The Exchanges

Q Well, I do have a question though, which is, how do you avoid the complacency problem when you do have an ongoing agency of record, and you want to light a fire under them?

A So, I think OutKaz was really good at this because we had clients like, so salesforce.com, for example, we had, I think, about a dozen years From 1998 onwards, right? Through, I think five VPs of marketing before the company filed for IPO. And that was like Karen Marooney. She did an amazing, amazing job managing that account through changes, inflection points, growth. And what we would do is we would ask ourselves and we'd ask the teams like, okay, so what's on the to-do list and what's not on the to-do list? And like, Forget what the client is telling you during the weekly calls. Like, what do you think will blow them away? And then go do that. And like, do not ignore media. Because if there's a good story, you have permission to do everything else. You can have every conversation. You can screw up occasionally. But if there's no media, then like, what are you doing? And as a result, we always were called a media shop. And I was like, you know what? I'll wear that badge with pride because I think it's important.

AI assessment note: “what do you think will blow them away? And then go do that.”

Q great context, because I would actually like to break down, what is a crisis? I know that sounds like a very existential question, like, what's a crisis? But how do you define a crisis? I mean, is a crisis that just because your CEO is freaking out about something, and you're in charge of comms, and you've got to worry about it, and that's good enough of a reason, or?

A Well, it's, it's anything and everything that negatively impacts your business and how people perceive your business. So it, it can be getting negative press because of something, but it can also go all the way down like an oil spill, right? All of those are crises. It's not like your CEO or somebody having a bad day or somebody being annoying on Twitter. I think the thing that's often overlooked in a crisis that's very important is like, what's the culture around crisis? Because what happens is The proverbial S hits the fan, then there's fight or flight, and people often want to hide stuff. So you want to create a culture around when you're in a crisis moment, honesty and being transparent is prized and highly valued, because you're not going to get to the truth otherwise.

AI assessment note: “anything and everything that negatively impacts your business and how people perceive your business”

Q great context, because I would actually like to break down, what is a crisis? I know that sounds like a very existential question, like, what's a crisis? But how do you define a crisis? I mean, is a crisis that just because your CEO is freaking out about something, and you're in charge of comms, and you've got to worry about it, and that's good enough of a reason, or?

A Well, it's, it's anything and everything that negatively impacts your business and how people perceive your business. So it, it can be getting negative press because of something, but it can also go all the way down like an oil spill, right? All of those are crises. It's not like your CEO or somebody having a bad day or somebody being annoying on Twitter. I think the thing that's often overlooked in a crisis that's very important is like, what's the culture around crisis? Because what happens is The proverbial S hits the fan, then there's fight or flight, and people often want to hide stuff. So you want to create a culture around when you're in a crisis moment, honesty and being transparent is prized and highly valued, because you're not going to get to the truth otherwise.

AI assessment note: “anything and everything that negatively impacts your business and how people perceive your business”

Q I want to pick on something for a moment before we continue with this stealth and not stealth discussion, which is, should companies really be doing any kind of PR if they don't have a product? Like, what are the pros and cons of that?

A Well, I think if you're an enterprise software company, for example, you have long sales cycles, and you want to start engaging in the market, and you want to start talking to CIOs, so you really want to be out there because it'll take you a while to close those deals. So I think there are lots of reasons to engage. There's also reasons to engage in Let's say you're operating in a completely new category, and you need to, quote, unquote, evangelize, like, why people should be thinking about this category differently. Like, there's lots of reasons to do it. I think the point that Kim made that that is super important is, like, the delta between where you are today and what vision you highlight and how much you put yourself out there shouldn't be too big, because then you're just a hype machine and you lose credibility, right? But if you are Actually doing here with your product and your shipping and whatnot, but nobody knows about you. You're really punching under your weight and you're leaving money on the table. And that's just a shame.

AI assessment note: “the delta between where you are today and what vision you highlight”

Q I want to pick on something for a moment before we continue with this stealth and not stealth discussion, which is, should companies really be doing any kind of PR if they don't have a product? Like, what are the pros and cons of that?

