Speaker 1:
Welcome to ETF Central, recorded here at the New York Stock Exchange, the home of ETFs. We're diving deep with the people shaping the space, the technologies driving innovation, and the stories behind the tickers. Whether you're an investor, issuer or industry insider, welcome home.
Bilal Little:
Welcome to another edition of ETF Central. I'm your host Bilal Little. I'm a director here at the New York Stock Exchange. I'm excited about my next guest. His name is Chris Sullivan. He is the president of Craft & Capital. They are a PR and comms firm that actually services the ETF industry. And with that, Chris, welcome to the show.
Chris Sullivan:
Appreciate you having me here. This is exciting. I know we've been talking about this for a while, so it's great to be here.
Bilal Little:
It has been a while, right?
Chris Sullivan:
Yeah.
Bilal Little:
We've been trying to coordinate this for about a year now.
Chris Sullivan:
Well, we're both busy guys, right? We have day jobs.
Bilal Little:
Absolutely.
Chris Sullivan:
So, can't just sit around doing podcasts all day.
Bilal Little:
So, first question is, when was the last time you were at the Exchange?
Chris Sullivan:
Oh, let's see. I think I was at the Exchange month and a half ago for a client bell ringing, which is always an exciting day for us. Because obviously, you guys do a great job with those events. And we get the chance to take our clients around to all the media that are here on the floor, because this is such an epicenter of financial news. So, we're able to get a lot of great things done here with our clients and with your team, too.
Bilal Little:
I love it. Every time I come here, there's no mistake and it's nothing missed on me, that there's a magical feeling of celebration. This is the best way to experience capitalism, I feel like, when you came in today.
Chris Sullivan:
I'm always surprised they let me in. I got to be honest with you. I keep waiting for the day where somebody's going to be like, "Wait a minute, that guy, get him out of here." They let me in. They keep letting me in. So, I'm going to keep coming until they tell me not to.
Bilal Little:
Absolutely. We got to get you a personal badge. So, Chris, for me and for the guests that come on, it's important for me to allow them to tell their own story. So, in a very succinct way, talk a little bit about who Chris Sullivan is, but more importantly, what is Craft & Capital and what you guys do as you sit as the president of that business.
Chris Sullivan:
Yeah, happy to. I mean, who Chris Sullivan is, that's a deep question.
Bilal Little:
Come on.
Chris Sullivan:
I don't know if we have enough time to get into that.
Bilal Little:
Do you go by Sully?
Chris Sullivan:
I haven't been called that in a long time, but I'll allow it. Back in my high school baseball playing days, that was the nickname. Now everybody watching this is going to start calling me that, so thank you for that. Who am I? So, I am Chris Sullivan. I am the president of Craft & Capital. We are a finance-focused public relations firm. So, everybody we work with is doing something interesting in the field of financial services. Asset management, big area for us. Wealth management, banking, investment banking, FinTech, research, data, really across the board in finance. We are marking our 30th anniversary this year. So, 2026 is a big year for us.
I was negative two when the firm was founded. I've been with the firm for 21 years at this point. We were actually known as McMillan Communications, which I think that name is still pretty well-known out there in certain circles.
Bilal Little:
Absolutely.
Chris Sullivan:
Rebranded in 2023, after I took over as the owner in 2018.
Bilal Little:
Nice.
Chris Sullivan:
So, I know you and I have talked about this before, but in terms of where we sit, we are very much a boutique PR firm. I cringe at that name, but it's still probably the best descriptor. 10-person shop. Everyone's very experienced. Finance is the language we speak. This is all we do. So, we're really well positioned to help our clients out.
Bilal Little:
No, I love that. So, let's just start the conversation wide. And I want to start wide in the sense of media relations is critical for the entire industry. I think, for any business, your brand, how you tell your story, it's critical. From your perspective, what are you hearing, seeing on the stage when it comes to media? Just because, look, over the last 30 years, it's changed so much. What are you hearing and seeing?
