In this episode, Chip talks with Rachel Sales from the PR agency Enunciate about managing client communications in a chaotic world.

Rachel discusses the importance of empathy and strategy in addressing news and its impact on clients. They explore whether brand leaders should comment on current affairs, emphasizing the need for authenticity and aligning with business goals. Rachel shares a process for determining when and how clients should respond to news events.

The conversation also covers the evolving media landscape, the shift towards contributed content, LinkedIn strategies, and the importance of humanizing client messaging in turbulent times.

Rachel Sales is the Founder & CEO of Enunciate, a marketing and PR agency that specializes in creative content. At Enunciate, Rachel works with mission-driven organizations all over the world to tell their stories and amplify their impact. Before launching Enunciate, Rachel co-founded Pink Pangea, the community for women who love to travel. Rachel has a BA and an MFA in creative writing from Columbia University.  She spends her days doing exactly what she loves.

The following is a computer-generated transcript. Please listen to the audio to confirm accuracy.

Chip Griffin: Welcome to another episode of the Chats with Chip podcast. I’m your host, Chip Griffin, the founder of SAGA, the Small Agency Growth Alliance, and I’m delighted to have with me Rachel Sales of Enunciate. Welcome to the show, Rachel.

Rachel Sales: Hi. Thank you.

Chip Griffin: So Rachel, you’ve got a, a, a PR agency based out of New York.

 But why don’t you, share a little bit about yourself with our listeners, and then we’ll, we’ll dive into the topic at hand today.

Rachel Sales: Sure. Thank you for having me. So Enunciate is a boutique marketing and PR agency that specifically focuses on content strategy and content creation. And we work with mission-driven organizations of many different industries all over the world to tell their stories and amplify their impact.

Chip Griffin: That is very succinct. I love it. So, today I thought we would talk about, you know, people realize I think that we are in kind of a chaotic communications environment today in a chaotic world, frankly. And so, one of the things that, that I’ve talked about on a lot of my shows is, you know, how we can navigate that as agencies from a business development perspective, but we haven’t talked about it so much from the perspective of.

How do we help our clients get through these times? And so I think that would be a good place for us to get started today. And, and thinking about the work that you’re doing with your clients and, and how do you help them to think about this chaotic environment and, and what, how does that influence the advice that you’re giving to help them get through it?

Rachel Sales: Yeah, thank you. So I will say that working in marketing and pr, our job has always been to find how our client’s story connects to the news, right? Like make it timely, make it relevant, what’s going on. They have a product they wanna push, they have partnerships they wanna share, they wanna speak to their audience, right?

If it’s not timely, it’s not gonna cut through the noise. Now we’re actually at a completely different time where we don’t even need to try in some ways, right? We don’t, the news every single day we’re finding is impacting our clients no matter what industry they’re in, right? And we have clients from FinTech to education, nonprofit.

I mean DEI, like it’s a huge fan. And just every single day what’s happening, the news impacts them. So now. There’s two issues. Number one is a human issue, which is we know that our clients are impacted by the news in a lot of different ways every single day. How do we approach them with increased empathy and acknowledge what they’re going through, what they’re experiencing.

It could be good or it could be very bad, right? And then number two, how do we create a strategy that actually defines whether they’re going to comment on the news. Weigh in on the news, acknowledge news, not acknowledge the news. So there, those are kind of like the two things that we’re dealing with every single day with every single one of our clients.

Chip Griffin: Well, let’s start with that second piece first because you know, we hear a lot that, you know, consumers want to hear brands speaking out about the issues of the day. And so there’s, there’s really this been, this drumbeat for probably the last three or four years about, how brands really need to take a more active role in the conversation.

And, and honestly, I’ve consistently pushed back against that. I, I don’t, I, I think that it’s, it’s very much situational and I think the default position should actually be, you generally don’t. Unless it’s impacting you or it’s core to your mission or something like that. But I’m, I’m curious, has that changed and, and how do you see that and how do you work with your clients on that piece of it?

Rachel Sales: So, I think there has been a bit of pushback because there were times, let’s say five years ago when every brand was kind of sharing, okay, we support this cause and then there was cause of, you know, slacktivism, right? Like you have never actually done anything for this cause and now you’re just like putting up a social media visual and saying, I support this while not actually doing anything.

So there has been a lot of pushback and we have to be really, really careful with our clients. Not to get into that, but a lot of our clients actually are leaders in different, you know, in industry leaders, different causes or things that they really care about from a business perspective and, and that they stand for.

