Sheryl Sandberg And Fox News Anchor Megyn Kelly Discuss Tech | Full Interview Fortune MPW

Conference because this is the only time I walk into a room and it looks like this. Yeah, it just feels good We need more of these We will have many many more so Cheryl thank you for being here. This session is called getting like so I'm going to just start by throwing out a few words And all you have to do is tell me like or dislike. I know Facebook doesn't have a dislike button, but you should And so just say whatever comes to mind no right or wrong answers, all right Cheryl Sandberg the comic book Have not seen but dislike anyway the term feminist like big two thumbs up everyone All right, we'll bring you back to work hoodies like Calling my four and a half year old daughter authoritarian instead of bossy. Can I do that? Better than bossy, but still this way. All right. Okay, and last but not least hello Haven't seen it Okay, does everybody know what hello is new anybody on it All right How many of you are on Facebook? Yeah, all right. Okay. I'm sorry. I see every hand 1.3 billion people can't be wrong ladies China Cheryl will come talk to you afterwards if you didn't raise your hand Well, thank you for playing on a more serious note. You just came back from advertising week last week, right? Can you give us your top two or three takeaways from the conference? What did you learn this year? So I think what's going on the ad world is what's going on in the consumer world, which is that consumers are moving to mobile I think what we're experiencing is the death of the word online so every single person in this room has a phone that has a hundred-thousand times the computing power of The computer that sent the first man to the moon and that was 1969, which is the year I was born, which I like to remember mind. Everyone is not actually that long ago But not only are our phones more powerful, but we're obsessed with our time Right 80% of Americans will only put their phones down twice for two hours a day I saw Arianna Huffington say on Jon Stewart that 20% of Americans are using their friends during sex. I Can't type it's true. I'm just saying I'm not gonna do that But the power of what's happening to mobile This is the fastest adoption of new communications technology the world has ever seen and last week was ad week and a lot of us in this room were there and That means a lot for marketers if you're running a company or a CMO you need to sell products and services You need to reach people where they are Let me let me just stop you for a second and ask Mobile is something that obviously I'm sure has come up for years now at advertising weekend the iPhone came out in 2007 and we've had Android around for a long time and smart phones in general. Why is it that Advertising that marketing that that Facebook on mobile also, why is it something that's still being figured out? For a lot of reasons first of all, we all adopt slowly I think our businesses we tend to adopt a little more slowly one thing I've been interested in is what I find with Clients and partners is that often the person who's number four in an industry moves faster than number one Number four not three or five or three or five, right? Now that's not always the case I think Melanie's here from P&G They're obviously huge market player great market position. They were one of our earliest and largest But often there are points where people, you know The other goes to add technology and that was the big announcement Facebook had last week Which is that the technology that's used to serve ads and measure ads really assumes that you are one person with one device I bet you everyone in this room has three devices everyone in this room has a laptop or a computer of some form a mobile phone of some form and a tablet of some form, right and you're the same person and so the ability to Serve ads the right way to measure them and do it in a privacy friendly way is something we haven't evolved to and I know We're working hard others are working hard But the technology and the way we market needs to catch up to the new form And I think we're all moving as fast as we can to get there So what you're talking what you're referring to the recent announcement is Atlas, right? It's just relaunched basically. Can you describe what it is? How does it work in kind of? Atlas is an ad server. So what that means? It's how you serve ads and measure ads and Lots of different lots of different options out there But what Atlas does is it looks at real people and real results so Atlas because of the Facebook data Without Facebook or Atlas telling any marketer who you are and that's really important but Atlas can serve you the right ad and think about advertising for those of us who are obviously marketers, but those of us who run businesses is that a Relevant ad is a great experience if you feel it's done in a privacy protected way. An irrelevant ad is a bad experience. My husband and I love him to death. Very good marriage. We have exactly zero overlapping movie sales. None. Except for Gone Girl, which is really great. It's out in theaters now. Everyone should go see it. But we really have very little so when I see an ad that's for his type of movie I'm like, yeah, when I see an ad that's for my type of movie, I'm like, yeah, this is great. And so in order for us to continue to develop our company to grow our businesses We need to get people the right message at the right time in a world where people have the message they should write to and that's what