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Jonathan Ernst on Staying Credible in the Age of AI Search · Expertly Said

• Kristen Sweeney: You're listening to Expertly Said, a podcast on the art and impact of communication. I'm Kristen Sweeney, founder and CEO of Every Little Word. My guest today is Jonathan Ernst, Deputy Director, Strategic and Digital Communications at Bayer. Jonathan is a storyteller at heart and an architect of brand authority by experience. For 14 years, he's navigated the evolution of digital connection from the rise of social media to the current frontier of AI. At Bayer, he leads the bridge between traditional narrative and emerging technology, ensuring their mission of health for all, hunger for none isn't just told, but is found, cited, and integrated in the age of large language models. With a master's in communications and media studies and a background spanning agriculture to higher education, to of course Pharma, Jonathan has spent his career creating award-winning branding and digital campaigns that drive measurable outcomes. Throughout this journey, he's been driven by a passion for community development and youth engagement, focusing on building meaningful connections that empower the next generation. When he's not architecting the future of digital strategy, Jonathan is a dad in the active pursuit phase, chasing his eight-year-old and five-year-old around the house, traveling with his family, or getting lost in a nonfiction book. Jonathan, welcome to the show. Jonathan Ernst: Yeah, thank you so much, Kristen. It's great to be here. Kristen Sweeney: really looking forward to this conversation. We have a lot we want to cover today. ⁓ My first question though is just what have you got against fiction? Jonathan Ernst: So I actually do like fiction, but it takes me a long time to like go through, you know, Kristen Sweeney: That's it for this episode of Expertly Said. We are produced by Every Little Word, a boutique content and communications agency. If you like what you heard, you know what to do. Subscribe, share the episode with a colleague, or leave us a review. If you want to connect with me directly, please do. You can find me on LinkedIn, just search Kristen Sweeney. Thanks for listening. Talk soon. Ha ha ha ha. Jonathan Ernst: Page book and I just really like the the facts and like learning about local history so much that I'm like, alright This is time that I could be spent on a nonfiction book about you know Route 66 or local st Louis history or sports history or something like that So that's kind of where I'm not doing that as much but I do like, you know fictional stories for movies I kind of like the shorter two hours three hour, know kind of time span that you commit to it so it's more about a commitment issue really then like a Kristen Sweeney: Yeah. Jonathan Ernst: not my cup of tea or other thing. Kristen Sweeney: Fair, fair, fair. We'll let you off the hook on that one. ⁓ So Jonathan, tell us a little bit more about kind of, we heard some of the contours of your career, your origin story. How did you make your way into digital? Was that an early starting point for you or did you start somewhere else? Jonathan Ernst: Yeah, for sure. So in terms of my journey, you know, so I grew up right outside of St. Louis, Missouri, in a town called Maplewood. And, you know, in terms of like my background, so my mom has paranoid schizophrenia. And so we were kind of a lower socioeconomic status. Maplewood is kind of a lower socioeconomic status town, if you will. And so, you know, I was always interested in science and technology. you know, because our school you know had that kind of population we were able to get a lot of grants from the state and from you know the federal government which is great so we really had a strong emphasis on science and math and so that really you know stuck with me I really loved that we also had a really strong English program too which is great and so You know, as I went through high school, you know, I was really interested in journalism and I was actually the editor of my school newspaper. And I was also really interested in science. So I did science research projects, mostly focused in engineering, you know, actually. So I was really interested in those kind of pieces. And so then when I was looking at universities, couldn't go too far because, didn't have all the funds in the world. But I went to St. Louis University, which was a good, you know, great university. actually got a scholarship called the Martin Luther King Jr. Scholarship. for diversity because of the socioeconomic status of going to SLU. And so I majored in communications and environmental studies, so kind of matching that science and storytelling aspect to it. And from there, was really able to get more experiences in telling great science stories. Ended up being the editor of the SLU newspaper for two years. So just really advancing the storytelling. I did an internship at the St. was Beacon, which is a ⁓ nonprofit newspaper that was all online. So it's former St. Louis Post-Dispatch editors from kind of when the dot-com boom, you know, hit all the newspapers and everything. And so I worked very closely with them and I was their science beat writer for about 18 months. So they kept me on even longer than just a normal internship. So was super great learning from them, great experiences at SLU, you know, being the editor. And so, you know, after that, my joke with everybody is that like I knew all of SLU's cigarettes because I was in the administration, knew all their stuff, so they were like, we have to hire him or he's gonna write about it on the other side. So my first job was actually at SLU and so I ended up. kind of taking on a lot of digital projects when I was there. So I was assigned