The End of ‘Shapes and Colors’ Comms

Becca Chambers: I think that the biggest issue that comms and brand people have is that we are viewed as “shapes and colrs and words people” who do not know how to use data in our jobs. That is a problem because it means that we’re not taken seriously when it comes to business decisions.

Shahar Silbershatz: Welcome back, everybody. This is Always On, the podcast about brand, reputation and data-driven communications. I am Shahar Silbershatz, CEO of Caliber, in Copenhagen, and today I’m joined by Becca Chambers from all the way in Silicon Valley. Becca is CMO at Scale Venture Partners, and a leading voice in the area of communications. So nice to have you with us, Becca. Welcome to Always On.

Becca Chambers: Hello. Thank you for having me.

Shahar Silbershatz: It’s great to have this chat, even though I had to stay here late, all alone in the office, just to align the time zones between Copenhagen and Silicon Valley. It’s wonderful to have you here. So let’s start from the very beginning. How do you describe yourself to a stranger in a cocktail party?

Becca Chambers: At a cocktail party? Lately, people have been coming up to me and saying, “Are you Becca from LinkedIn?” Because that’s how people know me for the last year or so because I spend a lot of time on LinkedIn and have been building a presence on LinkedIn.

Shahar Silbershatz: That makes it a lot easier.

Becca Chambers: It does make it easier, and it’s actually a nice icebreaker because then I don’t have to go and like, you know, interrupt the little groups of people. People come up to me, which is nice. But my day job, as you mentioned, I’m CMO at Scale Venture Partners, which is a new thing. I’m not even quite three months into the job. Two and a half months, I guess. But I spent the last 15 years building cybersecurity brands and wearing just about every brand and communications hat that you can wear in those roles. And before that I worked in sports PR and marketing, which was pretty cool. In recent months I’ve become a podcast host of my own, a communications-focused show called Under Embargo, and then I’m a pancreatic cancer advocate and marketing chair of the San Francisco Pancreatic Cancer Action Network. And I have raging ADHD, which you will definitely notice if you listen to this show for more than a few minutes. I have a couple kids. I live in the Bay Area. Dogs, three cats, and I guess that’s me and like a little nutshell. I’m excited to be here.

Shahar Silbershatz: Wow, that’s a lot. That sounds like a busy life. So what made you choose a career in communications?

Becca Chambers: I feel like choice isn’t the right word. I feel like accidental, serendipitous, meant-to-be maybe, whatever you wanna call it. I had a roommate in college who was going to the Annenberg — I was at USC, which has a school of communications called the Annenberg School of Communications, which is one of the best communications schools in the world. So I’m like, All right, well, roommate’s going there, sure, I’ll go take some communications classes. And it was awesome. So, I took more classes and then I went on a trip called “semester at sea”. It was an abroad trip in my junior year of college. And there was a whole disaster. We got hit by what was called a rogue wave. Ship was disabled. It was this very dramatic thing that happened. And our ship ended up becoming a global news story. And in the rush of the news cycle, I was kind caught up as one of spokespeople and I was like seeing the behind the scenes of how the AP worked and how all of the global news worked with the local news. And it was really exciting and suddenly I was like, Ooh, maybe I wanna do this with my life. So once I got back from “semester at sea”, I decided to actually double down on it. And then I am from the Bay Area, Silicon Valley, so I worked in sports, like I mentioned, for a little while, and then I moved back to the Bay Area and just got into tech, and that’s how I landed back here after all.

Shahar Silbershatz: It’s quite an original story. I don’t think, I think it’s a first here on the show that somebody had a disaster story, how I got into communications. Yeah. That’s great. We might use it for the title.

Becca Chambers: I love it.

Shahar Silbershatz: So how has the field, do you think, of communications changed over the years throughout your career?