Atlas is trying to do. So you touched on the relevancy side of things, right? People probably have two complaints about Facebook. Relevancy and privacy. So first of all What do they complain about more of those two? And second, can we touch on privacy as well and what you are doing there? Yeah, let's touch on privacy and go to relevancy. In privacy, it has to be the cornerstone of our business. We will only share to Facebook if you feel that I could post a photo of the two of us here. I could share it privately, which would make no sense. I don't know if this is on the record, but I could. Or I could share it with just my mom or just my high school girlfriends. I'm in a private group with them, or the whole world. And I have to believe that. Otherwise I won't keep posting. So privacy is very central to what we do. I think there's a belief out there that privacy and ads have to trade off against another and they don't. With our Atlas launch, with Facebook, we do not tell marketers who you are. We take ads. We can understand the targeting you're trying to do and serve those ads without telling marketers who you are. And it goes to relevance, because what's interesting is the number one thing we hear from our people who use Facebook on our ads is, why is this not relevant? That is the number one thing we hear when we get feedback from people on Facebook. More than the privacy issues. It's the number one question people have is, why can't you show me something that's relevant? What's your answer to that? Our answer is, we're working on it. We're working on finding that. And that's what newsfeed has been. So it's the same thing. As marketers, we know. It's the same thing as your friends. We all have friends who post great things to Facebook, where you look forward to their every post. The woman I wrote my book with, Nelson, she's hysterical. If you haven't friended her, do. Her posts are awesome. You know, I have a friend or two that maybe there's too many pictures of themselves. We know the difference. Same thing with marketers. There are ads that are good and ads that aren't. We know that in every format, but it takes time to learn the new format for when it works. And you touched on privacy already, but I think we would all probably like to know, what exactly are you doing to protect our data on Facebook? You know, thank you to Snowden and the NSA. This is a major issue. And security is a big deal for Facebook and every provider out there. And we take it incredibly seriously. Probably the best thing we've done is we have had for many years a bounty program. Where we say to hackers out there, find a bug, find a loophole, report it to us, we'll pay you. And close it. And we've paid out millions of dollars. That was a really good... Well, it wasn't my idea. But it was a good idea, right? Because you have to set up the incentives in place. And when you think about government, you think about government, what really matters is that we hold our own government and others accountable for their behavior online. That we have to respect people's privacy. We also want to make sure that we are doing what we can against terrorism and other threats. And there's an appropriate way to do that. And I know there are a lot of people working on that. If you were to start a social network today, you and Zuckerberg, how would you go about doing that? I'd like to think we'd start Facebook. But we'd start as a mobile company. And that was a very big difference. Facebook's 10 years old. And as Mark has said, had we even started just a few years later, we would have started mobile. But we didn't. We started as a desktop company. And for anyone who watched Facebook's performance over the last two years, as we were going public, a massive shift was happening and people were moving from the desktop to mobile. Advice, don't go public in the middle of one of those shifts in your business. But that was a big shift. And we really had to rethink things and we had to rethink how we did things. On the ads world, we made a hard choice and we prioritized ads and newsfeed over short-term revenue. And if you look at our earnings, you can see the difference. That was a hard choice to make and Mark was a brave leader to put us through it. We also had to rebuild the company. Three years ago, we didn't have very many people who built mobile products. And that had a dramatic effect. Actually, it's fascinating because we're hearing from IBM and HP and here you are at Facebook and you're having to contend with this huge shift that happened after you started. We see you as a very young company, but the 10 years in our industry is forever. One last question for you because we're almost out of time. As you look across everything that you've done so far in your career, what drives you? I think what's always driven me, which I'm sure is true for so many of the amazing women in this audience in this conference, is you want to make a difference. And that means making someone else's life better or something that enables someone. What I really love about Facebook and why I'm so passionate about my job is that I think we give people a voice. I was in India this past summer. There are two men in India from a town called Tamil Nadu and there was no road from where they lived to the hospital. So people died. If you had a child who's sick and you had to carry, because there's no road so there are no cars, a child for two days to a hospital. And so on Facebook, they raised $100,000, which is a huge sum of money for them and recruited