Chris Sullivan:
So, 30 years, definitely, I would even say over the last five, it has changed completely. I think we can zoom out and talk about the media writ large, which has undergone just massive amounts of changes over the last several years. For the purposes of our conversation, I would say let's keep it in the finance-focused media. But that is one of the corners of media that has just been exploding. There are so many new outlets, people, venues, where our clients have the chance to tell their story. And so, that makes it a really exciting business, a really exciting time. But it also makes it really invaluable for a financial services firm to have a true partner who can help them navigate all of this change. Because with the way things are now, with the explosion of videos, podcasts, everything else, our clients could theoretically spend all day doing media or something that falls under the heading of media, but are they reaching their audience?
Is their story coming across in the right way? Is it going to have a positive impact on their business? Which for you, for me, for the people we work with, generally translates to flows. Are they going to see the growth that they're looking to get as they're spending money on these media relations activities?
Bilal Little:
So, what's funny about that, I think media seems to be a catch-all bucket. How do you define media right now?
Chris Sullivan:
Yeah. If you had asked me that question 21 years ago, when I was sitting down for my job interview at this place, I would've said, well, it's the obvious stuff. It's papers, it's the main financial websites, it's TV, it's radio. All of those things are still very much in play. But what has really emerged is... What we talk about internally is the new media, the alternative media. In many ways, that has supplanted a lot of the traditional media and the importance for a number of audiences that are out there. So, you have call them small but mighty platforms where... Let's take YouTube, for example. Even a couple of years ago, we would have to drag our clients kicking and screaming into doing a YouTube video with some of these financial influencers that are out there. And even today, a lot of them, you're talking about subscriber numbers that are 10,000, 20,000, 50,000. You compare that to how many people are subscribing to The Wall Street Journal, it's minuscule. But that's an engaged audience.
Bilal Little:
Correct.
Chris Sullivan:
Those are people who are going to be watching those videos, commenting, sharing, chiming in when they disagree with something or when they want to learn more. So, if you can get on those types of platforms and leverage them effectively, that's a great way to get a very active, engaged audience interested in what you're doing.
Bilal Little:
Yeah. It sounds like, and I spent a lot of time thinking about this, that we have seen a significant shift and I wouldn't call it the death of large institutional media, but it's definitely changed to where they've become much more collaborative. I can look at our own media outlet and partnership led by Joe Benarroch here at the Exchange. And they've become extremely collaborative in some of the partnerships that they've taken on, to your point about these niche audiences that are growing. I guess my question to you is, when it comes to it's like personality-led media, I don't know if that's the right way to call it, that seems to be catching on faster than anything else that we see in the market today.
Chris Sullivan:
Yeah, 100%. Let's drill into the ETF aspect of all of this. We've been doing ETF PR now for about 20 years. And back in the day, your ETF PR 20 years ago, it was driven by your solution, your product. What did your ETF do? What niche did it fill? Where did it fit in a portfolio? You still need a good idea. You still need a strong product. You still need something that's well-built, that's differentiated. But to actually get out there and get attention for it, the human element is essential. And I think you could really see that shift coming pre-pandemic, but COVID, really, it flipped a switch. And all of a sudden, you had the rise of the personality that was leading the investment conversation, as much as the investment idea itself. So, when we're working with our clients, when we're talking with prospective clients, the human element is really what we try to drill into.
Yes, again, you got to have that great idea, don't get me wrong, but we want to know who we're going to be working with and taking out there because personality really matters. Think of it from your perspective. Hopefully, I do a good job with this conversation and I fit in with all the other great guests that you have. But you don't want to sit across the table from somebody who's monotone, who's giving you one-word answers to your questions, who's talking in a bunch of jargon, who's explaining things in 20 minutes that could've taken two. All of that, those are kinds of the table stakes for the spokespeople,. But we really want to help them bring out their personality, because just like in any other kind of media, personality really is often what sells.
Bilal Little:
Yeah, no. I'm glad you said that, actually. I want to frame this segment actually appropriately. So, we're talking about now, how are you helping these ETF issuers and money managers effectively modernize their communication platform?
