Ms. InterPReted

When crises strike, having a plan is essential -- and most strategists know that rule-of-thumb. 

But what about a crisis that unfolds in real-time, right before one's eyes (and the eyes of hundreds, thousands or even millions of stakeholders), when seconds count and the cameras are on?

Kelly and Mary Beth discuss some recent events and several new pieces of industry data that PR pros and client teams alike should take into consideration.  

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

On this special Holiday Season episode of #MsInterPReted, Kelly and Mary Beth share special moments from past episodes of the podcast with:

1. Marshall Ramsey -- on how some dark moments in his life (from personal loss to being cut to part-time and losing his benefits at his former employer in the wake of his cancer battle) resulted in his "It's the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me" attitude, thanks to his late father;
2. Marcus Hall -- on how taking the wrong path in life and paying the price with incarceration actually set him free to embark on a renewed entrepreneurial journey;
3. Tearsa Smith -- on how the power of seeing her children's joy and aspirations for their own futures have lifted her up during traumatic societal events of 2020-21... and how she seeks to share that hope with others, through the lens of journalism;
4. Ashley Nickloes -- on how reading the documentation of her grandfather's death during World War II from running out of fuel in his plane during a combat mission over the Pacific Ocean brought her full-circle, as she has served her nation for many years as a Tennessee Air National Guard refueling-mission aviator;
5. Melissa Carter -- on how the fear and anxiety of coming out to her family as part of the LGBT Community during her 20s ultimately surprised her in a positive way... and proved to her that her late father was the greatest Christian she ever knew;
6. Mike McClamroch -- on how a visit one day to the home of Lady Vols Head Coach Pat Summitt changed his life, as he embarked with Coach Summitt in his role as leader of the East Tennessee Foundation to assume management operations for The Pat Summitt Foundation (@WeBackPat), to beat Alzheimer's Disease ... in the late coach's lasting legacy of public service and philanthropy.  

Posted with great affection for our listeners, team members, clients, family and friends -- by Kelly & Mary Beth ... 
Wishing everyone a safe, happy and abundant Thanksgiving and holiday season ahead. 

• Discover Fletcher Marketing PR
• 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, Woolf McClane's Chad Hatmaker shares:

• What he's seen employers and management teams do right (or wrong) since the pandemic hit on the employee relations front
• Specific aspects of emerging employment law that were brought to bear significantly in the past 20 months and that should be tracked going forward, in order for companies to remain compliant yet competitive
• How employee / front-line team expectations have now changed 
• Why staying proactive is so important for companies -- in order to avoid much larger problems later
• Ways in which communications challenges arise throughout workforce-management issues, like vaccinations
• And much more... 

Links:

• Follow the #MsInterPReted hashtag
• Follow Chad Hatmaker of Woolf McClane
  • Twitter: @JChadHatmaker
  • Chad Hatmaker’s blog, “Tennessee Employment Law”
  • LinkedIn

View insights from members of the Fletcher Team on WBIR's special news segment on "The Big Quit". 

• Discover Fletcher Marketing PR
• Follow Fletcher Marketing PR on Twitter: @FletcherPR 
• Follow Kelly Fletcher on Twitter: @KDfletcher 
• Follow Mary Beth West on Twitter: @marybethwest 

In this conversation, Travis Parman shares his insights about:

• How people sometimes "fall into public relations" from different fields ... and how he has evolved his ideas about what constitutes PR expertise as a former self-confessed "public relations purist"; 
• Why his favorite Abraham Lincoln quote that he learned in high school helped chart his academic and career course toward public relations: "In this age, in this country, public sentiment is everything. With it, nothing can fail; against it, nothing can succeed. Whoever molds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes, or pronounces judicial decisions";
• Why diverse practitioners are so often the best public relations professionals: "They know how to read a room";
• Ways that PR students should work to position themselves for thriving public relations careers, by bringing their diverse perspectives and backgrounds to the fore;
• In what ways companies need to avoid knee-jerk responses to "diversity programs" that lump people of one diverse cohort together and inadvertently segregate them; 
• How one-dimensional, tactical and transactional "understandings" of PR pose some of the industry's biggest limitations that must be countered and overcome;
• Why being too deferential can be a PR professional's most self-defeating behavioral modus operandi in growing their career;
• Ways that cross-cultural and international standards differ -- and why public relations practitioners need to advance their game, including in the #PRethics arena and with full team involvement and buy-in.