A Well, I think if you're an enterprise software company, for example, you have long sales cycles, and you want to start engaging in the market, and you want to start talking to CIOs, so you really want to be out there because it'll take you a while to close those deals. So I think there are lots of reasons to engage. There's also reasons to engage in Let's say you're operating in a completely new category, and you need to, quote, unquote, evangelize, like, why people should be thinking about this category differently. Like, there's lots of reasons to do it. I think the point that Kim made that that is super important is, like, the delta between where you are today and what vision you highlight and how much you put yourself out there shouldn't be too big, because then you're just a hype machine and you lose credibility, right? But if you are Actually doing here with your product and your shipping and whatnot, but nobody knows about you. You're really punching under your weight and you're leaving money on the table. And that's just a shame.

AI assessment note: “delta between where you are today and what vision you highlight... shouldn't be too big”

Q like that? So, as we're on this topic of managing an agency, clearly, Part of this process, you, you guys began with the need to discover the stories internally. You've talked both about proactive and reactive moments, incidental and building ones. Now, what are the other kind of broad milestones to think about in a company's life cycle that could be musy moments that an agency could get involved in?

A And, and let me just say, a lot of them you bundle together, right? Like, we exist and depend, that's interesting depending on who the people are and what they're working on, all of that. Then you've raised money. And of course, the, Whether that's an inflection point that the bar for press coverage keeps raising because, you know, people raise rather large rounds these days, right? Then you get rockstar independent board member. All of those are ingredients, right? Ok, product, right? Like, and what are the product milestones? And then you have product market fit where all of a sudden, 50% of Wall Street uses your product. Like, there's lots of milestones, and I'm not saying every one of them is a big to-do, but they're markers.

AI assessment note: “Then you've raised money... rockstar independent board member... product market fit”

Q But I have a question about this, because honestly, like, if I'm a founder and I'm busy trying to build a frickin' company For God's sake. And in the beginning, you're doing like, 20 things at once, wearing 20 hats. I don't have the time to manage an agency. Like, isn't the point of outsourcing it to just not think about it?

A An agency is ideally managed not by the founder, because as a CEO, you have lots of things to do, right? Like, you're growing a company, you're probably managing engineering still. Like, there's a lot of things to do. So ideally, you have someone with a lot of input from you who will help the agency. Be successful and the other way around. And so, yes, you do weekly phone calls and you share lists and like this and that and the other, but there's like, okay, the building, the camaraderie and sort of the, the investment together. The agency can only tell the stories that they know, right? So if you're, if you are the founder that has that gene and understands like, oh, this will be interesting to Wired. That will be interesting to TechCrunch. This is not interesting at all.

AI assessment note: “An agency is ideally managed not by the founder, because as a CEO”

Q So there's a real dance I'm hearing, but quite frankly, what I'm also hearing a little bit of, and just disillusioned me of this, is Why would I even bother outsourcing this? Why not just hire someone in house? Like, why do all this work? If you're saying it's not dictation, you should be able to discover.

A It's totally legit. I mean, like, yeah, I don't think Apple has really used PR agencies. There are models where you don't have an agency at all. What we should do is dissect, like, how would you divide and conquer? Like who's, who's good at what? If you're internal, you probably are, you have more of your time is often consumed with like Talking to the product managers and figuring out what the roadmap is, right? And like doing all that and like finding the stories. Making sure that everything moves forward. Do all those meetings, right? And you don't have any of that when you're on the agency side, right? Your time is taken up with talking to reporters all the time because you have multiple clients. So as a result, you know, stories that are kind of outside of scope. And that's interesting to a client who is like, you know, I, I, I'd be good for me to know if Wired is doing a cover story on AI.

AI assessment note: “Your time is taken up with talking to reporters all the time because you have multiple clients.”

Q like that? So, as we're on this topic of managing an agency, clearly, Part of this process, you, you guys began with the need to discover the stories internally. You've talked both about proactive and reactive moments, incidental and building ones. Now, what are the other kind of broad milestones to think about in a company's life cycle that could be musy moments that an agency could get involved in?

