Transcription:
Contemporary Public Relations

We know what you want. You want to reach more customers and grow your business.

But the marketing and PR landscape is murky and confusing.

Now, you can gain clarity with straight talk on the latest marketing and fundraising trends in technology from two agency pros.

Bryan Earnest and Mark Mathis from Amperage Marketing and Fundraising.

Now, amp up your marketing with the Amp Up podcast.

Mark Mathis: Hey, all. I'm Mark Mathis and I'm with...

Bryan Earnest: Bryan Earnest.

Mark Mathis: And our amped up topic today is public relations. And Bryan, do we have a guest today? Lori Davis is with us. She's been the Amperage Marketing and Fundraising director of public Relations for 17 years and her career before being with Amp was awe-inspiring. She has deep experience in messaging, crisis communication, branding and just good old PR and that's what we're going to talk about today.

So, Lori, I was just reading a PR Week survey that said that 73% of PR professionals don't believe the term public relations describes the work they will be doing in the next five years. So how do you think PR is different today than five years ago? How is it changing?

Lori Davis: How hasn't it changed, I'd say, in the last five years? And first of all, thank you both for letting me be your guest today and talk about public relations, because I think a lot of people think of public relations more of just media relations and there's many, many disciplines of PR, such as crisis communications and we have many publics that we communicate with. So there might be investor relations, government relations. We might be doing executive communications. And in all these areas, there's been drastic changes in the past five years, because when the world changes, how we communicate with these publics obviously has to change.

So with the pandemic, for example, crisis plans, trainings and drills are more important than ever. We went through Me Too Movement in the last five years, the Black Lives Matter movement. So with those, we're seeing more of a need for corporate social responsibility policies and communications plans around there. As more boomers are retiring, we're seeing more mergers and acquisitions and executive transitions, so there's specialized communications there as well.

But like everything else, the digitalization of everything, that's really changing PR because we know online brand reputation management is a big part of what we do in public relations, especially in a fake news society and PR really is it's content marketing. You know, before we'd go for the earned dollars or the earned media placements that you would see in newspaper or on TV. And we now in PR call it PESO. It's paid, earned, shared and owned media. So I would think those are kind of the five biggest changes that we're seeing going on right now in the public relations world.

Bryan Earnest: Well, Lori, welcome. And you certainly have outlined how complex public relations has become. Is there still a place for press releases? Is it still a valid tool?

Lori Davis: Absolutely. Like everything else, press releases have evolved. I do a lot more online PR Web Wire owned and paid news releases these days that are really jam-packed with good storytelling, but lots of assets like videos and images and infographics. And a big important part of what I do there is I also optimize these releases for SEO.

We put out these PR Web Wire releases and they're important. Newspapers like to have a news release these days. Some of them run them as is, and then even the largest newspaper in the United States, The Wall Street Journal, just recently last month. We were able to work with a small client from Independence, Iowa, and we got them a story based on a press release, which gave them credibility from the Wire, right on the front page of The Wall Street Journal.

Bryan Earnest: Wow. Big win.

Lori Davis: Yeah, it was excellent. And the thing is, Bryan is that, you know, it's just not the release. It was also, you know, really targeting which journalists at The Wall Street Journal I thought would be a good person to pitch and tailoring it and really having a good story. I mean, the days of just putting out a press release to put out a press release to the media today, we have journalist for every six PR people. So if you can imagine that and how they get bombarded with just press releases that aren't news. You still have to have news. They have to be credible, factual. You know, they need to have good stories for them to be picked up. So there is a place for them. They just look a little bit different than they used to.

Mark Mathis: I know, Lori, we've even used press releases to go to other general publics just to use it as a way to communicate with people because they think it's cool to have a press release, right?

Lori Davis: Correct.

Mark Mathis: It seems like there are new digital ways of reaching out to people. What are some of the new PR techniques that you're seeing that really work in the digital age?

Lori Davis: I would say, I mean, the PESO technique that we just talked about, that paid, earned, shared, owned is definitely what's good going on in the digital world. And we're using SEO a lot, like I said. For example, I remember we had a client a few years ago that had a class action lawsuit and some real negative press. And so we used the power of pushing out positive news stories and having those PR Web Wire releases syndicated on media, news media outlets online across the United States with lots of backlinks and just the sole purpose of using keywords to push the negative stories down by flooding with positive news stories with those same key words. So that's just one example of a strategy and tactic that you can use this content, including online news releases in this digital world, you know, to get some of those stories out and to get positive stories, and move up in the search engine ranks with those versus seeing the negative.

You're seeing more work with blogger relations, some B2B companies are straight niche online media relations, right? Influencer marketing, these days when you can get a video on cameo of sometimes a B-list celebrity, maybe not the top celebrity. You can kind of play in that influencer marketing area without paying the huge hundreds of thousands of dollars for celebrities.

Same thing with online reputation. I mean, monitoring services, knowing your message sentiment across the channels can help you alter your strategies and your tactics to improve your brand position online. So I think those are some more technologies and PR, more monitoring, better monitoring because that's what we're trying to do, right? We want to have a positive brand sentiment and messages that are positive versus the negative. So the more we can track and measure and change our public relations programs and strategies and tactics based on that data and that knowledge is really impactful and it's a blessing of the digital world actually.

