And then your sneaker modification reminds me of something that I talk about a lot, which is a desire path. A desire path is when somebody says, “Okay, there’s a sidewalk that goes that way, but I want to get to the building diagonally across. So I’m just going to walk straight there.” And eventually enough people do that and they create a pathway there in the grass.

Stephen Denny:  Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Roger Dooley:     There’s two ways organizations could respond to that. They can put up a fence to make sure people don’t come up and cut across the grass, because it’s messing up the pristine lawn.

Stephen Denny:  Yeah.

Roger Dooley:     Or they can pave that desire path. And what you provided was a perfect example of paving that desire path, where you say…

Stephen Denny:  Yes.

Roger Dooley:     Okay, people are cutting the sneakers open so they can put them on a more easily and quickly, why not just make that even easier for them? So really important principle there.

Stephen Denny:  Yeah. We can even move backwards in Cialdini’s principles and point to consistency. If we are co-developed, we have created, I think, something much more powerful than fans. We’ve created experts. We’ve created people who have been part of the process and who can speak as an insider saying, “I contributed to this.” And as we know, consistency is the first step along the path of radicalization in service of a brand. We want people to be out there on the streets saying, “You know why this is important? This is why it’s important.”

Roger Dooley:     Mm-hmm (affirmative). Because once you’ve given that advice, it’s tough to go back on. Say you pick a color for something and then you see the final product, you’re not going to say. “I don’t like the color.” When you look at it, say, “Hmm, not what I was expecting.”

Stephen Denny:  Yep.

Roger Dooley:     You’re probably going to say, “Well hey, I helped create that so I love it.

Stephen Denny:  Helped create it. I’m part of it. And it’s very difficult for me to psychologically back away now and say, “I’m not in support or I’m not in favor of.” That leads us to the third version of raw, the third incarnation of this trend, which we called in context. And it speaks very, I think, loudly to this point of removing our ego, stopping ourselves from always trying to be the hero, and saying, “Listen, it’s our job to present the evidence and to stand shoulder to shoulder with our customer and say, this is what we’re looking at. And this is how you might interpret this. In other words, don’t take my word for it, let’s look at it together. And I’m here as a resource to help you understand this.” This is the creation of experts.

This is earlier, back in my Killing Giants days, 2011 when I wrote that book, my first interview was with Jim Koch of the Boston Beer company. And we had a wonderful interview. And he described to me that his people had two jobs. They had a job in the office. You were Roger in accounts payable, but you also had a job in the factory, in the brewery. It was kind of like being in the army, right? And you loaded hops into the fermentor and why would you do this? Why did he, so fervently, encourages employees to become home brewers? You guys work for a brewery, you want to bring a six pack home every night, go to it, it’s there. And we do make this stuff for a living. And he said, “No, it’s critically important because we wanted people to,” as he said, it was a wonderful expression, he wanted them to get it under their fingernails. He wanted them to know the answers to questions that their casual friends on the weekends would never think of asking.

So here, in context means we are providing the backdrop of this otherwise unmediated, fire hose of raw information that is not always going to be apparent to the casual viewer. In Unfiltered, I interviewed, it’s the second time I’ve interviewed him, he’s a fascinating guy, Rob Sharenow, who’s the president of programming for A&E networks. He’s the man who green-lighted Live PD, the wonderful mashup of cops and Monday Night Football, where we’re seeing a live feed from six different police departments around the country, with a three second delay, and a studio audience of experts. They’re saying, “Okay, here’s what’s going on. Let me explain to you what you’re seeing here.” And in this sense, he was creating a sense of understanding, of what police work in America was all about.

It was fascinating. The first time I interviewed him, it was literally a couple of months after the show began to air and it took off like a rocket. And he said, “Our biggest fear, once we said, okay, let’s give this a shot, our biggest fear was that police departments would not want to participate. And our biggest surprise was everyone, every single police department that we talked to, wanted to be on the show.” And with tears in their eyes saying, “We want people to see the reality of police work in America.” And that was big, a big eye opener for him.

