Company: The Sway Effect
Owners: Jennifer Risi
Year Started: 2019
Employees: 11 – 25
Welcome to “An Agency Story,” a podcast that dives deep into the personal and professional journeys of marketing agency owners across the globe. In the episode titled “Collective,” host Russel Dubree sits down with Jennifer Risi, the dynamic founder and president of The Sway Effect. This episode is a treasure trove of insights for anyone fascinated by the intersections of public relations, diversity, and entrepreneurship.
Jennifer shares her transformative journey from envisioning a career in medicine to leading a groundbreaking PR agency that centers diversity, equity, and inclusion in all its endeavors. The discussion delves into the roots and growth of The Sway Effect, highlighting how a steadfast commitment to values can drive both personal fulfillment and business success. Jennifer’s narrative is peppered with intriguing anecdotes, such as the origin of her company’s name and the serendipitous lunch that branded her entrepreneurial future.
Listeners will find the recounting of a particular PR stunt involving a dinosaur egg in Grand Central both hilarious and illustrative of The Sway Effect’s creative approach. Jennifer’s candid reflections on the challenges and victories of her career, including how she navigates the complexities of corporate communications for C-suite executives, are particularly compelling.
This episode not only shares a story of professional evolution but also encourages listeners to consider how integrating purpose and inclusivity into their practices can lead to richer, more impactful business outcomes. For those pondering the ongoing challenges of entrepreneurship, Jennifer’s experiences provide both inspiration and practical wisdom.
Tune in to “Collective” on “An Agency Story” to be part of a journey that challenges the status quo, champions diversity, and celebrates the power of staying true to one’s values in the competitive world of marketing agencies.
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Show Transcript
Welcome to An Agency Story podcast where we share real stories of marketing agency owners from around the world. From the excitement of starting up the first big sale, passion, doubt, fear, freedom, and the emotional rollercoaster of growth, hear it all on An Agency Story podcast. An Agency Story podcast is hosted by Russel Dubree, successful agency owner with an eight figure exit turned business coach. Enjoy the next agency story.
Russel:
Welcome to An Agency Story podcast. I’m your host Russel. On this episode, we are joined by Jennifer Risi, the founder and president of The Sway Effect, a PR and marketing communications agency based out of New York, New York. Starting out in the big agency world via Ogilvy, Jennifer passionately shares the significance of purpose and values and her agencies work, highlighting the importance of staying true to one’s beliefs and not being afraid to stand by them. A big believer in inclusivity and DEI, jennifer shares how focusing on these dynamics produce better work and everyone is better off for it. Enjoy the story. Welcome to the show today, everyone. I have Jennifer Risi with The Sway Effect with us here today. Thank you so much for being on the show today, Jennifer.
Jennifer:
Thank you.
Russel:
Let’s get right to it. Tell us what The Sway Effect does and who do you do it for?
Jennifer:
The Sway Effect is a PR agency. We are focused on driving brand reputation while putting diversity, equity, inclusion at the center of everything we do. Our specialty is doing corporate communications. Most of our clients are C-suite or heads of state. We get to do some great storytelling with some pretty important people.
Russel:
Alright, and like any good agency, we have to know the naming story. What’s behind the name?
Jennifer:
There are a lot of Sways and I wanted to call the company Sway because I came from Ogilvy, so I’m all about the one word. Because there were so many Sways, I couldn’t name it Sway. I actually came up with the idea to name it Sway in the shower one day. I went out for lunch with the head of the PR council, Kim Sample, I have to give her credit for it. I said, Kim, I’m bummed. I want to name the company Sway, but there’s so many Sways. I can’t even incorporate the damn thing, pardon my French. She’s, what about Effect? The Sway Effect? I was like, that’s awesome and then it was born.
Russel:
Over a lunch. Can’t wait to hear all the other parts of your story, but before we dive into that, let’s go back in time. Is Jennifer today doing what young Jennifer thought she was going to be doing?
