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Robert Berkeley  0:05  

Well, hello, and we've made it to another episode of Inside Jobs, the podcasts served up just for you creatives who work at all with in house agencies, brought to you in association with the in house agency forum, we’ll meet creative leaders who work directly for brands learn about how they got to where they did, and understand what drives them. This episode, I'm meeting Kelly Chmielewski until recently, the Vice President of PBS Creative Lab, who has strong ideas about playing with Lego, and will apparently tell us why she's ready to fire all Mojito in Havana. But first, I started by asking her What kind of education she had.

 

Kelly Chmielewski  0:44  

I went to a Liberal Arts College in Northern Wisconsin, part of the programme at the school required study abroad, which was a big plus for me. So I spent some time, I spent a semester in France. And our senior year, one of the requirements for all the International Business majors was running a small, nonprofit import business. And the idea was to get our hands wet in be able to dip our hands in the actual running in the business while we were still in school.

 

Robert Berkeley  1:12  

Did that go well?, because you need a lot of time to get a business running and to get some.

 

Kelly Chmielewski  1:18  

Yes, so the business is called Discovery's International, I think it might still be called that and it it belongs to the senior Capstone class of International Business majors. So the business is up and running. And our job for the year that we're seniors is to run the business.

 

Robert Berkeley  1:33  

So you’re custodians, kind of. Yes. That's right. And was that a successful custodian custody that you had there?

 

Kelly Chmielewski  1:41  

Yeah, I think what's what's really great is you're not learning from a textbook, how to do marketing? You're actually marketing to people on campus. In my case, I was doing marketing for them. The finance person had to keep the books for the nine months. We were in school and leave them in good shape to pass forward to the next, custodian of finances. The the trade experts had to know the laws. So if we wanted to import goods from a foreign country, how would we get them through customs? And then the logistics of sales? How do you sell your product on a campus? Without any doubt? I'm going to say without a bricks and mortar shop, but this was before e-commerce even.

 

Robert Berkeley  2:21  

So that’s where you’ve been? What you thought you'd be doing right now. Workwise, professionally. Would you have guessed?

 

Kelly Chmielewski  2:30  

No. But then yes. Or I should say? No. And then, yes. When I graduated from college, I thought for sure, I wanted to be the Vice President of International Banking at a Big Bank. And when I left college

 

Robert Berkeley  2:44  

Strange ambition for someone leaving college to want to go and work for a Big Bank, isn't it? Or is it?

 

Kelly Chmielewski  2:49  

am I did I did I didn't know at the time, I I believed it to be more glamorous than it actually was. So I did in fact, get a job in the International Banking department of the biggest bank in Wisconsin at the time. OK. But when you graduate from college, you get to be a Vice President straight away in most cases. So I remember doing a lot of transactional paperwork on the daily monetary trades. And it was very technical and very tactical and very transactional. And so my dream of how glamorous this job was gonna be was crushed

 

Robert Berkeley  3:25  

brutally by the sound of it.

 

Kelly Chmielewski  3:27  

But what I learned there, and why I say ultimately landed a job that probably better than the dream was back then is what I do now, which I'll call branding and marketing is really a mix of the science side that I think banking offers. But this really important creative side. Once I, you know, decided banking wasn't for me. I decided to try a few other things. I was still in Wisconsin at the time. So I was the coordinator for a large International Cultural Festival. 

 

Robert Berkeley  4:01  

How did you get that gig you knew people or you, you just sort of randomly logged in a letter to say, would you like help or one?

 

Kelly Chmielewski  4:09  

Both. I had this is the new festival in town, and I thought it could be part of creating something big and it had this international feel. And so I I put my hat in the ring, and I also networked until I found the Executive Director. And we chatted and had a great chat and I was willing to wear a lot of different hats. And I was willing to work on a freelance basis for six months to learn the ropes and we hit it off and the festival ran for several years.

 

Robert Berkeley  4:38  

They did pay you for this?

 

Kelly Chmielewski  4:39  

I did I did get paid. It was a paid gig.

 

Robert Berkeley  4:42  

Fantastic. Always good to know how did that did that money feel a little bit a little bit more pleasurable than the money you're getting a salary from the bank then?

