Making Good Part of Your Role with Jason Maggs [PODCAST]

Jason Maggs: So we put it out into the world and we sat there and I remember sitting there watching the website and seeing nothing happen. And I get a call about three hours later, and it’s Jack. He’s sitting on the stoop of his place up in Queens. I’m sitting in my dark bedroom, nearly in tears. He’s nearly in tears. We got one, application and all of our media budget was gone.

Kerry Boys: Welcome to the Leaders For Good Podcast where we celebrate and learn from the leaders making positive change for people, the planet and their organisations. We also talk to world class experts who share their insights, knowledge, and tools to help you make it happen. At Leaders For Good we believe all organisations can profitably integrate doing good into their business.

Phil Cross: Hi everyone, we have a treat of a conversation for you today. Kerry and I sat down with Jason Mags. Now Jason has over a decade of experience working with some of the world’s largest brands in the field of communication strategy. But it’s his dual role that he holds at the moment as Senior Director of Strategy and also Global Head of Good, for Initiative, who are a communications agency.

And we dive into how Jason came by a role of Global Head of Good. We explore some of the trials, tribulations, successes, lessons learned along the way, and we dig into how you can think about integrating a bit more good into your role. So without further ado, we bring you this conversation with Jason Mags.

Well, welcome to another episode. Well, the second episode of the, the Leaders for Good Podcast. We have, Kerry Boys with me as always.
Kerry Boys: Good morning.
Phil Cross: I’m Phil Cross and today we are lucky enough to be joined by Jason Mags. Jason, how are you today?
G’Day. I’m very
Jason Maggs: well, thank you. Thanks for having me on the podcast.
I feel honored to be the second.
Phil Cross: And only behind Andrew Davies, CEO of B Corp Australia, so you’re in good company. It’s all, downhill from here!
Jason Maggs: That’s correct.
Phil Cross: So, I would’ve given the listeners a little bit of a potted bio for you, before we started talking today, but I always love to hear in your own words. How do you describe what you do? What’s your role Jason?

Jason Maggs: Yeah, too easy. My role’s a funny one. So I am a marketing or advertising strategist by trade as you will. So, you know, 50% of my time is still still writing strategies for brands and making sure that they connect into culture, with great success. And then the other 50% of my role is as Global Head of Good, of an organisation called Initiative.

So they’re in a communications agency. And so my for good, portion of my role. Is really working with non-for-profits to help them to realize their potential and create long lasting change in the world. But also working with our existing clients, on their CSR initiatives. So making sure that they’re, you know, they’re walking the talk, in what they do, but also to ensure that they live in the world a better place.

You know, not just in terms of profit, but also in terms of impacting culture.

Kerry Boys: Super interesting. And obviously that’s a role that we are very excited about ahead of good role. How did you get to be a Head of Good? What was the path to that role?

Phil Cross: I’ve not seen the title Head of Good in many job descriptions.

Kerry Boys: But we want more of them!

Phil Cross: But we want more of them actively in the world.

Jason Maggs: I hope we get to a place where we don’t need ’em to be completely frank, you know, that it’s just a core function of business, would be really great. And look, I fought on the title. I thought it was a little bit wanky, to be honest, The Global Head of Good.

But it is what I’ve got now, but how it came about, Was about two and a half, three years ago. I was working in New York City, for the same organisation, working over there as a strategist. And, at that time in my career, I’ll be completely frank and sorry to all of my bosses, if they do listen to this.

You know, I was kind of one foot out the door. I’d really lost purpose in what I was doing. I was working for some really large, you know, fast food companies and some companies that, you know, if you look at it on face value, weren’t doing amazing things for culture and for the better, good, big, better and betterment of society.

So I was, I was there mentally. But then I got introduced to a fellow called Jack Manning Bancroft. Who’s the founder and CEO of a non-for-profit called AIME, which is the Australian Indigenous Mentoring Experience. So they help kids. They build bridges between high schools and universities, for underprivileged kids and specifically here in Australia for Indigenous and Torres Strait Islanders kids.
And so they’ve had wild success here in Australia and they’ve been trying to launch in the States for quite a while. A few years actually. And I got introduced to Jack and to have like a half an hour coffee catch up just to see how we could launch over in the States. Well, that half an hour kind of led into being about three hour long session where we sat in a room and we came up with crazy ideas.
And we were going back and forth, back and forth on how we’d do it. And I, you know, eventually, you know, I challenged him and said, Hey, how’s about we change the way that we do it? How’s about we, how about instead of we go after the Vice Chancellor and the Presidents of universities, How’s about we flip the paradigm and we go for university students and get them to rally their, Presidents and Vice Chancellors to have this, this, this model of mentoring in their universities.

Anyway, so, fast forward, it was all wild success. You know, we eventually, launched in the states. And off the back end of that, I, you know, I I reflected on what we were able to achieve as an organisation and how when we use what we do best for those that need it the most and how much change we can actually affect.
And so I put together a little bit of a pitch and sat out the front of Matt Baxter’s, office, who’s the global CEO of in. With my little pitch in hand and walked in and said, Look, look what we’re able to achieve with AIME. Look at the, you know, the lives that we’ve affected. You know, imagine if we had a department that was dedicated to doing just that.

So we use all of our resources, all of our influence, all of our skills for doing good. and, you know, to my, you know, surprise in that moment, he said, Yep, absolutely. Let’s do it and you’re gonna lead it. And that’s when the reality started. I, Oh shit, what have I got myself into? And we’ve been doing that ever since.

