Well Said

Cuore Collective
  • 5.0 (6)
  • Marketing
  • Updated Weekly

We're Pia and Kelly, co-founders of Cuore. We met at Amazon new-hire orientation 13 years ago, sitting at different tables, and ended up desk neighbors on the communications team. We've spent our careers obsessed with how words change what happens next, in boardrooms, in hallways, in the text you reread three times before sending. Well Said is our podcast about connection as a human skill. We talk to coaches, chefs, journalists, and founders about what actually helps people reach each other when it matters. If you care about trust, communication, and saying things that land, this is for you.

  1. 3d ago

    PR Pros Call Out the Brand Mistakes Everyone Fell For | Pia Arthur & Kelly Cheeseman

    Most mornings, Pia and Kelly catch up over coffee and trade hot takes on whatever brand moment is blowing up online. This episode puts that conversation on camera. Each brought scenarios the other hadn't seen, and they react cold: Disney opening its IP to TikTok creators, the wave of nostalgia menus, a golf collab ad that went sideways, the "sold out in 15 seconds" drop, and Liquid Death asking fans to donate their pee to cool AI data centers. Pia and Kelly are the co-founders of Cuore and spent years as communications executives at Amazon. Their verdicts keep landing on the same line: the moves that work trust the audience, and the ones that backfire try to manage it. Along the way they get into what they'd actually say to a CEO in the room, and what a better apology would have sounded like. In this episode: • Why Disney handing its IP to creators is a lesson in knowing who already loves you • Nostalgia marketing, and when a throwback turns into a cheap trick • What Kelly would do if she ran comms for a fast food comeback item • Target, Delia's, and why a collaboration doubles your exposure and your risk • The Callaway x Good Good ad, and why "this doesn't reflect our values" fell flat • Manufactured scarcity, bots, and resellers, and why it erodes trust • What to say when a CEO wants to make only 500 so they sell out fast • Liquid Death's "We Want Your Pee" campaign: gross, or genius? New episodes of Well Said every other Wednesday. Subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 00:50 Disney opens its IP to TikTok creators 04:41 "Hell hath no fury like a Disney adult" 06:53 The lesson: know who already cares about you 09:43 Nostalgia marketing: genius or cheap trick? 13:28 Why Kelly would rather see something new 17:19 How to run comms on a throwback launch 19:17 Target, Delia's, and the power of a collab 20:49 When a brand collaboration goes sideways 24:29 Why "this doesn't reflect our values" fell flat 28:11 The "sold out" drop brands keep pulling 31:30 What to tell a CEO who wants to make only 500 35:32 Liquid Death's "We Want Your Pee" 40:08 Turning a stunt into real action 41:54 Send us the next one to dissect

  2. Sep 29

    How to Talk to People Who Disagree With You | Professor Dr. Melina Abdullah

    Dr. Melina Abdullah grew up in Oakland, where her mother's front porch doubled as a classroom for the neighborhood. She's been organizing ever since, and she teaches, writes a weekly column, hosts a radio show and has spent two decades studying how people actually lead. She sits down with Kelly Cheeseman and Pia Arthur on the difference between leaderless and leader-full, why she quotes Ella Baker's line that strong people don't need strong leaders, and what she calls womanist leadership, which she wrote her dissertation on. Then the conversation goes somewhere else. What AI can't do, why she thinks spirit, love and art are the things that make us human, why she stopped being quiet about the voice that guides her work, and what she learned from her mother about talking to your kids for three hours at a time. In this episode: • Group-centered leadership instead of leader-centered groups, and where the idea comes from • Alice Walker's purple and lavender line, and why one image does more than a paragraph • Why she asks what her intention is before she agrees to speak to a hostile room • The oppositional student who emailed her four years after graduating • What she does when the work gets heavy, including the dominoes in her bag • How a story travels now, and why independent media and social changed who gets covered • Bullhorn, microphone or keyboard, and which one she'd pick New episodes of Well Said. Watch on YouTube, listen wherever you get your podcasts. Chapter Timestamps 00:00 Intro 00:54 The front porch classroom in East Oakland 02:34 Gary, Indiana and who gets news coverage 05:09 Ella Baker and group-centered leadership 06:17 Womanist leadership 08:27 Running for vice president with Dr. Cornel West 10:05 What the campaign showed her about the two-party system 12:48 What Dolly Parton meant to her 16:18 What AI can't do 18:16 Why she stopped hiding the voice that guides her 23:34 Staying grounded on planes and in airports 27:04 Parenting by talking to your kids 31:29 Love at the center of the work 37:23 The three things everyone can give 40:08 Rapid fire and speaking to a hostile room 44:12 Bullhorn, microphone or keyboard

