Beloved Brands

The new year is here, and Marketing Maven Shanita Akintonde invites all marketers ready to capture the hearts of consumers to listen to her latest podcast and learn how to do it! @McGrawHill @ProfessorShanitaAkintonde #MarketingInsights #BelovedBrands

Marketing Maven Shanita Akintonde personifies passion and purpose.  With over two decades of strategically-honed leadership experience as a professor and marketing executive, Shanita has transitioned over 10,000 students from her classroom to the boardroom.  She is an author, newspaper columnist, and certified professional speaker who serves as President of ShanitaSpeaks, LLC, a company that energizes clients to predict marketing trends, identify niche audiences and effectively communicate measurable outcomes, all of which she spotlights as host of the #1-ranked Marketing Insights podcast series.

Podcast Transcript

Transcript

Shanita Akintonde:

Greetings and salutations. It's yours truly, Shanita Akintonde, educator, author, career coach, and marketing shero. I am peppermint patty pumped and candy cane cute, ready to bring you this latest edition of my Marketing Insights podcast, this one entitled Beloved Brands. Now, before I delve into this topic further for this special edition of my Marketing Insights podcast, allow me to give you a little bit of context.

Shanita Akintonde:

For starters, y'all know I wasn't going to let 2022 end without you hearing from me and getting my scoop on what I think were the trends for this last year, as well as what I see moving forward, right? Secondly, even though some of you can't see me, although I encourage you to go back and look at this video, I am dressed for the occasion as I am wearing the color of love, and on the front of my sweater is a heart-shaped insignia that signals my love for this podcast series, my love for each and every one of you, Marketing Maestros, and my love for my ability to come on these podcasts regularly and share my expertise with all of you as it pertains to marketing practice, communication practice, and all the other ices that go into what we do.

Shanita Akintonde:

So let's delve into it. This podcast, Beloved Brands, came to me in a dream. I was thinking about what are some ways, what are the connective tissue points that we as marketers need to understand in order to continue to do what we do even better moving forward? What came to me was this idea that I've shared in past podcasts that is really about the heart/mind connection. In other words, the EQ, not the IQ, that consumers use when they are connecting to their brand loves. Consumers are building their paradigms, they're going out and making their purchasing decisions, they're doing all of these things based on a premise called loyalty. We know all about that. If you haven't familiarized yourself with it, where have you been? But go back and listen to some of my previous podcasts such as Selling the Sizzle, AEIOU, The Language of Brands and others.

Shanita Akintonde:

But back to this podcast. What I'm saying is the 80/20 principle applies to 80% of consumer decision making processes being based on emotion and 20% based on intellect. To take that even further, what it means is that we are driven by our hearts. We are driven by those things that guide us from an emotional perspective, not willy-nilly, not frivolously, not because we're not serious about the purchases that we're making, but it is something intuitively in us that tells us when we are making a good decision. And when we happen to be wrong, which can happen, in which we don't make a decision that is based on what we really need because we've gotten caught up in emotion, then what we have is buyer's guilt, buyer's remorse, and we have no problem taking those presents, those gifts, those items back. For this holiday season if someone purchases something for you, for example, that falls into that category, please do so with grace when you return it to them, do it with love. Let's hope that people when they're giving things to us are doing it from their places of appreciation for us, so we should do the same if we have to return it, but hopefully I'm not talking to nobody in my family because I told them already what I wanted. I told them where to go to get it. Actually, I gave everybody a list, but that's another conversation.

Shanita Akintonde:

So when you look at beloved brands on this podcast episode, I'm going to share it with you under the umbrella of four tenants, one, two, three, four. I'm going to outline them for you specifically. I'm going to unpack them so that when you leave the podcast, you can go and readily apply them and hopefully, as I said at the onset, this is something that can bolster you in 2023 to jumpstart your own marketing campaigns. The last thing I want to say about it before I move on is because beloved brands does sound pretty and nice, but y'all know me and my acronyms, from here in I'm going to call them the BB brands. The BB brands, or actually that's redundant, so I'll just call them BBs as in beloved brands abbreviated to BB. A BB, a BB, a BBBBB.

Shanita Akintonde:

Okay, here's point number one. Beloved brands understand this idea or premise that sometimes they have to shift their prices. Especially now during the holiday season and as we jumpstart 2023, sometimes doing an evaluation of pricing or offering consumers a discount of some sorts can be a way that you can make yourselves even more beloved or, check this out, attract new consumers to you who may not be on top of it.

