How PR Thrives in the Age of ‘Perma-Crisis’

Justin Levinson (00:10)‍

Hey everybody, welcome to the Agency Side podcast. My name is Justin Levinson and today I'm joined with Grace Leong, the CEO at Hunter, one of the most respected PR and marketing communications agencies in the country. Grace is an award-winning leader recognized by PR Week's Women of Distinction, and she's built Hunter into a powerhouse known for creativity, culture, and longstanding partnerships with some of the world's biggest brands. Grace, it's so great to have you on the show today.

‍

Grace Leong (00:34)

But Jess, and this is the best part of my day. Nice to talk to you.

‍

Justin Levinson (00:38)

Yeah, I'm excited to have the conversation. Yeah, I mean, let's just get started with, just for viewers who might not be familiar with Hunter, what exactly you folks are doing over there.

‍

Grace Leong (00:48)

Okay, so first I have to just correct something on my intro. I did not build this agency into a powerhouse. We did. This is a team of super, super talented and passionate communicators. And there's about 350 people behind me that have done this work. So just wanted to make that clear. What do we do at Hunter? You know, like any great company, we have a purpose. You know, we're here to place, share, and amplify the narratives of the world's

best brands and companies. That's why we exist. We take stories, we build them, and we make sure other people hear about them. Because when you hear a great story, you can connect with a brand, you can connect with a company. And we've been doing this here at Hunter for about 37 years. We started in 1989 with one client, and it's still a client today. And that's a story I think most people know. It's the story of the Tabasco brand.

That was our first client and we still do the work for that brand globally telling the story of the world's greatest hot sauce. So that's kind of what we do in a nutshell. When you start in the PR world, nobody really understands what PR is. They're like, wait, did you do that ad on television? Were you in that Super Bowl commercial? No, that's not PR. That's advertising. What PR does is build those great relationships between a brand.

and a company and its key publics, whomever or whatever they happen to be. ⁓ So that's what we do over here at Hunter. And I'm really proud to lead the team and been doing it for quite some time.

‍

Justin Levinson (02:24)

Yeah, that's great. And all those things are very connected. How did you get into this space yourself?

‍

Grace Leong (02:29)

Yeah, it's somewhat of a long story, but it's a good story. And I'm told I should tell it all the time because it's, you know, I went to college, had no idea what I wanted to be. And of course, like most kids right now, you go to college, like, what do I want to be? I happened to take one class and it turned me on and it was a public relations class.

And it was in the school of journalism. I was like, oh, this sounds really good. But the most important part of that class was I opened up a textbook and in there I read a story about a woman named Barbara Hunter. And Barbara Hunter was the first woman to own her own PR firm in the United States. She had bought the world's oldest PR firm, which was established in 1917. She bought it. She and her sister.

in the late 1960s and they built it up to be one of the world's largest firms. ⁓ It's now Ogilvy and Mather PR. And I read about this woman and I was like, wait, a woman owning a business in the sixties and the seventies? And if you knew anything about, know, women couldn't buy businesses back then. In fact, you had to have your husband or a man sign a loan for you. Women couldn't even take out loans. And I was just inspired by her story that, you know, she was able to find a passion for

communications and then build a business about it. And I said, one day I'm going to work for her. And I ended up doing that. I graduated from college with a degree in PR and English. And the first person I sought out was Barbara Hunter. And at first she told me she didn't have a job for me. And she's like, can't hire you. I don't have any jobs, but I'll stay in touch. And again, this goes out, this story goes out to all the college kids right now who are having a hard time finding jobs. When they say stay in touch, I'll call you when I have a job. They mean it.

