The Exchanges

Q So why don't you tell everyone a little bit about what you do and, you know, why are you passionate about PR? Why did you want to get involved in PR and how you switched over to startups from large companies?

A Sure. So I am an innovator at heart. I guess that's why I have a lot of passion for startups since I was a little kid. I'm just a dreamer and love to invent things and make things. So that's likely why I focus on startups today and why I started in the creative industries to begin with. I started my career about a little over 20 years ago, working in big advertising agencies. And worked on huge global brands like HP and Gillette and Diageo brands, Charlie Spirits brands and Procter and Gamble, like all the biggies, McDonald's, Verizon, you name it. You know, working in big ad agencies is amazing because you're surrounded by just the cream of the crop, creative people. And as the industry changed and social media became a thing, the big agencies weren't really jumping through hoops to win that business because it felt very tactile. Go at the time. I saw something bigger and decided to move over to PR because PR agencies saw it too, and they started to go after social media business and start to build there because they felt like, well, we're public relations. We understand how to build communities, word of mouth, and that's what social media was pretty much built on. So I saw that happening and decided to take the leap to PR. Super happy that I did. PR is a really interesting place to be very different from the advertising world. Although both are about brand building. One is re…

AI assessment note: “I saw something bigger and decided to move over to PR”

Q So what are the differences between good and bad PR methods? Like how, how do you look at a company and just kind of with your eye very quickly see, ah, they've got a proper PR strategy or they've got a bad PR strategy?

A PR strategy is about stepping back, taking a look at the PR mix, taking a look at the competitive set, the landscape, the context, right? The cultural context of what's happening and determine what's your best way to attack, to ensure that you're getting the most visibility, establishing a reputation for yourself and telling your story. The default of startups around PR is, oh, we just need to get mentioned. And then the world will open up For us, right? We need, all we need is someone to mention, mention us in Fast Company or in Fortune or Forbes. That's one part of PR is media relations, but there's so much more to PR than that. There is, you know, corporate communications. There's influencer marketing. Of course, social is a part of that. What I've noticed is that there isn't a real strategy there. It's what we call spray and pray, right? It's like, can we pitch as many outlets as possible? Please get us some coverage. First of all, it's not easy to get coverage. People think that it's a walk in the park. And as a matter of fact, I just saw an ad come across my feed where a startup is saying, Hey, do you want, you know, your brand placed in the big magazines and online publications? Well, we can place it for you there. No problem. You know? And I'm just like, sure, you can probably get a mention about a brand, but if you're not telling a story and you haven't strategically t…

AI assessment note: “The default of startups around PR is, oh, we just need to get mentioned.”

Q So what if that bottle company had a completely black packaging with like BLM on it, or if they had like a rainbow colored bottle to support LGBT? Is that virtue signaling or is that valuable, like truly valuable? Is that meaningful in any way?

A It's only meaningful when it's authentic to their brand. If their brand has a story that maybe the founder is a person of color that founded the brand and has deep roots with the The Black Lives Matter community, and, and they decided to do that, then I could see that that's authentic and genuine. There's a connection there, but if it's just taking advantage of a situation or, you know, just trying to leverage that, I, those are the things I hate. I, um, I did a talk probably like five years ago around this concept called Brandviguity that my team and I kind of coined at my last agency, and it was about Brands trying to keep up with the social media content race, which still is happening today. And they just glom on to anything that's happening. Ooh, I changed my profile picture of, you know, in honor of something that's happening in Ghana, you know, like I, how does that have anything to do with your brand? And the worst examples and offenders were when celebrities died. Right. And at one point Cheerios, sorry, Cheerios, um, put up a, a post That when Prince died, that said he was like RIP or something. And the Cheerio dotted the I, and I was just, I'm just like Cheerios. Why are you celebrating? Like, why are you not celebrating Prince's death? But why are you even in this conversation? Like, what is Cheerios have to do with this at all? And the answer is nothing. And so when…

AI assessment note: “It's only meaningful when it's authentic to their brand.”