But there is a much longer story to, to the actual inception of this, this good role and what we do. And I, a lot of lessons along the way, you know, like how we usually do business, how we usually plan a hundred million campaign for one of our clients isn’t necessarily what’s gonna work when it comes to doing good, at all.
And so there was a lot of ups and down.

Phil Cross: I think we’d both like to hear some of those, some of those ups and downs. But just, just reflecting on a couple of things you said there, we are big fans of the effective altruism movement, which is about maximizing the good you can do in the world and looking at your position and your ability to generate income, your ability to use specialist skill sets and I’m not sure if you did this consciously or you, you were aware of effective altruism when you were kind of thinking through, Wow, look at what we can do when we, sort of turn the power of our business on these kind of challenges and these kind of problems. But, you know, that’s really it. You know, Part of their, their ethos and their message. So I think it’s super interesting that you, you kind of came to that almost organically, I suspect.

Kerry Boys: I think a lot of people in that situation would often think, I know what I’ll do. I need to go and work for a not-for-profit. I need to find meaning. The answer there is not-for-profit. And actually, You kind of did the opposite, which is what we are really fighting for, which is how do you do that within business? How do you unlock the power that exists in business to do good? So we, Yeah, that’s why we love your story so much when we first heard it.

Phil Cross: and just, And just, sorry, just, just to build on that with the, you know, the start of your story where you said, you know, I was, I was kind of one foot out the door. That’s the danger for a lot of organisations. They’re gonna lose, you know, Talented, purpose driven people who want to do more good in the world because they don’t have that, that sense of meaning in their roles and kind of, you, you seem to have found your niche there, so that’s great.

Jason Maggs: Yeah, I think you’re completely right. I stumbled into that. I didn’t consciously know that that was the best way forward, and I’ve definitely been tempted to go over to the non-for-profit side. I’ve been offered roles. And have pretty deep moments of reflection, where I realized that would be crazy.
That would be, that would be nuts. I’ve worked so hard to get to where I am in my career. And you know, as I was coming up in my, in my career, you know, I was doing it for quite personal reasons. I was like, you know, I wanna be the best. I wanna do great things. And something flipped. During that process of working with AIME, in my head where I was like, I’ve actually not been doing that.
Just to serve myself, serve my family. That’s really important. But it’s actually because. I can do so much more from where I sit. I can actually affect the cogs and the systems and the way that we work. That’ll have a huge effect as opposed to me sitting on the outside and asking favors from the inside of my industry.

Phil Cross: That was great. and let’s circle back to some of those failures and the, the lessons learned, I suppose, as well as the, as the outtake, if there’s a couple you could share.

Jason Maggs: Yeah, definitely. So in that first meeting, where we were gonna flip the, flip the model. So we’re gonna get kids to, to nominate themselves and go through the process of getting their universities on board to have our non-for-profit, mentoring on campus.

You know, we agreed on that and then it became the question. So how will we get. These kids in universities to do this when they know nothing about us, that we are no one to them. So I put my marketing and advertising hat on, I said, We need a shiny thing, right? We need something that is gonna make them want to come and be part of our, our family.

And so I jokingly, you do this in brainstorms, right? You come up with crazy ideas and you think, this isn’t gonna go anywhere, but we’ll work, work, waterfall it down into something that’s achievable. I said to Jack, Hey, what if we, we got a plane and we brought a plane load of from the states to Australia to learn the Indigenous model of mentoring here at at their home.

The indigenous folk and from the people that are actually doing it. And he’s just this crazy amazing individual who just went, Yep, definitely. He stood up, he jumps on his phone and he starts ringing people. And I’m like, Who is he ringing? And I find out he’s trying to get onto Richard Branson’s people.

And I thought it was a joke. But no, this man, he knows everyone. And he didn’t get onto him then. But within a couple of weeks we had a, private 747 taking off from LAX landing in Australia on, I think it was the 14th of February and we’re about six or so months out. And so we have a plane booked. We have zero budget, no money whatsoever.

So we’ve got an empty plane that’s gonna have two of us on it at this stage. And so I went into the, my mode of what I do. I said, Okay, we need media. We need a media, and we need a lot of it. And so I pulled in every favor that I’d ever got over in the States. So I got every senior, leader of our business on board and they started getting free media for us.

So we, we got a a around 1.3 million worth of free media. And then we needed an ad. And so fast forward, we’re sitting in a recording booth at iHeartRadio. We’ve got the cast of orange’s, new black, doing voiceovers for this, ad campaign. I’m pinching myself every moment thinking this is going amazing.

We’ve got all this talent, we’ve got all this media. We finally went live. And so we put it out into the world and we sat there and I remember sitting there watching the website and seeing nothing. And I get a call about three hours later. And it’s Jack. He’s sitting on the stoop of his place up in Queens.

I’m sitting in my dark bedroom, nearly in tears. He’s nearly in tears. We got one, application and all of our media budget was gone. And so we’d, we’d rolled the dice, we’d shot our shot, and it didn’t work. And so we still had this private plane taking off, and we had no one on it.

And so that’s when the pivot came. And I thought, Okay, well it’s not gonna work the way that we usually do it for a, a business, right? I’m working on converse at that, that same time leading the strategy for them. And that would work because people know converse, right? And, they’d take note and they’d buy the shoes or they’d buy the kit, whatever it is.

