Transcript

Bennie F Johnson 

Hello, and thank you for joining us for this very special episode of AMA’s Marketing And. I’m your host, Bennie F. Johnson, AMA’s CEO. In our episodes, we explore life through a marketing lens, delving into the conversations of individuals that flourish at this intersection of marketing and the unexpected. We plan to introduce you to visionaries whose stories you might not have heard of, but are exactly the ones you need to know.

Today, my guest is a great innovator and friend, Brian Rice, Senior Vice President, Global Chief Design and Brand Experience Officer at the 3M company. As the global leader for the 3M design, corporate brand and partnerships function, Brian oversees 3M’s endeavors to leverage company purpose, brand position, design, and corporate partnerships to connect with customers, consumers, stakeholders.

Continually delivering on the company’s legacy of 3M science applied to life. Brian brings more than 25 years of deep experience. He’s bridged the power of design thinking with a focus on business and marketing strategy for some of the world’s most valuable, trusted and iconic brands. Companies including Procter & Gamble, the Coca-Cola Company, Bristol-Meyer Squibb and Georgia Pacific. Throughout his storied career, Brian has led brand positioning, purpose development, brand design, packaging, product, and innovation development. I’d like to welcome today none other than Brian Rice to our podcast. Thank you. my goodness. I look forward to sitting down with you in this format for so long, so long, my friend. It’s just…

Brian Rice

Great, thank you, Bennie. Thank you, thank you.

I’m glad we figured it out. We got the calendar to work out. So thank you for having me.

Bennie 

Yeah, it is. It’s an honor, and I know our audience is going to enjoy our conversation just as much as I am in this case. You know, one of the themes when I think about 3M and I think about you and your career is simply this word, breakthrough. You know, 3M is always known for success as being these breakthroughs in terms of science and unexpected. As a metaphor for that, tell me, tell me when it’s a little bit about your career path.

in that kind of your first breakthrough.

Brian 

Well, well, Bennie, what a great way to start the conversation off. You know, I think my career has been nothing but a breakthrough. We’re talking about a kid who candidly, when I went to college, I didn’t know what design was. I just had this knack for creating things, but also deeply into the academic side of things too. And so one of those kids that, you know, excelled in algebra class, but…

Bennie 

Mm -hmm.

Brian 

Then could design the class float. And I was always torn between kind of these two worlds. And lo and behold, I found design and figured out that, wow, there is a career in this. It’s not the starving artists under the highway, like my mother used to say, beware of. But a fruitful career that allowed me to.

Bennie 

Right. Right. Right.

Brian 

To do what I love to do best, which is to create, but also to create things of value, right? Which is kind of more of the analytical, you know, kind of marketing side of things. So truly, truly a breakthrough.

Bennie 

Right.

It’s interesting when you talk about your role at 3M and the title of global chief design and brand experience. Remember you telling me before that your portfolio really has three functions, has a design component. And then when I came in this role, I remember the first thing you were telling me was like, I’ve got corporate brand and corporate marketing and partnerships under it. Talk a bit about that synergy that you brought together, which is really powerful.

Brian 

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, well, you know, when I joined the company, you know, the corporate brand team, which is, you know, think of it as big 3M was part of the part of the work of, you know, our organization. And so really, the, you know, the leader who brought me in said, Hey, you know, we have this, we have this thing called 3M brand, which is big, iconic, but it’s probably one of the world’s best kept secrets because you probably know all the other things that.

Bennie

Right, right.

Brian 

The more iconic brands, Posted Notes, Scotch Tape, Filtrete, all of those brands. But Big 3M also makes products that are more inside the products that you and I use every day. And so the challenge was, is how do we help tell that part of the story? And design is a storytelling mechanism as well, right? Besides the marketing that we do, it’s like, how do we bring it to life in a way?

Bennie 

Right.

Brian 

You know, that helps consumers and customers kind of realize kind of the product services experiences that we offer as a company. And so the challenge that I enjoyed about all of that is that it’s a lot of business to business. There’s a little bit of B to C, right? Business to consumer, right? Which is a bit of my background or more of my background. But at the end of the day, I like to say it’s people to people.

Bennie 

Right.

