Jennie Sager’s Most Valuable Perspective
MVP Episode 2 | A podcast by State of Social & Dear Storyteller
In this episode of MVP, Managing Director of Nextdoor Australia, Jennie Sager, joins Dear Storyteller GM Mike Drysdale backstage at State of Social for a closer look at building communities and real-life connections. They explore the reasons why Nextdoor’s community-based app grew during the string of calamities known as 2020 and discuss its transformation from a needs-based to a wants-based platform.
The conversation goes on to cover the wondrous results of multi-generational communities and Jennie shares some insight to counter the idea that ‘community life is collapsing in Australia’. Also, with a career that’s spanned multiple global media companies (think: Twitter, ABC, MTV), Jennie has plenty of wisdom to share about building something from scratch and creating rapid growth.
Lastly, Jennie responds to Mike’s classic quickfire questions, uncovering her love of podcasts, a surprising prized possession, and Mike and Jennie’s mutual love for the ever-quotable Seth Godin. In this episode, Jennie’s down-to-earth and compassionate approach serves as a refreshing tonic in an industry that can often err towards creative self-interest. Her antidote (and one you’ll commit to memory on the other side of this chat), is community.
Read the transcript below or click to listen on your preferred streaming service.
Mike:
Welcome to MVP The Marketer’s Most Valuable Perspective; recording here live at Optus Stadium for State of Social 2022. My name is Mike Drysdale. I’m your host, general manager of Dear Storyteller, and joining me for the next 20 minutes as we deep dive into her most valuable marketing perspectives is the country manager of Nextdoor Australia, Jennie Sager. Jennie, welcome to the show.
Jennie:
Thanks for having me.
Mike:
How was that? You’ve just walked off stage. You’ve delivered your content. You’ve told us all about Nextdoor Australia. What was the experience like?
Jennie:
I think actually walking here this morning to Optus Stadium, I was thinking about my kids because I was like, God, this is where State of Origin was played last year. And now I’m walking in here. That’s pretty cool. It’s such a great venue for a conference, so that’s really cool. But it’s just great to see so many people in person again. I think just a couple years of virtual conferences exhausted everyone. And to see a room full of, I think it’s about 600 people today, is really awesome.
Mike:
Well, that’s something that I actually wanted to get into because the podcast is called The Most Valuable Perspective. And I think that there’s something really interesting about Nextdoor Australia and how much it is oriented around bringing people together in real life, which is not something that would’ve necessarily been easy over the last two years.
Jennie:
That’s true.
Mike:
How has that affected the business? Has it affected the business? And in what ways? What are the keys to actually fundamentally convincing people post-pandemic to meet in real life? Is it easy? Is it harder than expected? What’s the deal?
Jennie:
Yeah. Well, I think one of the great things about Nextdoor was, for people that don’t know, Nextdoor was originally created 12 years ago to combat social isolation and loneliness. So, we didn’t need to change the product at all when COVID happened. So many companies pivoted and had to do something different. What we saw before COVID and during COVID is that when there’s a time of crisis, people turn to their local community. So I would give the example, in Australia, the bush fires, which happened before COVID, where at the time we had been in Australia for less than a year.
And when the bush fires happened, all of a sudden we saw signups and content just like tripling overnight because people were needing evacuation information, they were needing help from their neighbours to get things taken care of in their house, some people were away on holidays, they needed to move furniture or things out of their home, so who were they going to get to do that? So we knew already globally that people turned to community and their neighbours in times of crisis, but we really saw it come into effect during the bush fires. And then we rolled straight from the bush fires into COVID and we saw-
Mike:
Disaster after disaster in 2020, for sure.