Q Okay, I love that you said that, and I want to go deeper into that. You mentioned several quick and easy kind of providers that they're like, hey, we can get you mentioned. Beyond that, what kind of red flags should someone be looking for when they're trying to pick a PR firm if they choose to go that route?

A There are many red flags. I think the most prominent for me Is that they don't consider strategy. If they're just willing to come in and say, yeah, we'll, we'll start making those calls, you know, and not thinking about the intent that I spoke about before and having a real strategy for how they're going to do that. As far as the due diligence to go in and look at the context, right? First and level set with competition and what's happening in culture and in the world and who your target audience is and what they care about right now, all of that. If they're not doing that and saying that they can go off and do it without that, that's a huge red flag. And then, you know, putting together an approach that is not just PR in a vacuum. It looks at your broader marketing mix and seeing how you fit in. You know, what else are you doing? How can we leverage and connect the rest of your efforts to what we're doing in PR? Can PR amplify things you're doing in other areas? Can you amplify PR results in other areas? So, um, the Cross collaboration piece. If they're not suggesting that or inquiring about what else you're doing, how else they can connect, how can they maximize your investment? That's certainly another flag as well. I think the transparency about expectations is a big deal. The promising of we're going to get you on the morning shows, you know, all of that is Anybody that pr…

AI assessment note: “There are many red flags. I think the most prominent for me Is that they don't consider strategy.”

Q So what if that bottle company had a completely black packaging with like BLM on it, or if they had like a rainbow colored bottle to support LGBT? Is that virtue signaling or is that valuable, like truly valuable? Is that meaningful in any way?

A It's only meaningful when it's authentic to their brand. If their brand has a story that maybe the founder is a person of color that founded the brand and has deep roots with the The Black Lives Matter community, and, and they decided to do that, then I could see that that's authentic and genuine. There's a connection there, but if it's just taking advantage of a situation or, you know, just trying to leverage that, I, those are the things I hate. I, um, I did a talk probably like five years ago around this concept called Brandviguity that my team and I kind of coined at my last agency, and it was about Brands trying to keep up with the social media content race, which still is happening today. And they just glom on to anything that's happening. Ooh, I changed my profile picture of, you know, in honor of something that's happening in Ghana, you know, like I, how does that have anything to do with your brand? And the worst examples and offenders were when celebrities died. Right. And at one point Cheerios, sorry, Cheerios, um, put up a, a post That when Prince died, that said he was like RIP or something. And the Cheerio dotted the I, and I was just, I'm just like Cheerios. Why are you celebrating? Like, why are you not celebrating Prince's death? But why are you even in this conversation? Like, what is Cheerios have to do with this at all? And the answer is nothing. And so when…

AI assessment note: “It's only meaningful when it's authentic to their brand.”

Q Okay, I love that you said that, and I want to go deeper into that. You mentioned several quick and easy kind of providers that they're like, hey, we can get you mentioned. Beyond that, what kind of red flags should someone be looking for when they're trying to pick a PR firm if they choose to go that route?

A There are many red flags. I think the most prominent for me Is that they don't consider strategy. If they're just willing to come in and say, yeah, we'll, we'll start making those calls, you know, and not thinking about the intent that I spoke about before and having a real strategy for how they're going to do that. As far as the due diligence to go in and look at the context, right? First and level set with competition and what's happening in culture and in the world and who your target audience is and what they care about right now, all of that. If they're not doing that and saying that they can go off and do it without that, that's a huge red flag. And then, you know, putting together an approach that is not just PR in a vacuum. It looks at your broader marketing mix and seeing how you fit in. You know, what else are you doing? How can we leverage and connect the rest of your efforts to what we're doing in PR? Can PR amplify things you're doing in other areas? Can you amplify PR results in other areas? So, um, the Cross collaboration piece. If they're not suggesting that or inquiring about what else you're doing, how else they can connect, how can they maximize your investment? That's certainly another flag as well. I think the transparency about expectations is a big deal. The promising of we're going to get you on the morning shows, you know, all of that is Anybody that pr…

AI assessment note: “I think the most prominent for me Is that they don't consider strategy.”

