Ms. InterPReted

Allison and Sarah discuss the Fletcher Marketing PR team’s predictions for public relations trends for 2023. With the end of the year around the corner, it is important to be thinking about strategic plans for the future. They talk through these predictions, the implications and benefits for businesses to look toward in the new year. 

In this episode Allison and Sarah discuss predictions about: 

• Changes in the economy 
• The death of influencer marketing
• The importance of paid media 
• Gathering and dissemination of data 
• Increase in need for owned media 
• Innovation and integration 
• Taking a stand on social issues 

Sharon Fenster is a public relations and diversity, equity and inclusion expert. In 2018, while serving as president of the NYC chapter of PRSA, she advocated for greater diversity equity inclusion in the PR world. This included a controversial stance at that time - calling for the release of diversity data among various organizations, not only industry associations, but private companies and agencies.

In this episode, Sharon discusses what it means to be an ally, checking your privilege and using it for good, her personal journey to allyship and the changing landscape of diversity equity and inclusion in corporate America. We discuss how to handle the threat of retaliation for standing your ground and how to handle the possibility of internal or external blow-back.

Learn how allyship feeds into authentic leadership or heart centered leadership and why its so important for workers today.

Robin Wilhoit, anchor of Knoxville's NBC affiliate WBIR, shares her insights on journalism, ethics, the changing face of the industry and what it's like being a woman in this ever-changing field.

Robin is a graduate of the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. She has been a broadcast journalist for more than 30 years, and has been anchoring the weekday newscasts at WBIR since the 90's.

She is passionate about being a community advocate, serves on several local nonprofit boards and frequently lends her time to serve the people of East Tennessee. In 1998, she helped to launch Buddy Check 10, a program to promote breast cancer awareness.

Beyond being an award-winning journalist, leader, and community advocate, she is also a mother of two. She shares the challenges of managing it all.

Robin shares her experiences on:
Ethics in the newsroom
Trust in the media and how to differentiate truth from fiction in news-gathering
Maintaining humanity in journalism
Sharing your gifts and talents
The importance of mentorship
Being a woman in a male-run industry at the beginning of her career
Maintaining mental health in an emotionally difficult profession

Paid placement should be considered another tool in your public relations toolbox.
It's an especially good tool when trying to raise awareness about new and emerging brands.
There's paid news release distribution that should be used for big announcements or seeding.
Another form of paid placement is affiliate marketing that is another great tool to get your brand noticed in major media outlets.
Syndicated content is a good way to control the messaging and imagery to release paid content that is prominently displayed and clearly labeled as sponsored content.
Sarah goes through the different ways that these avenues impact SEO which is incredibly important for getting clicks.
One of our favorite options that isn't exactly paid, is content contributor programs where you pay a fee to be considered, but there's still an application process. This option helps to gain credibility for your brand and helps to position you as an expert in thought leadership in your field.

With the possible repeal of Roe v. Wade in the headlines, Mary Beth West and Kelly Fletcher talk about public relations strategies for businesses considering weighing in.
Many people feel corporate brands need to take a definitive stand on these types of hot-button issue.
There seems to now be a high level consumer expectation that corporations take a stand on issues and also consumer criticism if your corporate brand is remaining silent.
Mary Beth and Kelly agree there's a time and a place for companies to speak out on issues that are relevant to their business, interests and industries. And then there are times when it's absolutely not.
They talk through companies that have taken a stand on Roe v. Wade specifically, and the criticism surrounding PR Firm Edelman and Zeno's advice to not.

The past few years have been tumultuous in the journalism industry. From shrinking newsrooms, fragmentation, audience mistrust, COVID and other global crisis. Muckrack conducted its annual survey of more than 1,000 journalists to assess the state of journalism in 2022.
Greg Gallant is the co-founder and CEO of Muckrack and speaks on the company's annual report.

Greg talks about his career as an entrepreneur and how he navigated a career from philosophy to what he does now.
"Once you get to any meaningful scale, the number one job of being an entrepreneur or a CEO.
Is communicating ideas boiling down what's happening in the world and coming up with kind of a way to explain it and a way to position your company to be relevant."

Some key findings from the report:
Journalists are busier than ever and are covering more beats than ever before.
Journalists are more likely to respond to pitches in 2022 than they were in 2021.
Journalists feel trust from the public is improving.
Twitter is the go-to social media platform for journalists. But that's not where they want to get their pitches!
Greg offers some tips about how to use Twitter to connect with journalists and how to make authentic connections.
Greg addresses the gender gap in journalism and what his company is doing to combat the issue.
Finally, Kelly and Greg talk about leading in a remote world and the transition to remote work.

Melanie White, executive vice president of Virgin Experience Gifts, shares insights from the experiential gifting field about where the market is headed and how Virgin experience gifts is leading the way in the U.S. market.

Among her remarks:

1. Melanie left her successful career in the fashion industry to find her "why" and search for something more meaningful. She talks about how providing curated experiences to enrich peoples' lives has been fulfilling. 
2. Virgin Experience Gifts is seeking to lead the way in forging the concept of experiential gifting: providing specially curated, experiential gift-giving that people can purchase for a friend, colleague or loved one.
3. The COVID pandemic has left Americans with a pent-up desire for travel and adventure. This is helping Virgin Experience Gifts and experiential gifting succeed despite the pandemic.
4. Woman are some of the top customers, buying experiences for spouses, friends and children.
5. Millennials and Gen Z are driving the trend toward experiences over traditional "things" as gifts.
6. Consumers are incredibly diverse. Virgin Experience Gifts is tapping into this diversity by offering experiences across the spectrum on price point and interest.
7. Experiential gifting is not only more meaningful and unique, but it's also sustainable. Americans are attracted to a more minimal approach to acquiring stuff, and helping to eliminate the clutter.
8. Virgin Experience Gifts sees their platform as a major opportunity for providers, destinations and retail labels. Virgin Experience Gifts could be a low-risk sales platform for them and a source of referral.  
9. Virgin Experience Gifts as a brand is in a hyper growth phase and sees big things on the horizon in the coming years.

