00:00 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:04 Hi, everyone.
00:04 I'm Rose Marie Miller, and I am backstage at the Forbes BLK
00:08 Summit with Jen Prud'homme Booker,
00:10 the senior manager of digital site experience
00:12 for a Fortune 300 company.
00:15 Thank you so much for joining me today, Jen.
00:17 Thank you for having me.
00:18 Absolutely.
00:19 So Jen, could you just tell us a little bit about what you do?
00:22 Sure.
00:22 So I work in the e-commerce industry, which is better
00:25 known as shopping online, right?
00:27 But specifically, I support enterprises as well
00:30 as entrepreneurs on building their digital presence online.
00:33 So that's everything from informational,
00:35 promotional value, or even just telling people who you are,
00:39 right, how you communicate to the world,
00:41 what your digital presence is, what's
00:42 the value of your service, and who you serve.
00:44 And who you serve.
00:45 Yes.
00:46 So what is the value of your digital presence?
00:49 Sure.
00:49 I mean, it's meeting an audience that maybe you've never
00:51 connected with in person, right?
00:53 It's the difference of being based maybe in one state
00:56 and connecting with an audience, global or not,
00:58 elsewhere within reach, right?
01:00 Just because you have access to social media or a website
01:03 presence, right?
01:05 So just enhancing those connection points
01:08 on behalf of having some type of web presence
01:10 or digital presence that you maintain.
01:12 So what inspired you to pursue this path?
01:15 It was the recession.
01:16 It was legitimately the recession.
01:18 So I have a background in merchandising and design.
01:21 And during the recession, there was just a huge opening
01:24 opportunity to step into tech.
01:26 And so I wholeheartedly started not just
01:28 being a fashion professional, but a fashion e-commerce
01:31 professional.
01:32 And that's how I dove into that aspect of the industry.
01:34 I started off just managing brands,
01:36 all kinds of pivotal brands in the fashion industry,
01:40 and giving them access to their customers
01:42 by way of their e-commerce sites.
01:44 These are people who were selling in stores
01:47 that otherwise were not doing really well in the recession.
01:50 And having web presence in a website changed all of that.
01:53 You were able to recapture those sales online,
01:56 build new audiences, engage and connect with them
01:58 in different ways on social media.
02:00 And so we just helped them fine tune how to do that.
02:02 And that was at the earliest stage of my career.
02:05 And I just kind of kept growing.
02:06 I was working with brands individually,
02:09 as well as large enterprise companies.
02:11 And it kept going.
02:12 Social media is someone else's platform.
02:15 This is Zuckerberg's platform, largely.
02:17 Sure, sure.
02:18 Is that not risky to put so much of your--
02:22 Yes, please.
02:23 --your income, your identity, your crab
02:26 onto someone else's platform?
02:28 Is this making sense?
02:29 Yes.
02:30 The response is, it depends.
02:31 OK.
02:32 Some people or small businesses really
02:35 do not have the means to pay for all that on their own, right?
02:39 Hire a developer.
02:40 Hire a marketer.
02:41 So you're leveraging these platforms as services,
02:44 essentially, to streamline access to all of that, right?
02:47 You're also essentially paying that person to have access
02:49 to millions of users.
02:52 In this instance, if we're talking about meta and Instagram,
02:54 we're talking about over 300 million users.
02:57 To pay for that independently is a lot, right?
03:00 So there is a caveat to not having a platform.
03:05 But you can start there, build that audience,
03:07 and then maybe get them over to your newsletter, right?
03:10 Your e-newsletter.
03:11 Get them to sign up.
03:12 So now, you're aggregating all that interest off
03:16 of these platforms.
03:17 And you're pulling them into your own personal channels,
03:20 right?
03:21 That would be the higher goal.
03:22 But you have to start somewhere to get there.
03:25 You have to engage them directly.
03:26 And then, get them committed to coming over
03:29 to your own personal channel.
03:30 But you have to start somewhere.
03:32 So once you build that audience-- so let's say,
03:34 you know, I have my business page.
03:35 I've built my audience.
03:36 I have 200,000 followers.
03:39 Is it necessary for me to still pay
03:41 for a little advertising slot on those social media platforms?
03:45 Or at that point, am I good just posting my content?
03:49 Depends on the intent.
03:50 So if you're posting content solely to engage them,
03:53 maybe not.
03:55 But if you're paying for advertising
03:57 with the intent of taking that 200,000 followers to 2 million,
04:01 you may want to, right?
04:03 As long as the advertising is engaging,
04:05 it's also tapping into a need, right?
04:08 Not just a want, but a need.
04:10 So that that person can keep coming, keep looking for you,
04:13 not X out--
04:14 we've all done that to a certain extent.
04:16 You see an ad, and you X out of it
04:17 because you're just like, I'm not interested.
04:19 But tapping into that interest to grow your audience,
04:22 that's a worthwhile payment for that advertising.
04:24 But if it's solely just to engage them, maybe not.
04:28 Can you give us some examples of good advertisements
04:31 that have converted viewers to customers?
04:34 I think good advertisements that converts viewers to customers
04:37 are authentic.
04:38 It's always the folks that willingly show you
04:42 how something works, and they're actively engaging with it,
04:45 right?
