Speaking of Media ....with Keith Marnoch
Insights for Communicators, Interesting for All. 'Speaking of Media' – the Podcast that brings together communicators and the media to consider and critique the world of mass storytelling, hosted by former journalist turned corporate communicator, Keith Marnoch. If you are a communicator - or perhaps someone who speaks on behalf of your organization - 'Speaking of Media' allows you to learn from experts on both sides of the media microphone. The Podcast aims to highlight effective ways to widely share your positive stories and messages, and also – perhaps more importantly - how to avoid getting caught in a negative media storm. Visit www.SpeakingofMedia.com
Speaking of Media ....with Keith Marnoch
Navigating the Front Lines of Corporate Comms with Anne Marie Aikins
In this engaging episode, we explore the dynamic world of communication with Anne Marie Akins, a seasoned communicator who has spent years navigating large organizations. Anne Marie shares her insights on the evolving media landscape, highlighting the importance of transparency and timely responses in crisis communication. As the former lead communicator at Metrolinx, she offers eye-opening stories about fostering partnerships with media and the need for empathy in delivering messages.
Listeners will learn practical strategies for effective communication, especially during challenging times. Anne-Marie delves into the shift from traditional media to social media and the implications of this evolution for organizations. This conversation is a must-listen for professionals seeking to enhance their communication skills and build deeper connections with their audiences.
Join us as we unpack the lessons learned from Anne-Marie's experiences and discover how to navigate a rapidly changing media world while maintaining trust and credibility. Don't forget to subscribe, share, and leave us a review!
On today's episode of the Speaking of Media podcast, former journalist and veteran communicator Anne-Marie Akins talks to us about communicating in large and highly visible organizations and the challenges of communicating with various and often challenging overlapping audiences. It's a great chat about the new realities of the media landscape, with some amazing stories mixed in. I hope you enjoy it. I know that I certainly did.
Speaker 2:If you're not out there fast telling a story, even if it's one. We know this has happened and we're looking into it and we're going to do everything we can to it. So it's not much information. It's just that you're out there and people know you're on it.
Speaker 1:And so today, our guest is Anne-Marie Akins, a media strategist and communications leader, perhaps most notably a decade-long lead communicator at Metrolinx in Toronto, trying to figure out how best to get people moved around the Greater Toronto and Golden Horseshoe area in Southern Ontario. Beyond the resume that Anne-Marie has, I think it's safe to say that, partly because of her visibility, but probably more for her effectiveness, anne-marie is certainly viewed as a true role model in the communications sector. Hey, welcome to the show, anne-marie. Really great to have you on, super excited to talk to you about all things communication.
Speaker 1:Our audience here on the Speaking of Media podcast really is sort of mid-range to upper level communicators who are always looking for the newest leading practice in terms of communication, and people like yourselves who come on the show. We're just trying to glean from you. You know the way that you see things and the way that you've dealt with issues and situations over the years. Maybe let's just start with some of the bigger theme challenges that you've had over the course of your career and how you got into doing this initially.
Speaker 2:anyways, I really loved journalism and the news. That is innate in me. I got that from my mother and it's just innate in me. I have a hunger for it all the time and I think good communicators really need to have a hunger for the news and that they really like it. So I was recruited to go into corporate communications following the SARS crisis and to help, I think, manage the relationship and the connection between journalists and media outlets and public service, and I didn't know what I was doing in that regard, but I thought I speak as a journalist so maybe I could help them make a connection and they don't have to be afraid of one another and they can trust one another. Because I firmly believe, even today, in the battered legacy media that we are living through, that it's a partnership between public servants and communicators and communicators outside public service, service and media, however we define media today, and that partnership can work together and it doesn't mean they're always going to write good stories about you. It just means you can work together to tell good, truthful, transparent stories.
