The Neuroscience of Direct Mail and Human+AI Teaming with Russell Kern

Intro: 00:02

Welcome back to the Response Drivers podcast, where we feature top marketing minds and dig into their inspiring stories. Learn how these leaders think and find big ideas to push your results and sales to the next level. Now let’s get started.

Rick Rappe: 00:19

Hello, I’m Rick Rappe, host of the Response Drivers podcast. Here we dive deep with marketing executives, experts and innovators to uncover how they approach targeted marketing and use data driven strategies to acquire and retain customers. We’ll talk about what’s working, what’s changing, and how we can stay ahead in an evolving marketing landscape. This episode is brought to you by RPM Direct Marketing. RPM helps companies develop hard hitting, direct mail creative and utilize advanced testing and targeting methodologies so you can fully optimize your marketing performance to drive more sales and exceed growth expectations.

With a proven track record, RPM delivers smarter, more profitable direct mail solutions so you can turn your direct mail programs into a predictable, efficient sales channel. You can visit rpmdm.com to learn more. I am really looking forward to connecting with my guests today. But first, I want to give a quick shout out to Bob Hacker and Gail Curtis, who introduced me to this gentleman almost 20 years ago. 

Russell Kern has for decades at the helm of a major national creative agency. And he knows how to capture attention, drive engagement and turn ideas into impact. He founded Kern, which he successfully grew to become a significant player in the industry before selling it to Omnicom in 2008. And he continued to run the current organization until 2023. Now as CEO of Kern and Partners, he applies the same marketing and advertising expertise to transform learning and development into a strategic business growth engine. 

Russell helps close chief learning officers and senior leaders navigate today’s biggest challenges, from AI driven skill shifts to hybrid team dynamics. By designing learning experiences that inspire action and deliver measurable ROI. Get ready to learn from a master of influence and Innovation. Thank you so much for joining me today, Russell.

Russell Kern: 02:24

You’re welcome. Rick. And I’ll just start with I love direct mail. My career. People used to say I bleed postal glue.

So having done a billion pieces and maybe, I don’t know, 50,000 tests. I love the topic. So take her away.

Rick Rappe: 02:47

Well, that is great. And that’s why I really wanted to invite you to the podcast, because I know you’re kind of a legend and, and a guru in my mind about direct marketing. So could you rewind time and maybe go back to the beginning of your career and tell me a little bit about how you got started and, and and what was your how did you end up starting Kern as a young person?

Russell Kern: 03:14

Sure. So the story goes like this. At around 19, my father passed away. I was in the middle of my college work. I took a year off.

I started to sell jelly beans on a pushcart in a mall, and it was really jelly bellies. I went back to school on studying in economics, and during that time, as I started to finish up, I said, oh my gosh, I need a job. And there were an ad for internship at an ad agency at that time called Needham, Harper and Steers and my selling of Jelly Bellies and running the jelly bean business with push carts allowed me to beat out my peers. And I got an internship job at this agency. Now. 

Immediately in the agency. What? I’m coming from a medical background. I mean, my whole family are medicine. People would get terminated or fired. 

I go, oh my gosh, I better get a specialty. And my dad and I always loved mail order marketing. And my young we used to read the New York Times, and in the back there was a magazine with little mail order ads, and there was a guy named Joe Sugarman who used to sell the spud gun and how to make $1 million. And so I had a fascination with getting rich by being in the mail order business. And quickly into my work at the agency, I became fascinated with a thing called direct marketing, direct mail, direct marketing, direct response. 

I read at that time the Direct Marketing Association binders, which were thousands of pages, and I always self taught myself everything there was. And in that time, there were great books from the great founders of direct marketing, from David Ogilvy to Jim Cobbs to Bob Stone and Caples, you name. And so, you know, we all, all the great founders shared knowledge. And in the end, direct marketing, as I learned from my great mentor and your mentor, Bob Hacker, is is about psychology. It’s about psychology without getting caught. 