to the School of Public Health and they were merging with their school of social work to create a new college. So I ended up doing like all the branding, all the digital, you know, media marketing, website, social media, the whole, you know, kind of spectrum. And so that's where I really grew my passion for like technology and like how to tell the science story through technology. So that has kind of carried me through my career, just those early interactions. SLU, the benefit of working there is you can get you know a graduate degree for free so it's like hey if somebody's gonna give out a degree you do it so I did it and got it you know communications master's degree in communication and new and emerging media so that's that's right there my capstone project was on credibility on Twitter on this was in 2014 so you know that's another thing I'm not interested in is like credibility and science information and that that's kind of leading up to some of the work you know that I'm doing now so that's kind of the background in terms of like how it led up to here. You know I worked at technology companies so I've been at you know higher ed as I mentioned I worked for a technology company that was interested in education you know providing educational software to higher ed. I've worked in the trucking industry in terms of like you know software for the trucking industry and then I transitioned to nonprofit so I worked for the St. Louis Science Center doing again science you know storytelling and connection and then Kristen Sweeney: Cool. Jonathan Ernst: after that experience, I got this job at Bayer working at corporate. So it's just kind of a very different experience now with working for a corporation. But it's been great to kind of use all of those things to kind of funnel into a digital communicator that uses technology and has science, uses that. And then also the community consciousness of it too, through my experiences with the socioeconomic status, with the MLK scholarship, a learning community. community I was in, bringing those different things to life now. So it's been great. Kristen Sweeney: Yeah, yeah, that's fascinating. know, we talked to a lot of folks who have a path that I would say is like agency to in-house. ⁓ But you've got such a broad range of industry experience in particular. What do you feel like that's ⁓ brought? Like, what have you kind of carried with you from being across industries? It's something I relate to as well. We, ⁓ at Every Little Word, we work with mostly B2B organizations, but in a wide range of industries. precision machining, you know, to financial services. Yeah. Jonathan Ernst: Yeah, I'm a my path has been pretty non-traditional I would say. You know a lot of my colleagues like they either grew up in corporate or they came over from like an agency as you're saying in the communication space. And so you know that was one thing I was a little worried about when you you jumped to you know like a big corporation. I I didn't even go to mid-level corporation I went into like a big global you know corporation. So That was a little concerning at first, but I think it really shone through how diversity and perspective is really valuable and how different teams really wanted me on their teams because I did have that diverse perspective from what they're used to hearing. And so that really helped me navigate early on and then has really led, I mean, six years later, everybody still collaborates with me, so that's great. everybody kind of wants that different perspective and I think that's really what is valuable in these kind of experiences is you're able to see like how does higher education work and in terms of higher education, well science in a corporation and higher ed, they're looking for the same thing, right? They're advancing our societal knowledge about a certain topic or subject area. It's the same thing. So when you're talking about LLMs and the things that we're doing with visibility and credit, ability, it's the same thing that higher ed wants to. And so, you know, how can we think about that in terms of like, how do we really deliver science for the entire society from higher education to corporations using technology? It all works together. So that's the perspective, you know, from that. And then from nonprofit, you know, how do we how do we open our doors and how do we let people in? So, you know, what a lot of what I do at Bayer too is a lot of community engagement, too. So I run the partnership with National 4-H organization with Bayer. We have a sponsorship and we also have an executive who serves on the 4-H board and so you know we try to open our doors whenever we can making those connections and really just helping those students navigate early career you know early you know or really getting great exposure to science early on so they can think about these things as potential for their career. So All these things kind of come together. Every time you get a new experience, it's just something else you can put in your backpack and take with you. So that's what I've always done. And so that's why it's been a ⁓ different path, but I wouldn't have it in either way. I love it. Kristen Sweeney: Yeah. Yeah, I feel that I love how you've articulated kind of what you've taken from each. I know I found myself that sometimes it was actually doing interviews like these that actually forced me to think about that. I have a background in theater and so I often get asked of like, how is that applied? And it was on some of these interviews live that I thought like, how? that applied. ⁓ But I agree, I think of it as like all in the soup, right? Like just kind of it's all part of that mix and the worldview you bring. I know for us when we're in front of, you know, a subject matter expert, and we may