Speaker 2:So I think I did a good job with public health and then I moved to another, worked for public libraries, thought I needed a bit of a rest Libraries turned out to be a quagmire of controversy because we had Toronto had elected Rob Ford in those days that thought we could just cut libraries in half, anyways, and we ended it into the first time in their history strike, so it intended to be full of crises as well, that job. I was recruited from that job into Metrolinx, which was at the time a very small public agency small public agency, provincial agency managing the construction for some transit projects and launching, under the Liberals, the largest capital campaign in this province's history and I thought that's something important to talk about. And they also were managing Go Transit, which is the regional transit agency, so there were customers to talk about.
Speaker 2:And they also were managing Go Transit, which is the regional transit agency, so there were customers to talk about. So I often it's probably the one thing I have in common with Doug Ford is I speak to people as customers. They have a keen personal vested interest in what you have to say and I learned early on, if you're truthful, transparent, human and easy to understand, they will trust you, believe you and you can do a much more effective job. So I kind of took all of that into my role and I had looked at reporters as a partner of mine. I needed them to get my story out to customers a good or a bad story and they needed me to help them tell the story.
Speaker 1:So it was a keen partnership that we learned to trust one another and uh and work together on stories and and and I carried that right through to my career, even as the landscape of media began to change drastically yeah, well, I really feel like we have a lot of parallels in that regard as well as mindset I I really appreciate, um, what you're saying, saying about speaking with likely one voice, because I'm thinking about you at Metrolinx, you've got obviously a very public and visible external audience to satisfy. You have a government oversight, probably in a way that I can't even understand. It wouldn't be just one point of contact, there'd be so many people going on. You have a large workforce, it wouldn't be just one point of contact, there'd be so many people going on. You have a large workforce.
Speaker 1:But my sense is and you've just kind of confirmed it is you probably were very genuine in the way that you approached that and the way that you sort of set the dialogue or the conversation with all those groups so that you didn't have to figure out and readjust every time you realized who you were talking to. You were, you know, you're just kind of keeping it simple, which is not easily done, I will say, for people who don't know to be able to do that right. So, but that was back in the day, I feel like, when media was interested in sort of all the points you know, and it wasn't quite as dogmatic or polarized the way that it is today? Did you see a little bit of that before you were done at Metrolinx? Like I'm talking, we're talking about the next, the last you know, three, four or five years Did you see that change at all.
Speaker 2:It was starting to change. You could see it starting to change and you first started to see it change when newsrooms started to get cut and they started to merge into bigger conglomerates and the ownership of media got very small. And you saw, I could see that starting to happen. For many years the City Hall Press Gallery or the Queens Park Press Gallery were the same people. They were seasoned reporters that knew and they weren't easy. You couldn't bullshit to them, because they knew what they were talking about.
Speaker 1:They had the time to really dive into it True, beat reporters as opposed to people who showed up. And what's this all about?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and just you know, quote what everybody has to say. So I knew I had to tell them a story. I had to tell them my truth in a way that they, they, they knew they weren't getting sound bites and they weren't getting. They got the truth about what was really happening and so I started to see that happening, lots more changes happening. They got less experienced on the files and that you saw that starting to gain. So this newsroom shrunk, so they had less people to get to get where we're. Back in the day, we, when someone would come, we had scrums more often and they would have camera operators, reporters. They might even have another person that was getting clips for radio. So the teams would be huge. Often they would just send a microphone, right. They would just send a microphone right and, um, I'd have to do, um, you know, in the report, the, the, the camera operators would just say what do you have to say?
Speaker 1:just just tell me, yeah, like not challenged in the moment, and no, not the craziness, like you say, of sort of what most people would kind of think of, the scrum. I mean I guess that happens a little bit still in politics, but not so much at the corporate level. You're basically in these kinds of situations where you're behind for efficiency more than anything else, like you're saying that you're behind a computer and you're speaking into a camera to somebody. You can kind of do it efficiently, but there is a different, there's probably a different. You could disagree with this or not, but like the product is different when you're face to face with someone, rather than someone that you're on on the phone with or on a camera, right, oh, it's, it's, it is 100%, and I think it's.
