How can you move from swag to storytelling?

Farra Trompeter: Welcome to the Smart Communications Podcast. This is Farra Trompeter, co-director and worker-owner at Big Duck. For today’s episode, we’re going to ask the question: How can you move from swag to storytelling? And hopefully that title intrigues you. I am delighted to be joined by Carl Glenn, who uses he/him pronouns. Carl leads all communications at Grand Street Settlement, a 110-year-old social service organization with more than 600 employees serving the Lower East Side of Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx. As the director of communications and strategy, Carl has implemented new processes, refined branding, and fostered innovative storytelling opportunities as the organization has more than doubled in size during his tenure. Carl’s expertise is rooted in an arts background that informs a theatrical approach to crafting narratives and finding interactive ways for stakeholders to deepen their connection to the Grand Street brand. Carl, welcome to the show.

Carl Glenn: Thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Farra Trompeter: Well, I want to pick up on that last mention of your bio. You studied musical theater in college a little over 12 years ago and have been working in various communications roles since. I’m curious, how does that theatrical background shape how you personally manage and lead communications efforts? And maybe for a bonus, what’s the best musical you’ve seen in the past few years?

Carl Glenn: Okay, I’m going to start with the bonus just to get that one out of the way. One of my very best friends starred in an off-Broadway musical last year, or I think earlier this year, called Beau the Musical, and was nominated for a bunch of Drama Desk Awards. His name’s Matt Rodin, he’s an absolute star. It’s a great show and really fun seeing one of your best friends shine. And so, if and when that comes back to New York City, it’s a fantastic show to see. But for your main question of how has my theater background connected to this communications world: I come from a long line of storytellers. We’re mostly teachers and preachers, so the main thread there is that we like to talk. And for me, that led into loving theater at a young age and working professionally for a few years as an actor. And as I’ve grown as a communications professional, I’ve noticed that I have a lot of the natural instincts due to that experience. You know, from building narrative structures, working on digital content, brand positioning, a lot of my instincts come naturally. And I think it’s because I see our brand as a character, and my job is to express that character through different mediums, whether that’s signage or event experiences or merchandise, whatever that may be.

Farra Trompeter: I love that, brand as a character. I’m going to have to reflect on that one. Thank you. I will shout out, though — we are recording this in August, so this episode is going to go live a little bit after that — but Cats: The Jellicle Ball, I don’t know if you got a chance to see that, as it is unfortunately closing a bit earlier than it should, but it was incredible. I believe a cast album’s coming out, so, you know, stay tuned for that.

Carl Glenn: Yeah, I mean, voguing and cats, incredible.

Farra Trompeter: What more could one want?

Carl Glenn: Nothing.

Farra Trompeter: So let’s go back to the origin of this conversation. You and I met almost a year ago at a session that Big Duck led at Nonprofit New York’s annual conference. You stood up to share some very useful tips for everyone in attendance about swag and brand ambassadors, and you were sporting a very fancy on-brand jacket that unfortunately our listeners can’t see — you’re wearing it again, we’ll take a picture. So, in fact, I don’t think I’ve ever met someone more passionate about this idea of really rocking that swag and letting that merchandise come to life for your brand. So, where did this love for swag and merchandise begin, Carl?

Carl Glenn: So, funny enough, it actually began as a deep disdain for nonprofit merchandise. During the pandemic, my sister worked for a nonprofit — we’re not going to call them out — but they sent out some merchandise to their team, and it was like stress reliever squishy balls and cheap sunglasses and notepads.

Farra Trompeter: Some branded face masks?

Carl Glenn: Yeah, right? None of which anybody actually wanted. None of it made them actually feel better. I mean, I don’t know what could have made us feel better at that point, but none of it was good. And at that point, it left me with this idea of, what do people actually want? And, you know, nonprofits, we don’t have a lot of money to spend, marketing departments have to run thin, and so if you’re going to make something, you should treat it like the rest of your marketing efforts and make something that’s going to have a high ROI. Make something that people are not just going to wear to home and put in a closet and never touch again, but that they’re going to want to use. So, you know, the jacket that I’m wearing, that we made — it was a huge hit with our staff. Rather than a big boxy polo that no one ever wants to wear again, we gave them something that feels cool and stylish. You know, our staff are New Yorkers who serve New Yorkers, and so we wanted to make something that a New Yorker would be proud to wear.