It’s about helping inspire immediate motivation at the time your message arrives, which is probably the hardest type of marketing there is. So over that journey, it was two guys and 600ft² at the time. Software was starting to get developed and then that grew to ten people, and then that grew from our own new business efforts to 20 people working for some banks and then working for some amusement companies in Los Angeles. And then that grew again to having some mail order clients in the Rose business, and it grew to having more financial clients in the mortgage industry. And so we would continue to grow. 

Now, I think the important lesson I learned as a young owner of an agency was real estate does not matter. So I made a big mistake and that I said, well, God, if I had a big fancy office like the one I used to work, our clients will come to our big fancy office at our big high rise. Well, that was a huge mistake. Very costly. And in the end, clients don’t care where your offices are. 

The most important investment for anybody running a creative business is your people. And especially now, the world has changed so dramatically. Nobody cares where you are or where you’re headquartered, what you’re doing. Because virtual work is the name of the game, especially in our creative services business. So that was a very important learning about talent, the economics and of the business. 

And then I think the other thing was just consistency of being present. The business just continued to grow through relationships and meeting relationships and just saying yes to opportunity. And very fortunate that one opportunity that started as a very small project ended up being one of our biggest clients ten years later. So, you know, an introduction to DirecTV and a small win against a big competitor at a time where everything was right grew into a huge opportunity. So you never know where it’s going to come from. 

But you certainly know if you don’t stay in the game, if you don’t have your hook in the water, you’re not going to catch any fish. So I hope that gives you kind of a short perspective. The other, I think, important journey was I didn’t ever go to business school. I you know, I went right from my economics knowledge and studying and school to working for an agency for two years and then starting my own because I wasn’t very good as an employee to anybody. And on that journey, I got capped out at a certain level. 

And I was very fortunate to run in the person that you and I both know, Bob Hacker, who at that time had sold his business and said, I’m, you know, are you — I’m willing to be your mentor if you’re willing to go on a 5 to 7 year journey. And I learned so much about what it takes to scale and grow an agency. And so between the operational expertise of growing a business and the fortuitous luck of preparation and meeting is what drove business growth. And then and just I think I never had not didn’t have a passion for the power of this channel and the power of every channel to move behavior. I still remain very deeply committed to the psychology of human behavior. 

Now, to the neuroscience of human behavior and how it how can it be used in other ways? So that’s kind of a long story of how we got to where we are now.

Rick Rappe: 08:43

Yeah. You covered a lot of great territory there. And in fact, several questions I was going to ask you. You covered, which is perfect. Let’s see.

Skipping forward now into sort of current day. I’d like to ask a couple questions about your perspective on marketing today and how it’s different. How it’s changing.

Russell Kern: 09:10

Should we just start there?

Rick Rappe: 09:11

Sure. Yeah. How do you feel? How do you feel that, like, marketing is changing and evolving? I mean, I know AI is transforming a lot of things and how we do our work.

How do you see that affecting our creativity and innovation in marketing?

Russell Kern: 09:26

I want to split it into two answers. I will take the AI piece of it second.

Rick Rappe: 09:31

Okay.

Russell Kern: 09:32

Marketing is harder now than ever before. The consumers that you’re targeting are more distracted than ever before. It used to be the economy. I think the distraction, the multitasking, the number of screens, the amount of content and information that it’s just bombarding target audiences. And to break through that with your message and value is harder than ever before.

I think the second thing is the power of influence is increased dramatically, and what your brand stands for as an important channel. I think the third thing that’s happened from the area that we came from is the physicality still remains important to humans, but the expense and cost of using physical mail has to be done with incredibly smart targeting, right? Because it’s not an inexpensive channel. It’s a powerful channel if you know how to use it. I see a lot of ineffective mail coming into my mailbox still, and I go, what are you doing? 

But yeah, so I think, I think marketing is harder than ever. Piece one of the question I think humans are the same, but I think the amount of noise that they have to filter before they pay attention to you is there’s more noise on the scale. And then that third piece of the question, how is AI changing? We’re just at the fax machine level. It’s changing in ways that we can’t even imagine from the simplest of it becoming a collaborative partner and ideation partner, an efficiency partner. 

