PR Wars

As corporations weigh-in on social issues, communicators are learning to become a company conscience. On today's PR Wars, we talk with Anthony Hayes, Founder and President of The Hayes Initiative. Learn what you should think about as your company navigates the winds of social change.

• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify Podcasts
• Google Podcasts

A.I. generated show transcript: 

Show open: “We want the truth.” “We want the truth.” “We want the truth.” “I have news for everybody. Get over it.”

Announcer
It’s time. Welcome to PR Wars coming at you live from Atlanta, Georgia. Now, here is your host… Chris Shigas.

Chris Shigas
Black Lives Matter, Save the planet, End human trafficking. Social issues are thrusting corporations into the media, as the country's moral compass. And communicators are learning to become a company conscience. Well joining us on PR Wars today, we talk with the Founder and President of The Hayes Initiative. It's a public affairs and strategic communications firm. It helps leaders at the highest levels, accomplish goals without shying away from making the hard call. Anthony Hayes, thank you for joining us on PR Wars.

Anthony Hayes
Thank you so much for having me. Glad to be here.

Chris Shigas
Companies that are now really more than ever before becoming a moral compass for the nation. Sure, engaging in social issues should accompany engage in social.

Anthony Hayes
So we're jumping right in? In other words?

Yeah. So listen, I think that, you know, what we have seen is fairly extraordinary. In that I think a lot of to your point, a lot of C suite executives are jumping in more than they probably ever have. My guess is there's a handful of them and are but that would prefer to not be because I think they would rather sort of like, just be sort of doing business as usual. But I think the world has sort of gotten to a place where we're having some really needed and necessary conversations, certainly, or if you talked about social justice, if you talk about equality and equity in the workplace, I think those are a lot of very needed conversations in order to break down some of the systemic problems that are fairly obvious. And so how do you do that, in a way that is that is truly authentic to your company, right? Because I think a lot of times, it's easy to think that you should, it's easy to lose sight of, I think is probably a better way to say it, of who you serve. Right. And so you have, you know, your investors, you have your you have your internal employees. And then obviously, your customers, right, all those people are living in this time of uncertainty, this time of upheaval, this time of what has been a really, really difficult year beyond just COVID-19 if you're in America, you know, politically it's been a very, very difficult for years, and is very divided. And so people, you know, your employees, stakeholders, and customers are all just sort of living in this upheaval. And and they're looking for any place that can deliver solid, hopeful, clear messaging. And so I think that, you know, with your generally starts with employees who are really pushing the C suite, to comment, right, not to mention, obviously, all of the customers that are also wanting their brands, the reality is customers want their brands to speak up, but then they have to figure out how they're going to do it in an authentic way. I'm not entirely sure people need to weigh in on everything. Like if it's not authentic to who you are as a company or you know, there's not a real reason for you to you really need to ask yourself, what do we get out of Wayne into this and in the one thing I would always advise everybody if you do way into it, you better describe it and talk about talk about it through the values that you live every day versus hopefully you know, listen, if you have had to have a reckoning and you realize you haven't been living up to the values you wanted to then you better own that and do your man Koba and and then sort of march forward and sometimes it's easy to see that an issue is relevant to your brand, but sometimes it's a little bit of a gray area, right? So absolutely look at like the Georgia voting law issue. And delta and Coca Cola weigh in. Well, that makes sense because they're headquartered in Atlanta. Even if you go to the other side of the aisle, and and look at maybe like a hobby lobby, chick fil a or whatever.

Chris Shigas
my pillow guy is saying, sure, you know, you you have engagement in the this political space? How do you go through figuring out if this is an authentic issue for my brand? And if this makes sense for me to engage?

Anthony Hayes
Yeah, I think first of all, you have to ask yourself why, you know, are you compelled because people are calling you out? Or are you compelled because you want to speak to the values of your company. And so I think obviously, the ideal place would be, if you feel like as a company and the brand that you are and what you deliver into the universe, for whatever reason, to your to your correct point, whether no matter where you fall on the spectrum of, you know, left or right or conservative or liberal, you're going to speak out, you're going to frustrate some people when you speak out. And so you better make sure that it is very true to who you are, and why you're doing it. So you should sort of hopefully have some, the ability to be authentic about your communication, meaning that you have a good track record already. But if you're being called out for it, you know, we live in a time where it can really get dicey if you don't sort of handle those kinds of moments carefully. And I think a lot of times when there is a growing and growing cry for a company or an organization or a leader to speak out against something, and then they finally do it, then it seems like well, you only did it, because you've got forced to

Chris Shigas
write, it is an issue, right? Like, especially as a communicator, because you have to figure out, Okay, this is how we could respond. And then you have to sell that internally and get these approvals. And you want to be fast. At the same time, maybe in a given issued, all the facts aren't out yet. Correct. And and then, if you wait too long, with this approval process, then you look like a Johnny come lately, who's just, you know, doing it for appearance sakes,

Anthony Hayes
yes. 100%. It is a rock and a hard place. For communicators. And in particular, similar to what you were describing as somebody whose job it is to, you know, your phone rings with the CEOs saying, are we speaking out on this or not, you know, or I saw the tweets, what are we doing, and then you have to craft it, you have to put it together, and then you have to move it along. And you have to make sure to your point, you have your facts straight. And if they're not straight, then you better figure out how to make it clear, they're not and there's going to be more to come so that you give yourself room and your organization room because certainly in a crisis situation or something that's rapidly moving. The reality is, is you need to, you need to acknowledge there's something that's going on, you need to acknowledge your values. I'm a big believer in that, because I think a lot of people miss that opportunity.

Chris Shigas
And that's some work on the front end to do. Right, right. Yeah,

Anthony Hayes
that's right. When you're going away and doing all these retreats and thinking about what are we doing for this year as a company, and who are we and what do we believe in and what's our mission and blah, blah, blah, like, this is the moment and listen, if if 2020 did not prepare every C suite, and every person who's planning these major businesses who go away, and they think about that, you know, the the the leadership teams go away, and they hunker down to be like, Alright, this is who we are. And this is what we believe in. And, you know, we're gonna do this business plan. But you know, you can put in, you can put in place actionable things, that sort of speak to these values, so that when you do have to speak about it, you can talk about a program that you genuinely have done for five years, where you help fill in the blank, or you do this, but you know, because I think it does get to the point where, you know, as a member of the LGBTQ community, you know, I certainly have witnessed every year, in June during Pride Month, you know, everything has a rainbow all of a sudden, which is great. And we like that, and I think that that's good. But at the same time, what else are you doing?

Unknown Speaker
Right?

Anthony Hayes
What else are you doing to actually help your LGBTQ employees get equality?

Chris Shigas
And that issue has come front and center, right? Whether it's performance activism, or slacktivism are some of the words that are being totally real easy to put out a tweet. But then what are you really doing to create change?

Anthony Hayes
Yeah, I mean, listen, you know, we can go back to you know, George Floyd, I mean, there's just unfortunately too many too, sort of too many, too many incidents to point two. And then I think you see people who, whether well intentioned or not, or I you know, I'm not going to try to get into sort of like, defining why they did it or But I think there were obvious people who, you know, when you look at their track record, which is really what people are focusing on is, you know, enough about what you say, you know, there's not a woman in your C suite, where there's not a black person on your board. You know, your management team is largely white men. And like, no gay people, or no trans people, or, you know, like, you can sort of tell how a company focuses on you know, you're either you either really are diverse, or you're not,

Chris Shigas
do we reflect the communities that we're in?

Anthony Hayes
Yeah, that's right. That's right, exactly right.

Chris Shigas
Sometimes there's pushback, as a communicator, you're very excited about a certain issue, you think it's authentic, you have a great message that you want to deliver, and then someone tells you look, I'm afraid it's a slippery slope. If we put out a message about this, that we're gonna have to put a message out about that. And then every single social issue that comes out, we're gonna have to put out a message about how would you answer that that kind of negative voice?

Anthony Hayes
Yeah, I think it's about you know, there's always going to be a negative voice in the room, there's always going to be someone who wants to sort of keep chugging along, and not sort of speak to the values of the organization. And that's really what we're talking about, right? And I know I keep harping on that. But it is true when you when you're making these statements, ideally, it is something that is truly genuine to who your organization is, or how your organization operates, how your leadership team operates. So when that negative person, you know, speaks up, I find it interesting sometimes where I've had conversations with clients, about, you know, what, we don't allow political speech, or signs or certain things that are events. And you know, I'm standing in front of them. And on my lapel, I have a rainbow flag. I'm like, you do allow certain things like so. And chances are most organizations have already spoken out or taken a stand on something that that may have at the time been uncomfortable, but now it's safe for them to do it. So I think it's I don't think every company should speak out about everything, I think everyone can sort of like, that doesn't mean that you can't have internal communications, that doesn't mean that you can't speak to your employee base or your stakeholders or, you know, or if there is a, you know, you do have a couple of customers or certain things like that doesn't mean you can't have individual conversations. But no, maybe you're not ready to speak out, because maybe you're not in a good place on this. And you need to get your internal house in order first, and then speak out about it, or some some hybrid of what I've sort of described, but I, I think that everybody has to realize that if it's something that's truly resonates with who you are as an organization, why would you not?

Chris Shigas
I mean, because you might have, obviously, like big tech companies, these are big companies that can change the world, right? And they're weighing in on the social issues. And then you have other companies, you mentioned the financial firms, and they have a lot of political clout, and they can help make a difference. And then maybe, you know, you got a company, they make blue jeans. So they may, you know, and it's like, you know, is it odd sometimes for them to weigh in on these heavy social issues.

Anthony Hayes
Not if that's who they think they are. And that's what their customers are, like, you have to if you don't know who your customers are, and you don't know, if you don't have sort of a clear vision and mission for who you are, even if you're a small company, and what you believe in, that doesn't mean that even if you have a customer base of 1000, that's 1000 people that may want to hear from you. And that's just sort of, we've been heading down this road for quite a while, like, if you look at advertising, you know, go back 10 years, you know, I was at the I was managing Media and Communications at the Port Authority of New York, New Jersey, and I 99% sure if my memory is correct, it was Levi, who, you know, was very thoughtful, and I couldn't believe they were so nice and called and said hey, listen, you know, the One World Trade Center, the Freedom Tower, we we did some shots of that, and we're gonna include it in in our upcoming commercials. And we're just like, Oh, thanks for the heads up. That's very nice of you. And then when the commercial came out, you know, it was it was about genes. But if you were it was literally saying follow your passion, follow who you are following how authentic you are, you know, in these jeans will get you there, basically. Right? And you're like, Why are

Chris Shigas
you pushing it? Yeah. That's what you think, like, at what point is a company trying to be authentic? But maybe they just push it a little too far, right? They want to save the whales save the sale, save the trees, save the bees. And and you're like, Okay, I get it like, you know, that's a little too much. When when do you know you're pressing on the gas pedal too hard?

Anthony Hayes
Yeah, that's a solid and very good question. And I think it's sort of case by case basis, but at the end of the day, right, like, what would I mean, let's, we're talking about mostly companies that provide said service, right? Like, that doesn't mean, you have a reason for communicating in the world, you're trying to get your customers to do something, etc. So stick to what you're good at. Like, that doesn't mean you can't have part of your messaging be about, you know, what your social good is as a company, but if your social good is taking over the reason you're there, then you're becoming an advocacy organization. Right? And so it doesn't mean you can, I mean, good for you. But like, that means you've changed your entire business model. Now you're an addressee. And I think that's a real struggle for a lot. I think, a lot of organizations, certainly people that we've worked with over the last, you know, 12 to 18 months, in particular, have been really trying to figure that out of like, how do we do this? And how do we especially if you're a New York City based company, where we're living in a city where COVID really hit right, like you have, you want to sort of be a part of the message of the of your city reopening and doing all these things, but you also are, maybe maybe you are selling jeans, or maybe you are selling, you know, pizza is, then that's a new sort of, like, idea that's getting presented, but you, you know, you can't constantly sort of just be about the advocacy message, because otherwise, then your whole business model changes.

Chris Shigas
Sometimes a company's forced into the spotlight, and I'll give you an example here, I live in Atlanta, and there was a police shooting of an African American in Atlanta in a parking lot of a Wendy's. And the protests that evening, they burned down the Wendy's restaurant. Yep. And Wendy's had, you know, their social media is very quirky, where they tell jokes and things. So they had to stop shift gears here. Right? Yeah. And so when you are a company thrust, thrust it into a social issue? Where is your? Is the focus on your customers? Is it on your media? Is it on your employees? Can you be everything to everyone?

Anthony Hayes
No, you should just be you know, you should try to approach it, in my opinion, you should try to approach it with as much empathy as possible. And then I believe, when you're sort of heading down that road, right? If you're sort of being empathetic to what is a terrible situation. And I think there's many that we could identify right, this is you just identified this one. But when you I believe, when when you are sort of in this situation and forced to sort of speak out, and it may be different than your normal voice. To me, the moment generally calls for empathy, and you likely are less likely to get it wrong. If you're empathetic and focus on, you know, how people must feel and how we can heal.

Chris Shigas
Right. And how do you know is that I guess there's not a hard fast rule of this is our brand speaking, this is our company speaking or this is our CEO, speaking as a person?

Anthony Hayes
Yeah, I think a lot of people try to thread that needle, I don't think they're different. Personally, like, right. I don't know anybody who Yeah, to me, they're the same. And I would I if I were advising people, I would, I would, you know, I think there's, you know, we've worked with some people that have, you know, the business and then they may have like a foundation, right? And they, they try to treat them differently. And I'm like, but they're the same. They're, they're the same group, like the business is funding the foundation. And so you know, and I think sometimes things get set up that way, for legal reasons, etc. And it's no one's fault. And it's the best of intentions. I don't think people mean to try to be cute, but it's sort of they're not, there's no way to separate a CEO from a business. If they're certainly if they're the current sitting CEO, in my opinion, I don't know how anyone would ever give them the benefit of the doubt on that, personally.

Chris Shigas
And so kind of Lastly, and we talked about this slacktivism thing, and how does a company create real change and it's authentic? And for a company that maybe is trying to get their act together? Maybe they haven't moved diversity and inclusion department or, and they really want to do more than just write a statement. Do you? Do you have any suggestions for what direction? What role should comms play in that and then what the What are some of the initial steps a company should take to get it? Right?

Anthony Hayes
Right? Well, there are two different things. So the comms department can communicate what is right. And so if they are if they don't have their house in order, and they're trying to do the right things, and they're trying to move forward, but they're not there yet. That's an operational. And like that's that is operational, HR, business CEO, decision maker level, and the client from the top level. Yeah, the comms team can be in the room. But if you're, you know, I think it is always a dangerous territory. And I think a lot of people obviously create policy this way, like, let's be honest, like, we all live in the real world. But when the comms team is making policy, based on what will be good publicly, then you have a real, that's where we get into systemic problems. That's an operational and business problem that needs to be solved. If you have an operational and business problem that about lack of diversity in your business, right at the at the, that's not the comms job. They can they can point it out to you. Like, we can come up with, like how you would discuss this, how you could put out a public statement saying, Listen, we know our houses, and in order we hear you. And rather than make, you know, sort of an empty, fluffy statement, we're going to tell you today, we recognize it. And tomorrow, we're going to bring in the right people to put this in place. So we can build a real Foundation, right? Something like that, that that, that makes it clear to everybody that you know, like, hey, look, you're right. But I do think there's a lot of that where people want to, you know, I have the needle kind of, you know, toss of the ball kind of thing and hope it goes through it. But it's like, people can smell that a mile away.

Chris Shigas
So it's a has to be a systemic change in your organization.

Anthony Hayes
Yeah, it's not, it's not a comms problem, like a lack of diversity in your business isn't a comms problem. That's, that's it. That's it. Like, what kind of business you want to have problems. So community communicators often get brought in to try to fix it when there's a crisis,

Chris Shigas
right? But that's not all right. And then when you're working To that end, right. And maybe you're engaging in some, some training for employees, things like that, and some unconscious bias or trainings or things like that, and then, you know, perhaps on some level, start engaging in the community with some of these organizations. Right? Yeah.

Anthony Hayes
I mean, go out, you're not the expert, clearly, you so go out and engage with experts who can help help you. You know, listen, I think we've seen that there are a lot of systemic challenges just in our world. And that translates into the business community, there's no way it won't. So business leaders that can actually acknowledge, like, Hey, we need to bring in people who can help train us and make sure that we're not having unconscious bias, or that we're not doing that as best we can. Right. And I think just sort of demonstrating that you're, you're gonna do the best you can by bringing in experts, because you clearly are not the expert.

Chris Shigas
So Anthony, this isn't a trend this company's as a moral compass. I think this is this is where we are from here on out.

Anthony Hayes
Well, I think where are we? Yes, I think what's going to happen is, you know, let's not forget, and I think it's always very easy to sort of assume that the pressure is coming from outside in. It's also coming from inside out. You have employees who are asking their bosses to speak up.

Chris Shigas
And so yeah, maybe just part of a new generational thing,

Anthony Hayes
right? Yeah. I don't I don't see. Nor do I think necessarily, it should go away. I think I think the reality is, the more conscious we are, the more aware we are, the more we can have someone raise raise up when something is not the way it should be. Ns find a path forward to correct it. Like that, to me feels like we're moving forward, you know, in a positive way. And we're not only giving feedback, we're hearing feedback, and we're making change.

Chris Shigas
Great. Anthony, thank you so much for joining us up here wars.

Anthony Hayes
This was great. Thanks so much.

Chris Shigas
You can listen to a new episode of PR Wars every Sunday night at 8pm eastern. I want to thank Anthony Hayes, Founder and President of The Hayes Initiative, and do me a favor. If you're looking to engage your company in social issues, be authentic. Are you representing your corporate values? And as a communicator, to have real empathy, maybe just maybe we should listen a little more then we speak. Now go get 'em.

PR Wars was selected as a Top PR Podcast You Must Follow in 2021 by Feedspot.

The life of an intern. It's tough to get that spot in the agency. When you do, what does success look like for both you and the agency? On today's PR Wars podcast, we talk with Kaci Pollack, Talent and Culture Manager for See.Spark.Go.

• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify Podcasts
• Google Podcasts

A.I. generated show transcript: 

Show open: “We want the truth.” “We want the truth.” “We want the truth.” “I have news for everybody. Get over it.”

Announcer
It’s time. Welcome to PR Wars coming at you live from Atlanta, Georgia. Now, here is your host… Chris Shigas.

Chris Shigas
Hello, everyone, and welcome to PR wars. I'm Chris Shigas. Hey, the life of an intern. It's tough to get that spot in the agency. And when you do you expect to learn. And it's got to be more than getting someone coffee. And on the agency side, what should you expect intern to do for a client? Today on PR wars, fellow communications stalwart Brad Grantham and I talk with the talent and culture manager for See.Spark.Go. It's a public relations agency with offices in Atlanta, Athens, Georgia and Nashville, Tennessee. Kaci Pollack, thank you so much for joining PR wars today.

Kaci Pollack
Yeah, so excited to be here. Thanks for having me.

Chris Shigas
internships, we're talking about interns. And it is tough for someone to break into the public relations agency. So what are some of your few basic tips to help someone say, hey, you gotta get your start somewhere. This is how you do it.

Kaci Pollack
Oh, really? Well, I'm super excited to be talking about internships today. Because that's sort of my bread and butter. It's the thing I'm most passionate about. And I love helping students how they can find a great experience and an internship, I would say my biggest tip to any student or recent college graduate, that's looking to kind of break in to the PR agency world with internships is to figure out what is unique about that agency, or that company, see where it aligns with your own passions and unique skills, and then merge them together. So an example I like to use is kind of, we have a student this semester, who she's a recent college graduate, and she's really passionate about the food industry, right? Well, we have food industry clients, and so she was able to in her interview, and in her application materials, show off her passion and her experience with the food industry. And that that for us was okay, that's a need we have, and she's able to fill it. So I like to tell students to find the need and fill it figure out how you can bring your passion, your skills, your unique experiences to the table and show those off and kind of do your own personal PR to tell that agency or company why they need to hire you,

Chris Shigas
right. So even if that person doesn't have professional experience within that industry, they're just perhaps a student, right, just for having that interest alone, that could help make them a good fit within the vertical industries of your clients.

Kaci Pollack
Totally. Absolutely. I totally agree. And I think that that's actually really important because an internship, we're looking for students who are super motivated to come to work and to show up and you know, they're doing an atwill, right, this is not their full time employment job. So it's gonna make it a lot easier for them to be excited and motivated if they're actually interested in in what we're talking about.