Shanita Akintonde:

So let me unpack this further. The way it works is this, you start off by taking a strategic look at your competitors, see what their price points are, take a step back further, look at what your price points are and what your needs are from a cost perspective because you don't want to discount so much you discount yourself out of business, but you offer a discount in a way that's conducive to you being still a viable brand, product, good or service, as well as giving a treat, so to speak, to your consumers, especially your loyal consumers. By doing so, you've made everyone feel good and what you may have also done with that group I mentioned before who don't know anything about you, you may have attracted a new consumer group that you wouldn't have had before.

Shanita Akintonde:

Now here's where it gets tricky. You want to be cognitive of something that I call the price value correlation. My students know that I talk about this ad nauseum. It's one of my favorite things to tell them. So let me share with you. The price value correlation, the way I see it works as follows. When you have a price set for a product good or service, the value for said product, good, or service needs to match. In other words, if I am a consumer looking at you, looking at the price, you're charging me for something, then I've got to feel that the value that I am receiving for said product, good, or service is in sync. I have to feel as though you are not trying to pull the wool over my eyes or pull the heart out of my chest. In other words, I need to feel that you're not trying to take advantage of me. Sorry for that last one. That was a little gross. I don't know why I said that. Y'all know what I mean though, right? Not literally pull your heart out of your chest, just like off the sweater like I'm wearing.

Shanita Akintonde:

Anyway, the point is when you have that consideration in mind, when you're thinking about how to adjust your price, it usually matches and therefore the consumer feels like they are getting a bonus. And what consumer doesn't want to feel like they are the smarter one, that they're getting a good deal, that there's some kind of, again, reward that is being offered to them. That works. When it gets out of sync is when the price is maybe too low, so you devalue what the service, good, or product is that you're offering or it's too high where people look at you and say, "What are you trying to do? Gouge my eyeballs out." Oops, there I go again. Scratch that. You all get what I'm saying.

Shanita Akintonde:

We are talking about not taking advantage of consumers. So here's the story analogy I use in my classes. I tell my students, pick a car, a vehicle of any sort. A new one though. So now we'll say 2023. Luxury. All of you listening or watching, think about it. See this car, see this vehicle in your mind, close your eyes and envision it. See the external pieces of it. See the internal pieces of it. What does it look like? Let me pause for the cause here and tell y'all something funny. I'm not really a car person, I know what they are obviously, but I don't get into them like that. I can't tell you the brand of a car driving down the street necessarily. And my husband and I went shopping for my car a couple years ago.

Shanita Akintonde:

I have a nice car now. It's a new car and when we went shopping for it, I referred to the things on the tire as hubcaps. I don't know what happened but everybody in the whole dealership like cracked up and fell out on the floor like for hours. Apparently they're not called that. I'm sorry, y'all, I didn't know. Anyway, back to this podcast. So whatever car vehicle that you're seeing, sans hubcaps, think about how much it costs. I'm sure it's several thousands of dollars. If you're on the luxury end of things, high end, sound system's great, all of that jazz, it's going to be pretty pricey most likely. But if someone offered you that same vehicle and said you could have it for $500, what would your response be? Well, when I ask my students, they often look at me and say without exception of maybe one or two, "What's wrong with it? Why you only selling it for $500? There must be a defect."

Shanita Akintonde:

That is the way that mental shift happens for us as consumers, if something is too lowly priced and we know in our heart of hearts it should be a lot more. Okay, so let's flip it. Say I offer you this orange because I'm at home and you all can see me. This orange here came out of a pack, but say this individual orange, I said for you, $500 for this. I want you to pay me $500 for this orange. I mean, it's sun kissed or something. It's off the trees of Florida. I'm in Chicago. It's like below... It's like negative six here right now in Chicago actually. It's negative, that's beyond cold. So you can't get this necessarily. If those of you who are living in Florida or California or somewhere else warm, you can just walk out in your backyard and pick one of these babies. But for us, we can't. So 500 bucks because you really love oranges, you're fiending for one. Here you go. 500 bucks. Now, what would you say to me about that?

Shanita Akintonde:

Probably the same thing that you said but in reverse. "Are you crazy? Why are you trying to charge me $500 for that orange? I'd really pay you a thousand." No you wouldn't. You'd pay me like 50 cent, maybe a dollar. So you get it. The price value correlation works on both ends of the spectrum. If something is too lowly priced, you go, "What the?" And if it's too expensive you go, "How the?" So when we are looking at beloved brands, they understand the importance of having the idea in the consumer's mind think with the idea that they are getting the value for their dollar. Nothing more, nothing less. In addition, beloved brands also know that they have to be careful because two things can occur. That group of people that I mentioned were coming over because they hadn't heard from you before and now they do because they heard about this discount you're offering.