But it’s not going to replace the human pure human creativity and intelligence. AI is not intelligent. It’s just a bunch of data that presents a result based upon a prompt. Now, granted, that prompt process will get easier. The quality accuracy of the response will be better, but.

Rick Rappe: 11:46

It’s becoming more and more intelligent all the time.

Russell Kern: 11:49

But I would say, you know, the word intelligent I think is a very careful word. It. Yeah. Unlimited knowledge which the human does not.

Rick Rappe: 11:58

Yeah.

Russell Kern: 11:59

Doesn’t have emotionality which the human does.

Rick Rappe: 12:03

Yeah.

Russell Kern: 12:04

And it can inspire lots of creativity by creating combinations the human cannot do at speeds human cannot do. So I see it and I speak to it as a collaboration partner. You still need human to human collaboration and the human with machine and then back again. It’s a generative process. That’s where that’s what I’m working with marketing and marketing teams to get better strategic thinking.

Better innovation is to leverage it, not replace humanity in it.

Rick Rappe: 12:38

Yeah. Right. We found a lot of power recently in predictive modeling using AI. I, and we’re able to really accelerate the process dramatically. You know, when I worked on AT&T and DirecTV back in the day and, you know, we were dabbling with predictive models and things like that, it was a long process that took teams of statisticians to work on.

And now we can do it in like 15 minutes. And we did a really interesting test where we did an AI predictive model that was generated very quickly. And, you know, AI is building it, testing it, refining it, and repeating very rapidly versus a team of statisticians. And we tested 100,000 pieces from each. And the AI model actually did two times the performance of the human built model, which was shocking. 

There might have been other things different about that, like the database that was built on, but so it’s definitely a complex topic. But it’s interesting how things are evolving so rapidly.

Russell Kern: 13:45

I try to talk about the topic, which is machine learning.

Rick Rappe: 13:49

Right?

Russell Kern: 13:50

AI, there’s generative AI and there’s agents, and there’s more to come. And so it’s so important, just like in our day when we would talk about direct marketing or direct mail representing direct marketing. And really there was direct response television, direct response radio, direct mail. I let’s, let’s speak authentically about what it is as part of the educational responsibility we have. But your point, the ability to do your regression analysis and predictive models with machine learning or whatever models you’re using is incredible.

And we are at an incredible age and in an era that we can’t even imagine what’s going to happen in the next 5 to 10 years.

Rick Rappe: 14:36

Yeah, no, it’s literally coming out. And, you know, new things are coming out all the time where new tools that do new things. And it’s an interesting time to be in the later half of my career where I’m still having to learn and, you know, and keep up with all this new technology. So yeah, it’s exciting.

Russell Kern: 14:56

And I think the thing is that you can see it’s easier and cheaper for people to be content creators now more than ever.

Rick Rappe: 15:04

Yeah.

Russell Kern: 15:05

That contributes to the noise of the targets.

Rick Rappe: 15:09

Yeah.

Russell Kern: 15:10

There. And the hard part is as more users become unless the data has become, you start to have what you and I both know is called regression to the mean. The same idea will come back, you know.

Rick Rappe: 15:22

Yeah.

Russell Kern: 15:23

Will generate especially in an open model language. You’re going to get lots of similarity of creativity.

Rick Rappe: 15:28

So yeah.

Russell Kern: 15:29

Certain expertise that you and I have always had in doing direct marketing and direct mail that will still be required, still will be required to break through the noise for the human attention.

Rick Rappe: 15:41

Sure. Yeah, we’re doing a lot of research right now on sort of digital fragmentation and digital disengagement. You know, all these the issues that are facing digital. It used to be digital was sort of new and novel and everything was a hack. And you could — everyone moved to digital, you know, for many, many years.

And now, you know, digital is sort of facing more headwinds. And we’re seeing more declining response rates, declining performance rates in digital. And we’re seeing clients coming back to direct mail as a tool that can help them, you know, break through the clutter and get to people.

Russell Kern: 16:21

The mailbox is empty. It’s — if you don’t know how to use it, you could make a huge, costly mistake. It is an art form that is not studied, but it is the physical. It’s one of the most unique physical marketing channels besides experiential. Sure.