Brad Grantham
So you're in an agency, you're in management, an agency, you put out an ad for internships, open internships, please send your resumes here. I can imagine and Chris and I have both been in that space that you're going to be overloaded with resumes from all over all different interests. So you've got this entire stack, can you walk us through? When you print out that stack? What happens next? A lot, sometimes these things just get lost in the ether, right? You never hear back? Or this, that and the other? What is your process and your agency's process? And how do you whittle it down?

Kaci Pollack
Yeah, that's a great question. And I actually love that question. Because we do, we're really processed at See Spark Go. So basically, we have an automated process where you apply and we, we actually and this is a tip I would give to maybe an intern manager or someone who's in this role at a different company that may be listening and looking to kind of, you know, revamp their intern program, we actually make our internship application sort of difficult. So they not only have to submit their resume, but they're also submitting writing samples as well as a creative pitch. They have to pitch themselves to us in a creative way. We we don't give a lot of boundaries, we want to see what they come up with. So students end up submitting videos or social media accounts or written essays, that kind of thing to kind of pitch themselves to us. So we want our application process to have multiple layers. So that Students who are applying are not just easily shooting over a resume, because it was one of 50 jobs they're applying to, we want them to, you know, actually be really interested and excited about applying for our job. So once we get those resumes, and you're right, we do get quite a number of them. Once we get those resumes, our first step is to, we have some initial criteria, right? So we have a, you know, some GPA parameters that we look for, we look for certain criteria around major, you know, you got to be in a major that's related to PR that, that sort of thing. So we have some initial criteria that kind of skims off the top right? Well, then once we're down to our core that we're like, okay, they've got the GPA, they've got the major, they've got all the prerequisites that we have a list of like a rubric that we go through, then we say, Okay, what we're looking for is a either prior experience, and it doesn't have to be professional experience in necessarily PR, but are they outside of themselves at all? So are they doing things outside of things that only benefit them? Are they are they working in any way? So we look for, you know, the classic example is a chick fil a employee, right? We know that someone who's worked at chick fil a is going to have a pretty strong work ethic and background, or student athletes, you know, we're looking for what are some things that kind of signaled to us that they would make a really hard worker, dedicated, motivated? Yeah, exactly, that they're engaged, that they're looking to do things that you know, take some work and take some motivation that you have to show up to every day.

Chris Shigas
So I guess the fortnight leaderboard that doesn't, doesn't do it for you.

Kaci Pollack
And not quite, not quite,

Brad Grantham
when I was growing up, when you were trying to get that internship, you will literally would do whatever it took to get that internship, you didn't care about the hours, you wanted that experience to move your career forward. And, you know, oh, as the years have progressed, you know, would you say those students are still just as hungry? As you know, we were 20 years ago, or do you think that's tapered off? What is the current crop of interns? What are they like attitude wise?

Kaci Pollack
Yeah, that's a great question. So I've had the privilege of working with several intern classes at this point. And I would say that they're just getting hungrier. What we've seen is that students realize, especially given the COVID pandemic, the students realize that getting experience in finding a company that's going to actually like, give you really beneficial, actual real life experience in this industry is hard to come by, especially during COVID. Because they, you know, company shut down, they stopped having interns, you know, interns can't come into the office. So I find that the ones who are wanting to do them now are super hungry. And that's also a quality we look for, right? We're looking for my boss, Andy. He's the CEO and co founder of our company, he's really invested in our intern program, too. And so he and I will sit down and we're looking at candidates, we want to see who's the horse ready to run right? When you open the gate, which are the which are the horses that are going to blast out of their running and which are the ones that are going to, you know, get a slow start.

Brad Grantham
So you've hired me, Casey, I'm here. I'm your intern, I'm ready to go ready, get out the barn and get to it. If you were to give me three tips that I need to remember, during my internship with your agency or anywhere else, what are those three things and why I

Kaci Pollack
love it, I would say my three tips are lead up, be enthusiastic. And remember that enthusiasm wins. And remember excellence over perfection. So I'll explain the first one lead up, we really truly believe and I truly just as a person personally believe that people can leave from whatever seat they're in, whether they're an intern, or the president of the company. So I'm looking for the students who want to come in and I really encourage our interns to come in and say what can I do that's going to make the person above me that's going to make their life a little bit easier. And that's what it means to lead up it means to think okay, my account leads or my supervisors, what can I do from my seat that's going to make their life a little easier, and make their work easier. And that shows that I'm having forethought for the clients and the work that I'm doing so just show us that you're you're able to lead up in that way. Because you really can lead from from any seat. I would say my next one which is to remember that enthusiasm always wins and to show up enthusiastic is to remember to be excited about the work you're doing and remember that this is a get to not have to situation. You know you signed up for this internship you want to be here show us that you want to be here show up every day ready to work, excited to dig in with an enthusiastic attitude and enthusiasm doesn't necessarily have to mean that you're loud and crazy. It just means that you have that posture of I get to do this today. Not that I have To where this is another thing I'm checking off my long list. And then third excellence over perfection. So we know students don't have experience, we know that they don't always know what they're doing, we hire ones that we think can learn quickly and are who are going to catch on quickly. And that you can go through our training process, which is extensive, but we're not looking for perfection, we're looking for a level of excellence in the work that you do, which communicates care, which communicates that you, you know, are going the extra mile to do the work to do your work well, but we're not looking for perfection. So I would tell students to get over the perfectionism stumbling block, and to just try to make their work really excellent.

Chris Shigas
Okay, Casey, I, for one, I'm a big believer in mentorship. I really do I take that part of my job very seriously. I also believe in sending the elevator down to lift other people up. But But I'm going to take a little bit of a gruff opinion here about my experience with interns, and I know some people love to work with interns, sometimes, personally, I can get perhaps maybe a little frustrated on the intern side, I choose not to use interns. While some of my employees really value that experience, to be brutally honest. And here's some of the reasons why I had my opinion, one, I don't think the people coming out of college today can write. My experience is they're very poor writers, and the ones who are good writers, right? Like it's a scholarly paper for a scientific journal, to a professor to, I don't think any of their work is client ready. And, and to that point, that means time to then go through their work and get it client ready. And then three, being able to do spend the time with an intern that makes it valuable for them, right. So they should end their internship with a good skill set that prepares them to have that entry level job in the profession. If you're taking on an intern, and you're not, you don't have the time to teach them, show them, get them prepared to work with them as a teacher, then I think it devalues the relationship both on the intern side and on your side. So now I know your agency has a really successful intern program. So So what would you say to a guy like me a grumpy, older veteran PR pro of Hey, look, this is how you really need to work your intern program.

Kaci Pollack
Yeah, no, okay, I kind of love that you are not fully sold yet. Because I'm on the complete opposite end. I'm like, the internships number one fan. I think that it's all about perspective, right? So for me, it's I'm thinking about the fact that running an internship program really is about grooming and, and developing the next the next generation of leaders of our industry. And that's really important to me, because, you know, this industry changes so quickly, every single day, there's new new trends and new things that we can be doing in our space. And I think that our our intern level students, and employees are the ones who are going to be the leaders of that. And so I really like to think about the fact that like, what you doing an internship is going to have impact on the full industry for years and years to come if you set it up well. So I think it's about that, I think I would tell you that there needs to be every company should have a person who's the dedicated intern person, right, um, which makes what those things that you were describing that can be kind of difficult, that makes those that makes it easier when you have a person who's there to train them to make sure that they know how to do the things that fall under their responsibilities, who's there to answer all their questions, as we know, interns tend to have a lot of questions, have that person in place to kind of feel that? And then I think it's all in your training, right? So, um, and in your in your recruitment, so you don't

Chris Shigas
just want them to be stapling papers, right? Like you want them to do real work that they can they can use, right. So as an employer as as a corporation, or as an agency, what is it that you can expect an intern to be able to do to really help?

Kaci Pollack
Yeah, well, even to your point a few minutes ago about, you know, students being able to write which is the number one skill you need to have in our industry, right? In our internship application process. Why we do make it so extensive, and we do have them send writing samples and we do have certain criteria that we're falling into, but then it all really comes in The training of the intern so when they come in their first week, is spent doing a super deep dive into all of the assignment types that they're going to be working on the things that they're going to be researching. So the core of our internship is writing, researching and reporting. So we want to make sure we're training them the way that the SSG way. So whatever way that your company does it, you need to be training them from day one, how to write how to research, how to report how to do those things at your company, so that they can be successful. And I think it's all in the training. Because you can, you can groom people into doing the work the way that you want them to do it. But you can't teach things like attitude and motivation and enthusiasm. And so those are the things we're really looking for. And then the rest of it, we really feel like we can teach in that first week. And I think it also, you know, comes from sharing the importance of, you know, development and mentorship with the rest of your team so that they understand the importance of taking the extra five minutes to walk through a pitch that an intern wrote with them, to help them learn and just kind of casting that vision for your company of, like I said, before, you know, we're getting a really unique opportunity to help develop and grow the next generation of leaders at our company, right. And we're also thinking through the internship as a pipeline builder for our own company, right? So we kind of think about it as in like, the farm system in baseball, where you have the minor league teams that then they feed into the major league teams, right. So think of it as you know, you're building your minor team right now. And the really strong ones are really strong interns are going to end up being the next generation of leaders, not only in PR, but at your company as well. So it makes sense to invest the time in it, because even if out of your 10 interns, you get three really solid, new employees out of it, who are going to come in, they already love your company, they already believe in the mission, they're already trained in the way to do the see spark go, are in how to do things to see spark go away. That's a huge win in terms of just culture and employee recruitment and engagement. So I would say just casting that vision is super important. important

Chris Shigas
right now, most PR programs at universities require internships of their students. And we've seen, you know, I don't know the latest data, but we've seen in a lot of states now they're starting to require the paid internships that that there are no unpaid internships, in some states, there may be still be unpaid internships, not that big of an issue in a corporation, but for a small agency. Right. But that that is an issue of, you know, are we going to have the if we're going to have these paid internships, then we're going to have to have much fewer interns than we used to, which means fewer people are actually getting the opportunity to learn their profession. So So what what's your take on the the paid internships versus the unpaid internships,

Kaci Pollack
so as you start go, we actually have a large internship program. So every semester we have anywhere from nine to 12, we call them support staff. So it's either interns or apprentices and our apprentices are just an elevated internship, a little bit more responsibility, it's someone who's already served as an intern for a semester and then gets tapped on the shoulder for that sort of promotion. Um, so that being said, you know, we actually really believe in the internship being beneficial and making sure that we, we actually don't offer a paid internship. And so what we do instead is we say, okay, we know that these students are coming to us. And they're giving their time to us in exchange for experience, and they're being compensated in the experience, they're gaining, because at our, at our agency, they're not stapling copies, and they're not getting coffee, they're writing press releases, and sometimes even listening, in some cases, or they're, you know, they're drafting the social media posts for the brands we work with. But obviously, there's editing and all of that, that goes into it, but they're getting real life experience. And so to do that, to kind of make that exchange, you know, they're compensated in an experience. Obviously, we offer class credit, we really encourage them to get class credit for it as compensation as well. But then what I would say to you is that we have gone out of our way to make sure that they leave our company, as, you know, developing professionals and so that they get a lot in exchange for giving their time not just the experience. So built in a mentorship program. So every student is paired with a mentor that they work with all semester long, and who ends up you know, being a really great resource for them even far past the internship. We also offer professional development courses throughout the semester. So we you know, host seminars in the mornings on topics that they're not teaching you in school, things like finances and health and wellness and stress management. So we're doing a lot above and beyond to really Pour into our interns because we know that they're here to get something from us in the same way that they're here to support our business.

Chris Shigas
Well, here's my advice to a media relations intern. And I say, look, if you can get into an agency, and write a press release, and distribute that press release, pitch that press release, and then get media coverage. And if you can leave that agency with a little binder, that shows the press release you wrote, it shows the media that you pitched, and it shows the results that you've got, then you're going to be a huge leg up on those entry level positions that you're applying for, versus your competitors. Is that in target with what you thinking?

Kaci Pollack
Absolutely. I think it's 100% in target. And I think that's one of the things we like to help our interns do is say, hey, you've done this internship for a semester to semester, I mean, we have interns who turn into apprentices. And then like, right now I've got two apprentices, which are that elevated intern role which that position is paid. But those two apprentices have been with us for six semesters of their college journey. So we've got these students who have spent a bulk of time with us at sea sparco. And so we really want to help them actually turn that into language to market themselves when they're applying for full time jobs after college. And so yeah, I think you're completely right, being able to take the hardcopy evidence and like, here's what I've done, here's what I've accomplished, here are the results of that and show an employer that is huge. On the flip side, if it's okay, I'll tell you too. I love seeing intern applications where a student goes out of their way to find a way to get experience, even if they've never had a real internship. So I always tell potential students if they're like, how do I gain in experience? If I have never had an internship before I say you go and you make your own opportunities, right? So I love to tell students like if there's a nonprofit that you're passionate about, if there's a your mom's company, if it's you know, your uncle's business, whatever it is, go to them and say, Hey, can I try drafting a press release for you, and can I catch it and see if I can get you any coverage. And then there you go, you've got your binder, and now you've got experience on your resume to then even get your initial internship.

Chris Shigas
I love the nonprofit ankles a great thing you volunteer, you do some good work in your community. And at the same time, you help build your own resume I one cause dear to me is the Make A Wish Foundation. And boy that there's a nonprofit with these amazing stories to tell, it's a way that you can really do some good in your community. And at the same time, you gain that experience that you wouldn't have had otherwise.

Kaci Pollack
Absolutely. And I would also tell students to in the vein of organizations and nonprofits, figure out what you can get involved in on your campus too. So get involved in the public relations, student society, the prssa, get involved in a nonprofit organization on campus and join the PR committee for that, you know, there are other ways to get experience on your resume than just a traditional internship.

Chris Shigas
I would say also, one last kind of parting thought on my side, when you have that opportunity, and you're around these professionals. Look for a mentor, look, look for someone that you can check in with and I'm very, I take a serious devotion to making sure that I'm helping younger people on on a on a personal level that they can help them through their careers, they can have honest talks with me about their career path and problems or challenges. And it's important for an intern to know that there are a lot of executives out there who take that role seriously. And it's not an inconvenience, it's not a hammer on your time, it's actually something that that's important for people in the industry to do

Kaci Pollack
100,000% cannot agree more. And I think that's something we also encourage our students all the time, like, like I mentioned, they get paired with a mentor of a formal mentor during through our mentorship program, but we always tell them, we say, go out on a limb and ask any member of our team to grab coffee with you. In fact, make it a little competition with yourself and see how many of our team members you can meet with before the end of the semester, and build those relationships because those relationships will then serve you far past the internship. And that's something our team is really good about too. And again, I think that comes from casting vision and helping our team understand the importance of pouring into our college students and it becomes something that's really fun for me and my team members, my fellow full time team members to do is to see our students you know, come in as as one type of professional and leave, you know, much more ready for the career world than they were when they got to us and that's really fun and it's always great to stay in touch. with them, I have several students who, who have left our program but who have done a great job at keeping in touch with me. And, you know, calling me and asking me for advice still. In fact, just a week ago, I talked to one of my previous interns who was debating whether or not to take a new job, and she called me and we talked about it. And that's so honoring to me and see spark go to know that we were able to build that sort of foundation with students like that, and I love it. It's so fun.

Chris Shigas
Great. Kaci, thank you so much for joining us on PR wars today.

Kaci Pollack
Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me.

Chris Shigas
You can reach out to Brad and me on PR wars, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn channels. I promise you, we will answer everyone. And on behalf of Brad Grantham and the entire PR wars network. I want to thank Kaci Pollack, talent and culture manager for See.Spark.Go. And do me a favor. If you're a PR executive. Don't forget the people who helped you get there. Now it's your turn to make an impact for the next generation. Now go get 'em.

When you engage in international public relations, what is lost in translation? On today's PR Wars podcast, we talk to Nick Haigh with British-based BAE Systems Applied Intelligence about the differences of public relations across the pond.

• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify Podcasts
• Google Podcasts

A.I. generated show transcript: 

Show open: “We want the truth.” “We want the truth.” “We want the truth.” “I have news for everybody. Get over it.”

Announcer
It’s time. Welcome to PR Wars coming at you live from Atlanta, Georgia. Now, here is your host… Chris Shigas.

Chris Shigas
Hello, everyone and thanks for listening to PR Wars. I'm Chris Shigas. When you engage in international public relations, what is lost in translation? Even between the United States in the UK, we might speak the same language, but the European to American cultural divide, can change the way you shape perceptions and change beliefs. Today on PR Wars, fellow communications globetrotter, Brad Grantham, and I talked to the head of global external communications at BAE Systems Applied Intelligence. They're based in England, and we talk about public relations across the pond, Nick Haigh, thanks for joining PR Wars today.

Nick Haigh
Thanks Chris for having me. Great speaking to you.

Chris Shigas
Today, we're talking about international PR, and maybe some of the differences in the UK to the United States and you work for a great Corporation. That's global with a big us presence, but also a huge UK company. So kind of off the bat, can you tell us some of the largest differences between US PR and UK PR?

Nick Haigh
I mean, it's it's a fascinating question, because for two countries that are so similar in terms of culture, and language, and all of the shamans same ideals that we share, there are an incredible amount of differences when it comes to PR. I mean, perhaps it perhaps if I start a little bit and just talk about England for a moment, and how PR generally works in England, our media is very London centric. So England, as I'm sure you know, compared to America is a tiny, tiny country, we only really have one or two large cities that we've compared to anything that you have. And as a result, our nation is very London centric. And this means that the media are all based out of London. I mean, there's been a lot of efforts to try and diversify, but they are all based in London,

Chris Shigas
it helps for media tours, right? You go to one city.

Nick Haigh
Indeed, exactly. And as a result, you know, all the media is based there, as you saying it's great. So if you have a London office, it is a lot easier to do media. And that's one of the interesting things as well. So our media is set up in quite a, I don't know, it's a unique way. But in terms of our print media, you know, the traditional print media, we've got quite a rigid system, whether there are the Nationals there significant national newspapers, which are very well respected. Telegraph, The Guardian times, we have the tabloids along the lines of the Sun star there, the Daily Mail that is sent popular online. And then below that you sort of have the regional media, which doesn't really have much of a foothold anymore. It's pretty much all about on national media, you know, the tabloids and the broadsheets, as we call them their national newspapers. And then of course, I'm sure you've heard of the BBC, which is in his own independent category. It's probably one of the things that England and the UK is most known for. And fascinatingly, with the BBC, they are our broadcaster chief broadcaster, but also probably the most popular news website. And the fascinating thing about them is they have to be politically neutral, they can't favor one side or the other. And the best thing about it is if you are left leaning, you will be convinced that they favor the right. If you are right leaning, you'll be sure that they favor the left because ultimately they serve like a governmental public goods service. Right. If that the position is effectively it's a public charter, so they have a responsibility to inform their news in a non sensational way. They have to be honest, they're, you know, very different to our tabloids, which are notoriously awful. And yeah, they have to be held to a very high regard. Very proper nuisance.

Chris Shigas
You know, Brad, what it sounds like when I was a news producer in Alabama, if I did five seconds more of Auburn coverage than University of Alabama, I was getting phone calls into the newsroom.

Brad Grantham
Yeah, yeah. And and to be fair, over the past 25 years, I would almost say with the addition of fox news to cable, you know, in the 90s we have seen you know, that erode years ago over the years. You know, I'm looking at a picture above my desk and as Walter Cronkite says, reelect the most trusted man in America. That was from the late 60s and You have three, you know, three networks, right? ABC, CBS, NBC, you took pretty much what they said to the bank back then. But yeah, I mean, I almost wish we could kind of go back in some sense to, you know, well, we can watch this, trust this, that they've done as much due diligence as they can, and they're not partisan. So I do admire that about the BBC.

Chris Shigas
Absolutely. So when you're putting together some some media pitches in the UK, and I guess the most basic form of PR is, is the press release, right? And so what kind of considerations do you have in the UK, when you're putting together these press releases, and you're blasting them out

Nick Haigh
in the press release is fascinating, because a lot of people say the press release is dead, it doesn't work. And to an extent that, you know, there is some truth in that, but you the value of the press release is still significant. If you are announcing a contract, when you know your most traditional probably PR output contract, when you've got to do a press release is what will cut through the noise get shared the most. And another interesting thing about press releases these days are they have a lot of value, I think on social media, and particularly for marketing purposes. So whilst a lot of journalists in the UK are probably sick to death of preferent, press releases and may not pay that much attention, certainly to engage your external audience via social channels, they are quite well received and well regarded. But I mean, your main thing these days with getting press coverage is you've got to build those personal relationships with journalists, you've got to identify the outlets, you want to get into the right journalists in the right outlet. And you've got to make sure you've got the right story that we'll be interested in. So it's, it's a lot about relationship building, and it's taking a targeted approach to who you want to get into.

