MEDIASCAPE: Insights From Digital Changemakers
Join hosts Joseph Itaya and Anika Jackson as they dive into conversations with leaders and changemakers shaping the future of digital media. Each episode explores the frontier of multimedia, artificial intelligence, marketing, branding, and communication, spotlighting how emerging digital trends and technologies are transforming industries across the globe.
MEDIASCAPE is proudly sponsored by USC Annenberg’s Master of Science in Digital Media Management (MSDMM) program. This online master’s program is designed to prepare practitioners to understand the evolving media landscape, make data-driven and ethical decisions, and build a more equitable future by leading diverse teams with the technical, artistic, analytical, and production skills needed to create engaging content and technologies for the global marketplace. Learn more or apply today at https://dmm.usc.edu.
MEDIASCAPE: Insights From Digital Changemakers
Truth is Your North Star: Navigating Ethical Marketing in the Digital Age with Eric Layland
From text-based browsers to generative AI, the digital marketing landscape has transformed dramatically since the 1990s. Eric Layland, Chief Executive of the Matters Group, takes us on a journey through this evolution while revealing timeless principles that still guide effective marketing today.
Leyland's career began in 1996 when he purchased "Internet in a Box" from CompUSA and discovered the power of electronic communication across vast distances. His fascination with data began even earlier—collecting baseball cards and analyzing stats rather than partying on Friday nights. This foundation prepared him for a career where he would witness the full arc of digital marketing's development.
What's most striking about our conversation is Layland's ability to identify patterns that have come full circle. The early bulletin boards and chat rooms where people found their tribes have evolved into today's highly personalized digital experiences. Yet the fundamental human desire to be recognized as an individual remains constant. As Layland notes, "Finding your tribe has stayed the same—these fundamental truths of wanting to be recognized as an individual."
The discussion takes a compelling turn when Layland articulates his "love-hate relationship with performance marketing." While metrics matter, he advocates moving beyond raw data to insights, knowledge, and wisdom. True marketing excellence comes from understanding the underlying motivations that drive human behavior, not just optimizing conversion rates.
Perhaps most illuminating is Layland's revelation about SEO's origins in accessibility principles—creating alt text descriptions to help visually impaired users navigate content, not primarily for search rankings. This example perfectly illustrates how marketing practices that begin with human-centered intentions can sometimes drift toward pure performance metrics.
As organizations navigate AI implementation, Layland urges them to first clarify their values and mission before determining how technology fits their strategy. The "translator role" becomes crucial here—bridging the gap between technical capabilities, C-suite priorities, and customer needs.
For aspiring digital marketers, Layland offers a powerful North Star: "If you can operate where truth is your guiding light, you'll develop trust." In an era of rapid technological change, this principle provides an ethical foundation that transcends any specific tool or platform.
This podcast is proudly sponsored by USC Annenberg’s Master of Science in Digital Media Management (MSDMM) program. An online master’s designed to prepare practitioners to understand the evolving media landscape, make data-driven and ethical decisions, and build a more equitable future by leading diverse teams with the technical, artistic, analytical, and production skills needed to create engaging content and technologies for the global marketplace. Learn more or apply today at https://dmm.usc.edu.
Welcome to Mediascape insights from digital changemakers, a speaker series and podcast brought to you by USC Annenberg's Digital Media Management Program. Join us as we unlock the secrets to success in an increasingly digital world.
Speaker 2:I always love having people on the show who have seen digital transformation since the beginning. I remember those early dot-com days when there weren't a lot of choices, and my guest today, eric Leyland, certainly remembers them. Eric, thank you so much for joining me on Mediascape.
Speaker 3:Monica, it's great to be here and hopefully I can lend something that some other folks if nothing else, maybe it'll conjure up a memory of times gone past where things were a little bit more challenging to get through and work through.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, let's start there. You are the chief executive of the Matters Group. I'm really excited to learn more about what you do now, but you have seen all of these shifts. So, all of these shifts you were working at organizations when we're very early days of the human side, the consumer side of the Internet, shall we say. So will you talk a little bit?