So hang in there. three months later, she called me back and she said, I remember you and I do have a job for you right now. And would you like to come and join me on the Tabasco account? And I said, sure would. And I started my career under Barbara Hunter on September 19th, 1989. remember the day changed my life. So I started working for Barbara on that day and on the Tabasco account. And at that point,

She was the chairman and CEO of Ogilvy and made their public relations. She had sold her firm to Ogilvy and was running Ogilvy. But at age 62, about a year after I was working with her, she said, I want to leave and start all over again. I want to start a new PR firm. Would you like to come with me? And I was like, what? Like I just got here and we're doing great. And you know, wait, we're going to go start a little PR firm. But I looked at her and I said,

You know, this woman, I could learn so much from her. It's not about the corner office. It's not about prestige. It's about learning and being next to someone who you know can teach you a lot. So we did. So we went down the street and we started Hunter and it was scrappy. But again, one of the best decisions I've made all my life. So that's the long story.

‍

Justin Levinson (05:28)

Yeah, that's brilliant. When you first started on that Tabasco account, what was your position at that point in time?

‍

Grace Leong (05:34)

When I first, I was a junior account executive. So we were working on, you know, I was doing work to promote the brand in the food service community. Tabasco is a brand that's sold in to consumers. It's also sold in the food service and it also industrial big companies that use Tabasco in the production of products. So I was assigned to the food service side. So that meant getting restaurants and corporate chefs to adopt Tabasco as a great flavor enhancer. So that was my job.

So I really learned the food business that way and how restaurants work and how chefs work and supply and ingredients. And it was really just, you know, fascinating time in my understanding of, food PR, which really became my specialty for a very long time.

‍

Justin Levinson (06:21)

And how did you continue to grow within the company? I obviously now as CEO, did you sort of go down a traditional route of becoming like an account supervisor, director, VP, work kind of to the top? did that journey go?

‍

Grace Leong (06:33)

It was, you know, it's a very, in those times in the eighties and the nineties, PR agencies were very hierarchical. You know, the job was always do the job at the level above you and that's how you get promoted. And that's still what I say to my team here. If you're doing the job one level above you, you have a better chance of being promoted. So always read the job description.

a butts in front of you because that's how you get there when you have that goal in mind. So yeah, and I just kept doing it and it was a small firm so you basically could do everything. It was me and a couple of other people and Barbara and I would just raise my hand for everything because I was just so interested. I was scared as heck. I didn't know how to do certain things. But my motto is, and it's not in advertising, but I love advertising slogans and my favorite is you got to be in it to win it.

‍

Justin Levinson (07:20)

Yeah.

‍

Grace Leong (07:21)

If you put yourself into it, you're always going to win. Don't put yourself in. You have no shot of winning. Get in and win. know, so I would, I would just take every assignment. Yes, mine, I'll do it. Yes, I'll work the weekend. I'll fly here. I'll go there. I'll call the client. I'll write the memo. I'll stay late. And that made all the difference, but I was passionate about it, right?

And it's not because I wanted to get ahead. just wanted to learn and then getting ahead just happened. And then, you know, develop client relationships that way. You develop partner relationships that way. You know, people really respect people that are constantly working hard and servicing them. So my client base grew, my client relationships grew to the point where, you know, about 10 years into Barbara and I working at Hunter, she decided, hey, I'm 72 now.

It's probably time for me to, to retire. So, uh, yeah, so she did. And we shopped the firm around to a bunch of big conglomerates. And at every single meeting we had with the WPPs and the publicists. I was like, yeah, this doesn't feel right. It doesn't feel right that we should join up. So we approached Barbara and we said, Hey, me and a couple of my partners, John and Mark and Jason. And we said, how about we buy it?

And of course the brilliance that she is, said, I was waiting for you to ask. She was playing us the whole time. ⁓ And that's what we did. Brilliant. In 1999 and fully took over that year. That's great.

‍

Justin Levinson (08:49)

That's awesome.

