 Hi, everyone. I'm Stephanie Paterick, Adweek's executive editor, and we are starting a brand new live show today. This is our first time recording. It's called Adweek Together, and the whole purpose is to have a moment in the middle of the day to just touch base about how we are all navigating the new normal. So we're going to have, you know, sort of a rotating class of hosts and guests starting with our staff. Today you can see I'm joined by Chris Arons, my amazing colleague. He is the managing editor of Adweek's newsroom and also the director of our visual newsroom. So he has a background in video, which is coming in handy right now. It is for all of us on multiple levels. Thanks, Steph. Absolutely. And you're going to be hearing from different staff members each day, just about what they're seeing sort of in their different areas, you know, how the coronavirus crisis is playing out on all of the beats that we cover and all of the industries that we cover and serve. I'll say too that we really are hoping to connect with you. We'd love to bring our readers and our viewers on as guests as well. So while this week we'll be starting with Adweek's staff, next week we'll be looking to, you know, sign you up to come onto this show and talk with us about how you're navigating this, you know, your agency and your brand and your tech company. And we're going to be sharing everything from, you know, the business implications of this to also very practical how you're handling working from home, as so many of us are now. I'll say that you might see a cameo from my three-year-old or my mini schnauzer today. Anything could happen. So Chris, you know, to start as managing editor of our newsroom, you have played such a pivotal role just in the last week of moving 50 journalists, you know, from our offices on Madison Avenue in New York, you know, into each of their homes and making sure that we were still, you know, serving readers. I can say last week we published 230 stories on adweek.com. About 130 of those were about coronavirus alone. And then we also put out a print issue in the middle of all this too. It came out yesterday. So Chris, what has that a very quick shift been like? How have you navigated that? Yeah, it's truly been a team effort. That term has been tossed around a lot these past few weeks. Technology has helped. Everyone has gotten up to speed on how we use video conference for Slack. Slack and the office was always sort of just a chat function. Of course, Zoom has played an important part in all of us getting together for editorial meeting every morning at 10.30. And then throughout the day, you know, we are already a remote newsroom in a lot of ways. We have editors across the country, important in Birmingham and reporters in Austin and Minneapolis. And so we're sort of feeling what they feel on a daily basis, all working remotely. But as you said, we did put out an issue last week. And I know you can talk a little bit more specifically about that. But it was it was a genius cover by Lisa Granitstein, our editor of taking a Zoom capture from a Deutsch New York Zoom conference as they were navigating their new normal. And then talking to experts from our different advisory boards at ADD, just for their take where last week was week one, this is week two, and it's going to be many more weeks from here on out for our company and for so many brands and agencies and tech companies. Everybody like that. Yeah, absolutely. No, I think just the story of how that story came together is pretty amazing. We had obviously, you know, we work weeks in advance on our print cover stories in particular. And we had a different story planned for this Monday, pivoted quickly last week and put out essentially, you know, a quick survey to, you know, several dozen, you know, CMOs, from agencies, from brands, and got back responses from 16 of them really fantastic real time responses about how they are again navigating this in the moment. So we heard from Martin Surrell, we heard from David Kable Shindani, a president of the McCann North America, Colleen DeCorsi with Wyden and Kennedy, Rob Schwartz with TBWA, so many people weighed in. It was just really, really great to kind of get their candor in the moment. One example, I'm actually pulling it up on my screen here, Davika from McCann was talking about how to navigate a crisis and she said that Churchill said, never let a crisis go to waste. And we aren't, we're more deeply adopting technology like Microsoft Teams and other new approaches to building culture remotely, which will allow us to emerge from this stronger. So I think that's kind of interesting just her pointing out how times of crisis really be moments when innovation accelerates, right? We all have to move faster, think on our feet. We mentioned, we ourselves have probably 15% of our journalists are remote all the time. And yet we've never used video conferencing. We always just do like a dial-in. And I've heard from so many of our remote employees about actually how amazing the last week has been because now they really feel connected, they can see us all on Zoom. And Chris, maybe you can share a bit about the cover as well. I think that that image has become so iconic. Yeah, in addition to that, but I'm gonna, Nick is producing this, he's behind the scenes actually cutting the shots in and out. The other thing that Lisa, Granice and her editor did in the magazine was an editor's letter. What she did is she took one of our Zoom happy hours that we did last week as sort of the cover art for that visual. And it just really shows how that kind of technology is being used across the industry just to be able to communicate. So that's just one of the ways. One of the other things that we started at ADRI pretty early on and a lot of publications also did this was just tracking how this story had developed. In late January or February, it was a health story. It was something that a B2B publication wouldn't necessarily cover. Well, that quickly turned by early February into something, yes, we're going to be covering this. So not how do we cover it. So by early March, we had a tracker that monitored all of the cancellations of big events, South by Southwest being of course the biggest one. And then it turned into the shutdowns and the stay in place orders, which affected just every business you can imagine, restaurants, businesses. And so the trackers been trying to update our audience on all of those sorts of things too, that retail stores closing restaurants closing, you know, whether