How much more email do you want in your inbox? How many?

Rick Rappe: 16:46

More.

Russell Kern: 16:47

You want to ignore when you’re searching? Right. So the mind is the our mind is designed to filter out, not filter in. So all that noise on digital is just meaning less attention. I’m going to filter you out better.

Rick Rappe: 17:02

Well, and with mail in the databases that exist. Right. We can reach the total addressable market a lot more thoroughly I think with a lot more data that we can use to target, like you said, we really have to target smartly in order to make direct mail work because it’s more expensive and it’s just, you know.

Russell Kern: 17:23

So but you have the art of precision. You have the ability to control the expense. You have the ability to use another set of senses other than the eye on a screen at digital that you don’t have in many other channels.

Rick Rappe: 17:39

Right? Well, I know I want to ask you a few more questions about your experience and. How do you balance the need for data driven decisions with the creative aspects of marketing?

Russell Kern: 18:04

So it’s a both and not an either or. I think the data decisions are confirming of who the audience is. What are their motivations, drivers, insights? How do I select from the most likely to respond to least likely. So or most likely to to purchase versus least.

And then the creativity of it all is the. Human humanity of getting to the head, the head and the heart of the potential buyer. The data is the North Star, and the creativity is the amplifier of the knowledge of where the North Star is. It’s the magnifier. Creativity. 

Creativity is such important. I just got to from Disney, the Disney Institute. And you know Disney is about creativity and innovation. And human beings are attracted to new and novel and creative and interesting because we’re so good at filtering out. But creative won’t land unless it’s relevant. 

And it’s the data, knowledge and data decisions that help you avoid costly mistakes, help you improve and maximize ROI. And so it’s a both and and also the data gives you insight about what the creative should Speak to and say and and find the why. You know, human beings first respond from the primitive, you know, our primitive sense that keeps us alive. And then they’re rational about why I’ll act. And so you have to be able to break through the primitive before any rational messaging lands. 

And you need that data to help guide. Because if you step into a new client situation, most creatives don’t have enough time where they are fully inculcated into the mindset of their customer without the data.

Rick Rappe: 20:10

Yeah. Right. Yeah. You really have to start with empathy about the person that you’re that you’re trying to reach and what their problems might be, and then build on build on that from there. It’s very helpful.

Russell Kern: 20:22

It’s a really good word, empathy. And I think the empathy is from a few perspectives. It would be the empathy of the pain, the problem, the worry, the very raw primitive. What they’re scared about because we go from pain to solution. And then the other is the empathy of their challenge of decision, their fear of decision, the risk of decision.

And then the last empathy is the rational aspects to help them make the go ahead decision, to help them actually go to the website to actually change and stop what they’re doing to save something and go to the call to action, whatever it is they they that piece to continue their journey of action once you’ve broken through from an emotional perspective. So yeah. It’s a lot of — I love that word empathy.

Rick Rappe: 21:15

Well, I know you studied neuroscience and human behavior a lot in your career, and I was just curious, as you were talking about that, were you did you ever do much copywriting in your career at at Kern?

Russell Kern: 21:27

No, I don’t, I don’t consider myself a copywriter. No, not an editor, a creative director. I’m an editor. I’m an inspiration. I get it on the field and move it to the 50 yard line and or move it to the 20 yard line. But I know, I know. I have studied enough neuroscience to know how humans process information.

Rick Rappe: 21:51

Right.

Russell Kern: 21:52

What triggers their ability to and what triggers persuasion or behavior. And so to this day, I still write probably more than I’ve ever written before, but my work always keeps coming back to the basic nature of the human brain and how we process information, because, I mean, it is an incredible £3 machine. It’s an incredible, magnificent machine. 100 billion neurons times 8000 synapse connections. You know, we’re talking about 800 trillion, some huge number in. £3. Water. So it I think not enough respect Is given to the neuroscience of human behavior and the advertising world succeeded on repetition for awareness. Right. That’s what. But so, you know, that’s how it started in the 50s, 60s, 70s, and even political advertising is about repetition frequency, because that is one way to gain awareness. But when you have a piece of mail, you got one second, if that, to create curiosity, to get it open, to get it considered and to get it acted upon. Now that’s an art.