Speaker 2:When you're having a frank conversation with someone. It's very one-to-one and you're looking at each other in the eye. It's even one-on-one conversations with you and I would probably have a different conversation if we were in the same room together. You pick up on things much more easily. So I did start to notice that that was starting to happen and and it was. It took more work to work with more reporters as they changed and I'd have to teach them about what transit was all about and so forth. And with that downsizing of their newsrooms I saw they didn't have as much time for the I would call them. They weren't fluff stories, they were human interest stories. They were things like how does this work behind the scenes? You know, explain why during a snowstorm, what the personnel on the tracks have to do while we're sitting nicely in our homes, why the trains are late, why they're slowed down. To explain that it helps people understand for the next storm. You know there's a better understanding.
Speaker 1:They build sort of that ongoing knowledge or whatever. I mean I feel like transit is super technical or can be. It can also have human interest, but it is most definitely of interest to everyone, right, like whether you're a car driver or somebody taking to transit. Commuting is, I suppose, is the bottom line theme, not so much transit per se, but it affects everybody. And so back in the day, like you say, they probably would have been very open to like not just sort of the news or the conflict of the day, but it's like how does this all work?
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh, and they used to just relish the idea of you want to send a crew on this new train train ride and talk to the engineers and talk to the personnel. We did stories, oh, we did in-depth, challenging stories, like talking about suicide on the rails to help build an understanding, because you would have 1,200 people stuck on a train for two hours after someone died by suicide on the tracks and if you never have to think about what just happened, they're just enraged right and they try and jump out the train in the middle of nowhere, and and so forth. We would build understanding and we we were getting brave media in to come and talk about suicide, because that's not something that, um, uh, traditionally was is talked about. Yep, so, uh, I started noticing that less time because they have fewer people to do that.
Speaker 2:That was starting to happen, and all the while, social media, digital media, was just snowballing and people were gradually moving where they got their news and two, they were often getting just the headlines, and so media was starting then to change to. We used to call it clickbait. It was just have the most inflammatory headline possible so people will click on your story and read it. And now often it is. It's just these crazy headlines, and that's where people are getting their news and that's all they're getting is the crazy headline.
Speaker 1:That kind of feeds towards. I'm sorry to cut you off that kind of feeds to. You know, in my view, how democracy you know way, way down the line is being affected. You, as a representative of a corporation or an organization, understand better than most what they want from you, what you can get from them and what you're going to give to them. It's different than I often say, or you know, when I'm talking to people about. You know the the olden days when you had a media scrum or a conference. Some reporters aren't as smart as the other ones and they hear things that other people and there's just a whole dynamic to being in the moment rather than one-offs. Right, and so if all you're doing is satisfying the needs of one reporter who may be not seeing the bigger picture in some respects and I realize it's not easy easy, but you have a better chance of accomplishing your goals through that than being challenged more broadly, I would say. Would you agree with that?
Speaker 2:oh, exactly, and a lot of the um, many of independent media now are becoming quite biased in a in a political way, um, so they only write about, um, conservative politics, or they only, or the opposite do. So. There's lots, and if you're just sitting down with a one-off that you believe is going to be what's called a friendly, there's no accountability. That's the issue I have in. Our democracy is getting eroded by that. That's a very challenging conversation to have with people.