  3. Sep 22

    The Emmy-Winning Composer Who Says All Sound Is Music | Amanda Jones

    A speech and a film score are built the same way. You hook early, you earn the emotional moment before you spend it, you let the silent parts stay silent, and you get one crescendo. Composer Amanda Jones spends her career making those decisions in sound, and this conversation is about what writers, speakers and communicators can take from the way she does it. There's also the problem she solves before writing a single note: figuring out what a director hears in their head. She gets one creative call, sometimes with months of silence after it, so she's built a method for getting inside someone's imagination fast. Jones is an Emmy-winning composer and the first African American woman nominated in the Primetime Emmy score category. Her recent work includes Apple TV+'s Murderbot, National Geographic's Hurricane Katrina: Race Against Time, and Tyler Perry's The Gospel of Christmas. She sits down with Pia and Kelly to break down how she reads a story, builds a sound from scratch, and knows when to get out of the way. In this episode: • The question she asks every director to find their "cultural focal point" • Why she chose a temperamental 1970s synthesizer to play a sentient robot • How she scored Hurricane Katrina survivor interviews without crowding them • The easiest emotion to write music for, and the one that's actually hardest What temp music does to a composer's work, and why it's a trap • The organizational system she learned working under Hans Zimmer and John Powell • Her advice for composers coming up, including why perceived proximity decides who gets hired Subscribe to Well Said for conversations with the people shaping how stories get told. Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or watch on YouTube. Find Amanda at amandajonescomposer.com and on Instagram @amandajonescomposer. Episode Timestamps 1:09 Scoring a script before anything has been filmed 2:40 The questions she asks a director to find their taste 4:14 "All sound is music," and why she doesn't get writer's block 5:09 How much of a movie is actually score 6:30 Temp music and the placeholder trap 8:28 Murderbot: building a sound for a sentient robot 10:11 Why a temperamental 1970s synth plays the machine 15:14 The movie that made her fall in love with score 18:40 The easiest emotion to write, and the hardest 20:03 Hurricane Katrina and the discipline of restraint 33:22 The organization system she learned in Hans Zimmer's world 35:05 Rapid fire 41:29 Advice for composers coming up 44:10 Where to find Amanda

  4. Sep 15

    Why "The Best PR Is Invisible" Just Stopped Being True, with Pia and Kelly

    The first PR firm Kelly ever worked for had a mantra: the best PR is invisible. Then, Pia and Kelly built a decade at Amazon on it. In this episode, they say it out loud one more time and come to the conclusion: it isn't true anymore. Pia and Kelly are the co-founders of Cuore and spent years as communications executives at Amazon, the people writing the words nobody sees. Now chief comms officers are reporting directly to CEOs, executives are expected to be digitally native, and the frontline employee has become the face of the brand. They walk through what that shift actually costs the people living it, and what it means if you're deciding when to bring a communications partner into your own business. They also answer the questions listeners keep sending them, including the one nobody warned them about: what changes in you when you start putting yourself on camera. In this episode: • When to bring in a comms partner for a crisis, and why "early, early, early" isn't a cliché • Why pulling comms into a product launch too soon can waste everyone's time • The "good judgment police" role Kelly's Amazon teams played, and the cost of playing it too well • What the WSJ's reporting on comms leaders in the C-suite gets right about the last twenty years • Why the Kardashians are a masterclass in being everywhere all at once, and what brands should take from it • The line almost every guest on this show has repeated, in different words • What Pia learned about her own limiting beliefs from a year of filming New episodes of Well Said every other Wednesday. Subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 01:28 Two months into filming, and what they've learned 01:57 The executives who say they want a podcast 03:30 "A human having a human experience" 04:04 What Pia learned about her own limiting beliefs 04:56 When are you actually ready for a comms partner 05:37 Storytelling matters as much as the business plan 06:14 Crisis comms: early, early, early 06:59 When comms gets pulled in too early 07:15 "Go write a release," three weeks out 08:10 The WSJ piece on comms leaders reporting to CEOs 09:41 Digitally native CEOs and selling through social 10:54 The relationship economy and the trust economy 11:58 The good judgment police 13:57 Out of the shadows 14:10 "The best PR is invisible," and where it still holds 15:38 The Kardashians, everywhere all at once 18:22 The frontline employee as the face of the brand 19:02 The Amazon driver who danced to the door