Brian 

Right? And so people have drivers that, that gets them to do things. And so from a design standpoint, how can I get them to act on, on an insight or on a, a product delivery system that, that makes sense for their business or for, for their household. So it was, a very nice, marriage of brand and all the things that we do as marketers and,

Bennie 

Mm.

Brian

Insight stewards and strategists and all of that. And then leveraging the power of design to kind of bring it to life, to help people touch it, feel it, see it, experience it, all of those things. And so it was a great, great marriage and probably one of the things that attracted me to the role.

Bennie 

Let’s talk a bit about that. So what drew you in? So you’re based in Atlanta, right? And spent a lot of quality time with companies and great brands in Atlanta. And with 3M, you’re based up in the upper Midwest.

Brian 

That’s right. That’s right. So, I still haven’t gotten used to the winners yet, but I joined the company during the pandemic. And so at that time, no one really was in the office and the company had a program. We created a program which was really called Work Your Way, which allows you to work from wherever and allows you to kind of do the things that you needed to do so long as you know, you get work done. And so I was…

Bennie 

Alright. Okay. Mmm.

Brian 

Flying back and forth from Atlanta, which is home base for me. And our largest studio is in the Twin Cities in St. Paul. And so that’s where most of the designers are. And so I go back and forth. I go about once a month, usually a week, week and a half at a time, spend time with the team, do what we need to do and try to get as much of the work done as we can. So certainly a culture difference, the Twin Cities is…

Bennie 

Okay. Right.

Brian 

Absolutely gorgeous this time of year. The, you know, late spring, early summer is absolutely gorgeous. But I have to tell you, being a kid that grew up in Florida, the winters are bitter. They are bitter. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sure.

Bennie 

But you know I was going to lean into that. I was like, I knew you’re a good Florida kid. The stretch. But I’ll ask this first question because I think it’s really interesting when you think about the language of innovation and brand and marketing being part of a language innovation. How have you been able to navigate that across 3M’s vast network? Because you have a team that’s truly global and design centers all over the world.

Brian 

Yeah. Sure. Yeah, we do. We have design centers in the biggest in St. Paul. We have a small center in Italy, China, a design center in Japan, as well as India. And I can tell you that it’s not easy to do, but I have an amazing leadership team that helps get the work done. And so because we are split in different business groups, we try to, of course, deliver on the work that the business needs but also figure out efficiency scale, things that will allow us to be effective as an organization so that we’re not kind of relearning things, that we’re able to knowledge share very quickly, as well as kind of celebrate, right? Celebrate those wins that we might be able to call it search and reapply to other areas. And so I always say that every amazing solution starts with an insight.

You deliver it through an idea, right? That hopefully is a solution that people will buy and pay more for it. And so, regardless of the type of division or the type of product line or what have you, I think I’ve learned over my career that those kinds of things remain true no matter what type of business segment you might be in. And so, always start with insight. Comes up with an idea. Come up with an idea.

Bennie

Mm -hmm.

Brian 

And how can we bring that solution to life that people will buy?

Bennie 

You know, one of the things that I’ve always admired about 3M’s history was like the breakthroughs that come through by accident. You’re attempting to solve one problem, and then you find this beautiful solution to the next. You know, how do you, you know, encourage your team through those kind of, for quotation fingers we’ll call failures or kind of misapplications to ensure that there’s something dynamic on the other side?

Brian Rice 

Sure, sure, sure. Sure.

Yeah, they happen all the time. And, you know, I think, I think three embers have this very vast passion for curiosity. and, and, and that wonder, I wonder what would happen if, right? If I did this, did that our scientists are absolutely amazing and being able to kind of take one technology platform, combine it with another technology platform and to kind of see what we can come up with. And so we have something that’s called 15 % time, which is really amazing.

Bennie 

Right. Right. Right.

Brian 

Which is each three embers has 50% of their time that they can explore whatever is of passion or of interest to them. And there’s different mechanisms that we have or forms that we have around the company, whether it’s a hackathon or collaboration sessions or what have you that will allow us to explore that idea further, maybe get a little funding to kind of see, is it viable? Is it feasible? Is it desirable? It’s all of those things that come in.

Bennie 

Okay.

Brian

With the typical innovation process. And so we try to spur that as much as we can. Now we got work that we have to get done, Benny, right? You know, those are the priorities. Those are the things that keep the lights on and pays the bills. But we also have that time that we try to spend on thinking of different ways of doing things, new ways of doing things. And it doesn’t hurt when you have a customer that comes to you with a challenge that kind of says, hey, we’re trying to figure out.