Speaker 2:But the other thing that started to change with media because of the clickbait that we called it and the headlines and so forth, and that's where people were getting the news. It meant there was this appetite for scandal, right, and gotcha stories and, and and. Today I find that you know, most of the stories are often about scandals or bad news, and the chance of an organization being able to talk about the good things that they're doing is slim to none. Now it's very difficult if you're talking about the way media used to work before. So it really changed the work from a media relations perspective kind of gradually, but faster than I ever could imagine and frankly I don't know what it's gonna look like five years from now. I really don't.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, absolutely no. And the greater climate that we live in, the political climate as well We've had a chance to talk about that in the last few episodes with people who are really on the front lines of that and how polarization and how sort of single issue or single angled media leave consumers in a situation where, if you're not willing to listen to more than one outlet, you may have a very different view of the world than somebody else, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly yeah, and I still have the habit from my journalism days is I don't just follow the people I agree with or read the people I agree with. I do try to keep my mind open. I am very solid in my politics and my beliefs and so forth, but it's really important to educate yourself fully on the angles and understand where it came from and why things like that. It's a fascinating example. When you look at Pierre Polyev, he really built his whole persona. He's a one-trick pony on Canada's broken F Trudeau and even the Canadian flag got kind of perverse and its meaning, but that was his whole and axe attacks. That was his shtick. And then Trudeau quit. That was the first thing. So he's now going to leave. He hasn't quit yet, but he's next. So that kind of came off the task. He won't dare say. Canada is broken right now because patriotism, because of tariffs and Trump, is so incredibly high. We got our Canada flag back, that's all back Right.
Speaker 2:That's all back, and the axe to tax doesn't even work anymore because most of the liberal leaders are saying they would axe the tax anyways. So he doesn't have anything to say all of a sudden.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he's been very quiet lately.
Speaker 2:It's amazing If you're going to build your whole platform on these clickbaits and never get beyond the issues other than the clickbaits. For some reason they resonate with people and then suddenly, one day, in a blink of an eye, it will change.
Speaker 1:It seemed like a pretty good strategy about a month ago. Fast forward to like two days ago, and that's you know again. The last show that we did was on, you know, the Trump effect and you know, you just can't get around it.
Speaker 1:It's just so pervasive in tariffs and the way that the president you know, the president's administration at least is treating Canada. We think that that's all consuming. For them it was only a top story. The tariffs on Canada was only a top story one day. In the United States, if you continue to watch American, we're down the page, if not on second or third page, in terms of the big stuff that's going on, and it's hard for us to wrap ourselves around that, but we are consumed by that right. And so just an interesting way of looking at how communication affects.
Speaker 2:It dawned on me today Can you imagine trying to run a provincial election in the middle of COVID? So think back to September 2020. We're all in lockdown. We're all afraid for our lives, afraid of each other, afraid to walk outside.
Speaker 1:We're wearing masks.
Speaker 2:You know, people are consumed about their livelihoods. In that moment, trying to run a provincial election, nobody would be paying attention. They just want to say what about?
Speaker 2:COVID. What about COVID? And I think that's where we're at pretty much with tariffs. People are like what about tariffs? That's all they're thinking about, because the and the crazy it's tariffs, plus all the other crazy things he says all day long and the next thing he's going to do and the next thing he's going to do and the next thing he's doing. It does feel a time of uncertainty, and so I guess it was perfect timing for Ford to call an election, because nobody's paying attention, Right.
Speaker 1:No, it's crazy. Our guest on today's show is Anne-Marie Akins, a communication expert. We are coming to you from the Digital Creative Arts Centre at the Boys and Girls Club in London, ontario, canada. So, anne-marie, I was going to ask you. I was going to go from SARS to COVID. So politics, yes, but you got any stories about COVID and running a regional transit system?
Speaker 2:Oh God. So because MetroL when because we're MetroLance operates a big, big transit system. Go Transit, which is regional, goes all over the province and it has the Up Express, it has buses that go all over Ontario. It was a big operating center.
Speaker 2:So, um, we had the lockdown you know the pandemic is called one day lockdown is called within a couple of days. I'd already been through the H1N1 pandemic at Toronto Public Health so I knew the sense of how pandemics operate. This defied all of that, of course, but at the time I was trying to help people understand the way pandemics operate and how you communicate. And there was that beginning parts of a pandemic with denial this is crazy, everybody's fine and blah, blah, blah. There's lots of denial, but then government put us into lockdown so but then you had to look at how do you continue operating transit and do you have anybody to transport? So we had. The end result was they scaled back services significantly to this kind of bare bones because we still had to get people. We realized as kind of bare bones because we still had to get people.