I'd be curious to learn, it's very cool that that Tabasco was a client that you started at inception and continues to be within the firm today. How, how did you, I know you just mentioned that you grew a lot of your personal relationships and that was part of the progression of your career. I guess how, did you, how, was the next step in getting the next client? Like how did, how did that sort of work where you guys continued to, was it sort of just the success with Tabasco sort of led to the next thing organically or were you kind of.

pounding the phones or what they kind of look like when you're in growth mode there.

‍

Grace Leong (09:27)

Yeah, I think there was a couple of things, know, Tabasco, the first client, and then we all had kind of some original context. You know, people knew of our work, so we would do work for Tabasco and we put it out there and we'd obviously use the power of publicity to convince other food companies, hey, I'm jealous of that Tabasco work, who's the agency behind it?

So we use publicity quite a bit in the work that we were doing and Tabasco being such a powerhouse brand, anytime they did something, people would want to know how did that get done? And then the other thing is when you're trying to build a network of clients and contacts, there can be really no separation between your personal and your professional life. And, ⁓ you know, it's a holistic approach to client service that, you know,

You always make sure people know what you do and how you do it and that you're always in the hunt to constantly service additional clients or more clients. Building networks is really important and you're never too young or too old to build networks. One of the things I did is in my early years at Hunter, I went back to business school because I thought maybe I wasn't going to just...

you know, do PR, maybe I want to get more into marketing and brand management. So for four years I worked, I went to school at night to get my MBA. And what I realized is two things being a business school. Number one, you develop some of your greatest contacts in academic networks, you know, working alongside of other people that are also looking to, you know, enhance their business acumen. That network then paid back because all those people became brand managers and.

and CEOs now, and I was in B school with them. So the other thing that business school kind of gave me was like an understanding of how to run a business, right? I had an undergraduate degree in comms and English, and that's all great for the practice of communications. But I also wanted to do some work where I'd understand how to run a business. So, and then the third thing that business school really helped me with was the fact that I did actually want to stay in communications and public relations.

I studied everything else, accounting, finance, negotiations, real estate, all the things that a classic B-school education will give you. And I realized, you know what? Communications, marketing, that's the best part of the job. And so was like, okay, I'm coming back and recommitting to the calm side of business.

‍

Justin Levinson (11:50)

brilliant. What's sort of like the biggest like thrill in this industry? You know, what sort of like, you makes you tick? Thanks for tuning in, folks. This episode is brought to you by Coming Up Creative, a relationship first boutique creative recruitment agency.

We disrupt the creative ecosystem by running sophisticated multi-channel campaigns with custom video and voice outreach that actually gets responses. We actively market the agencies and brands we represent to help them stand out to today's industry's top talent, all backed by real human connection and AI-powered targeting. If you're ready for a modern recruitment approach, visit www.comingupllc.com and get started.

‍

Grace Leong (12:30)

hands

down, hands down, I always say, you know, when I'm sharing the credentials of Hunter and I give them all the numbers, how big we are and how many offices and our revenue and, you know, our number of diverse staff, the number one thing that makes me tick makes me happy is the tenure of the staff here at Hunter. Cause I love creating an environment where people can be their most professional best.

and feel comfortable and continue to grow. There is no number that's more important to me than somebody who works with us having a great career journey at Hunter. The retention numbers, the satisfaction numbers I see.

‍

Justin Levinson (13:14)

Yeah, you guys have had, was noticing in my research here that there's agency of the year, best place to work multiple years. So that's ⁓ something that you must be proud of.

‍

Grace Leong (13:22)

You see it right behind me here, yeah.

‍

Justin Levinson (13:24)

Most loved workplace leader, rated most loved workplace leader. Yeah. People first philosophy was sort of like the thing I read.

‍

Grace Leong (13:33)

Yeah,

at the end of the day, your job as a leader of an agency, a consulting business, whether it's legal or accounting, public relations, marketing, advertising, is to create a space where people can be their professional best and nurture them professionally and give them all the resources and support. Because if you do that, they are going to be their best, deliver the best service to your clients and the best work.

