A new age: Two Texans, and GCI’s cultural shift; might search for 'purpose' return to an old one?

For years, Texas advertising executives Roy Spence and Haley Rushing have come across as corporate management evangelists with a New Age twist. Their pitch: Companies prosper when they find a purpose that goes beyond simply making money.

Now, Gannett's 31,000 employees are being asked to join their flock.

Chief among them: Maryam Banikarim, GCI’s top marketing officer since March 2011. Indeed, she and Rushing are scheduled speakers tomorrow during a Los Angeles marketing conference. They're to be on a Spence-led panel discussion called “The Purpose-Based Organization: From Concept to Practice.”

Spence

Spence and Rushing are well known across the advertising and marketing industries as authors of a book on their purpose concept: It's Not What You Sell, It's What You Stand For.

In it, according to Publishers Weekly, Spence argues "people work harder and more joyfully when they believe they are part of something larger than themselves; he speaks enthusiastically about employees turned into company evangelists and the power of purpose-based leadership."

This is a positive reminder, the trade publication says, of the private sector’s potential in “making a difference in the world.”

Rushing

If “making a difference in the world” sounds familiar -- well, it should. Only last week, Corporate announced a new internal honor: the Greater Good Awards. They “recognize the individual and unit that best represent the company’s shared purpose, which is to serve the greater good in the nation and communities we serve.” (Making a difference also echoes a well-know USA Weekend service project.)

That’s just one example of how, under 43-year-old Banikarim, the purpose credo is now being woven into GCI’s corporate culture, as the company struggles to regain its footing and identity in a vastly changed marketplace. Here’s another: This week, a memo revealed a Gannett/USA Today "Purpose Team" was building a "Purpose Wall" at Corporate’s headquarters in McLean, Va.

“We’re asking all departments on campus to submit photos that reflect you at work or the benefit of your efforts at work or in the community,’’ the memo says. “The Wall will be a representation of everything that brings us together as a community."

What's the purpose?
The wall will be unveiled at a “Corporate Purpose Celebration” tomorrow afternoon. Banikarim apparently is skipping that event in favor of the PromaxBDA entertainment marketing conference at a Marriott hotel, where attendees will be “inspired by the brightest of luminaries in the industry,’’ according to its website.

Sheen

Those luminaries include actor Charlie Sheen, who had a much-publicized meltdown in 2010. He's doing a Q&A tomorrow morning in the hotel's Diamond Ballroom.

Spence, 63, is a co-founder of the GSD&M advertising agency in Austin, which apparently has a contract with Corporate. Also in Austin, he and Rushing launched The Purpose Institute, which says it helps leaders and organizations “discover, articulate and align all stakeholders around a genuine and authentic purpose at the heart of the entity.”

He and his agency co-founders were students at the University of Texas, Austin who wanted to work together after graduating. (Now-retired GCI CEO Craig Dubow is a UT alumnus, too.)

In a video interview this spring, Spence said the founders had three goals: stay together; stay in Austin, and make a difference. Forty years later, he notes: “We're still together. We're still in Austin. And we're still trying to make a difference."

Spence emphasized one part of the words partnership and friendship during the interview: "It's the ship -- the good times and bad -- if you can stay in the ship together, you'll look back and never regret it."

A 'Seven Sisters' trio
Rushing has degrees from Vassar (1992) and the University of Pennsylvania (1994) in cultural anthropology, consumer behavior and positive psychology, according to her LinkedIn profile.

Banikarim

In their educational pedigrees, a Gannett Blog reader astutely observed, Rushing, Banikarim and Gannett CEO Gracia Martore, 60, have a common bond: They all attended one of the "Seven Sisters," a group of elite East Coast colleges. Banikarim graduated from Barnard in New York, and Martore from Wellesley near Boston. Barnard and Wellesley remain all-women colleges.

At the GSD&M agency and the Purpose Institute, Rushing’s title is "chief purposologist." According to her bio there, she "leads a team of people who act as organizational therapists, anthropologists and investigators dogged in their pursuit of uncovering the purpose at the heart of an organization."

Banikarim appeared familiar with GSD&M's work before arriving at GCI. She told Fast Company magazine about developing a "purpose line" for NBCUniversal (it's in the "idea business") for its January 2011 merger with Comcast.

Last year in Los Angeles, Rushing appeared onstage at an influential TED conference, where she was no less New Age-y in videotaped remarks that reflected personal interests, including what she calls Contemplative Christianity. She had just returned from a winter holiday at a Mexican resort.

"This morning I was on a beach in Cabo, doing yoga and building sandcastles with my five-year-old twins,” she told her audience. “So, I feel like I'm in a really good headspace to talk about well-being and vitality."

GCI's original purpose
Gannett, of course, hasn’t been in an especially good headspace for many years now -- and nor has the industry as a whole.

But as the sector’s biggest, GCI’s moves have been the most dramatic. It has shed more than 20,000 jobs through hair-raising layoffs and other cost-cutting; imposed wage freezes and furloughs, and sharply reduced its coverage of vital news across the nation. GCI's stock plunged. Top executives preserved their seven-figure paychecks, however.

New logo last year

Along the way, the company shifted from its long-established special purpose of community leadership through public-service journalism that protects the First Amendment. That shift was evident last year, when the company adopted a highly publicized corporate campaign where its newspapers and TV stations were rechristened in more advertiser-friendly terms: as consumer brands. The new tagline: "It's all within reach."

But the change was even more vivid in 2010, when the company redefined itself as “an international media and marketing solutions company."

It may well be time for deep introspection across GCI, of searching for a special purpose to inspire employees and customers. Yet, perhaps the answer is as simple as returning closer to the company’s original roots: comforting the afflicted, and afflicting the comfortable.