Jennie:
Wasn’t it tough for all of us? My gosh. But we saw in that first year of COVID, we had about a 300% growth in signups that first year. I mean, it was incredible. And similarly, with our content, the engagement stats were off the charts. And what’s happened now that life’s kind of back to normal is we actually didn’t see that come off the cliff. We are still maintaining that higher level of engagement. And in fact, it’s higher than it was during COVID, and that accelerated growth. And I think it’s because it’s true what you said, where people became reclusive and were indoors more obviously and online more. But I think at the same time, people realise the value of personal connection and that’s something that hasn’t changed now that we’re at the other side.
Mike:
Was there a period where it changed from needs-based, in-person kind of stuff to more wants-based sort of community and just socialising?
Jennie:
Yeah, definitely. I think in the beginning of COVID, it was very much needs based where it was just wanting vaccine information, wanting to know lockdown restrictions, things like that. And then, once we saw people getting that information from the government and other places, you definitely saw it change a little bit to actually, I’m even lonelier than I was before. I’m missing that connection. We saw things like virtual book clubs starting, virtual coffee groups. So all these things that on Nextdoor people usually do in person offline, they were still finding ways to do them online, which was really cool, but it was obvious that that social connection was needed more so than ever before.
Mike:
And there must have been an exciting point for those people who had built those communities online virtually to meet in person for the first time as well?
Jennie:
Oh, absolutely. And that was true even of our staff. I mean, I had so many new people start during COVID that they actually met for the first time last night. We flew to Perth together and they met for the first time in person last night. I thought, isn’t this wild?
Mike:
Distributed workforces. Hey, to change tack a little bit; you’ve worked with the likes of Twitter, NBC, ABC, CBS, MTV, every three-letter acronym under the sun. Discovery and Australia’s Nine Network here at home. How did working across so many global media companies position you to be successful in what you’re doing now with Nextdoor Australia?
Jennie:
I think there’s a combination of things. I think one of them was probably less the companies I worked for and more the experience that I had continuously of making something out of nothing, whether it was a TV show or Twitter, I was one of the first few employees in Australia. And then I ended up over years taking on a regional role because it was always about building something from scratch. And how do you scale it and how do you make that growth happen quickly? And so I think it was less about the company and more about that experience, which is so rare. And I’m so lucky that I have that and that ability, to be honest too, of coming in and going, my God, we have to start from ground zero and turn this into something. I like a challenge.
Mike:
Yeah. I like that as well. Do you think that there are any key tenants to creating something from nothing, starting from scratch? Any key principles, things, patterns that you’ve recognised at the time?
Jennie:
Definitely. Definitely. First of all, you’ve got to hustle. I mean, you’ve got to be somebody who, you’re not embarrassed or worried about getting scrappy, right? You’ve got to roll up the sleeves and make it happen. And I think you can’t come in with an ego or an attitude. You’ve got to try a bunch of different things and creative things to make it stick, but also lean into your strengths. If I think back to those moments, when I was the only person for the first nine months at Nextdoor trying to grow a platform in this country, I also obviously had to lean into what I was good at.
And so, it was working those relationships and those stories from both my media background and the tech background of just figuring out, okay, can I make this really resonate with people, and then listen to their feedback? And I think people forget to listen; and just listening to those super-engaged users like I was just talking about before and taking that onboard and going, hey, these are our people that instantly latched onto our product. We’ve got to figure out a way to serve this better in making sure that that happens.
Mike:
A politician here in Perth recently declared that there had been a collapse of community life in Australia. That was in response to the current state of affairs around charities and volunteer organisations. Do you think that community life is collapsing in Australia?
Jennie:
No. And in fact, we have data and research that shows the complete opposite. So one of the stats that you just made me think about is we actually ran our own surveys to neighbours across Australia. And what we found out from it, what came back was that 70% of Australians actually want to help more in their own community. And then we even looked at what ways, whether that was just volunteering or whether that was mentoring or actually financially helping. So that’s pretty powerful. That’s the exact opposite of what he’s saying, like 70% actually want to give back in their local community more.
Mike:
Do you think that there’s a disconnect somewhere that, in ways in which they’re not able to, or there’s a lack of accessibility or is the way in which we’re helping just evolved to a point that isn’t being measured by these organisations by the government?