not, we're obviously doing a lot of preparation to get up to speed in that industry, but we haven't been immersed in it. I'm often able to draw connections from other sectors I've worked in other concepts I've seen before. ⁓ And Jonathan Ernst: ⁓ for sure. Kristen Sweeney: Sometimes it's like a heat check and the person I'm speaking with is like, actually it's not like that, but it is like this, you know, and sometimes it's like, oh yes, that's a very clean paradigm that you can use, but at a minimum it gives us a starting point to have a different kind of conversation where we can clarify. So I agree, I wouldn't trade my like wild meandering background for anything. Yeah. Jonathan Ernst: It's what makes you unique. It's something different to the table. Everybody brings something different. And you're right, it does spark those conversations and it gets people thinking in a new way. So I think it's ⁓ just great. Kristen Sweeney: Yeah, yeah. Knowing that you've been in a lot of different environments and you talked about obviously ⁓ in a much larger corporate environment now, I'm interested on your perspective on digital, which is so often seen as, know, needing like early adoption, looking out for what's next. And it certainly sounds like you're someone who's sort of looking forward to the next technology ⁓ in a space, an industry not known for its... quick turns and not asking you to speak to anything organization specific. But can you tell me a little bit about that maybe tension industry wide and how you navigate this wanting to push forward while also there's a certain conservatism ⁓ to the way that a large pharma organization might be able to change. Jonathan Ernst: Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think it's a challenge for science, for science industries. And so we're heavily regulated, right? In several different fields that we're in. so regulation is great because it provides barriers of protection. It gives us a standard operating way that we can all operate as a society. So those things are needed. Kristen Sweeney: course. Jonathan Ernst: The challenge that we have with this AI world now is that somebody can be, you know, really, you know, in their mom's basement and they can be staying up all night writing on Reddit and acting authoritative on certain topics that they really don't know anything about. And then if you're searching for that, the AI can grab that from Reddit and present it as, you know, it's gospel, you know, it's real. And so that's the challenge that we have is that at a time when, you know, missing from is running rampant out there and people can just, you know, you know, those actors that really just, you know, put that information out there. How do companies really move quickly and make sure that their information is out there and readily available? I mentioned higher ed earlier. Higher education, it's a system where, you know, we have professors that are adding new knowledge, okay? So they're adding new knowledge to a whole host of fields. Most of the things that they're writing about our journal articles that are behind paywalls. So LLMs cannot come in and scrape their information. And so the other thing is that the professors are writing in a style that's meant for their profession. Well, that's not everybody. So, you know, when I'm seeking out knowledge about a specific subject area, I'm probably not getting the information from the actual experts of that subject area. I might be getting things from Reddit or things from, you know, the unofficial sources. And so that's something that we have to think about and we have to address as a society is, you know, if we're going to advance science and advance innovation, how do we, you know, allow that information to be out there and provide availability to it, you know, for the public? And, you know, again, like as you know, there are more barriers to entry where, you know, bad information or information that's not maybe not as credible is just running rampant. It's really something to think about. And so, you know, the way that that, you know, I've thought about this is just, you know, how do we keep, you know, pushing the buttons and making sure that this is valuable work and, you know, what we do put out there is valuable. so, like, you know, as a, you know, science based company with one hundred and sixty year heritage, you know, we have a responsibility to put science out there, you know, in a new way, in a different way that people can really understand and, you know, they can question too. You know, it's like, here's, you know, here's what we're doing, here's the study, you know, and here's, you know, information about that. And then, you know, some professor at a university can add to that knowledge or, you know, vice versa. So it has to come into a system where we're, you know, we have guardrails, but also that we're comfortable to provide that context. Because right now, like you know a lot of things that you know like lawyers are worried about is the context that you share you don't want to mislead you know but the LLMs love context so that's it that's the balance that we have to strike is you know really getting that credible information out there in a way that's responsible but also a way that you know really is is leaner and faster than the person on reddit that might have another intention for putting that that content out there. Kristen Sweeney: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. What would you recommend from your own experiences and maybe successes in this area to communicators who are maybe looking to sell in a kind technology forward approach? ⁓ You know, I think a lot of communicators right now are still, what I hear is they're getting a mandate that says like, use AI. And they're like, we don't. Jonathan