The second time I interviewed him, was just before they pulled it off on hiatus, before all of the protests erupted across the country. And he said, it’s fascinating because when they do their research amongst their viewers and A&E has built a network out of this kind of raw feeling in the shows that they do, he said that that their viewers decidedly broke into one of two camps. People were either always rooting for the cops or people were always rooting for the bad guys. I shouldn’t call them bad guys, that’s probably unfair. Rooting for the people that cops were chasing in the show. So it’s probably a statement about the current state of the country.

Roger Dooley:     Did he have any survey data of what the percentages were on either side of that equation?

Stephen Denny:  He share it with me. And I’m sure he wouldn’t, even if I asked him again. But I think it’s an interesting way to look at raw feed, right? I mean, it’s the raw feed and people are going to see themselves in what they’re looking at. It’s our job to be that, if you’ll forgive the classical reference here, stop being the protagonist and be the Greek chorus. Be the voice to the side that says, “This is what you’re looking at and this is what you should be. Here’s what you need to be seeing, and this is why it’s important now back to our show” and let people see that.

So for brands, for business people, this is a huge insight here. This is something that brands don’t necessarily do a great job at and they can. How can I show the evidence? How can I create experts? How can I teach you how to look at my brand and my product category with a more expert eye, so that when you’re at that barbecue on the weekend and someone remarks about the beer they’re drinking, you can enter that conversation and talk about hops in a way that makes you sound a lot more, not just a lot more credible, but you’re going to say it with a lot more passion because you understand the subject matter at a deeper level. Isn’t that important?

Roger Dooley:     Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. I love the Boston Brewing example Stephen, because it seems like it has so many benefits other than for personal productivity. Because typically if you’ve got an accountant, you want that person doing accounting for the entire day, not maybe doing some stuff in the brewery that they’re not very good at.

Stephen Denny:  Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Roger Dooley:     Do the brewers have to do accounting work I wonder?

Stephen Denny:  I don’t know. That’s a really good question.

Roger Dooley:     No wonder the books don’t balance.

Stephen Denny:  I think they should.

Roger Dooley:     Having everybody have a passion about a product like that. Not every company has a passion product perhaps.

Stephen Denny:  True.

Roger Dooley:     But having that feeling amongst all the employees has, I think many benefits beyond just what they’re going to tell their neighbors. It’s the way they feel about their job, the way they feel about the company’s mission, and really, a lot of benefits. I guess, to get the fifth principle, people have to buy your book, Stephen, Unfiltered Marketing. How can they find you and your ideas online?

Stephen Denny:  We’re very easy to find. Instead of trying to spell Denny Leinberger strategy, you can just type in dlstrategy.com. That’ll take you to our website. You can download the most recent insights from the culture technology intersection study there. You can also contact us there. If you’d like to contact me, I’m easily found on LinkedIn, on all the major socials. I’m find-able. And of course, I’ve got my own website up at stevendenny.com. So I hope you’ll to connect.

Roger Dooley:     Great. Well, we will link to all of those places, the book, Stephen’s social media profiles, and any other resources we mentioned on the show notes page at rogerdooley.com/podcast. And we will have text, audio, and video versions of this conversation there. So Stephen, thanks so much for being on the show.

Stephen Denny:  Roger, thank you so much. Pleasure to be here.

Thank you for tuning into this episode of Brainfluence. To find more episodes like this one, and to access all of Roger’s online writing and resources, the best starting point is RogerDooley.com.

And remember, Roger’s new book, Friction, is now available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and book sellers everywhere. Bestselling author Dan Pink calls it, “An important read,” and Wharton Professor Dr. Joana Berger said, “You’ll understand Friction’s power and how to harness it.”

For more information or for links to Amazon and other sellers, go to RogerDooley.com/Friction.