And so we pivoted, and we said, Hang on, We’re not about the flashy stuff. We never have been AIME. It’s about human connect. And so just threw the idea out there, why don’t we get the mentors from Australia, these indigenous kids, to come over, get on a plane, go into every campus that they can possibly get into and go face to face, and to talk to people and to do what they do best, tell their own stories.

So we created what we called the hooded hustle because the hoodie is a symbol within AIMEs organisation. And so we flew, I reckon there was about 20 kids over, and adults from Australia who most hadn’t never been to overseas before. We had to work with the Australian consulate to get them, some visas and some passports really fast.

And they got off the plane, they had a backpack on and they had a ticket in their hands, and that was it. And they went from campus to campus to campus, to campus. and you fast forward. You know, this was three months out from the flight, flight taking off. So we had three months to fill this flight, and so you fast forward and we had thousands and thousands of, applications and we ended up taking off with about 320 people on board.

Amazing, you know, change makers of America, and the flight took off. But what it taught me, you know, is what, what do I think works? Or what we think works doesn’t necessarily work. You know, we need to change the model for which we, we create change. If it worked already, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
I wouldn’t need a Department for Good. You gotta be radical in what you, what your so solutions are. So yeah, there was some pretty tough times in there. You know, we didn’t sleep for months on end, but it was all worth it, in the.

Phil Cross: What’d you put the lack of traction for that big media campaign and, you know, having all the, you thought all the, all the chess pieces were lined up. Why do you, what’s your intuition about why that didn’t, why that didn’t fire?

Jason Maggs: So the, the thing with advertising for non-for-profits is you have one, one shot to hit them, right? If you look at a traditional campaign for a brand, you’ll, you’ll talk about a traditional funnel, right? You’ve got your awareness, consideration and trial and everything else, and all the kind of theoretical stuff.
But you have a full campaign with a lot of artillery, with an unknown not-for-profit, with a quite a, it’s not a complex, but it’s not, you’re not gonna get the concept of what they do instantly. You need to be able to tell that story. And so you can put an out out there and say, Hey, look, do you wanna change the world? Do you wanna become a mentor? Do you wanna fly to Australia? Do you want, do you want, do you want. I don’t think people thought it was, I think people thought it was a con, you know, you see that and you go, Oh, what you mean I can get on a plane and Nah, that’s gotta be, that’s gotta be bullshit.

Phil Cross: Yeah. Right.

Jason Maggs: And so we didn’t have that level of, education or storytelling, which is what we got when we sent kids out to universities. And to actually tell their personal story and go, Hey, no, I’m wearing the AIME kit here. Like this isn’t, They heard it over and over again. This, this sounds too good to be. It’s not to be good to to be true. In fact, I’m a product of that. I’m in a country I’ve never been in before and the story goes on and they build that human connection.

Kerry Boys: And one of the things I love about that story is I think especially when we work in the corporate world, we assume that not-for-profits have so much to learn from corporates. But actually a lot of what you’re articulating there is community organizing, which is absolutely something that happens. All the time in the not-for-profit world. So there’s so much that can be learned both ways. And my time in Cambodia, that was one of the things, in all honesty, I thought I’m over there helping not-for-profits. I’m gonna help them understand how the corporate world works and take these models. Actually, there’s so much and we’ve built it into a lot of our programs, but so many frameworks and ways of thinking that the not-for-profit world has, that they’re not-for-profit world has that can actually benefit sort of broader brands and business.

Jason Maggs: Absolutely. And it’s changed the way that I approach strategies for my clients. A hundred percent. I think it’s Dave Trott. I saw a quote from him not that long ago. Dave Trott’s, an admin from over in London, and he was saying, they’ve got a hundred million pound campaign and that’s just a waste of money. You know, if you gave me a hundred million pound, I’d turn up to every single person’s doorstep and talk to them personally. And so I think sometimes it’s really easy for us to throw money at a problem as opposed to actually throwing the most fundamental of systems at, a solution.

Phil Cross: And it’s making the, you touched on it there as well, it’s how do you make the complex kind of, or make the, the connection that matters. So, you know, when people get face to face and they meet people from different communities and different walks of life and have a real sort of tangible experience and build that human empathy and that connection, you’ve immediately cut through the levels of doubt and complexity that might be, you know, that might be there. So yeah, I love it.

Jason Maggs: There’s this one, one little story on making the connections that matter. There’s a guy, Shawney Edwards, he’s an indigenous fellow from Northern Territory. He played AFL. Didn’t love it, wasn’t for him.
He retired really young and then found himself at AIME doing some amazing work. And so he was sitting over with us in the New York office being just like a like absolute killer. He’d just go do whatever is needed and get it done. So he was the first person to go on the hooded hustle. We wanted to see if it’d work first.
So we sent him to a university. Then we sent him to Chicago, and when he was in Chicago, we called him and just like, kind of jokingly, kind of not said, Hey, you know who’s in Chicago? Obama. Imagine if you could get Obama support and goes, Yeah, no worry bro. Yep. I’ll get it. I’ll get it. And, so fast forward, he, he turn, he turns up to the Obama Foundation, walks up to the front desk and goes, Hey, I’m Shawney Edwards. I’m here to see Obama. And they looked at him and they’re like, What are you on about? Like, that’s not how it works. Sorry mate. That’s you’ve, he’s not here anyway, but like, you’ve gotta have a meeting in, in the diary, blah. He goes, Yeah. Yeah. That’s cool. That’s cool. Well, I’ll just sit here in the reception and I’ll just wait for him to turn up.