Ernst: Yeah, for sure. Kristen Sweeney: quite know how to use it most effectively, because we're not maybe getting the follow-up of how to do that. We're all sort of just given the mandate. ⁓ Everyone knows AI visibility is important, but they don't necessarily know what to do. Not everyone knows what to do about it, right? ⁓ So. Jonathan Ernst: maybe. Kristen Sweeney: if you're communicator in that position, which I realize is not your position, but what would you do, what would you recommend to help folks kind of bridge that gap, whether it's their own learning, of selling back into their organization, the need for additional resources or expertise? ⁓ Yeah. Jonathan Ernst: Yeah, no, think that's super important. think in terms of, you know, how we've... shaped as a society. So we saw this shift with social media. We saw these shifts with the 24-hour news cycle. It's kind of a continuation of that sort of shift in the industry. This is big. It is real in terms of how it's shaping communication. And so if you're not sighted on large language models, and so what I mean by that is if you're not sighted by chat ⁓ GPT or Gemini or these generative engine searches that you're getting where you get the summary besides clicking the links, you're really not visible. If your brand isn't visible, you're not credible. If you lose credibility in your own space, in your own industry, that has real implications for business. That has real implications for how society thinks about you, for your reputation that you've built over time. It is important that you have good information out there. First of all, it's good information. and it's real information as we just talked about. But also too that you want to show up as an authoritative source for that subject. And so if you don't, you will lose out. Your business will suffer. And there has been many examples of this. If you don't get ahead of the curve early, you're going to be behind the curve and you're going to be gone. Blockbuster had an opportunity to buy Netflix. You know, I mean that happened and they didn't. Yes, or Kodak. Kristen Sweeney: It's like the story of my generation, know, for sure. Jonathan Ernst: Kodak actually created the first digital camera, but they had a film business that was making billions of dollars. So they didn't scale the digital camera because they had a film business. Somebody else did. So if you don't do it, somebody else will. Your competitors will. Your bad actors potentially in your industries will. So there's a lot of competition for this credibility. And so... It really is essential that communicators and organizations are really thinking about this new frontier in a really strategic way. The other thing I would say is that your website is very important. Your website is now the number one tool for communications. It is. I know it's like, ⁓ yeah, we have a website. We have one of those. And it's like, OK, that's great. But like, Kristen Sweeney: So many people just cheered for Usain. Jonathan Ernst: you have to use it and we're using it in different ways too. So it's not just, you know, where you put up like fluffy marketing messages, like that was kind of website 1.0. It's like, okay, we're gonna be here. We're gonna put up like fluffy marketing messages. Like that's fine. Now it's really about factual information about what you do, what your industry is, how you do things, you know, so like, ⁓ you know, and so one thing that's great about, you know, this generative search is that it's new tool that we can use for insights. So it's a new way of thinking about what is our audience want. So you can get insights based on what people are searching. There's many different tools out there that you can use and you can find out what are people actually searching for. What's their search intention and that can drive your marketing strategy. That can drive your content strategy on how you deliver some of these things and that can really help too because if you're really focusing on what are the things that people are really interested in, you can go straight to your web content and then that will pop up in that generative search. That's really powerful. The other thing you like in psychological studies, like when people are curious, they're most likely to believe the first answer they get back. And then it takes two additional reference points to undo what they learned in that first, from that first reference. know, so Kristen Sweeney: I've seen something similar, not quite the same, but something that basically was talking about misinformation and saying even if you know and recognize it's wrong, your brain is more likely to retain it than you'd like to believe. ⁓ The wrong fact, yeah. Jonathan Ernst: And that's just, know, again, we, you know, we're a society that spends trillions of dollars on marketing every year, right? We do these logos and all, all that's for brand recognition. Well, it's the same thing. It's like, if you get that, that reference wrong, that's just one more decay on your brand recognition. one more decay. And so that's where I would say like, it is really important to think about websites in a different way. They are your most valuable communications tool now. I mean, it's very, very valuable. ⁓ It's more about like putting information out there. If it's not on your website, it doesn't exist. It really doesn't exist. I mean, that's just kind of how it is now. So I would just say like, you know, really keep advocating for it because like the implications for the business are very real in many different sectors. Kristen Sweeney: Yeah, yeah, definitely. love that. ⁓ I wanted to ask, I was like listening so much to my question. No, no, no, that's why we're here. This is the question I wanted to ask. How you are thinking about Jonathan Ernst: Get out