Speaker 3:about how you got into the field, and then you know what has happened to get you to have your own organization now. Sure, so you know, I honestly I got out. This is going way back, so a little bit in the way back machine. But when I got out of school San Diego State, 92-ish, 93, I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do. I had a good degree in marketing. I knew I was going to move up to Seattle because I had a relationship with a young lady who I'm still with to this day, because I had a relationship with a young lady who I'm still with to this day 30-ish, some odd years later. But it would be in Seattle. But I had no job to get to. So I ended up gravitating towards an organization that was in the manufacturing space of electronic test and measurement equipment. I honestly had no business being in that role. I did not know a thing about engineering or electronics. But what I did figure out, probably from the marketing background, was if you can speak the language of the audience, you can communicate with them. And so I actually spent my evenings at UW University of Washington's engineering library just schooling up really quickly on the terminology of electronics and test and measurement equipment, and it was during that time that I got introduced to network test equipment and I thought it was just phenomenal the way that you could interact with other organizations across the country, across the globe, electronically.
Speaker 3:And this was before the World Wide Web came out and there were some ways to interact with these text-based communication and networks. But it wasn't real easy. You had there were a couple of. I don't know if anybody will ever remember these, but there were two text-based browsers in the early 90s, one called Archie and I think the second version was called Veronica, based upon the very old comic strip Soon. After that, mosaic came out and I think that was the first graphical browser.
Speaker 3:The first sort of product I bought was called Internet in a Box. I don't know if anybody remembers that, but it was purchased at the old CompUSA store up in Montlake Terrace here in Washington. But anyways, the point was that I got enamored with the way that you could communicate electronically over vast distances and to me immediately things started to connect. Very shortly after that I was in this manufacturing company selling this equipment and although I loved it, it wasn't where I saw things going and at that time, early 96, the internet in Seattle was just starting to get going. There was, I wouldn't say, really even the VC team had connected with Seattle yet. But there were little startups starting to pop up and so I just took the first job of one that offered me one and I said I'm diving in and that was the start. Back in there, my first day was September 6th 1996. Wow 1996, that's whyth 1996. Wow 1996.
Speaker 2:That's why I remember it Amazing. I mean, I remember the dot-com early days. I worked in magazine publishing. I worked at Future US, which published Business 2.0. Oh, I remember that. Yeah, so I worked on other publications, but I do remember those early days and it's interesting to think about how things go full circle in some ways. We were going into chat rooms to find fans for different publications video game publications, music and now everybody's forming their own chat rooms right by creating different groups and seminars and things online. So there are things that are time tested, that still exist, and we're seeing a lot of that in the digital ecosystem. I feel like the things that we do, going from the early days of the internet to figuring out how to do advertising, e-commerce, right till now we're using AI, agentic AI. So a lot of that stuff has changed, but a lot of the strategies, the tactics, the other things that you have to learn stay the same Having that foundational business expertise which you did have through your degree and through that Absolutely.
Speaker 3:It's interesting is that I'm going way back in the day when they had, you know, bulletin board systems that people would similar to what you're saying, you know these small groups, chat rooms, and even back then it was sort of like finding your tribe. Who are the people that are like me, that have a similar interest? And then I think the dot com bubble, sort of like push things to like just get bigger, faster, aggregate audiences. Sort of like push things to like just get bigger, faster, aggregate audiences. But I think it's come full circle to your point in that again, finding your tribe, finding that you know we're talking about one-to-one personalization and you know very delivering very unique experiences at an individual level. So it's kind of to your point. It has come back and it's stayed the same sort of these fundamental truths where I think as and it gets beyond sort of marketing and certainly beyond digital marketing but just to be a human, I think you want to be recognized as an individual, and that is kind of the underlying theme that I've kind of found myself.