Jennifer:
Young Jennifer thought she would be a doctor. I love science, I loved math, and so that’s what I thought I would do. Then I went to Barnard College, a liberal arts school, the female college of Columbia. They didn’t have communications, so I studied psychology and then I thought I’d become a psychologist. The summer between potentially applying for grad school and graduating college, my family told me I needed to get a job and so I did. I had a job at a PR shop at the time that was called Shanwick International. I found that I could actually do two things that I loved, which was psychology, but also being able to use the news. I love the news. I could actually use my skills to actually tell stories on behalf of my clients, cause I didn’t even know PR existed when I was in college. People say you wind up where you’re supposed to be, and I think that’s what happened to me.
Russel:
When you took that job, were you like, this is a placeholder until I can do whatever you need to do to become a psychologist? And then it sounds like at some point that transition occurred when you found the marriage of both skill sets.
Jennifer:
It’s funny. When I got the job, I was hired by this amazing woman at the time. Her name was Diane Perry. She was in corporate communications and I think if I was placed in a different part of communications, if I was in consumer PR or tech PR, I might not have stuck, but I loved corporate communications because I got to meet some amazing senior leaders. I was doing work with very senior level executives in the C-suite helping them tell their story, and I could tell that we were helping move conversations, helping people see perceptions of executives moving stock prices, moving product, and I was hooked. My first placement, back in the day when you actually still had the newspapers, one of my first clients was KPMG and I walked around the office, I got a big placement in the Chicago Tribune and I showed everyone. I literally had to walk around the office. I’m like, do you see what I got? I realized I loved it. That was at the first three months of my job.
Russel:
Oh man, you got to miss newspapers. Having something tangible like that to showcase your work is always fun. Obviously, cut to the chase, you had a pretty successful career before you even started your agency. Maybe pick a couple highlights in terms of, it sounds like it was a very formative career. Looking back on that, what were a couple of the foundational things that represent what you wanted to make sure you invoked when you started your business?
Jennifer:
I’m very much a, I stick. My first company, I worked for Weber Shandwick for 12 years, and then I worked for Ogilvy for eight. There goes 20 years of my career. Then I started Sway. The things that I loved the most the formative years of my agency work is when I was at Weber Shandwick, I worked on the Matt Gates fund back in the day when we were working on CSR driven work, but again, putting D&I and focusing on equity and equality. That was a long time ago when it wasn’t in vogue to talk about these topics. I loved that work, and I loved some of the work we did with nonprofits. When I went to Ogilvy, they let me have the opportunity, in addition to my client work, to do some pro bono stuff. I started to work with UN women and help them create HeForShe. Over that time I was then able to work with certain senior executives, giving them some coaching on how can you be more inclusive, if you’re more inclusive the work is better. You can actually make more money if you actually put D&I at the center of what you do. Not only that, but it’s also the right thing to do. When I started Sway, I’d seen some things that maybe I thought could be done better for my big agency days. I was like, you know what? I want to challenge how this industry is made and how this industry works. I said, okay, we’re going to continue to do comms, but I’m going to work with brands that have similar missions, similar values, similar objectives that I would, and how do we put D&I at the center of everything we do, not an afterthought, but a central part of the business strategy that we’re going to communicate> Those are the brands that we work with today. I know it sounds like a great thing, whatever, but we actually do it every day. If brands don’t do what they say or say who they are or are who they say, we don’t work with them.
Russel:
Wow. Very cool. I talk to a lot of businesses and some start their businesses for different reasons. Sometimes that purpose aspect comes later out of necessity. What did that transition look like? Did you wake up one day and say, I’m starting an agency? Did you give yourself a plan and a runway before you actually made that transition? Tell us what those early days were like.
Jennifer:
As I said earlier, I was at Ogilvy for eight years. Probably six, five years in, I was like, you know what, I don’t know if I want to stay in a big agency world. I think I have more of an entrepreneurial mindset. But then, a lot of changes happened at Ogilvy and I was offered the job to be worldwide chief communications officer and global head of media relations. You don’t say no to that. I stayed for an additional two years to get that experience under my belt. But I knew that this is what I wanted to do. I knew that I was better as an entrepreneur. I’m one of those people that says what they think, and that’s not always appreciated in the bigger companies. I wanted to create an environment where I felt comfortable, but also where I can make people be themselves and feel comfortable and create an authentic environment. I didn’t name it Jen Risi Communications. I named it The Sway Effect because I wanted people to feel vested in what I was building and they could help me create something special. I would say two years prior to leaving Ogilvy, this was an idea, and then one day certain things happen when you wake up and you’re like, you know what, it’s time. When it all started to snowball, it happened. People always ask me, so what was your business plan? I didn’t have a business plan. I built this whole company on gut instinct and by aligning myself with people that I’ve worked with for many years. The clients came over, the team came over, various colleagues became partners of the net of the agency. People say things happen the way that they should and it evolved. That’s why I knew I was on the right path.
