IT’S A PR THING

McDonald’s CEO Burger-Bite Uproar  

When did our profession start calling every little flare‑up a crisis? A TikTok trend, a snarky comment thread, a logo people don’t like — suddenly everyone’s acting like the business is melting down. But most of these moments aren’t crises at all. They’re upstream matters that are manageable, or a faux pas with a short life span and a valuable learning opportunity.

In this episode, we get into why PR keeps over‑labeling everything a crisis -- and how that habit distracts us from identifying the issues that could be tomorrow’s emergencies at best.

Today we’ll walk through the spectrum of incident categories — the harmless creative misstep that gets a couple of days of flareup, the issue that starts quietly and grows over the decades until the industry is in decay, the emergencies that hit daily operations hard and fast, and the rare, true crises that actually reshapes a business for years.

Buckle up and take a roller coaster ride today through real stories and case studies about the spectrum of incidents that can either make us or break us – and learn how to tell the difference.

JOIN THE MOVEMENT 

Struggle no more to tell your leadership what your value is to the organization. 

NEW RESOURCE PAGE (a.k.a FREE STUFF) 

GOT TOPIC IDEAS? WE WANT TO HEAR THEM! 

Send topic ideas and mailbag questions for a future episode to [email protected] We would love to hear from you! 

HOST BIO (a.k.a. Who is this crazy woman who can't stop talking about PR?) 

NEWS UPDATE: FeedSpot named IT'S A PR THING to its list of top PR podcasts in the world again - two years in a row, with IT'S A PR THING moving up four spots in 2026. Read more. 

What Consumers Said. Why the FCC Is Acting on It. 

Today's episode is a case study in the progress that demonstrates why it's important for companies to regulate themselves -- or else they'll invite regulation to be imposed on them.

Consumers have been signaling their frustration with offshore call centers for years — and companies didn’t simply miss those warnings; they dismissed and disregarded them. Now they're facing the real possibility of federal intervention later this month.

This development represents more than mere compliance. The FCC may very well be forcing companies to rebuild a stronger, more reliable U.S. customer service industry.

Listen in and learn what can happen when companies repeatedly ignore consumer feedback. 

JOIN THE MOVEMENT 

Struggle no more to tell your leadership what your value is to the organization. 

NEW RESOURCE PAGE (a.k.a FREE STUFF) 

GOT TOPIC IDEAS? WE WANT TO HEAR THEM! 

Send topic ideas and mailbag questions for a future episode to [email protected] We would love to hear from you! 

HOST BIO (a.k.a. Who is this crazy woman who can't stop talking about PR?) 

Brand Backlash: The Cost of Content Overload

Consumers are officially hitting the wall.

Five recent studies all point to the same thing: people are drowning in brand content, tuning out messages, and walking away from companies that won’t give them a break. In this episode, we break down what that overload is doing to the brain—fatigue, anxiety, decision paralysis—and why it’s eroding brand connection instead of strengthening it.

Then we get to the proven and practical solution as we walk through the four stages of relationship development, what actually influences people in each one, and how to shift from pushing content to creating real connections that builds relationships that build business. 

And we've posted the links to the five studies we mention in today's episode on our Resource Page. (So check that out.) 

Lots to cover today, so . . . let's go! 

NEW RESOURCE PAGE (a.k.a FREE STUFF) 

GOT TOPIC IDEAS? WE WANT TO HEAR THEM! 

Send topic ideas and mailbag questions for a future episode to [email protected] We would love to hear from you! 

HOST BIO (a.k.a. Who is this crazy woman who can't stop talking about PR?) 

What Customers Are Begging For (and Taco Bell Gets It)

In this episode of IT’S A PR THING, we’re circling back to customer experience — not the buzzword version, but the kind that actually builds relationship capital.

We’ll walk through what happened, why it stood out, and what it says about how we treat the people we work so hard – and invest so much -- to attract.

We’ll also touch on what some of the pros — including the C-suite at Taco Bell — are saying about customer experience in a high‑tech world. Spoiler: even the most automated companies know that human touch is still the biggest differentiator.

This episode is well worth a listen and a share!

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Struggle no more to tell your leadership what your value is to the organization. 

Bonus Resources

10 STRATEGIES TO TRANSFORM YOUR PR FUNCTION 

GOT TOPIC IDEAS? WE WANT TO HEAR THEM! 

Send topic ideas and mailbag questions for a future episode to [email protected] We would love to hear from you! 

HOST BIO 

Stewarding our PR Time -- What Is Your ROTI 

PR pros are always being pulled in different directions. We are expected, as the nature of the job, to be on-call, to be available to respond to breaking news, to crisis, to bend and flex with urgent deadlines, and to spend much of our day in meetings gathering info and intel – and then finding time to get the work done. That’s all on top of responding to media inquiries and sundry minor fires that happen across a week. And that leaves little time for strategic reflection, planning and the crucial relationship building needed to build business. How in the world can we steward our time, when we often don’t have claim to it?

Meet Lissa Figgins, a time-stewardship coach who counsels CEOs, Christian businesses and solopreneurs. (Notice I did not say “time management”.) Lissa is also the host of REDEEM HER TIME podcast.

Join me today as Lissa walks us through the difference between time management and time stewardship, how to measure our ROTI (she'll explain the acronym), and why it's so important to both our profession, our home life and our personal character. 

LISSA'S BACKGROUND

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IT'S A PR THING PODCAST RESOURCES & INFORMATION 

DOWNLOAD: FREE GUIDE - 8 STEPS TO MEASURE CUSTOMER EFFORT 

BONUS RESOURCE:

If you’re new to IT’S A PR THING or if you’re looking for a proven path to make your PR team more effective, check out the free resource: 10 Strategies to Transform Your PR Function. It’s a collection of deeper-dive episodes organized to help you rethink how you implement PR in your job everyday. Click the link above and download the free resource.