04:46 We see that a lot in paid advertising.
04:48 The old school version of that is on commercials,
04:50 where someone is actually showing you how it works.
04:53 And someone says, ah, I see how that solves my problem,
04:56 versus something that's maybe a little bit more inauthentic
05:00 or a form of artificial design, right?
05:03 It really depends on what the product is.
05:05 But I've noticed that the most authentic engagement
05:08 with customers is high in conversion, high in opportunity.
05:12 So Gen Z is different from millennials--
05:16 Totally.
05:17 --like how we consume content and what
05:19 we think is authentic versus what
05:21 a millennial thinks is authentic.
05:23 Could you talk about that, that shift?
05:25 Sure.
05:25 I think the shift boils down to they're
05:27 consuming things very quickly.
05:30 And a lot of it is hyper-engaged in digital touch points,
05:34 so music, visuals, right?
05:37 And as long as it's something tangible,
05:39 they will engage with it.
05:40 That's where you kind of start seeing
05:42 artificial intelligence or even metaverse being of interest.
05:45 It doesn't have to be a real person
05:47 for a lot of generations.
05:48 But you do have that generation that says, uh-uh.
05:50 I want to see or talk to a real person.
05:53 And that's a generational thing, right?
05:55 I think with Gen Z, they don't mind
05:58 if it's some type of-- even like an avatar of somebody.
06:01 You see that a lot in gaming, right?
06:03 So it really just depends on the level of conviction and trust
06:06 that they have in the method.
06:08 You have one generation that makes feelings about avatars
06:12 and engaging with that to buy a product.
06:14 And you have another generation that says,
06:15 we don't mind if it is the digital version of yourself
06:18 or a metaverse version of yourself,
06:19 as long as I actually get what I want
06:22 and get that kind of responsiveness,
06:24 whether it is someone who buys an emoji
06:27 and puts a crown on you as a filter, right?
06:30 People want that receptiveness to whatever
06:32 they're buying into and feel good about the decision
06:35 that they made.
06:36 Well, Jen, I know that you do other things as well.
06:39 We were talking before this interview started
06:42 about the nonprofit.
06:43 And I do want to mention that.
06:45 Sure.
06:46 Tell us about it.
06:47 So I work for a nonprofit called One Step Initiative.
06:50 And it gives opportunities to high-risk youth
06:52 that don't have access to study abroad opportunities.
06:54 The reason why that's important is
06:56 because working as an e-commerce professional
06:58 and a digital professional, I've had opportunities afforded to me
07:01 to where I could go abroad and work abroad.
07:03 The first point of doing that is really about having a passport.
07:06 And the reality is we have kids in the United States
07:09 that don't even have access to a passport.
07:12 And so we want to make sure that not only do they
07:14 have job opportunities here, but if they
07:15 want to go abroad and study in Japan or work in Japan
07:20 or work in Ghana, they can do that
07:23 by first having their passport and learning
07:24 how to be a global citizen.
07:26 And why Ghana?
07:27 Ghana specifically has a really close,
07:30 I want to say, historical and heritage connection
07:33 to the founder of our organization.
07:35 His name is Brian Booker.
07:37 And one of the things that we've really looked to do
07:39 is go to a place and space where they're investing
07:42 in entrepreneurialism.
07:43 They're investing in being an expat.
07:46 They understand that there are people
07:48 who are interested in coming from the United States
07:50 that not only want to learn about Ghana,
07:52 but want to travel there because they have job interests,
07:56 that want to invest in new economies.
07:58 Today, I know that there's a part of the summit where
08:01 we're talking about investing in Africa.
08:03 Well, how do you do that?
08:04 And I feel like Ghana's done a really great job,
08:06 the tourism agencies and the like,
08:08 of tapping into students, entrepreneurs,
08:11 saying, "Hey, come and invest with us.
08:13 "Join us and learn about those opportunities.
08:15 "Learn how you can actually live and work in Ghana
08:17 "and establish your life here."
08:18 So those level of connection points
08:20 have made it really easy to have partners there
08:22 that support that effort.
08:24 - You know, I love that you guys do that
08:26 because we don't always think of places like Ghana
08:29 when we're thinking about those opportunities.
08:31 - Yes, think global, you know,
08:33 or even just, they have enterprises no different
08:36 than we have here.
08:38 You know, they have Google there.
08:40 You know, there was a Twitter office
08:42 at one point in time now called X there.
08:44 So they have growing economies of interest
08:48 that you could live and work here for a company,
08:50 but what if they said, "Hey, we'd like you
08:52 "to do a special project for us there."
08:54 How do you go about doing that
08:55 if you don't even have a passport as a starting point?
08:57 So we work with the kids in understanding
09:00 how to be a global citizen,
09:01 but also to prepare yourselves,
09:03 workforce development that might not just be here
09:05 in the United States, it might be elsewhere.
09:07 - It might be elsewhere. - It might be elsewhere.
09:08 - Yes, indeed.
09:09 Well, thank you so much for joining me today, Dan.
09:11 - No, thank you.
09:12 Thank you for the opportunity, absolutely.
09:14 - Thank you.
09:15 (upbeat music)
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