Speaker 2:We realized okay, they can say lockdown all they want, but there are lots of people and it was about 55% of people still had to go to their jobs.
Speaker 2:So we still had to get the nurses, the doctors, the police, the fire personnel, all of the people that had to go to their jobs. We had to still get them there, so we did. Then we had to go to their jobs. We had to still get them there, so we did. Then we had to figure out how do you do it safely, and we had the six feet apart thing, all the stickers we had to put everywhere, and masks weren't the first thing that happened, but they eventually. Then came masks. Then the debate about whether frontline staff should have and remember the- N95s.
Speaker 2:N95s and so many different policies and procedures and it turned. The province ran out of those kinds of masks.
Speaker 1:So more globally. In that situation, you know, as a communicator, where do you kind of go to to find your balance or your center, when there's no playbook and you know, unprecedented truly is. You know the situation, what kinds of things did you rely on or where did you go to to try to set a new place, to kind of operate from?
Speaker 2:Well, I did many of the things that I always did, which is I relied on our partners, the media, to help me communicate with customers, and I would be doing the CP24s and the 1010s and the 680s and the breakfast televisions and I would be on all of the programs that people tend to watch, you know, the morning shows, the evening shows. I would try and make sure I was on all the time so they were always hearing both reassuring messages that we were doing what we can. We're going to do our best to keep them safe. We're going to do our best to keep them safe. We're going to do our best to keep them informed because at the beginning of pandemics, first off, we didn't even have a case. We didn't have no one that died and all of that. But I knew that the pandemic, the wave of it, it was all going to come. Because H1N1, most people forget that one because, thinking back, but it had a huge impact at the time People were ignoring it. It was just a flu and stop exaggerating it. They wouldn't take advice on it and then a young hockey player in York region died from it and all hell broke loose.
Speaker 2:The vaccines that we had that we at that point nobody was getting. They just didn't want them. We had 500 to give out one day and I got there three hours before we were to open and there were 10,000 people in line. Like what do you do with that? There was a woman in line that was in labor for their entire family and I learned that day the best time to give you a vaccine is when you're in labor. So she got up to the front of the line because she was in labor and people still were mad at me. I'm like, for fuck's sake, she's in labor.
Speaker 1:Anyways, I would say that your time at Metrolinx you really were the voice, if not the face, of the organization. In other circumstances you know the voice, if not the face of the organization. In other circumstances people might put forward executives.
Speaker 2:What's your?
Speaker 1:thinking around. Who speaks for the corporation?
Speaker 2:Well, I think it's both, and usually the reasoning is the good news goes to the you know your CEOs and the bad news goes to your spokespeople, and that is generally a concept to think about. But at the beginning, during very critical parts, we would put out our CEO, and so that did happen as well. But the everyday 5 am with the CB24 kind of stuff I often did, but I put the CEOs on with Metro Mornings and the talk shows that are often with the more difficult questions and you want to know your CEOs on the ball with it. But often I found the CEOs when it was. It depends on the CEO, but if it's a really an emotional situation where there are lots and lots of feelings happening, often I was the better choice for that.
Speaker 2:I had a more humane approach when I spoke to media. So sometimes it's just not necessarily the position of the person and the way they deliver it to the media. So there's always those kinds of decisions. Sometimes CEOs are hugely compassionate and then, in the case of I worked for a health agency. Of course you put out your doctors. You put out those because that's who people want to hear, but again, just because they're a doctor doesn't mean they're going to deliver it. In a way, I'm sure you've been to doctors where you thought, okay, what the hell did you? Just tell me, because I have no idea what you just said. So, or they're not compassionate, they didn't, they're not trying to find somebody who can sort of translate or express the empathy.