Speaker 3:I look back. Probably preparing for this interview was like you know, what have I done? And a lot of it has been rooted in data, but understanding what that data means to the marketing organization, but in a way that they can connect better to that audience by understanding what motivates that individual to make the decisions they make throughout their life, whether it's purchasing something or just take it in action. So it is interesting that you know some of these things that we maybe talk about on a cursory level about business and digital marketing stuff, but there's fundamental elements of humanity in there. If you dig hard enough and dig deep enough, you'll find them. But yeah, it's an interesting space to be in and it's one that's been very exciting, and I love the constant change, although it can be frustrating and we're going through a big wave now of things changing. So it's an interesting place to be and it's a fun place to be too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's fun to be able to learn new things, even if you've been in the industry for a while, and learn how to properly apply them to businesses that we work for and work with right, and our own businesses as well.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. When I started out in the digital space, we were with again what was maybe one of the earliest direct marketing agencies that used completely solely digital channels to do outreach to clients. But early stage of doing A-B testing before we really called it A-B testing, just like, oh I have an idea for some creative and someone else has another idea, well, let's run these and see if we can do a little bit of split testing. But that evolved into really understanding that. That evolved into really understanding that, wow, these data points that we get, they tell a story and if we can derive that sort of again the underlying motivations of what that real story is about, we can end up delivering some real value to whether it's an individual or another organization we're selling to and that's that. Again, I'm going to be dating myself. But going back into the dot-com days and then the 2000s of when really what was or has become Google Analytics kind of this new tool that was out there to show us what people were doing on our sites not just a stats counter, but giving some deeper level of insights, what content they were looking at, how long they were engaged with it that kind of then opened my eyes and, I will admit, as a nerdy teenager I was enamored with baseball. I liked to play the game, but it was really the stats behind it. I collected baseball cards for eons and I didn't go out to party on a Friday night. I hung out with some nerdy friends and played simulation games that were based on stats for baseball like really geeky, nerdy stuff, became a precursor to where I am now. But you know, but leveraging data to get an understanding of what's happening, but more than that, maybe at a higher level, some wisdom and some best guidance on how to conduct oneself, based upon data, not just.
Speaker 3:You know, I have a little bit of a love-hate relationship with the performance marketing. That marketing is about growth and delivering value. But when we come to rely only on the numbers, only on the data, and just at that point, not moving into insights, but when you start to move into insights and you start to look at what that data means and with the story that it tells, and you start to build up to not only data insights but knowledge and understanding and wisdom, that's when I think you it sounds corny, but maybe a level of enlightenment from a marketing perspective and I think most marketers and again. That's why I have a little bit of this love-hate relationship with performance marketing. Most marketers, I think, want to deliver real value. They want to be associated with a product or a service or an initiative that the recipient of the message likes and said, yeah, I feel I want a part of that. And you know there's an element too that's just about growth and you know, fill in that pipeline and you know, work in the numbers and it can be a numbers game, but I think there should just be a little bit more to it. And then you know you get into some areas of that would.
Speaker 3:I guess you would consider the distinction between performance marketing and brand. But I mean, to me, brand and I learned from a couple of fellows that I worked with long ago who were older than me but kind of taught me the ropes, like, like what a brand really was, and it was these underlying motivations that cause people to act, and then tying that into data, understanding that and then weaving that story together and delivering value to them based upon their values. To me, that's where I think you can be proud to be a marketer that, yeah, I'm giving something to somebody that they really like and enjoy and can feel good about that, rather than just we sold another X, y, z, whatever it is, and our conversion rates X and our cost of acquisition is Y and OK, that that's wonderful, but I think there's maybe a little bit more that we could do with that information than just sell stuff.
Speaker 2:You are so hitting the nail on the head. The course I'm teaching right now at USC for the Digital Media Management Program is about digital media ad buying measurement analytics, but we also in that course we talk a little bit about that. But we also talk about storytelling. I brought in a case study of a client that I worked on and how we did AV testing and you know we did paid advertising for four different campaigns to see which tagline resonated and which campaign name and walked them through that process. Now some of the students are very sophisticated. They've been in the field. They're just trying to hone in skills even further.
Speaker 2:Some are brand new to digital. They might not even go into advertising or marketing. They might be in production or some other aspect to advertising or marketing. They might be in production or some other aspect. But yesterday we brought up an article about the Amazon upfronts, because another full circle thing right, all the streaming platforms were like we don't need to do upfronts. That's old news. Now they're all doing upfronts and they have schedules with their shows. And the fact that Amazon is layering on even more types of advertising that interrupt the shows An example that they used in the article that they used in the article that they thought was great was a show.