Becca Chambers: Totally changed. I mean, even just the last few years, it’s changed. It’s constantly changing. I think it used to be that communications felt like it was either about protecting a brand or about building a brand. And it kind of felt like you were doing one of those two things. You know, you worked at a smaller company, you were building a brand. You worked at a larger company, a Disney, you were protecting a brand, and you fell into one of those two buckets as a communications person. And I feel like now there are so many more shades of what you do as a communications person, and if you were to ask a communications person if their mom could explain what they do, I think the answer is no. And I think that’s really fun that, as a comms person, my mom can’t explain what I do. And it’s because it’s very nuanced and what I do is about building brands but it’s also about protecting brands. It’s about shaping stories and it’s about changing people’s perspectives and changing the way people feel. It’s about aligning to business goals, and it is about employee engagement. And it is about helping the CEO, you know, reach their business objectives. And I think that there’s just so much more to it than the way that we used to talk about communications as kind of these broader buckets of reputation. And I like to think of it as a much more important business driver now than it used to be.

Shahar Silbershatz: That’s a nice way actually to describe it because usually when we ask people about how the field has changed, people talk about the changing of the media outlets and social media and digital and all that stuff. But you’re actually talking about the goal of this profession has changed. It’s not about what it used to be before. It’s actually much more nuanced and much more multifaceted today.

Becca Chambers: Well, and what you said is also true. But I also think that’s part of why what I’m saying is also true, right? Because what we do as communicators becomes more important as the media landscape becomes more fragmented. Everyone’s attention is no longer in four places. It’s not just newspaper, TV and events, right? It’s all of these social media places. It’s in communities, it’s still newspapers or online newspapers, I guess. Are people really looking at physical newspapers, I don’t know? Radios…

Shahar Silbershatz: They’re making a comeback.

Becca Chambers: We don’t even know 90% of the communities that people are in. I’m always discovering as a communications person, like, should I be spending money on traditional PR? I don’t know. Like, I need to be thinking of new ways to be spending my communications dollars. And first of all, as a comms person, how cool is that, right? That like, we’re constantly rethinking our strategy. But also, again, from a business perspective, that means I need to have a seat at the table, at the highest levels, to say, Hey guys, if we are not looking at this from a top-level strategic view, we are gonna miss where our customers are, where our future employees are, where our current employees are, you know where all of the influencers in our space are, if we are not meeting them where they actually live, not where we think or where we want them to live, right? Or where they were living five years ago. And I just think that for us, that’s where we as communicators need to be telling the business. Like, without us telling them, how are they gonna know?

Shahar Silbershatz: Yeah. And that’s a point I want to get back to, but I’d say basically that the field has changed a lot, as you say, based both on what we do, but more importantly on why we do it. And the why has changed a lot as well. So I like the statement where you describe yourself on your website. so I’m gonna read it out. It’s a bit of a mouthful where you say “visionary chief communications officer, driven by a contagious passion for empowering teams and building brand through thoughtful storytelling and data-driven brand marketing and communication strategies”. Right? Sounds familiar? There’s a lot there that I like. Obviously the word that caught my eye was data, because that’s what we do here a lot in Caliber. But tell me a little bit about this statement, what’s behind that and specifically also the data part of it, maybe.

