Blog

John (00:08): Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Will Cady. He is Reddit’s global brand ambassador and founding head of Reddit’s Karma Lab creative strategy team. And we’re going to talk about his recent book, which way is North, a creative compass for Makers, marketers, and mystics. So will welcome to the show.

Will (00:33): Thanks for having me. Excited to be here.

John (00:35): So let’s pretend you were at a cocktail party and there was a person there that somehow had never heard of Reddit, and they just came up and said, what’s Reddit? How do you tell people? What’s the quick version of what is Reddit?

Will (00:49): Yeah, the quickest way to say it is Reddit is where the best questions live, and it’s been that way for over 18 years now, just celebrated it’s 18th birthday. So it’s pretty foundational to the internet and what makes it different than the other places is the questions that people ask remain and you can see the conversations and communities that form around them. So when I say best questions, I mean like Reddit is literally famous for some of its questions like the ask me anything or is a hot dog a sandwich, for example?

John (01:21): Well, it’s also pretty famous for policing too, right? I mean, there are a lot of people that are very passionate community members that you better up your game if you’re going to go there and answer a question or ask a question. I mean, is that a fair assessment?

Will (01:37): It’s become famous for figuring out how to structure the way we connect and converse online into these community spaces that have clear rules. And the community construct is something that is, it’s a part of the internet past, but it’s also looking to be a part of the internet future.

John (01:56): And I guess policing is probably not the right word. I think they’re just passionate about staying on topic, for example, and the topic is in some better than, I mean, there’s some topics on there that are so micro that they’ve probably collected the 10 people that care about that thing on that subreddit.

Will (02:16): Sure, yeah. Well, the keyword is context and that’s become such an important word for business as well. And when you have a context and a conversation that everybody’s trying to have in that context, then there’s things that do and don’t belong in there. If I started droning onto you about my baseball card collection right now, you’d be like, that’s nice, but that’s not what we’re here to talk about. Will we got to bring it back to the context that this conversation is supposed to be in. And that’s happening at the scale of millions upon millions on Reddit every day, people holding the context that they want to have a conversation in.

John (02:54): So my rookie Reggie Jackson card, you don’t want to hear about is that what saying

Will (02:59): Maybe do you want to pivot?

John (03:02): This is another dumb question, but I have to ask, what does a global brand ambassador do? Is there a job description of that?

Will (03:08): Yeah, the way that I approach it is with this speak, listen, build framework. So I’ve been at Reddit for over eight years now. I started expanding into Los Angeles. There was an experimental hire to see if there’s opportunity for Reddit as a business in la and of course there was. You’ve got so much going on down there and my role back then was really to tell our story and to share that and then listen to what people reflected back, like what stuck with people, what did they believe when we shared that story that Reddit actually is, and then bringing that back to the team and saying, here’s where the story is resonating. Let’s build against that common point. So a lot has happened in the eight years since I was just the one phone number in LA to call for Reddit and we’re a global business now, so I’m effectively doing that same thing at a different scale. This year alone, I’ve been to Amsterdam, I’ve been to Sydney, Australia, I’ve been to many different cities across the US and it’s bigger audiences, but it’s the same thing. Speak, tell the story, talk about community, talk about context, talk about where we’re going, and then listen to how people respond to it and then converse internally say, this is where the opportunities are because these are the stories that people are actually picking up that we’re putting down.

John (04:36): So the other part of your title I guess is founding Head of Karma Lab. So how do those two things, well, I guess you’re probably better describe what you do at Karma Lab, but then how do those two things kind of integrate?

Will (04:50): Karma Lab is Reddit’s internal creative strategy agency. So when I talk about those early days when me and a group of people were going out and we were telling the Reddit story and figuring out what people wanted from Reddit, when we were sharing that story, it started to build a little bit of a playbook for activation on the platform. If you are a business or a celebrity, we know the Ask Me anything, for example, that’s just one play in the playbook. And for those that don’t know and ask me anything is going to a community on Reddit. It could be the food sub Reddit, it could be the car subreddit. Again, the context for a conversation and having that conversation that’s relevant to what it is that you want to be talking about and the way that I have this book in the world and I want to talk about it. That’s one example of many different activation strategies for engaging with Reddit. Karma Lab is the creative strategy agency that is internal to Reddit that was built around that playbook that we started to develop and it was my privilege to be the leader and the founding that team.

John (05:57): So let’s talk about your book, shall we? One of the things that you and I were talking a little off air that there are some other books that are maybe sort of in this category that are structured much differently and I’ll just start with the title. There are a lot of books that encourage you to find true north, your true north and you start with which way is actually north. I think right off the bat, that’s a very different approach. There was supposed to be a question in that, but I really just wanted to hear if that resonates with you.

Will (06:27): There is a question in that. The question is the title. So one of my principles here is I believe in big questions. I believe in good questions. That’s what my time at Reddit has taught me is that questions are more powerful than answers because they are the beginning of a journey, not the end. So which way is north? It really describes the whole attitude of my voice in that book. I’m not telling anybody what their true north is. That’s not for me to say. What I am offering is a way to think about that. And so the