Chris Sullivan:
Yeah. So, I would say that's a big question. And again, it goes back to how much time you got. But I think there's a few different types of clients that we're working with. And we're working with clients that are at wildly different stages of their growth stories. Taking some of our more established clients, some of those clients that actually date back almost 20 years at this point. What we are focused on is helping them bring new spokespeople into the mix, build that bench, build that roster, so that as their product lineups are growing, it's not the same one or two spokespeople who are being called upon to answer questions about something that a year ago they weren't being asked about. It's kind of like if you're a master of all, are you actually a master of none? We help them figure out what are the lanes for their spokespeople.
We're also often helping them figure out... What we do tends to focus on what I call earned media, but our bigger clients are very effectively building their owned media channels as well, content they're producing themselves, but that shouldn't exist walled off from PR. That should be very much part of the fuel for the PR apparatus. So, how can we get more life out of what they are producing themselves? How can that drive their PR forward? For our clients who are... let's say they're in a mid-stage or they're in early stage of their growth, maybe their product lineups are smaller, it's all about drilling into those points of differentiation. Why you? You have this great idea, but why are you the ones that people should listen to when it comes to this conversation? Why are your funds the ones that they should look at if they have a need in their portfolio that your products might solve for?
So, it's really about the messaging. It's about the narrative. It's about another term that I cringe at, which is the storytelling in the whole thing. I've come around on that term a couple of years ago. Actually, I gave a presentation at a small industry event. I had slides where there was a guy with a guitar sitting around a campfire. And I talked about why storytelling was such a horrible way to describe what we do. I've lost that battle. We're storytellers. But helping our clients get into that mindset, because another part of all of this is we encounter a lot of people, a lot of firms who are very good at telling their own story, but have probably lived in a bubble with that story for a long time or they've thought about telling that story to a very specific audience. In most cases, that's the wealth channel, but that might not translate to the self-directed retail.
That might not translate to institutional. It might not even translate within wealth. There's so many different variations of advisors out there. So, being able to frame, reframe, take your story apart, put it together in different ways, connect the dots for different types of people with different interests, that's a lot of what we spend our time with.
Bilal Little:
Could you do me a favor and unpack what you just said a little further around earned media versus their home-grown stuff? I assume it's obviously related to your relationship and business, but specifically for the ETF, how should they be thinking about that with their teams?
Chris Sullivan:
Yeah. So, I guess just to clarify the terms. Really at its heart, owned media as the term applies, those are things that you own. Those are your blogs, those are your videos, those are your outlooks, your webinars. You have control over them. So, from start to finish, that's a narrative that you can build. You can take it in the direction that you want to go. And the finished product, you're going to sign off on it. Earned media, those are opportunities where you're getting in front of journalists, podcasters, producers, newsletter writers, but they're talking to you on the strength of your ideas. They're talking to you on the strength of your thought leadership. How interesting is what you have to say to their audience? Are you going to help them deliver quality content, interesting stories? But you're giving up control because this is someone else's platform.
Bilal Little:
Platform, yeah.
Chris Sullivan:
And generally, the days of signing off on somebody else's article, they're way in the past, if they ever existed. Even the days of quote check are mainly behind us. But both sides of that media conversation owned and earned have to tie together. They have to, because your earned media should really be driving your narrative and building your brand in the way that you want to be seen. The owned media should be augmenting that, feeding into the earned side of the equation. And more and more, this has been true over the last several years, the end audiences, they don't often distinguish as much between owned and earned, as maybe you and I might, talking about this all day long.
They want information. They want information they can trust. And so, if they can trust that earned media platform, great. If you're producing content in such a way that is able to generate trust in an audience, also great. But both of them are really effective levers that should be pulled to build that brand and get excitement around an idea and a product.
Bilal Little:
No. I love that. And I'm glad you actually unpacked that. Let's transition now into... I just want to get a sense of what is your discovery process like to work with an issuer or a client, because you only work with a handful of folks by selected choice. Talk a little bit about that.