And we have to say, okay. When is the time for them to take a stand and when is the time for them to not take, take a stance, right? Like a lot of what we’ve been finding is that there’s a lot of chaos and we wanna make sure that our clients are not just adding to that chaos and adding to the noise and kind of sharing feelings like, oh, we are so unhappy that this is happening right now, but they don’t actually have any actions to take any suggestions, et cetera. And so, so that’s something that we need to be careful about. The other point is that sometimes our clients, they have audiences that actually are, like you said, expecting them to say something, right?

Like they are leaders where they need to, like their audience needs them to say something. And we have to be careful that they’re not just saying the thing that everyone is saying. So we actually do have a process that we work through to help our clients kind of figure out like something happens in the news.

Is it time to, you know, should they actually comment on what’s going on in the world?

Chip Griffin: Can you share a little bit more about what that process is and, and how you help them think that through?

Rachel Sales: Yes. So something happens big in the news, okay? Our client says, I must say something, right? So first we say, okay, hold on one second.

Let’s, let’s first say what is the major news item in question, right? Because a lot of times something will happen that’s big, but it’s actually related to a lot of other different issues. So we wanna like get very specific. What’s the one thing that you need to comment on? You think you need to comment?

Okay. Number two, how does this news item actually relate to your work? And impact your organization, right? Because sometimes it will just be, you know, things happen in the world. They’re impacting us professionally, but also personally, right? And those might not intersect. So we need to say, does this actually impact your work and impact your audience?

Or is this just something that you feel passionate about as an individual? Number three, how will commenting on it align with your business goals? Does it have anything to do with the business goals? Will it, will it help? Will it hurt? And then we always wanna look into how are competing, or like minded organizations commenting on it, if at all.

How might their audience react or, you know, not react if they comment. And then a lot of times, you know, organizations are told, think about, you know, one persona, right? Think about your persona and think about how they will feel about your acting. But I always like to say, look, yes, you have a persona, but all of these personas are actually people, right?

They’re people and they don’t all feel the same way. So say half of your people don’t like what you say and half of them do, how will you feel? And sometimes we’ll take, you know, our clients for that whole process and they’ll still say okay, this doesn’t align my business goals, but I must say something, I still must, because I need to be authentic.

So we’ll say, okay, let’s say something in the best way possible that is in your brand voice, speak and speaks to your audience in a way that’s not going to hurt you.

Chip Griffin: Yeah, I mean, I, I, I really love that analysis that you do with them and, and particularly reminding them that, that not all of their customers or constituents think exactly the same way.

And, and I, you know, we are in an environment where a lot of us have, have blinders on and, and we see the world through a particular lens, and we surround ourselves with other people who, for the most part, probably share that same worldview. And so it’s very easy to forget, or frankly, not even realize that there are a lot of people that we depend upon for business, for other things, who may think 180 degrees opposite on it, whether it’s a political issue or an economic issue or a social issue.

And so you need to understand the risk of taking a stand. It, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it, but you need to make sure that you’re at least including that and saying, you know what, if if I lose business from this segment of of my population, I’m okay with that because I feel that strongly about it.

I think the problem is that a lot of organizations don’t do that math and then they’re surprised when there’s blowback against them for whatever position they’ve decided to take.

Rachel Sales: Yeah, a hundred percent. And I also think that sometimes we need to kind of translate for their, you know, where they are to their audience, right?

So, and the same, you know where we are. Like it could be sunny in New York, where, you know, sunny emotionally and weather-wise and where they are, they’re experiencing something devastating, right? So we need to think, okay, let’s put ourselves in their shoes. But at the same time as we’re putting ourselves in their shoes, we also need to make them put them in their audience’s shoes, right?

Like you’re feeling this way, by the way, your audience who’s maybe an entire ocean away, does not feel the way you do. Does, like it does not have the same mentality and you, you, we need to make sure that we can, you know, reach, fill that gap, bridge that gap. Yeah.

Chip Griffin: And I, and I think that that understanding

those differences is absolutely critical for agencies today in working with their clients because business and, and everything else is much more global than it ever was. And, but even within, say, the United States, there are differing views from one state to the next, one coast to the next. And, and trying to, to navigate all of that and making sure that you’re putting yourself in those shoes and understanding what those differences are.

Is really vital and, and I’ve been fortunate over the last decade or so to have done a lot of international work and, even though I always considered myself fairly global in my viewpoints, you’ll learn so much more every day as you talk to people in other places with other backgrounds and, and how they’re perceiving the exact same piece of news and information that you are because they’re getting it reported to them differently.

They have a different life experience. And, and so the more you can do as a communicator, as an agency leader to, to adapt to that, I think it’s important and you have to help your clients with that as well. Right.

Rachel Sales: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Absolutely. And I think also you need to like, you know, we’re, we’re all reading like hopefully the front page news every day, right?