Jennie:
I think there’s definitely a lack of knowledge of how to help. And I think part of that comes from the bureaucracy of the government. So I do think it’s really hard, even at the local council level, to get them to actually just do something different and to think out of the box and to go, okay, cool. Yeah, we’ll try that. It’s like, nobody wants to be the first. And we even find this with Nextdoor where we do work with a lot of local councils and there are ones that come on, but my gosh, the hundreds and hundreds of meetings with others, where you go, hey, this is a free service. It’s totally free. And you can be talking to residents in your area who, by the way, have amazing feedback for council of ideas you have or things they want to see changed. And they’re like, but wait, we use Facebook. And you’re like, yeah, you can still use that. But by the way, this is going to actually connect you with the people in your actual LGA. And they’re just like, it’s so hard to break that bureaucracy and that antiquated way of thinking.
Mike:
Last question before we just jump into some quick fires to finish the podcast. You’ve been great. It’s been wonderful to talk to you. I wonder, do you know off the top of your head, you might not, what the average age of the user on Nextdoor Australia is?
Jennie:
Well, we don’t capture age data, so I don’t know the average age, but one thing I would say that makes me really happy about Nextdoor, and this is true globally, is that we do have a really big portion of users that are 65 plus. And these are people that don’t necessarily feel safe going on some of the other platforms. Some people have never even used the internet before.
There was a great post from a 90-year-old in Australia a couple of months ago where she literally said in her post, “I can’t believe I’m on an online platform. I don’t even use the internet. My daughter had to help me. I’m 90 years old, but I just want to connect with the local community.”
We’ve also seen, one of my other favourite ones was from a Chinese immigrant who spoke very broken English. And he said, “I’m really sorry for my English; I’ve actually always felt too embarrassed to post on any social media in Australia, but I want to get to know people in my neighbourhood.” And so I’m really proud of being able to break out of that typical demographic for social media.
Mike:
I think that’s so powerful and I think that’s really interesting because if you go on down the line of pretty much every social media, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, they have all started young and aged up. Is there any kind of ambition for Nextdoor to age down in time?
Jennie:
Well, we don’t need to age down because we’re already there. So we already have the majority of our users are definitely in that, I’d say, 35 to 55 bracket. And then we obviously have, as I mentioned, a big proportion older than that, but also the younger demographic as well. We see a lot of uni students for example, on Nextdoor, because they can earn a lot of extra cash right on Nextdoor. They can furnish their apartments for free and things like that.
But I think again, going back to why Nextdoor was created, and that was to combat social isolation and loneliness and build those true meaningful relationships. There’s a lot of investment. And for myself, a personal mission of actually helping both sides of that age bracket combat that. So we’ve seen the loneliness stats with the younger demo, with the teenagers and young 20-somethings. And we know the loneliness stats for the elderly.
So we’re really working on, how can we work with aged care, for example. How do we work with the universities and the psychologists and the therapists that work with that younger demo to help them combat those issues? And so I’d say it’s less about what you think about some of the big players like Twitter or Facebook, Instagram, Snap, as you mentioned. It’s not about, well, how can we earn profit off of those demos? And for us, it’s actually, how can we make a social impact and actually make sure that we’re helping them improve their mental health and wellbeing?
Mike:
Love that. I’m going to ask you some sort of quick-fire questions now that we’re hopefully going to be able to ask every guest along the way. Question number one is, where do you go to learn more about marketing?
Jennie:
Oh my gosh, I go to so many places. First of all, I have to say our global CEO is a total book worm and she literally sends out a new book to read every week. And when I first started Nextdoor, I was frantically going on Amazon every week and buying the book that she recommended. And then I realised they were just piling up. So I think you also have to remind yourself to take breaks and read something for fun or listen to a podcast for fun. I’m an avid podcaster. I listen to a tonne of podcasts because that’s really digestible for me.
