Redefining Marketing with Purpose: The Givsly Story with Chad Hickey

Erik  00:01

We want to welcome all of our listeners to another episode of MRP, Minority Report podcast with Erik and Kerel. Each episode, we talk with real operators and leaders in media, tech and business and today, joining us is Chad Hickey. Chad is the founder and CEO of Givsly welcome, Chad. How are you? I am doing great to be here. Erik and Kerel, absolutely. We're thrilled you're joining us, and can't wait to get to know a little bit more about you. But Chad, tell me a little bit about what's going on with you these days. Where are you living? Where is home? Where are you at in the world? 

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Chad Hickey  00:39

I am in New York City. So born and raised in Arkansas, but have been in New York for 13 years. I did have a minor break when it comes to the pandemic. I left the city for a couple years, but recently came back. You came back? Is it the same? Was it different? You know, so many people have asked me that question. They're like, are you excited? And I'm like, it doesn't really feel like I left, you know, enough, because I was traveling up here so much just for meetings and things like that, to see my team. So it feels this. It feels like home. I think that's what it really made me realize, being away for a couple years is New York as my adult home. There you go. Now, home, adult home, New York that wasn't always home, born and raised in Arkansas. Tell us a little bit about that. Have you been Have you vacationed in Arkansas before vacation? No pass through.

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Kerel Cooper  01:32

If you would have said yes, Eric, I would have definitely would have wanted to know where 

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Erik  01:37

you guys would have been like, Man, you ain't telling the truth. You but Chad, you still have a lot of family there. 

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Chad Hickey  01:45

I do. My parents are there, and so I like to, you know, go back and see them, and some extended family. And then obviously I have a couple of really close friends from high school that I still very much keep in touch with. So it was good to be home. It was actually, you know, for the time that I was there for the pandemic, it was actually very peaceful. I got to reconnect. It was interesting being there as an adult after a lot of my experiences. You know, living in Atlanta, I also live in Atlanta for seven years, and then being in New York for 13 but, you know, it's still home. It's just not my adult home, if that makes sense, yeah, that definitely makes sense. I want to ask you a little bit about kind of those high school days and growing up in Arkansas later, but first tell us for our listeners and for our viewers that don't know what gives Lee does tell us about what gives Lee does tell us about your company. Yeah, so Gibbs Lee, in a very, very high level, is a responsible advertising and marketing solution that aligns consumer values with brand values. And the reason why we really focus there is eight out of 10 people now look at values alignment when making their purchase decisions. I think we're seeing that very front and center, you know, in the last couple of months, but there's examples even before that, where people are voting with their wallet, when you know a brand does something that doesn't align with who I am, then I don't shop there anymore. And so it's really helping brands know how to have that conversation and really connect with the right consumer that would share those values, so that they become a loyal customer. That's great. Chad, where did the idea of Gibbs Lee come from? So the idea when, you know, I was a CRO for most of my career, before stepping into the CEO role for this company, and one of the things that we would do as a sales organization is we would go volunteer with our clients. So instead of always doing concerts, or, you know, the really expensive dinners, which we've all done, which after, I always say, after two glasses of wine, I don't remember what we talk about, because I'm forgetful in that way. But we would go and volunteer with, you know, brands like the Home Depot and brands like McDonald's, where we would say, hey, we know these are your values. Instead of doing this concert, why don't we go build benches for homeless veterans? And what was interesting about it is the relationship development in the conversations that you have in that environment, versus, you know, a dinner or something that is a little bit more typical, I think, of our industry. We're just fundamentally different. So fundamentally different that, like, there are still people to this day that, you know, I volunteered with one time that I could probably email and they would respond. And so it was really I was at a point where I started thinking about what made me happy. I was in a job that I was pretty miserable in. But I think that always makes you re evaluate things. And I kept coming back to this moment in China, where we were six hours outside of Shanghai, and we went and donated these desks to these students. And I say all the time, you know. And Eric, I know you were at our responsible Media Summit, so you may have, you know, saw the opening that I did. It was the truest example of like, tangible joy that I've ever felt, you know, in a work setting. And so I really.

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Chad Hickey  05:00

Wanted to take that concept and apply it to all advertising and marketing, to really move people through the funnel quicker, and also to create a new revenue stream for nonprofits, which, you know, we're coming up on close to $3 million in donations, and at a time when nonprofits need it more than ever. So, you know, I think that you know, in the last couple of months, that goal of helping those nonprofits feels so much more important to me, and the weight of that responsibility feels so much more important to me than

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Kerel  05:28

ever. Awesome, awesome. And then, if you can, I would love for you to give another example for our listeners, so they truly understand gives Lee from the standpoint of how you're able to rally the community, right? So the two things that come to top of mind for me is season without swag, and then the recent action that you all led around the LA wildfires. Can you speak to one of those for a second there? Yeah.