Becca Chambers: I think that the biggest issue that comms and brand people have is that we are viewed as “shapes and colors and words people” who do not know how to use data in our jobs. That is a problem because it means that we’re not taken seriously when it comes to business decisions, and it means that we’re first on the chopping block when budgets are tight or if revenue’s down or if we need to make decisions about, Okay, team, we need to make cuts, who are the easiest heads to cut? It’s the ones who aren’t driving revenue, right? I am here to challenge that notion and to say, Comms, brand, we do drive revenue. It’s just harder to measure in the same way. So when I say I’m a data-driven communications and brand person, I will use whatever data I have, in any way that I can, to prove the value of what I’m doing, and it never looks the same in any organisation that I work in. So it’s not the same as marketing and sales. They have it easier. They often are able to say, doing X will equal Y. It’s not always that, but brand and comms, we can’t do that. So I might say, Okay, I’m gonna set up this employee engagement activity and I’m gonna hope that if I do X, Y thing will happen, and over time, I’m guessing that that will lead to Z. And then I’m going to watch that and if that happens, am I right? Is that actually data? For me, yes, that is data, that does tell me something, right? Am I able to then just show those numbers to the board? Probably not. I need to turn that into a story, right? I need to then contextualize that for my executives and say, Hey, these activities that we did, drove this thing, that led to this outcome, and that was laddered up to this business goal. It’s a bunch of steps and it’s really hard to do, but that’s how you prove your business value as a communications leader. And it is totally possible to do, but it takes effort and it takes figuring out what data you have access to, how you’re gonna track that data, and how you’re gonna ladder that up to the business goals of the company, not just the goals that you’re trying to track. Like, what does share of voice of your media, what does that matter in the context of your business goals? Is the share of voice of your CEO, does that matter, if your goal is to show up as a security company when you formerly weren’t a security company, then yes, share a voice, as it pertains to security against other security companies, that does matter, right? But your share of voice against all of your competitors in the space doesn’t. So again, contextualizing the data in that way for that particular company in that campaign, that’s what matters. And then figuring out how you tell that story in the context of the broader business goals. So not nearly as simple as how sales and marketing get to share their data or share the way that their activities impact outcomes, but communications, brand, you know, all of the people who sit under those umbrellas, we can do that. We just aren’t doing it. And I think that’s where — that’s a blanket statement, some of us are doing it — we need to try harder and we need to do more of it. And it is hard to do and it can be expensive because we don’t have the tools often that we need or the data to do it. But part of that is on us to go find that data. Like, I need to go work with the people who have access to Salesforce, right? Hey, how do I get data? People who have access to Google Analytics: Hey, how can I create a dashboard? How do I get access to this? Like, that’s on me to figure that out. So when you ask, what does that mean, data driven, that’s what it means. It means getting scrappy and finding the data.

Shahar Silbershatz: Yeah, I mean, it’s a good point because it’s not just about let’s use data, but let’s use it in the context that makes sense, and also let’s tell a story about it. You mentioned a couple of nice examples, you know, whether it’s from Salesforce or whether it’s from Google Analytics – what are some of those data points that you think are underused today by communicators?

Becca Chambers: This goes back to my original point. It’s completely bespoke for every single job, company that I’m in. But like something that matters a lot, and in my current job is something that I think about a lot, message consistency across channels. Everyone thinks about like, oh, do we have enough this? Are we talking about that? Are, you know, is our website, are we talking about this topic and are our competitors doing this? But do we have a new consistency that we show up as a brand that people know when they see something that your company is thing that is actually saying it, because that’s what builds trust. Consistency and solid messaging, that’s a metric that matters. Like, message consistency and the trust that comes with it. Sentiment across analysts, right? Like, beyond journalist sentiment. Like, industry analysts, are you not just talking to the analysts, like are you measuring how they feel how about you? I love analyst relations. I find it to be one of the… I talk about this all the time if you follow me… one of the most important parts of tech communications is relations, and are actually stopping to understand way that analysts feel about your company, your products, and then what are you doing about it? Are you taking action on that? Because that not only matters for how those analysts are talking to customers about you, but then how they’re writing about you — like, that really matters. Internal alignment, right? It’s not just like HR measurements. If your employees can’t tell your story, I mean, your external audience is not hearing your story, right? Like, all of these are measurements that like you can be measuring and you could be benchmarking and working on over time, right? These are things that like you could be doing now and have nothing to do with necessarily like large-scale campaigns that, you know, might move the needle for external audiences per se.

Shahar Silbershatz: And in many cases, I think people have the data, but they’re not using it for communications. Like alignment data, right? Employee alignment.

Becca Chambers: That’s the thing. I think another like misconception and I’m glad you say that because a lot of us feel like, okay, well we don’t have the tools that marketing has or that sales has or that finance has, like they have analytics tools, which is true. But we can go tap into those, we can go ask them for their data, right? We can ask them to share their data with us, that we can then use to create our own dashboards, because we can use that data in different ways. And it goes back to: we’re storytellers. We should be able to figure out how to use data to contextualize our activities and how we’re driving outcomes as well. And I think in addition to the quantitative outcomes that we’re driving, there’s ways to show the qualitative results that your activities are driving. So I think that we would be shortsighted not to mention those as well. So I think that’s worth mentioning we talk about data, it’s not just quantitative, we can also look at qualitative measurements and things that you know matter, that you can look at over time.