Speaker 2:There was a heartfelt scene where a mom and daughter were talking on a cell phone and T-Mobile ad would pop up and talk about having those heartfelt conversations on T-Mobile. It gets ridiculous when we start thinking about so we can analyze data and obviously they have huge numbers of. There's a crossover between people who are watching Prime Video and who are purchasing and have intent purchase for the brand awareness and engagement. They can shut, throw out all these metrics, but are those really good for the consumer? Are they really where we want to see more advertising when we're trying to like, decompress, right, just watch a show for a little bit. And so your point about you know, yes, analytics, but really it's about the humanization, the storytelling, that aspect of it that really hits home with the consumer and with our prospects.
Speaker 3:I think so too, and, you know, I think it's maybe the feeling that you're more than a number, when somebody kind of understand you and you get it, that they understand you, yeah. So I don't think that anyone likes to be considered just a number. I'm a conversion. What's my lifetime value to you? X Y Z corp. But I just got to mention the, the algorithms. I have not cut the cord yet, but I'm probably.
Speaker 3:Most of my viewing on a big screen is from YouTube, and I don't have the paid subscription, which I probably should as a marketer, but the poor timing of when ads come in, like right at the cliffhanger scene.
Speaker 3:You're like what? Another ad for whatever Xfinity or whomever it is, but yeah, it's like. Yeah.
Speaker 3:The thing is, though and I do try and keep it in this context that, especially with technology and maybe even specific AI, because I'm sure we'll get into that topic in our conversation here is that what we see today generally, but not not in all cases, but I think in general, it's the worst, it's going to be, it's going to get better, and I think that those organizations that do really pay attention to what their brand means to their audience and, really more so than that what's important to their audience outside the brand, just in general, like when you start to again look at humans as being humans and that having very complex personas. We're all different, but that's kind of more important than making sure you get that add-in at that right moment and increase visible. To me that's it's idealistic, but that's kind of what marketing should be about. And I granted I know you got to make money. You've got to, if you're public, appease the shareholders and all that stuff, but it's nice knowing that maybe there's a little bit more that you can strive for.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, and that's the play between marketing. There's a lot of unethical practices, or practices that people could consider unethical, right. So how do you bring ethics into marketing? I think that's where the Matters Group. You call yourself a marketing modernization firm and I think that's where you bring your insights in. You're also an advisory council member for Harvard Business Review. You mentor right in entrepreneurship and AI and you do all these other things to give back, but I think that we need leaders who have the experience but who also can talk about. Yeah, I've done all these different things, that we've made a lot of money for different organizations, but what really matters is the people. And let's think about how we're showing up with our brand values every day, making sure that we're matching, that we're customizing it to right our potential buyers, to right our potential buyers.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and you know a couple of topics that kind of I've become interested in and you know, when our article comes up I'll look into it, do a little bit more, you know, dig into the research. But it's two things that probably aren't on the top 10 list of marketers, but it's governance and data strategy and they're sort of like they're just they're in the environment that they were in. Today and for, I'd say, probably the first two decades of my career, I didn't really think about those two topics at all. They weren't in my vocabulary. But then, looking to see to your point about you, you know there's some folks that have been less than ideal in how they've handled data and how they've been. Data's been manipulated to reach customers or persuade customers to act in a certain way. But if we believe that, you know, data is the the new oil or electricity or whatever, or AI is the new electricity, those analogies like okay, I see that these are important things, these are important strategic assets to the corporation, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, corporate speak. But they can be used for good and they can be used for bad. And then the aspect of governance, which for years I thought, oh, this sounds boring, not interested, but then my eyes opened up to how they work together to provide some safeguards and guidance into how to become, ideally, that marketer that thinks a bit beyond the conversion rate and the lifetime value.
Speaker 3:And, as an organization, how might we use the tool of governance, the asset of data and the various channels that we reach our audience out to with our message? How do we use this as a system to just be a better participant in the market and put on the white hat and be the good guys? It's tempting and I don't think some of these organizations that might wear the black hat intended to end up that way, but there was possibly an opportunity that showed itself, they pursued it and they went down that path. But I do think that there are other tools that are out there and I think then, when they are done with the right intent, they can deliver great things.