Shanita Akintonde:

Well, you don't necessarily count them to stay with you. They may just get that discount and run back over to wherever they were originally, and that's okay as long as you don't factor them in too much into your loyal customer base. And speaking of loyal customer bases, in the process of discounting or trying to attract new consumers, which we're going to talk about more in a minute, don't forget about those who've been loyal to you. They are your priority, right? So while you do maybe want to attract new folk, the current consumers need to stay top of mind. Which brings me to point number two, keeping consumers top of mind and attracting new consumers simultaneously. The plot thickens. BB brands understand that they need to be able to maintain longevity to stay on that Maslow's hierarchy of needs, which you all have heard me talk about also in previous podcasts.

Shanita Akintonde:

We know that at the base are the physiological needs, and at the top is self-actualization and somewhere in the middle is all that love and belonging and all that awareness stuff. And so what BB brands get is that they're kind of shifting up and down that pyramid all the time. But in so doing, they understand also that they've got to maintain the primary group, what the secondary group can become new consumers and that tertiary group may be some combination they're in. All right, I don't want to get too jiggy in this podcast, so I'll come back to that probably in the future, but let me stay on this one. Point number two, BB brands and how they attract new consumers. Here's what I want to share with you all. Oh my gosh, I'm so excited. It's been a minute so I got a lot, so y'all bear with me because I've been waiting to get on this podcast, share this with you.

Shanita Akintonde:

All right, here we go. One of the ways that BB brands understand is key to connecting with new consumers is to offer them things that they are not currently receiving from their current loyal based products that they are affiliated with. The other thing that you can think about it, oh, this is getting real jiggy, is new consumers can be your current consumers who use your current products but in a new way. What? Let me say that again. New consumers can be current consumers who use your product, your current product, in new ways. So here's how it works. Regardless of whether they are in the primary category I just mentioned or that latter category group, if you take a brand such as... I'll use Beats by Dre. That's because I'm reading this current book, y'all, called 3 Kings by Zack O'Malley Greenburg, I think I'm saying that young man's name correctly.

Shanita Akintonde:

He's got a multi-hyphenated name, but the book is awesome. It tracks the progression from a hip hop, career base, business base, and entrepreneurship base of three top artists, Sean Puffy Combs, Jay-Z, and Dre. And in the book, this particular chapter that I'm going to reference now focuses on the product Beats by Dre. And if you don't know what Beats headphones are, where have you been? Beats headphones when they were launched were something that took the marketplace by storm. Let me do another pause for the cause here as well. One of the things that I'm really going to be focusing on more in 2023, although I've delved in it a little bit in the past years I've been doing this podcast, is this whole marriage of hip hop and marketing. It's something I've taught, I've created classes on this topic, it's something I currently and have for many years researched.

Shanita Akintonde:

It's something that I have always held near and dear to my heart because I've known before others, whether they be academicians or fellow marketers or somewhere in between. I couldn't get them to see the light, but the idea is there's some power in this that moves mountains, moves money, and moves Marketing Maestros. And so because of that, there'll be many more references if not full blown podcasts on this topic. So here's a little sound bite tease in this podcast, BB Brands. When the Beats by Dre product, back to that, were launched, they took the marketplace by storm because they were able to take what people were doing, listening to music, listening to headphones, and put them on steroids. Here are a couple of ways and why this is one example of a beloved brand. When Dre introduced the product, he was solely focused on sound quality.

Shanita Akintonde:

He is an engineer, a sound engineer, a producer, a rap artist himself, but he knows all about sound as many musicians do. But in his case, his ear was keenly tuned to making sure that we as consumers could experience that same feeling of euphoria, if you will, from hearing the music from these headphones. That's point number one. So as a beloved brand, what we need to do is want to put ourselves in the shoes of our consumers and have them experience things to the point of not just being okay, not just being okay, well, that's better. No, we want... You heard me use the word euphoric, we want to take it up to the mountaintop to the sky so that people are able to shout it and share it with others. Number two, what was happening before this is that people didn't see headphones as more than what their function was, which was to have us listen to music.