Chris Sullivan:
Yeah. I think, for us, most of the ETF issuers that we work with, and there are about a dozen different brands that we're working with right now, they have come to us through connections in the industry. We do a little bit of marketing. We're at all the conferences. I'll pen and op-ed every now and then for an industry trade, or I'll come on a podcast like this, but we tend to be very selective in who we work with. And part of that, and this is one of the blessings and the curses of owning the business, I get to decide who we work with. And that's in really close consultation with my team, once we're getting to know people. They have to have a good idea. And they can't be the 12th firm to try to get into an already crowded category. First mover advantage is real. It's not the only aspect, though.
And there are definitely ways to help second, third movers really carve out effective market share, but the idea has to be good. The team has to be one that's going to be fully bought into PR. One of the things that's probably the biggest red flag for us is people who give us the sense that they want to work with us so they can completely offload this, maybe hear from us every once in a while, get reports on how great their PR is. I wish it worked like that. It doesn't. You have to have buy-in on the client side. And it really helps if you have buy-in all the way to the top, because those senior executives... Again, thinking about some of our bigger clients, we don't call on the C-suite every day or even every week to do something.
But if we have a really important media opportunity, knowing that they're going to play ball, they're going to make themselves available, they're going to see the value in it, they're going to listen to us when we try to help them prepare, that's huge. Because nothing is more frustrating than starting to work with somebody, putting our network in action, calling on our contacts who trust us when we bring them something new, and having a client slow walk their answers or just not engage in the way that's really needed for this to be effective.
Bilal Little:
Honestly, I'd argue that's probably one of the more frustrating things on my end as well. The day you decide to launch a product, whatever that product is, you also need to be completely aligned vertically, internally about what your media strategy and what your distribution strategy will be.
Chris Sullivan:
Yeah. No. I think for us, one of the things also, we like to be involved early. Generally, if we're connecting with somebody, it's often pre-filing for a newer issuer. For more established issuers, it's generally when they've reached, call it some kind of a plateau, where what they've been doing previously has stalled out a little bit or they're feeling that the marketplace isn't quite grasping what makes them unique and why people should be paying attention. Either of those scenarios, we're really well-equipped to come in, and since this is all we do, be very effective quickly to turn things around for them.
Bilal Little:
Oh, that's so good that you said that. I'm going to switch on you now. I want to talk a little bit about AI, particularly how it's changing the way content is being engaged with. But then, how are you coaching these ETF issuers or money managers across the spectrum that this is a new paradigm shift that we have to deal with?
Chris Sullivan:
So, I think, for us, AI is an incredible tool, and it's helping us build and use an incredible set of tools. I'm not a Luddite, even though I might be among the PR firm owners who are taking a little bit of a slower approach to implementing AI. For me, from my perspective, AI has been really wonderful in taking things off the plate of me and my team that used to be tremendous time drains. The research, the tracking, the reporting, the list building, the monitoring of different topics and trends, all of that over the years you could automate some of it. AI has just accelerated the way that you can speed that whole process up and that's amazing. And for me, what I've seen and what has me most excited about it is it's really allowed time for PR people to focus on what actually is at the heart of our job, and that's public people relations.
We are spending less time on call it the grunt work, and a lot more time talking to our clients and turning those conversations into other conversations with the media, because we just have more time to do it. I think that's a huge change, and something that makes firms like ours and others in our space gives us the ability to be so much more effective, find more opportunities, act quicker when we see an opportunity. All that is huge. I think the way in which AI is changing how people find information about investing, the importance of that can't be overstated.
Bilal Little:
No, not at all.
Chris Sullivan:
Search is a completely different ballgame than it was a year ago, two years ago, three years ago, probably even a month ago, with the way these things are evolving and changing. But one of the things that we're always doing is we're running our own searches. We're seeing, how are our clients showing up? Where are they showing up? How are their competitors being viewed? What are the sources that are informing these generative AI search results? Because one of the great things, and it's been a boon for PR overall... And again, I hate to say this out loud, because they might change the algorithm on me tomorrow, but earned media, trusted earned media sources have a huge amount of weight in these GEO results.