Rick Rappe: 23:14

Yeah, for sure, for sure. Well, that’s the thing that we love about it, right. That you get an immediate reaction and you get to monitor the results and see what your work is doing, and make adjustments and try new things. You know, that’s the part that keeps me excited about it. All the testing and learning that we get to do.

Russell Kern: 23:34

Rick, what are clients struggling with? Let’s twist this conversation around what do you — what problems are you solving for them? Where are they struggled. Where? Why are they struggling?

Rick Rappe: 23:45

Why are they struggling? You know lower results are always a reason why we are brought in to help fix low results. Obviously we get brought in quite a lot to help people build direct mail sales channels from the ground up. If they are not using direct mail yet and they want to use direct mail, then we come in and help them test and learn and figure out how to crack the code for direct mail very quickly. I think budget pressure is another issue that is always facing our clients these days.

I mean, a lot of budgets are being cut and they need to make their stretch their direct marketing dollars and make them go further. You know, we also run into a lot of situations where overburdened teams, Eames people that are marketing teams that are just spread too thin and and they may not have the internal expertise to take on direct mail and all of its moving parts. And that has become, you know, something that we’re really good at is executing programs. And we basically make it very easy for clients to execute programs.

Russell Kern: 24:54

So I think that’s a really. I think that’s a good point because, Rick, I used to tell my team there are many more ways to goof up a direct mail program than there are any other way. I mean, there’s a thousand ways to goof them up, and they’re all expensive. And so if you don’t expert, the chances of you making a mistake is much higher than your chance of having success. It’s a.

Rick Rappe: 25:13

Yeah.

Russell Kern: 25:13

A specialized craft. It’s a specialized craft with a power tool. And you really need to turn to someone like yourself to know how to use that tool.

Rick Rappe: 25:22

Yeah. And you face this in your career also though, the problem with in the direct mail industry is that everyone does it. You know, advertising agencies will say, yeah, we’ll do your direct mail and so do the local printer down the street will do say they do direct mail. There’s lots of people that do direct mail who really just do know how to put ink on paper.

Russell Kern: 25:44

Yeah, I think that’s, you know, that’s like asking your local handyman to build your house. That would be the best I could give you. If you’re going to this is an art. Direct mail is hard. It is not to be.

It is not to be taken lightly, you know, and the local printer or the local agency I doubt has studied the craft. This is a craft that has a whole art of how it arrives. How does it open up? How does it reveal? How does it call? 

What is every element doing? Why? Postcards are a waste of your money and time. You know all these aspects of this piece. You know, if you’re turning to a printer or an agency that doesn’t specialize. 

And again, it’s like asking your handyman to build your house.

Rick Rappe: 26:36

This is why I knew I was going to love talking to you about direct mail, because you’re obviously you understand my point of view because I learned my point of view, perhaps from you. So you and Bob hacker. Let’s see. Let me shift gears a little bit and sort of ask you about the work that you’re doing now. Obviously, you’ve created Kern and Partners after leaving your illustrious career at Kern, and that’s the focus of your work today, leadership development and leadership training.

What led you to this, this shift in your career?

Russell Kern: 27:13

So it’s take — so the shift was time. You know, when you study any work environment, there’s a thing called the employee life cycle. And at some point in all of our ages, we come to the end of our employee life cycle, especially for a large corporation. It was time I had 40. I had been at the helm for 15 years.

We had 15 years of consecutive year over year growth and profits and okay, fine I understand.

Rick Rappe: 27:38

Wow.

Russell Kern: 27:39

Took me a it took it took me a bit to say, well, what really is my voice? Because I have always been a student of leadership and development and team development. But what has become the voice that I work on right now is the blending of creativity and ideation and innovation within teams, with or without the use of AI gen tech, because human to human collaboration still sits at the essence of ideation and creativity. So when I look back at my life and during the fire, I was saying, what is your authentic voice? Well, I’ve always been a creative inspiration, person and creativity is there and so.

