Twitter's first communications manager is building a communications network for executives

The world of communications is an enigma, and at times, seems contrary to the job of a journalist. So to hear that there's an effort to help more comms people swap notes, share stories, and prepare organized responses, I have a selfish concern that we'll have less vulnerability on the part of founders and leaders of the startup world.

But Sean Garrett, senior communications and marketing manager at Twitter, is trying to convince me otherwise. Garrett built Twitter's communications team and helped the company develop a marketing, public affairs and government relations strategy. He also advised the Obama White House on digital strategy and communications, Slack, and established two other communications consultancies. All of this makes his latest bet all the more interesting: Mixing Board, a startup that brings communications and marketing executives together in one place to help clients avoid "the BS PR stuff".

Mixing Board brings together current, emerging, and seasoned marketing leaders to trade notes, whether communicating a startup's pivot or announcing a company's stealth debut to the world. It offers different programs based on different needs, but mainly focuses on scaling mentorship with leadership guidance from Airbnb, American Express, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Netflix, Obama White House, Oatly, Slack, Twitter, Virgin Group and others. Over 200 people are part of the community to date.

The company does not want to be an alternative to a public relations agency, but rather wants to help people in charge of communication within organizations to progress through mentoring support and to obtain more diverse ideas beyond from the monolithic perspective of their immediate network. In other words, its clients are not startups; he is the communication manager within a startup.

At the moment, communication managers can join Mixing Board for free. The startup makes money through a community recruiting drive, in which companies pay money to help with executive search. The startup shares a 50/50 search commission with the member who made the suggestion, and as Garrett describes it, "it's a much bigger return than the karma points we've all collected doing this sort of thing. for free for many years...the success of this (along with current economic trends) is why we're also adding split/temp and consultant roles to what we help find."

Unlike 10 years ago, when communications experts mostly stayed in their own lane and competed more than complementary, Garrett believes the market today offers a key opportunity for the cohort. "One of the big changes, obviously, that's happened over the last few years is just the increase in the relative power of employees. People talk a lot about its impact on social justice issues, it's impacting on the organization but also impact the truth,” he said. “Organizations and companies cannot ruin marketing campaigns or public relations campaigns that are not based or centered on truth, because the employees will tell right away: he may be dead on arrival."

Employees are among the best sources, both in organizing and in disclosing company concerns to the press, to bring about change. For him, this shift in power is an opportunity for companies to focus on their truths and lead comms to be better and stronger at their jobs.

Another tailwind that Mixing Board is looking to capitalize on is the evolution of what a communications manager is responsible for today, compared to when they started out. As I led this story with, we often think of communications as media relations. It's part of the job, but Garrett pointed out that so is editorial strategy, community moderation, and events. Basically, anything that includes someone speaking or supporting their audience could have a communications person involved, behind the scenes, to make sure everything is running smoothly.

“What has really changed profoundly is that communications is now more and more part of this type of leadership structure. And even I have a lot of peers who like our communications managers who do the marketing below them,” he said. “They don’t report to the CMO anymore, the marketing team reports to the head of communications, right? This means that the work is much more important… the thinking and perspective of communications is integrated into the strategy of the management. »

Garrett gave me the example of the mixing board helping communications people figure out the best ways to handle layoffs. Members will talk about “how to communicate with employees, how to contextualize that. Be direct, be clear. Don't promise too much. Don't do things like, say this is the last time we're gonna do this because if we're not...you're really screwed."

"Really focused on that internal audience and obviously there's the external audience as well, but if you can get the internal audience to be okay, and you will be," he...