We’re reading a variety of sources, we’re reading. And so I think, you know, I, we’re not just reading to be informed, but we’re also reading to think like anyone we’re talking today, how is that news going to impact them? Like, for example, we were doing a PR for an orchestra, right? And some of the people that we were interviewing were in LA and that was the time of the wildfires.

So we were actually, you know, and here we are talking about an orchestra, such a nice thing and who knows what they’re going through. So I, you know, we keep reminding our team like. Just think about who are you, who are you talking to, where are they located? Before you start the conversation, make sure you are in touch with what they might be going through right now.

Acknowledge it and then see if they’re ready to move on to the conversation, right? So like for a lot of our clients, the conversation we’re actually gonna have, you know, have actually has nothing to do with what’s going in the world or even in their neighborhood. But you’re not gonna have a good conversation.

You’re not gonna connect and you’re not gonna be human unless you understand what people are going through.

Chip Griffin: So as you try to understand what people are going through it, it seems to me that it’s, it’s kind of important to, to pay attention to the news. But I talk to more and more people today, including in the agency world, who tell me, I just, I can’t even bear to put the news on anymore.

It’s, it’s all confrontational. It’s, and regardless of your world where you just like, I just can’t take it anymore. And, and so they’ll, they’ll say to me, why do you keep watching? And I always say, because in my conversations with clients, I need to understand what’s going on so that I can, you know, communicate with them based on what I know about it.

But, you know, so how do you, how do you overcome that? Are you hearing the same thing from your clients that, that they just don’t wanna pay attention to it either? And, and does that create any additional challenges or is that, is that something I’ve seen, but you haven’t yet?

Rachel Sales: No, thankfully all of my clients seem very news aware and are still reading just as much.

And, and definitely we are. I think, you know, there is a level for sure of compartmentalization that we all must practice, right? At the same time that as agency leaders, we need to put ourselves in our clients’ shoes. And a lot of times, look, the things that our clients are facing that are hard may not be the things that are hard for us, right?

Like, it’s not like everything they’re experiencing that devastating. Or great is devastating or great for us, but we need to under, we need to make sure that we understand. And same thing for us, like what might actually weight on me has nothing to do with them. So we need to be aware of what’s going on. I did just receive an, a marketing email from somebody that was like, well, I haven’t written in six months because the news has been so dire.

So I just didn’t wanna read and I, I just didn’t wanna write, I didn’t wanna say anything. I was like, you know what? I. Look, that’s, that’s where they’re coming from. But like, you have to keep going. Right? And I think, and, and it, that, that just doesn’t work. That doesn’t work for the world, doesn’t work for being human.

Doesn’t work for business, right? And for our clients who are impacted, you know, and all of them are by news that’s happening. Every single one has kept going, right? Whether they’re, you know, some, some of what I’m advising them to do is not necessarily to comment what’s going on, but to actually just keep doing and showing the amazing things that they’re doing.

Keep telling their story, keep inspiring their audiences. Keep showing like they are accomplishing what they do, what they’ve always done, no matter what the changes are. And that grows their audience so much. Or a lot of our clients are, are showing themselves to be the solution. Right. These issues are happening.

They are the solution. That’s not fake. That’s real. Right? So we’re trying to show, okay, how can we take, ’cause I, I actually really believe in like positivity and marketing like, anything you can say, maybe you can say it in a positive way instead of a negative way. I think it positivity does a lot better in the world.

So we are advising our clients. How can we share unique perspectives, share inspiration, share solutions, move the conversation forward, move the world forward, help your clients. I mean, I know that you talk about that a lot, right? Like how do you, you’re there to help the people you serve, you’re actually there to be a helpful resource.

So that’s what we’re trying to help our clients do for their customers and stakeholders.

Chip Griffin: Yeah, and I, and I wanna come back to that in a minute because I, I think that it’s, it’s so valuable that you’re encouraging them to focus on, on what their core mission is and, and their need to do that despite all of the chaos that’s happening around them.

And that you can’t lose sight of, of your ultimate goals and the things that you need to be doing. Before we do that though, I, I do wanna touch on one last piece of this, talking about the issues of the day piece for organizations. Have you noticed any trend in terms of organizations being more or less inclined to speak out.

On the one hand, you see people, you know, talking in much more powerful language than I think I, I can remember it probably in my professional career about the issues of the day. At the same time, you see a lot of reporting that organizations are pulling back from talking about some things like DEI, ESG, et cetera, that, that are you know, real lightning rods in the, the current communications environment. So have you noticed a trend with the clients that you work with? Whether they’re, they’re more or less inclined, or is it really situational?