Brad Grantham
Well, we'll get we'll go into how you cut through the clutter, again, from a UK perspective, versus the US, because I'm sure there's a lot of differences there. But what has been your biggest frustration in dealing with American media versus European media, like what has just left you either dumbfounded or you just go? Well, this normally doesn't happen.

Nick Haigh
The first thing that I think surprises everyone in Britain, and this will sound stupid, is just how massive America is and how how different the media is like, you know, we've got the BBC, you know, the Telegraph, The Guardian, they're read in the entire country, whereas in America, like I don't have as many options to reach all of America. You know, I compare it to musicians, when they're trying to crack America, they have to take it step by step. And I think we've got to take the same approach that we want to hit New York, we got to focus on the New York press. We want to hit California, we got to find the revised California impresses, it's not like we can go to an a, an equivalent sort of publication, although, of course, in the, in the American times, New York Times sorry, New York Times,

sure. Your times, I assure that has the gravitas on a on a statewide level and others do as well, I'm sure but yeah, biggest challenge is taking that state approach rather than a national approach.

Chris Shigas
It's like 50 countries, right? And you look at a paper, some of the papers, My hometown is Atlanta, Georgia, that's circulation rate is is larger than a lot of country's major newspaper. Or if you look in Texas, like the Houston Chronicle, same thing, huge hit huge circulations reaches very segmented. From a from a b2b standpoint, you can reach certain industries and certain cities because certain US cities, focus on industries, maybe Houston's oil or gas, maybe Charlotte is banking. So I agree with you. I also think one of the challenges in your role as doing international comms is just some simple things like timing, at what time do you put out a press release? Because if you're going to put it out London time in the morning, before the markets open, that really leaves California half a day behind. Right?

Nick Haigh
Yeah, it's, it's, it's so awkward. And then when you factor in, you know, if you want to hit Australia and Singapore as well, you just get stuck. It's, it's, it's really hard. I mean, there's, there's just so many differences as well, like, if you know, in London, if we want to do a big press event to kick off a campaign, we might host them at our London office, or we may rent a nice venue in London and invite journalists along. And you know, they'll generally turn up they don't have to travel far they know they're going to get some good news and good content, which they can write about. What we find is quite different in America. Like if I was to invite someone to our office, I don't know if they'd turn up. Whereas I have to take a different approach, which we do in England as well. But you know, I have to hit the streets back to go directly to their offices with our spokesperson to talk to them and it's a slightly different approach, but it's it's always interesting, and I think a lot of Brits will struggle when they try to do what they do.

In the UK and try and apply the exact same methodology to America, it just, it doesn't always work. It's very different. In your experience, who do you find to be the more determined reporter. And what I mean by that is a reporter who wants, you know, a large amount of data or a larger amount of proof points for whatever you're talking about, Would you say that's the American reporter, or the European reporter?

I mean, Europe is fascinating, because actually, each country in Europe is completely different. The French media, the German media, the British media, all completely different with different interests and approaches. So again, it's hilarious to compare America and Europe is hard. Because it's different. It's a bit like comparing England and you know, all of the states of America. So it's quite tricky.

Brad Grantham
So one of the differences I've noticed over the past couple of years is universities and America, Canada, have added a large amount of degreed programs in public relations, which is a shift from the journalism programs that you know, 20 years ago existed maybe at a marketing minor or even a public relations minor back then now it's become fully specialized degree programs. Would you say that trend is continuing across the pond to the UK as a more general degrees that still exists, and you have to get like a special certificate or something in public relations?

Nick Haigh
Yeah, I think you're ahead of us as America often is, unfortunately, I don't think we have those specialist degrees in PR yet. I mean, it's a long time since I went to university, I could be wrong. But in general, when you're getting into PR, a lot of people will have marketing degrees, they will have English degrees, and a lot of journalism degrees as well. And of course, former journalists do flocked VR quite readily. But in general, we, yeah, you would, when you get into PR, you're more likely to follow different training programs put on by organizations such as the Chartered Institute of VR, I don't know if you have the same in America, but they are very respected and trusted bodies, you spend time with them, gaining qualifications, attending different conferences, to upskill yourself and learn the relevant tricks of the trade, you can then apply

Brad Grantham
to your job and your craft. It will be very similar to RP RSA, I would assume when you're when you're doing and here's another difference between our countries. You know, and you've alluded to it a little bit earlier. But when you're doing media training, for spokesperson for, you know, the BBC, versus a media training for, you know, let's say msnbc over here or Bloomberg Television, talk about the difference in that approach, when you're trying to prep that spokesperson for you know, vastly different mediums. Yeah,

Nick Haigh
that's it's a real challenge, because I find the key thing to all media training is preparation. And it sounds obvious, but you've got to know what you want to say before you go in. And that's what we spend a lot of time doing in our media training sessions. It's about making sure you've got the key messages lined up knowing what you want to achieve by doing an interview, not just going in and trying to wing

Chris Shigas
it, and hoping they ask good questions, right? Yeah,

Nick Haigh
you got to go in, you've got to know what you want to say what you want to get across and prepare for the awkward questions, particularly in the UK, and I'm sure in the States, if you're not saying anything interesting, they will start the journalists will start asking harder, more probing questions. So you've got to know how to steer away from that and navigate away, spit back to your comfort zone and make sure that you're actually giving them something that they can use, because it's a two way conversation, right, you've got to be able to, they've got a job, they want to get some good content, to fill their website to fill their newspaper and to go on the television. And that's what we've got to train our guys to make sure they can do make an interesting, short, snappy sound bites, you know, it's all that good stuff.

Chris Shigas
One unique difference that I've seen in European journalists and us journalists. You know, obviously, the goal here is to build a relationship, right? You want to build a relationship with these journalists and and beyond just sending them emailing them a press release. Most mainstream, US outlets have very strict guidelines about what a PR person can pay for. So with the Wall Street Journal, I can't buy them dinner. I can't provide their travel to go to one of my locations to see a news story. really can't give them anything. I found that there's a lot of media in Europe, where they can go on a media tour, they can they can accept travel as part of the story. I think it's changing a little bit in the us because we have more and more freelancers, and they're writing for multiple outlets and they can actually Some of these things. So tell me about the UK? Are you able to buy dinner for a PR person? Are you able to give travel?

Nick Haigh
It's so fascinating question. So speaking personally, I would be terrified about buying dinner for a journalist, not just because the journalists might not be able to accept it, but all of our own capital, the company you work for have a very strict rules on ethical behavior, and what is it spend with a supplier, and a journalist would probably fall under that, you know, finding things. So we have to be completely aboveboard. So you know, I might buy someone a cup of coffee, but I wouldn't really want to do anything else. Again, you know, traditional press trips, you know, they're not as common these days. I mean, some industries will still do a sports industry will do entertainment, you know, computer game industry, they will probably fly journalists around the world to do something exciting. But your traditional, you know, London based media, you'd probably expect them just to travel to your office or to the venue, you're going to, you would put on like a bit of coffee, some food breakfast, if it's a breakfast briefing lunch, if it's over lunch, you'd be a good host. But certainly you'd I don't think it wouldn't be common to pay for someone to come to travel to your site. That would be very unusual. Okay.

Brad Grantham
I just I just hope you wouldn't serve blood pudding or what is that? black pudding? Yeah, that's that's just rank. It's a delicacy. But it's the right one.

Chris Shigas
Yeah, but Louisiana doesn't have any rank food right.

Brad Grantham
Now we just have we have alligator alligator don't get mixed started on alligators. We've gone through a challenging year for all of us. I mean, we've all been affected in one way or COVID 19. What would you say has changed for you? And perhaps some of your colleagues or former colleagues? And the way they think of PR going forward? I mean, what will you do differently going forward?

Nick Haigh
I mean, not not really in terms of tactics, but the biggest impact is, is working from home. So I mean, then, I feel like that's probably more common in the states already. But in the UK, it's traditional, you go to the office, you do your hours you go home. So that's been a really big change. And I think for journalists as well, then similar, though, I mean, again, journalists probably work from home a bit more than traditional office workers. But that's been the biggest change. So finding ways to get a hold of journalists has been a bit harder, I found, I mean, you know, you have your normal check ins, you might catch up with people, invite them over to your office for a coffee, you can't do any of that. So it's harder to have those basic catch ups that you would have with your regular contacts. So that's, that's been a real challenge. So you got to work hard, again, to almost to create the news to find something that will be of interest to your contacts to share with them. So we spent a lot of time trying to develop thought leadership, which is a terrible buzzword that everyone uses. But we really focus a lot on thought leadership. So giving them something interesting to work with. An interesting idea. I thought leadership stuff is some of the things I've found that hasn't really worked that great in America, I don't know what you think, Brad, but I think in the UK, it won't surprise you. We think it's great. It's brilliant, we've done something great. It's gonna work everywhere. And we take it to the states doesn't necessarily,

Brad Grantham
but let's talk about that. You know, I think the thought leadership stuff in the UK and in Europe in general, I think the press is a little bit more. I say this relaxed, as, as opposed to the US because the US changes by the second, you've got all the competing stations and networks trying to one up each other. And that's what they're focused on. So almost from a US perspective, you know, if you really want to make an impression, you almost have to news jack, the coverage find a way how can we get in on this topic at this moment? Do we have something substantive to share? And can we get in that conversation?

Chris Shigas
I agree with you about the newsjacking comment for sure. And you know, the pace of the news cycle in the US is is fast pace. It's it's really dominated by US politics and some current events, whether it be things like Black Lives Matter and protests like that. And and the US News doesn't is not interested at all in international, you do not see the way the BBC covers news. internationally. You don't you do not see that in the US. And that, that leads to a perhaps some ignorance in the US part about what's going on in the world. And the closest thing we may have to that, frankly, is the PBS news hour, right?

Brad Grantham
I mean, base to a compared to a BBC broadcast, potentially. So Nick,

Unknown Speaker
So Nick Haigh,

Chris Shigas
thank you so much for joining us on PR wars.

Nick Haigh
Thanks, Chris. And Brad is great spend time with you. Great to chat about PR.

Chris Shigas
You can listen to a new episode of PR wars every Sunday night at 8pm Eastern. On behalf of Brad Grantham and the entire PR wars team worldwide. I'd like to thank Nick Haigh, head of global external communications at BAE Systems Applied Intelligence. Do me a favor. When you're reaching out to media internationally, play on their terms. Don't expect them to adjust to your culture. Look at your timing, the relevance and don't ignore the differences… embrace them. Now go get 'em.

PR Wars was selected as a Top PR Podcast You Must Follow in 2021 by Feedspot.

Is Wikipedia in your communication plan? On today's PR Wars podcast, we talk with Josh Greene, CEO of The Mather Group about strategies to make the world's largest reference site work for you.

• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify Podcasts
• Google Podcasts

A.I. generated show transcript: 

Show open: “We want the truth.” “We want the truth.” “We want the truth.” “I have news for everybody. Get over it.”

Announcer
It’s time. Welcome to PR Wars coming at you live from Atlanta, Georgia. Now, here is your host… Chris Shigas.

Chris Shigas
Hey, everyone, welcome to PR wars. I'm Chris Shigas. Look it up on Wikipedia. I mean, how many times a day do I say that to myself when I'm searching? Chances are if someone wants to learn about your brand, the likely take a look at your Wikipedia page. It's the largest reference site in the world. It attracts 1.7 billion unique visitors a month. In many cases, Wikipedia is completely ignored in public relations and communication plans. Well, that stops today. Our guest on today's PR Wars is the leader of a digital marketing agency. And, one of its specialties is Wikipedia. So welcome to the show, the CEO of the Mather Group. Josh Greene, thanks for joining PR Wars today.

Josh Greene
Chris, thanks for having me.

Chris Shigas
This is something I'm really excited about. Because I've been in public relations for decades. And this is probably the most important marketing tool for your brand. That is usually completely ignored. Wikipedia. I mean, that's the first place people go when they want to learn about you, there's so much mystery around the proper ways to strategically position your Wikipedia page. Or even if you can, or should influence your Wikipedia page. So so so tell me you have a great Wikipedia program at your agency and tell me where do you start with clients who are looking for counsel,

Josh Greene
usually, it's an education process, before we do anything in terms of here's what's possible, here's what's not possible, and here's a reasonable expectation of what you might be able to achieve with your page. And for a lot of clients, they just want to get to neutral. They know Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. It's not designed to list the 43 industry awards that you've won, okay, and they just want to have it be balanced and neutral. And most of the time, if we're talking to them, that's probably not what's going on with their page. So, you know, a big driving factor for a lot of people is just how do we deal with this? What can we do? And what can we expect? Because oftentimes, it's an internal messaging problem, as much as it is an external facing problem.

Chris Shigas
So I assume I can't just write an advertisement give it to you, and you're going to post it on my Wikipedia page.

Josh Greene
No, no, that wouldn't work, and would probably lead to a lot of disappointment on your end.

Chris Shigas
All right. So so so as far as level setting, and getting those expectations, right, what, what should I expect out of my Wikipedia page?

Josh Greene
And what part can I control? The first thing to keep in mind is Wikipedia is designed to be very transparent. So you can see who's editing a page. And all the citations that a page relies upon should be visible. So you can go back and see, say, each of the 19, citations or footnotes that were used to create your page, and make sure they're legitimate sources, so they should all be legitimate sources, which we can talk about what sources but you should be able to see them, they should be legitimate. And then your expectation generally is you should have a page that's that's similar to how it would be written in an encyclopedia, very, very balanced, very neutral. Sort of laying out the facts about your organization, your company, your CEO, whatever the topic might be.

Chris Shigas
So let's start with who I don't know if this the right word deserves a Wikipedia page. So maybe you have a new brand. Maybe you have a new product, a new company, maybe you're a publicist, and you represent a B level C level celebrity or what at what level Do you can you expect that you are worthy of a Wikipedia page?

Josh Greene
So Wikipedia has its own definition, and it's based on notability. And unfortunately, Wikipedia definition does not line up with anyone's idea about their own notability. at all in the real world. So Wikipedia definition is you have to have a lot of third party articles written about you. So interesting. That's what we do in PR. Right? Right. But it needs to be an inner, it needs to be something where it's not an interview with the subject. So if someone's interviewing the CEO of a company, that doesn't count, because it's viewed as a self serving, generating your own content about yourself. And so that that makes it very challenging. And if you're quoted in an article, that doesn't count either, so it needs to be sort of a neutral third party profile. And I think the guideline is, is five or six of those out there. And then there's an approval process as well. So actually getting a new page created from scratch and actually live and published is one of the more challenging things to do on Wikipedia. It's also partly driven by the fact that many of the people who gravitate towards a free crowd sourced encyclopedia are not the biggest fans of companies. So that that adds a degree of difficulty to getting a page set up as well. There's a little bit of a negative feeling towards companies setting up new Wikipedia pages, I see,

Chris Shigas
I see. Let's just say you either have an existing Wikipedia page, or you go through this process to get yourself a page. Now, obviously, you provide a service for your clients, can companies edit their own Wikipedia page? Or do they need a third party to do that?

Josh Greene
You are not supposed to edit your own page, the absolute white hat role in Wikipedia is there's a talk page associated with every Wikipedia page. And what you're supposed to do is go to that page declare your conflict of interest. I am Josh green of company x. And I would like these three sentences change to the following our number of employees is now two x our revenue for 2020 versus 2018. And then the theory is that a Wikipedia editor will come across your request, make those edits, evaluate them, and publish them to the page. As you can probably see any system relying on the kindness of the internet to get you to where you want to go, is not designed for long term success. So there's, there's some challenges going that route. But that is that is how Wikipedia as an entity feels companies should engage and sort of post on the talk page and make requests for edits.

Chris Shigas
So when, when a brand or a company is looking at its page, at a minimum, what would you expect them that they should expect that they should be able to accomplish with your help or the help of an agency? Or what should they expect to be able to use strategically that Wikipedia page for their business?

Josh Greene
I think the most important strategic thing is keeping in mind that the first two sentences of your Wikipedia page gets syndicated all over the internet. They're the first two lines when Wikipedia is in your search results. There the first two lines in the knowledge panel on the top right of a Google search when you see that, and Google's even integrating it into some other areas of their products. So if you've got those first two sentences, they should describe what your company does, as opposed to you know, company x is located in the Dulles tech corridor near Dulles Airport, 30 miles from Washington DC, versus you know, company x is a leading provider of home automation systems. One of those is a lot more helpful to have show up in a lot of different places. Absolutely. The other thing companies should expect is usually there's an info box on the right side, that sort of a just the facts type of place, revenue employees do. And then there's usually a table of contents that sort of shows you how the page has been organized over time. And that's something that you can take a look at usually and get a feel for whether or not there are issues that you might need to address. For example, if in the table of contents, you see something titled executive compensation, that's probably negative there. There very few Wikipedia pages that highlight how fairly companies pay their executives. So when you when you sort of browse through that you can get a feel for, you know how Wikipedia is, is as an entity treating your page at the moment. And then you can sort of dig into the specifics of different editors who might be involved in your page. Now,

Chris Shigas
now, this next question, I think, is intriguing. Because, you know, I just learned talking with you that really managing a Wikipedia page is really a process. It's not, my original impression was, you write a piece, it looks like an About Us page on your website, you post it, and then you forget about it, and you live there forever. But But there's more to it than that, and why you might need some professional assistance, can you tell me about some of the process of maintaining a page?

Josh Greene
Yeah, the biggest, the biggest challenge with a page is that it can get edited at any time by any Wikipedia editor, of whom they're 2030 40,000, maybe many more. And while sometimes those edits can get reverted right away, other edits can stick around a long time. So the challenge is, many people in PR are used to, you know, hammering out a press release, you go through 17 rounds of revisions, you finally got everyone more or less comfortable, or you just run into a deadline and have to put it out. The challenge with this is your final project, or product can change at the whim of a bunch of people on the internet. So it's important to think about this as something even if you're not actively adding a ton of content as sort of a living document that can get changed. And you need to be aware of that. So a lot of times companies will say, I just want to update my page, or, you know, I just want to publish the page and like you said, be done with it. The question then becomes what happens if someone changes it when you're done? Like, you know, are you going to be happy about that, or not happy about that. Most of the time, we talk to people who are not happy about that. Because something has sort of changed on the page. They don't like for whatever reason,

Chris Shigas
lots of PR people are used to having to deal with crisis issues and crisis comms and from time to time, a company may be engaged in a controversy. And then Hello, it's on their Wikipedia page. I come to Josh and I say, Josh, how do I get this off my page,

Josh Greene
usually, the first thing that we'll say is, you're not going to be able to get it off your page, unless it's completely incorrect. So it's much like crisis comes Something happened, the important thing is how you reacted to it. So there's opportunities to explain what the company did to rectify the situation, there's generally an ability to get rid of inflammatory language around it. Or disproportionately long coverage, oftentimes, you'll get huge blocks of text from someone who's clearly been affected by something. So most of the time, you can work towards getting it towards, you know, a reasonable standpoint, you know, that there's an example of United dragged a passenger off a plane, you know, you can say, a passenger was removed, or you can reference it as a self immolation of Sterling proportions, which was on their page for a while, you know, there was an incident, you can't really pretend there wasn't, but you also don't need to have that degree of negativity around it. So a lot of times, if it's crisis comms, you're sort of Wikipedia is trailing after that. Versus in some cases, if someone's Wikipedia page gets edited in a vacuum, that can be the crisis sort of unto itself.

Chris Shigas
If I'm a work for a PR agency, or I'm in corporate comms for business, and I go over to my client or to my company's Wikipedia page, what should I look for? To determine whether or not we need help? The easy rule of thumb is if you wins when you see any payment, that's right, that's usually a good sign.

Josh Greene
You know, or the other one is if your client CEO says, Hey, this needs to be fixed, that's that's the other sign you've got a problem. Yeah. But usually, it's not a judgment call in that it's usually a pretty obvious if you've got some kind of situation. You need to Do with when Wikipedia editors are ticked off? They're not very subtle. So it's gonna be pretty obvious if you look at a page and go, Wow, that's, that's rough. Yeah, that's that's probably a sign. There's something there that maybe shouldn't be there.

Chris Shigas
You got any special secret tips for helping win over a Wikipedia editor?

Josh Greene
I wish I knew. However, you know, the thing that that's really important to keep in mind is there are 10s of 1000s of editors editing pages at any one time. So a mistake I see a lot of companies make is sort of saying, Yeah, we tried to update Wikipedia two years ago, it didn't work. And they just sort of assume they're done. And in reality, that was one editor on one day, you know, said no, or said something negative. And they might have gotten a totally different answer the next day, that editor might not have known a role that would have let them publish something. So that's, I think, one one, maybe not secret, but something that that oftentimes gets overlooked. And then the other thing is, there is a talk page, where you can address editors, and there are rules that Wikipedia will follow, even if it eventually takes a while to get there. So I would say just, unemotional discussion tends to do much better than then pulling in, you know, sort of the passion around a particular issue.