Russel:
It sounds like it was hitting the ground running from the get go and in terms of bringing clients with you or using some of those relationships, you didn’t have any dreaded, oh crap, what did I do periods, it doesn’t sound like?
Jennifer:
I couldn’t bring any clients with me cause I had a one year non-compete, but I had clients that had left Ogilvy earlier that I had known through the years and there were three clients I reached out to over LinkedIn and three of them actually responded to me, they became our first three clients. One of my good friends who’s a chief communications officer of one of our clients today, who came to my launch party, was in the middle of saying, I don’t know if I’m going to take this job. I have this other opportunity. If I take this job, I have to give up this other opportunity that I have. I said, why don’t I take it on for you? That assignment was a nine month assignment that enabled me to be paid enough that was able to fuel the first nine months of the business.
Russel:
As I understand it, we don’t always talk exact years and chronology on the show, but you were starting this all around 2019, which we know is before a major world event that occurred. Not much more than a year into your business or maybe less than a year, depending on when in 2019 you started, what was that like for you?
Jennifer:
It was a trip because in the beginning, things happened. It was organic, as I said, and we had a couple of clients out of the gate. I had a cool consulting assignment that was extremely lucrative that helped me to grow the business. A lot of things the stars aligned. I believe in karma. I believe things happen the way they should. November 2019, we’re working out of the Noya house at the time. I didn’t even have a proper office space yet. A friend of mine who works for a big med tech company, he reached out to me and he said, you should pitch us. We have a new CEO. We have some new stuff going on. We think you should pitch us. So I, my little lonesome self, we didn’t have the team I have now, with a couple of our network partners wrote a presentation for a big med tech player, Fortune 200. We went up against my former agency, Ogilvy and another big agency and Sway won. Then the pandemic hit in March, 2020, and what else would you want, a med tech player on the front lines of COVID who are going to make the COVID devices at the time. That became the company that sustained our business for the next two and a half, three years. We had a very smart relationship at a very opportune time, so again, things happen the way they should. Good karma.
Russel:
Clearly, definitely a testament. All these points to the sign of the impact and the relationships you’ve built over the years, I can’t imagine. Or you were Mother Teresa in a past life or both. Maybe both. Who knows? One of the things that was interesting when I found out about your story this whole notion of working from home and what’s that right balance, or do we come to the office? You had a pretty cool approach to how you did that within your business, if you don’t mind sharing?
Jennifer:
I was one of those people that finally had office space, and I actually signed my lease at our office space in the Chrysler building. March 2020 is when I signed the lease, March 1st. The first two years of the lease we never were here, so it was a great use of my money at the time. But we all worked remote and we figured it out, right? Then when it started to open up, we started to come back to the office. I talked with the team and I said, we’re going to have a hybrid environment, but I want us as a team to decide how often we’re going to come into the office. We’re mostly based in New York, but we also do have other remote employees. We have someone in Austin. We have someone in Ohio. We wanted to figure out what was the right mix, but I didn’t top down it. I made it be a team wide decision of how we were going to do it. And look, we had some people that left the agency because that was not what they signed on for. But if 90 percent of the company wants to be in the office X amount of days during the week and somebody doesn’t, then maybe it’s not a cultural fit anymore. Our culture evolved. I think that the culture we’ve built is we rule by the team. It’s not my decision. It’s a team decision. We now have three specific offices in our office space. I thought I would need one more, like my office and another office, but because they all wanted to be here so much, I had to get a third office because they needed a place to work. I think it’s a good problem to have. I have a coach, my coach actually said, you can’t actually pay for problems like this.
Russel:
Can’t pay for problems like that. I like that one. Only found more problems to pay for. Team and culture has obviously been very important to you, even some of the inspiration you mentioned is starting around the business around inclusivity and DEI. Why has that been so important for you?