  5. Sep 8

    Clothing Allows You to Communicate Before You Say a Word | Ryan Wood, Apparel Designer

    Ryan Wood spent sixteen years deciding what hangs on the rack at Urban Outfitters and The North Face, and he'll tell you plainly that a lot of it ended up in a landfill. He walked into the Well Said studio wearing a beat-up trucker hat. Ryan is an apparel designer and merchant, most recently the founding head of men's product at Quince, and he's in the early stages of building athletic wear that doesn't look like everyone else's. Kelly and Pia get him into the mechanics of clothing as communication: what a hidden zipper and a cheeky line on a care label actually do for a customer three months after the purchase, why he takes inherited military jackets apart and stitches them into something wearable, and how vintage became his grown-up version of hunting for buried treasure. The hat turns out to be his father's, from his years on the Blue Angels design team. It's one of the few fond memories he has of a complicated relationship, and it's the first of three things he'd grab in a fire. In this episode: - Why clothing is the front line, and what it says before your mouth opens - The Boston Red Sox hat test for anyone who insists they don't care about fashion - What he does with the clothing people inherit and can't wear or throw out - Why individuality disappears the second you walk into a gym - The case against polyester from someone who spent a career selling it - How Urban Outfitters stays relevant forever and why J.Crew couldn't - Where to start if you've never thought of getting dressed as communication New episodes of Well Said every week. Subscribe on YouTube, and follow on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Find Ryan on Instagram @ryyywood Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 01:16 The clothing people inherit and can’t wear or throw out 02:46 Remaking his mother’s shirt so she could wear it 03:26 What clothing conveys that words can’t 03:51 Clothing is the front line 05:29 What clothes do for connection 06:02 The story behind the hat 07:34 The hidden details nobody asked for 08:48 Designing for everyone and for the one who notices 10:05 Vintage as buried treasure 13:11 Why Urban Outfitters stays relevant and J.Crew didn’t 15:27 Merchandising as storytelling 17:05 Why everyone at the gym looks the same 19:08 Rather be uncomfortable than look like everyone else 19:30 The case against polyester 22:41 What his closet says about him 23:50 Microdosing the us-ness 24:47 Three things he’d grab in a fire 25:55 Where to start if you’ve never thought about it this way 27:51 Rapid fire round

  6. Sep 1

    The Checklist That Tells the Surgeon to Ask for Help | Dr. Robert Cho

    Dr. Robert Cho operates on children's spines with Pearl Jam playing. When the monitors show the electrical signals between a child's brain and spinal cord starting to drop, the first thing that happens is not medical. The music goes off. That is the signal to everyone in the room that a checklist is coming, read out loud, together, off the wall. And one of the steps on that checklist is for Cho, the most senior person present, to pick up a phone and admit he needs help. Cho is an orthopedic spine surgeon with offices in Beverly Hills and Brentwood who has done over a thousand scoliosis surgeries on kids and adults. His argument to Pia Arthur and Kelly Cheeseman is that calm under pressure is not a personality trait, it is something you script in advance, and that trust works the same way. He reads the t-shirt before he reads the chart. He gives every patient his cell phone number. He opens every operation by telling the room that anyone can stop him at any point, because he knows the story of the copilot who could not bring himself to tell the pilot they were flying into a mountain. In this episode: • Why the phone-a-friend step is the most valuable part of the checklist, and what an outside voice with a low heart rate can see that the room cannot • The ego burden of asking for help, and how putting it on paper removes it • Reading the t-shirt: earning a child's trust in the few moments you get • Why most patients he sees never get operated on, and how telling them so builds trust • The surgeon who threw a scalpel into the wall, and what that does to everyone else in the room • What actually happens in a parent's head the second they hear the word surgery • The one word he thinks should be banned from every doctor-patient relationship • Why a confidently wrong AI reminds him of an old-guard surgeon • What "well said" means in an operating room, and the pet peeve about reading the scan first Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 01:40 Welcome to Well Said 02:14 What a pediatric spine surgeon actually does 04:45 Getting the call from the OR in the middle of the day 07:39 The Alec Baldwin scene in Malice, and the surgeon god complex 09:32 What surgeons can learn from pilots 11:43 Projecting calm as a leader 15:13 The environment you create in the room 15:49 Earning a child's trust in the few moments you get 17:44 Why he doesn't sell surgery 20:16 Go home and think about it 20:44 What happens in a parent's head the second they hear surgery 21:56 The patient who saw seven surgeons before him 25:48 Why a confidently wrong AI reminds him of an old-guard surgeon 28:46 The note-taking tool that saves him two hours a day 30:16 Self-driving cars, robots, and what's next in the OR 31:26 The most accurate medical show on TV 35:42 How he tells a parent their child needs surgery 39:43 The demands on doctors, and why patients deserve more 42:54 What a scared patient needs from your first sentence Subscribe to Well Said for new conversations on connection as a human skill. Watch on YouTube, listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