 

Kelly Chmielewski  4:50  

Oh, sure. Because if you're doing a job you love and you get paid for it, and you're pretty good at it. You start to feel pretty good about things get the new feel fulfilled. And I, you know, if I would say something that has carried forward from then to today is like doing what you love, because it's true to who you are and what your purpose in life is. And for me that was bringing a sense of an International World to people in Southeastern Wisconsin through this festival.

 

Robert Berkeley  5:20  

It's a festival still going, by the way.

 

Kelly Chmielewski  5:22  

I don't think this festival is still reading No.

 

Robert Berkeley  5:27  

I need again, Thank you. So. So you're doing that for a few years? You said? And then. So how did the radio career get going?

 

Kelly Chmielewski  5:35  

So PBTS is the is the Public Television System. And

 

Robert Berkeley  5:42  

Television, I keep saying radio, do I keep saying radio? And I mean, television,

 

Kelly Chmielewski  5:45  

perhaps. So how did I get in? How did I get into television? I applied for a job at PBS through an advertisement in the Washington Post Newspaper. That when that's how people got jobs, and then I networked like crazy until I found out who the hiring manager was? And I called his office about every two weeks until like an interview,

 

Robert Berkeley  6:05  

you get pretty single minded about things, you think I'm going to do this, and then you set your entire focus on it until you've got it is that is that pretty characteristic?

 

Kelly Chmielewski  6:14  

I would say if there's a will, there's a way and I was pretty excited about this job. And what happened was actually better than what I expected. Because I really, I really figured out I wanted marketing or, or something like it. And the job in the paper was for special events, which is for some people that is marketing. But I thought well, let me see if this is a step the foot in the door, and maybe down the road, I can find a job closer to marketing. So I ultimately went for the interview. And the woman I interviewed with saw my resume. And the first question was, you know, why did you why do you want this job? The second question was, I see you have a lot more experience here with marketing. And we have this other job that we didn't advertise, but it's it's more like marketing, would you? Would you be interested in talking to us about that? So it really, it paid off to explore the opportunity. And what came out of it was better than what I had anticipated, which was a job for a nationally recognised brand. Yeah. And it was a job doing the kind of work that I was looking to do.

 

Robert Berkeley  7:17  

Okay, so so with PTBS, they they are headquartered in DC, right?

 

Kelly Chmielewski  7:22  

That's right, just outside of Washington.

 

Robert Berkeley  7:24  

So you were in the mothership, although they clearly have a lot of affiliates around the country. So right, you have to explain to an Englishman how it works?

 

Kelly Chmielewski  7:32  

Absolutely. So PBS is The National Headquarters, The National Office, The National Brand. And there are over 300 local affiliate stations across the country. So in every state, in, in virtually every community. And that translates to millions of people who watch and who log on and who download. And our sister, I guess you could call the sister organisation is NPR. So that's the radio side and PBS is exclusively yet TV.

 

Robert Berkeley  8:05  

Yeah, so obviously, I live in the UK. And you know what we do here? Right? So we have a BBC that's funded by everybody who writes, who even owns a television contributes to the BBC,

 

Kelly Chmielewski  8:17  

the licence fee for that that goes toward the BBC, right?

 

Robert Berkeley  8:20  

Yeah. Which is, which is going to be difficult to navigate and becoming difficult to navigate right now. Because the whole idea before was that if you had a tuner, on your on a screen, therefore you needed a licence for that, and you'd pay that licence. And that would go straight to the BBC. Well, of course, in this day and age, it's not as simple as that. So there's some choppy waters not together, not not to forget political choppy waters, which I know, PBS also is subject to that come and go from time to time and ebb and flow and support is there or it's not there.

 

Kelly Chmielewski  8:50  

Yet, I think what's really fascinating and I'm curious if like how this is unfolding in the UK, as well. But you know, TV, really is the word we use now to mean content. Because when I started at PBS, that brand meant TV, this is the destination where you go to watch shows in a certain genre. And I would say, today really stands for something a little bit different. It's still about shows and key genres. But it's a content, differentiator. It's not a destination anymore.

