Guest: Liz Caselli-Mechael, Chief Communications Officer at Watch Duty, formerly Vice President of Marketing and Communications at World Central Kitchen
Kevin Shively sits down with Liz Caselli-Mechael from World Central Kitchen during Content Marketing World in San Diego to discuss how speed and authenticity drive digital content in disaster response. Liz shares how World Central Kitchen operates with embedded communications teams in the field, documenting relief work in real time and publishing within two hours of a disaster response beginning.
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Kevin Shively: Hello, everybody, and welcome to Content Marketing World in sunny San Diego, and welcome to Web Sessions. My name's Kevin Shively. I'm the VP of Corporate Marketing for Pantheon, and I am here with Liz Caselli-Michel from World Central Kitchen. Liz, thanks for being here.
Liz Caselli-Michel: Thanks for having me.
Kevin Shively: Liz, I want to jump straight into it with our first question. You work for a major global nonprofit. When that's the case, what makes the web work?
Liz Caselli-Michel: Couple big things. Number one, speed. Always being up to date. We're in disaster response, so things are changing every couple hours, and that speed is a huge piece of it. Number two, complete audience obsession. Build for them, not for us.
Kevin Shively: That's a great, great concise answer. I want to back out a bit, if you don't mind. Tell me a bit about how digital and content and the web in general work at World Central Kitchen as well.
Liz Caselli-Michel: Yeah, we have a very real-time model. So we have embedded communications team members that are with our relief teams out in the field, and they're doing a lot of kind of raw documenting of what's going on. Our home office team, which is mostly in Washington, D.C., is focused on packaging that in a way that's really going to work for the audience, but keep the feel really authentic and turning that around really rapidly so that the audience is seeing what's happened within the past day, not within the past couple weeks.
Kevin Shively: How important is that real-time content to an organization like yours where events are happening in real time, people need food in the moment, and what makes your audience respond to that?
Liz Caselli-Michel: Yeah, I think it's two big things. One is that that's just a core value of our organization. We move fast. We have very little tolerance for bureaucracy, very little tolerance for delay. So communications wants to move the same way relief is going to move. It's a core value we uphold. The other is that I think it's a big part of earning and keeping trust from our supporters, whether they're donors, whether they're just parts of the community.
Liz Caselli-Michel: I think they need to see what's happening in real time to really have that trust about what is the impact on the ground, what's the situation, and how do I get involved and support?
Kevin Shively: That's fantastic. So tell me about your team's day-to-day, what type of content, how you produce it, how it gets live, how it winds up impacting donors like me who want to contribute.
Liz Caselli-Michel: Yeah, there's a ton of video, a ton of photography, really being able to kind of see and feel what it's like in the field. And we have a big value to say it doesn't have to be the perfect shot. There's people walking through airports with all their bags when they've just found they need to switch what city in Guatemala that they're in because results are changing so quickly from different disasters on the ground. So it's a huge focus on what does it really look like, not what feels polished or feels impressive.
Liz Caselli-Michel: Sometimes that means the meals are quick turn. We'll have meals coming from restaurants, we'll have meals coming from huge kitchens. It's all about showing how the different pieces of that come together in a very rough way. And so often we'll find what the audience might respond to the most might be someone walking through the airport with all their bags on their back more than that perfect, gorgeous shot of foreground and background is that lovely food service.
Liz Caselli-Michel: We want to show those meals, we want to show what those environments are like, but people are really here for the journey. They want to see what's really going on and they don't want to wait until things are perfect. They want to know what's happening while we're still figuring it out.
Kevin Shively: So how do you do that in real time, figure that stuff out? So when you talk about a disaster hitting, you have to be ready at all times. How do you operationalize a digital content team to be ready for that?
Liz Caselli-Michel: Yeah, we have something as an organization we talk about as like Corps, like a Peace Corps, but we have a Relief Corps that's based in different places around the world that might be responding in their local region. We also have a Comms Corps. So we have folks that will call on. There are some areas that unfortunately are going to get consistently hit with disasters year after year, like in hurricane season. We know who we're going to call to embed with those teams and really move with them to support the work and to document what's happening.
Liz Caselli-Michel: So a lot of it really leans on local and regional partners that step in and work directly with the relief team. We're really their support system to then do that last mile of everything they're documenting. How does that get organized, packaged out to audiences that are going to care about them the most? But often that real ground communications work is being done by someone in the community.
Kevin Shively: That is really cool. So a reserve core that's ready to go at a moment's notice. Wow, that's a great, great structure. So what are the most effective channels when it comes to driving broad scale donations like you do?
Liz Caselli-Michel: Yeah, it can really vary. And we have a lot of partners that support and kind of help make that bigger. So social media is huge for us. I would say, especially something that's really visually pulls you in like a Instagram or a TikTok is somewhere that people can really come along on that whole journey. Those are really strong channels for us. Web is also really important because it's somewhere that people can always find the latest information, no matter what pace the algorithm's moving.