Bennie 

Right. Right. Right.

Brian 

This and having our product engineers, our designers, our R&D scientists try to work on that problem to solve it. And so we try to share. We share failures. We share successes. We kind of build together when we can to help inspire or spark the work that our amazing teams do. So.

Bennie 

Mm -hmm.

Brian 

So we try to do it as much as we can when we can.

Bennie 

It’s amazing when I think about this. When we first started our careers, these roles didn’t exist, right? You know, just in the span of a career, you’re now looking at brand and design being elevated to a C level position in a major company like 3M. When you take stock of that, when you think about that trajectory, what amazes you the most when you think about that growth over time?

Brian 

Mm -hmm. Exactly. Yes.

Yeah. Well, I tell you, Bennie, when I left college, I did undergrad at Florida in our School of Journalism and Graphic Communication. And when I was going through the program, for the most part, what we saw as the trajectory, if you will, was

Bennie 

Yes.

Brian 

Go work in an agency, you’ll move up the corporate ladder, the company ladder, if you will, and you’ll be successful. If you were lucky enough, maybe you went out and had your own agency, you hung your own shingle out front, and maybe you had your own shop. But you’re right, this idea of corporate design didn’t exist when, it existed, but I didn’t know about it when I came out.

Bennie 

Right. Right.

Brian

And so as I take stock of just the trajectory, my first job out of college was in design management. And really didn’t know what that was, right? And so I crossed paths with P&G at the time. And what it really did was it sped up my trajectory, right? And so here I’m able to kind of learn and fail.

Bennie

Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Brian 

With a company that was willing to teach me how to manage design. Because again, I was one of the, I think I was one of the first at Procter & Gamble that they recruited straight out of undergrad. And so their hypothesis was we think we can teach design management to an undergrad. And so I was the, a bit of the test market for that. And so candidly, Benny, I loved it. I loved it as much as I did designing. It’s like, okay,

Bennie 

Okay. Right.

Brian 

I get to lead some of the biggest agencies in the world with some of the biggest products and brands in the world. Not so much doing the work, but leading the direction of the work. And so that might be talking to a marketing manager, understanding what it was that they were trying to do, trying to deliver for consumers, our customers or users, and then figuring out very quickly. It’s like, okay, well, how can design help enable that? And so I loved that back and forth between business problem,

Bennie 

Right.

Brian 

Potential design or product solution that would help deliver the outcome that they were looking for. And so I just moved, moved up the chain, right? You know, from a senior design manager, you become a director of a, you know, of a business, you know, of a business team, and then you do it globally, right? And so it’s not just US, it’s global, you know, global platform or landscape. And then you do it for bigger and bigger companies. And so I had the luxury of being able to kind of,

Bennie 

Right.

Brian 

Take one step at a time. It’s like, what’s the next right answer? Not really knowing, you know, kind of like, okay, I think I might like, you know, like that job. And so really kind of dipping my toe, if you will, into that experience to say, hey, is this something that I would enjoy doing? And so it’s been step by step.

Bennie 

Right. Right.

It. It’s really interesting. I hear you talk about the journey and it makes me think about in some respects, we’re all innovation projects. We’re all innovation projects that are looking for, you know, can we find an insight? Can we find a solution? Can we find an organization or person to kind of serve as an executive sponsor to kind of lead us into that? You know, speaking of that, you’ve had one thing that’s always been a part of your career is service to the community around you and being engaged in that.

Brian 

Sure, sure. That’s right. Yeah. Sure.

Bennie 

I want to take it back a little bit when I talk about this executive sponsorship. I know we’ve talked a lot about mentorship and those people in your lives that are shining space in there. Talk a bit about your experience at FAMU because you had a mentor who just kind of blew the doors open.

Brian

Sure, sure. My first, and thanks for that because mentoring is huge. I’m a product of mentoring and you’ve heard me kind of say this, that mentors help you figure out what you don’t know. They not necessarily give you the answer, but helping you, here’s what you don’t know and this is what you need to learn. But my first internship after my, I think in my freshman year, was with a little newspaper in Orlando, the Orlando Center.