  7. Aug 25

    How to Pitch Without Trying to Win the Room | Steve M. Cullen @ All Together Now

    Steve M. Cullen has presented roughly 200 times a year for two decades. He'll tell you privately that a pitch is warfare, that his mother's retirement is riding on it, that the fundamental job is to be the freshest person in the room. Then he walks in and refuses to pitch at all. Steve is a creative director and the founder of All Together Now, a studio whose entire tagline is "good ideas and sunny vibes." His work is turning companies into stories, which mostly means convincing people that something that doesn't exist yet should exist. Kelly and Pia get him into the mechanics of how that actually happens: the craft skills he built by taking apart campaigns and films line by line, the Eminem lyrical-construction exercise he ran on advertising for years, and why the difference between winners and almost-winners is that winners write it down. The back half turns inward. Steve talks about trigger journals, memento mori, the stoic virtues he actually uses, and the nightly 6pm debrief he gives his cat, which is how he discovered he'd been telling himself he'd failed 12 days in a row. In this episode: Why creative direction isn't salting the soup, it's deciding what to make with everything in the kitchen How Steve prepares a competitive pitch so the outcome is decided before he arrives The reason he runs a working session instead of a presentation What a trigger journal is, and how to start one this week• Why winners write their goals down The signature question he's asked clients for ten years, and where it came from The one word he's banned from his vocabulary New episodes of Well Said every week. Subscribe on YouTube, and follow on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Find Steve's studio, All Together Now, on Instagram.

  8. Aug 18

    The Mediator Who's Spent 30+ Years Finding the Real Fight Behind the Lawsuit | Angela Reddock-Wright

    For 30+ years, Angela Reddock-Wright has sat between people who cannot stand each other. First as an employment litigator, then as a workplace investigator during the reckoning that followed MeToo, and now as a full-time mediator. Her conclusion after thousands of cases: almost every workplace dispute is a communication failure wearing a legal costume. In this episode, Angela shows Pia and Kelly the work. Why a wage or employment complaint is rarely about wages or the employment, and almost always about "you don't value me." Why she barely mentions money in the first hours of a mediation. What separates an apology that resolves a case from one that blows it up. And how a picket line she was taken to as a seven-year-old in Birmingham, Alabama ended up defining a career spent bringing two sides to the same table. If your job involves the conversations people call for help with too late, this one's a working method. Chapters 00:00 The core of almost every case01:07 Birmingham, Alabama03:53 Her grandmother's picket line06:44 Why conflict is rarely about the conflict07:04 35 years in, and the entertainment career that never happened08:00 Litigator, investigator, mediator10:06 "It's an issue of seeing people as human"11:08 The wage complaint that means "you don't value me"12:11 San Jose nurses, and two sides who are both right13:47 The layoff from the manager's side15:57 The executive who asked her to deliver a message17:14 Why California mediations keep both sides in separate rooms18:47 Why she barely talks about money20:11 What makes an apology land23:03 Settlement versus transformative mediation24:33 Compton to Brentwood, at 1530:26 The Sweet 16 that became a life model31:15 One lesson for every student32:48 Rewriting SAG-AFTRA's policies after MeToo36:24 Where the pendulum is swinging now 41:26 Rapid fire45:54 Where to find Angela

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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
6 Ratings

About

We're Pia and Kelly, co-founders of Cuore. We met at Amazon new-hire orientation 13 years ago, sitting at different tables, and ended up desk neighbors on the communications team. We've spent our careers obsessed with how words change what happens next, in boardrooms, in hallways, in the text you reread three times before sending. Well Said is our podcast about connection as a human skill. We talk to coaches, chefs, journalists, and founders about what actually helps people reach each other when it matters. If you care about trust, communication, and saying things that land, this is for you.

Information

  • Creator
    Cuore Collective
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    27
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Cuore Collective
  • Show Website
    Well Said

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