Well I’m in the category called learning and development. The truth is I’m in the creative innovation business. I have teams become more better strategic thinking, ideate better together, solve problems together amongst themselves or with the use of technology to solve the biggest challenges. And so that’s what I do. And now and of course, for marketers who I’m speaking to, it’s hey, what marketing team doesn’t need to improve how they think and solve problem, given their burnout and all the rest of that? 

And of course, you can make a bunch of mistakes with AI just like you can make with, you know, so it’s not some magic solution. And then of course, I, you know, that that same creativity and innovation is really needed across a business because the CEO wants the business to grow. Well, growth happens from innovation, competitive advantage. Efficiency improved sales result, improved breakthrough of investments or improve return on investments and all that is innovative and creative. 

And so that’s the area that I’m focused on for marketers, for CMOs and their teams. But even product management teams, senior leadership teams, this whole aspect and I call it human plus AI teaming because the word, the verb to team ING is about real time in the moment, problem solving and learning and feedback. That is very that takes us a trust within the people to go back and forth at rapid speed. And I know in our industry we always had to do things rapid. I’m sure you do. 

You have no, we got to come up with an idea. We need to get it out the door. So I think we forget as agency people that we work at an incredible speed that many teams aren’t used to working at. So that’s my area of focus. My new book on called Beyond Teamwork. 

It’s going to come out in June. It’s going to be the guide to unbeatable teams and in using human and plus AI teaming. So that will be my new book. And then I also have a special program on giving and receiving feedback as part of the collaboration. So this aspect of ideation and collaboration is my heart and passion right now.

Rick Rappe: 30:59

Yeah. Well that sounds very inspirational. And I think it’s, it’s I mean, part of me was going to ask you and if this is inappropriate, I’ll edit it out. What keeps you motivated to keep working? You’re obviously been so successful in your business career you could retire and ride off into the sunset, but you’re continuing to work. So is it.

Russell Kern: 31:22

I have been a learner, Learn. So I keep working because learning gives me life.

Rick Rappe: 31:28

Okay.

Russell Kern: 31:29

I have always been a learner. I am bored very easily. I hate watching TV and my golf handicap is stalled at my at and quickly going well above my age. And I think that’s one. I think the second piece is not about the money, it’s about helping other leaders, helping change lives.

Knowledge transfer. When I look back at current at 400 people and realize how many families and children and lives were improved because of good leadership and care and passion, that’s changed in the world. And that gives me life. And so I work for that mission to help as many other leaders help as many other of their team members have incredible lives because they’ve been able to grow and learn and flourish together.

Rick Rappe: 32:27

Wow. That’s very inspirational. I mean, I think that’s entrepreneurs. We like to do things to make money, but it’s really not all about the money. And we. That’s the bigger why that you have to have to keep you motivated and keep you going on a, on a longer term basis.

So I think that’s very, very smart.

Russell Kern: 32:49

The gift of just and even I always keep in mind if I could just help one person today, then I’ve done a good job. So I try not to get carried away just okay. Just one just one swing of the axe. Just one step forward.

Rick Rappe: 33:02

Yeah.

Russell Kern: 33:03

And helping in some way or it’s just a good — it’s a good thing. It’s the right thing. What else am I going to do? Right? Riding into the sunset is not I don’t think is. It’s not for me. It’s for others. But it’s not for me.

Rick Rappe: 33:17

Yeah. That’s a very, very, very inspirational. Let me ask you a quick question from your website. I’m looking at your current and partners.com website, and I noticed a term that I wanted to ask you about. Can you tell me a little bit more about the appreciative inquiry model?

Russell Kern: 33:39

Sure.

Rick Rappe: 33:40

I’m super I’m super curious about this for my own organization.

Russell Kern: 33:45

So Appreciative Inquiry was founded and creative out of Case Western Reserve University by David Cooperrider, who’s the father of Appreciative Inquiry. The concept of appreciative inquiry is what you inquire about is what you get more of. So if there’s research that says if you inquire about all that is broken and all that is not working, you get more brokenness. If you inquire about what is working, the strengths, what you want to carry forward what we represent, you get more of that. So the word appreciative is in its broader context.