Shanita Akintonde:

What Beats by Dre did was transform that to not only a tool for us to hear music but also a fashion statement. It became a status symbol. So not only were you wearing these headphones which were supersized sockets on your head, it became a fashion statement. So even if they weren't plugged into any kind of sound cord, you still looked cool, you still wanted to wear them, you still were out flexing because everybody could see that you were wearing not just headphones but Beats. Which brings me to the next point. They came in different colors, they come in different colors. Similarly to Apple's product when they did the laptop computers, which I'm talking to y'all on now, by the way, the idea of color choice, of being able to personalize things as consumers is what beloved brands know like no other. They know we want to pick our own color palettes, that we want to have decorations, that we want to be able to share and express ourselves through brands and not have it be the other way around.

Shanita Akintonde:

And so when you bought your Beats by Dre, you got to choose how you were going to be reflective and reflected in the culture. And lastly, but certainly not least, the idea of this brand being introduced at such a high price point. When they came out on the marketplace, and I don't know if they still are considered to be top line, Beats, but I have bought so many of them myself. Look, not because I'm frivolous with them, but because that's a whole nother conversation. I'll tell you why I bought them later, but they're not cheap. They cost I think at least $300 on the low end and depending on if you get the premier ones, they can go up to $500, $600 if not more. But that price value correlation that I mentioned earlier can be real or perceived as well. And I didn't hear any complaints from those who drunk those dollars, myself included, for the product because the end result was that the sound is amazing.

Shanita Akintonde:

And credit goes back to Dre for that because what this book talks about, and you can research this on your own, is when Dre created this product along with others in his camp, he didn't just listen to hip hop music to make sure that sound quality was good, although that was probably the first genre he chose. There was rock, there was jazz, and he even listened to folks like Sade, who he wanted to hear the acoustics to make sure that no matter the genre of music that was coming through those earpiece, that the quality was equanimous. So that's what I'm saying to you, create the democratization of your consumer's experiences with the same template as beloved brands do. So it doesn't matter whether I'm in Idaho or Iowa, whether I'm listening to Dr. Dre songs or listening to honky tonk batonk, which I was listening to the other day too, because I like country now. No matter the case, the idea is the same that the quality needs to supersede the expectations even that your consumers have.

Shanita Akintonde:

Let's continue with this example. So you've got these headphones and back to me saying about attracting new consumers. So you may attract people over who may have been using other forms of headphones and now you've got them over to you because you're a beloved brand. Your beloved because you offer quality, your price isn't necessarily lower. Actually in this case it's higher, but because the experience makes up for it, you may get people to come over to your camp. Now here's where I want to go into what I said a moment ago about either you track people because you've offered something new or you've offered something new about the current product that your current consumers can get jiggy with. When you look at this example again of Beats by Dre also just known as Beats, right? Because we don't call it the whole name, who goes up to someone and says, "Give me your Beats by Dre."

Shanita Akintonde:

We just say Beats. But I just want to add that by Dre part because in case y'all forgot. He signed a quadruple, quadruple, quadruple, quadruple, quadruple million dollar contract for that. One of the best business moves by the way in recent times. But back to this, what happened is when you looked at the way they did what are called brand extensions, I know you know this, Marketing Maestros, because back to the product life cycle, four stages, intro, growth, maturity, decline. When you get to that maturity phase, which is step three of the product life cycle, before you go into decline, which is where your foot's on a banana peel and the other one's on the grave, you have an opportunity to resuscitate yourselves. How? By reinventing or reimagining, reinventing your brand. One way you do it is through product extensions, line extensions, added value, right?

Shanita Akintonde:

Y'all know all of this. So what Beats by Dre did was they decided to continue to build on the momentum that this foray and this marketplace had given them. So what do they do? They offer executive versions of Beats by Dre because you know those big old headphones look good on some folk, but if you're going to a meeting, you're a CEO, you don't necessarily want to have that look, but you still want the sound quality. You got to listen to that music to pump yourself up before you go in there, Dreams by Fleetwood Mac or something. So you have a different version of the same product. You might be that consumer who already has the big headphone version, but you're also a CEO. Guess what? You might go back and buy a second pair. What they also did was they decided that they were going to put the sounds, because that's what this is really about, into other products such as laptop computers who can have the Beats by Dre sound effect in the computer.

Shanita Akintonde:

They also, get this, added it to a certain Chrysler product. I believe it's a truck, don't quote me on that, but whatever the case, the sound system of the Beats is now in a vehicle. So the vehicle from what I understand is banging when you're driving that, listening to the music coming from the speakers, which are the same as you get from Beats. There are other examples that I could go into, but I'm still only on point number one. I got three more to go, but you all get the picture. You take a product such as that, you extend the brand, you attract new people, you retain new people because they use it in a different way and all is good in Hollywood.