Chris Shigas
Great. Well, hey, Josh Greene, CEO of the Mather Group. Thank you so much for joining us on PR wars

Josh Greene
today. Thanks for having me.

Chris Shigas
You can join us every Sunday night at 8pm eastern for a new episode a PR wars. And make sure you come talk to us on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. So on behalf of the PR Wars team, I want to thank Josh Greene CEO of the Mather Group, and do me a favor. Don't abandon your Wikipedia page. Make sure Wikipedia is part of your communication plan. You're the caretaker of your brand. So make sure it's in good hands. Now, go get 'em.

PR Wars was selected as a Top PR Podcast You Must Follow in 2021 by Feedspot.

Influencers can have stronger readership than a news publication. And, today's influencer is a savvy content creator. On today's PR Wars podcast, we talk with Jason Falls author of "Winfluence: Reframing Influencer Marketing to Ignite your Brand."

• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify Podcasts
• Google Podcasts

A.I. generated show transcript: 

Show open: “We want the truth.” “We want the truth.” “We want the truth.” “I have news for everybody. Get over it.”

Announcer
It’s time. Welcome to PR Wars coming at you live from Atlanta, Georgia. Now, here is your host… Chris Shigas.

Chris Shigas
Hey, everyone. I'm Chris Shigas. Welcome back to PR Wars. Thanks for listening. Are you stuck in a rut? Using that same old, dwindling and boring media list? Well, let's try something new and make your plan fun again. Many influencers can have stronger readership than a news publication. And today's influencer is a savvy content creator. And they target specific audiences for your brand. On today's PR wars podcast, fellow public relations bellwether, Brad Grantham and I talk with one of the more engaging digital marketing keynote speakers in the world. He's spoken on three continents, including events like SXSW. He's also the author of a new book, Winfluence: Reframing Influencer Marketing to Ignite your Brand. And you can find this book at Jasonfalls.com. Jason Falls, thanks for joining us on PR Wars.

Jason Falls
Thank you. It's great to be here.

Chris Shigas
influencer marketing, it's something that's kind of a hot term, and some people are engaging, some people are a little afraid. Your book goes through some of the do's and don'ts of you know, some of the perils of influencer marketing, but then how do we do this? Right? So So let's talk about maybe at the start, when you know, nothing, you're used to maybe engaging with media, right? And now all of a sudden, you want to engage with influencers? Where do I start?

Jason Falls
That's a really good question. And the book kind of spells it out, because I write books, and I've written a couple of books before and I always write from the strategic perspective, because I think business owners appreciate, you know, a list of things to do is great, but I can blog, I can search search for that and find it on a blog somewhere. So you always start with your goal. And always start with you know, your your business goal and what you're trying to accomplish there. And your marketing obviously should ladder up to that, and then your influence marketing should ladder up to, to whatever that is. So, you know, if your goal is to drive awareness, then, you know, you want to find influential people online. And I would argue offline as well, we can touch on that in a second. But you're gonna want to find influential people who have a lot of reach a big audience, right? Because that's going to help you drive more awareness about what you're doing. If you want to drive foot traffic to a specific, you know, geographic areas, retail location, somebody with 250,000 followers on Instagram, who lives in LA isn't necessarily going to help you, you need to look at local influencers, micro influencers, people that are going to affect the people in the geographic footprint that you're looking for. So you really have to kind of start with your goal, what is it? What is it we're trying to do? And what audience are we trying to do it with or do it for and then find the people who are influential over that audience. And if you do it that way, it's just like you sort of dialing in the type of media outlet that you might want to target for PR outreach is, is well, if we're going to try to reach people in Atlanta, Georgia, then we're going to, you know, target the newspaper there. We're going to target the the radio stations and the television stations there. With our outreach. You can do the same thing with influencers, you just have to figure out which ones are influential for the people in Atlanta.

Brad Grantham
Talk to us about, you know, the generation that's here, now graduating college, and universities across the nation have grown up, essentially with influencers over the past, you know, 510 years, that's been part of their life. For us. We're a little bit older, but not much. Except for Chris. Walk us through, you know, how this all started with influencer marketing, like what, what was the timeframe here? Are we talking like 2010 2005 or earlier than that? What's your what's your take on that?

Jason Falls
Well, you know, influencer marketing, it dates back centuries. I mean, when you think of Josiah Wedgwood, who, you know, was a potter in England and you know, Princess Caroline, or one at Queen Caroline, one of the royalty actually, you know, saw his work and decided to commission him to you know, make her You know teacups and saucers and things like that. And so you know, he would then he then turned around and said, I'm selling, you know, the Queen's pottery. And all of a sudden, he was using an influential person in that society to sell his wares. And so it literally goes back and, and to be honest with you, the whole point of influence is really to kind of tell people, we need to reframe how we talk about it and think about it. And so when I talk about reframing, influencer marketing, I think we need to take the AR off. And let's not focus on the influencer, the people, or the now let's focus on what we're trying to do the verbs strategic purpose, the influence, right? So influence marketing, if you look at it, through that perspective, everything we do is influence marketing, public relations, people have been influenced marketers for centuries, as long as PR, you know, PR goes back a couple of centuries now, I think,

Chris Shigas
right? It's how do you how do you get a third party to talk about your

Jason Falls
exactly how do you get a third party to talk about your stuff, that's what you're doing. You're trying to find someone who can convince an audience to take action, or to think differently, and convince them to help you tell that audience to take action around your brand, your product, your thing, or think differently about whatever your thing is. And so if you kind of trace the lineage of it, in the social media terms, it obviously dates back to the early days of social media in the late 90s, and early 2000s. But it really kind of became a thing in the mid 2000s, when bloggers started building audiences for themselves online that were bigger than some media outlets. And from probably 2005 to 2010, you had this sort of surge of bloggers and people on Twitter and a couple of the other nascent social networks, that started to accumulate audiences that were competing with the audience sizes of daily newspapers in some cities. And so you you go through the the advent of the of in 2005, we had YouTube came out, I think 2003 was when LinkedIn came out, Instagram didn't really start until 2000. I forget the year I think was 2009 or 1011, somewhere in there. But as the social media networks all came to the forefront, and you have these, you know, bloggers, and then you know, tweeters if you want to call them that, and then facebookers, and then instagramers, were all people saying, hey, if I can collect enough of an audience here, I can turn that around and turn it into selling them products are turned into partnering with brands to talk about products. And so again, it became this whole movement online with social media, that was taking a little bit of attention away from traditional media and creating a new channel a new space for brands to play. And that's kind of what they've done. And that's kind of where we are today.

Brad Grantham
I'm the CEO of marketing for brand. And I say alright, team, I want you to come up with a full PR and influencer plan. Okay, great. Here's the product that we're doing. Here's our launch date, you guys, let's figure this out. Go ahead and present something to me in two weeks. The influencer side of things, as we've seen over the past couple of years can also be very tricky. My question to you is when you're looking at those potential influencers, to compliment your PR plan, or the marketing plan, how do you vet some of those influencers? Because we've seen some bad examples over the years of Jared from subways? What are some of the others? How far back? Do you go to vet these potential influencers? And what are your criteria, as you're recommending this potentially, to your boss or an organization?

Jason Falls
Sure, I think in general, you know, you're definitely going to want to use a combination of things. First of all, depending on the scale of your program, the influence marketing tools out there, they range in costs, but you're going to want to find a database that allows you to at least identify potential influence partners. So you know, all the people out there that have a certain number of followers or are in a certain topic area, or maybe even in a certain certain geography. And you know, you get a list going just like you would go into a media database for PR and pull a list of potential media outlets, they're not all going to be relevant. They're not all going to work, but you got to start somewhere. And unfortunately, the software's most of the software packages are really good at going out and scraping and finding people, but they're not always great at being able to really analyze their content, their followers, all that kind of stuff. So honestly, you really have to roll up your sleeves and do some homework, you've got to go to let's say, you take the the top 20 on your list, and you really have to go to their Instagram accounts or their YouTube channels, you got to watch the videos, you got to go through the comments, you got to see okay, does this person post content and then never engage with their followers? probably not going to be real persuasive on motivating them to do anything. Does this person actually engage? Is their content good? Do they partner with brands look at the sponsored content that they've done before? And would you buy that product or consider that product based on their content because I've seen influencers who have really engaging channels. And then you get to sponsored content and they're just like, wink, wink, nudge, nudge, gotta pay the bills, here's this spammy ad in your stream, just ignore this, you know, and then at least that's how it comes across. And those are not influencers you're gonna want to work with. So in order to vet who really fits in with what your you want to do, and who is on brand and and aligned with you, you got to do your homework, it takes legwork to do it. And, and sometimes, you know, you you have to go deep into their content, especially if someone suspect if you think they, you know, maybe cross the lines on political issues, or maybe they use foul language and your little, you know, risk risky I work with in the spirits business, so, we have to go deep and find out, you know, have they ever, you know, tried to drink straight from the bottle, because that's not gonna fly to you, I, yeah, you might want to do a background check on him to say, Hey, have they ever got a DUI because I don't want a DUI person out there talking about my spirits brand. So you got to do your homework. Unfortunately, it takes a lot of legwork to do it. But if you found the right ones, build a relationship with them over time, you don't have to do it again. And again and again.

Chris Shigas
Now, I know there's tons of variable in the cost of these plans. It depends on the size of the celebrity or the influencer and but you know, for someone for someone in PR, and they're trying to put together a program, do you have some sort of budget guidelines of what I need? And what can I expect from the influencer to do for me?

Jason Falls
Well, I think the answer to that question is another it depends. But what I would tell you is if you are if you are shooting for mid tier and above, so let's say 100,000 followers, on any given social network, up to maybe a half a million, that's going to be your sort of mid tier half a million up to a million or two is considered a mega influencer. And then beyond that, you're really talking about a celebrity. And so if you're, if you're wanting 100,000 to 500,000 followers, that mid tier, they are generally going to cost somewhere in the neighborhood of anywhere from 500 to $2,000 per post, it's a good sort of range to think about, but I would challenge you to not think about it in terms of how much do I have to pay per post, because almost all of them, if you approach them and say, Look, we want to partner with you, over time, to really get you engaged with our brand. If you're building a relationship with them, and you're bringing them into, hey, we're launching a product or we're launching a new marketing campaign, we want you to review it with us, we want you to co create it with us. So we really want to bring you into the fold at that point, it doesn't become a math game of how many posts are we going to get for what what amount of money that's not so

Unknown Speaker
transactional, right?

Jason Falls
You want to build a relationship where it's like, hey, let's retain you for a certain amount of time. And let's build content together and collaborate and really do cool things for you and your audience. Remember what's in it for them, and then you're gonna get what's in it for you back in return, and they're gonna be really enthusiastic about working with you. That's where you really get into a sweet spot where it works, those mid tier influencers, are

Brad Grantham
you dealing directly with them? Or do they outsource all their business to an influencer manager,

Jason Falls
sometimes, sometimes they do outsource they do have management representation, which is it can be a little bit more challenging on your budget at that point, because the management firm has to take their cuts, there has to be some cash transaction, right, or they don't get a piece of anything. But you know, especially when you get into the lower, you know, the 100,000 range 100 200,000 range, some of those folks are not going to have, you know, management, they're going to know that their content is worth something. And they're going to, you know, say well, you know, it does cost money to work with me, but they're going to be a little bit more flexible, and you're going to be able to deal with them directly. I would also say this, it's always helpful to to remember that when you are partnering with these quote unquote, influencers, what you're really partnering with is a content creator. These are people who are really good at Tick Tock really good at Instagram really good at YouTube really good at Facebook, and you may not be and so you are actually getting assets from them. That Yes, they're going to use on their channels, but you can also use on your channels. And when you think of it that way, you think oh, wait a minute, instead of paying an influencer, I'm paying a freelancer who's creating content with me. They're gonna use it on their channels, and get in front of their audience, which is significantly good for me. But I'm going to be able to use it on my channels, too. When you think of it that way. The budget problem starts to become a little bit more clear.

Chris Shigas
one chapter that I think is interesting in your book, and you talk about reviews, so and and I think it's something that PR people may not look at enough how people are validating buying decisions based on reviews ratings rankings.

Jason Falls
So talk a little bit about some of the recommendations you have for maximizing and leveraging those reviews. Sure. There's this really great case study. out there, a couple of them are in the book. And this is this is kind of a magical thing. Because if a PR person brings this kind of strategy at the table, everybody's going to look around and go, Wow, Where'd that come from, because that checks a bunch of boxes. So imagine that you have a relatively new product, you have a relatively new website, you're you need SEO, you need inbound links, you also need engaging content on your website. And of course, you need those ratings and reviews on all these other sites to have that validation when people are searching. Well, you can actually engage a number of influence there, there are agencies out there, there's one that I talked about in the book called Apex drop. And their whole purpose is to say, to take someone with a product, and get that product in the hands of 100 150 200, micro and nano influencers, people that you do not have to pay cash money to, you're giving them product, I think you have to go to go to the table with a little bit of retail value, maybe 100 bucks worth of retail value, and whatever you're distributing to them. Because that entices them to want to do it, you got to give them something, but you don't have to give them cash, you give them $100 retail value worth of product and Apex drop will manage it for you so that you get 150 influencers, let's say they take your product, what they do is they not only create great social content for their feeds around your product, to review it, to tell people about it. But they also give you permission to use that content as well. So while you can't necessarily send a bunch of people to Yelp to review for you, because that's against yelps Terms of Service, and I would never recommend you do that against someone's Terms of Service, you can have them go to and post reviews on sites that accept solicited reviews, you can also use their reviews on your site, which is a big bonus for Google, who's searching your site for content. Well, more reviews on your site means there's more validation from other customers. And Google likes that. And you can use their social content, I've actually seen several of these programs where you get literally for a reasonable amount of money, you get 150 influencers, creating a piece or two of content that you can then use on your website. And they're great images. And they're great videos, and they've got great copy because there's from these really talented content creators, right. And now all of a sudden, you've checked the box of SEO, you check the box of ratings and reviews, you've checked the box of website content, and you've checked the box of social content. And enough probably the last year for a year,

Chris Shigas
Brad, I love the term, he used nano influencer, I think we're nano influencers.

Brad Grantham
I don't know what sandbox you're playing. And you know, we all learn from our mistakes and our careers. And you know, influencer marketing, especially with social media has evolved quite rapidly over the past five to 10 years. What is the biggest not mistake, the biggest learning that you've taken away over the past five to 10 years, something that you won't repeat that you learn from? What would that one thing be?

Jason Falls
Well, I think the one thing that I keep coming back to that is the sort of the fear factor for me, when I sit down to identify the right influencers to use with a client's project is I don't want to repeat the mistake of choosing someone because they have a big audience, and not do the homework to know that they can actually motivate that audience to do something. And that's the biggest mistake you see brands make now they get fascinated with the number of followers beside the person's name. And they don't do enough homework to realize, oh, maybe they've got a bunch of fake followers. And that number is kind of added. Or maybe they you know, they can't really motivate that audience to do anything. So you really have to look beyond the superficial vanity metrics. And really understand that influencers content and how they engage with their audience. And when you do that, you're going to find the ones that can move the needle for you. And that's my biggest fear is choosing one because it's a big name. It's a sexy number. I've actually gone and engaged influencers that the client was fascinated with. And I've done the research and gone back to the client said, This person is not going to move the needle, they're not going to motivate their audience to actually do anything I would recommend. We go with a couple other different ones. And they were like, now I want to use that one. And it's fine that I think it's a waste of money. And it proved out to be that. Well, to that point,

Brad Grantham
what's your biggest success like what's you know, arguing that with a client and saying, look, this is the person not person x over here? What would you say that your biggest success has been today?

Jason Falls
So the biggest success that's a good one because I don't mean to brag but I've had a couple. Now the biggest success for us we did a it was actually a very local hyperlocal influence campaign. For I know you guys are in the south and sec folks, so forgive me here but it was for the University of Kentucky health care. So it was for the hospital health care system of university Kentucky. But they had a new campaign that was launching. And they launched it with a two minute brand film, not really a sizzle reel, but kind of a brand cinema cinematic graphic is that he say that a really, you know, sort of almost Hollywood style two minute film. And we I was asked to help develop a strategy using influencers to get a lot of people to watch this thing when it first went live on Facebook. And so and we wanted to get a lot of people to watch it in a very short amount of time, because we knew if we did that we could game the Facebook algorithm a little bit and get some organic lift out of it. Because we know that you know recency, relevance, and resonance are things that the Facebook algorithm likes. So using those three things, recency, relevance and resonance, we said, okay, let's find online influencers who can we can engage to come and comment on the video, share their UK healthcare story, and then share the content, the UK video with their networks, encouraging other people to come back and do it. We found 43 influencers, who had, I think, All told, if you add up all their followers, like 1.2 million people in reach, keep in mind licensing Kentucky's 320,000 people. So you know, I think if we'd gotten 100,000 views, this video would have been felt felt like it was successful. So we had 43 influencers that we engaged, very low budget, like under like I think was under $12,000. We didn't spend a whole lot of money. And these some of these folks were UK grads, and some of them wanted to participate anyway. But then we said, Wait, we can't stop there. We got two other audiences of influential people that we need to reach one was University of Kentucky healthcare employees, they have, you know, a couple 100 couple 1000 employees. So we shared the brand decided to share the the movie with them first and say, Hey, this is coming out tomorrow. And we want you to go support it go comment, like, share all that good stuff. So we had employee influencers, you know, who are people who maybe have a couple of dozen followers online, but they're influential, because they have family and friends in the area. Right? Then we went and said, Let's find influential people, not online influencers, people with influence in the community. So we got the mayor involved, we got local state representative involved, we got the president of the Urban League involved, we had a local dentist involved a local real estate agent, people who knew other people in the community. And when they posted it on their Facebook page. Now all of a sudden, we were reaching a lot more people than then the online influencers could all told after I think 30 days, we had 800,000 views of this video. And we were capturing stories of people commenting on the video that then parlayed itself into an entire new suite of content on UK health care's website where the community was telling their story about UK health care, which was great, you know, fodder for people to come and read and consider UK health care for their medical needs, but also for the search engines to say, hey, there's a lot more content here for us to consume. And so that was probably, I think, the biggest feather in my cap in recent years anyway,

Chris Shigas
when you look at measuring these campaigns, and yeah, of course, sales in direct sales, if your product or service is like that, right? You know, you sell t shirts, you tell the influencer to say buy this T shirt, and then you measure how many t shirts you buy, when you're looking for a longer play. When you're looking, say lifestyle association with a brand. What are some of the metrics that you get excited about?

Jason Falls
You know, there's, there's a ton of them. If let's let's start by getting away from the financial metrics, and then I'll come back to those because there's some interesting things you can do there too. But if you're if you're talking about building branding and awareness, if you're talking about aligning your brand with an influencers, audience or with a lifestyle, then the metrics you're going to want to look at or certainly the reach and the impressions and whatnot. But more importantly, I think you're going to want to do either a some social listening. So let's let's see what people are talking about, when they talk about our brand or see how they think about our brand, when they're talking about it online, before you start. That's important, you got to start out with a benchmark, right? And then during and then you know, a year or two years down the road and see how you're moving those needles, right? If people are not, if you're trying to align yourself as being a brand that is aligned with outdoorsman, and and and, and hunting and fishing and whatnot. And when you do some social listing and say okay, when people mentioned our brand, do they also talk about those things? If the answer is no. Okay, now let's figure out how to make them align and associate us with that type of activity. So you engage outdoor influencers, you create content with them, you align yourself with outdoor, in a year in six months and two years, whatever. When you do that same search, do people mentioned those activities when they mentioned our brand, now you've got a needle that you've can see how far you've moved it. So it might be social listing. It might be that you do consumer surveys and you Net Promoter Score type measurements to see how are we aligned with our, or how much more aware are people of us now than they were, and when we started. So those are some fascinating things that you can really get into kind of monitoring and measuring over time. But let's go back a little bit to the financial metrics. Because if you look at, you know how much you have to pay for a placement, right, that's how much you're going to pay the influencer to do whatever or the number of placements they do divided by whatever you pay them. There's a cost per placement, you also can look at the number of engagements that they drive and get a cost per engagement. You can also look at the number of, you know, 1000s of people impressions that you drive to them. So you can get a CPM out of that as well. And you can do a cost per click on how many times that influencer causes people to click over to your website, or whatever it is you're trying to do. You have to plan to measure and do all these figuring upfront on how you're going to capture all that data. But what you can do if you set it up on the right way on the front end, is you've got CPM CPC, CPC is cost per placements. And you can compare those two, you're the same metric in SEO and pay per click in a traditional

Unknown Speaker
plan in all the

Jason Falls
traditional plans. And now you can say, okay, what's more efficient? What's more effective if we need to hit this button to make this needle go higher one month? Where do we got to put our money? Now influencer marketing is not necessarily always going to be the most effective and efficient depending upon what your goals are. But it might be, and it might be good for you to understand, okay, I'm going to spend across these different categories and channels, because I need those multiple touch points. And each one of them is important. But if I want to do really effective cost per click, I'm going to go over here and do pay per click, because I can get a better cost per click there. But if I need a good CPM, I might have an influencer with a big audience who's really engaging, who gets a lot of people's attention on my stuff. And they might be more effective and more efficient, because I've built a relationship with them. So measuring it that way also gives you a lot more to think about.