Jennifer:
It was important to me because I saw what happens when you don’t think that way. That was part of the reason I left my former job, I saw a lot of things that I thought could be done better. A lot of things were like, I had a very senior job and I was told to go make some changes in the organization and there wasn’t an appetite to make the changes. I saw the work was better when you’re more inclusive. I hire people who all have different skillset. Not anyone on my team does the same thing. They all are complimentary and they all learn from each other. I hire people that are different from me because I want to learn too. You never stop learning. I think that’s why it’s so fundamentally important to me is because I’ve seen what happens when you don’t have an inclusive mindset.
Russel:
Maybe share a little bit about that. We definitely have different size businesses and it sometimes seems that smaller businesses buy in this a lot more than larger businesses. What are some of those benefits and impact that you feel like you’ve seen in your own career in that being your focus?
Jennifer:
The work is better. The outcomes are stronger, and I think you actually are more successful. It’s been proven, stock prices go up, sales go up when you actually have diverse thinking in what you’re doing. I used to see a group of white guys in a room brainstorming a new product launch for women of color. That doesn’t make sense. You have to be inclusive in how you’re putting teams together to produce the best work, and I’ve seen it. Yes, we’re a smaller boutique agency, but some of our clients are some of the biggest brands in the world. I’ve seen some of these CEOs who transform their leadership teams to be much more inclusive and then how that team inclusive team translates different practices across different businesses, and then they’re seeing better results. I’ve seen it work in all sizes. It could come down to a CEO mandating it from a business strategy. It can also be, how do you do day to day things and speak up in a meeting and challenge something? Big and small. It’s a mindset. I think having a sense of awareness is always the first step, but for me it’s so fundamentally how we work. At this stage I don’t know how not to work this way.
Russel:
Do you seek out companies that naturally gravitate towards that thought process, or have you made it any part of your mission to transform companies that may not naturally be there?
Jennifer:
I think it’s both. Our job is to be consultants and to give advice. Some of our brands take it, some of them don’t. I had a new client that we brought on that, knowing who we are and how we work, they said, we think what you’re doing is great. We think your communications approach and your strategy and the plan you put together in the RFP process was awesome. We need you to know, we don’t know if we’re going to be able to live up to what you might tell us to do, with some of the recommendations relating to working the way you think we should work. And I said, look, everything is a process. Not expecting things to happen overnight, but our job is at least to give you the awareness of how to think a little bit differently and to challenge how you’re working and it’ll evolve over time. If it doesn’t, then that’s the bridge we cross when we get there. But I think we work with some brands who live it every day. We work with some brands who are trying to do better, and we work with some brands that have some changes to make.
Russel:
I don’t try to jump up on soap boxes in the podcast but what I think a good lesson coming from your story that would be great for especially a lot of up and coming agencies out there’s, one, how much impact you can have if you’re driving someone’s marketing and their visibility in the world. That you do have this transformational power. Even in going back to the beginning of your story, starting with purpose and standing by all of your values that you bring to the table, and don’t be shy about that. Versus, I think a lot of agencies start out and it’s, can I get the business? I’ll work with the devil if I have to, but give me the business. You’re a great example of sticking by your guns from the get go and how that’s worked out for you. Not a question there, but I don’t know if there’s anything you can share or add to that from your own perspective?
Jennifer:
I would say yes to all that. I think we’ve come to a place where, we’re a certain size. We’re boutique by design. I don’t want to get bigger. We have a certain number of clients we work on and, we are selective in who we work with. As an entrepreneur, the hardest thing to do is to say no. I’ve learned the power of no over only over the past couple of weeks. I’m working on this with my coach, to learn how to say no, because there are some assignments that don’t make sense for us. There are some assignments that, they’re not right. As I said, I built the whole company on my instinct. If I meet someone and we don’t vibe, we don’t do it. I think we’re in a fortunate enough position that we have clients. Most of our clients have been with us since the beginning and to keep PR clients for over four years, that’s not normal, I know that. We have very deep relationships because we serve as extensions of their team. But yeah, I think right now I’m learning the power of no, and I want to continue to work with brands that I think, are like minded, but then also brands that I think we can, that they, you can see innately, they want to be better, they want to do better, and they want someone to give them some perspective. We have a couple of those clients right now that we’re very excited about.