I am inquiring with a positive mindset to appreciate what we have, what we’re good at, what we want to move forward, what we want to imagine, what might have happened might be. And so that process of appreciative inquiry is been formalized into a thing they call the 4D process of discovery and dream and develop and execute. There are four DS. I didn’t name them all correctly. And so when I work with a client, I bring all of that together. 

I bring their strengths together. I bring a focus of positive questioning. I bring what might be the smallest thing we could do that would have the biggest impact. I bring the positive inquiry of what do you want to carry forward? Especially when I’m brought in to help a team that’s not exceeding to the level they want. 

What are we doing great that we want to carry forward? And so and so the other thing about appreciative inquiry and the process is it is hands-on practice. It is hands on ideation across business units and functions where there people are settled in and gain safety. And then they build idea upon idea and rapidness using an idea process from, you know, about rapid creativity, and then filtering those ideas and filtering and filtering to the biggest impact. And so that is just another form of creative inspiration. 

And so a year ago, my website’s a little out of date. I like it, I love it and I weave it in. But it’s a topic. It’s a topic that creates both curiosity and confusion. But it’s a powerful methodology to Find the new.

Rick Rappe: 36:19

Well, it sounds like in that process of going through that with the team, what came to my mind is that, you know, it gives people the ability to participate in it and to not feel like they’re being attacked and to be weeded out. I mean, they become part of the process to, to accomplish improvements to, to, to take what you’re doing today and build on it and be part of a new path forward rather than.

Russell Kern: 36:50

So, so.

Rick Rappe: 36:51

Problems, problems to be fixed, I guess you’d say.

Russell Kern: 36:54

Yeah. So problems to be fixed. You just have more problems. But upon two things everybody wants to know they matter, their voice matters. And so the appreciative inquiry process invites everybody into the solution of whatever you’re trying to solve.

So there has to be an inspiring North star. And then all are invited, all are included, and in that action, the leader has validated the humanness of every individual. And so they become engaged, excited, inspired, and that they’re in an environment where they can share their idea and not worried about it. And the conversation is not about the problem, right? All that conversation, you don’t get to bring it to this meeting or whatever it is. 

We’re here for the new solution, the recombination, that new ideation given an inspiring North star and that ignites the brain to elevate. Now imagine taking all that ideation and then using AI, various AI tools to take it to a whole nother level. That’s what I mean, that when you put those two together now you have dynamite.

Rick Rappe: 38:07

Yeah. No, I get it. Yeah. AI is just rapidly I mean, the speed at which you can generate new ideas is phenomenal. And obviously you have to interact with them and filter and refine and do a lot of work.

Human work in addition to the AI. But the generation of input and ideas and organization of information is so rapid that it’s very exciting.

Russell Kern: 38:34

And we as humans have limited, limited ability for, for recall and recombination. Some of us are more genius than others, but the machine then can inspire us given a combination to either build it, refine it, use it as is.

Rick Rappe: 38:50

Yeah, well, sometimes I have a kernel of a concept in my mind and I can just barely get, you know, think of a thing to prompt AI with, and then AI takes it so much further and all of a sudden I’m.

Russell Kern: 39:02

Yeah.

Rick Rappe: 39:03

Literally months, weeks and months down the road on developing my idea. Just through getting help. Yeah.

Russell Kern: 39:10

So we come back to so appreciative inquiry is bringing a lot a team or a large group to do problem solving ideation.

Rick Rappe: 39:23

But through.

Russell Kern: 39:24

Positive lens. So you’re doing problem solving ideation by yourself. Now imagine you’re with ten people and now you’re rapidly generating between each other and with AI and generating with AI. And the environment has been set up and the North Star has been set up so that you guys are inquiring to the positive.

Rick Rappe: 39:44

Yeah.

Russell Kern: 39:44

That’s so that’s what appreciative inquiry is.

Rick Rappe: 39:47

You know, it’s really interesting. And another thing that comes to mind about what you’re talking about. I always think about the direct mail process and I’m thinking about, you know, a lot of our clients think about what are we going to mail and who are we going to mail to. And I also like to really dig into the how are we mailing. What’s the process that we go through?