Brad Grantham
So as we wrap this up, is this a fad? And where do we go from here? I mean, where the next 510 years look like hell, what is the end of this year

Unknown Speaker
look like? Yeah, that's a good question. I

Jason Falls
don't think it's a fad. And the reason I don't think it's a fad is because the media landscape is so fractured, and people's attentions are so fractured, that they are gravitating toward people with very narrow fields of expertise, very narrow, you know, content. And so social media has created a world where you can go out there and be the one guy or one gal who is the you know, Navy SEAL veteran blacksmith or with halitosis that can be your thing on online. And, and there's going to be a number of people out there that are interested in that type of content. So I don't think it's a fad. I don't think it's going away because the media landscape has really fractured probably to the point that it will never not be. But the signal rises from the noise, right? These people who are really good at creating content, have a really interesting perspective on the world are really engaging and entertaining, are attracting those audiences. And I don't think that's going to go away anytime soon. What I think will happen as 2021 evolves, and then as we get into the next five to 10 years, is you're going to start to see more signal emerge from the noise, you're going to start to see the fakers and the posers go away, you're going to see more influential people who are great content creators stand out and develop really good relationships with brands, where there's a long term relationship there's a given a take and both of those parties benefit, meaning the influencers audience benefits, the brand's audience benefits and the brand benefits as well as the influencer. So I think we're on the up side of the bell curve of this industry becoming mature. It's not mature yet. And so I think we've really got nowhere to go but up, it's just gonna get better.

Chris Shigas
And the production values are only getting better, right? Absolutely. Yeah. All right. Well, the book is wind Fluence, reframing influencer marketing to ignite your brand, Jason falls. Thank you so much for joining us,

Jason Falls
Chris. Brad, thank you. Really appreciate you having me on.

Chris Shigas
You can listen to a new episode of PR Wars every Sunday night at 8pm. On behalf of Brad Grantham and the entire PR wars team. We want to thank Jason Falls author of Winfluence available at Jason falls.com. And do me a favor. When you're looking for an influencer, do your homework look for an influencer? Who really engages with his or her followers and measure this new tactic to see if it moves the needle? Now go get 'em.

PR Wars was selected as a Top PR Podcast You Must Follow in 2021 by Feedspot.

If your media list isn't spot on, it won't matter how good your press releases are. On today's PR Wars podcast, we talk with Meltwater's Cody Konschak to help you build better media lists for better coverage.

• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify Podcasts
• Google Podcasts

* You can also listen to Meltwater's Cody Konschak's previous episode PR Wars Podcast: Better measurement reports

A.I. generated show transcript: 

Show open: “We want the truth.” “We want the truth.” “We want the truth.” “I have news for everybody. Get over it.”

Announcer
It’s time. Welcome to PR Wars coming at you live from Atlanta, Georgia. Now, here is your host… Chris Shigas.

Chris Shigas
Welcome to PR Wars. I'm Chris Shigas. The media is changing under our feet. I mean, media lists over six months old can get dozens of email bounce backs. And if your media list isn't spot on, it won't matter how good your press releases are. We can do better. Well today on PR Wars, fellow veteran public relations sage, Brad Grantham and I welcome back to the show the Managing Director of Client Success at the media intelligence giant Meltwater. Cody Konschak. Cody, welcome back to the PR Wars. Thanks for coming back.

Cody Konschak
Thanks, guys. I'm really excited to be back here to talk with you today.

Brad Grantham
Cody, I gotta I gotta tell you one of my biggest pet peeves, you know, we know the importance of having an updated MEDIA list. We can throw away those old Excel spreadsheets full of bounce back email addresses, and there was nothing worse when I was starting out in the agency world when you would put out a release. And you hear bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, and you're like, Great, great. This is Oh, wait, wait, that's actually 62 bounce backs. That's not good. You know, we have seen in the past decade more so maybe in the past five or three years, consolidation of media. We have seen massive layoffs in print and newspapers, magazines. So how often? Do you see media contacts needing to be updated? And how often does meltwater do that?

Cody Konschak
Yeah, this is a really great question, Brad, I gotta say, you aren't the only one with this pet peeve. It's certainly a pet peeve of mine as well. Because I think what we see is these Excel one from from the client standpoint, write the one sending out the press release, there's nothing worse than getting all of those bounce backs or, or getting an email back from the journalist saying this is completely irrelevant to what I'm doing. Now. This was something I was doing years ago. There's nothing worse than that, because you spent time sending this out thinking you had a really great list. Conversely, it's also really horrible for the for the the journalist who's sitting on the opposite end, getting all of those emails with irrelevant press releases, wondering what do I do with this information and then taking time to respond. So it can result in a lot of wasted time for both parties, which is really unfortunate, I think, through conversations with clients that I've spoken with, and the ones have been really successful, with not only our with our media database at meltwater, but also just sending out press releases in general, is refreshing these as much as possible. I mean, I'm seeing clients do it monthly. I'm seeing clients, you know, taking time quarterly to do that as well. It really depends on one, how often are you sending out these media lists? Are these? Is it a media list of you know, 250 people? Is it a media list of 500 people, or is an immediate list of like 20 to 25 people that you have maintained really close relationships with. So I do think it will vary per company. But it's always good to just hack to a quick refresher, do your due, take some time, do your research, and I think you'll be fine.

Brad Grantham
So if I used meltwater this afternoon, and put out a press release to 50 people, and I've got 20 bounce backs or five bounce backs, whatever that number is, what do I do with that information? Can I send that to you and say, Hey, just FYI, sent this out. These bounce back? Can I do that? Then what happens after that?

Cody Konschak
Yeah, this is another great question. And this is great for any project, any of our clients that are potentially listening to the to the podcast today, you certainly could then send that back to meltwater, we have an entire support team that is dedicated to ensure our system is working properly, including our media Contacts database. So we do have a research team that is dedicated to updating the contacts. I think the important thing to remember though, is that we have over 600,000 contacts in this database. So because of that, it can take some time to sort through all of that and think about it this way. You always you talked about when initially came on. There's been a lot of consolidation of publications, lots of layoffs. I could be a journalist at one publication today. And I can leave and go via publication that journalists had another publication tomorrow. And they updated my information yesterday. And now I don't have my new information. It's as easy as that and and oftentimes happens that way. So again, it's always good to check just to make sure but we do have a team of people to help you do that.

Chris Shigas
For many veteran PR pros, you develop a circle of trust circle of reporters that you nurture, and you know, their bead, and you know, your industry and all that. It's really difficult for a young PR person who's just getting into the industry, and they're trying to build these media lists, and they're not sure the right contacts. Some cases, what I see when when a junior person is making a media list is is they'll pick an outlet, let's just say Fast Company, and then they'll pick every person on that list in that company, and and send the same press release out to everyone. What advice do you have for a young PR pro? To say, Hey, here's a good strategy for really getting your press release in the hands of the right person.

Cody Konschak
Yeah, this is a this is a great question. I always relate, sending press releases back to sales, I, you know, I work for a software company. And majority of what we do is, is sales related, right? We're working with clients, ensuring they're they're utilizing our tools appropriately. And I've been in sales since I graduated University. And it reminds me a lot of a great prospect, right? We spend so much time researching, finding that that person with a great job title, who has the great job description, it perfectly outlines exactly what I can do to help them, I know that if I reach out to this person, they're the right person, they're going to resonate with the message that I'm putting out there. So I think for any junior person, it's not so much about padding, the the list that you're sending it to, because I would almost shy away from that if you want to, if you want to send it to, you know, 500 people or above, send a wire release, you know, the the point of targeted releases is that you are able to do that research, take that time, build out a really quality list of prospects, and then pitch them on the press release that you're sending out. So that I think pick up that

Chris Shigas
it's also worthwhile for them to spend some time I think, really learning the roles in the media organizations. You know, Brad and I come from a TV background. So sometimes I'll cringe a little bit when I see somebody send something to a news director, when I know that really needs to go to the assignment desk, wouldn't you agree bread?

Brad Grantham
Yeah, no, I got a little die a little inside every time I see that happen. With all the investment that you guys have made machine learning, Ai, all the data that you have, how do you get the best open rates? What works the best? What's in that subject line? How long or short? Is it? And do you have data on the best times to actually send out a press release during the week?

Cody Konschak
This will probably be somewhat polarizing amongst your amongst your listeners. Maybe I imagine that some aspects of this will be but yeah, to a degree I again, I'm going to relate this back to my experience in sales. And my experience with giving my clients ideas on how to approach this. The best times to reach out to a prospect is on a Tuesday or Thursday. Now until you why Okay, Mondays are reserved for for catching up, right, you're planning for your entire week, you have things that you didn't finish on Friday before you left for the weekend. You're you don't have time to answer all of those incoming emails Tuesday, especially Tuesday morning. People typically feel a little bit refreshed. They have things off of their to do list, they have some time to address any sort of incoming extra curricular emails that they're getting, and will do so that so I think Tuesday's Tuesday's one of my favorite days to send an email the other day that I always I always suggest to you is on Thursday, Thursday, pretty much any point through the day. And that's because Fridays are typically reserved for I'm going to get as much done for the weekend as possible. And Thursdays too. I think we find out Yeah, yeah. Or not. Oh, and Thursdays too. I think there's they're typically deadlines that happen by Thursday. So you really want to be able to get in, get your email in maybe a follow up email even by Thursday.

Chris Shigas
And so the open rate question, I'm a meltwater customer. So I know I can when I send out a press release through mail water, I can track the open rates there. And actually, I've heard industry wide, that open rates may be less than 50%. Now that that's half your media list isn't even opening. So one of the things I like to do is I preface in the subject line story idea, because to a media outlet, story ideas are always good. There's good story ideas, bad story ideas, but hey, give me story ideas. I could always use story ideas, right? Do you have any thoughts about about open rates and how to increase your open rate?

Cody Konschak
Yeah, I've actually seen no, an alarming amount of clients that just send out a press release, no sort of pitch or information to go along with it. Not that there's anything wrong with that, I think, especially for the organizations that let's take, let's say, you know, small, smaller hospital systems that work regionally. And there are, you know, 20 to 25 journalists that they work with, on average, they already have relationships with those people. So it's okay, you know, just shoot out your press release, you know, it's gonna get picked up because they're looking for it. But for anyone who's sending out a larger targeted hitlist, maybe to journalists that they don't have relationships with, I always recommend to give a pitch, why are you Why are you targeting that person? Right? or Why are you targeting this group of people, there should be a reason, you should be able to help help them resonate with what you're sending over. And the press release itself is just not going to do that. The best way to do that is to give yourself a little pitch. And you mentioned like subject lines, I think sometimes too, people are sending, you know, emails in with all caps, or they'll put in, you know, exclamation points and things like that,

Chris Shigas
the high priority thing on

Cody Konschak
the high priority thing that outlet, they'll say things like urgent, you know, and those types of things. In the world that we live in today, the security systems that we have in place for our own internal systems, getting emails, phishing attempts, they're catching all of that. They're looking for the emails with the all caps and the exclamation points and anything that could potentially seem off or not like a real email address, I would just say avoid something simple, simple, simple, catchy and and relates back to what they're doing.

Brad Grantham
Cody, do you recommend any other channels for reaching journalists with a pitch, like LinkedIn are sliding into some DMS? I mean, I remember way back in the day giving elaborate press kits in the mail. Is that dead?

Cody Konschak
I wouldn't say that elaborate press kits are dead. I think, depending on the organization, it makes sense. But I think because of the way that news is digested now, it's so fast paced. Does everyone have the time? Or the resources to put those together and send them out? And is it really making a difference? Right, I definitely recommend going into social media slide into those DMS, I'm hearing about that left and right from our clients. I was actually surprised. There was like a week in particular, I kept hearing from clients. Oh, yeah, we find ourselves reaching out to them more on Twitter than through email, because they're constantly posting on Twitter, I know that I can get them. And so they're utilizing like our social engagement tool to easily schedule out schedule out posts or schedule out messages or respond to messages, things like that, that they're getting. Yeah, I highly recommend those types of things,

Chris Shigas
services, like meltwater and the other ones, and you'll have contact information for different reporters. And now those may include their LinkedIn profile, their their Twitter account, and a phone number, right. I'm assuming that on some level, the media contacts kind of have an option to tell you how they prefer to be contacted. It's a little bit of a debate now, whether or not reporters want to be called on the phone. In my opinion, it's it's effective. However, I could see that you really want to reserve those phone calls when you really know that this story idea is relevant to the reporter. Right, Cody?

Cody Konschak
Um, again, this is our I think we're maybe a little bit polarizing, but I definitely recommend a phone call. Unless you're, you know, unless you're sending Well, let me rephrase that. I think I think it makes sense for specific outlets. So maybe you're sending out a press release that needs to go out to a list of 200 250 people. But like we talked about in our previous conversation, the previous podcast on measuring, we talked a little bit about the quality of the pickup, right? That's where it comes in. What are your goals, identifying your goals, you have a goal to get picked up in a specific publication or specific publications, then those are the ones that send them the email and follow up with a call. It does not hurt to do that. And what's the best way to develop a relationship or one of those journalists is having a conversation. Now I know that they're there. They're typically fast moving fast paced, but still, I think, getting ahead of anyone else who's potentially in there. inbox, the best way to do is via phone call.

Brad Grantham
On the flip side of that, and again, I'm not sure if my daughter has this or not. But I remember back in the day using another service, it would be labeled clearly do not call this person or are never called this person, I assume that's the same amount Walker, you have that listed.

Cody Konschak
So we actually have updated updated our system a bit just due to new regulations and security compliance. So that now every journalist has the ability to opt out of our media list. So if you you, they get an email from you, and at the bottom of every email, there's a link to opt out, that means they will not receive another email from our database. So they have the ability to opt out the You don't even have to actually enter our class, from our clients point of view, you don't even have to worry about reaching out to them, because they won't show up for you to do that.

Chris Shigas
And I found that the lists are really relevant. Now. I remember in the old days, when these lists first came out,

Brad Grantham
they were in with pirates.

Chris Shigas
I yeah. And I can tell you, you did not want to work for the Associated Press with the last name that began with an A, because that meant you were at the time that you got hit by everyone. And I think now it's a little bit easier to differentiate.

Cody Konschak
Yeah, we really try to sort out, store that information and give as much detail these contacts as possible. So you're not just looking at, you're not just looking at the beat and their name, right, you're able to see, like you mentioned before you're able to see their social profiles, you're able to do a little bit more research into the types of articles that they're writing. And you Okay, is this person really the best person to reach out to? I can see their job title as well, is this the right contact for us? So hopefully, we're we are reading that down to so that we can create the best list as possible.

Brad Grantham
So as we're organizing our media lists, before we're putting out a press release, how do you recommend organizing them? Should you have a separate one for every release? Should you break them down by beats and have a huge master list? What do you recommend?

Cody Konschak
I think it's always good to have a master list of contacts. So you have you have that to work off of right. But I am a firm believer in creating a new list for your press releases. If it's if it's if it's important enough that you are sending out a press release to people then then it's important enough to create a separate list for it right, it warrants the time it takes to find the right contacts to hit to target. I mean, you're not just sending a press release to check a box. You unless you're sending out you know financial wireless, that's the wire here, you really are trying to get a specific message across. And the only way to do that, I think is by finding the best contacts possible to reach out to the only way to do that is to separate them out into separate lists for these releases.

Chris Shigas
I work for a global company and one of the big changes with GDPR. And and actually even though people think of GDPR is a European thing, many companies are taking on these regulations globally. One of the benefits of using a service like meltwater is I could just say, okay, all the data is going to be over at meltwater, then, then that takes off some of the pressure on me. Can you tell us a little bit about how you're handling GDPR? And then what? What is the responsibility of the PR professional for them to make sure that they do on their end that they're in compliance?

Cody Konschak
Great question. I actually dealt with this with a with a client just a couple of weeks ago who had questions about GDPR. So as a company, we are GDPR compliant. So anyone utilizing our database can feel comfortable knowing that if they send a press release from our system to anyone in our database, they are compliant, they don't have to worry about breaking, breaking that that rule, right. Yeah. But there is there's also the understood that that comes with the understanding that that only applies to the contacts found in our system. So the other functionality that we have in our media database is the ability to upload your own lists. And that's where it becomes more of the clients responsibility, that they are reaching out to people that they have the right to reach out to, they have the right to contact them. It's It's okay. Because those are the lists that we as a company don't manage. So it is important to do your due diligence to make sure

Chris Shigas
right, so when somebody uploads the wrong contact, that that's not spread out to your entire customer base, right. It's just individual for the user.

Cody Konschak
Correct. So you don't have to worry about that causing any sort of problems. Anything you add into your own account stays in your own account

Brad Grantham
as we close out this episode, Besides sliding into DM'S, is there anything that you could help us with to generate a better result with our press releases? If you could give one or two tips?

Cody Konschak
Yeah, I think it's a little bit about what we've talked about. But one of the my favorite things is having a consistent template. I've worked with clients that change their templates up all the time. And and it's so easy to resonate with a journalist who opens your email and sees the press release. And they're like, Oh, you know what, I've utilized this information before, it was good information. It helps connect them with previous articles that they've written previous relationships they've had with you. And just remaining consistent with that, with those conversations. We talked about updating your media lists. We've talked about doing your research, take the time, I'm telling you, if you spend a little bit of extra time building those lists out, you will feel much better about sending these sending these press releases out and you'll get a better response as well. Great. Thank

Chris Shigas
you so much for joining us today, Cody.

Cody Konschak
Thanks, guys. Happy to be here. You can

Chris Shigas
listen to a new episode of PR Wars every Sunday night at 8pm. On behalf of Brad Grantham and the entire PR wars Broadcasting Network. I want to thank Cody Konschak, Managing Director of Client Success at Meltwater and do me a favor. When you have an important press release. spend a little extra time building your media list, be discriminating and strategic. The time you put into your media list will reap dividends for your coverage. Now, go get 'em.

PR Wars was selected as a Top PR Podcast You Must Follow in 2021 by Feedspot.

How do you engage with public relations when public temperament is permeated with division... and dipped in napalm. On today's PR Wars podcast, Brooke Hammerling, founder of The New New Thing, helps companies navigate an opinion charged landscape.

• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify Podcasts
• Google Podcasts

A.I. generated show transcript: 

Show open: “We want the truth.” “We want the truth.” “We want the truth.” “I have news for everybody. Get over it.”

Announcer
It’s time. Welcome to PR Wars coming at you live from Atlanta, Georgia. Now, here is your host… Chris Shigas.

Chris Shigas
Hi, everyone. Welcome to PR Wars. I'm Chris Shigas. So you want to engage with public relations at a time when the public temperament has been permeated with division and dipped in napalm. It seems like you can't say anything without half the comments supporting you and the other half disparaging you. Arguing doesn't work. Well, today on PR Wars, fellow carnival barker, Brad Grantham and I, talk with the founder of the New New Thing. It's a strategic communications advisory with clients like Oracle, and Live Nation Entertainment. And among other things, the New New Thing helps companies navigate an opinion charged landscape. Welcome to the show, the founder of the New New Thing, Brooke Hammerling, thank you so much for joining us on PR Wars today.

Brooke Hammerling
Wow, it's my pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Chris Shigas
All right. PR people all over the world are taking a deep breath right now. And they're saying all right. But that's besides the point, the world hasn't changed, right? This highly charged, opinionated, consumer base nation that's divided. So tell me a little bit about how your company is counseling corporations in navigating these these twisted roads of consumer sentiment?