of talking somewhere, sorry. Kristen Sweeney: Two questions. The first one is, and I love that you brought to this this lens of like risk mitigation and combating misinformation because I think especially when we think about like search visibility, we think of that sort of promotional, I put my brand out there. Jonathan Ernst: Yes. Kristen Sweeney: aspect, but what I'm hearing from you is there's also a sort of protective element to this of getting the right information to mitigate misinformation and making sure things are clear ⁓ so that the wrong so that users aren't getting like the wrong idea or having misconceptions about things. So I really like that framing that you brought to it. ⁓ The second thing I wanted to ask is how you're thinking about navigating the search visibility versus, ⁓ I guess, of like more direct user experience. So the one that's not filtered, you know, I think for years we've all, folks with a marketing or comms background where you land on a website, you see the wall of text and you're like, ⁓ this isn't for me. Nothing here is for actually for me. This is for a blue link in Google. ⁓ Jonathan Ernst: ⁓ yeah. Yes. Kristen Sweeney: So is that an integrated approach? Are you thinking of it as two separate pathways? What's that like look like for you as it's obviously evolving all the time? Jonathan Ernst: Yeah, it's a complete integrated approach and we haven't figured it out fully. I mean, as an industry, not just me, I don't think we've fully figured out exactly what it is. I do think we need to work more with the developers and IT professionals that we have too and making sure that we have components that work both for LLMs and for people too. I think a lot of the components that we use on our site or different sites I've seen, they work for kind of web 2.0. And don't know if they really work for like, I don't know if we're at three or four at 17 at this point. It's something like that, but the new version, you know, it's like, we kind of need to think that through a little bit more. So what I'm noticing is that pages are getting longer. And so, you know, that can be more difficult to navigate. What we've done is, you know, we've kind of created more Q and A information. So again, like, you whenever you can answer people's questions directly. So you're taking that like search intention and then you're answering people's questions Kristen Sweeney: Right, right. Jonathan Ernst: directly and with a response that's like, you know, one or two sentences. That's really great for LLMs. That's like fuel for them. Kristen Sweeney: Mm-hmm. Yep. Jonathan Ernst: That's great, but then it increases your pages. And then the problem is too, that like accordions, you so those little drop downs, know, are things that we kind of used in classic web design to like shorten the pages. LLMs can't access that because they can't click. They can't perform an action. They just like the HTML. They just like the words. And so that's challenging too, because I have to open up all my accordion items for the LLMs to come in. So it's just push and pull between, you know, what's a Kristen Sweeney: Hmm. Yeah. Jonathan Ernst: user experience for the humans but then also you know what's this great user experience for the LLMs to come in it's great my page and so I things that I think about you know how to optimize these things are you know maybe we have you know tickers on pages where you know we're updating the page with with just a sentence you know and it's just a sentence update so for instance like you know if you have a community impact page for you know for your corporate website let's just take that as an example and you have a community impact page. Well, besides writing a press release or writing a story for every single engagement that you have, why don't you just add a sentence or two into a ticker type of item? You'll still get credit for basically doing that community activation. It'll show up in large language models, but you also just are really keeping the page fresh and updated. So it's things like that. where we're gonna have to have this balance of like, you know, the user experience with it, getting the updates, and then also keeping the content fresh. we can't, so what we used to do on websites is we used to just create pages, right? You just create pages, you have a big menu, all these things. Well, now with LLMs, you have to keep your content fresh. You have to, there's no option anymore. And so like what the LLM will do is that if you ask it a question, it will, it's trained to go, to most recent information for that. If it doesn't find that answer to the question, it will go to the next reference point, which could be older, but then when it pulls the older reference point, it will then present it as new information. And that's a problem because then it's taken out of context. So it's really important that we keep all of our pages fresh. So what we're trying to do is consolidate the number of pages that we have and do a better job of updating more quickly. We're less of a public publishing house than we used to be, you know, in terms of that. So that's where it's tough that even like old press releases, you're thinking about how those work differently now because, know, so if you put out a press release, for instance, about, hey, we have this lab opening, you know, and we do it in 2022. OK. And I have no information about this lab anywhere else on my website. And you ask LLM about what we do in the site or where this area, it'll pull that old information from 22 and say like, Kristen Sweeney: Yeah. Jonathan Ernst: the lab is open. Well, the lab's already open, but the LLM doesn't know that. So that's how we have to think differently, is like every press release you have to now follow up on in different areas of your