So you just let him know. Shawney Edwards is here. He sat in the reception of the Obama Foundation for two days straight and he made mates with everyone that walked in. He was best friends with a receptionist. He was best friends with everyone else. One day he met someone walking in who’s the head of, education for the Obama Foundation and they start talking. And so then Shawney’s pitches his pitch to them. And then that opened up so many doors they believed in our journey. And then we had that co-sign in all the different universities we would turn up to saying, Hey, we’ve met with so and so from the Obama Foundation.
And it was just one of those moments that changed everything for us. But I always look back on, and the hustle that was at the heart of that was just unbelievable.

Kerry Boys: I love how you have to do that when you don’t have the resources, right. But you suddenly start to think about things differently and this whole point around connection is so important in this area.

Phil Cross: I’m curious, in terms of any advice or any steer you’d give people, and we’ve got a million other questions, but say, I can imagine there’ll be a lot of people listening now who are kind of thinking, Wow, I’d like, I’d like a piece of what Jason has. I’d like to pivot my own career and kind of, you know, I wanna be head of good, for wherever I work.

What was the difference that made the difference in terms of you having those conversations and you making this role happen and making it reality?

Jason Maggs: I think it was a few things, right? I think you need to get the runs on the board. I think you need to prove the success of it. And that’s what we did.

Like I didn’t have the role when, when we’re doing AIME work and you know, I did get some resistance from some people within, our organisation and really importantantly I got my other work done, the paying work done. So I made sure that I performed above and beyond so that no one could say, actually your, you know, client X, Y, or Z isn’t getting the service that they’ve paid for.

And so I think really importantly, it’s finding the line that you walk between the two, and acknowledging the importance of both. I think there was a period there where I got quite dejected where I’d run from a meeting with, you know, some, it was a Universal Music, meeting where we were talking to artists to try to get them on board to, you know, be the voice of us.

And it was a really exciting meeting. Right. and we got, we got some nods and some yeses. And then you run into a budgeting meeting with, with one of your clients. And it felt like I go from trying to save the world to, you know, doing this. And I got a little bit ejected for a while and I got the best advice I ever had, from Jack Manning Bancroft.

He said, pick your chin up. Stop being a wuss. You know, like you go and you do your work and that allows you to do this for good. So you need to see it as a symbiotic relationship, but in terms of advice for having a role like my own, you know, you just gotta be brave enough to go for it.

You know, I’d struggle to find any organisation in the world that doesn’t see the importancein of having a role like this. But you need to get the runs on the board and you need to back yourself in and push until you get what you want or not even what you want, what the world needs. And I think that’s really important.

Framing it up as this isn’t for me, this isn’t for my career. I didn’t ask to be the head of it, the department. I said we needed the department and eventually got the role. I think you need to take yourself outta the equation, a little bit, and do it for a bigger cause, which ultimately makes the world a fairer place. But never, ever forget the importance of what this looks like for the business as well.
Right. You know, I’m not a naive, Global Head of Good. I know that what I do it, makes our company also look, really good at the same time. And it helps us when we are pitching new business to prove that we are a company with a soul and with a heart. Which is really, really important.

Kerry Boys: And you mentioned that part of your role as the Head of Good is with not-for-profits, but it’s also working to help your existing clients do more good in their business, and obviously that has business benefits to them. How do you sell it to them? What’s the sell to clients on that?

Jason Maggs: I think the sale’s quite easy. I think that most organisations and brands want to be doing good, right? And most of them already have the framework in place to be able to do good. And so ultimately, you know, with newer clients, I sit down, I listen to them, I understand exactly what their goals are, like what, what is it that they are trying to contribute to?

And then it’s about workshopping it with them so that it’s a digestible, true action in culture. I think a lot of times it can be something that is put onto a website, and it’s said in the mission statement of their business, but there isn’t actually that link between the hundred million dollars of media that they spend every single year, and the actual affecting of change at the same time.

So it’s really, you know, it’s a long slog too sometimes. It’s not gonna happen overnight, and I completely recognize that. My dad says the weirdest thing, it was always weird to me when I grew up. He always said, How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time? And, not that I’m saying we should eat elephants. That’s completely not what I’m saying. But it’s really important to take it a bite-size pieces, right? If I go in and I try to promise, I try to get them to do, a complete huge campaign around this, this, this core, belief of their business, I might scare them away. I might actually turn them off for a long period as opposed to going, Actually, let’s just do this one little thing and do it really well.

Okay, now let’s take a bigger bite. Let’s do this next thing and let’s do it really well. And I think when you see brands trying to eat the elephant all at once, you end up seeing some really bad outcomes. And it looks really forced, and often not really authentic, and gets a lot of backlash.

Phil Cross: True. You do realize that’s gonna be the one outtake that blows up on Twitter. It’s like no known elephant eater, Jason Mags suggests…

Jason Maggs: I would like to say I’m a vegetarian, so I would never eat an animal, let alone an elephant.

Phil Cross: I’m, I’m, I’m curious about the impact, Your role and the, and the initiatives that have been run, no pun intended, has had on, on the initiative as a business.

Have you seen, have you seen the culture shift? Have you seen, another kind of, you know, projects spring up in the business? What’s, what’s been happening there?

Jason Maggs: Yeah, definitely. I think, the part of my role, that makes me really, one of the things that makes me most excited is, is the effect and the flow on it has for the other employees within our business.