Q So why don't you tell everyone a little bit about what you do and, you know, why are you passionate about PR? Why did you want to get involved in PR and how you switched over to startups from large companies?

A Sure. So I am an innovator at heart. I guess that's why I have a lot of passion for startups since I was a little kid. I'm just a dreamer and love to invent things and make things. So that's likely why I focus on startups today and why I started in the creative industries to begin with. I started my career about a little over 20 years ago, working in big advertising agencies. And worked on huge global brands like HP and Gillette and Diageo brands, Charlie Spirits brands and Procter and Gamble, like all the biggies, McDonald's, Verizon, you name it. You know, working in big ad agencies is amazing because you're surrounded by just the cream of the crop, creative people. And as the industry changed and social media became a thing, the big agencies weren't really jumping through hoops to win that business because it felt very tactile. Go at the time. I saw something bigger and decided to move over to PR because PR agencies saw it too, and they started to go after social media business and start to build there because they felt like, well, we're public relations. We understand how to build communities, word of mouth, and that's what social media was pretty much built on. So I saw that happening and decided to take the leap to PR. Super happy that I did. PR is a really interesting place to be very different from the advertising world. Although both are about brand building. One is re…

AI assessment note: “I saw something bigger and decided to move over to PR”

Q At what time should a company start thinking about developing a PR strategy? And at what point should they start thinking about executing that strategy?

A They should think about it as early as possible because we do branding as well. We do advertising, like we're not just a PR agency. So our eyes are always on the broader mix and when things are going to start and, and, and how we, how PR can fit into that, you know, if we're just doing PR for a company. We would love to be part of the brand development process because understanding the birth of that story and also affecting it, because there are many times that startups are thinking of their brand name or their branding, and they actually don't do a huge competitive dive. And I just had a client that we didn't end up working with for the long term, but they had the same name as a huge tech startup. They're probably not going to win the SEO war there, um, because this is like a super highly funded startup. So, you know, when you're coming up with branding and naming, really doing that due diligence of who else shares that name or, you know, avoiding sharing the name of another brand is super important. So in the brand development process, understanding the origins of your brand story, probably like Six months before launch is a good time to engage PR and many times that's about the time when maybe a year out people are starting to develop their brand before they launch and then they kind of get their act together and then they're ready to launch about a year later, depending on …

AI assessment note: “They should think about it as early as possible”

Q So what are the differences between good and bad PR methods? Like how, how do you look at a company and just kind of with your eye very quickly see, ah, they've got a proper PR strategy or they've got a bad PR strategy?

A PR strategy is about stepping back, taking a look at the PR mix, taking a look at the competitive set, the landscape, the context, right? The cultural context of what's happening and determine what's your best way to attack, to ensure that you're getting the most visibility, establishing a reputation for yourself and telling your story. The default of startups around PR is, oh, we just need to get mentioned. And then the world will open up For us, right? We need, all we need is someone to mention, mention us in Fast Company or in Fortune or Forbes. That's one part of PR is media relations, but there's so much more to PR than that. There is, you know, corporate communications. There's influencer marketing. Of course, social is a part of that. What I've noticed is that there isn't a real strategy there. It's what we call spray and pray, right? It's like, can we pitch as many outlets as possible? Please get us some coverage. First of all, it's not easy to get coverage. People think that it's a walk in the park. And as a matter of fact, I just saw an ad come across my feed where a startup is saying, Hey, do you want, you know, your brand placed in the big magazines and online publications? Well, we can place it for you there. No problem. You know? And I'm just like, sure, you can probably get a mention about a brand, but if you're not telling a story and you haven't strategically t…

AI assessment note: “if you're not telling a story... then that's not really strategic. It's just a mention”

Q Is there anything I haven't asked you so far that you'd like to add?