Shanita Akintonde:

Okay, BB point number two. What we also know as beloved brands is there is something that has to be said to extend on this point of attracting new consumers is this. You can do it in a way, and this is another example that I use in my classes, which are to look at your current arsenal and just be more creative with your current product. So the last example I gave was about how you take your product but you basically recreate new products from it, such as going into the cars and going into the computers and the executive version of Beats. But what you can also do is make people use your current product differently in a different way. So one of the products that I am very excited about and I don't know why it took so long, is Frito-Lays, excuse me, it has a potato chip brand called Dill Pickle. Now, some of y'all don't know what I'm talking about. If you've not had these chips, I suggest you stop whatever you're doing right now, pause this podcast and go to the store and grab a bag of Dill Pickle chips.

Shanita Akintonde:

Now, that chip is something that my friends and I did in my neighborhood growing up on our own. We would take a bag of plain Frito-Lay chips or plain chips. Usually they were Frito-Lay but sometimes they'd just be plain chips. Stay with me because this may sound a little gross. We would take pickle juice because we all ate pickles. Something we in my neighborhood, we loved pickles. We would take pickle juice, not the pickles, but the pickle juices from the container. So say our moms had the pickles in the refrigerator, we would take the pickle jar, take the pickles. We didn't want the pickles, although we did eat them, but in this case we didn't need the pickles. We would pour the juice into a Ziploc bag. We would take these plain Jane potato chips, we'd open that bag, we'd take the pickle juice from the Ziploc and sprinkle it on top of the plain chips.

Shanita Akintonde:

Now, some people did it to the point that the chips were soggy, so they resembled soggy tissue. I know that don't sound appetizing. Some people would drizzle it or some people would put it somewhere in the middle. I was a somewhere in the middle girl. But if you understand what I'm saying, the combination of that juice from those pickles and the chips, I don't know what you want to call it, but we all did that and we loved it. Well, apparently word must have gotten back to Frito-Lay and now they don't... They've saved us the trouble. Plus it's not as soggy and they have these ships which remain crunchy, but I still love them. That is an example of how you take a product that people are already consuming and basically doing things on their own with, but you combine it and make it into something to make it easier for them.

Shanita Akintonde:

So I think that maybe correlates more with point number one because it is a new product because Lays has its plain and they've added the dill juice. But for some reason I thought it tied in to point number two when I was writing the podcast. But as I say it to y'all out loud, I think it may be more related to point number one, but allow me to continue. The second thing is, and this was a brilliant copywriter, I don't know what year this was, maybe the 1960s or so in which this particular copywriter decided that they were going to add a single word on the back of the directions of a shampoo bottle that was so incredible so again, ingenious, so awesome that it not only triplicated their revenue, quadrupled their revenue, took their revenue to another century. It was something that was so small yet so significant simultaneously.

Shanita Akintonde:

And for those who are my advertising aficionados, you already know what this is, but I'm going to share with you all on this podcast for those who don't know. The one word that was written is repeat. Repeat. So by writing that one word repeat on the back of the packaging of shampoo, that caused the consumer who also y'all should know, consumers are very good at following directions. Most times they'll do exactly what you tell them to do or ask them to do. In this case, wash your hair, rinse and repeat. And in that simple step, you are now going to double your consumption of shampoo. You're going to double your consumption of conditioner, you're going to double your consumption of whatever other product tells you to repeat.

Shanita Akintonde:

And that's what I'm saying beloved brands understand. The significance doesn't have to be because you go out and climb Mount Kilimanjaro's equivalent in the marketing landscape of the world. You just have to figure out ways to engage your consumers even more with the current products that they are using, right? I love that example. So let's continue. The idea of being beloved is something that we may take for granted. I mean, we talk about loyalty, but I think beloved goes beyond loyalty. BB brands are about people, as I've said in other podcasts, who drive both ways barefoot in the middle of a storm and don't care about the temperature outside or the fact that they may have to run around for miles to get their product.

Shanita Akintonde:

That is what being beloved is all about. Here is point number three of what BBs do to remain in the frame. They understand the importance of consumers being seen, being heard, and being believed. One example that I will delve into further in future podcasts comes from MasterCard. They have been masterfully dealing with their consumer demographic, particularly those from the ability challenged group. One of the things they've done with one of their product lines is they've put them into braille so that blind individuals who are MasterCard holders can have braille supplements interfaced on the surface of their products so that when they go to the stores or the various merchants to use their cards, they don't have the hindrance of having to navigate around that space in those disadvantaged ways. That's one example of something many of us don't even think about, but MasterCard has and they have a whole campaign surrounding it that's beautiful.