You know, the next generation of brilliant minds for our industry. They want to be doing good. They are acutely aware. Of their, you know, their role to play in the future of our, our world. And so when we do have bigger projects, we have an actual platform. I dunno if you’ve seen Bono Jo before. But it’s a platform where we can put jobs onto it. So shout out to Benojo, great platform, everyone should be using it. But you can put little bite size jobs on there. So a, a good example is I’m working for, working with, sorry, Gotcha For Life, which is a mental health, organisation that’s all about prevention, and about flexing your mental muscle through mental fitness. And so we are, we are working with them to formulate a brand campaign and a brand idea essentially. And so what I can do is I put up onto our platform all the different bite size jobs, and then anyone from the organisation can be part of the global good. And so the reason behind doing that was to democratize my role.

The last thing I wanted to be was the emperor that sits on the top of the, the castle of good. And be the gatekeeper of everything that we do. And that would be, that would be a incomplete and out of failure, right? One person can’t change the world, but an entire organisation, a hundred percent. And so, yeah, I’d say the biggest flow one effect has been for anyone within our organisation, seeing much more purpose in what they do and purpose beyond just, you know, doing a, a day where the offer shuts down and we all go to a soup kitchen, which is important, but it isn’t creating long lasting change through what we do best for those that need it most.

So yeah. I hope that answered your,

Phil Cross: It does. That’s brilliant. I love the idea of using technology to democratize it and to get the word out and to let people know what’s going on, because it’s all too easy unless you are directly connected or bump into you in the kitchen, or no one’s bumping into anyone in kitchens at the moment to, to not know, to not know these, these things are happening.

So having a, having a portal for people to plug into, I think is, I think is amazing. That’s great. I’m curious about your definition of Good. So we, we have ours, but you know what, and we kind of ban this term around, you know, how do you think about good? What’s the frame you put around doing good and I guess the responsibility of business within that.

Jason Maggs: Yeah, look, you’ll get this through the conversation, I’m no intellectual. So good doesn’t for me have this, sort of textbook definition. I think that it’s a credit debit system, right? And I look at it through my own life. I think that, you have your credit and your debits, right?

So you, you might do some things that aren’t so great in the world. Not to say that you’re evil or you’re not. But I think that ultimately the pendulum has to swing towards the positive. And so, and particularly for businesses, right? We’d be crazy to think that, the role of business is not to drive profit.

I think that that is entirely an utterly why businesses are set up. But, to be able to offset or to be able to, have a long lasting change on, the world and leave it a better place to which you started. It is probably my definition of good, but ultimately I think that, I think that it’s, this is gonna be too hippie, I think maybe.

Kerry Boys: Never too hippy.

Jason Maggs: Okay, here we go. This is, this is gonna be the Byron Bay coming outta me. So, I think that good for me, is when you go to bed and you, sit your head down at the end of the night. And , I do it every night, every morning I reflect on three things I was really happy about from the day and three things I wanna achieve the next day. And it’s kind of affirmations. But you know, if If I struggle to find those three things at the end of the night. Then I know I haven’t done my job that day. I haven’t actually pushed forward and pushed hard enough to do good. And so there is an element of hippie dippy, how you feel inside your gut. That I attribute to what good is because, you know, that ultimately is, a big, big part of the puzzle.

Phil Cross: Mate, you’re speaking to the converted here. I do exactly the same thing. So definitely not too hippy. Well, not for us anyway. And that’s really important. I think good is not just a cognitive thing. It’s not just, you know, a tick box thing and it’s up here. And we obviously do a lot of work with people helping connect a purpose and find, find what’s gonna be meaningful for them.
Yes. Because unless there’s something in the, you know, some fire in the belly and some desire to do something, then people are not gonna put in the nights, the weekends and do the kind of work you were describing with Aim, where you, you know, you, your kind of, you know, your life was consumed to some extent by, by making this happen.

You know, unless there’s a connection, it’s not gonna happen. And that, that connection isn’t just intellectual, as I said, it’s, it’s in the body. So people getting in touch with what feels right, I think is, is really, really important. And, yeah, I’m super, super glad you you called that out.

Jason Maggs: Yeah, I think, I think passion’s a huge part of it. There’s a slide that I present in every single time I talk about, the for good. And it’s like we need to make that shift from, doing things that feel good versus things that do good. And so I think that when we’re just doing things that feel good, they can sometimes be quite surface level right.

As opposed to actually doing what we do. And eventually, it actually creates change and it does good. You will get that good feeling and it’ll be longer lasting. And it’ll be a fire underneath your bonnet, that makes you keep on going back and doing it again and again and again because you’re seeing actual actions take place. You’re seeing actual change, form in front of you. So I like to just try to shift my, my, my mental thinking around that.

Kerry Boys: Yeah. That’s super interesting and it actually makes me think about one of the key challenges in this area that I’d love to hear from you on, which is around measurement.

So on being able to put actual measurement around good. And there’s lots of different route, some of them incredibly complex. But how do you tend to work with your clients on trying to put some metrics around how that’s delivering to their businesses?

Jason Maggs: The way I look at it, and for anyone that hasn’t worked in advertising industry, we’re an industry obsessed with awards.

And so, you know, there’s an award for absolutely every category and everything else. And there’s, there’s often awards for doing good. And within the criteria of those awards, more often than not, there’s no impact, criteria. It’s, it’s often we reached 10 million people. Our PR each reached this many people.

Ultimately there was never that metric for, how many lives were affected. And so that’s a really important part of the puzzle. So then how do you measure how many people were affected? And I think the biggest, the hardest challenge that we have is that, that that measurement and that system that you have to setup costs money. That is a bigger investment. You know, working with AIME for instance, we, we commissioned a white paper, by a consortium of all these different, lecturers and intellectuals that looked at the pre and post effects. And now, you know, we were fortunate to get some funding to be able to do that, but not everyone’s as fortunate to be able to try to find that, that funding.