volunteers and they built the road they called the People's Road. And a more recent example, which I think this audience will find as compelling as I do, and I can't talk about this without getting emotional, is this new page called the Selfish Freedoms of Iran. So step on Facebook, it has about 650,000 fans. It got to 150,000 in a week. And what it is is pictures being posted of women taking pictures of themselves outside in Iran without their passport, which is a punishable crime. And I don't think a place anyone wants to go to. And my favorite is a beautiful picture of a grandmother, a mother, and a child, and a young daughter. And the grandmother writes in Arabic and it's translated for me, I wanted my granddaughter to feel the wind on her hair before it went around. Well, Cheryl, I'm going to have to cut you off, I'm sorry. We want to introduce our next trailblazing woman. We're actually going to turn the tables a bit, and thank you, by the way, for both being interviewed. Cheryl is now going to play the role of interviewer, and I will have her go ahead and introduce our next. So I get to introduce our next guest, Megan Kelly of The Kelly File on Fox. It is a really fun day to introduce her to this audience because today is the one-year anniversary of her show. Her show is a serious show. In a world where we're not sure if people want serious news, she is not doing light stuff. She is doing Ebola and ISIS and troops on the ground, really serious current events. She averages 2.5 million viewers each night. It is the second most watched cable news program and the fastest growing. And in her time slot, which is 9 p.m., it is the second most popular program in all of cable TV behind only ESPN in one year. Just amazing. So I met her because I watched one particular interview, and to set this up a little bit, what happened is Pew put out a study, and Alan Murray is here now at Fortune. I think he was probably at Pew when this study came out, but Pew put out a study saying that women were the primary breadwinners now in 49% of households. And Lou Dobbs and Eric Erickson went on, actually on screen, and they said that this was, I quote, anti-science, that men are supposed to be the dominant ones. Megan had something to say. Let's share that with everyone. What makes you dominant and me submissive? And who died and made you scientists in chief? It doesn't have anything to do with submissiveness per se, and it was certainly poorly constructed how I said it. What I meant by that was, when you look throughout society, look at other animals, the male of the species tends to be the protector, the dominant one in that regard. We've gotten to a point in this country where you have a lot of feminists who think that the male and female roles are completely interchangeable. When you have a mom who's working 12 hours a day, and a dad who's working 12 hours a day, and they come home, and they're also trying to be good parents, you can't have it all. And they're making compromises. I'm not judging them, and no one should, but it's just a reality. No, I'm not judging them. You are, because you come out very clearly and say that you believe that women who choose to work instead of staying at home to nurture their children, and instead have the father do that, are imposing a worse future on their children than women who make a different choice, the choice you and your wife make. I don't view it as judging. I view it as a statement of fact, that when you've got a mom who's working full-time and then coming home trying to be a full-time mom as well, it's very difficult, and I think three-quarters of the public, according to the Pew poll, agree that it's much harder to do. Just because you have people who agree with you doesn't mean it's not offensive. I didn't like what you wrote one bit, and I do think you are judging people. To me, you sound like somebody who's judging, but wants to come out and say, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, now let me judge, judge, judge. And by the way, it's science, it's science, it's science, it's fact, fact, fact, fact, fact. Well, I mean, I have a whole, this is a list of studies saying your science is wrong and your facts are wrong. I think most people understand moms typically are more nurturing than dads. Not always, not in all cases, and it's painting very broad brush strokes, I admit. Do you know that in this country, in the 50s and 60s, there were huge, huge numbers of people that believed that the children of interracial marriages were inferior, were biologically inferior, and that is why it was illegal for blacks and whites to marry in some states in this country up until 1967. And they said it was science, and it was fact. If you were the child of a black father and a white mother or vice versa, you were inferior and you were not going to set up for success. Tell that to Barack Obama. So I saw that on TV and I just cold called her and said, I love you. You are awesome, and I know everyone here agrees. Unbelievable. This was not the same reaction I got from the guys on the set that day. Totally different experience watching it in this room. So it is really interesting and it goes a lot to who you are. So I've done a lot of work, as everyone here has, on what we expect of women. This is science. We are uncomfortable with aggression in women. We are uncomfortable with people who are forthright. How many women here, I do this every year on this stage, I love it, how many women here have been told they're too aggressive at work? How