That really, really makes me tick every day. I come here every day for the people I work with and to make sure I'm breaking down barriers, I'm creating spaces where we're doing our best creative work together and they feel safe, secure, happy, empowered, responsible, challenged. That's what my job is every single day.

‍

Justin Levinson (14:23)

Love that. How do you, does the team work remotely a lot or do you guys have a lot of in office or how does that? Yeah.

‍

Grace Leong (14:29)

We,

you know, our official policy, if you open up our handbook, right, it'll say three days a week in office, four days preferred. One of those days has to be a Monday or Friday, you know, so we have the policy, which I think does work because we are a people focused business. And I believe that people learn side by side, you know, and together one of our values is better together. And that also means physical proximity, you know, makes people excited. I think.

Technology is great and it works as well for when we can't be together, but there is magic that happens when people are together. Bonds are formed, electricity goes back and forth, ideas are sparked. So we offer hybrid, but I generally prefer in-person. mean, we were founded as a public relations agency and building bridges with people I think are best done in person.

‍

Justin Levinson (15:24)

Yeah. Do you have a lot of huddles like strategy sessions where you guys kind of get together and meld minds?

‍

Grace Leong (15:30)

There's a joke, and I'm sure you guys have this too in your organization, where I spend all my day in meetings. And when I get home, I stand in my kitchen. And if my adult children are home, like I'm a very different person at home. I don't talk at all at home. And my brother used to say to me like, wow, you run a PR firm? Like you don't say a word at family parties or you don't talk at home. Because my social battery is completely dead when I leave here. I get to my office at 630.

I leave maybe 730, eight o'clock at night, all day long, I'm talking, we're in huddles, we're strategizing, and you just leave it all on the table and at home. Like there's nothing left, right? But it's a trick on my family. could talk. I'd rather listen at home to what's

‍

Justin Levinson (16:15)

Yeah, it can be the same way for me too. Sometimes I'm like, there's so many meetings, I'm just like, what happened? Like, what did I do today? I didn't remember. It's kind of like, goes by. I think I still have young children who are, they don't really understand what I do. So it's sort of like a little bit above them. they're like, yeah. But I try to talk about work a little bit less with them and try to focus on their school day and ask them like, Hey, you know, what good questions did you ask today? You know, who did you play with? That, you know, that kind of stuff.

‍

Grace Leong (16:43)

Absolutely. My kids' lives are infinitely more interesting than mine and I want to hear what they have to say when they're home. They're now all out of the house. yeah, so it's, yeah, but here it's all about connection. You know, we have five values at Hunter and it really drives everything we do. We believe that we're always better together, that we should always be caring, harder. Ideas are always welcome. We foster, we want ideas all the time. We're always hunting.

little play on our name, we're always looking for the next big idea or way to do things. And we always, always, always create work that matters. So those five values kind of drive everything we do at Hunter and have, since really since day one. And we found that when we lean on our values and focus on that mission, we can get it done. and as a community, that's what we believe in and it works.

‍

Justin Levinson (17:36)

I love it. was, I know you've been in the industry for a minute. it's obviously it's probably changed since your inception. know, I mean, I imagine early PR, was, it was like a press release and a, and a Rolodex or, know, and I'm sure it's changed. It's like influencers, all these different things have changed. I had read that you, guys were early adopters in, in working with influencers. Maybe you can share how things have, have changed since you got into the industry with Barbara to what it's like now.

‍

Grace Leong (18:03)

Yeah, absolutely. You nailed it. Good, good. it started to be, you know, that, public relations was really publicity, right? That what we were turned to as an agency provider was to drive good publicity, not drive good PR. I have this, I have this issue, you know, clients say they, need good PR. like, no, you want good publicity. PR is the practice of,

you know, bringing two people together or a company and their publics together. That's the practice of public relations. You don't get good public relations. You get good publicity and publicity is a tool in the practice of public relations. So just to clear that up. So yes, so we're basically great at publicity. I mean, that's where it started when I was in, it was all about how do you drive great publicity so that those brands and the company reputation can increase.