FOLLOW #PRethics

FOLLOW Travis Parman:
Twitter: @TravisParman
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/travisparman/ 

FOLLOW AppHarvest:
Twitter: @AppHarvest

FOLLOW FLETCHER MARKETING PR:

• Discover Fletcher Marketing PR
• Follow Fletcher Marketing PR on Twitter: @FletcherPR 
• Connect with Fletcher Marketing PR on LinkedIn
• Follow Kelly Fletcher on Twitter: @KDfletcher 
• Follow Mary Beth West on Twitter: @marybethwest 

In this episode during PRSA's #EthicsMonth, Mary Beth West interviews close colleague Susan Hart -- a past president of the PRSA Nashville Chapter, a past PRSA Nashville Chapter Hercules Award honoree, and a now-former / resigned PRSA College of Fellows member. 

Susan voluntarily discontinued her 35-year membership in PRSA in 2018, in disgust with PRSA's National leadership cultural shift, after what she describes as "one of the most stressful experiences of (her) life" at the hands of PRSA National leadership, who infamously opposed ethics-driven bylaw reforms -- after secretly reversing course from prior assurances that measures would be supported. 

In this interview, Susan discusses:

• Accountability as the essential crux of what any leadership team must offer as a non-negotiable deliverable of its own cultural mindset
• How leadership quickly falls down a slippery slope and point-of-no-return, when national leaders fail to conduct due diligence
• "Say-do" disconnects -- when organizational mission and stated principles no longer match leadership behaviors
• What the modus-operandi of "Operation Incompetence" entails with an escalating lack of financial transparency
• How the good work of PRSA's local-level chapters is overshadowed and undermined when the national organizational leadership has entrenched unethical and unaccountable practices
• Why curiosity by members is important and should not be demonized ... and why it's an ethical red-flag when any organizational leadership "kills the messenger" and instills fear of retaliation among a membership who become too fearful to ask valid questions.

FOLLOW #PRethics

FOLLOW Susan Hart:
Twitter: @susanhartpr

JOIN THE FACEBOOK GROUP CALLING FOR A BETTER PRSA:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/ABetterPRSA 

FOLLOW FLETCHER MARKETING PR:

• Discover Fletcher Marketing PR
• Follow Fletcher Marketing PR on Twitter: @FletcherPR 
• Connect with Fletcher Marketing PR on LinkedIn
• Follow Kelly Fletcher on Twitter: @KDfletcher 
• Follow Mary Beth West on Twitter: @marybethwest 

Recorded on #WorldPRDay (#WPRD), Kelly and Mary Beth welcome one of the PR industry's most prominent and prolific thought leaders, Gini Dietrich of Spin Sucks, an entire learning platform that Gini founded and her team manages, in service to the industry, including consulting work for fellow agency owners and entrepreneurs.

Gini opens up about her passion points for the industry, on both the positive / uplifting front as well as frustrating sides... and on the latter, including discrimination and misogyny that she has experienced first-hand as a business owner and public speaker. 

In this episode of #MsInterPReted, Gini opens up about personal (and shocking) experiences in her own career, and how the up-and-coming generation in PR will not suffer fools gladly or tolerate the discriminatory burdens that have all-too-often persisted in PR and in business / society. 

Gini also shares insights about other professional-practice ethics and qualities that hold great potential for the PR industry's advancement, if colleagues will embrace them. 

FOLLOW Gini Dietrich and Spin Sucks:
Twitter: @SpinSucks @GiniDietrich
Website: http://spinsucks.com/spin-sucks-community

FOLLOW FLETCHER MARKETING PR:

• Discover Fletcher Marketing PR
• Follow Fletcher Marketing PR on Twitter: @FletcherPR 
• Connect with Fletcher Marketing PR on LinkedIn
•  Follow Kelly Fletcher on Twitter: @KDfletcher 
• Follow Mary Beth West on Twitter: @marybethwest 

On this #SocialMediaDay2021 episode, Chris McCarty of Knoxville-based law firm Lewis Thomason delves into the larger issues at hand for companies/organizations and individuals alike in managing the good, the bad and the law, when it comes to leveraging the power of social media in productive and legally compliant ways.