Bennie 

Right? Okay, yes.

Brian

And I got a summer internship there, not as a designer, believe it or not, Bennie, but more as a copy runner. And so, reporters went back in the day when reporters used to, you know, kind of type on the computer, they used to print it out. I used to go run, get the story, take it to the reporters so that they could proofread it and do all of those manual editing things that they used to do way back when. But there was a designer that was in the,

Bennie 

Okay.

Brian 

I think it was the editorial graphics department. I’m going to give him a shout out. Essex James, we are friends to this day. I can call him up right now and he will be at my door within an hour. But I met Essex and Essex was a graduate of Florida and one of the things that we would do, and he no longer works there so I can probably say this now, is that Essex would allow me to design things on the front page of the Orlando Sentinel. And so…

Bennie 

Huh. Nice. Alright.

Brian 

So behind the scenes, I was figuring out how to lay out, you know, kind of copy and photos and headlines and all of those things to get some experience with the design part of journalism, if you will, or editorial graphics, that sort of thing. And so Essex was just teaching me along the way. So it’s one thing to learn theory and ideas and principles in college.

Bennie 

Right. Right.

Brian 

But Essex really, really kind of took me under his wing to kind of say, hey, try this. You can do this. Like, let’s work on back in the day when you had the comics on the back page of the newspaper. He used to let me color the comics, Bennie. I mean, it was like all kinds of things that only he and I kind of knew. And so I would, you know, I would literally, you know, back in the day get the newspaper and say, hey, mom, I did this, right? I did the front page. I selected the image. I put the.

Bennie 

Mm -hmm. Great. Right.

Brian

Put the headline here and we’re trying to fit the copy in. And so we had to move it to, you know, A6 and you know, all of that, which was just fascinating to me. And so, Essex really kind of gave me my, you know, that push, that gentle nudge, that push to really kind of pursue a career in design. But not only that, the confidence that I could do it. And so it was a safe space that allowed me to do it. And candidly, Bennie, that’s what I try to do now.

Bennie 

Right.

Brian 

For young designers, right? Can I give them a safe space to explore, but also give students the confidence that they can do it as well, but even better, because they get to learn from all the stuff that, man, if I were your age, I wish I would have done that. And so, again, not giving them the answer, but helping them understand or maybe identify what they don’t know.

Bennie 

Mm -hmm. Right.

Which is really, really truly invaluable. And we think about how dynamic the spaces, right, of design, of brand marketing, of corporate engagement, some of the rules and the functions didn’t exist, like we said before, and they’re being transformed now. So, you know, when you think about breakthroughs, what advice do you give to young professionals looking for a breakthrough?

Brian 

Mm -hmm. Right. Right.

Well, I tell you, that’s a tough one because sometimes it happens to you. Or you can figure out how to disrupt yourself, right? And I think the advice that I would give, I guess my younger self, right? I think change is inevitable and it will happen. And I think the sooner that we learn to embrace change and pivot as we need to pivot, I think the better off we will be. Nothing will be constant.

Bennie 

Right, right. Mm -hmm. Right. Right.

Brian 

And if I just think about my last, call it three and a half, four years since the pandemic, I mean, things have changed at a rapid pace that none of us have ever seen. And so I think the desire to, or the ability to be able to adapt and be flexible to this change that’s gonna occur, I think the sooner that we can do that, I think the better off we’ll be.

And probably the second piece that I would offer up, and this is, it’s related to change, is empathy, right? Empathy is that new, you know, kind of leadership trait that, that whether you’re a designer, a marketer, a CEO, you know, a supervisor of others, right? This notion of being more empathetic, I think certainly will allow you to deal with certainly the first piece, the change piece.

Bennie 

Mm -hmm. Right, right.

Brian 

Right. And so like, how do you, you know, you know, thinking about like, well, why is this, why is this occurring or what else do we need to think about? I think these are the kinds of skills, right? Softer skills, right? Than the hardcore technical skills, or in addition to those hardcore technical skills, I should say, I think it’s becoming increasingly important because things are changing. They’re changing rapidly. They’re changing daily, hourly. And, and, and if you think about our profession, it’s, it’s, it’s changing with one tweet.

Bennie 

Right. Mm -hmm, right.