Shahar Silbershatz: Right, and on that point, do you find sometimes that it’s hard .. you said in the beginning that people look at us and see us as those creative storytellers… do you find a challenge sometimes in balancing the storytelling, the emotional side of our work with hard data? I mean, how do you manage that, getting the right balance there and craft a good narrative?

Becca Chambers: A narrative externally or internally?

Shahar Silbershatz: Both. I mean, there’s art and science in our craft, and sometimes it’s hard to balance the two.

Becca Chambers: For sure. I mean, my goal for my teams, when telling them how to create internal decks or, you know, to create things that they’re gonna share for leadership, is always lead with data. Like, there is no reason to have a slide that says anything that doesn’t have a “so what, why?” Like, what is the purpose of this? Because nobody cares. Like, unless there is a “so what” on it, whatever. Externally, the story is the point, right? Data is a validation of your story, but the story is the point. So I am all about storytelling that has data to support it. But if you’ve got a story, you’ve got a story. Sometimes a story is a story and you know … my favorite thing to do when I worked in B2B tech, when I didn’t have any good stories internally was just to go do research that would get data to create a story, right? Because then you have the data that backs the story that then the media will pick up, right? And that is literally just, we had a good story and we needed the data so that somebody else would tell the story for us. But the story is still the story.

Shahar Silbershatz: And the story is still art, but the art needs to rest on science is what you’re saying in a sense.

Becca Chambers: You need to have both pieces. You need to have the data and the story.

Shahar Silbershatz: Got it. So let’s talk a little bit about this idea of always on. You know, the complexity of today is very much around this idea that a crisis can erupt at any point in time and companies and comms teams need to be always on. In what sense are you always on, would you say?

Becca Chambers: So I have raging ADHD, which I mentioned earlier, which means I am always on anyway. Just part of how I function, which is a good thing, I think, for being a communications person, it’s probably why I gravitated into a role like this, to be honest. I also came up in the ranks of cybersecurity, which is an always on industry. I worked at companies that were constantly the cause of government breaches. Constantly, Oh hey, China broke into, you know, one of the major government agencies and it’s your company’s fault, so you’re gonna have to get on with Homeland Security on a Saturday, right? Like, that’s real crisis comms right there. I was doing that for years. That’s always on. That sucks. And I think my answer to you is always on is an impossible standard. I was always on for 15 years and what I learned is that always on leads to burnout. And so what always on actually needs to be is always on with boundaries. So always on is learning how to prioritize, right? And understanding that a Slack message from your boss at nine PM that says, Hey, can you email me this thing? If that thing can wait until tomorrow, wait until tomorrow. If that thing is, Hey, our company is the cause of a Chinese espionage and you need to get on with Homeland Security in an hour. That means you need to get on in an hour, right? So you need to start to understand what matters now and what matters tomorrow, and you are the kind of boundary setter of your life. And if you can’t do that, then you’re gonna burn out. And I am the first to admit that I burned myself out more than once, trying to be everything to everyone, and it doesn’t serve anyone when you do that, especially your own team. And I think that I actually burned myself out trying protect my team from burnout, and that doesn’t serve anyone either, because I probably did protect my team until I burnt out, and then they all picked up the pieces when I burnt out. So the answer is you protect your own time and you protect your team’s time, and then you prioritize the things. Because things ebb and flow too, right? And sometimes you need to sprint and you all need to sprint together. So then when you need to rest, you need to rest. So always on but it ebbs and flows. Boundaries.

Shahar Silbershatz: Yeah. And maybe also recognize that always on is an unachievable goal, as you say. You can never actually be always on, so you might as well not push yourself to try to be that. But how do you measure success in … I mean, it’s an always on world in terms of communications more now than it was 10 years ago, let’s say, because, you know, the crises, they spread and they come more frequently, they come in a more unexpected way and they spread more quickly. How do you measure, or maybe I should ask you another way, do you think that measurements with comms and data points have evolved in order to support better the measurement of success in an always on world?

Becca Chambers: No, not necessarily.

Shahar Silbershatz: Well, we do have a lot more real-time tracking going on today. We have a lot more data that comes a lot more constantly right than before?