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Chad Hickey  05:55

So la wildfires, you know, when the that broke out, my team went and did the social post of how we were supporting and look, we have a platform that a lot of companies can use to replace swag with a donation. And so we obviously were sending, you know, access to that platform out to our partners so that they could help raise money and just their typical marketing demand gen but you know, when I saw the social media post, I picked up the phone to my two co founders, and I said, we have to hold ourselves to a higher standard of real, tangible action, and we also have to be an outlet for the industry, not because, like, people need something turnkey, but everyone's trying to do their day to day jobs, and this is what gives Lee does. So it was like, Let's rally all of our partners around sending these donation bins to agency lobbies. And so 44 different agency offices took these donation bins, and then their employees were able to donate new supplies, and then we shipped those off to our nonprofit partners in LA that were supporting people impacted it. And Kerel, I know your company was a part of that. We, I think, ended up having close to between 15 and 20 companies. And so not only were we able to utilize that money to ship all the supplies there, but everything that we had left over, we donated directly to a charity. So in this specific case, Gibbs Lee kept none of the proceeds. And I think that out of that, what I challenged my team with was to have a crisis plan for these moments that could become more frequent, so that we are that outlet. That again, it's not making it simple for people, but it is making it scalable and simple, so that other companies can focus on their day job but still make the impact that they want to make. So that's one example. And then season without swag is our first tent pole that we ever did. It's coming up on its fifth year, I believe, and that started during the pandemic, when really it was meant to be more sustainable. We had a lot of agency execs and brands saying, I'm so tired of getting a branded blanket or another fleece or and it wasn't necessarily that they weren't appreciative of those things, it was that there's a lot of duplication. And so what we go to brands and say is like, hey, why not just give someone an option to opt out of that material gift and actually redirect your budget to a charity that they want? And so we've been doing that now, like I said, for five years, and we have typically 30 to 40 companies every year participate in that, and that's been a significant driver of donations as well. We see about 30 to 60% of the companies actually opt for the donation over the material gift. So it just kind of is a great data point on the waste of of swag that's duplicative. Not necessarily that swag is bad. We have our own swag. It's just that we're very thoughtful in the way that we, you know, approach that strategy.

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Erik  08:43

That's great. Chad, let's go back a little bit. Okay, let's go back to growing up in Arkansas, and you talk about high school for a second, but you also went to college there, right? Yeah. So, yeah, yeah. So, so, tell us a little bit about like, what that was like. What was it like? You know, growing up in Arkansas for Chad Hickey,

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Chad Hickey  09:04

you know, my family, it felt like we had money to me, but we didn't have money at all. You know what I mean? I grew up fairly lower middle class, as I would define it. You know, my mother was a single mom. She got remarried, but there were definitely some moments where I vividly remember her eating cereal while she would pick me up $1 hamburger on Tuesday nights from, you know, a sonic just so that we could have a meal. But again, I don't think I wrapped my head around the financial state that's been something that's very instilled in me is I didn't come from, you know, a lot. I had to work for everything I had, and I'm actually very thankful for that. I put myself through college. My mom got remarried to a great guy, and he helped some. But, you know, they got remarried when I was 16. I don't think it was fair, you know, for. To say, hey, cover his college, you know what I mean. And so it was something that I worked three jobs to be, you know, completely transparent, to pay my way through college. And actually, it's what led me into advertising. When I went University of Arkansas, I just happened to go and apply at the the newspaper to sell advertising sales. And there was one quarter that that the head of the department came up and he goes, your paycheck is bigger than mine, because I would go and sell, you know, a lot of print ads. And so I was like, well, maybe I'm good at this. And that's what led me to Atlanta, is I had that experience, and I got hired pretty quickly at the Atlanta Journal Constitution, and that's where I started. My career. Was there for seven years. That's

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Erik  10:40

great, and that was the leader of its market. There too, right then, oh, yeah, big paper, yeah, that's good. Yeah,