 

Robert Berkeley  9:23  

So so your career transitions, you said you started out in in PR and ended up looking after brand strategy. It's not, as you already just alluded to, it's not a typical organisation., PBS in terms of the way the imperatives work, you where did you get your direction from?

 

Kelly Chmielewski  9:41  

There was a strategic plan, there was always a five year strategic plan. And then within marketing communications, we would usually do annual plans that fit into the larger goals and those are based on content promotion, I referenced earlier getting people to watch so they love the shows and from a brand perspective, you know, I remember one time I, my niece came to visit me at the office, she was nine at the time, she sat in a couple of the meetings I went to, and she sat in my office with me while I did work on the computer. I was with the creative team at that time. So we reviewed some scripts, and we were doing a new brand guide for kids licencing at the time, so I asked her opinion on some colours and some shapes. And we got in the car at the end of the day to drive home and she said, Auntie Kelly, you know, I saw that you went to some meetings, and I know you sent some emails. But what do you do? for her? Was she she couldn't see us like making widgets, for example. Yeah. And, you know, you and I can talk and we have this vocabulary called marketing and brand strategy. But it was really a thought provoking question for me at the time, because I thought, you know, what, what do I do? And if I can't explain it to a nine year old, I need to figure out how so I actually slept on it and said, you know, as the head of the brand team, my job is to make sure you love PBS whether or not you watch and that moment really crystallised for me like what it was to manage a brand, so much more about the emotion than the transaction?

 

Robert Berkeley  11:16  

Could be the old time definition of brand marketing? No.

 

Kelly Chmielewski  11:22  

Maybe, I don't know. Could we could we make it so?

 

Robert Berkeley  11:25  

Well, you know, it's true. It's our podcast, we can say what we like.

 

Kelly Chmielewski  11:30  

Excellent. And it's gonna be on the internet after this. Right? So it's definitely true.

 

Robert Berkeley  11:34  

But somewhere along the line, you introduce the idea of design thinking,

 

Kelly Chmielewski  11:39  

yes, I. So I was leading the brand team at PBS, when I myself first learned about design thinking, and I offered a brand workshop for affiliate stations. And I've been doing this workshop for three or four years, and always got these great ratings, like we love your videos, we love your presentation. We love spending the afternoon with you. But I got back to the station. I didn't know what to do with that all that I didn't know what to do with all that information when I got home at the end of the day. So I got a referral to a team that they had, they were design thinking trained and use it in their own work. And I said, I want to reimagine this workshop. And my goal was really to have people enjoy the experience as much as they had in the past, but be better able to take what they learned, and really own it and practice it when they get home at the end of the day. And this guy's name is Toby. And I owe a debt of gratitude to him because I learned alongside of him doing this with me as my partner, we reinvented the workshop. And I will tell you the story of the first activity he suggested we do was was play with Legos. And I said, What's that all about? He said, Well, before you can solve a problem, we really need to spend time defining it. You know, there's this great Einstein quote, right? If I had only an hour to solve a problem, I would spend the first 55 minutes just defining it. So our goal with the Lego exercise was to get people to define the problem. And I'm, I was pretty sceptical. At first I thought, wow, first of all my reputations on the line, I have had these workshops, going for three or four years, people love them. And now you want me to show up and bust out Legos for them to play with. You know, this is 350 stations, we've got all of these show properties. And we've got this complicated funding model, and how the heck are we going to build our problem out of Legos? And he said, I hear your scepticism, why don't we just do a test run in the building? Before we make this activity part of what we do? You know, in San Francisco was the first year we did it. So we did a little test run, we invited eight or 10 people from across the building, we were just testing a couple activities. And the first one was Legos. And we said we need you to build your biggest challenge out of Legos. And wouldn't you know what, Robert, they built their problems out of Legos. 

 

Robert Berkeley  14:00  

sounds really good.

 

Kelly Chmielewski  14:01  

here's, here's how it works. People worked in pairs. And by the way, there are their Legos called serious play. And these are not the same Legos that your I would buy for our, for our kids. They're called series flakes, they have different shapes. And there are more people and you might find a briefcase instead of a fire engine wheel, you know, but but the idea is, if you have to choose a couple of bricks to put on a base, and you and your partner have to choose it and build this thing and you're limited in your colour palette and the style of the bricks, it forces you to simplify your problem.