Interestingly though, so does owned media, effective owned media from asset management firms. And I say effective, meaning pieces that are not sales content, pieces that are educational. Pieces that are putting the asset manager in context, but really helping the readers, the viewers, whoever it might be, solve a problem, understand a trend. Both of those, the owned and the earned are hugely important in this AI-driven world. So, again, at the end of the day, does it change what we are doing in terms of who we're trying to reach out to, how we're trying to reach out? No. But it gives us more time to do it, and it lets us do it in a much more efficient and effective way.
Bilal Little:
From your perspective, for the managers that have been unsuccessful in raising assets, call it a legacy brand that has a significant AUM base in mutual funds. And they're trying to modernize and recognize that the ETF wrapper is heavily weighted towards your PR campaigns, because it's about visibility. How do you help them through that conversation of saying, "Look, we have to modernize." Because some of them, to your point, they're like, "You know what? We rely heavily on our investment thesis and process, and our philosophy is what makes us different." But if you don't tell that story correctly, you're not going to get the message out in the channels that matter most. How are you helping these legacy firms be like, "Look, we got to get with the times."
Chris Sullivan:
Well, I mean, first of all, almost halfway through that sentence that you just said, I almost fell asleep. When you're leading with we rely on our legacy processes, a proven investment thesis.
Bilal Little:
But you hear it.
Chris Sullivan:
Oh, God, I hear it all the time. My answer to that is, of course, you do. Of course, you do. You didn't make it to this point, you didn't build a successful business without having something good, something that you can sell, something that people have wanted to buy. And here I'm really talking about the true legacy firms, firms that were building and selling mutual funds in the '80s, early '90s, which again is when our firm got its start. And we worked with a lot of mutual funds back then. The process was a much simpler one. And what I find is, the biggest question is who's running the marketing and comms internally at a firm like that. Because there are some old approaches that are still somewhat calcified in some of these bigger, more legacy firms. But when they get some new voices in there and when they get some people who have really bought into not just PR, but again, storytelling.
Hate it. I'm cringing right now as I say it out loud. But people who have bought into that concept of storytelling and realizing that it can't just be about what you do. It has to be about who you are. That's where things start to change and that's where things start to shift. But one of the things that... And I'm guilty of probably overusing this line with a lot of people, but I tell them, your existence is not news. News by definition has to be new. So, what are you doing? What are you saying that's new? Let's dig into that because it's there.
Again, those firms exist for a reason. They got to where they are for a reason. There's a great story there. You just got to help them pull it out. And sometimes you have to convince them that, again, the world probably doesn't know. Most people out there don't care. You have to make them care. You have to find ways to reach the people who will care once they've had the chance to understand what you do.
Bilal Little:
I'm laughing as you say this, because the truth of the matter is the news cycle gives you everything that you need to be current and relevant.
Chris Sullivan:
It's given me a lot of gray hair.
Bilal Little:
Right. But it gives you enough, because that's where it's going to drive the engagement. But you just revert it back to your strategy and your visibility of why you do what you do.
Chris Sullivan:
Yes. I think that gets into an interesting point as we dig into media relations, the proactive versus the reactive side. We talked about owned versus earned. But even within earned, there's proactive where you've got your pitch, you've got your story, you've got your product, you've got your idea, you're pushing it out there. A lot of times the interest level is going to be dictated by what else is happening in the world. And we live in a world right now where forget about the 24-hour news cycle. It's like the 24-minute news cycle these days. So, you have to be prepared to pivot, and you have to be prepared to maybe revisit what it was you were putting out there and reframe it a little bit. We work with a lot of managers who are doing really interesting things in ETFs, with different shades of volatility. And that right now there's obviously a lot to talk about.
So, you have to get really specific about your solution. Where does it fit? Managed futures, a lot of people don't understand that category. How can you help them not just understand it, but put it in context of this current news environment, because you're going to have a lot more opportunities to be a part of that conversation if you're helping the journalist on the other side of that discussion. They're not just looking for a product to plug. And that's also something that I think people are a little... they have some misapprehensions about that.