Brooke Hammerling
Yeah, I mean, it's it's an incredible moment in time. And, you know, we were talking a little before before we started here, but starting in tech, and that's really where my bases, tech for many years, for decades now. I think we are so accustomed to being the number one story, it was always leading with technology. Now the innovation and the consumer technology that even the enterprise software stuff would take for the front and center stage. And for the last four something years, it's been politics, and it's been a divisiveness amongst that, and that's changed, right. So even the media coverage of companies, there's sort of a lens to it, of where do they fall in terms of you know, whether it's whether it's politics policies, you know, now it's it's an I think these are some really wonderful changes that have happened, where media are now holding companies accountable. Why do you have an all white male board? And why are all your employees, white men, and you know, these things are changing on a on a day to day basis. So I don't have a cookie cutter approach to every to every company. And I think that's the biggest lesson, I can always teach people that are starting out in communications, or remind

those of us who have been a little long in the tooth here, but is that there is no playbook. And you can't what is good for client a is not going to be good for client B or C, it really, really depends on a, who that what that company is, what their, what they stand for who their audiences, what is natural to the spokesperson, generally, the companies, I work with the spokespeople, and I think more and more so. And every industry is that founder or CEO, it's not the CMO, it's not the spokesperson, company spokesperson, it's really you know, people are being held accountable at the senior leadership. And so what I would tell you know, one client who might be a, you know, a over 50, white male CEO who has a consumer facing business might be very different than what I would tell another client who's a 25 year old, you know, black woman with a with a b2b business, and it would depend on so many different things, but you have to be aware of everything that's around. So it's a 360 approach, right? Because we've really seen a lot of CEOs moving forward and really providing a moral leadership right in the country, and that's good, but if it's from a real place, right, it's I think what we find now is that the inauthenticity is so we can sniff it out. People can sniff it out, right? And whether it's on Twitter or whatnot, you can sniff it out. You can sniff out if it's a CEO that's just following somebody you know, because they feel it's the right thing.

Do you can sniff it out if it feels like they're just fabricating something for you know, for dollars and mindshare, it has to really be authentic and it doesn't work otherwise, in fact, it'll backfire. And immensely, I'd rather, I'd rather a CEO do nothing. And you know, like, in this moment in time, for example, there are a bunch of people like, what do we do? There was such divisiveness when when the capital was taken, oh,

Chris Shigas
yeah. Do you put out a statement on Twitter?

Brooke Hammerling
Do you put out a statement on Twitter? Do you send a note to your, you know, 1000s of employees or your 25 employees? You know, it doesn't end but the thing is, every company is different. So there was the end, what I hope and what I think all my clients achieved was what was right for them. There are some there are some CEOs who have companies where 50% of their workforce might be on the other side of it. They might believe that the storming of the capital was, you know, this was patriotic, and how do you navigate?

Brad Grantham
Which leads me to a question. Last week on CNN, there was a full screen that showed all the companies that have withdrawn or stopped political contributions to candidates on both sides, you know, somewhere GOP somewhere democratic. Do you think that's a dangerous move for companies to make? Because you just touched on the internal stakeholders? I mean, obviously, this is external facing. But it could backfire internally, like you just kind of mentioned.

Brooke Hammerling
Yeah, I mean, I think it's when you were heading into really, I don't know what I don't know what I would have done in advising Twitter, for example, right? I don't know, if I would have advised. You know, I think what what jack did with his transparency, just recently with the tweets were why, what what? That was great, but like five days too late, right? Sort of, it's like we've had for years of this wine now. Yes, there's been inciting violence, but there's been violent acts before and, you know, so forth and so on. I think with companies now suggesting that they're outing different people on different sides. It's it's tricky, right? And I think there we just saw Bumble or one of the dating apps trying to navigate that as well. The fact is, they're 50% of this nation have different views than the other 50%. And just because and that's the thing about this echo chamber of Twitter, it's sort of like I saw somebody tweet recently, like, what I say is right, and if you disagree with me, you're wrong. You know, this is sort of like the idea of what how everybody is on Twitter right now. Like everything I say is right. And I even see that with myself. Like when I tweeted something about peloton, which is a little bit off mark for me, because I was, you know, I wasn't thinking necessarily about the fact that everybody's in a pandemic and peloton is an on luxury thing, but I was tweeting about people's experiences, not mine, but people what I saw as a as a, as a brand issue that people were complaining about the lack of communication from the brand on on the product delivery, anyway. And then so many people just got up in arms with me, and for various reasons, some of them, you know, misconstrued some of them, you know, completely valid, and I had to check myself and not be like, all of you were stupid, and I'm right, and you're all wrong. But, you know, you feel that that's, that's happening, I think we're, you know, we have to, if you're in a place, there's obviously places where CEOs are going to have to take a stand, and they're going to have to let their people know that they're protected, and they're safe. And but it gets very tricky when it's asking them to take a point of view in this environment, because you're inevitably going to find a bunch of people that don't agree with you.

Brad Grantham
And to that point, you know, we have a general lack of trust in our neighbors, you know, our co workers, our organizations, at least in North America, I mean, social media has divided us now more than ever. So if you're advising a company, and you're saying, look, this is the landscape at this moment, it's very torn apart. But you've got to drive home your message b2b or b2c, you've got this product, you've got this feature, how can we break through this? Right? You know, some people would say you need to go to data, you need to find, you know, do surveys, you need to do this to bring your own information out to the public or to those potential stakeholders. You know, that's just one tactic. What other tactics should people be thinking about? Again, realizing it's not a one size fits all situations? For

Brooke Hammerling
sure. No, I think it's a good question. I think first of all the the problem with data now is that it's so ubiquitous that we've almost lost like, you know, it's like everybody's putting out a survey and it's a survey goes back to whether or not it benefits that company. What I always tell the clients when they're putting together these surveys are, are these interesting questions are these is this data that's really good arise, like, that's going to surprise people, that data is going to be impressive and then also having a name connected. To that, like if you do it in partnership with a name that it's really recognized as opposed to just your company that offers a validation. And I think that's important, but that data needs to be really, really interesting, not just self serving data, you know, and not and it has to be big picture. And it has to be surprising, but it also has to be something that media or others can use to sort of paint a broader picture. So that's definitely one. In terms of social media, it's so interesting. I mean, now we have so many channels, right? It's not just Twitter, but it's Instagram. It's it's tik tok. It's, it's whether you know, some I mean, we have younger clients on on tik tok. We have younger clients on Snapchat. You know, there's now these group things going on with telegram and WhatsApp. And there's clubhouse, which is obviously a growing phenomenon in the new sort of audio world of social media.

Chris Shigas
And my kids won't go on Facebook at all.

Brooke Hammerling
And oh, by the way, did you notice I didn't even mention? I mean, I guess by by mentioning WhatsApp and Instagram, my default I do but no, I mean, Facebook, I can't even I mean, I grew up with it. And I can't navigate it. I don't it seems to be like, I don't know. But I A great example. And in the difference of how this this, there's just so many different variables. Now I tweeted, like January 4, or fifth? I said, Can Can I have a dry ish January, like, trying to be like, everybody in my world would know that it's dry, January is a thing and can dry ish January, I mean, like, I drink ish, or I don't drink ish, right? Well, the blowback I got on that, which was, there were I heard from about 20, maybe more, all of them men over the age of 15. Sorry, guys love you. But they all thought I was talking about not wanting it to rain in California, if you can believe it, I got messages from people saying, Go back to fucking New York, you know, you don't belong in California. I'm so disappointed in you, Brooke, California needs water like. And I just was like, take a deep breath. So my point that was you missed it. And that's my point is that not everybody should be on social media. And I tell my clients like, yes, they've been told by many like, you need to have a, you need to have a presence, you need to have a footprint, you need to have a sort of, you know, a personal brand out there. You don't, if it's not natural to you, if you don't feel comfortable in that situation, then it's never going to be a good position for you, if you're not comfortable being on Twitter, or putting out tweets, or you have to get somebody to, you know, write a tweet for you, everyone. It's not your like, use Twitter as a resource, read it be up to date with it, you know, track people, but you don't need to own the narrative. If it's not authentic to you in that format. There may be other formats, maybe it's writing something that you put out on medium, maybe it's you know, having a daily sort of interaction with people off of social. But if it's just because it's there doesn't mean every every leader should be doing it. Now a brand should be I think a brand should have a presence in social, whether it's consumer facing or not, whether it's used for information or interaction or just brand awareness, but the leadership does not need to be having that.

Chris Shigas
There's a distinction there between the CEO and the brand. Yeah, you're absolutely,

Brooke Hammerling
absolutely. So that's what we tell. We tell our clients, I tell the CEOs, like if you want to, let's see what's most authentic to you. And then let's work out from there. Is it writing? Is it not? Is it is it storytelling, is it interacting with media, but if it's if it's getting like your knee jerk reaction, where you just want to, like, get up there and start to fight or if you just want to post pictures of you on vacation, or you in your luxury home where you have, you know, a different a different lifestyle than many of your employees or customers. It's like, let's rethink

Chris Shigas
corporate comms it within the corporate comms. As an industry, we've worked really hard to get a seat at the CEO table to be considered a function that is amongst the leadership of a company and in some level really function as a conscience for a company. Edelman just came out with their trust barometer for 2021 business as an institution is now the only trusted institution in the United States. Now it says something about our other institutions and where the trust is, but

Brooke Hammerling
what were the other institutions that they were looking at

Chris Shigas
things like government media,

Brooke Hammerling
okay, so,

Chris Shigas
so with that said, How are we doing something, right?

Brooke Hammerling
Yes, I think we are. I think it's an evolution. I mean, I think there's still a lot of work to do. But I think what I find so interesting, I'm sure Do you guys see it is that when when I first started out in this business, there was never chief communications officers, there were heads of communications that reported under marketing. And their earned media fell under paid media with a very different that was there, they all fell into the same goal sort of like, and it was never really thought of it was, as you know, as anything more than just getting a press release out getting reporters that you like to write stories and the old school model, and I think where, you know, some incredibly smart and thoughtful communications. people over the years have been incredible in their impact here, but also the evolution of the founder and CEO, who now understand that the story can't be a manufactured sort of, it's not just about marketing and buying advertising, that the CEO, we know the names of the CEOs of our companies, like my parents who had like they loved certain brands, they loved IBM, they love their, their electronics in their house, they love their car, they didn't know the names of the company of the CEOs behind those companies are the founders. Whereas we live in a world now where we do they they're interchangeable. And so those CEOs now realize that their story their how they communicate, it is so crucial that they have to have that trusted

Chris Shigas
person. And if you're if you're buying a Tesla, you're buying into Ilan Yuan dream.

Brooke Hammerling
100%

Brad Grantham
don't don't don't get that Tesla.

Chris Shigas
I'll talk about Tesla, oh,

Brooke Hammerling
I just got my new car. It's the opposite of a Tesla.

Unknown Speaker
What is it?

Brooke Hammerling
I'm a Jeep girl. I love Tesla, but I have the regular I have and I have had a Wrangler. But I got the new 2021 Wrangler. And it's amazing. And it has it has all the bells and whistles and I love it and I can't wait for the hybrid, it will be great. And I can't wait to have an electric car when I don't have to worry about the anxiety of like I run out of juice in the middle.

Brad Grantham
Well, I mean, I was gonna say, Well, at least once you stuck in traffic in LA, she will look good and feel good.

Unknown Speaker
I will

Chris Shigas
Brooke that range anxiety is so 2016.

Brad Grantham
Let me let me jump into another question. Again, with the changing landscape, Chris kind of mentioned the role of corporate comms and yeah, agencies as well have evolved over the past 100% 20, even even the past two years, not even 20 years, the past year before we went into COVID-19 I think many would argue that it looked like we were heading into some type of recession, right? Because the market has to rebalance every decade and 100% you know, so then COVID hits, which is his own set of problems. So as you are coming to the table, our clients are pursuing you and saying, look, you know, we're thinking about working with you and the new new thing. But we have got to prove ROI. Now more than ever, to our board. What is your definition for ROI? And how do you prove that to your clients?

Brooke Hammerling
Well, I mean, it's in your asking about this, I launched brew, back in 2000. And set whenever it was, it was three months before the financial crisis before all the banks quit, you know, before Bear Stearns everything, it was like a nightmare. And I thought, Oh, well, that's great, I launched a company, I'm gonna go broke, And we thrived. We thrived because of the type of service we are providing. And the same here I launched the new new thing, which is, you know, it's it's, it's an extension, most of the companies we work with already have built in communications teams or have agencies, we're not looking to replace roofing to amplify. So it's a, it's a luxury service. So three months into launching, you know, the world falls apart. And I assumed it you know, at the same thing I assumed the last time around, but this would be it that I was going to start moving into you know, friends, guests houses and, you know, become an Au Pair or something, I really the end of the end of days. But what happened was CEOs really need that trusted person. That is their gut check that they can call and just understands the bright, broader landscape that sort of perspective outside of their own company that sees the sort of that hears and sees things outside of there because they're so focused and you should be if your internal comms to you got to be so focused on what is happening with your brand and your team and your that to have somebody who that the CEO trusts and that they can get a really good read and it's all about EQ. Frankly, it's about reading, being able to have that instinct that EQ that emotional sort of capabilities of connecting with the CEOs and understanding how to navigate that. That said, really important. I think, you know, in my case, I have built up a bit of a brand around who I am that a lot of the CEOs either don't need buy in from their board, or the board was part of the reason why they brought me On they brought, you know, and so I think what I always tell people is just remember to build those relationships and build your own network because it's that is so powerful as my own network of those of those people. But I think what they saw was that now more than ever, we've This isn't the time for press release PR, we're not doing it's not business as usual. We can't just ignore everything that's going on and just pretend like we're gonna put out we have our we have our roadmap here. It's our product roadmap, and it's not we're not deviating. It's just not even if you didn't have to deviate. That doesn't mean that the story doesn't change, we have to be much more thoughtful. How can you think about how each company I work with, regardless of their business, or their industry had had a story to tell in this moment in time? And how could they get in? How could they be of service? How can they be of value to, you know, whether it's their customers or just you know, in general, the the world and, and it was important for them to be able to figure out how that story needed to be told for each and every one of them.

Chris Shigas
Well, great, well, thank you so much for helping us navigate through this opinion charged landscape. Thank you so much for being on PR wars.

Brooke Hammerling
Thank you so fun,

Chris Shigas
You can listen to a new episode of PR wars every Sunday night at 8pm eastern, and please reach out to Brad and me on PR Wars Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. On behalf of Brad Grantham and the entire PR wars crew, we would like to thank Brooke Hammerling, founder of the New New Thing, and do me a favor. Your customers and your employees may expect or even demand moral leadership. If you engage in this opinion charged landscape, make sure it's authentic. Let's do less criticizing and more leading a vision of success. Now go get 'em.

PR Wars was selected as a Top PR Podcast You Must Follow in 2021 by Feedspot.

Communication planning will help you get better results. PR consultant, Isabel Peña Alfaro is our guest on the PR Wars podcast today. We'll learn how to focus on the priorities, while we write some fun into a 2021 communications plan.

• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify Podcasts
• Google Podcasts

A.I. generated show transcript: 

Show open: “We want the truth.” “We want the truth.” “We want the truth.” “I have news for everybody. Get over it.”

Announcer
It’s time. Welcome to PR Wars coming at you live from Atlanta, Georgia. Now, here is your host… Chris Shigas.

Chris Shigas
Hey everyone! Welcome to PR Wars. It's 2021 and I'm Chris Shigas. Thanks for listening. Yogi Berra said, "if you don't know where you're going, you'll end up someplace else." Well, communication planning is difficult. It takes thought, strategy, patience. If you love to run around and do cool tactics, it feels like planning just gets in the way. But planning will keep you focused. It will force you to prioritize those tasks, on things that move the needle. Tactics that make an impact. Our guest on PR Wars today has worked for a couple of the largest PR agencies in the world. Her clients are big. I mean, like fortune 10, kind of big. Now she's a PR consultant in New York. Her website is IsabelPenaAlfaro.com. Welcome to the show, Isabel Peña Alfaro. Isabel, thank you so much for joining us on PR wars today.

Isabel Peña Alfaro
Thanks so much for having me excited to be here.

Chris Shigas
Here we are the beginning of a new year. Right. Everyone's hopeful This one's gonna be a good one. All right. Well, so far, it's been a little shaky, but it's gonna get better. Planning. Yeah. All right. It's something that maybe people don't like to do a lot. I'm a big believer in planning. How about you?

Isabel Peña Alfaro
You know, planning is not necessarily the most exciting or sexy thing about PR. But getting results is super exciting. So the way to get those results is by planning and having a really good strategy and backbone to how you're going to execute. Hmm. Yeah, I like the exercise of planning. I think even even a bad plan is better than no plan. Because because it gets you thinking, What am I doing? What Why am I doing this? What does success look like? Right? There's all kinds of plants that sometimes plants don't wake at work out. And you have to change. We learned that in 2020. Right? If I look at my January 2020 plan, it was very different than my July 2020 plan. It's a new year, I need a new plan. Where do I start?

Yeah, that's a great, that's a great question. So you know, the place to start is really to hone in on the priorities. So a PR plan doesn't necessarily exist on its own, you have to really communicate with the team and figure out what the business priority is. So you start there, and then you move into objectives, tactics, benchmarks or goals, and then the annex section.

Chris Shigas
Mm hmm. So at the beginning with with your priorities, these are kind of some broad objectives that that you're really looking at, of what you want to accomplish. Are these at this point? Are these are these meant measurable? Are they more inspirational?

Isabel Peña Alfaro
They are, they're more inspirational, and they go back to the business. So they're usually business strategies. So when we talk about priorities in a communications plan, it's the one piece that is not necessarily about communications, it's more about the business priority or the company priority. And so so you ask questions, like, what is the company's mission right now? Or what is one piece of our business that our constituents and stakeholders should know about? But don't necessarily know? And then, in the plan you get into, okay, how can communications drive that goal?

Chris Shigas
Okay, yeah, I understand. So you're looking at how communications fits into the broader business picture. And so once you start looking at, okay, what are some of the objectives, my communications can help support that priority? Right. Right, and you've worked with agencies before to what I would think is that you've done a lot of different plans for a lot of different types of industries and verticals, what are some common threads that you see when you're trying to build some objectives that you can measure? What are some of the KPIs the sum of the measurements that that you will really want to make sure that your objectives address?

Isabel Peña Alfaro
Yeah, so in your objectives, you get into two or three things that you want to accomplish. So what you want to do in the objective objective section is get very clear and not necessarily go into, you know, in a million directions, you want to get very strategic and think, okay, How can two objectives or three objectives be the center of where I'm going to go from there? So, for example, you know, one of your objectives can be engage audiences, such as consumer media investors, non NGOs, and your own employees through thought leadership. So that's it, you know, you're not going to get very, very granular yet you just get that objective is going to be you know, your audiences and thought leadership. And that's, so that's one objective. And then you can say, okay, what's another objective that will again, drive back to my priority, the business priority. So it can be something like, you strengthen your internal and external networks through third party organizations, so that it's not just your company talking about you. But it's those third parties now talking about you, in a positive way, of course.

Chris Shigas
And that's really what public relations is right? To get a third party to give you credibility, right. Whether it's the media, or a influencer, or maybe a analyst, you know, who's talking about your company, at this stage? Do you find that most companies go too big or too small? object with the objectives? Yeah. Are they trying to accomplish too much here? Or are they maybe not trying to accomplish enough? What are you seeing as far as the typical mistakes in limiting your objectives?

Isabel Peña Alfaro
Typically, it goes too far out. So you know, trying to do too much, right. And so I think that's where you always have to think back to the business priority, it's because, you know, you can go in a million directions. So you, you hone in and you say, Okay, how am I going to achieve that, and then you also want to think about what your resources are and how big your team is. So, you know, when your objectives you, you drill in on that, but you think, Okay, how are we going to do that with the resources that we have in a smart way? Because, you know, you can go very broad, but it can be sort of a thin, thin layer versus having those very strong objectives, and then just drilling in and trying to get those results.

Chris Shigas
Yes, sometimes when you're looking at the, the measurables on an on an objective, and you go back and you say, Okay, well, what we really want to do is raise the number of impressions for our brand, if that doesn't support your priority. For example, a trade magazine might have a very limited number of impressions, but it reaches a very specific target audience for you. Otherwise, you just say, hey, let's buy a superbowl commercial, because that'll have a lot of impressions. And then I accomplished my plan.

Isabel Peña Alfaro
Right, right. So you know, it's really about the quality and the communication and also the engagement. Because you know, if you're engaging with an audience, you a lot of times you want to create a, you start a communication between both parties. So so it's more about the quality, then, like you said, then the quantity.