they're mom and pop restaurants or the big chains McDonald's and etc. So that's all that's one way we've been able to sort of update our audience on a minute by minute basis of how it affects them, both as brands and agencies and consumers. And it is, I think you're hitting on something that I'm hearing from so many people is just how quickly the situation changes and the news cycle and our understanding of it changes. And I'm thinking back to, you know, the Monday after South by Southwest announced that it was going to cancel. And the team leaders in our newsroom all got together and we had, you know, like a long brainstorming session about just, wow, what is the fallout of South by Southwest cancelling and all of the activations that were supposed to happen, all the announcements that were supposed to happen, how our business is pivoting. And it's amazing that we've, you know, so that that seemed like a really big deal. And now to me, South by almost feels like a flip out here in New York, where we have this week, all non essential businesses, closing or moving remote. And so yeah, our trackers just one example of how we've had to keep, you know, evolving our coverage, what started as a cancellation tracker is now a broader economic tracker. Right, absolutely. And Robert Clair, who covers brands for us and has for many years had a great story last week about how some of these brands, they're not selling products, they're giving them away. Can you talk a little bit about that and what Robert brought to the fore in that story? So this was the second most popular story on our site last week. The most popular one was actually about how corn hubs traffic has changed as we've moved to a remote, you know, a work, a work from home culture. And as the work day has been disrupted. Josh Sturmburg wrote that one. Our second most popular story was about how brands, yeah, are really sort of using this as an opportunity to build goodwill with their customers. And so it gave examples of everything from, you know, Google allowing free access to hangouts, to a PR firm that opened up its supply closet and realized it had like, I don't know, 200 rolls of toilet paper, you know, they had a big stash of toilet paper. And I started handing them out, I think like on the side of the road. So it has been neat to see brands sort of taking it as an opportunity to superserve their customers. On the media side, you know, we've seen a lot of media businesses lifting paywalls or loosening paywalls so people can read coronavirus coverage. We ourselves are making all of our coronavirus stories, even ones that would have been premium free, you know, as long as you're registered on our site, you just sign up with the email address, you don't have to pay and you can read anything we've done about coronavirus. Because something on my mind too is just the medical front. I mean, obviously, it's come to light. Just how much our hospitals and our doctors are going to be needing help in the weeks and months ahead. For personal experience, I can tell you I'm like seven and a half months pregnant. And we just got word, you know, last night that one of the largest hospital groups in New York will not be allowing partners at birth. So that's really big news. And so, Chris, I know you've been kind of tracking this about how companies are stepping in to help with supplies. What are some interesting things that you've seen there? Yeah, so Ford actually put out both as chairman, Bill Ford and its CEO and president on the different morning shows this morning, talking about how, you know, they had to shut down their assembly lines as, you know, mandated or guided by federal government and their state governments. So what they are doing is they're turning over their assembly lines and creating, turning them into to making ventilators, which, you know, it's hard enough to make a car all the parts that go into that. But as the president Ford described this morning, it can be just as complicated to make a ventilator. But they're going to do it. They're partnering with GE. They're also partnering with 3M. So major brands wouldn't ordinarily necessarily be working together just to get more of these ventilators into the supply chain. And they figure by the beginning of June, they could be producing 100,000 of these up into the hospitals for as long as this is going to be going on and necessary. So, you know, this is where this is where we are now. This is where the big brands are stopping with, you know, manufacturing, stopping what they normally produce to sort of get us through this and get the hospitals and the medical facilities, the protective equipment and the medical equipment that they need. Yeah. I think I saw something just this morning about H&M. I believe it was offering to start sewing, you know, like protective gear and masks and things like that. So I'm hoping we'll see a lot more of that in the days to come. Christian Seriano is trying to create the masks. So none of the fashion designer, you know, designing red carpet outfits. He's trying to get his folks as safely as they can to be producing, you know, the medical masks. Right, right. And it's like the Met Gala is one of the many things canceled. So what else are you going to do? Also, you know, I'd love to talk about the creative side of this because, you know, I do think we are going to see, we're just starting to see, I think, agencies and creatives step in here and do some public service campaigns. What have you seen on that front? Yeah, Auto, which is a huge television advertiser just because I've been watching a lot of TV as a lot of us have over the last few days, not just streaming but broadcast television. Well, but big car companies are still advertising and they've customized their ads given the current situation. Toyota hasn't had out there sort of problems together, kind of feeling. I saw Hyundai Spot this morning, which actually mentioned COVID-19 in their spot saying, if you've been affected by COVID-19, we're here for you. And no one's going to be, I can't imagine a Hyundai dealership, at least where we are in the TriStar area that's open now. But at some point, there's going to be some good will out there from somebody who's in the market to buy a car. And they're going to perhaps remember this and then also take advantage of these incentives that might be available because we just, again, don't know, talking about the economic side of this, what the job losses are going to be, what the total economic losses are going to be. And we leave that