Bilal Little:
Completely agree with you.
Chris Sullivan:
Journalists aren't stenographers. They are looking for insights. You'll have opportunities to get your products involved in those insights, but you got to lead with those thoughts. You got to lead with your thinking. And that's where the reactive and the proactive, really, sometimes you butt heads on those two things.
Bilal Little:
Yeah. I was going to ask you that. Could you talk a little bit about some of your frustrations? And when you do so, can you also maybe unpack the difference between...? Because you say PR, you say marketing, you say branding and comms. Can you talk a little bit about that as well as you round out the conversation?
Chris Sullivan:
Yeah. So, I would say those different functions, PR, marketing, branding, comms, for the longest time, each was siloed from each other. That has changed. And the firms that are actually doing really well on all those fronts, every one of those functions has a seat at the same table at the same time, because we'll often get signals on the PR side of things. We call it the rule of two. If two reporters reach out to us about the same general topic that we haven't really seen bubble up in the news just yet, there's 12 others that are probably kicking around the same idea. How can we get out in front of it? How can we find a way for our clients to be framed in that conversation, in a way that's going to be positive for them, meaningful for their business?
But not just that, how can that inform the marketing? How can that inform the broader internal and external comms? How does that play into the brand? Bigger firms, there's going to be at least one person, sometimes more, who are going to have that job function. They're going to bring their own thinking to the equation. For other clients, it's one person wearing all those hats. We can help them really figure out how to navigate that so that all those different functions, all those different activities are still pushing towards the same goals, still being effective, even if there is so much change happening out there.
Bilal Little:
And so, when you're frustrated that they don't execute-
Chris Sullivan:
I don't get frustrated. No.
Bilal Little:
That's fair.
Chris Sullivan:
That's me putting my PR hat on. I would say I truly don't get... I actually love my job. I love my job. I love the clients we work with. I love the people that I have on my team. It's a great team. I think, for us, it's about getting out in front of it before you get to that point of frustration. And we've been doing this long enough where I think we know where the roadblocks are, where the speed bumps are. What's the expression? History doesn't repeat, it rhymes. We've been through a lot of crazy cycles before. We've worked with a lot of firms. And we see it far enough down the road where we might run into some issues. And we want to talk to our clients about pivoting, changing, adjusting early enough where we avoid that.
So, it's an opportunity to avoid frustration. And actually, that's sometimes where the best work gets done, where the best opportunities are found. Because when you're getting out in front of things, that's something that journalists take notice of. It's what they're looking for. Our clients are always... they love being a part of the conversation, but everybody's looking for those stories, those interviews where you are the conversation. How do you get there? You've positioned yourself well to get there. You've shown yourself to be forward-looking, ahead of the game. Those are the kinds of people that not just...
The journalists aren't just coming back to talk to them again and again. They want to do a profile. They want to do a Q&A. They want you on a panel. They want you on a podcast because you've proven yourself. You're not just pushing out the same content all the time, hoping people pay attention to you. You're putting it in really important context for them.
Bilal Little:
So, let's talk about that. Let's make one quick pivot to the rise of retail, because this is a perfect example of what's new, what's happening, where's the attention going. How are you navigating those waters with these ETF issuers to make sure that their message is heard appropriately?
Chris Sullivan:
Yeah. I mean, talk about a huge change over the last five years. I can count on two fingers the number of clients pre-COVID, again, who really had retail as anything approaching a priority. It was the wealth channel. And that's still crucial. I do not discount that channel one bit. But you can see the strength of this motivated, self-directed retail contingent. You can see the flows and you can see the firms that have really leaned into this and had that as one of the biggest drivers of their growth. In some cases, the only drivers of their growth, because the issues that issuers have long faced with things like wire-houses and the requirements that they have, those aren't changing. Those are getting tougher. But retail, I think everybody's excited about it. I think, though, just like anything else, it really requires strategic thinking, because retail, they're not afraid to share their opinions.