Chris Shigas
So now you have these business priorities. And now you've outlined some communication objectives to help support that, now we get to the fun part. NASA tactics, right? Yeah, boy, it's just seems like this big giant bag of tricks that anybody can pull out and do whatever. How do you get your arms around? Oh, we got all these tactics we want to do, do they align with our objectives? We have a limited amount of budget. Do we want a lot of tactics? Do we want inexpensive tactics? Do we want one big expensive too? How do you even approach this?

Isabel Peña Alfaro
Yeah, so this is the part where you can get really creative and part of being creative is how to use those dollars. And also how to use your creativity so that every piece of coverage that you get or every piece of PR that you get, you give it the legs that it deserves. So you know for example, if you get a story How are you going to get it across different channels so that you give that visibility, that extra visibility to that piece of coverage. So in the tactics, you put in all the different ways that you're going to do this, you get into the nitty gritty of how you will execute. And you really getting granular on everything, including, you know, what types of platforms you're going to be in, like you said, are you going to do trade magazines versus, you know, national media publications? Are you going to engage influencers? Are they are they going to be paid or not? You get into all of those things, and, and you just lay it all out?

Chris Shigas
One thing I've noticed when I was working with an agency, when you're looking at tactics, it's easy to get in a rut, and you have the stable of clients. And sometimes you tend to put in tactics, because those are the tactics you're comfortable with. Right? And, and you you recommend that this client, oh, you should do these tactics? And then you get the next client? Oh, yeah, you should do these tasks. And I just curious, working with agencies and things like that now as a consultant, how do you get yourself out of that rut? To expand your scope of services, to really look at your bag of tricks and tactics and and how to make that really relevant to those objectives?

Isabel Peña Alfaro
Yes, I agree with you completely, you can get into this rut of always putting in what you know, you will achieve, yeah. But, you know, it's kind of like in fitness. If you say, Okay, I'm good. My next goal is to do 10 push ups without stopping. But you know, that you can do 12 push ups, no problem. So then what's the fun of it, you know, you get to the gym, you do your 12 push ups, and you're done. And that's it. And so you're taking out the fun in the whole process. So what I would say to that is, be real with your, with your goals, because it's part of the fun that you that you that you're gonna have with your, you know, with your own plan. And

Chris Shigas
I love that I love that idea of having fun with your own plan. And it's kind of like, yeah, you can have your, your stable block of tactics, the blocking and tackling and the media relations or whatever, but put in a little, something, a little cherry on top, a little sprinkle chocolate on it, something that's gonna make it plain five, might not be the center of your plan. But maybe something that is a pilot that you can experiment with have fun. And if it works, you just added a tactic to your toolkit. And yeah,

Isabel Peña Alfaro
yeah, yeah. And, and, you know, really, it's about not letting your fears drive your goal setting. In other words, you know, not letting your limiting your failure, your fears of failure of not, you know, not accomplishing what you those limiting beliefs about what you're capable of achieving, drive your goal setting right?

Chris Shigas
Now, tell me about this idea of annex. I'm not familiar with this word for this. So So give me a little bit about your thoughts about this, this part of your plan.

Isabel Peña Alfaro
The annex is another part that is not necessarily it doesn't sound exciting, but it is very, it's so useful, because this is where you put all the extra detail. So you add in, for example, you add in a calendar, and you put in what you know, is coming up each month, and you might not have all the details for every month of the year, but you know that you know, your earning season. For example, if you have earnings in your company, you might have some industry events. So you can add that. And you can also add a list of reporters. And this you know, going back to the goal setting that we were talking about, you can add a list of those reporters that you want to start reaching out to or networks that you might not be in touch with that you want to start communicating with, you might have put all your ideas down in January, but by March, you forgot what what ideas you had in January. So the annex is super important because it it it is a a roadmap to to getting to your goal. And the annex is really where you put all your details. So it's gonna be really helpful as you go through the year.

Chris Shigas
And that's wonderful because here's, here's the number one crime that happens with plans is you spend a month on this thing, you plan everything out, and then when you're done, you present it to your boss, you stick it in a drawer and you never look at it again. Right? Like that's a crime. This should be a living, breathing. breathing document. Right? How do you keep your plan alive throughout the year?

Isabel Peña Alfaro
Yeah, the the key to the plan is printing it and referring back to it daily, and having it next to you on your workstation. And like you said, it's a it's a breathing document. So every day you're adding, adding things to it taking things away, and you do a whole refresh of it at least once a quarter. While it might not change drastically, you are looking at it through the lens of Okay, what needs to be adjusted, including the goals and what can we change to strengthen the whole plan, right.

Chris Shigas
And you know, when I really love taking out a plan, after you do a giant initiative, when you do a big tactic and everyone's happy and you're patting yourself on the back, you don't want to lose momentum. That's the perfect time to pull out your plan and go Okay, what's next? Right?

Isabel Peña Alfaro
Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, once you have the momentum, you want to keep going and you know, we've been talking about that goal setting and executing and just when you got that when is when you are so expect dreams and, and you know, those it's not just about you achieving that dream that you had or that goal, it's about getting your entire team behind that goal and together, reaching that and and you know, achieving what you want for you and your business.

Chris Shigas
Wow, Isabelle, thank you so much for talking to us about planning today. I really appreciate it.

Isabel Peña Alfaro
Thanks so much for having me. I had so much fun. Awesome.

Chris Shigas
You can watch a new episode of PR Wars every Sunday night at 8pm. I want to thank Isabel Peña Alfaro. Her website is IsabelPenaAlfaro.com. Do me a favor. When you're writing your 2021 plan, keep it focused on the priorities. But don't forget, sprinkle in some fun. If the plan is boring. The work will be boring. Make your plan shine, and be a PR superstar. Now go get 'em.

PR Wars was selected as a Top PR Podcast You Must Follow in 2020 by Feedspot.

We have to be realistic about our budgets. When you work with a small business, every dollar needs to get results. Our guest today on the PR Wars podcast is Carmena Ayo-Davies, author of the book "Publicity on a Budget."

A.I. generated show transcript: “We want the truth.” “We want the truth.” “We want the truth.” “I have news for everybody. Get over it.”

Announcer
It’s time. Welcome to PR Wars coming at you live from Atlanta, Georgia. Now, here is your host… Chris Shigas.

Chris Shigas
Hello everyone and welcome to PR Wars. I'm Chris Shigas. Budgets. A great plan for a giant corporation may not be a good plan for an upstart entrepreneur. We have to be realistic about our budgets. And when you work with a small business, an entrepreneur, or even a celebrity, anyone where a marketing budget is coming straight out of their pocket. I mean, like from a personal bank account. Every dollar has to work and you need immediate results. Our guest today on PR Wars has been driving results for entrepreneurs for decades. She launches new products, creates events, she's even a publicist to athletes, musicians and influencers. She's the owner of 3BG marketing solutions and the author of a new book called "Publicity on a Budget, Carmena Ayo-Davies. Carmena, so good to see you and welcome to PR Wars.

Carmena Ayo-Davies
Thanks. Thank you for having me, Chris.

Chris Shigas
Absolutely, I am so excited to get this book "Publicity on a Budget." There are so many people who want to engage in PR, on some level you have these giant corporate programs, but you have a lot of small businesses that want to make an impact. And as we look at what's going on, in our communities today, these small businesses need this more than ever, right?

Carmena Ayo-Davies
Yes, they are.

Chris Shigas
So so so what inspired you to write this book "Publicity on a Budget?"

Carmena Ayo-Davies
COVID did because it was where you know, people open their business during these times, especially small business and pushing entrepreneurship, I'm big on entrepreneurship, and pushing that it's like, you know, people started reaching out to me, because they were desperate and wanting to know how they can work with our company and how we can help them, you know, get exposure. And when I gave my price, they couldn't afford it. But they loved everything that I can do and everything they seen me do, you know, in the market, but they could not afford it. And you know, I want to give back. And I want to be able to share the knowledge I've had an experience working with especially small businesses, and working in entertainment to help them get the exposure that they're needed, and to help them implement these different tactics and how to reach out to people and etc. To get this exposure that

Chris Shigas
is much needed. That's wonderful, because there is a need in the community. So when you get approached all the time, people see you as a marketing expert. Yes. And they go, please help me I don't have a big budget. And sometimes what could be a great plan for a big company might not be the best plan for a small business because they just don't have the resources. So how do you approach that when you're dealing with minimal resources? How do you approach saying I can help you?

Carmena Ayo-Davies
How do I approach say, I can help you now the trends and the tides have changed, you know, before you and i think you know, our our industry is changing before your whole thing could be driven by just being on a TV show, or and then your sales will go to the roof we all remember like the Oprah effect and being on these different things that helped. But as you know, everyone wants to be on those shows and etc. And it makes it harder and you may not get the same effects kind of from your, your smaller market Morning Show. You wouldn't get that same type of effect, but people be like, oh, I'll check it out. So but it's minimal. It's very small. You know, with PR and marketing, you know, people have to see you hear about you at least like 100 times for them for it to like actually stick right now with social media. I always tell people okay, when you come to me, you can't just do PR now you have to come with to me with the entire marketing budget. For us to do the social media marketing, that, you know, all the PR does, I think is just fanning the flame. It just made like, Oh, I remember seeing, Oh, I remember hearing, oh, that's the girl you're going I'm saying so it kind of marries each other. So you kind of just can't completely rely on just public relations and getting a write up or getting in on television anymore, you have to have these things that support it, because, unfortunately, not a lot. It's so many distractions. Now, not a lot of people are reading like they used to not a lot of people are watching television like they used to, people are always on their phone. So I always tell you, especially on a smallest scale, hey, maybe you should do your targeted ads on Facebook and Instagram, everybody's on Facebook and Instagram, do targeted ads, find who your demo is, and actually get an ad manager, we work with the ad manager on our team. That's really incredible. Like we had a small business, they invested about three grand, it was a shoe company and on the ad manager and get an ads and they got back 14,000 in that week. For small business, that's great. That's, you know, they made their money back and son. So I always say to you having these targeted ads. And I'm not saying to anyone, you just going it's a certain way, you have to set the ads up, it's a certain look alike audience you have to create with the email addresses that you collect. So things like that collecting email addresses, having your your constant contact, or MailChimp sending out like email marketing things before you remember, we send direct mail stuff into people's mailboxes, not people, I barely check my mail, because everything comes I get everything on paper left, I'm green majority of the time. So it's best to target people online and via emails, or we know they all go to these blog sites and etc, having ads that you know, that they will see on the black side actually don't video than creating content.

Chris Shigas
So I guess it's so important when you have a limited budget, that all these pieces are kind of working together. So that makes sense that you'd want to see it holistically. Because if you had these different parts moving, then you're not really making your dollars work for you. I also like what you're saying, when you look at marketing is creating touch points with the consumer and, and maybe the consumer says, You know what, I don't know where I saw it or read it. But I've been hearing a lot of good things about this company. Right? Yeah. Now you're really building a reputation management, right? And the brand. Yeah, that's great. As you look at some of the things, I mean, obviously, there's this idea, hey, I really want to be the show or I want an article in The New York Times. But even if you get the New York Times, which is a great hit, but not everybody reads the new york times every day, right? Or even the ones that read it, they might not even see that story. So So there comes also a time of having to leverage those hits that you do get, right. Yeah, tell me a little bit about that.

Carmena Ayo-Davies
I always say to people, I'm like, Okay, if you do, like, you know, the People Magazine, and the Vogue's and etc, when we come to entertainment. Yes, that's great that you have it, but what I tell my clients, all that does is it co signed you. That's it, it just makes it No, like makes people know, okay, it's the New York Times or Vogue or people is doing an article, someone that like a magazine or outlet that is respectable is doing something on you. It's basically now when people Google you and they see that comes up, it just gives you like that stamp of like, Oh, this is actually a good business, you know, it gives them it makes them more confident in working with you or going to check check it makes them feel more comfortable, you know, in working with you. So I always say that PR piece just gives you that official cosign, but nowadays people like buying into people, they like buying into a situation and they like to see so they were rather you know, see you're whether it's clothing, it's a product or whatever it is. don't like to see it on a Kylie Jenner or Chris. What's that called? Kim Kardashian, whatever her name. Before you know over New York Times, you know, like me, you tell me, my book is, you know, in the New York Times bestseller, oh my god, this

Chris Shigas
credibility

Carmena Ayo-Davies
was holding my book going into a private to chat, and that's it, you know why? Because when these girls like, like your things, it flies off the, you know, off the shelves, like, you know, and then you start getting these caught like following so these kids don't care about like, you know, the New York Times,

Chris Shigas
yeah. Now you deal with a lot of celebrities, athletes, musicians, influencers? What do I need to know as a business owner or even at maybe as a PR person who wants to get more into publicity?

Carmena Ayo-Davies
What do I need to know about working with these types of people, they want to be seen, and they want to be seen on social media, all these people want to be popular, they want to be, you know, I'm not saying all of them majority of that. So it's about like, raising their status. You know, you have to think what type of athlete you're dealing with, when you're dealing with football player, unless you're, you are a quarterback, or the star running back or whatever, you rally, you know, people don't really know. Yeah, so some of these guys, you know, these kids, you know, whether they're from the hood, or you know, middle class or whatever family, you know, this is you're making money that you've never made before, they want to shine, you know, so you kind of have to speak their language they want to go to like, so it's like more. So like, when I think when you're starting a PR company, you have to have a whole, like concierge side as well, where you're getting them to the tables at the best restaurants and you're getting them the, you know, to go right,

Chris Shigas
giving them that kind of service, you're giving

Carmena Ayo-Davies
them that type of service. So, you know, because they'll click to say, oh, you're not doing anything for me, like, dude, I just got you in Sports Illustrated, like, you know, like, Yeah, that's great, but they want to be seen, and how they want to be seen. It's the social effect. Mm hmm.

Chris Shigas
Absolutely. You know, and it's almost like as, as a celebrity publicist, you have that concierge level, but I remember, you know, making sure Oh, do they have water at the for the interview, and then, you know, how they look over a carpet and you're trying to take care of all these little details? Yeah. At the same time, you're thinking about the publicity and the hits that are going to come from this publicity. And, and then you're thinking, sometimes you have to be part therapist, right? Like, you have to get them to the event. That's, it's not as easy. I mean, sometimes, you know, working in the corporate world. Now, if I have a CEO scheduled for a media interview, they show up, right, like

Carmena Ayo-Davies
they've been partying all night. m&d 30% chance, it all goes by like that upbringing, or sometimes they're like the breadwinner of the entire family. It's like, I always say they've been the man their whole life, because they start these journeys since like, freakin elementary school. So they've always been like the golden tickets, so they don't care about anything. Like all they care about is that job that they do. So hey, he meant I had an athlete not gonna say any names. Yeah, I got him a show on me and my partner pitched him to EA and attainder him an actual show on EA. We were ready to go with production and everything and gave us I think was a six to eight episode show. Based on this athlete's life, we're going to be in Miami, then we're going to be filming it. And all of a sudden, he changed the schedule. And I'm like, haha, all right. We were supposed to start filming in August, they changed it to November. And they said, Oh, we'll be okay. We just have to push back filming. I'm like, Look, I'm gonna rock out with whatever you guys want to do. But that's not a good idea. I'm like, these boys get distracted very easily. And this is based out of him dating and a social life. And I don't think that like, Who knows if he's still gonna be single in November. He's excited. Now. Let's do it. Yeah, Chris didn't listen to me. It was like, No, no, no, we'll be okay. Come November, he stopped answering his phone. Hmm. Mind you. We had a whole production team setup. This is for a television show. This kid did not care. Like people's jobs on the line. You know, we pitched the show didn't care. He said, Well, I have a girlfriend now. So what's gonna happen? Like, is she gonna be on the show? Because I can't be on a show talking about I'm single. When I'm in love. This is like literally, what Two months later he's talking. And then I'm like, well, that's not what we pick. We didn't pick you having a girlfriend or it's Being about your family life, we pitch you being this successful bachelor leave living in Miami offseason working out and just living the life like flashy that doesn't go, he didn't care and my contact ended up losing his job.

Chris Shigas
And that shows, especially for public relations professionals, it shows you when when you're dealing with a corporate brand, versus when a person is the brand. Yes. Right. And all of the things that go with that the emotions, and you brought back to me when when I was doing celebrity public relations and, and a time where I actually had the unusual opportunity to have to say no to Oprah. And I don't know if anybody's ever said no, bro, no Oprah before but I had to. And it was one of those things of working with the show. You're dealing because you're not just dealing with a brain, you're dealing with a person. And you have to say, Hey, we need good communication here. And I need to know what's going on. Because I can't have surprises on this end. Because we're dealing with a human being right? Yeah, I can see where on your side, you're dealing with a client, and they have personal preferences and issues and life goes on. And then on the other side, you have a show that's trying to do a product and an image and a brand and marrying those two can be tough.

Carmena Ayo-Davies
Yes, very tough.

Chris Shigas
Now you wonder one thing that surprised me Kareena. While I was doing the celebrity stuff, I realized I started getting some TMZ photographers on my phone, and realize that they don't just hang out at Jimmy choos waiting for celebrities. The celebrities call them to come out and filmed their client walking by right. That's not just happenstance. That kind of tickled me.

Carmena Ayo-Davies
Like, Hey, I'm throwing to see that. And then you name drop, who's gonna be there you think you're gonna get and sometimes be like, man, like, Hey, listen, pence in New York City. As far as I remember, it was for a Range Rover, it's going to be like, so so so yeah, sure, just make sure I'll be there. Just make sure I have passes to like, you know, the Claire or whatever. And that's it, my job is done. And they're gonna take their picture, and it's gonna get on the blog.

Chris Shigas
So going back to the book, when someone is reading your book, What's your goal? What are you hoping they really get out of it that they can take and use in their daily work? In

Carmena Ayo-Davies
my book, I want to target upcoming publicists, like someone that's new, like, maybe you could be the person, like I said, where it's hard for you to find a job. And you kind of just want to freelance and reach out to people on your own. And now you don't know how to get these contacts. Because these databases that we use are expensive, they sure are about that, like those databases can run you like, you know, 5000 or more a year, um, the cheapest you could probably get is 2500. And that's considered

Chris Shigas
anyone I pay 15,000 for my MEDIA list.

Carmena Ayo-Davies
Exactly. You know, and so here is these databases. So now you're competing against someone like yourself, where every, all the contacts are right there, all we have to do is live on and be like, Okay, let me see who's there at you know, no one Oh, and get a contact where you if you're a new upcoming person, or you're this new business that you don't, you know, you don't have the money to pay the publicist, but you don't have the database, I kind of teach you how to, like, do it, like intern style, how to get the, the contacts, like, on the hustle and on the grind. And now with social media, it's like it's easier. And, you know, it's more easier to get some of these people that work at these magazines, because all you have to do is follow the magazine and see who the magazine follow. So I tell you, all these things are great to get these contacts, you know, so

Chris Shigas
yeah, great. So let's just say you have a limited budget, you're you're following some of the steps in your book, and I get really interested, I think my market will react well to an influencer. If I'm engaging an influencer? What can I expect in return? I mean, what if I'm not giving you six figures? What's a reasonable expectation level of what I can do with an influencer? or How can I even leverage maybe even if I just was able to get it, like you said, a photograph of somebody carrying your book, right? But like, what, how do I turn that

Carmena Ayo-Davies
you can do more with influences right now. So I think people have to get in, you know, I'm not gonna keep saying their names. I'm just gonna use them as hard. Get source, you know, to use a Kylie Jenner, Kim Kardashian, some of the times that asking for a million dollars a post, right? Trust me I know this because I have priced them. I think the least I'm Kylie came before all the craziness was like 351 time. So we know for our small business, even the mid size into your life saw one post, like

Chris Shigas
I know a lot of celebrities, I mean, a minimum of $100,000 to come to a party, right? Exactly. Yeah,

Carmena Ayo-Davies
I'll walk through. But now I'm liking the space of the micro influencer. So you don't have to go that big. I have a girl Her name is Mia Ray. She's in Detroit, she probably has about like 65,000 followers, right. And her budget is nowhere near 100,000 or whatever to post, right? You can probably get me to post for like 1500. And you can probably you know, a post. And for someone like her, I like her because she has a die hard call. She's created this business. She actually has a business herself. And she she's a single mom, she has two kids. And they saw her when she was in our apartment. They saw her when she was broken. I think her boyfriend had left her and she started her life over and she was very transparent. So these people support her now she's like, making a million dollars or more, you know, doing her business. So these people have supported her and went through this journey with her and some sharing the same stories. So like a Mia, if I get say, Chris, you say to me, hey, Carmen, Carmina, I have this product is for women, do you have any micro influence you can use? That's the first person I'm going to tell? Because guess what, when she puts it on her page, it's probably gonna miss out loud.

Chris Shigas
Wow, that's interesting. So it's not necessarily how big the number is. It's how you can activate the followers and engage exactly engagement.