Brian 

Right? And I think it’s important for us to embrace that, but also to figure out how best to get ahead of it when we can. I think that bodes well for us.

Bennie 

Yeah. Right. Right.

Bennie 

It’s so true. And we realize that as we advance in our profession, how artificial the boundaries really were. Right? When we think about it, I look at your portfolio, it’s core design, it’s brand thinking and strategy, right? It’s problem solving, but you also have relationship building. And those aren’t owned in any one domain, right? You’re thinking about it throughout the space in there. You know, when you look at what innovation looks like, and that’s really a question for you. You’re at one of the most…

Brian 

Yeah, yeah, right. Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Yeah. Sure. Right.

Bennie 

Annually deemed one of the most innovative companies on the planet. So what gets you excited about the possibility of innovation?

Brian 

See. You know, I think 3M has this amazing way of helping the world kind of see what’s possible. And so when I think about what gets me excited is the fact that there are still questions out there and still things to be answered. And I think to the extent that, you know, we leverage our amazing ability to use material science to solve some of the world’s biggest challenges.

Bennie 

Right. Right. Mm -hmm.

Brian 

I think that excites me. And so, because we know that those challenges are out there, we know that 3M has a place to play in that. And more importantly, as I think about the role that design can play, you know, again, and showing the organization what might be possible. I tell my team all the time, I say, one of the greatest skills that we have, and we use it, but sometimes we’re not conscious about what we’re actually doing.

Bennie 

Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Brian 

Is helping our organization to see what they’re saying. And so too often we can get wrapped up in all the words and the jargon and all of that. And every once in a while you just need to pull out a pen and sketch something on a world famous post -it note and say, you mean something like this? Was it this what you meant? that wasn’t it. And let’s try it again and let’s try it again. And so I think our ability to leverage material science in a way that…

Bennie 

Hmm. Yeah.

Brian 

That helps us to create what might be next. And so that’s kind of what keeps me excited about our innovation engine. Got work to do for sure, but I think certainly we have a lot of the fundamentals that were here before I arrived that I get to kind of leverage and exploit and build upon to again help the world be a better place.

Bennie 

So question, so we’ve talked about you as an inspiration to others. So today, where do you find inspiration?

Brian 

Wow, you know, I have to go back to my roots, you know, and I find it whenever I talk to young people. I think that’s the, that’s kind of where I find the most inspiration. And so whether I’m talking to a mentor on the weekends and these are young people that are in high school and just kind of talking to them and kind of hearing how they think about things, because they don’t know the rules. They don’t know, Benny, all the things that, you know, they’re not biased.

Bennie 

Right? Right, right, right.

Brian 

By all the stuff that you can’t do or what have you, they just have that pure, like unbiased creativity of what’s possible. No, none of that, none of that. And I’m just amazed at like, how did you put that together, right? Like, how did you think about that? Because I can tell you when I was 16, 17, I might’ve had the thought, but I certainly didn’t have the ability to maybe act on it, right? I didn’t have.

Bennie 

Right. No, no, no, no, no filter, no structure, no edge, right? Yes.

Brian 

People around me say, yeah, that’s a business or, yeah, you need to study, you know, study that or what have you. And so for me, it happens with the younger generation and watching kind of popular culture and seeing the things that work and some of the things that don’t. And then of course, it’s going back to, you know, to undergrad and talking to design students and kind of hearing some of the things that are on their mind, some of the things that they’re working on. And I think it’s just, it’s just amazing. 

And the amazing potential of what if, I think is the thing that excites me about what I see. I look at the work and it’s like, wow, that is an amazing insight. And so what are you going to do with it? And so I get to push them a little bit. It’s like, just don’t let that idea die there. Do something with it. And so test it, validate it. Do all of those things that we learned in design school to maybe bring it to fruition. And so I tend to get.

Bennie 

Right, right. Right.

Brian

I tend to get inspired by more of the younger generation in terms of the things that they’re doing across the board in many, many different fields.

Bennie 

Right.

Well, hearing you just gets me super excited as well and inspired because it’s that interchange, right? Mentorship in its truest forms is circular. It works both ways, right? And if you think about that, it’s validating and amplifying the insight that they have, right? Because we might’ve had good ideas, but having somebody who’s gonna trouble make with you and go, so yeah, what are you gonna do about it? How are you gonna get that? So you wanna build a business, okay, so.