Bilal Little:
Not at all.
Chris Sullivan:
The wealth channel, the institutional channel-
Bilal Little:
They can't.
Chris Sullivan:
... a lot of them can't.
Bilal Little:
They're just doing you a favor.
Chris Sullivan:
They're from a compliance perspective ignoring it. They'll just ignore you. Retail, if they don't like what you are selling-
Bilal Little:
It's real-time feedback.
Chris Sullivan:
... you're going to get that feedback in real time.
Bilal Little:
Real-time feedback.
Chris Sullivan:
Yes. But it's another area that's really exciting for us. And it's where I think the lines are most starting to blur between PR and marketing, earned and owned. A lot of what we're talking about and platforms that we're talking with, there are earned opportunities, there are owned opportunities, there are paid opportunities. And that's where, again, a really experienced guide can help these issuers navigate those channels and figure out, okay, if I'm going to spend, is this the right place for me to spend it? Is this the audience I'm trying to reach? So, we've been spending a ton of time over the last couple of years building really great relationships with platforms that are serving as gathering places for retail investors. I'm of an age where the thought of sharing my portfolio with other people, I would wake up in a cold sweat. But younger investors, this is normal.
Bilal Little:
Oh, it's normal.
Chris Sullivan:
And you see these platforms-
Bilal Little:
It's very communal.
Chris Sullivan:
Yeah, that's a great way to describe it. It's a communal conversation. And that's a great place for issuers to look to engage, but you have to be very careful about engaging because your authenticity is really going to matter. And that's something... I don't think that word's come up yet today on our bingo card, but that's something you can't fake. And going back to one of your earlier questions about what do we look for. Authenticity is huge. You have to believe what you are saying. Mercenary thinking gets called out really quickly. People see it. People smell it out. But when you have that authenticity, again, when you approach these retail conversations not from a place of sales and marketing, but of education, that's where you can really start to make some headway with that group because they are hugely, hugely important.
Just one more point on that. They're consuming media in an entirely different way. This is where that legacy media we talked about, still hugely important, does not have the audience that it once did. Lots of interesting surveys out there about investors who are 45 and under, where they go for news, they go to their peers. That's really the biggest place that they are heading. Or they go to digital platforms that they've grown up with, podcasts, places like that, YouTube. They're native to those platforms. So, it's really important that asset managers recognize that and work to figure out an authentic way to get themselves involved in those conversations.
Bilal Little:
I'm glad you stated that the way you did, but I want you to lean in and dig into one aspect of this conversation. When should an asset manager engage with you and your team to say, "You know what? There's a lot of new opportunities out there. We're going to be launching." What part of the cycle should you be engaged in that conversation of working with an issuer?
Chris Sullivan:
Preferably, as early as possible. We often talk with issuers or people who are thinking about issuing when they're still in that idea generation phase. And actually, that's a really fun conversation to be a part of. Although, over the years, I think I've probably, and I'm sorry about this for you guys, talked as many people out of launching ETFs as I've talked into launching them, because this is a tough business. This is a tough business.
Bilal Little:
Hyper-competitive.
Chris Sullivan:
And you have to have that strong plan coming out of the gate. In a firm like ours, people who do what we do can play a really important role early in the process, because as the investment team, as the product people are coalescing around the idea, we can simultaneously coalesce around the messaging. How are we going to communicate this to the people that we want to get this in front of? Doing both of those things in tandem leads to such a better outcome than products built, filing's done. We're a couple weeks out from launch. Uh-oh, what's our PR plan? We've been there and we've done a good job with that, but everything goes smoother and everybody has just more time to get comfortable with the narrative with what we're going to ask, with where we're going to go. And we can get aligned and everybody can understand what our plan is going to look like. So, the earlier, the better, is really my answer to that.
Bilal Little:
Love it. So, last question. How should people think about Craft & Capital if they want to work with you or be engaged with you?