Russel:
Yeah, it’s been fascinating. Completely unprovoked, if I had to point out a common theme in so many folks I’ve had on the show recently, it’s the no word, and I think back in my own journey and it was very significant as well. What did we start saying no to? And that balance too, of sometimes it coming from a place of luxury when you’re not as stressed out about other things, but by gosh, if you can say no as early on in the process, folks, Jennifer and I are telling you, it works out for your benefit. Stay the course. We’ll have to have you back on once you’ve mastered this art of no, and then we can do a whole episode on The Sway Effect and no.
Jennifer:
That’s going to be a work in progress because I’ve just started. It doesn’t mean I’m comfortable yet. I’ve started.
Russel:
Fair enough. Fair enough. Good perspective. You hinted at it a little bit, but I don’t know if there’s anything to add to when you think about the long term big picture of this business, where are you trying to take it?
Jennifer:
I like where we are right now. I like where we are right now. I want to keep doing good work. The cool thing is none of our clients are in the same industry. We literally have 15 clients, each of them are in a different industry. I want to keep growing into new industries and continuing to do good work, and honestly, growing my team and continuing to find great people that I want to work with each and every day. I don’t have big ideas of grandeur to go double the size of the agency. I like what we’re doing now and I want to keep doing it.
Russel:
You don’t want to spread your good karma to as many people as possible?
Jennifer:
There’s enough.
Russel:
All right. Fair enough. I’m sure by being on the show today, you’ve already spread some of it. I’m sure there’s other ways you can do it without, as you said, having to double your size or anything like that. Last big question for you, Jennifer, are entrepreneurs born or are they made?
Jennifer:
I think they’re made. I also think that there has to be a certain part of you that is made to be an entrepreneur. So I think it’s a little bit, made, but I also think it has to be part of who you are. It’s a loaded answer. Made was where I went to, but then I also think the other side of it is, you have to have the nature and the thick skin to do this. It’s not easy.
Russel:
Amen to that. If people wanna know more about The Sway Effect, where can they go?
Jennifer:
They can go to our website, www.theswayeffect.com and check us out.
Russel:
There you have it, folks. Thank you so much for your time today, Jennifer. It was an absolute pleasure to get to speak with you and so many great insights. Love your story from beginning to, not the end, but to the present and where the future goes for you. Thank you so much for sharing that today and being on the show.
Jennifer:
Thank you so much for having me. This was fun.
We hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of An Agency Story podcast where we share real stories of marketing agency owners from around the world. Are you interested in being a guest on the show? Send an email to podcast@performancefaction.com. An Agency Story is brought to you by Performance Faction. Performance Faction offers services to help agency owners grow their business to 5 million dollars and more in revenue. To learn more, visit performancefaction.com.
Jennifer:
We launched a candy brand in Grand Central over the summer, and we put an egg in the middle of Grand Central because the candy was made from dinosaurs and dinosaurs come from eggs, and we had to explain to everyone why we were launching an egg in the middle of Grand Central in the summer, and then the egg opened up and there were people in hazmat suits and actors. It was a trip but it was very entertaining.
Russel:
Are we talking like a giant egg? Or are we talking like, what’s the visual here?
Jennifer:
I thought, because you think about the perspective you think it’s going to be, I thought it was going to be a massive egg. It’s little. That’s why it’s funny.
Russel:
Alright. what was this for, a candy brand?
Jennifer:
It was a candy brand that launched in Grand Central over the summer.
Russel:
Okay. And then curiosity, cause this is very unique. Is this, there’s people mulling around minding their own business and this all happens, or is this like a timed event or something like that?
Jennifer:
We had a moment where the egg opened and the candy came out and people ran up to the egg to get the candy? Then people were standing around, literally dying for this candy all day long. I had a woman literally push me aside so she could take a picture of the egg as it opened. I couldn’t believe it. People will do anything for free stuff.
Russel:
I guess so. A sight unseen to say candy pops out.
Jennifer:
Don’t even know if it’s any good.
Russel:
Yeah. Sounds like it works. Sounds like a good event.