A What's the good things that I'm seeing among the startup community that I think they should keep doing? What's great about startups and what is so endemic to just the people that are starting them and running them is their fearlessness and their openness. And that's awesome for PR folks to work with individuals that have the balls basically to go out there and tell a story that hasn't been told before. Or to say something that may ruffle feathers, because then they will get noticed, and they'll be one of those brands that people do want to talk about. Um, the hustle and the speed, they move so fast, you know, they'll make decisions super quick, so if an opportunity comes up as a PR professional, you have moments to capitalize on that. Whether you're in social, tweeting something back at someone, or if you're gonna go pitch media, As a response to a story that you've seen out, that speed and hustle is not happening with established brands. So that is certainly an advantage. And I do think that startups are, are quick to trust, which is lovely because as an agency, you know, you're not a snake oil salesman. You know, I think when I started in advertising, I read that ad agency people are like one above used car salesmen. And I'm like, that's ridiculous. I totally fundamentally disagree with that. Any agency person I've ever met in my life, which are many, we just want to do great…

AI assessment note: “What's the good things that I'm seeing among the startup community”

Q At what time should a company start thinking about developing a PR strategy? And at what point should they start thinking about executing that strategy?

A They should think about it as early as possible because we do branding as well. We do advertising, like we're not just a PR agency. So our eyes are always on the broader mix and when things are going to start and, and, and how we, how PR can fit into that, you know, if we're just doing PR for a company. We would love to be part of the brand development process because understanding the birth of that story and also affecting it, because there are many times that startups are thinking of their brand name or their branding, and they actually don't do a huge competitive dive. And I just had a client that we didn't end up working with for the long term, but they had the same name as a huge tech startup. They're probably not going to win the SEO war there, um, because this is like a super highly funded startup. So, you know, when you're coming up with branding and naming, really doing that due diligence of who else shares that name or, you know, avoiding sharing the name of another brand is super important. So in the brand development process, understanding the origins of your brand story, probably like Six months before launch is a good time to engage PR and many times that's about the time when maybe a year out people are starting to develop their brand before they launch and then they kind of get their act together and then they're ready to launch about a year later, depending on …

AI assessment note: “They should think about it as early as possible... Six months before launch is a good time”

Q Is there anything I haven't asked you so far that you'd like to add?

A What's the good things that I'm seeing among the startup community that I think they should keep doing? What's great about startups and what is so endemic to just the people that are starting them and running them is their fearlessness and their openness. And that's awesome for PR folks to work with individuals that have the balls basically to go out there and tell a story that hasn't been told before. Or to say something that may ruffle feathers, because then they will get noticed, and they'll be one of those brands that people do want to talk about. Um, the hustle and the speed, they move so fast, you know, they'll make decisions super quick, so if an opportunity comes up as a PR professional, you have moments to capitalize on that. Whether you're in social, tweeting something back at someone, or if you're gonna go pitch media, As a response to a story that you've seen out, that speed and hustle is not happening with established brands. So that is certainly an advantage. And I do think that startups are, are quick to trust, which is lovely because as an agency, you know, you're not a snake oil salesman. You know, I think when I started in advertising, I read that ad agency people are like one above used car salesmen. And I'm like, that's ridiculous. I totally fundamentally disagree with that. Any agency person I've ever met in my life, which are many, we just want to do great…

AI assessment note: “What's the good things that I'm seeing among the startup community”

Q So what are the pros and cons of working with a firm rather than building PR in-house?

A I mean, there's nothing wrong with building PR in-house. I think startups have other key staff that they need to hire first. That's probably, you know, more of a priority at that point. PR is also when you're starting out, you don't know how the industry is going to react to you and how well PR is going to work for you. PR is not a silver bullet. It Works sometimes great for some brands in the right context, among the right competition at the right time, and sometimes it doesn't. You know, if you were trying to launch a brand, you know, in certain sectors during COVID, let's say that you had a collaboration or video conferencing brand during COVID, that's great. What if you were launching it after COVID? You know, PR would work for you maybe really well during a certain contextual moment, and then maybe it wouldn't, no matter what you do if you're banging your head against the wall trying to get coverage for things that post-pandemic people aren't necessarily thinking about top of mind, but still need. Sometimes PR will work really well, and it's great to test it out for your brand and for your sector before you commit to hiring a full team to do that. See how it works for you and delivers on ROI for you. The, you know, difference between an in-house team and an out-of-house team is just in, I believe, in how you pay them because the out-of-house team and agency is so in it wit…

AI assessment note: “it's great to test it out for your brand... before you commit to hiring”

Q Who should be responsible for establishing the PR strategy? Who should be responsible for executing the PR strategy? At what time should you be starting to think about PR strategy? And what do startups routinely end up with at the beginning?