So ultimately we create these, so for on the client side of things, we create these campaigns, within marketing departments, right? And so what we know is marketing formulas and marketing, metrics. We don’t necessarily have the know-how or the capability. To be able to look at the bigger impact, measurements.

And so I think there is a job still to be done and maybe it’s within organisations like yourself, where, where we can plug in specialists to be able to measure the impact because it’s not something that we should even be self-reporting, I don’t think. I think it’s something that needs to be third-party verified, for us to actually look back on it and reflect and go, This worked and this didn’t. Because it’s really easy to say we did this thing that was meant to do good. We think it worked, but it might actually be the case it didn’t, you know, and in that process of it not working, we’ll actually learn how to do it right. But yeah, that’s, that’s my ten two cents worth.

Phil Cross: No, that’s great and I like the idea of the third party verification cuz we do know there’s a degree of purpose washing that goes on with, you know, in some organisations and for the most part, I’m, you know, it probably does come from a good place. I don’t think many leadership teams are sat around Machiavellian style, sort of drum their fingers together and thinking how can we bamboozle everyone, but…

Jason Maggs: Warby Parker.

Phil Cross: Just a brief clarification there. Jason actually misspoke during the podcast. Warby Parker are not the branding question. It was Oscar Wiley who were ordered by the federal court to pay three and a half million dollars in penalties for misleading and deceptive conduct and making, misleading representations about their charitable donations and affiliations. So, apologies, Warby Parker.

And Oscar Wylee, you should probably know better.

All right, back to the show.

Really? I dunno that story.

Jason Maggs: Well, controversial. Yeah. What haven’t they, they just got caught out doing it recently. Yeah. And really pissed me off. Yeah.

Phil Cross: Oh, do tell.

Jason Maggs: You know, So it’s, it was their buy one, give one model. That never took place. So they sold a truckload of glasses and there was a royal commission into it, and they’ve been since fined. The news came out about two weeks ago, that they weren’t giving one, they, it just wasn’t happening. And it just really got under my, skin and I think it would anyone that works in this space, because, you know, you try to constantly work on the perception in front of consumers. And within the business world. And, you know, when people do stuff like that, it’s just, it’s pure, it is evil in a way, but it’s just a real kick in the guts why anyone would ever do that. And not follow through, but use it as a marketing tool.

Phil Cross: Yeah. Right. Okay. Well, my, I’ll take my, previous statement back then. There clearly are some people sitting around, drumming their fingers together. But one of the things that are most sort of galling about that is, is it has a, an effect on consumer perception of any brands doing that kind of work. Cuz I think conscious consumers are looking for brands that are, that are acting in an ethical way, and you know, we certainly try and use suppliers and buy products and engage with brands that, that are, that are trying to do good in the world.
And to hear about one that. You know, I might have, you know, I might have, I don’t think [Oscar Wylee] were here in Australia, but I might have used them. You know, I wear glasses, I could have picked them up thinking I was doing, doing a little good in the world, and that would’ve been, yeah, a sour taste as a consumer.
And then obviously the main impact is on the person who was supposed to be on the, on the receiving end of the kind of philanthropic effort. So, shame on you [Oscar Wylee]. We usually like to call out good stories, but you know, there’s a time and a place to highlight the a assholes as well, I suppose.

Kerry Boys: And I guess that’s a perfect move on to any brands that you love in this space. Any businesses that you think are doing really good things. Yeah, I think there’s a lot. And I’m gonna do a quick little shout out to Shaun Edwards. Anyone that listens. Check out House of Darwin, an amazing, Indigenous owned, social enterprise. So he creates some really cool kit, and, all the proceeds go back to helping kids in remote Indigenous, countries within Northern Territory. He’s doing a really, really good job and I love to see individual instances like that, I think those, those organisations are doing really, really well.

And I think what he’s been able to do is he’s, he’s married the cool factor of fashion with doing good, but in a really authentic way. So I love that. But like, I’m a big fan of changing over your super guys, like, you know, Future Super. And, there’s, there’s a lot of organisations out there.

Good. Super. They’ve all got a pretty similar. But it’s, it’s a really simple thing that we can do. That has a lot of change. A lot of effects. So basically using your supers to create a world that you actually wanna retire in. I’m, I’m a big fan of that, and it took me a little while to get on that bandwagon. I’m, I’m shameful to admit. It was one of those things I was like, I’m gonna do it, I’m gonna do it, I’m gonna do it, I’m gonna do it. And then eventually it took me two seconds and it makes, it creates a lot of change. So, you know, I am absolutely a fan of the no single use plastic organisations and everything of the likes, and I think they’re really important.

But my latest obsession has definitely been the super side of things.

Phil Cross: Mm. Yeah, completely agree. It took me a while as well. It was, and even before I kind of clocked and really felt into the impact of it. Cause I don’t think I’d given it much, much thought. Fortunately, my partner’s on top of it and we’ve, we’ve been with an ethical super fund for quite some time, but, I’m now like you, I suppose, a lot more vocal about spreading the word and letting other people know because. That wider trend of ethical investment and kind of putting, putting money in in the right places is, is so important.

So yeah. Okay. Shout, shout out to the ethical super funds for sure.

Jason Maggs: Yeah. Not a sexy but huge effect I think.