And what has really happened over the last 30 years is yes, publicity is still at the bedrock of what PR people do and no one has been able to replicate that. As you see all these other agencies like creative agencies or even media buying, trying to get into the publicity side of it, they can't. You can't do publicity unless you're founded in publicity. But there has been a land grab for other things, creative, influencer, and

You know, we have done the same thing. We have broadened out from being just a traditional public relations or crisis and reputation driving agency into a full service communications agency. And the reason that happened, and we officially changed our name from Hunter Public Relations to Hunter in 2018 is because our clients were like, you're so good.

at communication strategy and you're so good at the creative and you're so great at publicity and you're so great at finding the right mouthpieces or influencers to represent us. Why are you just public relations? We're like, you're right. So it, you know, we officially changed our name in 2018, even though we were doing all of that work as early as, you know, the early mid and two thousands, we were developing people's social channels and, and brands, Instagrams and managing communities on

X and Twitter. So we really have become a full service communications consultancy and rooted and based in publicity. Our motto is still, we earn it. But we earn it across any form of comms now, digital, analog, traditional publicity. And that again has created a great opportunity for my folks.

to not just be earned media specialists, but we are communication specialists. We can pull every single lever that's available to us in the modern kind of comms toolbox. And it's really helped grow the agency and most importantly, provide opportunities for the team that stays with me. Cause they always want to know what's going on. Of course, right now it's all about AI and how we're training people to harness that tool to improve comms and storytelling.

‍

Justin Levinson (20:54)

Yeah.

Yeah, how is that being used in the comm space? How is AI transforming this world? I mean, big world. Every world is already transforming, but...

‍

Grace Leong (21:19)

It's really fascinating. mean, I think the AI tools that are now available to us are just infinite. Obviously we've been training our people on these tools for more than two years. know, everything from the basic ones, chat, GPT, Gemini, Claude, all the way to the visual AI tools as well. But I think the most exciting part that we're seeing at Hunter and we're doing a lot of training and helping our clients understand is how fast

consumers and the market have adopted the output of the AI tools. The adoption rate by which people are picking up and switching to using ChatGPT and trusting the data that comes out of their queries is exponentially ahead of the curve. I don't think anyone expected how quickly people are trusting those large language models to give them their information and provide the answers.

And what we also know is publicity and earn content that we're generating is actually prioritized by these LLMs. So our business of driving earn coverage and putting information out into these LLMs is through the roof because the LLMs, they're lazy machines, right? So they're prioritizing when somebody goes in and answers them a question, the LLMs are pulling from traditional PR sources.

press releases, influencer quotes, listicles, infographics. So the more of that stuff we can put out into the LLM universe, the more that our client stories will be told via these LLMs. So we are in a rapid kind of moment right now of really using more and more PR tools to train the LLMs so that the information that consumers are seeking rises to the top. It's a fascinating

wonderful time. feel like we're in kind of a renaissance and the history books are going to write about this time and about 10 years from now saying all those comms people, they were really in it because we're feeding those machines right now and it's really, really fun. So we're spending a lot of time training our people how to be LLM experts, not only obviously querying, but putting the information into these machines.

‍

Justin Levinson (23:43)

That's cool. Well, as far as like other things in your tech stack to just work as a team, are there any other tools that your team uses to, mean, even if like Slack or different tools like that, they keep everybody kind of working well together.

‍

Grace Leong (23:56)

I mean, we have all the tools, know, obviously the video conferencing, Slack, email, Teams, you name it. We have a full suite of technology. I think the challenge you have is when you have so many technologies is getting everybody on a shared system. Cause if you Slack it, it's not an email. so it is, is it a little too much at sometimes that there's so many portals for communication? But I think in terms of technology, some of the things that we're really excited about in our crisis and issues management practice.

is that the tools in that space have become much more sophisticated. And we're working with tools to monitor conversations so that we can see where heat is rising around certain conversations and then advise clients, my gosh, this is happening over here. Let's get ahead of it. We also, after a crisis hits or chatter goes on, we can monitor and find out where those conversations started so we can go to the source and try and contain.