GOT TOPIC IDEAS? WE WANT TO HEAR THEM! 

Send topic ideas and mailbag questions for a future episode to [email protected] We would love to hear from you! 

HOST BIO 

Measuring Customer Effort

Today we focus on Customer Effort Scoring — a practical way to see where people are running into friction and operational hurdles long before they turn into a reputational issue.

CES helps teams see the incremental operational hurdles that show up in aggregate as overall poor customer satisfaction. When organizations use CES well, they can help reduce customer effort and create a smooth and positive customer experience. And that generates return business, referrals and revenue generation.

Listen in today and learn how CES is an excellent tool to add to your relationship radar system.

BONUS RESOURCE:

If you’re new to IT’S A PR THING or if you’re looking for a proven path to make your PR team more effective, check out the free resource: 10 Strategies to Transform Your PR Function. It’s a collection of deeper-dive episodes organized to help you rethink how you implement PR in your job everyday. Click the link above and download the free resource.

GOT TOPIC IDEAS? WE WANT TO HEAR THEM! 

Send topic ideas and mailbag questions for a future episode to [email protected] We would love to hear from you! 

HOST BIO 

CUSTOMERS ARE FED UP 

The urgent reputation risk PR must face in 2026

In this first episode of 2026, we take a clear look at a growing issue shaping the year ahead for PR professionals: customer frustration has reached a breaking point, and new data from 2025 shows just how widespread the problem has become. Customers are dealing with broken processes, confusing systems, and automated tools that create more work instead of solving problems. Companies are trying to cover these issues with messaging, storytelling and AI, but the numbers show that approach is backfiring. People want ease and peace, and instead they’re getting noise, delays, and unnecessary friction.

We walk through the latest national research on customer frustration, including record levels of anger, wasted time, financial loss, and emotional strain. We also look at how customers are responding — from ghosting brands to walking away after one or two bad experiences. At the same time, many executives believe their customer experience is strong, creating a dangerous perception gap.

This episode lays out what PR pros need to understand as they guide their organizations through 2026. Join me as we break down the data, the trends, and the real reputational risks shaping the year ahead.

EPISODE STUDY SOURCES: 

Forbes Technology Council (2024).

CSG International (2025).

National Customer Rage Survey (2025).

Emplifi (April 2025).

PwC (2025).

BONUS RESOURCE:

If you’re new to IT’S A PR THING or if you’re looking for a proven path to make your PR team more effective, check out the free resource: 10 Strategies to Transform Your PR Function. It’s a collection of deeper-dive episodes organized to help you rethink how you implement PR in your job everyday. Click the link above and download the free resource.

GOT TOPIC IDEAS? WE WANT TO HEAR THEM! 

Send topic ideas and mailbag questions for a future episode to [email protected] We would love to hear from you! 

HOST BIO 

Today we tackle my favorite part of the PR work -- measuring success while a campaign is still in motion.

In today’s show, we’ll talk about a framework to help you read the signals stakeholders give off in real time, and how those behaviors reveal whether your strategy is progressing or stalling.

You'll learn clear, actionable ways to measure momentum as it happens, so you can refine your approach and achieve stronger results. And here’s the proof: campaigns that consistently apply this framework outperform those campaigns that fail to use it. 

Too often, evaluation happens only at the end of a campaign, when the chance to adjust has already passed. Don't be those guys! 

You’ll want to share this with your team, your division leaders and use it as a basis for strategy development and management in the future.

BONUS RESOURCE:

GOT TOPIC IDEAS? WE WANT TO HEAR THEM! 

Send topic ideas and mailbag questions for a future episode to [email protected] We would love to hear from you! 

HOST BIO 

It’s Time to Reframe PR — Go Beyond the Messenger Role

If you’re a PR professional tired of being seen as just the company’s messenger service or the cleanup crew after a crisis, this episode is for you.

PR pros in numbers are crying out to be rightly recognized as strategic-management professionals  — yet too often, we’re left out of the early conversations where our knowledge, experience and insights can make the biggest difference.

In this episode, we dive into a pivotal true story and share five crucial strategies from the PR Pro’s Reframe Playbook to change the conversation about what you do.

These are real, applicable approaches you can use in your job every day to transform the way your organization views and leverages you, your team and your public-relations expertise.

Listen today -- and start changing the conversation about what PR truly brings to the table.

BONUS RESOURCE:

GOT TOPIC IDEAS? WE WANT TO HEAR THEM! 

Send topic ideas and mailbag questions for a future episode to [email protected] We would love to hear from you! 

HOST BIO 

Welcome back to IT'S A PR THING, where we help you build relationships that build business.

Today’s episode is straight talk for PR pros who want to do the work better. We’ll cover 10 strategies that help retool your thought process, load you up with practical approaches and transform your PR function into a relationship-building machine!

This is a mini-course – building from the basics while escalating to the more expert skills that drive you and your team beyond the “stay-on-message” culture. Each strategy hits the highlights with cut-to-the-chase, real-world experience.

And we finish off with access to an audio book that takes a deeper dive into each strategy, and we provide recommendations on how to use the chapters to transform your PR function.

Whether you’re working as the one-man-band PR pro in your organization, or you’re managing a multi-division PR operation, this episode is for you!

BONUS RESOURCE:

GOT TOPIC IDEAS? WE WANT TO HEAR THEM! 

Send topic ideas and mailbag questions for a future episode to [email protected] We would love to hear from you! 

HOST BIO