 

Robert Berkeley  14:37  

So, Let me let me get this right then. So again, I'm an ignoramus when it comes to design thinking, but you're saying that you first of all define your problem, as Einstein instructed us. And you're saying in this example, the use of Lego I'm using British English here Lego. Sure, there was a was one of a range of tools. You have to address that problems?

 

Kelly Chmielewski  15:01  

Yes, you've got it exactly right, you have created a clear definition of what the problem is. And you've probably also broken it down, like to the core of it, and you can't come up with new ideas to solve a problem if you don't know exactly what the problem is. So we're gonna call this the foundation. And like I said, design thinking, which, which, by the way, sometimes called human centred design, which is an important note, because what I'm going to say next has everything to do with the humans of the people who you're trying to solve the problem for, is you have to understand where they're coming from. So if you try and solve a problem, it has to be something that works for them. So in the case of fundraising, which for other organisations might be sales, or attendance or participation, whatever your measure is, you have to have to really know we say, who you're designing for who your customers who are your donors, so that as you start to come up with new ideas to solve that problem, it's their ideas that are gonna resonate and have meaning to those

 

Robert Berkeley  16:06  

No, no slight danger there that you will continue to focus on, on sort of, on on areas that have already been exploited. And it might close off potential new donors, new areas that you haven't yet exploited.

 

Kelly Chmielewski  16:22  

No, I would say maybe the opposite. Because there's, there's another tool in the design thinking toolbox called prototyping, and testing. And I always encourage people to do that with the end user, or the customer. And even better if you can bring that end user, that customer in to co-create and come up with ideas for you. And that should be existing customers and the people who you want to be your customers. I can give you an example. If we were doing what we call empathy interviews, I was doing this workshop for the PBS station in Kansas City. And to bring in the human element, we started the day by interviewing people in the community who were their audience, current, and people who they wanted to engage more more deeply. And we started with these interviews. And one of the things that came out of these interviews was that and by the way, an empathy interview is about getting to know the person. It's not brand research. Exactly. It's not what do you think about our brand? And what do you think about our content? Or our product? It's really getting to know the person what brings them joy? What are the challenges in their life? What do they aspire to? So so you're really trying to do your best to walk in their shoes and understand their point of view. So that later, you can find a great way for your brand, to meet a need or bring some joy to their life. So in the course of these conversations, people said, we heard from a lot of people, they wanted to learn more about social media, beyond Facebook, which they all used. You know, and this, this was an insight because we realised that the local station had social media experts on staff, they had a studio, so they had space. So they so the idea that came out of this was well, would you come to the studio, we could have like a social media boot camp. And to this day, it's unclear whether that idea actually started from one of the end users or it came from a station person, but it certainly came out of a conversation between between the two of them, that wouldn't have happened without that end user in the room. And that's, so that was a need that this person had a turnout that was something that the local brand the local station could deliver on and so.

 

Robert Berkeley  18:47  

doesn’t have the long term goal for the station as well. Because I suppose if you've got so the idea would be you're getting champions in of your brand that would then learn social media learn how to amplify their message and get it out there. Is that is that really, you were kind you just of generating ambassadors in a way?

 

Kelly Chmielewski  19:04  

You just shared the punchline I'm sorry. Which is, no, it was it's great. So I'm, it means you're following right along. It's It's great. You've got it. So they've got relationships building with people because the people are in their physical building space. And these people are learning social media, which they can use to share and and keep up with their families and of course, then be advocates for the local brand. Okay, absolutely.

 

Robert Berkeley  19:31  

So can you be a design thinking bubble in a non design thinking organisation?

 

Kelly Chmielewski  19:35  

Yes.

 

Robert Berkeley  19:36  

Oh, okay.