I think we're really excited about what the market is coming out with for monitoring tools in that space because really in the world where we live right now, like we are in a state of permacrisis. I gave an interview a couple of months ago to PR Week and they asked me, you know, what do you notice about it? And permacrisis was, I think, the word of the year in 2022, but I think it was a little too early.

It's definitely the word for 2024 and 2025. Like everything's a crisis right now. And I think that's really helped the PR business because so many, you know, celebrities, there's so many fires, like everything's a fire now. Like it just is everything. It used to say you had six burners, right? And maybe one was red and one was orange and one was still black, but now they're all at a, at a pretty red state. So.

It's good and it's bad for our business. Good because we know how to handle that. We know how to contain, put a lid on those things. But it's like everything is a crisis. So you kind of get just accustomed to it. So it's good to know that the comms tech world is helping us with new tools that help us. Okay, it's burning, let's contain, let's bring it down and let it back on a simmer. And next and next and next. But I think that's really been great for the business. PR people have never been in more demand.

then since 2019, 2020, our business just skyrocketed. Because he used to be like, I need a doctor and a lawyer and a mechanic in my family or my corporate family. I also need a really good person. I think we've been elevated because we're, you know, we just are used to it. We know how to handle it.

‍

Justin Levinson (26:37)

of that.

Yeah, that's cool. ⁓ Any huge big wins that you'd like to share with the audience? Any like big success stories that you'd be interested in sharing with us?

‍

Grace Leong (26:48)

Yeah, well, I think we had some really great wins in the last couple of years. Our consumer tech practice has really grown so dramatically for, you for 10 years, we've been an agency of record for Amazon, but in the last couple of years, we've added so many other consumer tech brands into that practice. Again, consumer tech is...

is such a hot space. an agency of record for Adobe and Meta and, and, know, even the Intuit brand, you wouldn't think of it as consumer tech, but it is, you know, doing your taxes on TurboTax or Credit Karma. So we're really excited about the growth in our consumer tech practice. We're also really excited, obviously, earlier this year, we merged with another agency within the Stagwell family.

And we added a whole new travel and hospitality practice and a whole corporate and crisis and reputation practice, which really just elevated the work that we were already doing in that space. yeah, that's been, you know, cause we were for so long, just solidly consumer products and consumer services and adding these practices has really just been a great growth to our, to our agency. yes, Tabasco is still with us.

‍

Justin Levinson (28:01)‍

Is there, is consumer tech sort of like a big place that you want to keep growing in and that you kind of see that as.

‍

Grace Leong (28:06)

The challenge is, you know, once you have certain amount of consumer tech, you can't really grow it much more because the non-competes and, you know, it's such a competitive space. So we do get locked out of some, some work in consumer tech, but we're finding other spaces to find, you know, for example, TripAdvisor is a big client and that is in our travel practice, but it is consumer tech if you think about it, because you're using, you know, this, this really sophisticated app to help you turn your travel. So. ⁓

I think this space is where we're really growing and it's crazy, but beauty and consumer healthcare continues to grow with all the work we've done with the FDA and what's going on in the current administration. A lot of consumer healthcare is under fire right now. So we're seeing for help and counsel in that space and beauty and fashion.

you know, no matter what's happening, that's always a hot market and we're extra strong there as well. So, but again, the businesses get, the units get quite large and then we have to turn things down and that, that bums, that bums us out. But yeah, we, we are, and in our home unit, you know, just expanding like crazy over there. We represent a lot of great top-notch brands in the home space, Benjamin Moore, Sub Zero. So like we love that space as well because when recession hits people have

done a lot of nesting, right? Since 2020, people learned about gardening and home decorating and they stay home more. So our food and home divisions do well because people are back to basics as we know.