Liz Caselli-Michel: And it's something where people can always dig into some of the responses that matter the most to them, which may not be what's getting covered the most in the media, but they'll be able to find what is really going on in the ground right now in Pakistan, even though that's something, in a crowded news environment, that might not be getting covered other places.
Liz Caselli-Michel: So I think web is really important for us in a different way, and having that deep relationship and that trust and transparency of people always able to find the information that they need.
Kevin Shively: Yeah.
Kevin Shively: I'd be remiss if I didn't ask more questions about the web. When we think about how the world has changed all around us with SEO changing and AI, I'm assuming that impacts your ability to reach people and how you do it in different ways. What are some of the biggest changes that you've seen and some of the opportunities that you've seen come out of that as well?
Liz Caselli-Michel: That's a great question. I'm cautiously optimistic. I would say so far, we've really had a great experience with the role that folks moving a lot of searching into large language models has had on how they find information about our organization. So one thing that I was sharing already this week is I was looking for a specific team member, Delphine, who's been on a lot of responses with us. And I was just looking for her full name. I had only ever called her by her first name.
Liz Caselli-Michel: So I was Googling "Delphine World Central Kitchen" and actually, the generative answer that came up top of the search was about the work that she was doing on the ground that day in Myanmar, because it was already pulling from an Instagram story that we had updated. And so something like that, I see as a real opportunity when people are looking, "How do I help a new place?" "What do I need to know about?" Kind of... "Is World Central Kitchen serving in Gaza?"
Liz Caselli-Michel: What we've found is that the content we have on web actually has been pulling through really well in a lot of those generative environments. And that's certainly something we're gonna need to stay on top of and stay ahead of, but I'm really proud of the team because I think it's reflective of their commitment to answer the audience's real questions. And bless, I hope that this continues to be true for our experience with AI, is that AI is really finding that quality of true incredible answers and using that to pull through.
Liz Caselli-Michel: So we've been lucky so far. We found that it's a positive contributor on traffic. We found it's not taking away from online donations. That's always vulnerable. We wanna stay on top of it. But I think the work that the team's put in to really having quality content and quality audience experiences is still there and just coming through in a new way for folks who are asking questions on the AI side.
Kevin Shively: Fantastic. Okay, I got one more question I'm gonna put you on the spot with here. We talked before we sat down here, you have a corporate background. What are some of the lessons from World Central Kitchen and just the nonprofit world and the speed at which you operate that you would give advice to folks on the corporate side?
Liz Caselli-Michel: Ooh, that's a great question. And I am a huge believer that there's so much nonprofit can learn from what private sector and corporate and DTC have gotten really good at that nonprofit really needs to catch up. There's also so much that corporate can learn from how nonprofit works. And I would say the two big things are having the confidence to really produce emotionally resonant content.
Liz Caselli-Michel: That's kind of a given for nonprofits because they work typically in spaces that are really connective, but it's something that nonprofits also tend to do with very little fear. And on the brand side, you're always kind of worried about being too emotional or too resonant. You don't wanna be cringy. And sometimes you kind of run to the middle as opposed to doing something bold that could really connect. The other thing is, if you had to get it published in two hours from idea to publish, you can.
Liz Caselli-Michel: It's - every hit - We put a lot of barriers for ourselves in between. And some of those may be worth that trade off, but it's worth pulling back and really asking what would you have to do in your process to be able to publish in a really short amount of time and see how much of that you can replicate while still taking a responsible approach to risk and still honoring the different parts of your organization because it is certainly a lot longer than it needs to be in many corporate environments.
Liz Caselli-Michel: And often when I tell people that we have an expectation that when we're starting a response, we publish within two hours, it's shocking to them. They can't imagine how they would do it if they had to. And you can, you really can. If you build the system for that, you prioritize speed, but it does take having a patience for the imperfect. And it does take having a lot of trust between different parts of the team.
Liz Caselli-Michel: So I would say being able to kind of aim for that on the corporate and brand side, you don't have to get all the way there, but to take that challenge a bit to say, "Could we publish if we really had to in this amount of time, what would it look like?" Because you can.
Kevin Shively: Yeah. When we talk about the human side of the internet and you talk about building that trust, what are some of the things that it takes to get there?
Liz Caselli-Michel: I think one thing I'm a huge fan of is remembering that it's two- way communication and not one- way communication. So it's typical that we're always focused on the message we want to put out. We typically put way fewer resources into listening or responding in a two-way environment, but the comment sections, you know, it can be toxic in some places. It's also super valuable. I think a credible response to a question will often travel so much farther than a proactive message because you're meeting somebody where their need is. So I'm a huge fan of remembering that two- way communication and making room for your audience to communicate back with you as opposed to expecting them to just be passive receptacles.