 

Kelly Chmielewski  19:38  

It's a great question. And I think we hear this from we hear it in the, you know, create in house creative agency world, I've heard it elsewhere. Because not every organisation is design driven. Although it's such an interesting time and it's a great time for design thinking because the world is just kind of becoming more designed. You sort of need it just to navigate the every day over all, which can be kind of overwhelming, right with all the media and access to lots of stuff and lots of choices. But again, I would say right size it. You know, I started small because once the Lego, the Lego activity was one of many, and the workshop we did in San Francisco, that year was fantastic. We did Legos, we did something called empathy mapping, where you really build out a profile of the person you're serving. We had a lot of fun, hands on, get up out of your seats and do stuff which, which was really the key to people learning on the spot and solving that original problem, which is how do I take what I've learned back to my shop and put it into practice. And they did that because they had taken that first step that very day in the workshop.

 

Robert Berkeley  20:52  

And it carried them through when they got back through the inevitable kind of, you know, the the back in the old routine, and same old problems and same old ways in which I have to deal with them, whenever whatever they learned at these sessions carried them through.

 

Kelly Chmielewski  21:08  

Yes, and one of my favourite stories is from this guy named Tim from Grand Rapids, Michigan. And he was in a design thinking based workshop that we did in Chicago a couple of years ago. And at the end of the day, we call it the workshop of why because it was all about being true to your purpose, but leveraging that to make new relationships and grow relationships in the commercial world that would be get new customers in the nonprofit world. It's build new relationships that you can cultivate into donors down the road. And at the end of the one day workshop of why Tim came up to me braving about what a great experience that was for him. And he said, I've got this meeting with the community partner next week, do you mind if I borrow some pieces of this agenda, to use in that workshop with them? And I said, Absolutely take what you need. And, you know, with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away. And he did that. And he called me back after that workshop and said they had such a great time that they want to take it to their national meeting in Denver, later in the summer. And could they do that? And so we said, of course, we don't own this, everything we used is, by design, we use all activities that were publicly available and and the Stanford reused. Yeah. So they did that. And so fast forward to about two or three weeks ago, this has, has really taken a life of its own. And they've put this handle on it called know your why. And what they built out of this continues today. And they've just created this great video, and they've done it for their national organisation. So I just started, like, how can I help people use the PBS brand to achieve local goals? And because the tools are so applicable, this guy was able to take it and apply it to the thing he was working on. And then they were able his partner was able to take and apply to the thing they were working on. And it just, it grew from there.

 

Robert Berkeley  23:08  

Well, that that obvious momentum is a huge validation of what you did back then. And I'm sure it's I'm sure it's not the only example. But you're you've now moved on from from PBS. And you're consulting right now. Yeah, that's right. In this in this arena, I presume?

 

Kelly Chmielewski  23:24  

That's right. I call it brand strategy and innovation, consulting. So right now I work with clients who both need strategy, and they need my help finding it. I'm working on a rebrand with a media company right now. And just this week, I think they're actually we're putting research in the field to get consumer insight. I have another client, I'm really excited. I'm going to do a brand strategy workshop for them in about two weeks their Museum in San Diego. And they're going to go through a physical renovation and a rebrand 

 

Robert Berkeley  23:58  

googling museums. And so yeah,

 

Kelly Chmielewski  24:02  

Wwe'll invite you to the grand reopening.

 

Robert Berkeley  24:04  

I like San Diego. Yeah, I'd be quite happy to be there

 

Kelly Chmielewski  24:07  

really excited 

 

Robert Berkeley  24:08  

as a client, they're just so easy to get to from Washington, DC.

 

Kelly Chmielewski  24:12  

I'll just I think it's gonna be worth the trip. That's all I'll say.

 

Robert Berkeley  24:16  

Yeah, absolutely. So Alright, so the next thing and I've got on my pad here is is Cuba, we're going to Cuba is that right?

 

Kelly Chmielewski  24:23  

I hope so very soon.

 

Robert Berkeley  24:26  

What's the plan?

 

Kelly Chmielewski  24:26  

I have a dream to take brand innovation workshops are or create a brand innovation retreat that takes place in Cuba.