Discover Fletcher Marketing PR:

• Post your questions and comments about the podcast, via #MsInterPReted 
• Follow Fletcher Marketing PR on Twitter: @FletcherPR 
• Follow Fletcher Marketing PR on Instagram: fletcher.pr
• Follow Fletcher Marketing PR on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Fletchermarketingpr 
• Follow Virgin Experience Gifts on Twitter: @VirginExpGifts 
• Follow Kelly Fletcher on Twitter: @KDfletcher 
• Follow Mary Beth West on Twitter: @marybethwest 

Allison Lester -- director of media relations for Fletcher Marketing PR -- shares insights on transitioning from the pressures and challenges of years working in a media newsroom environment to the front lines of PR strategy and media relations execution for a PR firm.

Among her remarks:

1. How deadline-driven environments of the newsroom differ from deadlines / workload in PR
2. Ways in which lifestyle / work-life balance stresses differ on the two "sides," particularly given the pandemic
3. What "pet peeves" she encountered from PR firms back in her newsroom days
4. Aspects of pitching for topical / timing relevance to be realistic and newsroom-friendly
5. What it means to deliver for clients on media relations content and availability 
6. Best-practices in media contact-development
7. Practical considerations (such as lead times) that build parameters around what a news outlet will (or even can) cover
8. How to "turn lemons to lemonade" when media rejection of a pitch can still present a relationship-building opportunity with a reporter 
9. Differences between needs / opportunities for newsrooms working across different formats (print, broadcast, digital)

Discover Fletcher Marketing PR:

• Post your questions and comments about the podcast, via #MsInterPReted 
• Follow Fletcher Marketing PR on Twitter: @FletcherPR 
• Follow Fletcher Marketing PR on Instagram: fletcher.pr
• Follow Fletcher Marketing PR on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Fletchermarketingpr 
• Follow Allison Lester on Twitter: @ALesterTN 
• Follow Kelly Fletcher on Twitter: @KDfletcher 
• Follow Mary Beth West on Twitter: @marybethwest 

Business development for any company (or fund-raising and audience engagement in the non-profit sector) can be driven extensively through sharing the heart, soul and mind of the brand.

Podcasting has emerged as one of the top conduits for sharing brand voice in the competitive marketplace of ideas, through owned-media platforms that brands can directly curate and control.

Chris Hill shares with Kelly and Mary Beth his production recommendations as well as marketing strategies, to help those with something to say in the podcasting space to be successful, in building a podcast from the ground-up.

Discover HumblePod:

• Website:  https://www.humblepod.com/about/ 
• Twitter: @Humblepod https://twitter.com/HumblePod  

Discover Fletcher Marketing PR:

• Post your questions and comments about the podcast, via #MsInterPReted 
• Follow Fletcher Marketing PR on Twitter: @FletcherPR 
• Follow Fletcher Marketing PR on Instagram: fletcher.pr
• Follow Fletcher Marketing PR on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Fletchermarketingpr 
• Follow Kelly Fletcher on Twitter: @KDfletcher 
• Follow Mary Beth West on Twitter: @marybethwest 

In this episode, Kelly and Mary Beth discuss their PR Industry Predictions for 2022, including:

• How the PR agency business model's pandemic-driven shifts have impacted the industry
• Why the U.S. PR industry is on a particularly troublesome ethics track -- much of it self-inflicted and further exacerbated by apathy ... particularly in light of disappointing choices and lack of truth / transparency by the domestic PR association -- PRSA
• Ways that workforce recruitment strains between talent availability, rising payroll demands and follow-on COVID waves will impact budgets
• Implications of recent industry reports:
  • Public Relations & Communications Association (PRCA-UK) (London): 
    • https://www.prca.org.uk/PR-industry-roars-back-2021-PRCA-UK-Census 
  • International Communications Consultancy Organisation (ICCO) World Report: 
    • https://iccopr.com/services/world-reports/download-our-2020-2021-report/  
• Whether the PR, media and journalism sectors will ever join forces to stave off systemic public-trust root-rot driving disinformation
• How the Diversity conversation will continue as a merry-go-round until the industry and respective associations set a definitive bar between two separate metrics: 1) Having the PR industry employment base represent all of society demographically, or 2) Having the sector mirror demographics of other professional-service sectors with which PR competes to recruit workforce
• Ways that politicization and partisanship in news rooms and across the industry drive the very divisiveness that the PR industry should be more competently taking in hand and mitigating (not exacerbating) to bring people and publics together in more positive solidarity around issues
• How the dearth of men in the PR industry workforce (minus the C-suite) is a far more complex and troubling problem than is adequately discussed ... and if the industry fails to address the gender imbalance in 2022, we can expect to slide more into "pink-collared ghetto" territory relative to compensation and share-of-voice.

Mary Beth also shares a glimpse of work-in-progress currently underway via the PRCA Ethics Council, in partnership with the Ethics & Compliance Initiative (ECI) in Washington, D.C., as part of its Global Business Ethics Survey to ascertain PR industry ethics issues. 

• Discover Fletcher Marketing PR
• Post your questions and comments about the podcast, via #MsInterPReted 

• Follow Fletcher Marketing PR on Twitter: @FletcherPR 
• Follow Fletcher Marketing PR on Instagram: fletcher.pr
• Follow Fletcher Marketing PR on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Fletchermarketingpr 
• Follow Kelly Fletcher on Twitter: @KDfletcher 
• Follow Mary Beth West on Twitter: @marybethwest