Kelly and Mary Beth set the stage by providing a flashback to a November 2020 episode of #MsInterPReted (Social Media & Surveillance Capitalism: Dr. Candace White), and Kelly also shares a recent challenge experienced with a Facebook hacker ... indicative of the power -- much of it unchecked -- that the largest social media companies in particular wield, which can derail any company's ability to do business, at the drop of a hat.

Chris discusses legal implications of these and other challenges, as well as broader issues of free speech and regulatory facts that every PR person and professional communicator should know, in today's dynamic social media environment.

About Chris McCarty of Lewis Thomason, P.C.:

Chris W. McCarty, a shareholder in Lewis Thomason's Knoxville office, practices in the areas of employment law, education law and civil litigation. Chris handles matters before state and federal courts throughout Tennessee, and has argued before the Tennessee Court of Appeals. Chris also presents on employment and education law topics. His articles on those topics have been seen in numerous publications, including HR Magazine, the Tennessee Bar Journal and the Knoxville Business Journal. Chris is approved as a member of the American Arbitration Association’s (AAA) Panel of Employment Arbitrators.

 AFFILIATIONS

• Federation of Defense & Corporate Counsel
• DRI – Employment & Labor Law Committee
• Society for Human Resource Management
• American Bar Association
• Knoxville Bar Association
• Tennessee Bar Association
• National School Boards Association Council of School Attorneys

PROFESSIONAL HONORS AND ACTIVITIES

• Tennessee Council of School Board Attorneys, President, 2018-2020
• Best Lawyers® 2020 Employment Law – Management “Lawyer of the Year” in Knoxville
• Named to The Best Lawyers in America©, Employment Law Management and Education Law
• Named a Cityview Magazine Top Attorney
• Federation of Defense & Corporate Counsel, Elected Member, 2018
• Knoxville Bar Foundation, Fellows Program, 2016
• Member, American Arbitration Association (AAA) Panel of Employment Arbitrators
• Mid-South Super Lawyers® Rising Star, 2015, 2016
• Leadership Sevier, 2015
• Knoxville Zoo, Circle of Friends Leadership Council, 2015
• Nucleus Knoxville, President, 2014
• “40 Under 40”, Knoxville Business Journal, 2013
• Tennessee Bar Association Leadership Law, 2012
• Leadership Tomorrow Sevier, 2010
• Tennessee Bar Association Young Lawyers Division, President’s Award, 2009
• Introduction Knoxville, 2007
• Knoxville Bar Association, Publications Committee

FOLLOW Chris McCarty and Lewis Thomason:
Twitter: @LewisThomasonTN
LinkedIn: Lewis Thomason / LinkedIn and Chris McCarty / LinkedIn
Website: https://www.lewisthomason.com/

FOLLOW FLETCHER MARKETING PR:

• Discover Fletcher Marketing PR
• Follow Fletcher Marketing PR on Twitter: @FletcherPR 
• Connect with Fletcher Marketing PR on LinkedIn
•  Follow Kelly Fletcher on Twitter: @KDfletcher 
• Follow Mary Beth West on Twitter: @marybethwest 

AlexAnndra Ontra of Shufflrr discusses the art of the presentation:

• How to lead with storytelling and more conversational approaches
• Why presentations are getting more play in the marketing mix
• Ways in which presentations must keep ever-evolving “in a continual loop” and not remain static over time
• How it is that some 70% of marketing assets are not used (a data point from 3M) – representing an intellectual-resource waste
• Methods for avoiding mismanagement or non-accessibility of presentation assets so that there is wider, more searchable usability of presentation data
• Ways that presentations can remain fresh but have enough content preservation and replicability to save staff time

Discover more about Shufflrr: https://shufflrr.com/ 

Follow Fletcher Marketing PR on:

• Website:  https://www.fletchermarketingpr.com/
• On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Fletchermarketingpr
• On Twitter:  @fletcherpr
• On Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/fletcher.pr/
• Follow Kelly on Twitter: @KDFletcher
• Follow Mary Beth: @marybethwest

During his second visit to the “Ms. InterPReted” Podcast, Francis Ingham shares his latest insights about the state of ethics in the public relations industry, amid real-time issues that have impacted Fletcher Senior Strategist Mary Beth West, MPRCA, who now is serving a second term as PRCA Ethics Council Co-Chair.