Rachel Sales: I think there’s definitely a trend across the board. Our clients do not wanna be political.

They do not wanna be perceived as political. They are political. We’re all political people, right? We all have how, you know, what, what we feel, what we believe, but they do not want to come across as political because they, they don’t want to, to hurt their business. Right? That being said, yes, I, we have noticed that clients may be a little more reticent to speak up sometimes. And,

in some cases, we actually have needed to prod them along to say, listen, take the time to think. Take the time to think about what it is that you want to say at this time and to add value. But in some cases, their audience actually really needs to hear from them, needs to hear, you know, sometimes you actually need, humans are just this way.

Like we need our leaders. When something bad happens in the world, we actually just need our leaders to say, Hey, this is bad, I, I’m here for you. Right? Sometimes we don’t, sometimes they add to the chaos. Sometimes it actually just needs to be like an individual text message or phone call. Like, you know, something that’s not on LinkedIn or social media.

But some, but for some of our clients who are really big industry leaders and have very sizable audiences, they do need to say something. They need to say something specific, something that stands out, and they can take the time, but they can’t take too much time.

Chip Griffin: Yeah, so, so bottom line is you, you know, you need to be focused on what your audience wants or needs to hear and, and, and tailor your communications plan around that.

So let’s, let’s now pivot to the, we’ve talked a lot about, you know, how you handle the issues of the day from a, a commenting or not commenting on them standpoint. But now let’s talk about, you know, we’re, we’re trying to just communicate generally in this chaotic environment. And because there is so much attention being paid to all of the various crises and debates and all of that, you know, it, it can become harder, particularly as the, the size of the news media shrinks to communicate your messages as a, a PR agency on behalf of your clients.

So how do you work with your clients to help them, as you talked about, keep their head down and focus on their core mission and get the word out and, and cut through all of this clutter that’s around them.

Rachel Sales: I think in a lot of ways, I mean, I think we had training for this during COVID where, you know, like the first three months or maybe just like the first three weeks, everybody would be like, Hey, how are you doing?

How are you doing? Right? And then it was like, oh my God, we need to keep this wheel turning. We need to keep generating revenue. We need to just keep going. Like, this is our reality. Let’s go. So there’s, there’s the point of like, look, we need to stay in touch with the news, see what’s happening, what changes are, because the changes are not fake, right?

Government programs are closing. You know, people are getting fired. Like, things are happening. Those are gonna impact some of our clients. We need to be aware of that while still saying the world keeps turning and as long as it’s turning, we need to keep pushing our message in a way that feels sensitive. You know, we’re always thinking, okay, what just happened? You know, we, we are very careful not to schedule social media too far in advance because, and even when we do schedule it, we, we will often hit the pause button because it’s like, oh no, something happened in the news that’s going to look ridiculous if we post that right now.

Or like, we need to tweak it. So I think there’s that, there’s those two pieces of like, you know, you, you can’t take a week often. You know, something big will happen in the news. I think sometimes the organization will be inclined to be like, wait, okay, let’s just like pause marketing for a week until we get our bearings.

But it’s like, hmm, maybe pause for two days and then let’s keep going. Right? Like, we need to keep going. The world also moves fast.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. I, I, I think that’s great advice because you and I always tell people, you, you can’t turtle, you know, no matter how, how bad it is, how chaotic it is, whether it’s covid, whether it’s politics, whether it’s something else, you know, you, you need to, to keep doing what is right for your business.

You can’t worry too much about the what ifs and you really need to just, you know, buckle down and, and, and get things done, because what’s gonna happen around you is gonna, most of us can’t impact in a, in a meaningful way, the events that are taking place around us. We can contribute to that change, but we, you know, we’re not gonna be able to affect it directly ourselves.

For the most part. If you happen to be one of those listeners who can, great. Please do. You know, it’d be kind of fun. But it, for the, for most of us who are just, you know, keeping our heads down and doing our, our day-to-day jobs, we need to keep doing them and not get so wound up by what might happen if, or how is this going to, you know, how are we gonna deal with this policy if it happens, you really need to just keep moving forward. And, and so, you know, I love that that’s something that you’re focusing on with your clients.

Do you get pushback from clients on this? Are, are they, is it tough to keep them corralled and focused on doing the day-to-day? You know, do you feel like they are more distracted than they have been in the past? By everything that’s going on.

Rachel Sales: Maybe we’re really lucky, but our clients, you know, just wanna keep pushing ahead. I mean, they have companies to grow, they have revenue to increase, et cetera. So, so no, definitely like they and, and I think a lot of them know and believe that what they can do is positive for the world and positive for what they believe in and making a difference.