Kevin Shively: I love that. A different approach to how a lot of people think about content marketing is a push versus a pull. And you just got off stage at Content Marketing World. Tell me about your session. What was the topic? What did you talk about? What was exciting about that to you?
Liz Caselli-Michel: Yeah, I joined up with a team called Green Buzz and their founder, Todd, to talk about video and YouTube strategy. So we wanted to really put together some of the nuts and bolts of building a strong YouTube presence with "what does that mean for how you package content for audiences and meet them where they're at?". So a lot of my focus was on how do you create really personalized pathways?
Liz Caselli-Michel: I like to use choose your own adventure because that's a favorite like childhood book memory -
Kevin Shively: Same!
Liz Caselli-Michel: - and create a choose your own campaign adventure so that when we're creating content, we don't have a huge range of messages. We have a few clear messages, but we can package in a lot of ways so that people can really get the packaging that's going to work the best for them, not because we know their Gen Z or we know their East Coast, but really letting their behavior put them on the journey that's going to be the most effective for them.
Liz Caselli-Michel: They may be Gen Z, but be really responding to a content format that we designed for older audiences. Let that drive what their future content experience is instead of the assumptions we might make about them because of their age bracket.
Kevin Shively: I love it. Curious as a content marketer here, what is your favorite content format right now? What is the most exciting to you?
Liz Caselli-Michel: Oh, I'm a sucker - this is not like brand new, but I'm a really sucker for like a green screen explainer because I just love that like audio and visual. I love somebody who's meeting me where I'm at at the very beginning of the story so I don't feel like I'm already behind on what's trending. I love them giving that background, and I love getting to see that combination of them really telling the story with what it looked like in real time, whether I'm like catching up on a reality show or if I'm getting into, you know, new narratives in women's sports.
Liz Caselli-Michel: Coach Jackie is a favorite of mine for this on TikTok, so she's a huge inspo for me. So I think that's a format that I love because it really brings me along and makes me feel really connected to the speaker.
Kevin Shively: Yeah, brings you along and it makes it feel almost unpolished like you're in their living room with them doing this while you get the content experience behind them. That's great.
Liz Caselli-Michel: I'll say - this is something we're experimenting with more and more, to kind of... tell the story of our responses. I was on an island response on Mayotte. And I will say: the visual that people responded to the most in my green screen was of our sleeping bags on a porch! That was where we stayed the first night, and I took that only for my parents.
Liz Caselli-Michel: I had just sent that in a text message, but that, over and above all the beautiful, serving imagery sometimes just gives you the real real of what's happening in between those shoots.
Kevin Shively: Yeah, and I would imagine for an organization like World Central Kitchen where people want to.... They donate because they feel like you're first on the scene. You're first there to help feed people. You're first there to take care of people, so that behind the scenes of real folks getting in the mix is huge and that's going to be a huge draw for people.
Liz Caselli-Michel: I hope so. I think that we have a really supportive community and it's exciting because they really get it. They really get what we're doing and why it's so important that we're serving, you know, an hour after a hurricane and not the next day that we take seriously the needs of the people we're serving and we don't act like, "Oh, they can wait until we're ready". We need to go before we're ready because that's when the need is there.
Liz Caselli-Michel: So I do think that that's something our community really connects with and has seen from us in such radically different contexts, but it's something they know they can always count on from us.
Kevin Shively: One thing that's unique, and I'm just going to keep going because I keep having questions come up. One thing that's unique about World Central Kitchen is that you have a celebrity founder in Chef Andres. What is that experience like? How has it been both leveraging his personality and using that within the context of a broader marketing organization?
Liz Caselli-Michel: I think Chef Andres gives us all a really good north star because he'll be the first one to push. If you think something's taking too long, if you think something's getting too bureaucratic, he'll be the first one to say, "People are hungry now. We're not going to wait to figure this out; solve it in the meantime, and then we'll build to scale". So for instance, when we go into a new place, we might start working on building a field kitchen. Our field kitchens can scale up to producing 80, 000, sometimes 100, 000 meals a day.
Liz Caselli-Michel: But what you need day one is to start getting meals out and probably when you're building the kitchen, it's not producing meals the first day you land. You are figuring out often lack of water, lack of power. So what we do first is partner with local restaurants who will often have functional or partly functional kitchens, will maybe have stock. It depends on how they've been hit. Chefs are often like the unofficial mayors of their community, and they will be problem solving like crazy.
Liz Caselli-Michel: So I think one of the real benefits of having a founder like Chef Jose Andres is that he is really pushing, what's the solution for now while we're also doing the solution for next, while we're also figuring out how to get to maximum scale. We don't have the luxury of working on a single track and he will not let you forget it.
Kevin Shively: That's a good quality in the CEO too. Liz, thank you so much for joining us. Liz from World Central Kitchen, fantastic conversation. Let's do a high five here in the middle. Enjoy the rest of Content Marketing World.
Liz Caselli-Michel: Thanks so much. You too.