website too. So hopefully that's a long-winded answer, but there's a lot to consider with web design, web development in the future. It's crazy how much progress we've made, but crazy how much progress we have to make to really make that great. Kristen Sweeney: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah, no, not too long at all. I really appreciate your getting into the details of it. I'm such a strategy mindset, but also like operations focus at heart, which is like the devil is in the details. Like this is, you can talk about it all day long, but it's these kinds of small decisions, which in and of themselves are very strategic that actually determine the success. of an initiative and whether something gets over the finish line and has the intended impact. So appreciate all the specifics there and kind what you're thinking about on the leading edge. ⁓ I want to transition us now to our one big idea. I think we kind of have two big ideas, right? We spent a lot of time on this ⁓ topic of AI search and LLM search results. ⁓ But I also want to talk about, you mentioned ⁓ youth engagement and community engagement. And I'll be honest, that was something I was kind of surprised to read about in your bio because I had come into our conversation knowing you're like the digital guy, right? And so ⁓ I'd like to start from more of a personal perspective. Like what does it do for you as a maybe balancing element in your career and in your role to ⁓ be focused on? on this kind of ⁓ community aspect. Jonathan Ernst: Yeah, for sure. And especially like as a digital person, like everybody just kind of like assumes like you're just, you know, in front of a computer all day and just like typing or, you know, doing coding or whatever you're doing. I think it's important for people to be community conscious. And so that's where I think like, you know, my experiences have led me to, know, so like, you know, the mental, you know, aspects of my mom's, you know, situation, you know, definitely gives you a perspective about, you know, what does it mean to, you know, really, you know, think process information in terms of your brain. So that, you know, that kind of piece. But then also too, like, you know, how we can help other people that need help in our areas. And there's always people that need our help or our expertise or thinking about different things. And so as I progress through my career, I've always had this community conscious aspect to how I go about it. And it's really where I try to volunteer my time or I try to really show up big. If we're showing up as a company for something, it's like we really lean into this because it's very important for the society or for the community that we're serving. that's where it is. It's a big passion point, but it also leads to strategy. I really am a big believer that like doing good is good for business and how you show up is who you are. You know, I really am a big believer of that. And so I think the more that like, you know, more professionals can be community conscious, I think that really strengthens your organization and makes you different. And I also think like it makes you feel good. I mean, you're really you are making an impact that's just beyond the numbers and the, you know, the words that Kristen Sweeney: Yeah. Jonathan Ernst: we put on a page. Kristen Sweeney: It's convenient that it works that way, isn't it? That doing good makes you feel good. It's like a very smart ⁓ biological wiring mechanism. Jonathan Ernst: It is, is for sure. then like, you know, just a couple examples to that, Kristen Sweeney: Yeah. Jonathan Ernst: Well, you know, as I mentioned before, like a lot of work that we do with like 4-H organization. you know, after the pandemic, students are really, you know, feeling more anxious than ever. You know, we call it kind of like the anxious society or the anxious generation, I think is what we call it. And so, you know, what 4-H is trying to do is they're trying to do an initiative called Beyond Ready, where they really make sure that these students are prepared for these next steps in these careers. And, you know, with AI and all these different things, you know, it's a really skill. Kristen Sweeney: Yeah, yeah. Jonathan Ernst: based industry now. All of our professional lives are more skill based than ever. So that takes a lot of maturity, it takes a lot of intention of how do you navigate through developing and being intentional about your skill development. So if we can help these students earlier on identify skills that are important for the future and things that they can foster, that's going to help us later on as ⁓ a company, as an industry, and as a society. I mean, it's really important that these young people are prepared for their next step. And so that's a great organization that I love working with. We also do a lot with the FFA as well, Future Farmers of America. And so it's really helping to connect all these students that are in these rural areas to these global experiences that we have at our company or we have just in our communities. And so that's a great organization to help out at. Kristen Sweeney: Mm-hmm. Jonathan Ernst: You know, I was ⁓ actually just in, you know, with any New Jersey with the LaGrant Foundation as well So it's a diversity, you know scholarship that they give for communications, you know So it's really communications professionals from like, you know, Harvard Yale Duke and it's like ⁓ geez like okay guys calm down, know But like it's really great to see these students come in from all over the country and they're having these discussions about like You know, what what does like technology look like in the future? What does science look like in the future? How do you actually scale it? How do you actually bring it to life. Those