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Chad Hickey 10:47

I didn't think I would get that job, to be completely honest. And I had a call with a woman named Marcia Jaffe, who I'm still very close with, and we did a phone interview, and she said, Well, come in on Monday. So I drove down to Atlanta on a Saturday night to stay with my cousins, who had said you can stay here to get on your feet right? And I walked in on Monday and I had this interview with the Atlanta Journal, and I knew what a big publication it was at the time. And Marsha looked at me, and she goes, at the end of the conversation, she goes, Well, do you want the job? And I had been trained, you never just like, say yes on the spot. So I go, I go, Well, let me go back and think about it. And she goes, Are you getting serious? And I was supposed to say, and then I ended up, I ended up being like, I'll take it so

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Erik  11:32

Chad as I hear you talk kind of about growing up and all those things, I can't help but sort of hear a little bit of a connection as to, like, how maybe the idea of gizly sort of came about, even helping others through other ways. And do you feel there's a connection to some of those early experiences and some of those early influences?

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Chad Hickey  11:58

Well, I mean, look, growing up in Arkansas, you obviously grew up in church. That's just what it is, you know. And I think a lot of it came from that, you know, having that instilled in me was very fundamental. But one thing that I never realized until, literally, probably two or three years ago, is my senior project in college, I had a magazine editing and publishing class with Patsy Watkins that ran the department, and we had to come up with a magazine concept. And my concept was a business magazine, but for people to be able to connect on who they were as humans, it was called Young corporate and so it was. The concept was really kind of a mix of Oprah Magazine that also meets Fast Company. And I find it so interesting that that was the focus of my project, because I do feel like that humanization of business is something that gives Lee does today that, you know, I connected a couple of years ago when I just started talking about it. So

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Erik  12:59

that's great. I'm curious, Chad, you had a successful career in sales across some big organizations and handling a lot of responsibilities there and teams of people. And so I'm curious for those listening that that are trying to figure out their career path, can you talk a little bit about how sales and kind of revenue leadership has helped you today to be a founder and a CEO. Yeah,

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Chad Hickey  13:23

like, you know, I was CRO at exad, which is now rebranded to ground truth, but I was there during the ex a days, and I was there for, you know, six years. Started that sales team from zero for the National Sales org. And then, you know, by the end of my tenure, there we were in, I think, 22 countries. I expanded into Japan, China, the UK, Germany, France. And look, when I first started doing that, I had never traveled outside the country. So let that sink in. You know what I mean? But you know, we had had so much success, and the growth was so rapid in the US the first two years that my CEO came to me and said, Hey, I want you to help with our international expansion. I said, you've lost your mind like I have barely been outside the country. I think at that point I'd only been to London. I go, I don't know that I can do this. He goes, you'll figure it out. I know you'll figure it out. And you know, I think we did. I think that that experience taught me how to run a business, and it taught me how to run an efficient business. It taught me how to think 10 steps ahead, you know, of what could potentially happen. It taught me to not get ahead of myself, but to, you know, walk a balance of being aggressive in your growth, but also not draining the bank. And so Gimli would not have survived the six years of a pandemic and the challenges that we're even, you know, facing today with the current political environment. If I did not have that experience, there have been competitors that have raised millions and millions of dollars. We have not, and we broke profitability last year, which is something we're super proud of. Chad, how do you.

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Kerel  14:59

To maintain sort of your focus and staying on the path that you know is right, regardless of what's going on around you, right? So, for example, you just said, you know, competitors have raised 10s of billions of dollars, right? I'm sure that sometimes you look at that, maybe others at the company, looking at and be like, Okay, should we be doing that? How do you maintain the focus, the mission, the vision of the company, with all the things that could distract you and get you off course?

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Chad Hickey  15:31

I mean, listen, it's hard if I'm being completely vulnerable. It's hard, especially right now mentally, I had forgotten how challenging it was, because we started Gibbs Lee in, you know, 2019 when the President was in his first term. And, you know, not to be political, but let's be honest. I mean, things are changing every two seconds. And you know, I think that what I do is I just over prepare, like Kerel, my former CEO at ex Ed used to say, you have a plan, a, b and c, and in today's environment, I have an A, B, C, D and E, you know. So I'm constantly like, looking at cash flow, I'm constantly looking at close ratio. I'm constantly looking at how many new brands we're bringing on. And when I start to see those metrics shift and change in a way that should raise a yellow flag, then we adjust accordingly. Now that is not to say, you know, we are foolproof, and you know, bad things can't happen to us, but I don't think that there's any way that we can prepare anymore, or that I can personally prepare anymore. And I think that my two co founders, susu and lodec, are also that type A let's plan for everything, which can get a little neurotic, but I think it's also led to our success of just not getting ahead of ourselves. Yeah,

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Kerel  16:47

and I think you raise an interesting point there about sort of the mindset of not only a founder but a CEO, which is that you are constantly preparing. You're constantly thinking about the business you are constantly in your brain, pressure testing certain situations over and over and over again. It's like that great athlete that just practices and practices and practices the things that people don't see behind the scenes, right? But you know, they see you when you're on stage or or somewhere else, right? But it's the things that you do when the lights aren't shining that keep the business moving forward.