So while, yes, I can see that they are. It’s on their, things are on their minds and this is weighing on them. And these are things that we have to address in communications. No, everyone has kept going.

Chip Griffin: Now, I know obviously your agency provides a mix of, of PR and marketing services for clients. Have you seen that mix change as the environment has shifted?

You know, are you doing more of one thing, less of another or, or has it really kind of just been steady state?

Rachel Sales: A hundred percent. I will say that, you know, of course, everyone is who’s listening to this podcast is aware of all of the layoffs at different media agencies and shutting down and all of that.

So of course, like the, it has changed a lot. Personally, I love contributed content, especially when we’re dealing with very sensitive issues. One of our clients recently wanted to weigh in on something that was happening from a governmental change, but was worried about doing so because didn’t wanna come across political, didn’t wanna come across too aligned with the changes, didn’t wanna align their business with the changes, and then like it would, you know, have bad repercussions.

So we said, okay, you know what, let’s do a contributed article where we own the message in a non-promotional way for a leading industry paper. And it got accepted. And, you know, that was, I think, a great, a great way to get the message out, be timely, but also do it in a way that felt comfortable.

And like I said, they own the message. Another thing is, you know, we do a lot of LinkedIn strategy and content creation. I think that, I mean, everyone knows the world of PR is changing and I think that one;s media outlets can really be – one’s social media outlets can be their media outlets, right? You can get,

you can make noise, you can, you know, we see like with different partnership announcements with clients or different products, announced, like no one’s covering product announcements anymore, right? Like nobody cares. But social media cares. So you can make a huge, a huge, you know, a, a big deal of that on social media, on, you know, LinkedIn specifically, let’s say, and your customers, your stakeholders will say, wow, this company is doing amazing things.

They’re always having new product releases, new partnership announcements, right? So yes, things are moving a lot more to social media, to LinkedIn, to these kind of like thought leadership videos where you’re really getting to like sit down with the leader and hear their industry insights and, and recommendations and, and, and we love it.

We love the changes.

Chip Griffin: Would it be fair to say then, from what you’ve described, that, that it’s more important than ever to humanize your clients for their target audiences and, and really get the people behind the organizations out there and, and less so the logos?

Rachel Sales: Definitely, it’s all about the people.

They, everyone wants to know who these leaders are. They’re inspired by their stories, but they, they wanna hear their stories. But we still need to make sure what the, you know, that the business, that it, that the com you know, that the business, it makes business sense, right? Like the product, right, there’s alignment there.

Business, yeah, there’s, there’s alignment. But yes, definitely, definitely that’s, yeah, we are seeing that, that the human aspect is, is hugely important and our and our clients are game. They understand this is what it takes. And I always say like, whenever you go to a event, take videos, take, take this and just blame us.

Just blame us.

Chip Griffin: If I asked you, as we get ready to wrap up here, to pull out your crystal ball and, and look at, you know, how, how is the, the media landscape changing, how is the client landscape changing and how does that impact the work that you do on behalf of your clients over say the next 12 or 18 months?

Rachel Sales: I mean, people are flocking to LinkedIn. I don’t think that’s anything new. I think that’s gonna continue. And, you know, LinkedIn, as we know, is pushing this video. These, you know, video contents a ton. And right now the video content is actually pretty elementary. It’s really just people sitting at a table talking, you know, sharing their advice.

So I am hoping that those LinkedIn videos get a little more sophisticated, TikTok or you know, Instagram reel level. But, but we’ll see. Right now it’s really not that hard to break in.

Chip Griffin: And you’re trying to push that directly yourself. You, you’ve been working some, some really nice ones out there, so for anyone listening, you should absolutely follow Rachel on LinkedIn to, to check out some of these more creative, business oriented videos.

Rachel Sales: Thank you so much. But I think, you know, don’t, I, I always say like, don’t be afraid. You know, don’t be afraid. Let’s see, like things are changing. We don’t have control. Let’s go where things are changing and really I want these industry leaders, our clients, to get out, what really makes them stand out. Their thought leadership, what sets them apart, and, and people wanna hear from them.

Chip Griffin: I, I think that is a great note to end on. If, if someone wants to learn more about you, or what Enunciate does, where should they go?

Rachel Sales: Go on LinkedIn. You can find me at Rachel Sales and you can visit us at enunciate.xyz.

Chip Griffin: Excellent. Well, thank you very much. My guest again today has been Rachel Sales of Enunciate, and hopefully you all have gotten some good tips on, on how to navigate the chaos with your own clients.

And, I hope to have you all back here again listening to another episode very soon. Thanks for joining me.

Rachel Sales: Thank you so much.