Kerry Boys: Absolutely. And what about any of the big corporates? Are you seeing any of the more traditional brands that are doing things in this space?

Jason Maggs: Look, I worked a long, long time, over in the States, heading up the strategy for Converse, and so I got really close into the Nikes of the workers, Nike owned Converse, and I feel like this one’s always used as, you know, a yard stick, Nike in that matter, but I think for good reason.
You know, I think what happened with Colin Kaepernick, and if anyone that doesn’t want to follow American sports, but Colin Kaepernick was an NFL quarterback, who started kneeling during, the national anthem in protest of, police brutality against, black Americans. Anyway, fast forward, he lost his job, just by doing the right thing.
And he, he was kind of an outcast of, of the sporting world, but he started a movement. He started something that was completely phenomenal, and changed the landscape of, of American sports. But what Nike did, Was they backed him. He was the first non like athlete, person to be sponsored.

And they did a huge campaign around him and they knew that they were gonna lose half of American base. They knew that the, the results would be poor. People were burning Nike shoes, it was crazy. But the, they were brave and they followed through. When I use that example, I think, you know, in terms of social causes, they’re great, but then you look at the flip side of it, and the contribution that they have to the environment, ain’t so great.

And so, I think when, to your question, when I look at large corporates, it’s hard to be like, they’re absolutely killing it. A hundred percent. Yeah. Like even. You even look at, Patagonia, right? And the founder, he writes in his book. He knows Patagonia’s probably the best company, at doing what they do in terms of environmental, friendly product. But he even puts his hand up, admits they’re not where they need to be. Yep. And so I think it’s really hard to look at a, a north star in one company that’s doing the best, but, or, or the most, I just hope that every company just tries to do their bit, you know?

Phil Cross: I was listening to a story about Nike, in a audio book the other day one of Otto Sharma’s books, Theory U. He’s done a sort of lot of thinking in this space, and he was reflecting on Nike back in the nineties when, the scandals broke around, the working conditions over in, over in Asia, so at the factories, et cetera. And the underpaid workers and poor conditions, et cetera, et cetera.
And that scandal broke. And a lot of people, a lot of consumers were upset about it. And Nike’s initial position on that was, That’s not our problem, that’s our suppliers, and we just, we just order things from them. And it took that public backlash for Nike to take a more ecosystem, way of thinking about their whole supply chain and actually say, it’s actually our responsibility to work with the suppliers to implement standards, to implement, fair wage, to implement working conditions, et cetera, et cetera.

And I think that ethos and that, point of waking up has carried through with Nike in a lot of ways,in how they, how they do business, So it’s, increments and it’s small steps and it’s no businesses, well, very few businesses are perfect right out the gate, right.

Kerry Boys: And we have this sort of philosophy that good is never done. It’s not a fixed point. You don’t suddenly become good and then it’s all ticked off. There’s always work to do and you’re always gonna have to try and get better.

Jason Maggs: Definitely. And I have the exact same ethos and I think also there’s no competition in doing good. . Is a really important part. You know, there’s, throw all that competitive shit out the window. Brand X and y like come together to solve the problem. Is, is, is often, That is the only way that I think we’re gonna get there in the end.

Phil Cross: Yeah. Completely agree. Jason, are you, you’ve been very generous with your time.

Are you up for a few, rapid-fire questions to, help close out the episode?

Jason Maggs: I would love some rapid fire.

Phil Cross: Okay, well the questions are rapid-fire, your answers certainly don’t have to be.

What are you obsessed about on evenings and weekends when you’re not being a force for good in the world?

Real estate. I, not that I’m buying any real estate, I love it. I’m obsessed with it. And this is not PC, but like, it’s my porn, you know, Like I’m online late at night looking at it and my wife’s like, Come to bed. But there’s something about it, Hey, and I think it’s the strategist in me, It’s just like a little peek into someone else’s, world or life. And like, you know, you walk past a beautiful house on the street and how many times you look at it and you’re like, Oh, I wonder what its like inside. And so it’s just been an obsession of mine for a long, long time and it’s just how I kind of zen out and think about something other than, what I do at work.

Kerry Boys: I love it. Amazing. So you talked already about changing your super fund. Other than that, what’s the biggest change you’ve made in your personal life towards sustainable living?

Jason Maggs: I think that there is enough shit in the world. Like guys, I think it’s like 27, we buy 27 kilograms of clothing each a year, which is 500 million kilograms.

Yeah. Or 5,000 tons that go into landfill every single year. And you know, sometimes it’s unavoidable, right? You do need to buy some new things. But I try to buy, secondhand upcycle, and recycle wherever possible. Whether it be furniture, I actually like secondhand furniture. I think it’s great.

Phil Cross: Same.

Jason Maggs: Yeah. I think cars, you know, the moment you drive it off the lot, it’s secondhand. So just buy a secondhand car. I don’t think we need to be overproducing. And fashion’s a big one. You know, if we can kind of get off the drug of fast fashion, that’s a huge, it’ll have a huge effect, on the environment around us.

And also, I just think vintage stuff looks cool as well, so, you know, it’s a win-win in that situation. But I think my wife and I, what we’ve tried to do, you know, we’ve got a new home and we’ve been trying to furnish it and it’s, it’s, it’s going onto awesome things like your Facebook marketplace, there’s gems on there. We don’t need to go out and produce more and more and more and more. I think we’ve got plenty for everyone that out there, and there are some cool finds on there. So I really try to try to buy a second hand, up-cycle, and recycle as much as possible.