Shanita Akintonde:

Again, I'm going to delve into it further in future podcasts, but it warmed my heart when I heard what MasterCard was doing for the blind community, and I am a seeing person, and so I can only imagine what those who are members of the community must have felt. And that's another point I want to make. When you are doing things that impact members of communities and groups, even those who are not on the inside of those particular dynamics but are on the outskirts looking in, they also can feel a sense of appreciation for you, the brand, because they see what you're doing. It's the old adage that the rising tide lifts all ships, so that when brands do good in the world, when they give back, when they show that they are concerned, when they show that they care, then that in and of itself makes them beloved beyond compare.

Shanita Akintonde:

And that leads me to the final point of what beloved brands do understand and wield the power of. Because at the end of the day, Marketing Maestros, this is about the power of good. What we as marketers need to understand, and this is even more crucial as we enter into the next year and to the next foray of what we're going to be doing on the marketing front. And that is understanding that consumers today more than ever, are looking for the authenticity of brands and they're looking for the proof in the pudding. I've talked about this as well, but more importantly, they are looking for the opportunities to merge their own ideas, ideologies, and concerns, and considerations with said product, goods, and services as well. They understand that when you look at a brand solely as something to be consumed, that there is so much that's still left on the table.

Shanita Akintonde:

That's why when you take a product like Beats by Dre, which gives back to communities, which talks about ways in which music can be used to uplift humanity, it goes beyond just being headphones that people listen to to enjoy themselves. When you look at other products like the MasterCard example I just gave that understands that when you're a part of the seeing community, there's a whole other underworld, so to speak, happening around us in our midst even that we may not be privy to. And when you take other brands that I've talked to in this podcast or spoken about, excuse me, such as McDonald's and Coca-Cola, brands like Starbucks and Visa, there are just so many other brands that I feel serve as examples of ways in which when you do it correctly, you can become beloved. Procter & Gamble always stands high on my leaderboard for what they've been doing, particularly in the matters of Black Lives Matter and others.

Shanita Akintonde:

So those are the types of examples that we will be unpacking further in 2023 because I think they're oft overlooked. I think women as a consumer demographic, that's another category that I'll be unpacking further in this upcoming year because women are the sole purchasers in most households regardless of whether they're single income or single family, excuse me, dual income, double family, et cetera. And so that's a powerful area that beloved brands also understand the key importance of tapping into. Children who are also waving their monetary flags are often overlooked or trivialized or stereotyped or just [inaudible 00:34:20] things that I feel are not necessarily conducive to them learning and growing in a productive way, but seeing them only as consumers that can be tapped into with a way that is ethically based and soundly promoted. So I'll get off of my soapbox now. I just wanted to share a little bit of that with you to give you a slight preview of what's to come and to round out this BB podcast to say to each and every one of you, I hope that this Marketing Insights podcast series produced by McGraw Hill is beloved to each and every one of you.

Shanita Akintonde:

A lot of time and energy and effort goes into these podcasts. Each time you listen by myself and my other co-host, we are researching and interviewing and spending time curating and cultivating content that we hope that you are finding useful. Continue to send me messages. You can find me on LinkedIn as Professor Shanita Akintonde, on Twitter @_ShanitaSpeaks. You can reach out to me via McGraw Hill on my website there.

Shanita Akintonde:

Thank you for those who are doing that, letting me know what you want to hear from me on. I got your list. That is going into 2023 as well. Continue to like and share this podcast. That helps us. Just so you all know, this is the number one rated podcast for McGraw Hill, which, woo-hoo, is very exciting and exhilarating and encouraging, I might add. So continue to do that and do all that you do to continue to propel me forward as one of the hosts, and also to continue to keep me motivated. I love, again, each and every one of you. I love the opportunity to share with you all on this podcast platform. And as you can see again here, I love being a marketing shero. Take care everyone.

Shanita Akintonde:

Until next time, which will be our best time, this is Shanita Akintonde, professor, author, career coach, and marketing shero, signing off. If you enjoy listening to these podcasts, be sure to subscribe on Stitcher, iTunes, or Google Play and like them wherever you hear them. Connect with me on LinkedIn at Professor Shanita Akintonde or follow me on Twitter @_ShanitaSpeaks.