A Okay, so who should do the PR strategy? If you have a PR agency or a PR consultant, you should be collaborating with them to create it. It's a co-creation method. The reason being is that if we look at PR as, let's say, just media relations for a second, the people that are day to day speaking to the media understand what the media is looking for, At those moments in time and are going, what they're going to want to write about, what their readers care about, et cetera. So if you're not working with a PR professional and you're trying to do media relations, you should probably think about contacting someone and getting them to collaborate with you. The other pieces of the PR mix, you know, like taking influencer, for example, the same rule applies. You can Reach out to rando influencers and say, well, they have a good following and they're kind of talking about what I want them to talk about. Let me go and reach out to them. Like you can do that again. It doesn't have that intent, right? It's not part of a bigger story. There's not really a role carved out. It's just, Hey, can you talk about our brand? So I think that it is a collaborative process with those who are professionals at doing it and are living and breathing it every day. And someone on your team, be it the marketing director or, you know, communications director, everyone has different levels of marketing communica…

AI assessment note: “who should do the PR strategy? If you have a PR agency... collaborating with them”

Q Who should be responsible for establishing the PR strategy? Who should be responsible for executing the PR strategy? At what time should you be starting to think about PR strategy? And what do startups routinely end up with at the beginning?

A Okay, so who should do the PR strategy? If you have a PR agency or a PR consultant, you should be collaborating with them to create it. It's a co-creation method. The reason being is that if we look at PR as, let's say, just media relations for a second, the people that are day to day speaking to the media understand what the media is looking for, At those moments in time and are going, what they're going to want to write about, what their readers care about, et cetera. So if you're not working with a PR professional and you're trying to do media relations, you should probably think about contacting someone and getting them to collaborate with you. The other pieces of the PR mix, you know, like taking influencer, for example, the same rule applies. You can Reach out to rando influencers and say, well, they have a good following and they're kind of talking about what I want them to talk about. Let me go and reach out to them. Like you can do that again. It doesn't have that intent, right? It's not part of a bigger story. There's not really a role carved out. It's just, Hey, can you talk about our brand? So I think that it is a collaborative process with those who are professionals at doing it and are living and breathing it every day. And someone on your team, be it the marketing director or, you know, communications director, everyone has different levels of marketing communica…

AI assessment note: “who should do the PR strategy? If you have a PR agency or a PR consultant, you should be collaborating”

Q So what are the pros and cons of working with a firm rather than building PR in-house?

A I mean, there's nothing wrong with building PR in-house. I think startups have other key staff that they need to hire first. That's probably, you know, more of a priority at that point. PR is also when you're starting out, you don't know how the industry is going to react to you and how well PR is going to work for you. PR is not a silver bullet. It Works sometimes great for some brands in the right context, among the right competition at the right time, and sometimes it doesn't. You know, if you were trying to launch a brand, you know, in certain sectors during COVID, let's say that you had a collaboration or video conferencing brand during COVID, that's great. What if you were launching it after COVID? You know, PR would work for you maybe really well during a certain contextual moment, and then maybe it wouldn't, no matter what you do if you're banging your head against the wall trying to get coverage for things that post-pandemic people aren't necessarily thinking about top of mind, but still need. Sometimes PR will work really well, and it's great to test it out for your brand and for your sector before you commit to hiring a full team to do that. See how it works for you and delivers on ROI for you. The, you know, difference between an in-house team and an out-of-house team is just in, I believe, in how you pay them because the out-of-house team and agency is so in it wit…

AI assessment note: “it's great to test it out for your brand... before you commit to hiring a full team”