Farra Trompeter: I love that. So now these fun bomber jackets, the other swag you’ve done — is that mostly for staff, as you were just talking about? Or are there other audiences that you believe all this both intentional and affordable swag and merchandise is for?

Carl Glenn: Yeah, so it’s sort of all of the above. To me, as I mentioned, swag should be looked at through that same marketing lens. If you’re going to be spending the money on it, you need to be trying to get a high return. And to me, the return is people seeing that item as many times as possible. So, for instance, let’s use our youth participants as an example. We have about 8,000 youth participants in summer camp and after-school programs. So, they don’t want umbrellas, they don’t want pins. Let’s give them something that they want and that they’re going to use. Let’s give them a basketball that’s got our logo on it that they’re going to take to the playground every day, all summer long. Let’s get creative and make Labubus that have the Grand Street logo on it, right? It’s silly, but it’s also real, because then they’re going to put it on their backpack and they’re going to wear it around, and people are going to see that logo. And the thing is, merch can be much more affordable than people think it is. It used to be that your only options were those big screen-printing retailers that would drive up the price as the middleman, and that’s not the case anymore. With a little know-how and a little creativity, you can get yourself a long way. There are platforms where you can work online with manufacturers directly around the world and come up with very creative items. I use a platform called Pietra, P-I-E-T-R-A. And on there, they have toys, they have skincare products, they have clothing — we’ve made candles before — they have anything that you might want to have. And so, with a little bit of creativity, you’ve got to have a good graphic designer who knows what they’re doing, you’ve got to have a little extra time in the calendar because you’ve got to be able to work with someone who’s in a very different time zone, potentially. But with that, you can make things that are affordable. These bomber jackets would have been $60, $80 through an online screen printer — they were $20 a pop for us. And then suddenly, we’re able to do something a lot cooler, a lot nicer for our staff without having to break the budget.

Farra Trompeter: And I’m guessing with the timeline too, it probably takes longer for shipping, so you really have to plan in advance.

Carl Glenn: Yeah, yeah. You know, I’ve done it with a couple of manufacturers in China, and so you’ve got a 12-hour time difference — you really only get one set of messages back and forth, each time. And then, you know, there is some time of them actually creating the product. But if you give it a three- to four-month runway for those big things that you know are happening every year, you can come up with good stuff.

Farra Trompeter: And do I need to age in reverse to get myself a Labubu, or just come by your office sometime?

Carl Glenn: Look, when the Labubus come in, I will send it to you.

Farra Trompeter: Save me a Labubu.

Carl Glenn: The whole Big Duck staff!

Farra Trompeter: Holiday gifts will come early this year.

Carl Glenn: There we go.

Farra Trompeter: You know, one of the things that I also appreciate about your enthusiasm for the merch here is that you also take this swag-as-storytelling approach to creating memorable events and publications. And I want to start with the event — you had a big fundraiser recently called The Taste of the Lower East Side. Tell us about that event and your approach to connecting products to programs.

Carl Glenn: Yeah, so Taste of the Lower East Side is our annual fundraiser. We do it every year — we’re coming up on our 25th anniversary of it — and it’s a big food event. There’s 800 people, 40 restaurants, and the food is often the main character of the event. But for a fundraising purpose, we need Grand Street to be the main character. And so this year we found a lot of success — we made a theme for the event of a bodega, and everything in the whole venue was styled like a bodega. And we actually built our very own bodega — it’s called Rosie’s Bodega. Rose Gruening is our founder, we named it after her. And every product in that bodega that we built was supposed to help the guests understand more about Grand Street as they shopped in it. So, for instance, we had Pre-K Crunch, which is a cereal that even the nutritional facts on the side of it are about our childcare programs. We had Summer Aid and After Skool Aid, which were juices that talk about our youth programs. We had Activit-Teas, which is a hot tea variety box — each of the little teas on there are Tai Chi, and Bingo, and Zumba. You know, as I said, I’m a talker, and I can go on and on about the little Easter eggs that we put in there, but it really sold the point, and people interacted with it, and we got a lot of really positive feedback from it.