Speaker 3:And I think that, again, one of the things that I would really like to emphasize is that, again, I've been doing a lot of self-studying lately, kind of in this space of AI, data, data, strategy and governance and how that can be missed the governance aspect and like, oh yeah, we've got the latest, greatest thing, we've got this new AI tool. It's going to go gangbusters, but did we stop and check and just say is this the right thing to do According to our brand whatever your brand may be but does it kind of fit within the guardrails of who we want to be and what we want to be known as in the markets that we serve, and so I think it's something that's getting more traction, but I'd like to hear it more often and elevated to some of the things about on the level of like, brand strategy, customer acquisition strategy is just the governance kind of gets pushed to the side because it's not the cool, shiny thing. It's like someone telling you how you should actually behave when no one's looking.
Speaker 2:But what's interesting is I do see, even with nonprofit organizations that I volunteer with, that people are saying, hey, we don't really have an AI strategy. We need to have one so that people know what is acceptable to put into. If you have, whatever system you're using at home, Do you have a subscription or are you using a free version? So what really do you want to put in and which ones are going to safeguard your information and which ones aren't? And you did get a certificate from MIT in AI.
Speaker 2:I'm studying AI right now at Villanova and I'm a big fan, but I'm also a big fan of the human element and what we're going to be able to do by using these tools. And I know this is obviously a big area privacy, security, governance with artificial intelligence, Intelligence and you have a great series of articles on LinkedIn that talk about customer experience and how AI can be a help or a hindrance. So I'd love to hear a little bit about how your agency is approaching generative AI and other AI. You know machine learning also into your work streams for using with your clients, and you know your overall thoughts around this whole big new world.
Speaker 3:There's a lot of temptation out there to do things and I think and I'm going to kind of speak to the enterprise organizations where we know AI is in the business news and in general mainstream news everywhere, but it's mainstream news is everywhere. But the appearances is, what I've seen is that the C-level folks might not necessarily grasp it and maybe in the big picture, but not kind of that level second, third layer, down, and then some of the ideas that are innovative come from the team, either the aligned level folks or even the managers, directors, et cetera, and they have some great ideas. But there's sometimes there's a disconnect between where those ideas are coming from and the leadership team that says, yeah, let's, let's support this, yeah, let's support this, and then not to hinger the financial types, the CFOs, in the organization. But they have kind of a different check and balance against the marketing side. And wanting to grow revenue, it's a good thing, wanting to grow the customer base, certainly a good thing, and deliver value to all the stakeholders in the organization is also generally a good thing, and deliver value to all the stakeholders in the organization is also generally a good thing.
Speaker 3:But I do think that sometimes there's too much attention and this is maybe driven by headlines somewhat that AI is purely a growth or efficiency option. We're either going to be putting optimizing our channels that are driving those initial conversions whether it's leads or actual customers or transactions and our sole intent or objective is to raise the value of our share price for our shareholders. Again, that's not necessarily a bad thing, but I don't think it should be the overriding thing. I should have taken more finance classes in college but I didn't do that. But I understand it's important, but I think that there's looking at the customer experience and how that's become much, much more important and is it's getting much more visibility than if you look back 10 years or so. Having the financial perspective is good, but at what point do you say we're not going to go the extra step for the customer, even though they want it? We can deliver it and we can do so in a realistic manner, but it doesn't push the whether it's revenues, roi, whatever the financial metric is it doesn't push that enough as some of these other levers that we can push or pull. That's where I would like to come in to our clients and say you know what? Let's talk about who you are as an organization. What's the personality of the organization? Again, we know all these roles are important, but as someone that is a leader and I would say not just as a chief executive officer, but that leadership team agree on who you are as a brand.
Speaker 3:And going back to mission and values types of stuff, like the decision you're making to maximize shareholder value, does that truly align with your values and mission in terms of what you say you deliver to your audience? Because probably your audience aren't shareholders it is a constituency but your, your customers, probably aren't shareholders. And I would argue that if you can satisfy your customers first, prioritize them first, those shareholders will become satisfied in time. Yeah, they'll get their turn at the table, but yeah, so that's in terms of what we do for our clients.
Speaker 3:It is really trying to sometimes level set and say, hey, let's step back a bit. Yes, we can go in this direction, we can develop an AI strategy for you, we can make sure your team's literate and understanding you guys are ready to take on this, but let's understand where we want to go first and not just go to that next and near-term goal and objective, but the longer-term goal and objective, and I think that's in business and it seems like maybe with the digital space really sort of being on par now with the physical space, digital used to be this little like checkbox item like make sure we got the website done, make sure we got those Google ads running, make sure we've got SEO. No, Okay, now that your business is digital business and so you've got a lot of tools available, but how you use those tools to deliver the value that you say you want to do, let's just make sure we're checking that and that we are making sure that we're asking the right questions of our customers that ultimately are the ones that it's their money that ultimately goes to the shareholders. So let's make sure that we're taking care of them first and that we're doing so in a way that's aligned with what we say are our values and our mission of how we're going to deliver this value. So that's kind of how we approach things.