Chris Sullivan:
I think, for us, our biggest differentiator is our people. We have a really experienced team. And that's up and down the roster of people that are on our team. We lead from a place of experience and expertise. We've also got a great network out there when we're talking about this financial media, this investment-focused media. And that's for retail, wealth, institutional, you name it. I think having that network is really crucial, because it means on day one, we don't just know who to reach out to. We're already talking with them. They're coming to us. One of the things I'm most proud of about this agency is that we get as many inbound inquiries from the media as we're putting out there, because they... Well, they know us and they trust us. And I think, again, back to one of your earlier questions, who do we work with?
We're careful about that, because that trust can go away very quickly. And I want those journalists to know that if we're going to reach out to them with a new client, with a new pitch, with a new fund, we believe in it too. We're people who have done that due diligence. We know the people behind this product. We know they stand behind it. We know they're going to do a good job in explaining it. We know it's not just going to be a pure sales pitch every time they talk. That is hugely important for us. So, expertise, it's experience and it's really, this is what we live and breathe. So, I would like to think we're pretty good at it, so I'll let the marketplace decide. But ETFs in particular have been just an incredibly fun area for us over these last 20 years.
Bilal Little:
Man, I love it. Chris, before I wrap, I got to ask you, I throw a left ball question out from anywhere. You ready?
Chris Sullivan:
There's only one door.
Bilal Little:
I don't think he's ready. I don't think he's ready. Best vacation you had and why?
Chris Sullivan:
Oh, that's a really good question. Best vacation I had and why? So, in 2020, my family and I, we were supposed to go to Ireland and COVID hit. We literally had plane tickets. We were going to leave on March 13th. And I've got my wife, three kids, so that obviously got postponed. We tried again in 2021. One of my sons got COVID two days before we were supposed to leave, so we postponed it again. About nine months after that, we were supposed to go and my other son, he got COVID. So, for the third time, we kicked that vacation down the road. Finally, in February of 2025, we made the trip. And I loved that vacation, not just because we had an amazing time and not just because my name is Sullivan and Ireland is... Obviously, I'm going to be very comfortable there. Climate's amazing for people like me.
There's no sun. You don't burn. It's wonderful. No, I'm the guy who gets a sunburn, if I ride the bus with the window on this side. But I love that vacation, because it finally actually happened and it happened before the kids got old enough where they were going to be in college. I was worried they were going to have kids of their own, because I'm like-
Bilal Little:
At this point.
Chris Sullivan:
... I can't buy more tickets for grandkids. We got to move this along. But the trip was awesome. And what made it even better was the kids actually really appreciated it, because we had been talking about it for years. So, that was just a recurring theme while we were traveling. I was like, can you believe we're finally here? We've been talking about this for five years. It's actually finally happening and we had an amazing time. I've been on a lot of great trips. I've been on a lot of places around the world. I'm not sure I'm going to top that one, just because of how long it took to actually get on that plane and get over there.
Bilal Little:
I love that. What it sounded like is your trip was marinating.
Chris Sullivan:
Marinating. Yes.
Bilal Little:
Right. So, it was getting ready for you.
Chris Sullivan:
It just wasn't the right time.
Bilal Little:
That's all good. Chris, I want to say thank you. Thank you for joining ETF Central. It's been a pleasure.
Chris Sullivan:
Thank you. I really appreciate it. It's been a great conversation.
Speaker 1:
That's a wrap for today's conversation, but the ETF discussion doesn't stop here. For more insights, deep dives, and voices shaping the market, stay connected on etfcentral.com. From the New York Stock Exchange, we'll see you next time. Information contained in this podcast was obtained in part from publicly available sources and not independently verified. Neither ICE nor its affiliates make any representations or warranties expressed or implied as to the accuracy or completeness of the information and do not sponsor, approve, or endorse any of the content herein, all of which is presented solely for informational and educational purposes. Nothing herein constitutes an offer to sell, a solicitation have been offered to buy any security or a recommendation of any security or trading practice. Some portions of the proceeding conversation may have been edited for the purpose of life or clarity.