many of your bosses or your colleagues or your underlings who are men? The answer is none because I ask this to those audiences too. 5% or less. And so the traditional way women have anchored news is actually different than what we do. It's a little more eyelash batting, a little flirtier, a little more demure, and you're not doing that. You are covering serious topics and you're doing it with strength and conviction. So how do you think about that? How do you think about being a woman and doing that? How do you think about the fact that men would never be asked the question I'm asking? True. And men never even give it a thought and they never get criticized for going after somebody aggressively. Whereas, you know, if I really have a contentious interview, the word I've heard in some circles is shrill, which I actually looked up and it's high-pitched and piercing voice. Really? I think that might be motivated by something other than my voice. Correct. A different body part. But I try not to think about that. I've said many times that I think Bill O'Reilly, who precedes me on our channel, is like a superhero because if you meet him in person, he's kind of shy. He's quiet. He would never dominate your dinner table. But you put him behind that desk and he grows into this larger-than-life personality. And I have a little bit of that in that when I sit in front of that desk, it doesn't matter who's across from me. I don't care if it's a Republican, a Democrat, a President. It doesn't matter. I only have one master and that's my audience. And I will serve that audience. And if you try to dodge or weave, you're going to get pinned down. So I feel very empowered to do that when I'm on the set. In person, I'm not a shrinking violet, but I don't have quite as much power. I don't feel as confident. I was just telling you this in the green room. Cheryl was so nice and introduced me to a bunch of very powerful women who are here by email because she wasn't here last night. I said, okay, we'll meet in the bar. So I went in the bar last night and I didn't know anybody and I was looking around and I thought, I feel uncomfortable. I'm going to go back to my room. Okay, so how can that woman be that same woman? I would like to get more homeostasis but at the office, I find it very easy to own my own power and be my strongest self. Which I think is a great lesson. And I think a lot of us feel that. A lot of us feel that we can kind of put it on for work and then you deal with it personally. Have you ever seen a male anchor get the kind of comment? The male equivalent of Cheryl, whatever that might be. No, no. It's a different standard, but I try not to pay attention. I think the gift I had was, even though I grew up in a middle class family, we didn't come from circles of power, I certainly never knew any politicians or anybody who had real power. But the gift I had was I went and I practiced law for 10 years. It was at a big firm, Jones Day, and I used to call it the Olympics of law where you're really out there defending and cross-examining Fortune 100 CEOs like some of the women in this room. They were all on the right side. Good, glad to hear that. But that taught me to stand up and be strong and it didn't matter where I came from. It just mattered that I got the job done. When I think about my own daughter, I want her to do something that challenges her, that makes her stand up and fake it until she makes it, because I learned to just be strong. It doesn't matter who's across from you. It's about getting the job done with a plum, and that translated into my TV job. How did you make that shift? You were a lawyer, a very successful one. Why journalism? Why TV? It's funny to talk about it here. The short version is I was burnt out. I was about eight years into it and I realized I am more interesting than this and I am more interested than this in terms of what I was doing, which was pushing a lot of paper. All my weekends, all my vacations got burned overnight, 3 a.m., all the time. I wanted more balance in my life. At the time, I was married to my first husband or as I heard recently, it's a great term, my was-ben. Good. How awesome is that? That is awesome. I have someone who has one also. He's a very nice man. We parted amicably. He wound up remarried too. I decided that I wanted to change my life and I looked around and said okay, I'm not really happy in my job, not really happy in my marriage. What am I going to do? I got out of the law and I started this new job and then suddenly I realized I want to get out of this marriage and start a new marriage as well. What I'm trying to say is I realized that I could never have a full life with the life I was leading back then with the profession I was pursuing back then. There just wasn't time for it so I wound up going to a profession that does allow for more flexibility. I have a job that allows a lot of flexibility in terms of the hours and shifts and not that much face time so that's good for me. If you're in a job that requires 15 hours a day it's very hard to be the mother of 3 children who are under the age of 6, which I am. I know! There's a child in every room now! But anyway, back to your original question. I got out of the law because I was unhappy and I managed to befriend a woman in my guitar class once again, a woman in my guitar class who had mercy on me and she was a freelance reporter at WMAQ which is the NBC affiliate in Chicago and she said, I will help you. And let me tell you, in TV a woman helping another woman break