‍

Justin Levinson (29:40)

Love that.

Well, outside of work, Grace, what do you do to keep your sanity? What's fun for you?

‍

Grace Leong (29:46)

a huge, huge sports fan. I'm a competitive person by nature and I love sports. I love to watch sports. I love to go to sporting matches. In fact, I just came back from Puerto Rico. My son plays professional soccer in Puerto Rico. I was down watching him this weekend. I love college football. So it's my birthday this weekend. So I made all my kids and like, we're all going to the Rutgers Oregon game. That's what mom wants to do on her birthday.

‍

Justin Levinson (30:14)

That's, that's where you went to school, right? That was where you went to business school.

‍

Grace Leong (30:16)

Grad school, I went to Rutgers, undergrad. I'm a Blue Hen, University of Delaware. But my college team is SC. I'm a huge Trojan fan and them beating Michigan this past weekend was delightful. I was very happy.

‍

Justin Levinson (30:32)

That's cool. I'm a sports fan myself. I'm a big baseball fan. Okay. ⁓

‍

Grace Leong (30:37)

So am I. Here's my Yankees.

‍

Justin Levinson (30:39)

The Yankees, but that's maybe a little bittersweet at the moment, Very.

‍

Grace Leong (30:45)

It's very bittersweet, although ⁓ my staff at our staff meeting last week got me a cameo with Aaron Boone for my award. They asked Aaron Boone to give me a greeting and they showed it at the staff meeting. It was the best gift ever because I am a big Yankee fan. But are you, a Yankee fan or no? ⁓

‍

Justin Levinson (31:07)

We both have the New Jersey connection, But my, grew up in a Mets family. I'm sorry. Yeah, they've been pretty brutal. But I guess for me, we moved, we eventually moved to Vermont, which is where I live now. And when I was a kid growing up in the nineties, you had the choice to either watch the Red Sox on channel 10 and they were terrible. Or you could watch the Atlanta Braves on channel 11 because Time Warner had TBS, Ted Turner was...

was a genius. put all the Atlanta Braves games in homes all around the nation. So I grew up watching. I tuned to Channel 11 because I wanted to see a team that didn't stink. So I an Atlanta Braves fan, which is pretty bizarre over those years. But the Yankees, I definitely gave the Braves some problems over through the 90s and early 2000s in those years.

‍

Grace Leong (31:55)‍

Well, I have to tell you my favorite Atlanta Brave story because everyone always says, you know, we work with a lot of talent and celebrities. And in my years, I've met so many talent and celebrities that have represented our brands. But people say of all the people that you've ever worked with, you know, talent wise, who's your favorite? And I come back to two people and number one is Hank Aaron. And of course, you know, he was a big Atlanta Brave. Yeah.

And I say, you know, why people say, why was it Hank Aaron? And I said, well, he taught me one of the best lessons of all time. He's a wonderful human being, very humble man. And I was, you know, I was taking him to the, I don't know, but today's show, Good Morning America is representing one of the brands and he goes on and delivers a great interview and he comes off and I said, Mr. Aaron, you did so well. That was so amazing. Thank you so much. And he's like,

Yeah, I didn't really like that question. said, what question? And they said, you know, um, Oh, how does it feel to be the, the home run King? And I'm like, well, why wouldn't you like that question? You are the home run King. mean, seven 55, like, what are you talking about, man? You're like the killer of home runs. He's like, but what people don't know, I may be the all time leader in home runs, but I'm also the all time strikeout King.

And they never asked me about that. And I'm telling you, the reason I'm the all time home run king, because I struck out more times than I hit home runs. And that's what I want people to know. Just keep trying. Just hit those. And I was standing there. I remember standing there and I'm like, my gosh, he's so right. He's the king of strikeouts as well. But nobody ever wants to talk about that. They just want to talk about his home runs. But you got to have those strikeouts together.