Becca Chambers: Maybe. I mean, I think we are evolving into a place where we will have metrics, and I talked about this on one of my recent podcasts actually, because I do think AI is gonna get us to a place where we will be able to measure influence, right? Like, whether it’s a person or a brand, and this is where it comes to like, you know, where, say, I’m a journalist and I work for CNN, but then I leave CNN and I go start my own Substack. Like, I’m taking my brand with me, right? And I think it will be really interesting to see how that person’s reputation is able to be measured when they leave CNN, right? Like how does that work? So that’s one thing. The next thing is how do we actually start to track … you know, you and I are here chatting on a podcast and someone clicks a link from the podcast and then how are we actually tracking attribution? Like, how do we still not know how people are getting to our websites?

Shahar Silbershatz: The holy grail of attribution.

Becca Chambers: I just don’t know how we just..  we’re never gonna solve it.

Shahar Silbershatz: We certainly haven’t so far, but hopefully there’s a bit of hope in the future.

Becca Chambers: And this is a huge problem for communications people because I know that people learned about things from podcasts and I know that people are clicking links from articles and, you know, learning about whatever on social media, and yet communications teams are not getting any of that credit, and that’s bullshit.

Shahar Silbershatz: Right. So it’s interesting also because we are focusing on real-time perception tracking. So reputation tracking, right? How people feel and think about companies at any given time. But the question also, of course, is why do they think and feel like that? What is it that made them feel and think like that? And what you call attribution, that’s very hard to track in a real-time environment. Do you see any difference between a startup environment and a big enterprise environment when it comes to this always on world? I mean, you’re seeing those two as different or having different needs in that world?

Becca Chambers: Totally. Startup — like, chaos is the default, right? Like everything is chaos. You just kind of live in it. So you’re trying to create clarity and you just live in always on. Whereas enterprise, you’re more, the constraint is politics and you’re trying to navigate the landmines and trying to like, you know, get around the things that might get in your way. I just think it’s such an interesting opposite dynamic, I guess.

Shahar Silbershatz: But that actually makes it harder to be always on, no, where you have all of these things pulling you back or making it difficult for you to react in real time?

Becca Chambers: Yeah, maybe. I, you know, as a leader, I would say not, but as somebody like an individual contributor for sure. Like, I think that it is very easy to become complacent in large enterprises, especially if you’re not empowered or if you work somewhere where you are kind of just like expected to do, you know, “well, we’ve always done it this way and so we’re just gonna…” Like, I think those kinds of environments are just like setting people up to just check out and just show up and do the bare minimum.

Shahar Silbershatz: What about leadership then in that sense? I mean, what role does that play, leadership visibility in an always on environment? You know, how do you address this question of to what extent the CEO of the company needs to be visible at times, you know, where a lot of things are happening or people are expecting a lot of opinions from CEOs?

Becca Chambers: I generally believe that leadership needs to be more visible, period, these days. I think that people don’t wanna buy from corporate, right? Like, I think people wanna, well not just buy from, I think employees wanna work for a person and not for corporate, right? So yes, I think that the leaders of teams, the leaders of companies, the leaders of all of things, you need to show up and you need to show up authentically. Not this like, bullshit, I have my talking points, or I have my scripted video that I’m emailing to the company, right? Like, show up, have a conversation, answer questions. You know, like there is this perception that if you’re not showing up as perfect, then you shouldn’t be showing up at all. And that is, I think, misguided. So to your point, yes, and I think that not just showing up, but showing up authentically, showing imperfections, showing vulnerability, showing that you’re humble and, you know, just that you’re human. And I think that will not only kind of differentiate brands in this next phase of phoniness and artificial everything, but it’s also gonna endear people to companies. It’s gonna make people wanna work at companies. It’s going to make people wanna buy from companies. It’s gonna make people wanna like…. if I have a product … you know, it’s like the way people feel about Apple, right? Like I know that everything I buy from Apple is gonna feel a certain way. Well, I know that everything I buy from this company is gonna have a CEO who’s not a dick, right? Like, that matters right now, right? No one’s buying certain cars anymore because the CEO is a dick. So I think that like, I don’t know…

Shahar Silbershatz: Let’s talk a little bit about the role of the CCO, and you talked before about the seat at the table and you’ve also reported in the past into CEOs. How do you think people, because not everybody has that ability to influence strategic decision-making, what’s your advice typically for peers who want to be able to have more influence at that level?