 

Robert Berkeley  24:35  

Like why Cuba,

 

Kelly Chmielewski  24:37  

Cuba is such a special place. I hope many people will have a chance to visit it before. Everything that's a bit crumbling, infrastructure wise in Cuba gets fixed because part of what makes Cuba so special is that there's this phenomenal architecture from the days of colonialism and yet There's a lot of constraints there currently, because it's a communist country. And if you want to go and have a vacation there and have a Caribbean vacation, and many Europeans, do, they, they don't have the same restrictions that people from the United States have. Although the truth is, it's easier to get there than you think. So

 

Robert Berkeley  25:18  

if you're single minded about it as some people, maybe it's not as difficult as you think, because

 

Kelly Chmielewski  25:24  

it's, it's true, where there's a will there's absolutely. Anything is possible. So, what what you see there is the opportunity to be low key and casual, if you want to go sit on the beach and listen to fantastic point of VISTA social club, like music and drink mohito every night, you can do it and the arts fantastic, and the dance is fantastic. And, at the same time, it's a communist country. So there's constraints at every turn for the people living there, they don't have access to the same goods and services. You see the classic cars is sort of the postcard of Cuba is one of the classic vintage cars in front of a faded building. And out of necessity, they keep those cars running because they don't have access to new cars. And so, you know, we both work in the in the creative world. And this is just living, breathing full on evidence that constraints fuel creativity. They don't have access. So they make they're very creative about making work with what they have. And probably our second or third night in Cuba, I went in March earlier this year. And our second or third night there. We were eating in a restaurant called the Paladar, which, by the way is one of the entrepreneurial. And the Paladares are kind of a new wave of entrepreneurship in Cuba. It's people who open their homes as restaurants and they do the cooking in their kitchen. And they don't have many seats because it's their home and their patio out back of their home. But these are individually owned and operated with permission from the government. Paladares is restaurants. and our second was, so we always tried to eat at Paladares, so that we were supporting the local entrepreneurs. And the second or third night, I noticed on the menu, that even though the dishes had different names, more or less, there were about six ingredients on the menu, shrimp, fish, onions, carrots, tomatoes, two or three herbs, or spices and olive oil. But three restaurants in a row, like the menus looked different and sounded different. But if you really took a moment, and read the fine print, you realise they're all working with the same six or seven ingredients. And that's when this light bulb went off. And I thought, yes, constraints breed creativity. And, and this is evidenced in the cars as evidenced in the menus, you see people building out homes to add rooms as their families grow, but they can't buy new house. So my dream is that this brand innovation retreat takes place in Cuba. So it's a combination of let's work on a real problem or challenge in your business. Or maybe, maybe explore an opportunity that you're not sure about. But let's use the space as part of the inspiration, and part of our guide for how to solve that problem.

 

Robert Berkeley  28:29  

So it would be a mixture of workshops, but also getting out to observe this creativity amongst restrictions for yourself and discuss them and discuss how these Yeah, and I would definitely how they've come to pass.

 

Kelly Chmielewski  28:42  

Yeah, I would stitch together hands on, like a real working session with whatever the, you know, team wants to work on. And then let's get out and see some examples. And what what can we learn from that. And maybe it's more of a retreat, because I I also want to build in time for mosquitos and weight of a social club.

 

Robert Berkeley  29:03  

Very important to help the digestive, sorry, the creative juices going. And also it would be much needed tourist dollars for Cuba, which, which it needs you're

 

Kelly Chmielewski  29:14  

doing doing good at the same time.

 

Robert Berkeley  29:17  

Absolutely. So that sounds great. That's something you kind of thinking you want to do. So I suppose you're interested if people are themselves interested in being part of that, how should they contact you, Kelly,

 

Kelly Chmielewski  29:27  

You can contact me through my website, which is possibilityshop.com. I'm on LinkedIn. Or you can email me which is my first name last name@gmail.com

 

Robert Berkeley  29:39  

Okay, thank you. And your name is in the show notes. Of course. Thank you and also via the the insidejobspodcast.org website as well, which we have created to store this and all the other podcasts that we're doing in the series. Kelly, it's been a huge pleasure. Thank you very, very much for your time, and 

 

Kelly Chmielewski  29:58  

Oh, Thank you. The pleasures the pleasures all mine for sure.

 

Robert Berkeley  30:03  

Looking forward to the opening of the museum,in San Diego with your ideas we'll ever think. Obviously meeting up in Havana from a heater.

 

Kelly Chmielewski  30:12  

first rounds on me.