A And, and let me just say, a lot of them you bundle together, right? Like, we exist and depend, that's interesting depending on who the people are and what they're working on, all of that. Then you've raised money. And of course, the, Whether that's an inflection point that the bar for press coverage keeps raising because, you know, people raise rather large rounds these days, right? Then you get rockstar independent board member. All of those are ingredients, right? Ok, product, right? Like, and what are the product milestones? And then you have product market fit where all of a sudden, 50% of Wall Street uses your product. Like, there's lots of milestones, and I'm not saying every one of them is a big to-do, but they're markers.

AI assessment note: “Then you've raised money... Then you get rockstar independent board member... product milestones”

Q Know the difference. So one of the themes that you guys have touched upon throughout this is the The importance of a plan and progress against those goals, whether it's measurement, whether it's figuring out what to do, how to judge. So what is a plan and what goes into one?

A Yes, there has to be a plan, but it's more the act of planning than the actual document because, uh, you know, particularly successful companies, things change all the time, right? And so the plan goes out the window because there's new stuff to work with, which is great, but you need to have a plan and a planning process to put some method to all of this. And you need to also make sure, particularly when you're an outsider, you gain the client's trust. It was like, okay, what is actually going to happen? So that's why a plan is really important. A good starting point is sort of, if this is your goal for this year and for next year, then here's what needs to happen in the first 90 days, and then here's what needs to happen from there, and here's how much time we need from you, you know, all that kind of stuff you need to document.

AI assessment note: “if this is your goal for this year... here's what needs to happen”

Q Know the difference. So one of the themes that you guys have touched upon throughout this is the The importance of a plan and progress against those goals, whether it's measurement, whether it's figuring out what to do, how to judge. So what is a plan and what goes into one?

A Yes, there has to be a plan, but it's more the act of planning than the actual document because, uh, you know, particularly successful companies, things change all the time, right? And so the plan goes out the window because there's new stuff to work with, which is great, but you need to have a plan and a planning process to put some method to all of this. And you need to also make sure, particularly when you're an outsider, you gain the client's trust. It was like, okay, what is actually going to happen? So that's why a plan is really important. A good starting point is sort of, if this is your goal for this year and for next year, then here's what needs to happen in the first 90 days, and then here's what needs to happen from there, and here's how much time we need from you, you know, all that kind of stuff you need to document.

AI assessment note: “if this is your goal for this year... here's what needs to happen”

Q So there's a real dance I'm hearing, but quite frankly, what I'm also hearing a little bit of, and just disillusioned me of this, is Why would I even bother outsourcing this? Why not just hire someone in house? Like, why do all this work? If you're saying it's not dictation, you should be able to discover.

A It's totally legit. I mean, like, yeah, I don't think Apple has really used PR agencies. There are models where you don't have an agency at all. What we should do is dissect, like, how would you divide and conquer? Like who's, who's good at what? If you're internal, you probably are, you have more of your time is often consumed with like Talking to the product managers and figuring out what the roadmap is, right? And like doing all that and like finding the stories. Making sure that everything moves forward. Do all those meetings, right? And you don't have any of that when you're on the agency side, right? Your time is taken up with talking to reporters all the time because you have multiple clients. So as a result, you know, stories that are kind of outside of scope. And that's interesting to a client who is like, you know, I, I, I'd be good for me to know if Wired is doing a cover story on AI.

AI assessment note: “Your time is taken up with talking to reporters all the time because you have multiple clients.”

Q But I have a question about this, because honestly, like, if I'm a founder and I'm busy trying to build a frickin' company For God's sake. And in the beginning, you're doing like, 20 things at once, wearing 20 hats. I don't have the time to manage an agency. Like, isn't the point of outsourcing it to just not think about it?

A An agency is ideally managed not by the founder, because as a CEO, you have lots of things to do, right? Like, you're growing a company, you're probably managing engineering still. Like, there's a lot of things to do. So ideally, you have someone with a lot of input from you who will help the agency. Be successful and the other way around. And so, yes, you do weekly phone calls and you share lists and like this and that and the other, but there's like, okay, the building, the camaraderie and sort of the, the investment together. The agency can only tell the stories that they know, right? So if you're, if you are the founder that has that gene and understands like, oh, this will be interesting to Wired. That will be interesting to TechCrunch. This is not interesting at all.