Becca Chambers: Well, there’s a couple things. Don’t be afraid to say no. Like, learning how to say no, strategically say no, is a very important skill. And being comfortable with pushing back, you know, with data, why you’re pushing back, is valued and respected, and if you have a CEO that understands, that values, somebody who is willing that, that can help put you right next to that person. I know as a leader that I super-value having somebody who’s willing to spar in ideas with me because often you don’t have that thought partner. And so having somebody like that is really valuable. So that is one, and if you find a CEO who does value that and then values you that can like really elevate you and get you that seat at the table. So it’s almost like a chief of staff communications role. Right? So that’s one. The communications, chief communications, whatever you want to call it role, is the only other role besides a CEO that looks across the entire organization. Like, every stakeholder, not just customers, not just employees, not just, you know…

Shahar Silbershatz: Investors.

Becca Chambers: Investors. It’s every single person, government agency, like everyone who might interact with your brand, communications is looking at, and that cuts across the whole organization. And so we are looking around corners, we’re looking back at history, and I think that says a lot about what our function is. And it says a lot about the value that our function brings. And so if you’re able to articulate that to people and explain that having a seat at the table allows you to better do your job, so if we have the information, we can look around corners, rather than just, Oh, hey, communications people, we’re gonna acquire a company next week, can you spin up a press release? It’s like, Oh, well, if we known about that six months ago, we started talking this we could have a whole transition plan, right? For our employees, for the media, for our analysts, for our messaging, for all of the things that we would need to do would make this successful, right? However you, as a communications person, can articulate that, so that you can get that seat at the table. And then being the “I’ll figure it out” person is the most valuable thing that you can do. And not in a wishy-washy pushover kind of way, but in, you know, “We don’t know how to do this thing. Okay, well then let’s not do it. Just nope.” “You know what? I can figure it out. I’ll figure it out. I’ll come back here and we’ll get it done.” That is an invaluable skill and if you can be the person who does that, you will always be invited back to the table because somebody wants the “I’ll figure it out person” in the room.

Shahar Silbershatz: And you’re probably best positioned to do that as the CCO because you’re so well informed from such a broad audience.

Becca Chambers: And comms people are scrappy because we are so, because we’re undervalued and people don’t appreciate the skills that we bring to the table that we do end up figuring things out and learning new skills all the time, right? So we are scrappy and we through necessity figure out how to do new things.

Shahar Silbershatz: So what are some of the trends do you think CCOs should get on board with versus trends you think are maybe distractions?

Becca Chambers: I mean, the personal brand building is everything. Like, I can’t stress that enough. And I tell that to everybody, whether they are… I just had a conversation yesterday with somebody who’s wrapping up her senior year at Stanford. Go build your brand online. Go build it out loud. Whatever your skills are, showcase them online. Show your personality. Be cringey. Push yourself a little bit more than you are comfortable with. Because if you’re not telling story online, somebody’s making it up in their head, right? And I don’t think you want somebody else telling your story. We are communications people, we are telling our executives all of the time, “Go do this, quote”, right? “Go speak at this event, whatever.” Go do it yourself. Tell your executives to go do it. Go post online. Stop over polishing and just go show up. Post every single day. Do it. And right now we’re still in early days. It doesn’t feel like it, but we are … in five years, every single person is gonna have a massive personal brand online. And you don’t wanna be late to that party. I can’t stress this enough. And I think our executives all need this. It goes back to what I said before. People don’t wanna buy from brands. They wanna buy from people. So if your executive is not out there building their personal brand … you know, we spend all this time trying to get execs, keynote spots at events. I got 80 million views on my content last year. 80 million. Like, I didn’t speak at … I mean, I spoke at a couple events. I didn’t speak at any huge, massive events, right? 80 million views. I’m not even selling anything. Like, that’s way easier than going and speaking at events. So just saying, get online, build a personal brand.

Shahar Silbershatz: That’s a scary thought right there, 8 billion personal brands out there in a few years’ time.