Mike:
Any personal favourites?
Jennie:
Oh, marketing-wise? Oh, I don’t have like a-
Mike:
Business or personal development.
Jennie:
I do love Business Wars. That’s a great one. Have you heard of that one? So they take two brands, so say McDonald’s and Burger King, and then they talk about, so there are two brands competing with each other and they basically look at what they both have done right or wrong and how they have beaten one another at various times in their journey. I think that one’s really great. I usually type someone’s name in, so I’ll type in somebody I really admire in the business world, and just listen to whatever podcast they’ve been on. And then I guess just for, yeah.
Mike:
You love Seth Gordon as much as I do. Trust me. The crew is kind of giggling to themselves right now because I quote him about five times every day.
Jennie:
Oh there you go. Yeah. I was like, oh man, someone’s going to put something on social media about how I used three of his quotes in my presentation. Anyway, shout out to you, Seth. And then I think for personal pleasure, I love Dax Shepard’s podcast because he gets such a good mix of guests and talks to them about so many issues; interesting things about their personal journey.
Mike:
Love that. Question number two, what’s a small brand you love and why?
Jennie:
Oh, a small brand I love and why. How small are we talking?
Mike:
As small or as medium as you want to go.
Jennie:
Okay. I’m going to go with a local coffee brand because Nextdoor is obviously all about neighbourhoods and local business is such a part of that. So in my local neighbourhood, there’s a brand called Split Coffee that actually started as just a coffee truck. So it was just a guy from the neighbourhood who would park his truck down at the beach and serve coffee. And the community embraced it so much that then he opened a brick-and-mortar shop, so then he got the coffee shop and sold the van. And then last year, he actually got so big that he had to knock down walls and build a little cafe off of it. And I just thought, how awesome is that to see what started as a little coffee van scale into a shop and now a cafe? Now they’re making t-shirts and hoodies and selling their own beans and all this stuff. So big shout out to Split Coffee.
Mike:
Do you feel like you’ve been part of the journey?
Jennie:
Totally.
Mike:
That’s very cool. If you could spend four hours with any marketer or business person in the world, who would you choose and why?
Jennie:
This is a tricky one because we recently started our own podcast. So it’s a global Nextdoor podcast called Where Kindness Lives. And I am actually the host of it, even though it’s global, it’s not just Australian. And so recently, I’ve spoken to some really great people in the marketing space. One of them was Guy Kawasaki, if you know him. Another one is James Rhee. And so I feel like I’ve had a lot of time recently to actually talk to some of the best marketers. But my gosh, we were just sitting here talking about Seth Gordon, so I guess I’d have to say, yeah, let’s both get him on our podcast.
Mike:
That’s right. Even as I was asking the question, I was like, oh I know the answer to this one. That actually reminds me of a question that I had specifically for you as well, that you are hosting Where Kindness Lives the podcast for Nextdoor Australia. And you’ve taken quite an active personality-driven role as the Australian leader of the company. But as you just mentioned, that is global. What are the pressures of being the face of a brand like Nextdoor Australia? What is that like for you?
Jennie:
Oh, that’s a good question. I never actually, I don’t feel pressure from it because I think I genuinely relate to the company’s mission and purpose I don’t actually feel pressure about being the face of the company because I genuinely care. And I think I always feel that way with whatever roles I take. It’s really important to me to believe in what the brand I’m working for is doing. I’m not the kind of person that can just take a paycheck and a title for any brand. I have to truly connect with that brand. And so I don’t really feel that pressure. And I think I’ve had a lot of people say to me, oh my God, isn’t it scary to be a podcast host like you’re doing? I’m like, no, you’re just having a conversation with somebody. And I think that also comes from the media background as well is you could talk endlessly. It’s fine.
Mike:
I love that. Okay. Last two questions. Can you think of a major public opinion that recently flipped where you felt marketing or communications played a crucial role? Perhaps it’s even something that happened on Nextdoor Australia or a conversation that happened?