Speaker 1:The emotional intelligence is an important part, obviously, of deciding. You know whether yay or nay on an issue or but at some point. I mean I talk a little bit about leaving yourself room to kind of escalate. But by the same token, no matter who it is, no matter you know if you're going sort of subject matter, specific somebody knows, really knows what's going on, or someone who's super responsible for everything that's going on. If they don't have that emotional connection or that that ability to kind of factor in that there's probably a person or a group that's harmed on this, then it's probably not the right person to put out that right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's true. I would often do bring in the in my messaging. When I'd be talking to media, especially live, I would bring up my CEO. I would say the CEO has given us full latitude to do X, y and Z. The CEO has given us marching orders to make sure so you can bring in your CEO to your messaging about stuff. So there is a way to do it. So I think I guess the point that we're both making is there should always be a decision made about who's the right person in this moment to put forward, and that's an important decision. It has to be thought through without worry of hurting feelings or so forth. It's more about who's the right person in this moment that people need to hear from.
Speaker 1:Right, I can't let you go without talking a little bit about crisis communication, crisis management that we talk about here on the show and, more broadly, you're the perfect person. You probably have great insights to offer. So if it was sort of a general topic around dealing with crisis and so on, what are the things that really spark or come to mind quickly when you realize you're in one of those situations? What are the first things that you think about doing?
Speaker 1:I always ask people do you have a plan? Well, I think everybody puts their hands up when they say they have a plan. Then, when you ask how many people have actually done some sort of simulation or whatever in the last six months, a lot of hands go down, like all of them. And you know, I just feel like crisis takes you to such a higher level. It's nice to document that you've got something, but if people don't really understand what you know everybody else is doing, it's difficult to pull that off. What are the things that you know if you're asked to talk generally about the crisis communication that you like to like, you like to share or put out there for people to think about?
Speaker 2:Well, one is, I think, something that has been consistent about every crisis I've managed, and I've managed a lot of different kinds of crises, and sometimes it can just be reputational, sometimes it is a very operational focus. But they're all very different, but they all have some similar kinds of things. If you're not out there fast telling a story, even if it's one we know this has happened and we're looking into it and we're going to do everything we can, so it's not much information, it's just that you're out there and people know you're on it the dead silence will kill you. One of the things that has changed with that point about getting out there fast is how you get it out there fast. You can't necessarily rely on the same vehicles that I used to have this traditional media but there are other ways to do it, and one of the things when I do media training and so forth is you have to find your own platforms and your own channels along with these other channels, so you can't just rely on them anymore because of their resources and sometimes it may, for example.
Speaker 2:So sometimes, if something needed to get out there to the public quickly, quickly, quickly shooting a quick video and the iPhones are a blessing for that. They can take great quality video. So the same message with a face, giving a message and producing that in such a way that it's useful to. If media do want it, they can use it, but you can post it on your channel. So, if you don't have channels, though, so it means you have to have that plan ready, with the channels, the places to put it, the podcasts, the videos, the things where you can put things and that your audience will see them and you'll be able to deliver it to your audience. So, so nothing has changed, though, about it being fast. If you can point to any kind of especially reputational crisis that went badly once the media got it, it's because it was leaked to the media. They found out it before you started talking about it, and then you didn't respond for 48 hours. Nothing good will come from that.