Becca Chambers: But here’s the thing. I will double down on this real quick because people used to just Google you, right, and then whatever popped up, that’s what they know about you. There’s so much more now. Like, this is a podcast. If this was the only podcast that I ever did, this is the only thing that would show up. So this would be my whole story about me. There’s like those little things. So you need to go build your story out there, because if you’re not, like your whole story is just gonna be whatever people concoct in their brain about you and…

Shahar Silbershatz: Yeah. Absolutely. And they do. Alright. I wanna finish up with some quickfire questions. Something that you’re probably familiar with from your podcast. So what’s the last thing you read or heard about comms that made you angry?

Becca Chambers: I don’t know if it’s the last thing I read or heard about comms, but it’s the last thing that made me angry, and it’s that LinkedIn doesn’t pay their content creators. This is what I just said. I had 80 million, more than 80 million views, on my content between February 2024 and February 2025.

Shahar Silbershatz: Wow.

Becca Chambers: If that was on YouTube, I’d have made so much money because YouTube pays their content creators. But I made $0 on LinkedIn. But now LinkedIn is starting some paying content program, but instead of paying the people who are on LinkedIn making content, they’re paying like new creators to come over from other platforms like to TikTok-ize LinkedIn. That’s just crazy and stupid and I don’t wanna TikTok-ize LinkedIn. Like, pay your creators.

Shahar Silbershatz: That’s another scary thought. Anyway, okay, that’s good. So, what’s a contrarian view you hold that most of your peers strongly disagree with.

Becca Chambers: Always use Oxford commas and em dashes. Non-negotiable.

Shahar Silbershatz: Okay. So always use the Oxford comma that most of your peers strongly disagree with. All right, that’s a good one. If you could eliminate one trend from your field, what would it be and why?

Becca Chambers: Everybody acting like AI invented em dashes because I’ve been using em dashes since forever — because I’m a good writer — and this whole, like, “Oh my God, I can spot AI writing ’cause em dashes.” Fuck off!

Shahar Silbershatz: All right, and then another one from your own podcast. If you could banish one corporate buzzword or phrase from existence forever, which would it be and why?

Becca Chambers: Share of voice. Meaningless. It might mean something within a specific context for specific campaigns, but the way most people use it is totally meaningless, stupid.

Shahar Silbershatz: That’s good. Yes, I tend to agree with that. Great. So we talked a lot about always on and being always on and how that can actually lead to burnout as well. So how do you switch off or how have you learned over the years to switch off?

Becca Chambers: I massively protect my sleep. I sleep in on weekends and my kids know not to wake me up unless it’s an emergency. And my husband does all the morning duties and that’s like my routine. And so, like, if I can nap, I will take a nap on the weekends. Like, it’s my thing. Mom sleeps. That’s my thing.

Shahar Silbershatz: And do you have any activities that help you switch off that you like to do? Hobbies or things that help you relax?

Becca Chambers: I like to garden. I mean, so my house is filled with ADHD-ers, me and my kids. So we all hyper-fixate on random things at different times. And lately it’s been like gardening. So whatever it is, random fun things around the house. And this weekend it was like repotting house plants. So we were all, you know, digging in dirt and repotting house plants. But it could be something, you know, Legos one weekend. It just depends. But usually it’s something random ADHDish with my kids.

Shahar Silbershatz: I should get some tips from you one day on how to get your kids to do gardening with you.

Becca Chambers: Yeah, well have a couple of ADHD kids.

Shahar Silbershatz: So, I’m done on my side. Is there anything that we didn’t ask you that you wanted to say?

Becca Chambers: Just if you all wanna hear more from me, you can check out, my podcast is called the Under Embargo Podcast. We are on LinkedIn and YouTube every other Wednesday with Parry Headrick. Some of you might have heard of him. He’s a communications dude. Otherwise connect with me on LinkedIn. I’m always there. Becca from LinkedIn. Thanks for having me.

Shahar Silbershatz: I will do. Thank you so much, Becca. It’s been a real pleasure. Many thanks for listening to this episode of Always On. If you haven’t done so already, check out some of the other episodes. They’re packed with unique insights from seasoned experts at leading companies. Oh, and if you have any comments or questions about anything you’ve heard on the pod, we’d love to hear from you. Just drop us a line at [email protected]. Thanks again for listening. Till next time, take care.