How are we generating new ideas? This engine that you can build behind the scenes of how your whole team works together can really be a fundamental difference in the performance of the marketing that you get. Right? It’s it’s.

Russell Kern: 40:28

Yes.

Rick Rappe: 40:28

And there’s a lot more to successful marketing than just. And I think this is where you learned it and you developed it at Kern, obviously. The how the team is interacting with each other is critical and has a huge impact on the results.

Russell Kern: 40:43

So important. Let me just give you an example to support what you’re saying. The relationship between the production managers, the creative people, the mailing postal specialists, just those three partners could make or break a program. Because if you come up with an idea that’s maybe too expensive to produce or could be a more effective way, and then the data person and the postal person don’t work together to maximize postal savings, which is one of the biggest expenses in mail. Then you and the team isn’t a collaborative effort where everyone’s working together.

You miss out on the opportunity. Or conversely, when they’re working together in an incredible collaboration, you give to your client the opportunity of what expertise is in collaboration. So it’s not it’s not the what. I’m going to mail it. Is this art? 

The art and science of mail. That call comes together through collaboration and knowledge and wisdom and experience.

Rick Rappe: 41:46

You bring to your clients.

Russell Kern: 41:49

Well, this has been really exciting for me to talk to you and to learn more about what you’re doing today. I’m going to ask you one more final question before we wrap it up. And then we’ll wrap it up. But my question is, if you were at an awards banquet like the Oscars or the Emmys and you’re being awarded a lifetime achievement award for everything you’ve done up to this point. What I’m curious to know is in your acceptance speech, who would you like to thank?

Who would you who would you acknowledge? It’s a big question. I’m sorry to hit it with. Hit you with a big question.

Russell Kern: 42:27

You know, I was thinking about it because in writing my book, I write a dedication. So I think if I accepted today, I would, I would have I would accept and appreciate my I’ve had three incredible mentors in my life. One was Bob, one was Zeke Iberia, my CFO, and he was an incredible mentor to me. Those are really some of the most powerful mentors.

I would think my, of course, my wife, for her dedication just to stand behind and from my ups and downs. I think my brothers, for their inspiration. I think my mother for kicking me in the teeth to finish college.

Rick Rappe: 43:10

Very good. You gotta think. You gotta think, mom. Absolutely.

Russell Kern: 43:16

Mom made. Mom said you’re going to finish college over my dead body. And till the day she passed, it was our joke we had together. But it was that. That’s what got me into jelly beans.

That’s what got me into advertising. That’s what got me into growing the business. You know, it was her kick in the pants to just finish it. That has always stayed with me.

Rick Rappe: 43:33

Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Russell. We’ve been talking today with Russell Kern, the founder of the current organization and a customer acquisition and demand generation marketing legend. And now as the CEO of Kern Partners, he guides business leaders through challenges such as integrating AI driven capabilities, managing diverse teams, and optimizing organizational efficiency. Russell, where can people get in touch with you if they want to get in touch with you?

Russell Kern: 44:01

I think the easiest. Is to go to kernandpartners.com and just use our contact us and you can call me. My cell’s always on. You can write me. Those would be the two easiest ways you can. LinkedIn to me. It’s, you know, /russellkern I’m right there and.

Rick Rappe: 44:17

And you have an outstanding podcast on your, on your website called Trailblazing Leaders Podcast.

Russell Kern: 44:23

So I’d love to talk marketing. I’d love to talk about creativity and innovation. So Rick, I appreciate your time and I’m glad I’m able to be of some value and service to your audiences.

Rick Rappe: 44:36

Oh, thank you so much. Have a great rest of your day. We’ll talk to you again soon.

Russell Kern: 44:40

Thanks, Rick. All right. Bye bye.

Outro: 44:42

That’s a wrap for this episode of Response Drivers. Thanks for tuning in. If you found today’s insights valuable, make sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. And if you’re enjoying the show, we’d love it if you left a review. Got a question or a topic you’d like us to cover? Just drop us a message at responsedrivers@rpmdm.com. Until next time, keep driving response and making your marketing work smarter.