in not that common but she did it and in terms of the scale of journalism my career has gone like this and she wrote me the most beautiful long love letter at Christmas just saying how proud she was and sisterhood lives. And this is a this is a great place to talk about because I think this conference is about this you're right, that the history especially generations before us was women not helping women necessarily because I think the system was set up against them they knew only one of them was getting promoted not all, and so there was more competition I think, you know, hats off to Patty for this conference bringing all these women together to help each other, it makes a big difference Well I think, you know, one of the other things that my boss told me, which I think everybody here can remember is, it's true in TV but it's true in your job too never, he said people will imitate you they will try to do what you do never worry about them because there's only one you so whatever you're doing that makes you special they can imitate it but they can never be the same person with the same delivery and the same gifts and so on once you accept that and that it's not a zero-sum game you can be more embracing I think I know you and I have talked about working parent guilt, which we think more moms have you also have a philosophy called settle for more I'd love for you to talk about that, it's a great phrase May I just say that what we really don't need as women is men like Eric and Lou tapping into our working mother guilt and making us feel even worse about it which is one of the issues I have it's like, you know what, it's like the overweight person they don't need us to tell them they're overweight working moms do not need to be lectured on what their children need and how it's a tug of war you know what, we're experts on it we don't need you but my settle for more philosophy is basically the life I was just telling you about which is, back in the day when I was unhappily married and unhappily working I heard a brilliant man by the name of Dr. Phil say, the only difference between you and someone you envy is you settled for less and it just spoke to me it just spoke to me like, yes, that's exactly right so settle for more that was my advent, that was you you're gonna quote it and I started putting it into practice, Sheryl and it really did change my life instead of wasting energy sitting around looking at someone who I admired and thinking she's got it all why can't I have it all, she's on TV oh I would love that job she seems so happily married I wish I were happily married I just started to change my life little by little and success breeds success when I was practicing law I was making a lot of money and I left that for my first TV job which paid $17,000 a year which wasn't a lot but if you love something then you're good at it and then rewards follow, success follows and the same is true in my personal life I basically had a very sweet, loving husband who was a doctor, I was a lawyer but I knew I wasn't happy and we divorced as I said amicably and I wound up meeting a man who was unlike any other man I'd ever met before he didn't behave like any of the other guys he wasn't a jerk so I thought is this attractive great, yes it is I'm going to give him a chance and we've been happily married now for I don't know 10, 12, 8 years, a long time and he's an equal partner to me and a critical part of my success in life so you're obviously now in journalism you're settled for more both personally and professionally journalism is changing how do you think about journalism is journalism struggling is journalism going to struggle what's happening what's changing I think journalism is alive and well but I think the way we get and deliver news is changing big time and I think online, social media or mobile media is really changing the face of what we do in terms of cable right now it has a major effect there isn't a night that goes by where I don't look online and check our Facebook page which is awesome by the way thanks to Cheryl but I look at what the viewers are saying I look at Twitter as well Facebook has 5 times the reach and I see the instant feedback from the viewers so that's one way in which it's really changed what we do I will literally ask questions that I get from viewers real time during the show or I'll make a point that I forgot to make or somebody will offer a suggestion or somebody will say you have lipstick on your teeth so it's very helpful yes it really is but I think people are getting their news from social media much more so than they ever did before so when I go on the air at 9 I have to assume they know most of the day's stories it's not like back in the day when Peter Jennings was telling you what is going on in the world they know, they come to television at 9 knowing so we have to work extra hard to advance the story and provide more context and analysis and I think that challenge will grow even greater over the next 10 years I am so excited to have helped introduce the great Megan Kelly to this audience I think, and I just want to say this publicly and thank you that I think we need more examples of strong women people will get used to it when they see it when it produces results what matters here is not just what you're doing but how successful it is and so I think it's setting an example for me and every woman here as well as my daughter I want to thank you for being here and thank you for what you are doing I think we all owe you you're the best