Speaker 3:It's not nuts and bolts, it is. So that's kind of how we approach things. It's not nuts and bolts. It is a little bit kind of elevated, a little bit. You know, sometimes pie in the sky. We'd love for the client to shift your focus from a peer financial gain to delivering something that's a little, maybe more fuzzy to measure, but I think that that's important and there is a balance. I understand that there's a balance, but it's just. Sometimes I think we have been losing a bit of how we look at how we serve each other.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. That's a really, really important point and it brings me back to something you were talking about early on. Well, you started this job, this company. You would go in and go into the engineering library and get to learn the terms. So that role today is really the translator right. So this new role that's being created out of our world of AI and more tech, so that you are the person who can decipher between the C-suite, the engineers or the other team members who are using things in the field and need to have the right tool set and need the C-suite to understand, and the C-suite, of course, coming in wanting to be concerned about share prices and the shareholders, and so finding that connection point, that middle ground, when everybody's satisfied but you're still able to make progress and use these tools in the best way possible no-transcript translate into business value.
Speaker 3:How can we use this to again learn at a deeper level about customer, a product, a market and that translator role? And I don't know that I'm fascinated that you mentioned, because you're the only person I've spoken to that's ever mentioned that translator role, even though I've thought that, wow, this is like the ligaments between the bone and the muscle, this is the connective tissue here that kind of makes a lot of things make sense, and I guess I kind of have adopted that role in a sense at least when I talk to clients. I don't really have that as a title, but it's like how do we help you understand the environment that you're in, that bigger environment, the environment that you create for your customers, your employees, your partners, your ecosystem as an organization? And how do we make the data that is generated from these interactions on a daily basis make sense so that whoever it is in that pool of stakeholders can gain value from it, and an honest value. I'd kind of put that there as a qualifier, because there's sometimes you can play with numbers and play with data and stuff, but we won't go into that, but that's again.
Speaker 3:I think it's. I hold out hope that there is still a. The majority of folks know that there's a right way to conduct yourself and do things. Even though you're in a business, we're all in it to make a profit and develop the lifestyle that we're comfortable with. But yeah, I think that there is that North Star sort of focus, that that's what we're going to, that's who we want to be, that's how we want to project, who we are to market and people understand us at that level that we are. We're trying to be better than we are on a typical day. You know it's always striving to be our best and put our best out there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, everything you're saying has given me a lot of hope for the way that we treat our programs, because in every single course, we weave in ethical considerations, we weave in thinking about the customer experience, but also atypical customers.
Speaker 2:We think about accessibility, right, we think about, we talk, we still talk about equity and inclusion and we're not losing that language and those things are really important because we need to have these conversations so that when the next wave of marketers comes out of our programs whether it's digital media management, digital social media, on and on and on we have, you know, that they are thinking about it from this lens and they're trying to make sure they're in the room to ask the right questions, but look around and make sure that room has representation of different people. Because we have to make sure that we are being, that we're on the ethical side of marketing, that we're not just manipulating data, as you said, and using, you know, just throwing bots out there to do all this, all this stuff, that we're being really intentional with the way that we're using these tools that we have access to to get the very best information and deliver the best value, the best service we can.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, and this goes back again a while Okay.
Speaker 3:But so when I started to get into SEO the first agency that I was with that we started we were focused primarily on Google AdWords at the time, google Ads or whatever it's called now. But then we got into SEO because our clients were asking for it, and one of the things that's still like that article about the translator but that resonates with me today, is that the sites that were doing best in SEO were the ones that took a very deliberate approach to in there. The metadata and the sort of the underlying machine readable text were constructed with accessibility in mind for folks with poor eyesight. You know that description of the image. Oh yeah, it isn't to rank well in Google Images. Exactly, it's to be descriptive of that image for somebody that's sight impaired. Yep, and those types of things are actually the foundations of SEO.