‍

Justin Levinson (33:33)

So

I think that's probably my favorite thing about baseball. The whole metaphor is like when you're a hitter, you know, if you're a 300 hitter, that's, that's elite level hitter. so that means out of 10 at bats, then out of 10, you're, striking out or flying out or running out. you're, know, if we're looking at it, you know, in a test score, three out of 10 is a failing grade. Right? So it's sort of like the

the, you know, the resilience to get back up the plate all the time after that. That amount of failure to me has always been the most intriguing part of the game.

‍

Grace Leong (34:05)

And that is the most intriguing part. know, during the end of the Yankee season and then the postseason, I would watch Aaron Judge go up to the, you know, the mound and there's so much pressure on that man. I mean, he's a 32 year old kid, right? There's the weight of the world because he's supposed to be the best. He's hype him up like crazy. What goes through his head at that moment when he's expected to perform and hit those grants? And of course he does, but like the amount of pressure. So I say to myself, if he can do that.

then being the leader of an agency like this, then I take inspiration from that, even if he doesn't hit me, but he does. Because wow, what a great power comes great responsibility, right? Stan Lee said that in Spider-Man. But it's true with great power comes great responsibility and he has to perform as the captain of the team. So my job and whatever I do every day is nothing compared to that. He's endowed with this amazing gift.

and he's got to show it off all the time. What pressure that must be.

‍

Justin Levinson (35:06)

It's gotta be pretty insane, but he lived up to it in the playoffs. He performed really well. did. did. Yeah. Yeah. I have to your hat to the guy. But cool, cool, Grace. I really appreciate you being on the pod day and offering your insights and fun talking some sports. Yeah. I really enjoyed our conversation today. So thanks so much.

‍

Grace Leong (35:10)

Dead. The captain.

⁓ We can talk again soon and good luck. I'd love to hear you play one of those guitars behind you.

‍

Justin Levinson (35:29)

Yeah, maybe next time I'll have you on, I'll serenade you with a little tune here.

‍

Grace Leong (35:33)

What, play any song, any song in the world on that guitar, what would it be?

‍

Justin Levinson (35:38)

I don't know. mean, well, I'll tell you this before we go. My favorite song is God Only Knows by the Beach Boys. That's my favorite tune. And I played that on the piano. Yeah. That song is just, you know, I think Paul McCartney also, it's his favorite song. So I'm not, you know, it's not an original thought, but it is the most beautiful song in my opinion. The lyrics, the way the whole, harmony, the round and the voices and all the different layers, like, you know, gives you goosebumps. So if I could, if I could play you a song on round two.

I don't know if I do Brian Justice, but it would probably be that song.

‍

Grace Leong (36:08)

Well, I have to tell you though, my friend, being from Jersey and of course with the Springsteen biopic out, do you know what Bruce Springsteen's favorite song is when he was out? I don't.

‍

Justin Levinson (36:18)

What's his favorite tune? Is it Galen Oath?

‍

Grace Leong (36:21)

Summer Wind by Frank Sinatra. And Sinatra is my favorite singer of all time. I mean, right up there. Summer Wind? mean, come on. And Springsteen said, I think he was doing an interview with Fallon or one of those guys and they asked him, Stone Cold, and he said Summer Wind.

‍

Justin Levinson (36:23)

Really?

Beautiful. Yeah. Frank ⁓ is on my rotation here in the office. So my kid's coming in like, what are you listening to, dad? I like it. It's cool.

‍

Grace Leong (36:48)

Every

day at my house he's crooning to me. Good old blue eyes.

‍

Justin Levinson (36:52)

Totally. All right, Grace. Well, thank you for being with me today. I appreciate it. All right. Cheers.

‍

Grace Leong (36:56)

Good luck to you. ⁓