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Chad Hickey  17:27

Yeah, and listen, I have to give 100% of the credit to my team, because they are also there to let me lean on them. I have a team that I can be pretty vulnerable with and transparent to an extent. You know, obviously there are things as a leader you don't always, you know, uncover to your team, but especially my two co founders, they have been so good at letting me vent. That is the part that when I was thinking about launching my own company, I didn't understand how lonely the process was, and it is something very, very isolating, in my opinion, because you have to maintain a certain level of calm in any situation to not freak out your team, you know, or give them concern. And so there is a level of the experience that is completely internal. And what I always laugh about is when I was talking to other founders and saying, Hey, I'm thinking about doing this, everyone was like, great, you know, it'll be a great experience. And blah, blah. And then after I launched it, about three months in, I sat down with one of the founders who had encouraged it, and I said, Do you ever get lonely? I go, that's the only word I can think. He goes, Oh, it's like, the loneliest experience. I'm like, now you tell me, thanks for sharing that as I'm in it. You know what I mean? Yeah, really been the hardest thing, but I'm very lucky to have a good support system in my team. Gotcha

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Kerel  18:51

and Eric, I'm sure as a founder and CEO, you can relate to what Chad is talking about, right? Yeah,

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Erik  18:57

absolutely. And I think also, you know, founding and then having partners to help carry that weight, as you're talking about too Chad, just like you know that you're always thinking about the business, and you're always thinking about your teams, and you're sometimes I feel like you're thinking about your teams more than they're thinking about themselves. And it just but you know is that saying that pressure is a privilege, and I think it is something that all those founders can really sort of rally around. There are those, definitely those moments where you feel like you're alone, but when you have others there to help, sort of carry that with you. I can't imagine what it's like to be a solo founder, candidly, you know. And then, like, I think about it too, when I hear, when to read, or I see or I talk to them, and I'm like, oh, man, I don't know, but there are other, tons of similar situations that chat and maybe you could relate to there as well. Yeah,

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Chad Hickey  19:50

and Eric, I'm not sure if you and Kerel, if this kind of speaks to you, but I've learned more about myself personally through this experience like trigger. That I have, for example, my dad, my biological father, was not in my life. And I have a real reaction to men saying My idea is stupid, or, Oh, this isn't ever going to do this. Like I have a different reaction to that that has really made me discover kind of things that I haven't dealt with to some extent, that I'm actually thankful for, you know, because it has made me much more aware of more personal things than just the business side of it, yep,

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Erik  20:32

one that I've discovered too, and sort of talking with others and even seeing other founders. You know, one thing is trying to be very open to ideas, and then also being, you know, you don't have to be right about everything, you know. I think there's this common sort of founder thing where it's like, you know, the idea is right, or, you know, just keep making it right. And you actually have to step back and realize, like, sometimes you're not the best advocate or the best doer or the best to execute something. You just have to know that about yourself and kind of, you know, let someone else take the lead there and actually run with it, you know. Oh,

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Chad Hickey  21:13

absolutely. Like, again, it's why one of my co founders, susu grace, like she knows my brain, and I'm like, I don't know if that's a good thing for her or bad, but you know, it is one of those things that I can I can lean on her, you know, significantly. I can lean on both of them. But, you know, she and I work so closely on a day to day where lotus, you know, building the product that she definitely is that for me, and I'm super thankful. That's great. Chad, I want

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Erik  21:41

to ask you, you're talking about, sort of the de ideation and the product and things like that, what are some things that get you kind of excited, you know, you've had, you know, a great six years, five years, four years, three years, figuring it out, right? You know, through each one of those years, what are the things that kind of get you excited about the future of what gives Lee can do. What are some things that are like, kind of on that ideal white board with your founders that you haven't quite executed, but things that kind of Get you, get you excited?