Carmena Ayo-Davies
So when somebody tells me, did you hear the story about this girl, like one of those youtubers or DME social media like sensation, she had all these followers, and I guess a company paid her and or something. They said she couldn't even sell 20 shirts, right? Well, you don't even know if the followers have all, you know, no, no, she's been paid. Well, there's the or you don't know how high stupidity they've become where they're not connecting. where, you know, some people people just love, they hate, they love to hate, you kind of were just like, want to talk crap about them. So they follow them. So you don't know what the level of respect or engagement is with these followers. So you have to be careful when you see big numbers, it's not necessarily a great thing, unless they're like an entertainer or something legitly, you know, but for these little micro influencers, I have in recent, probably the past year or two, I've been seeing more movement with the micro influencers and small businesses being able to afford them and them seeing movements and actually getting things done with the micro influencers. So like Amelia, like every time I'm client, she put up a product for them. And she sold 50 of those products at $135 apiece. So that worked.

Chris Shigas
Yeah, there you go. You get an ROI.

Carmena Ayo-Davies
Yes, you get in your ROI. So that worked. So someone like her, I would say that's a good one. So now I've masked I wouldn't say mastered but I'm in a great space with the micro influences where you know, where a lot of like, when Kevin Hart's movies come out. There's a marketing company out in LA. They do a lot of marketing for like influencers. That's the new thing to post up like movies coming out. So I have a guy. His name is Marcus, he always calls on me. When he's done like releases. It could be like a TV show. I did on p Valley for him. I helped him with that. When it came out for stars. It's a new show that's on stars. So he called my cat. I'm looking for some micro influencers doesn't matter. 100,000 to 20,000, whatever. If they have good engagement, let me know this is my budget, can they post? So I do that, like when Kevin Hart had a couple of his movies come out. He did the same thing. 50 cents at his show on ABC. That came out he reached out to me saying hey, I'm looking for this, this this or whatever. We don't want to spend more than this. Who do you think we can get and I submit like their pages. And he goes and his people check out their engagement and he'll he'll come back to me and say, Hey, I like this one and not that one. And we go from there.

Chris Shigas
So deep to wrap up. Do you have any kind of last words of advice for someone who's that they're they're an entrepreneur. They're trying to get going. They don't don't have a lot of money and they can't really afford to make a big Miss, right? Do you have any kind of last words of advice of where their mindset needs to be?

Carmena Ayo-Davies
Don't be discouraged. And you don't necessarily even have to use, say popular influence as you start with people in your area. Start with someone that is known in your area that might have a little more following than the regular person in, you know, in your Charlotte, North Carolina, whatever, like, Hey, Chris Shigas is poppin in Charlotte, and he got it. I go to Chris. Hey, Chris. Like if I

Chris Shigas
I don't know if I've ever been popping anywhere.

Unknown Speaker
No.

Unknown Speaker
I hear you

Carmena Ayo-Davies
ever been who's never been approached to be a so called influencer? You say to Chris, you probably don't even have to call Chris. You just say, Hey, Chris, I'll send you some clothes for my boutique. Can you for a month, can you every week or whatever. Can you post once a week about my boutique and Christmas? Sure. You're sending me clothes?

Unknown Speaker
Yeah, sure.

Carmena Ayo-Davies
We'll do it. So let's start with where you are. Don't start shooting for the stars right away. Not that anything is wrong with that. But you know, just think I'll say don't get discouraged. Use what you have. You'll be so surprised to see the contacts you have in your own database. Just utilize those. Great

Chris Shigas
carmena thank you so much for being on PR Wars today.

Carmena Ayo-Davies
Thank you so much for having me, Chris.

Chris Shigas
You can listen to a new episode a PR Wars every Sunday night at 8pm. Be sure to say hi to Brad and me on PR Wars Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn pages and do me a favor. Before you put together your 2021 plan. Figure out who are the micro influencers in your industry, who's talking about the issues relevant to your business. Make this part of your plan, expand that old media list, build new relationships with your key influencers. Now go get 'em.

PR Wars was selected as a Top PR Podcast You Must Follow in 2020 by Feedspot.

Holiday retail. It is a tough pitch to get your clients products under the Christmas tree. Our guest today on the PR Wars podcast worked a decade for the National Retail Federation. She even worked with the team that originally coined the term "Cyber Monday." Join us as PR Wars talks holiday public relations with Kathy Grannis Allen, Director of Media Relations at SalientMG.

A.I. generated show transcript: 

Chris Shigas
Hey PR Wars fans. I have some sad news today, PR Wars co-host Brad Grantham is mourning the loss of his father. His dad, Bill Grantham, passed away from COVID-19 this week. As we pass this 300,000 deaths in the US, it's more than just numbers. It's a devastating illness that is impacting too many families. You see, Brad's dad, Bill Grantham, lived in North Carolina but spent most of his life in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. And in this world of inconsistency, Bill Grantham's legacy represents commitment. He was completely committed to God, to his wife, and to his family. Bill Grantham was 71 years old. So this Christmas, honor Bill Grantham by committing. Commit to something in your life that's important. We'll welcome back Brad to the show next week. Now, let's roll.

Show open: “We want the truth.” “We want the truth.” “We want the truth.” “I have news for everybody. Get over it.”

Announcer
It’s time. Welcome to PR Wars coming at you live from Atlanta, Georgia. Now, here is your host… Chris Shigas.

Chris Shigas
Hey, everyone, welcome to PR wars. I'm Chris Shigas. Holiday retail. It is a tough pitch to get your clients products under the Christmas tree. Our guest today on PR wars worked a decade for the National Retail Federation. She even worked with the team that originally coined the term Cyber Monday. Huge now, she's the director of media relations for the marketing agency SalientMG. Kathy Grannis Allen, thank you for joining us on PR Wars today.

Kathy Allen
Yeah, thank you so much for having me.

Chris Shigas
Here we are, it's the rush of holiday shopping season. And you have clients who, who are really trying to make this quarter work for them in this space in this holiday retail what's working in 2020?

Kathy Allen
Man, that is the question, isn't it? You know, veteran PR professionals go into the situation, knowing the reporter there be the outlet, what works and what doesn't, you build up to this level as a PR professional, where you have a very good understanding of how to access a reporter how to research their beat, when to pitch them when not to how to evaluate the new cycle. But 2020 he hit has changed. Even all of that, for sure. For everyone, for every single pair professional, you know, whether you're you specialize in communications in general or, or if you are strictly PR media 2020 has changed everything. And I think this year, so far, what I've really noticed has worked, regardless of whether it's about the election, or COVID. Or if or if you happen to be in the space where Amazon, Facebook and tick tock play, what really works is a concise, well researched and well thought out and well timed pitch more so than ever before. Because if you're going to get a reply in your email, it's only going to come if it provides true true true value to that reporter

Chris Shigas
right. So So you started off the year and you had planning and then mid year you changed your planning probably and that now you're executing. So So what's working what channels do you see I know different clients have different objectives. But but but if you look at it from a broad picture, which channels are really working in retail PR

Kathy Allen
that's it that's a great question. And Funny enough, I think only in the last year or so have I become the Twitter retail PR person that I am today. Honestly, I I was always of the mindset that social media is great when it comes to interacting with reporters. But it was always a side gig. It was always just something that was there but and and I would use it to keep up with my friends right to keep up with the beat reporter if they were having a tough day or if a lot of them were piling on about a story or a trend I would jump in but these days It honestly has become a mechanism to see what media is saying and what they're saying about how people pitch them. Because sometimes it's not. It's not the most friendly, obviously, because they receive so many crazy pitches, but there's a lot of feedback about how to pitch them. There's questions about what they're looking for. So Twitter is one channel that has worked for me in terms of, of getting through. Exactly,

Chris Shigas
yes, they do like Twitter. Yeah. And I guess, are you at the school where you're engaging with these reporters, even when you're not pitching them?

Kathy Allen
Correct. Exactly. So there, there are more things, I've always believed that media relations is a two way street. it you know, you can expect to go to a reporter just with the, the idea that they're going to cover what you have available to them, you have to also be available to them when you have nothing to offer, except guidance, or a name or a suggestion for a source or a website they haven't seen. So getting in front of them with with ideas of who to go to who has great research, who has, you know, great contacts is just as important. And I've sent DMS to you know, CNN business reporters to protocol to, you know, LA Times you name it, just introducing myself saying, I'm here I'm working with such and such, it's very nice to meet you. Please let me know if there's anything I can ever do. And that is actually believe it or not, has worked worked very well for me. And in just having them come to me, again through Twitter or come to me even an email with a follow up question. Even if it has nothing to do with me or require

Chris Shigas
media lists had been shrinking and shrinking, just the whole industry has been shrinking. And as you look for ways to expand your contact list, and stakeholders, obviously, one thing that's coming up is influencers. And you mentioned Tick tock, and you mentioned other kinds of things. And what role do you think influencers are playing today in your industry? And do you treat them the same as a media reporter? Or how do you work that?

Kathy Allen
Well, from my standpoint, at least the influencers that I would rely on most, or that I am relying most at least may not have the million plus followers, you know, like your YouTube or Instagram stars, your tech stars, per se, but I I rely a lot on the analysts and the and those types of global influencers. You know, there's a research firm out there Forrester Research and I'm a very big fan of sushi relates to Karina kodali, she is been an influencer in the retail and e commerce and digital retail space for for as long as I can remember, that kind of influence to me matters a little bit more than somebody who would be getting paid by a brand to speak about it. That's not to say that the value of these influencer firms isn't real. Imagine social media was only born 10 years, 15 years ago, right? And the things that we've seen come from that just not even in the world of PR, just the world of marketing, and just that digital visibility is huge.

Chris Shigas
I'm aging myself here. But my first Facebook campaign that I did, I had to use one of our interns, because when if you remember when Facebook started, you had to have a college email address in order to have an account. So my first campaign in Facebook, I had to enlist my intern so that we could even create a site. Yeah,

Kathy Allen
yeah, exactly. Yeah, I was. I was at the National Retail Federation. For a year Cyber Monday was coined and invented and created. I worked with the the team that actually coined that phrase, and the idea of having somebody come in. And you know, they were in their early 20s. They came in twice a week to help us manage Twitter, and social media, because it was so new, and it was burgeoning. But we weren't accustomed to this idea of what of our was gonna grow or what it was, but to be there at the beginning of it was incredible.

Chris Shigas
Now, there's lots of ways to reach out to a reporter you mentioned kind of slipping into some of these DMS on Twitter, right? But But there's also okay, traditionally, you send out a press release and you blast it out other ways. There's a what you you send a pitch, right, maybe it's just a couple of lines. And here's an idea. There's we used to do these old school press kits where you mail them to reporters, and I'm thinking in retail, maybe even giving that if the product isn't expensive. You could send some stuff to a newsroom. What's your go to what's what's working for you this year?

Kathy Allen
Oh, let's see. Well, yeah, clearly, email is the easy Yes, but I have we, as all of us we've struggled with getting that reply right? So, I have found that even if I get, let's say, five replies a week, for four, again, this is proactive. This is just proactive PR, right? This wouldn't be necessarily a breaking news story. I, one of the one of the things that also works for me is, believe it or not going to somebody I might know at that outlet, whether it's a Fast Company, or if it's Reuters, and saying, Hey, I realized this isn't your beat. This isn't your stick. But we've worked together for X number of yours. Do you happen to know the person who's covering supply chain, or the person who would be covering digital online or you know, online retail, it's all the same, that kind of ask for advice method has actually worked for me a couple times, I went to a fortune reporter, I was trying to get in front of one of their lead diversity inclusion reporters, she she runs this awesome newsletter and this, this great DNI beat, but I don't really know the retail reporter. And I asked him for, for an introduction. And he had no problem with that introduction, because I've known him for so long. And we had such a great relationship that he knew that I in No, no way was going to spam this reporter or harasser or send a send an unnecessary email. That is I've used that in many beats at dozens and dozens of outlets. And it's actually worked quite well for me.

Chris Shigas
Interesting. Now, one thing, I'm interested in you, you work with a full service marketing agency, and you lead the media relations portion of that. So you may be more than a lot of people in a media relations agency, really learn how to integrate your media relations with the overall marketing mix. Can you talk a little bit about that, and kind of how you approach that and when media relations is one piece of that marketing plan?

Kathy Allen
Yeah, that's a that's that's a good point. Because back, I don't know how long, there was a time where you would simply leave the marketing side of the house to the marketing side of the house, and you would have the PR side of the house or the PR side of the house. But these days, because everything is so integrated, and so digital, there is no such thing as just hitting send on a press release. Nor is there such thing as just scheduling a tweet, nor is there such thing as just a direct mailer, right, you know, the direct mail or has a QR code that sends you to a website that has to be updated, that you know, should direct people and media to the right place. So I, I've really benefited and learned more about marketing and integrated communications than ever before, with this role with where, you know, it's salient, because my team of marketing experts are really, you know, they are making back end changes for our clients that I'd never heard of, or knew of. And not to say that I want to become a marketing expert in any fashion. You know, I love what I do, but I've learned so much from them. And it's been important for me to stay up to date with their trends, just as it is for them to understand what I'm battling with PR and media, and especially in this landscape when they say and they asked me a question about a press release that came up while I wasn't on a call. They know, my messaging enough to know, you know, sometimes the answer isn't just a press release most of time. It's not, you know, sometimes it's just a targeted call or targeted email. And it's it's been, it's been really beneficial for all of us to to be a part but yeah, that handling that media relations alone is actually not really I'm not really alone there. There is a you know, a nice team effort.

Chris Shigas
So you you burn up messaging, and and sometimes a marketing message looks a little different than a media relations message. And which looks a little different than a social media message. But But tell me about kind of your approach to messaging and what you're looking for when you're helping a client.

Kathy Allen
I'm really glad you you asked that literally just the other day, we were working with a client who was drafting a press release, there were two paragraphs that read like a marketing brochure. Mm hmm. And, you know, and in the comments and and through some edits, we had to remind them, this wasn't newsy that this was salesy. This was promotional.

Chris Shigas
Yeah. Like an advertisement.

Kathy Allen
Yes. And I find that I'm having to do that a lot more with communication teams that do focus more on the marketing side, right or if our point of contact is a vice president of marketing, so instead of them having a PR expert on hand, you know they'll will as their agency of record obviously, it clearly we work with them and help them but a lot of the materials when you break it down, you know when you try to put them through the PR lens. It is Very easy to spot that promotional language. So I, you know, I mostly, and honestly, what I ended up doing was I ended up just putting quotation marks around one of those paragraphs because it read like a quote, it couldn't, you know, it was also the quote from the chief marketing officer,

Chris Shigas
right. And that is where you can get a lot of the opinionated stuff in. And instead, the one thing I hate throw away quotes, I hate the quotes of we're thrilled to be a part of this, whatever, you know, I like it. Let's make these quotes work a little bit. And if you have to put in some marketing language, yeah, let's use this quote.

Kathy Allen
Right, yeah, and especially the more provocative you can be in it right now, the better, right, you know, you can certainly thank your partners, you can say it's a match made in heaven, etc. But by literally saying that there are millions of people out there just waiting to tackle your cyber platform in erupt with fraud is better left as a sentence, if you can back it up obvious or as a quote, then then it's been his press release. And then obviously, then there's the next level of messaging, which is your CEO messaging, which I also work on every day, whether it's for prepping for an interview, or honestly, if they are themselves, just trying to wrap their head around a launch, you know, we want to put them in the right, the right frame of mind, let's say it is a marketing launch. But they need materials that are going to be something that they would speak whether they speak on the record or whether they speak speak to a partner, or virtual coffee, you know, with a reporter, there's there's definitely that level that difference. And it's been important to keep the promotional side promotional on the newsy side newsy. Well,

Chris Shigas
you have about a couple of weeks left in this holiday shopping season, and then you're going to wrap up, you're going to do some measurement, and then you're going to do some reporting back. Can Can you foresee maybe how 2020 how what's happened this year is going to change for your plans next year for your clients, how they're gonna shift?

Kathy Allen
Right? Well, you know, like you said that any playbook we may have had, in early 2020, was thrown out the window, we've had to learn how to become a referenceable. And newsy. When it is on it is virtually impossible. So with that, what we've found ourselves doing And to your point, as we are currently making our year, yearly rap reports for clients, right. And actually, the metrics aren't as far off as I think we would have had in a normal year. But let's say even Chris, even without this pandemic, it was still an election year. Right? So. So regardless, we were still looking at a difficult year ahead, even if COVID had not spread the way it had. And it hadn't become this this huge tragedy. And taking over the news, an election itself takes up editor's budget space for eight, nine months, regardless. So I think, when we do speak to our clients, we always remind them about expectations. And that is, that is, that is the one thing, yes, I don't ever want to be the PR person that says that I'm making an excuse for why I didn't get coverage. It's not my job to explain my life away. But it is my job to make sure that they understand the absolute realistic, the realistic atmosphere, you know, the the environment that we're all in. And that's going to be the only way we succeed together is if they understand the definition of news, and not news, saying, hey, you should cover my client, because they're interesting, is it? It's a puff piece, right? It's not going to work. Right. But but saying, you should meet my client, they're the only black CEO in this space. They were the first to market with this product. He's you know, raised $43 million since inception. And by the way, the numbers he's seeing with his product, you know, are up to 543%. That's the new story. It's not meet my meet this client. He's news where they have

Chris Shigas
some of those those specifics, you know, yeah, you have $1 figure, you have numbers, you have some specific information, you get the reporter and it's not just a piece of marketing fluff. Yeah,

Kathy Allen
exactly. Yeah. And then there's you and there's year over year and there's change and there's, there's stuff that goes into it that makes the reporter at least reply back and say, Wow, that's great. Can we connect next week, or I loaded up for the next three weeks can remind me that I want to connect with you and you know, next month, and trust me, I'm writing that down.

Chris Shigas
A big part of my plan so far has always been to do decide briefings and to take when when you're doing something like you just mentioned, pitching as a CEO Bringing them on a media tour where they can shake hands and they could look someone in the eye and a reporter can get a briefing. And that was kind of taken away from us, right? We can't do that and done a little bit on zoom and things like that to do reporter briefings. Have you found that the reporters have been more willing to to just meet? Or is it hasn't been tough,

Kathy Allen
really tough, really tough? The way the way our firm works, you know, we actually only work by referral only. So we don't respond to RFPs. And then the clients that you know, we take on because

Chris Shigas
I've never had to write another RFP again, it would be too soon.

Kathy Allen
I know, trust me, um, it's great. But you know, with that, I say that because our level of trust and commitment to our clients is hands down, explicitly different than a lot of other firms, you will find, right, like we are into, you're intimately involved in the success of these individuals, because we also work with minority and underrepresented executives, specifically, to help them find their voice in the market. I feel and I know in my heart is a good pitch. And I know is is a good story idea I've offered for these virtual coffees or I've offered for a 510 minute introduction has been very, very challenging, very challenging to get through, you know, again, I'll get the reply from a Fast Company. I'll get the reply from you know, a Mashable, it's on that, you know, the consumer side?

Chris Shigas
Absolutely. Well, it takes tenacity, takes persistence. Last question. If there's a young person graduating college, maybe with a degree in PR, and they come to you, and they say, you know, what, what kind of skill sets? Do I need to be where you are and to be successful in this industry? What would you tell them?

Kathy Allen
Well, I think they have, you have to like people. I'm not saying you have to be an extrovert, right. But you have to be able to meet in the middle when it comes to emotional development, right? If you're pitching a reporter who is bubbly, or who is not bubbly, you have to be able to meet them in the middle. And you have to enjoy that and you have to sound like you'd like it. So that's why I think liking people is a big part of it. That's maybe maybe a little bit like in the personal development. But you also to your point, tenacity is a great is a great point, because you can't give up after the first pitch. But you also can't spam them, right? So you have to find a balance. And it does it has to be thorough research with your pitch like you have to, you have to get in bed with your pitch. You have to you have to marry your pitch and figure out if it is going to work the way you want it to and don't waste reporters time zone never they'll never reply.

Chris Shigas
Okay, great. Well, Kathy, thank you so much for joining us on PR Wars today.

Kathy Allen
Thank you so much for having me. That was a lot of fun.

Chris Shigas
All right, great. You can listen to a new PR wars podcast every Sunday night at 8pm. I want to thank Kathy Grannis Allen, Director of media relations for SalientMG and do me a favor. Commit to your loved ones this holiday season. The year has taken a toll on everyone. And when you return to work, commit to this profession that we love. Use communication to lift people. Commit your skills to make 2021 better than ever. Now, go get 'em.

PR Wars was selected as a Top PR Podcast You Must Follow in 2020 by Feedspot.