Farra Trompeter: It’s really great — unfortunately, our podcast currently is audio only, but you do have a page where you mocked up these items and people can see it a bit more dimensionally. So we will link to that page — if you go to bigduck.com/insights and find the transcript for this episode, we’ll link to that and all the other gems that Carl is sharing. Now, I’m curious — did that bodega come before or after the Bad Bunny Super Bowl bodega?

Carl Glenn: The idea was before Bad Bunny — the actual bodega itself came later. So I’ll just say Bad Bunny and I were on the same page.

Farra Trompeter: I’m sure. Maybe Bad Bunny probably got the idea from a brainstorm with you.

Carl Glenn: Yeah, we texted about it.

Farra Trompeter: Sure, that sounds good. I’d like his number too, after that Labubu.

Carl Glenn: Got it, got it.

Farra Trompeter: I mentioned earlier publications, and in addition to your love of swag and events and how creative you are, I was really intrigued to learn about a book that you actually published called My First Day: The Grand Street Way. This is a children’s book, and I’m curious if you could talk about how that came about and how you’ve used it to build relationships.

Carl Glenn: Yeah, so, you know, Grand Street CEO Robert Cordero has a lot of dreams, and one of the dreams that he had for me was to write a children’s book that helped position us as an expert in the childcare sector. And so the way we started it was, we had a focus group with our teachers and educators and came up with this idea of making a book that could help children and families as they transition into those first days of preschool. And so, what we did after that was, I had a focus group with the kids themselves. We got some of the four-year-olds together and talked about what was hard about starting preschool. And even the second line of, “It’s hard to leave your family and all your toys at home,” was straight from them. And so, after that, we worked with a local artist, Carla Torres, who has done some murals with us — she was our illustrator. One of our board members, Sumya Ojakli, works in publishing — she helped us on that end. And here we are with a book. And it’s been really cool, because it’s been this great tool to give out to people. We have it translated in Chinese and Spanish, because that’s a lot of the participants that we serve. And we’ve even had Governor Kathy Hochul come to our site and read it to the kids. And so it’s been this really great thing — it starts with this really sweet narrative for the kids, then it goes into activities that the parents can do with their kids to help them feel comfortable making that transition. It’s even gone on to kind of influence our curriculum that we use with the kids. It’s been really sweet.

Farra Trompeter: That’s great, and I think there’s some content about the book on your site — we’ll be sure to link to that too, in case folks want to check that out. So, beyond all your clever ideas, I really appreciate how you’re using swag, merchandise, events, and more to build the brand experience of Grand Street Settlement and also create opportunities to connect with your community. And I’m curious — you talked about positioning earlier — how have all of these efforts helped strengthen your positioning?

Carl Glenn: So each of these items gets people talking, right? And as a nonprofit, it is difficult for us to break into the culture, right? Often we are seen as the people who need us pay attention to us, and other people don’t necessarily. But with these items, we have people asking us for more of our branded hot sauces. We have people asking when they can get a jacket, when more get in stock. We have neighbors who see our seniors using their Tai Chi fans in the park. And all of that just helps drum up more interest and more excitement about Grand Street, and just directs people back to the good work that our programs are doing.

Farra Trompeter: That’s great. Well, if you’re out there and you’d like to learn more about Grand Street Settlement, be sure to visit grandsettlement.org. And if you want to connect with Carl on LinkedIn, you can find him at linkedin.com/in/carltkglenn. Carl, before we sign off, any other advice or ideas you want to share with our listeners on this whole topic of moving from swag to storytelling?

Carl Glenn: Yeah, I mean, to me, it is just that thing of thinking about your community and what represents them, and thinking about what people actually want. And when those two things come together, that’s the sweet spot for you.

Farra Trompeter: I love it, because this is not only applicable to swag — it’s really to all parts of communications, right? The more we can connect to what our community is looking for, where they are, what resonates with them, the more likely they’ll be to listen, read, engage, wear. So, thank you for all of this — a very different way to talk about this work. Well, thanks again for being here, Carl, and for everyone listening. Have a great day.