Jennie:
What’s a public opinion that flipped because of marketing? I mean, I think Adam showed a great example of that with the Katy Perry menu log ad because my God, I was watching those games and I was like, everyone had actually had a party at my house and everyone was like, oh my God, no, not this Katy Perry ad again. And I did love seeing them flip that. I saw the Wendell sailor ones afterwards and I loved seeing that response and I thought, that’s so clever, right, and that’s what we all talk about of leaning into the moment and not going, oh shit, we really messed that up, instead going, okay, well we messed that up, but how can we actually use that to our benefit?
Mike:
Acknowledging the cultural conversation, but then also kind of embracing weakness as a brand positioning tool. I think that’s something that Adam’s talked about a lot in the past and that was sort of it in action, which is really cool. Last question. When you think of the term prized possession, what’s the first branded thing that you own that comes to mind?
Jennie:
Okay. This is funny. This is not, there’s a few things. I travel a lot for work in my personal life. And there’s a few things that I feel like everyone feels like is a prized possession to travel with like Air Pods or things like that, but they’re just kind of part of life now. I don’t know why I’m telling this story.
Mike:
I love this.
Jennie:
There is this hairbrush actually which it’s quite funny because it’s a great marketing story, that three weeks ago, this is a new product in my life.
Three weeks ago, one of my girlfriends bought this hairbrush and then posted in WhatsApp group that we’re all in and said, oh my God, I just bought this thing. 65 bucks. It’s going to change your life. Look at my hair. It’s so amazing. It’s going to change your life. And then one of my other friends, two days later was like, oh my God, I ordered it. It is amazing. Look at my hair. It’s amazing. And then you saw in two weeks, it go throughout my whole circle of friends. Everyone now has one. All of our kids were like, why do you guys all have the same brush? And when I think about it from a marketing standpoint, they did a really good job.
So the company’s name is Bondi Boost. They make nothing but hair products. Never heard of them in my entire life until three weeks ago. But what they do is they’re really good at following up all the time with discount codes. So what has since happened is that, I haven’t done this yet, but my other girlfriends who are a couple weeks ahead of me on this hairbrush journey, have now bought multiple products from them. They can’t stop buying their products. They’re like, oh my God, did you see? I got another 30% off code from them today for some hair care serum or something. That’s great with the brush. It just keeps going. And I’m like, gosh, they are doing something right where they’re combining really good incentive where they’re obviously sending discount codes.
Mike:
Incredible word of mouth, obviously.
Jennie:
Word of mouth. But they’ve also balanced the amount of emails and things that you get from them perfectly. Because I think if you overdo it as a brand, and we see so many brands do this, where all of a sudden you get spammy, right? You’re getting all these things in your email inbox. And you’re like, oh God, I wish I never bought this from them, unsubscribe, whatever. But they’ve balanced, they’ve found that cadence perfectly where it’s about every, I’d say six days or so, where they’re hitting people and going, oh, by the way, we also have this product and here’s why you should use it.
They clearly know their audience. And they’re being really clear. It’s a simple email. It’s just, here’s your discount code. Here’s three reasons why you’re going to like this product. And all of my friends are buying it. And I’m like, man, what is this?
Mike:
And the power of group chats.
Jennie:
The power of group chats. Oh my gosh.
Mike:
That is all the time that we have for this today. But I have had a fantastic time talking to Jennie. It’s just talking to another person. That’s all podcast hosting is.
Jennie:
Yeah. That’s it.
Mike:
Thank you so much for joining us at State of Social 2022. Thank you for your wisdom and your insights and your talk and for joining us here on MVP, The Marketer’s Most Valuable Podcast.
Jennie:
Thank you.
Mike:
Make sure that you subscribe to us on Spotify or whatever other podcast platform you’re listening on. Give us a five-star rating and review – or whatever your truthful rating and review is as well – and we will catch you on the next episode. Thanks so much and talk soon.