AI assessment note: “An agency is ideally managed not by the founder”

Q Well, I do have a question though, which is, how do you avoid the complacency problem when you do have an ongoing agency of record, and you want to light a fire under them?

A So, I think OutKaz was really good at this because we had clients like, so salesforce.com, for example, we had, I think, about a dozen years From 1998 onwards, right? Through, I think five VPs of marketing before the company filed for IPO. And that was like Karen Marooney. She did an amazing, amazing job managing that account through changes, inflection points, growth. And what we would do is we would ask ourselves and we'd ask the teams like, okay, so what's on the to-do list and what's not on the to-do list? And like, Forget what the client is telling you during the weekly calls. Like, what do you think will blow them away? And then go do that. And like, do not ignore media. Because if there's a good story, you have permission to do everything else. You can have every conversation. You can screw up occasionally. But if there's no media, then like, what are you doing? And as a result, we always were called a media shop. And I was like, you know what? I'll wear that badge with pride because I think it's important.

AI assessment note: “we would ask ourselves and we'd ask the teams like, okay, so what's”

Q Okay, so a frequently asked question is, when is the best time, timing-wise, for a startup founder to bring in a PR agency?

A The one thing to know is that PR is not a transactional thing. It is a long-term thing. It's much more like enterprise sales rather than anything else. So it's really hard to do as a project. There are exceptions to that, but it's a long-term thing that has very much to do with telling a story over time. A reporter would Will not listen to a pitch, whether it's from a PR person or anyone, and go like, oh, let me just write this down. There are exceptions to the rule, like your famous, well-known founder, you know, that's different. You're in the news all the time, right? Or you have huge news. But in general, people want to discover the story over time, and they're not sitting there to take dictation. It's just not how it works.

AI assessment note: “PR is not a transactional thing. It is a long-term thing.”

Q Okay, so a frequently asked question is, when is the best time, timing-wise, for a startup founder to bring in a PR agency?

A The one thing to know is that PR is not a transactional thing. It is a long-term thing. It's much more like enterprise sales rather than anything else. So it's really hard to do as a project. There are exceptions to that, but it's a long-term thing that has very much to do with telling a story over time. A reporter would Will not listen to a pitch, whether it's from a PR person or anyone, and go like, oh, let me just write this down. There are exceptions to the rule, like your famous, well-known founder, you know, that's different. You're in the news all the time, right? Or you have huge news. But in general, people want to discover the story over time, and they're not sitting there to take dictation. It's just not how it works.

AI assessment note: “PR is not a transactional thing. It is a long-term thing.”

Q Blog posts count as under SEC rules, right?

A So the way I think about the press and blogging is that you want to do both. The press has an important function, which is to kind of inspect the world and the companies that are in it and the technologies and whatnot. Having relationships where there's an open dialogue is just a very good practice, right? Because that will happen no matter whether you choose to or not. But then the other thing is sometimes you are at odds with the press's view of things and your own view of your things. And it's very, very useful to have a direct channel where you can tell your story your way. And at least for the record from you, this is how you see this issue or this problem or this product or whatnot. So I think both are important.

AI assessment note: “So the way I think about the press and blogging is that you want”

Q Blog posts count as under SEC rules, right?

A So the way I think about the press and blogging is that you want to do both. The press has an important function, which is to kind of inspect the world and the companies that are in it and the technologies and whatnot. Having relationships where there's an open dialogue is just a very good practice, right? Because that will happen no matter whether you choose to or not. But then the other thing is sometimes you are at odds with the press's view of things and your own view of your things. And it's very, very useful to have a direct channel where you can tell your story your way. And at least for the record from you, this is how you see this issue or this problem or this product or whatnot. So I think both are important.

AI assessment note: “the way I think about the press and blogging is that you want to do both.”