Speaker 3:That kind of got bastardized along the way, but in the root, when it first started, there were some really good intentions behind it, and that again it's always resonated with me is that, yeah, the reason that and I have not read Google's SEO guidelines in forever, but I do remember way back in the day and this is probably early 2000s or so that it was to help those that needed help be able to experience this digital environment, and that again, I think there's sometimes the really good intentions get.
Speaker 3:That story doesn't always come through as maybe as it should, but yeah, that is not, and I've honestly felt at times as a digital marketer really my entire career in digital marketing Sometimes I've had that kind of slimy feeling like, you know, cambridge Analytica, those types of instances that have come up in the past, cambridge Analytica, those types of instances that have come up in the past and yeah, there's been some times where the field has got a bit of a black eye, usually self-inflicted, but there's also some real good foundational intention out there and I think sometimes that's been lost along the way.
Speaker 2:I don't think I didn't even know that, but now I'm going to use that in class.
Speaker 3:I don't think I didn't even know that, but now I'm going to use that in class. Yeah, it's out there and it primarily started with images and the alt text descriptions of images. And then just being very clear, because, as folks are using a reader to experience the website, the visuals, the cool designs doesn't mean a thing. It's what you're saying and how you're describing the services and products you're offering.
Speaker 2:I think we could probably continue this conversation for several hours, but I know that we are time constrained, so I want to ask what is one piece of advice that you would give to students getting their master's in digital media or in the digital ecosystem right now?
Speaker 3:Well, we are in interesting times and in a number of ways, but I do think that there is a premium on truth. And if you look back on what is the sort of the overriding, like top tier objective of a brand, it's to be trusted, and trust only comes from truth. And so if you can operate and again I say if, because some folks have a problem with it, we know that but operating in an environment where truth is your guiding light, your North Star, you'll develop trust. And I would also add, in there there's a degree of transparency too, because, again, these days things can be twisted and you know, data itself can be twisted too. But having that sort of approach where, if you rely on going after a very building trust with your audience and having that trust and knowing that trust is earned over the lifetime of that relationship and it can be lost, I mean literally in an instant, as as we know and have seen in many examples throughout time, literally. But I don't think you have to hide from anything.
Speaker 3:Transparency is easy. When you live in a state of truth and trust, you don't even have to say well, I'm being transparent because that's already been established, you know, and so I guess, yeah, if I would say to those students that are getting their new degrees and they've invested in these couple of years to really kind of elevate themselves, I think it, and you know, it's nice to be able to sleep at night and not have to think like gosh, what did I do today? But, and again, again, we're in interesting times and I think that it's kind of funny. Like, take the high road. Well, that's easier said than done. There's a lot of things pulling at you to take a shortcut and whatnot. But again, if you can really focus on that beacon of being a work, living in facts and truth and earning the trust of your audiences, you'll do all right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, fantastic, and I understand that we are going to have a no obligation 30 minute consultation on data strategy, governance, ai, marketing, so we will drop that into the show notes when the episode releases so that people can get more time with you. And I'm sure this you know short time we've had together has been really intriguing for a lot of people, eric and you're approaching the business and I really do value that.
Speaker 2:You're bringing up trust, transparency, truth. You know all these important things governance in your data strategy, thinking about things that, like you said, they're not. They don't sound like sexy and exciting, but they are the most inherent core things that you need to build into your business.
Speaker 3:That and I think, as us, as individuals too yeah, I think it starts with us here and on these other sides of the screens. I'm looking at you, you're looking at me, but you know, when you wake up in the morning, we'll go into the. You know, get out our hairs on mess, just got out of bed. But we look in the mirror and we see who we are. And I think that if we know who we are and we all have our faults and all that, but we start that day trying to live in a truthful, trustworthy environment and add what we can to foster that again, we'll, we'll, be all right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, fantastic. Well, thank you, eric Leyland of the Matters Group. I really appreciated your time today and thank you to everybody who's in the Mediascape world watching this, listening to it on your favorite platform. Please do leave us a rating and review. They mean a lot and they help discoverability. With that, we'll be back again next week with another amazing guest to share their journey.
Speaker 1:To learn more about the Master of Science in Digital Media Management program, visit us on the web at dmmuscedu.
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