are really exciting things. So these bring up things for our business too. So we get something back too because it gives us a perspective that's different than what we had before. again, it's good for business. It makes you feel good. And it helps with connecting with who you're really talking to. So I just love it. I love that piece of it. Kristen Sweeney: Yeah. Yeah, that's really cool. ⁓ How do these efforts tie into, maybe not directly to AI search, but to some of the digital aspects? Can you talk about any connective tissue that's there? Is it part of the same ecosystem? Do you think of it as quite separate? Jonathan Ernst: think about it as all the same to be honest. like, you know, it's ⁓ It's really about you know showing up at the end of day right like you know when you're you know working in communications You want to show up right so know you want to show up in the answer box? But you also want to show up in the community too, so you have to think about it It's like it. know people are gonna post about your organization So they're on LinkedIn or you know they're on ⁓ Tiktok or Facebook or any of these different platforms that we use and they're gonna post about your organization positive things. That's great. That's always helpful. That helps with that word of mouth, that helps with that building of culture internally, that's so important. that's one piece of it. And you see that in a digital space. We see that back in a digital space. Also, when we as leaders at these brands, when we can be out in the community and we can really share that on our own channels and give our own perspectives on these things, that's always good. good. It expands our networks, but it also expands the reach of the company to making those different partnerships as I mentioned too. that's where I see it really all connected. The other thing too is if you type in, do they do in this region? What do they do in Atlanta or St. Louis or Cincinnati? You can really see all the community relations work that they do because that's what people want to know. What are you doing to help us as a society? you show up. That's really people want to know, you know, with these bigger companies. And so again, like it's all tied together, you know, and I will say like when we do that for us, like our 4-H work like comes through tenfold, you know, our FFA work like really shines through. So that's that's always great to see that, you know, popping up because it helps the organization and also, you know, helps us to that like our passion is showing we're not just this faceless company. We are we're real people, you know, we have hearts and we care and we're reaching out. Kristen Sweeney: Yeah. Yeah. Jonathan Ernst: That's always good. Kristen Sweeney: And that's something that I so consistently, mean, all of my guests are very passionate about what they do, but to a person, think, like healthcare or pharma, there is a real commitment of wanting to help. And sometimes that's very, very direct work, in the case of maybe like patient advocacy groups, and sometimes it is... you know, the journey's a little, looks a little bit different or it's a couple, you know, I don't want to say layers removed because what you're describing isn't really removed at all, but ⁓ different journeys ⁓ in being able to do that. But there is that commitment to like really wanting to help people, ⁓ whether it is, you know, patients ⁓ with a specific condition or as you said, like preparing the next generation. I love what you talked about. ⁓ about kind of like the conversations being facilitated around technology. I think when I, and my kids are much younger, so I'm not in that space of, know, I'm dealing with sort of the uncertainty of how is AI gonna reshape our society and our workforce and the kind of work we do. I'm dealing with that as a mid-career professional ⁓ who has already acquired a lot of knowledge. I think of younger generations and I feel some just... trepidation and that uncertainty sort of you know, multiplied significantly. But I love hearing that ⁓ there are avenues in which those questions are maybe not being tackled with fear, but just with curiosity and excitement and what comes next. Jonathan Ernst: One more piece to that too, let's bring it back to AI for a second too. AI can do a lot of great things. The one thing I always tell people to skill up on, to skill up on, is really your human edge. It can't decide based on data when to take a risk, when to reach out, when to do these things. The strategic decisions are still very important. Our human lens really helps strengthen that. Because at the end of the day, communications, marketing, you're all just connecting with people. really what we're doing. so that human edge really allows you to connect with people in a very real and authentic way and that is super valuable, know, especially these days. Yes. Kristen Sweeney: Yeah, both digitally and in person. Yeah, awesome. Jonathan, thank you for that conversation. I'm going to move us now to our lightning round. So this is the last word. Every guest gets the same five questions to answer. Are you ready? All right. Question number one, what is your favorite word to say out loud? Jonathan Ernst: Yep, let's do it. Let's try is my favorite word right now because it kind of it's like safe to try you know so it's like with all these different tools and all these different things it's like you know let's do it let's dive in let's try if we're going to fail let's do it quickly and let's move on and let's find success so let's try. Kristen Sweeney: Is this? Knowing the ages of your children is this from Sesame Street. Jonathan Ernst: It might be a little bit, especially my five year old does like Big Bird a lot. Yeah, like, and he's a very messy eater, so he's like, all right, let's