Brian 

Right. It is. Sure.

Bennie 

How can I then be active in your success or your journey, right? Because a big part of it, as you’ve said, is being in there and trying is really the gym.

Brian

That’s right. Right.

Yes. Yes. Yeah, no, I think that is, that’s half of it. And I think we all need that, you know, I call it the shot in the arm or that nudge to kind of say, do something with that. And, and by the way, you can’t, right? It’s a better idea than you actually probably think. And so sometimes it’s hearing that, right? Just like, it’s that simple kind of, you know, I call it that simple nudge that will get you to act on, you know, to act on that idea. And,

And I know a lot of the, you know, a lot of the students, they have it, right? They just need, you know, folks like you and I that continue to push them. Like, you got this, you got this. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely they do. And so, I’m often inspired by the work that I, or just the gems of the idea that I see when I go back to my alma mater and judge design competitions or talk to students at Pratt or Parsons or wherever, wherever it might be.

Bennie 

It’s like you got this.

Brian 

I think those are the kinds of exchanges where sometimes I feel guilty because I get, Bennie, I get a little bit more out of it than probably the students do. And so it’s like, wow, you know, like we’re in good hands. We are in good, good hands. We just need to continue to push.

Bennie 

Right.

So what I love is about that exchange, right? You get more out of it than the space. But the real kind of global impact of your reach and role and presence. So at any given time, you’re talking about mentoring students in Atlanta or FAMU, but you’re also spending time. I know you just had a major trip. You went to Milan for design week. So talk about that experience, right?

Brian 

Yeah. Yeah. Thank you.

Yeah, yeah, I knocked that off the bucket list. Yeah. Well, I will give you a little bit of context. And so this is something that 3M had been doing for many, many years. I think over 10 years, we had been going to Milan Design Week, started by my predecessor and his predecessor. And so that we had a presence there. And so we kept this engagement over the last several years. The last two years, COVID has slowed, at least slowed me down personally and I couldn’t make the trip. So this last trip I was able to go and kind of see the work that one of our business groups is doing with a pretty well -known company that makes a lot of architectural products. It’s actually called ARCHIPRODUCTS. And so we were part of their installation and being able to share some of the

Bennie 

Okay. Nice.

Brian 

Design products that we have in our commercial films division. And so it was exciting, exciting to kind of see it come to life and kind of see architects and interior designers. We partnered with a local studio to kind of bring this experience to life while also launching our new architectural finishes products. And so it was amazing just to see that it had my trip ended there.

Bennie 

Mm -hmm.

Brian 

That would have been wonderful, but I also was able to spend a couple of days to also see some of the installations of other brands and companies, right? That brings these folks to Milan, which is arguably one of the design capitals of the world, kind of see how they are sharing kind of their brand experience, their brand story in a way that attracts kind of.

Bennie 

Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. Right.

Brian 

Design connoisseurs, if you will, and even those who are just fans of design. Right. And, it was absolutely amazing to kind of see back to that insight idea. What is the solution, whether it was Ikea and some of the work that they were doing or Google or, or a lot of the automotive companies, right. Lexus, Porsche, you name it. I mean, just amazing, amazing experiences really that, that, that they created through design. Right. And so.

Bennie 

Right. Right. Right. Right, right.

Brian 

And so it was just absolutely wonderful to kind of take that in my first time to, to Italy. And so it was my first time attending the event. And so it was definitely a bucket list item that I’m glad I got to cross off. because it was truly, truly for designers who are very much into the creative process and unexpected, you know, kind of outcomes is certainly kind of one of those places you want to want to visit at least once in your lifetime.

Bennie 

Right.

Definitely. And you started talking about other brands in space. And I want to spend a couple seconds just talking about the other part of your portfolio that’s a newer part, which is the partnership. Now, you’ve talked a lot about insight leading to design, leading to solutioning. But then that next step of how do you find that right synergy to be 3M plus, you fill in the blank.