Susan Hart, MPRCA, guest-hosts alongside Fletcher Marketing PR CEO Kelly Fletcher, MPRCA. 

Francis Ingham is Director General of the PRCA, and Chief Executive of the International Communications Consultancy Organisation (ICCO).

With a background in politics and public affairs, Francis is External Examiner to the American University at Richmond; Trustee of The Speakers' Corner Trust; and the Master of the City of London Company of Public Relations Practitioners. He was educated at Oxford University, where he read Politics, Philosophy and Economics. He appears in both the UK and the Global editions of PR Week’s PowerBook.

Follow the PRCA-UK:

• Website: https://www.prca.org.uk/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/prca_uk/?hl=en
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/PRCA_UK

Follow Francis Ingham on Twitter: @ingers1975 https://twitter.com/Ingers1975

U.S. citizens can inquire about PRCA-UK international membership by contacting:

Website: https://www.prca.org.uk/membership/join-today/international-individual-membership 

OR

Melissa Cannon MPRCA

PRCA International Director

T: +44 (0) 207 233 6026 

W: prca.org.uk

Follow Fletcher Marketing PR on:

• Website:  https://www.fletchermarketingpr.com/
• On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Fletchermarketingpr
• On Twitter:  @fletcherpr
• On Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/fletcher.pr/

• Follow Kelly on Twitter: @KDFletcher
• Follow Mary Beth: @marybethwest
• Follow Susan Hart: @susanhartpr 

In this chat with Kelly Fletcher and Mary Beth West, Blount Partnership President / CEO Bryan Daniels, CEcD, discusses:

• The old versus new model of marketing rural communities successfully
• Ways in which Blount County, TN has differentiated itself as a top quality-of-life community 
• Blount County's true partnership-driven approach, with collaboration and cooperation among municipalities, elected officials and business community leaders
• How Blount County is taking a role at the international level to help drive thought-leadership and best-practices (with Bryan Daniels serving on the board of the International Economic Development Council, which will bring its conference to Nashville, TN, later this year)
  • https://www.iedconline.org/index.php?src=directory&view=staff&srctype=detail&refno=804&category=Board%20of%20Directors 
• How local, high-quality workforce development remains the most critical driver of attracting and retaining employers to a local community
• Ways in which today's social-responsibility discourse is informing the site-selection process... with some corporations including as part of their due-diligence a request for the voting record of local electorates as a criteria point for moving a headquarters or base of operations to a new community
• Rationale for rural communities to take a proactive stance versus a reactive stance in their econ-dev approach: 
  • Proactive: Driving site-selection visibility and relationship-building from the front, with a rural community sending its own delegations overseas 
  • Reactive: Relying entirely on one's state department of economic development to send site-selection leads to the local level

Learn more about moving your business to Blount County, Tennessee -- The Peaceful Side of the Smokies:

Blount Partnership: https://www.blountpartnership.com/
Connect with Bryan Daniels: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bryan-daniels-b597283/ 
Follow the Blount Chamber on Twitter: https://twitter.com/blountchamber 

Smokies Vacation: https://www.smokymountains.org/
Peaceful Side of the Smokies / Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/peacefulsmokies/?hl=en 

Site-Selection / Pellissippi Place: https://blountindustry.com/our-region/sites-and-buildings/pellissippi-place/

Follow Fletcher Marketing PR on:

Website:  https://www.fletchermarketingpr.com/

On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Fletchermarketingpr

On Twitter:  @fletcherpr

On Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/fletcher.pr/

Follow Kelly on Twitter: @KDFletcher
Follow Mary Beth on Twitter: @marybethwest