dive into it. But I'm sure it's some of that coming out too. Kristen Sweeney: They've got the I wonder what if let's try. Hahaha Nice, nice. Question two, what's a word you know from reading but you are not sure how to pronounce it? Jonathan Ernst: So in the field of communication, there's a word for the study of like interpretation. And so this is becoming really big with digital because, you know, as we have more AI generated content and generated imagery, it's really interesting to see how like people are interpreting these different things and like what is real. So the word is ⁓ her-man-uc-us, man-uc-utus, man-uc-utus. See, it's really hard. It's, it's H-E-R-M-E-N-U- E-U-T-I-C-S. So it's a really hard word to say out loud, but like it makes, yeah, yes, I see I can't even say it, but it's a great word for like where we are right now and it's like interpretation. So. Kristen Sweeney: her hermeneutics? is it hermeneutics? yeah yeah yeah okay Yeah, well if you're lucky maybe you'll get a few more chances to ⁓ going forward. What's a phrase or saying you wish could be retired for good? Jonathan Ernst: If you do a cast on it, yes, exactly. So I don't know if I wish it, but I think I predict that it will. So writer's block. My prediction is that in five years, we will not have writer's block as a phrase at all in our society. Because as we use AI for the blank page, you can start the blank page with AI, you can refine things with AI, writer's block just won't exist. Kristen Sweeney: ⁓ interesting. Interesting. I'll follow up with you in five years and see where we're at on that. Jonathan Ernst: Yeah, exactly. You know, my I told somebody I was like maybe 10 years, but I was like, I'm thinking it's sooner than that because it's like these things are moving so quickly. It's crazy. Kristen Sweeney: Yeah, yeah. What's a communication practice or principle that's non-negotiable for you? Jonathan Ernst: So I think it's really like strategies that are not based in data that really like, we have so much data nowadays in our society and pulling from different things. Really not having that data as a base for what you're trying to do or your strategy and still going with like, ⁓ this feels good or that looks right. That's where you have to have it based on data, especially nowadays when people's attention are so varied in many different ways, especially in digital too. like the other thing with digital is that physical is becoming very important in terms of like how it influences digital. So it's like some companies are thinking about physical activation that then turn into digital content. So that kind of marriage between like the physical and the digital is gonna be really important and data is gonna how is how we navigate it. So data has to be included in everything. Kristen Sweeney: Great. And what's the last thing you read, heard, or watched that really stuck with you? Jonathan Ernst: So my kids, they're eight and five, as we mentioned before. So they're really big into Superman. And so one of my favorite shows growing up was Superman the Animated Series. And so I have the DVDs. So it's like, all right, we're gonna watch this. Well, one episode that's really relevant to what we're kind of working on nowadays is the pilot episode. So basically Superman's father, Jor-El, is a lead scientist. He has data. He's saying to the Kryptonian council that the planet's gonna explode based on my data. They ask Brainiac, who's the AI for their society, and Brainiac says the data is not sufficient, he is wrong, it's not gonna explode, nothing to worry about. And so the council sides with Brainiac and they don't listen to Jor-El, so Jor-El sends his son to Earth and then Krypton explodes. So it's really interesting parallel, yeah, ⁓ like a kids show. This is a kids show, great. Kristen Sweeney: Yeah! Jonathan Ernst: Brilliant writing brilliant writing by these writers, but like Brainiac is really relevant to us because Krypton was a society Thousands of years ahead of us. So you have to think like oh, they're more advanced, but they lost something when they had Brainiac they lost something so we have to make sure that like as we advance and we adopt these new technologies that we still maintain some of these things and we have to be more intentional about maintaining some of the things that we have as humans than we have been in the past. So that's, love that animated series, but that was something I was like, ⁓ my gosh, this is so relevant to what we're dealing with. Yeah. Kristen Sweeney: Yeah. Wow, how prescient. Yeah, absolutely. Jonathan, thank you so much. This has been a great conversation. If our guests want to, or our listeners want to learn more about you, where can they go to find you? Jonathan Ernst: Yeah, so definitely connect with me on LinkedIn. It's, you know, Jonathan Ernst and then it's jernstmedia at gmail.com. So feel free to connect with me. I'm happy to do it. I'm not the Jonathan Ernst that's like a White House photographer. So there's like a professional photographer for the White House. So if you Google me, you'll see like pictures of the White House sometimes. And it's like, okay, it's a joy strain. I mean, it's beautiful, but it's like, I'll take it. But worse things to be known for. But yeah, just. Kristen Sweeney: Good to know. Hahahaha Jonathan Ernst: you know, definitely connect with me and I'm happy to follow up on any conversations. Kristen Sweeney: Thank you so much for being here today. Really appreciate it. Jonathan Ernst: Yeah, thank you so much for the invite. It's just great talking about some of these, you know, aspects to it. Hopefully, you know, some of the listeners are inspired by some of this and not fearful of different things that are coming. And, you know, just take care of everybody. Kristen Sweeney: Thank you.