Phil Cross: Yeah. Beautiful. We did exactly the same when we got our house, I think we, we furnished the entire place for a few hundred besides I think our bed and our fridge, which we, we got new.

Everything else in the house was from, The Bower or, you know, yeah. Second hand off Facebook Marketplace. And at the, at the moment, we’re seeing it massively. We’ve got a five month old baby in the house.

Jason Maggs: Congratulations.

Kerry Boys: Your, baby. Not just a random baby.

Phil Cross: Not just a random baby. We, we didn’t, we didn’t, we didn’t just steal it.

Jason Maggs: You didn’t get that secondhand, didn’t you? 

[laughing]

Phil Cross: We barely bought anything brand new.

The amount of, the amount of baby clothes and they grow out of it in, you know, a handful of weeks. It doesn’t get worn out. So, that as a secondhand marketplace is absolutely thriving. So, yeah. Yeah. I love it.

Are you reading or listening to anything super interesting right now, or any books or documentaries that have really shaped your, shaped your thinking on this that you’d like to shout out?

Jason Maggs: Yeah, I think a couple of books I always try to, revisit and also pass forward, are like Steal Like An Artist by Austin Kleon and all these books kind help me to formulate my strategy strategies, but I’ve found it really help with doing good.

So I’ve actually written a list in case I got to ask the question. Also Predatory Thinking by Dave Trott. So, you know, it’s, it’s getting ahead of the problem and thinking of it like no one else will. And I thinking what we do you, for us to be able to actually able to solve these problems, we’ve gotta think in a way that’s never been done before.

And then just last one for anyone, Listen, that wants a great book, It’s Whatever You Think, Think the Opposite by Paul Arden. It is Unreal. And all those books I have sitting in my office and I actually hand out to people that I’m mentoring along the journey. I think they’re really important, but in terms of like, I love podcasts, but I kind of, I treat it like 25 /75, so 25% of like, you know, feeding my brain for good and then 75% just listening to true crime podcasts.

Phil Cross: Yeah. Nice.

Obsessing over them. So, you know How I Built This by Guy Raz is just a great one and whenever I listen to it, I get motivated to actually get up off my butt and do something good. With the world. But yeah, I’d say that that’s my go-to.
Beautiful. I listened to Austin Kleon, I got onto him, he was at South by Southwest, and I saw him speak and I immediately went out and bought, Steal Like An Artist. And, Oh, what’s his other one? I forgot…

Jason Maggs: Show Your Work.

Phil Cross: Yeah. And they’re both super short books as well. There you can, you can read them inside half an hour.

Jason Maggs: And the lesson is so great on Steal Like An Artist, right? Because we’re always so obsessed with creating, coming up with something that’s new. It doesn’t need to be that way. You know, you take little elements from this, that, and the other, and then you combine them to create something that’s unique, to that set circumstance.

And I think that changed my thinking early on in my career where I always wanted to be, you know, I’d have the freshest, newest, best thinking and it would get me into an absolute hole late at night where I’m trying to come up with something that’s never been done before, when in fact there were 10 different things that were done similarly, and I could just take little elements of it and create something that’s truly refreshing.

Phil Cross: Or the depressing thing where you think you’ve come up with a brand new model in the world and then you, then you go Google it and you’re like, Oh no, no, this is, this is old hat. That’s weekly for me.

Kerry Boys: Yeah been there!

Phil Cross: Same, yeah.
Yeah, that’s great.

Kerry Boys: And there’s a couple of books that I haven’t heard of, so I’m looking forward to looking up and we will put those in the show notes.

Phil Cross: Yeah, absolutely.

Jason Maggs: Brilliant.

Kerry Boys: Okay, I think the final questions for you now. Any parting thoughts or anything you’d like to ask the audience?

Jason Maggs: I think I generally end in the same way, same when I present is, you know, I got the three R’s. Like, I just, I just encourage everyone to be, restless, radical, and relentless.

I think the restlessness comes from if you wake up every single day and something’s putting a fire in your tummy and you’re unhappy with how the world is. It’s gotta be you. If not you, then who, If not now, then when be restless, then that person actually creates a change. You need to be radical. Safe doesn’t save the world. You know, our, our solutions need to be radical in its absolute DNA, which means you need to read those books. You need to, you know, get educated enough so that you can, come up with radical solutions. And then relentless is eat no for breakfast. This stuff ain’t easy. You’re gonna get 10,000 no’s before you get a yes, but you just gotta use it as fuel and eat it, eat it up.

And so I think that’s my, my advice to everyone. But other than that, like just get started. I think all, sometimes you just gotta take a bite out that elephant. I love it. And in the spirits feeling like an artist. There are some soundbites there. We’re definitely gonna nick, all credit to you as well.

Phil Cross: And Jason, where can people find you if they wanna, wanna reach out and say hello?

Jason Maggs: Jason Mags is my name, so you just look me up on LinkedIn, but happy to have you on my Instagram as well, jase_maggs. But yeah, just drop me a note. I’m always open for a chat.

If you’re a brand looking to, looking to do some, do some media spend, Initiative.

Jason Maggs: Initiative, a hundred percent. Best agents in the land.

Phil Cross: All right. Good stuff. Anything, anything else from you Kerry?

Kerry Boys: No, I think that was a pretty wonderful chat.

Phil Cross: Amazing. Yeah. Thank you so much, Jason. Really appreciate you, spending some time with us and sharing your thoughts and wisdom with the audience. And listeners, thank you for joining us for the conversation and we shall see you next time.

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