Speaker 1:So not to toot my own horn, but that's what I have on my socials today. It's all about timeliness. In 40 seconds I gave it as much time as I could, but just the acknowledgement, right. So people kind of forget about that. The group thing can go crazy, you know, like you get locked in a room pretty quickly and you start thinking about stuff, but the one thing you forgot maybe, like turning on the recording button is to, you know, to just let people know that you're on it, right, and like you say that silence or that vacuum just allows for bad things to go a lot worse, and so trying to hide away and hoping it's going to go away when you know it's not, you know, all the time before then it just makes your first outreach, you know that much more difficult.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 2:So yeah, exactly so, but no, I really appreciate the similar thinking in terms of trying to get on that, but the reality is and I love the sort of the dive down there is like you have channels, but then even within those you've got to prioritize and maybe to some extent not ignore but just disregard some others, because the other ones will cover those channels too, right, so yeah, but we used to I used to, you know, had great, great team of people behind me and they would produce things so fast for me, because I often had a habit of hiring journalists that had that, those skills, and they would deliver a quality that they knew a television station would need and they would use it, or they'd use the photos that were in the right kind of quality.
Speaker 2:But the other piece of advice I would get is people get very rigid. Here's my plan, this is what we're going to say, and then they, you know, no matter what, they kind of try and stick to it because they think that's the best way where I think the best crisis managers know how to know when and how to pivot in a correct way. I'll give you a quick example, because I just love the story. I was at Metrolink. We had thwarted and stopped a virus from attacking the system at Metrolink which could have given out a lot of. You know and it seems everybody today now is-.
Speaker 1:Computer virus, you mean.
Speaker 2:Yes, cyber security incident. Well, this was an early one, early day one, and it turned out it was a virus from North Korea, so it could have really been created a lot of damage. The information got out through the government themselves because they thought it was a good news story that we were able to stop it. However, they didn't coordinate that with us very well and this was at a federal level, and the information got out. And while I'm at an event with Go Bear, which is a big dancing bear, early in the morning at Union Station launching an etiquette book for transit, it was a very cool thing we thought we were doing and I had a few media there, but the next thing I know, I was bombarded with media.
Speaker 1:CNN arrived.
Speaker 2:Everybody arrived to talk about the North Korean virus. So I made a deal with them that if they covered the etiquette book I would give them a clip on the North Korean virus. But I remember the CNN camera in front of me and at a corner of my eye I realized Go-Bear was dancing behind me and I thought that would not give the right message for the North Korean virus stopping. So I had to pivot and give them what they needed in the moment, satisfy them. We could get on with what we were doing there and that wasn't part of our plan to do international media about the North Korean virus. But we did do and I didn't give them very much information because I didn't have it All I knew we were able to stop a virus. They didn't get any personal information or any Presto card information and we were doing a deep dive investigation on how it happened and make sure it never happened again. You know that kind of thing Reassuring message that nothing got out. And anyways, we were. It was I, was I pivoted in the moment.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so like agility is part of your toolkit of emotions and sort of mindsets, right. So, but that's where marketing and communications comes together, right, exactly being able to manage that so well. There's no doubt that they had the right people and yourself in the right spot to be able to deal with that, and so I'd love to maybe get you back sometime. We've touched on so many great things that we didn't go into super detail on today, emery.
Speaker 1:But government relations being one of them, and the wacky world that that can be, it's still communications, but it's, you know, as we know, and maybe some people in the audience know it's it's a whole other layer and again, I just feel like you know you've done more than Metrolinx, but that that job must have been fascinating to you and, you know, certainly tested and challenged you in lots of ways, which you have passed in flying colors. But, yeah, it's just great to kind of get a sense of how you actually juggle and how you manage the big picture of something that's so big and, like we talked about, it affects everybody to some degree within your hyper-local community of six or seven million people. So, anyhow, I want to thank you so much for coming on the show today and super, super insights that hopefully everybody will really appreciate and, like I say, if we can find another time to get you on, and we'd love to have you back sometime.
Speaker 2:So thanks for the time, anytime, I love chatting.
Speaker 1:And so just the tip of the iceberg on so very many communication fronts. Great insights from Anne-Marie and, as any pro communicator will try to do, great that she was able to express it through so many great stories that she shared with us. On this episode, I'm Keith Marnock, thanks for joining us and we look forward to the next time we're together when, once again, we will be speaking of media.