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Chad Hickey 22:11

Yeah. I mean, look, we want to have the best engine at predicting consumer values than anyone else in the industry, right? The number one thing we hear from brands, and we have for several years is, you know, what if I send a message out to the market and I get backlash, or what if I, you know, and I think that really boils down to knowing your values and sticking with your values. And so for me, the ability to build something that automates that in a way that the brand can speak to the consumer on who they are as a human, while also promoting a product. That's the other thing that, you know, we're really bullish on is, I think cause marketing is a little archaic, and so we really push brands to kind of think through how okay, if your values are mental health or, you know, protecting the environment or child welfare. Like, how are you going to tell that story to actually sell more lipstick or more hamburgers or that sort of thing? And so that is our North Star and our key focus,

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Erik  23:13

Chad, that's interesting. Can you talk a little bit about your customers and like, what they're actually looking to accomplish? Because I believe a lot of it, at the end of all their work, is connected to something very specific. What is that?

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Chad Hickey  23:26

Yeah, I mean, I think that at the end of the day, we've heard this for years, like purpose drives profit, purpose drives profit, purpose drives profit. And I think that there's words like purpose and good, and things like that social impact that have really gotten this bad rap, and that is why we are really pushing back on brands and saying, look, there's a better way to do this. You know, values is something you have every day. Like, that's what it boils down to. I don't care about the earth one day and then I don't care about it the next day. Like, that is instilled in me. So, like, we go to them and say, hey, here is a way that you can use that value to, not only one make your customer lean more into your advertisement and kind of break through the digital clutter, but also where you're actually going to sell more product, like, to your point, selling more butter, selling more lipstick, whatever it is, it's like using that value to personalize the relationship between the brand and whatever platform they're working with, or whatever ad unit you know that is out there, so that they lean in and then they actually transact. The reason why cause marketing, whether CMOS will say it or not, is always the first to get cut, is because no one really looks at it, at the lens broadly through, okay. How is this actually going to drive ROI the units are very touchy feely and look cool, but I think there's a more efficient way to do that and to tell that story in a way that actually drives people to the shelf. And we were talking to a CPG brand recently, and one of the things that was super interesting is we have these ad units that, as you watch more of them, or you. Age with them. Then there is, you know, obviously a donation that is triggered to a nonprofit of the brand's choice. And they said, you know, what we're finding is that people see an ad like yours, and there is a halo effect of the sentiment that actually they feel an accountability to go to the shelf, which I thought was super interesting. And I would love to say that we had thought about it that way. We hadn't, but it was something where we're like, okay, how do we continue to lean into that? You know what I mean, that personalization, that human connection between consumer and brand.

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Kerel  25:31

Gotcha. Thanks for that. Chad, what does a good day look like for you?

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Chad Hickey  25:35

Well, work or personal, personal? Well, I know that this will surprise people, but I am very introverted. I channel all my extrovert energy into business. And an ideal day would probably be something like yesterday, a Sunday, rainy, in my pajamas all day, watching watching a movie or some sort of bad Bravo show where I don't have to think and just doing nothing, that is my favorite day.

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Kerel  26:09

I love it. I love it, all right? I have a two part question here for you. The first one is and you can answer this, and then I'll give you the second part of it. What question do you want to ask our next guest that we have on the podcast,

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Chad Hickey  26:26

what are you going to do this year to make the world better? Okay,

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Kerel  26:30

that's a good one, all right. And then the second part to that, our last guest wanted to ask you, why haven't you started the next project yet

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Chad Hickey  26:41

I ain't got time. So, Sarah Johnny, whoever it was, I got it. So that's what's keeping me from

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Kerel  26:51

it. There you go. There you go. All right, fun question here, what's in your music rotation?

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Chad Hickey  26:58

Well, this weekend, I got on a Roberta Flack and Angie stone kick. I don't know if I was in mourning, you know, like it was a delayed thing for me, but I listened to that a lot. But I would say my consistent, and this is gonna be very typical, is chapel. Roan, I just cannot stop listening to that album like, I love it, love it,

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Erik  27:19

love it, Chad, we had so much fun talking with you. Oh, thank you. A lot of our listeners love to stay in touch. What are some ways that our listeners can reach out to you, stay in touch with you, and then also learn more about gizli

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Chad Hickey  27:33

LinkedIn. You know, Chad, Hickey is my LinkedIn handle, Instagram. I'm trying to limit for my own mental health of the latest events of the world, or they can email me, chad@gibsly.com so more than happy to talk to anybody. Thanks,

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Erik  27:49

Chad, excellent. Thanks so much for hanging out with us and sharing a little bit about yourself and a little bit about ghislay. And thanks everyone for listening to another episode of minor report podcasts. And you can find many more episodes where you find all of your audio and video, just look for the logo. Thanks, you.

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