Brian 

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yes. Yeah, no, I think, you know, partnerships was an interesting space. And so when I joined, I didn’t have partnerships, you know, a year and a half in, then I took over partnerships and now it’s kind of evolving and moving to a different space. But, but that aside, you know, I think about, you know, kind of partnerships as a brand building opportunity, right? A brand building opportunity gives us an opportunity to showcase, you know, kind of who we are as a company and as a brand to our customers and to hopefully those communities or properties that we represent. And so, you know, our team does an amazing job of finding the right types of partnerships that are synergies, right? You know, with our values, right? Our beliefs in a way that becomes, you know, more of a win -win -win, right? You know, situation, right? And so we do a lot of work with, we have our, you know, own, golf tournament in the Twin Cities, the 3M Open. We do things that are probably a little closer in the Young Scientist Challenge, right, where we recognize and look for future scientists of tomorrow, right? And so it’s a really great opportunity for us to kind of showcase young scientists, but also leverage kind of the science of 3M to help bring to life some of the…

Bennie 

Mm -hmm. Mm. Mm -hmm. Right.

Brian

Amazing kind of invention and innovation that these young people have across the across the US and even the world. And so and so things like that, you know, we look for those types of relationships, right, authentic relationships where we can share a little bit about who we are, but also help amplify other properties or other other brands in a way that is mutually beneficial. And so.

And so we, you know, we often get a chance to kind of help bring that to life as well. And so whether it’s showing up at CES or Milan Design Week or a major golf tournament, right? Those are different ways that we try to leverage the brand to build it in terms of our reputation and the trust that we try to, you know, create with our many constituents and stakeholders.

Bennie 

I think that’s incredible when you talk about how you kind of reinforce it to build the trust. Because you really are a nexus point for so many communities, right? Our creative problem solvers, our brand leaders, those who are pushing the brand more. And we often are working outside of these titles now, right? We come to the table with those titles, but when we really get into the work and get into the sandbox, it all comes together. I love…

Brian 

Sure, sure.

Bennie 

To close with, if you could give one call to action to this nameless group that’s innovating and building brands and leading and creating a new business, what would that call to action be?

Brian 

You know, it’s interesting because you’re right, you know, expanding and you kind of actually said it, you know, I think feeling okay with not with, with leaning into areas that you might not necessarily think, you know, that much about. And, I probably have done that all my career, right? I kind of, I left school thinking I’ll be a graphic designer in an agency somewhere. And now I’m, you know, kind of leading a pretty big.

Bennie 

Yes, yes.

Brian 

Pretty big organization that I would have never thought of, but it kind of leaned in, you know, leaned into the next, you know, the next right answer or the next opportunity. And I would say, I would encourage folks to certainly lean into those situations when you kind of think it might be a little fuzzy. It’s amazing. There’s probably a quote out there somewhere, you know, that when you leap that net will appear. And it does, it does, because I think if the folks around you truly care about you, they won’t let you fail.

Bennie 

Alright. Yes. Right.

Brian 

And so yeah, you’ll have some mishaps and some obstacles along the way, but certainly kind of leaning into some of those spaces where it’s like, I’m not supposed to do that. Well, I think you are supposed to do that, right? There’s an opportunity that’s in front of you. And so it’s up to us to kind of take advantage of it. And I think design is the way that we think, you know, we think, you know, spirally and we like to blend things and we like to pull in those external kind of points of inspiration.

Bennie 

Mm -hmm.

Brian 

That’s candidly what we do, right? And that’s what makes us a bit more unique, right? As compared to other functions or other disciplines. And so I think leaning into those unexpected places, I think we’ll do a lot for one’s career and one’s just ability to contribute at levels that they probably wouldn’t have imagined that they were able to do. So I certainly have tried to take advantage of that as best I can.

Bennie 

Right, right. Right.

I think that’s a wonderful way to end our conversation today. Where we started, right? We started talking about the breakthrough and you didn’t disappoint my friend, you know, being able to share as an example of what breakthrough thinking looks like, feels like, leads like, and inspires like. So thank you, Brian. It’s such a pleasure. We will do this again next year. For those who are listening, we have a little surprise.

Brian 

That’s right. Awesome, Bennie.

Bennie 

In plan for you for next year, but Brian and I are going to spend some more time talking. Once again, it’s been a pleasure to have Brian Rice, Global Chief Design and Brand Experience Officer of the 3M Company as our guest today on AMA’s Marketing And. Thank you for joining us. We encourage you to see all of the innovation, new ideas and programming with 3M. We also encourage you to follow us on AMA.org. Thank you.