to the CNBCs and the Fox businesses of the world. We'll cover the brands and the advertising side of it. But one of the other stories that we wrote yesterday, Katie Gunstrom, who's our reporter down in Austin wrote this pretty cute story about how some brands are having to affect just their logos in this time, and the Chiquita Banana logo, where Ms. Chiquita has gone home. So it's just the yellow that we know from Chiquita Banana without Ms. Chiquita. Coca-Cola, their iconic logo, script logo, which goes back to basically the founding of the formula in the late 1800s, separating the letters just to show separation, the separation of that value from each other is what's needed right now. Yeah. And we had a story in our creativity vertical yesterday about a spec ad. So it wasn't even an official ad, but that somebody did for Guinness where it's sort of a black background. It looks like a Guinness pint with a couch, the color of foam at the top. And from a distance, it really just looks like, you know, a glass of beer and you look closer and you realize it's a call to stay home. Which our creativity editor, David Griner, was like, if you're going to do a spec ad, you got to knock it out of the park. And these people really did. Yeah, 100%. Yeah. You know, some big news this morning just speaking about advertising is the Olympics decided to cancel. They had to be dragging their feet. I think as early as March 17th, you know, they were saying that they were still supportive of going forward with it. But the Olympic Committee and Japan's Prime Minister, you know, announced that they're going to postpone it for one year. And interestingly, in the summer of 2021, they will still call it the 2020 Olympics. That obviously is going to mean a lot of things for NBC Universal. They had, they had booked, I think, 1.25 billion in ad sales around it already. 90% of the inventory was full. And, and also I think they were, they were really planning their campaign around releasing the Peacock streaming service. Thank you for talking about this. Am I right? That's right. Absolutely. Yeah. And, and we'll do a little plug here to promote tomorrow's show. I know you're going to be bringing on Kelsey Sutton, who's our streaming editor, who can talk more about that. But just what streaming has meant to all of us as we, you know, start this sort of new normal being at home. Absolutely. And on, on that note, I want to ask you before we, before we close out today, you've been working from home a week now. Actually, no, you were, you were a trooper. You went into the office a couple of days last week. Last Tuesday, I went in and I was like, no, this can all be done from home. Yeah. Chris is going down with the ship. Anyway, I'm glad that you're home now. I'm glad that you're being safe. And I'm wondering what tip would you pass along after working from home for a few days? You know, I was thinking about this earlier today. And, you know, I've learned how to be a better listener, frankly, sounds a little schmaltzy. But, you know, when you're in the office and you have someone coming up to your desk, it's that eye to eye contact when you're going to someone's desk and you're talking to them. It's much easier to listen in that kind of situation. We're going to have to for the next couple of months, you know, sort of rediscover how we listen to each other. If it's on Slack, if someone slacks you and has a problem because they can't get into the Zoom room, how do you react to that? How do you listen to them? How do you coach them through it? So I'm sort of like, you know, keeping that manager hat on and get the entire team through it and just trying to reach out as much as we can. I don't know if you're doing the same thing. And just to be a better listener in new and different ways. Yeah, I love that so much. I do think I am finding that I'm having to be much more intentional about my interactions because when we're all in the office together, you can kind of walk through the newsroom and get a vibe and get a sense of how everyone is doing. And it's very easy to have quick conversations, you know, in the hallway or at people's desks. And being home, I'm realizing, you know, there's no way to know how everyone is doing and what everyone is working on unless we really are intentional about it. So for me, I think, you know, something that that I've been trying to do is have a schedule where again, just to be intentional where my mornings are about meetings, both group meetings and also one on ones. And I've been trying to check in with people, not even necessarily my direct reports, but just having one on one video chats with people. And that's been really helpful. And then my afternoons are more for creative and strategy time, you know, where I'll be writing or, you know, sort of prepping for our early morning strategy call the next day. And then in between, I take a walk. So anyway, well, great. I really, Chris, thank you so much for helping me kick this off today. And just for everything that you've been doing for our staff and for our readers. Thank you to everyone tuning in. It's really, it's great to have you here. We're going to be doing this at one o'clock, just about every day. So as Chris mentioned, tomorrow, Kelsey Sutton, who's our streaming editor and part of our TV team is going to join me to talk about, we'll talk about the Olympics, but also even bigger, if we're going to talk about, you know, what the streaming services are doing. This is actually a pretty key time for them as we are all home watching TV. And also just so you know, you can, you can find this a few places. So tomorrow at one, you can tune in on adweek.com. You'll see a story on our homepage that you can click through and just watch, watch this live right from our site. You can also watch it live on adweek's account on LinkedIn. And you can comment there too. So we'd love to hear from you. And then after it's recorded, it'll be posted on IGTV. So you'll be able, if you don't catch it live, don't worry, you can, you can still find it in three different places. One last thing I'll share is that we have an email account. It's adweektogether at adweek.com. And please write in and tell us if you're interested in being a guest. Let us know what topics would be useful for you, what questions you have. And we'll bring some of your questions and commentary into this show, you know, in the days ahead. So thanks so much again, Chris. Thank you, Nick behind the scenes. Thanks for producing and to all of our readers. Have a great afternoon.