Bryan Earnest: Lori, earlier you talked a little bit about executive transitions and maybe talk a little bit about how important it is for organizations to perhaps engage outside counsel as well as public relations help to handle that messaging. And what should they worry about?

Lori Davis: Great question, Bryan. And we've had several executives communications clients over the past five years to deal with these executive transitions. And they've been a mix of boomers retiring, some Me Too issues, or just some poor performance on behalf of the executive.

If you don't get the message right when it comes to these very sensitive messaging, it can lead to speculation. It can cause internal cultural issues. And if you're publicly traded, you're going to spook investors and, you know, that's the worst thing you can imagine that could happen. So it's really important that you help these boards out. That's one of the most important roles of a board, but many boards are just not properly equipped, I think, to handle the communication on their own and need an outside consultant to help with, let's just say, special nuances of the communication.

If the transition was due to a termination, as a consultant, I've led the board chair through some real uncomfortable conversations with a CEO. First, we usually develop a plan and a messaging strategy with the board chair, the board and guide that conversation. And if you have a retirement, even if somebody is outgoing CEO, I've had this situation where I had two CEOs, with kind of the new incoming CEO also kind of had a big ego. That's a different way that the board chair has difficulties with working with the CEOs on who gets quoted first, who doesn't get quoted, what words are used, because it could lead to speculation as to why the person was exiting.

So we'd like to have a win-win situation with executive transitions and the best thing that I've had happened in my career was getting a nice handwritten thank you from a CEO who we helped exit graciously and move on to his next chapter. So it can be a very challenging, but can be a very rewarding part of executive communication work that we do in public relations.

Bryan Earnest: Compare, contrast that if you would, Lori, with the work around mergers and acquisitions. I mean, that's something quite often PR has forgotten in that process as well.

Lori Davis: I think so, especially privately held companies, they don't think through it as well, obviously as a publicly held company that PR is very much involved with it. It's another sensitivity. I mean, the confidentiality that you need to have here with you and your staff that might be involved with it is extremely important because you would never want something like that leaked and it's critically important that you have professionals help you put that out. And if you're a publicly traded, you need to know the proper ways to share that type of news, so, you know, you don't end up in trouble with the SEC as well. You don't want that.

Mark Mathis: You know, Lori, from that very complicated area of communications, I kind of have a simpler question.

Lori Davis: Sure.

Mark Mathis: It's just do we need PR now? And with so many outlets that are available from Apple News to aggregators, like BuzzFeed. And it just seems like there's myriad outlets. Lots of ways to get your story out if you want to, even your own platforms. But what is the need for businesses and organizations now for PR?

Lori Davis: You need it more than ever when you have all these news outlets, I would say. Mark, when we did crisis training, I think one of the quotes that we always would put in our decks or even in our plans was one that you had foundand it was from Napoleon that said something around "Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets" or something along those lines.

Mark Mathis: Right.

Lori Davis: If you think about it, it seems today instead of four hostile newspapers in France, you're worrying about nearly 4 million, sorry, 4 billion with a B people on social platforms. And take that negative news and have it start spreading through social platforms, and you really need public relations. You need public relations help and monitor it, see what's happening, being able to message around it, and get your brand sentiment together, so you can properly address it for sure. Consumers are, like you said, they're digesting their news on their phones and sharing those reviews.

And it's just really important that you also have built up some pundants that you have in your online social community, some influencers that can help you during those times too when news might get negative online. So you can have them come and share positive stories about your brand in those cases, wouldn't you agree? Don't you think it's more needed today, Mark?

Mark Mathis: Yeah, I like your point that it's not people tend to think of it as media relations and it's so much bigger than media relations and media has changed. How do you relate with BuzzFeed and Apple News and different thinking than how do you work with your local newspaper?

Lori Davis: And it's different thinking than how you work with vloggers.

Bryan Earnest: I just sent out a negative tweet about you, Mark.

Mark Mathis: Thanks.

Bryan Earnest: You got that going for you.

Lori Davis: Oh. Look, it just popped up on my Cision Social Monitoring.

Bryan Earnest: There you go. There you go. Lori, I want to shift gears just a little bit. I know with all of your areas of expertise, internal and employee communications has been something in your toolbox for a very long time. With the whole new trend towards work at home, hub and home work environment, how has employee communications changed? What are you seeing?

Lori Davis: Oh, yes, internal and external communications or internal communications or employee communications, when I was at the airlines in corporate communications, I spent a good few years fully focused on employee communications. And one thing that was always kind of a bummer when you're on the internal side, it seemed like external communications or government relations really like was front and center star and employee communications people are kind of on the sidelines in the public relations world. But Bryan, your exact point, I think after COVID I think companies realize how important internal communication teams are. And we know that employee communications impacts your employee engagement, how it actually impacts your productivity, the profitability, and your employee retention and satisfaction. So it's really important to the business that employee communications has a place front and center.

And I think, you know, working from home, the WFH trend is going to stay and we have new technologies, of course, like Zoom and chats. And I think companies just really needed to be more deliberate with our employee communication. Then employers need to be more deliberate with their employee communications than I think they had in the past. More scheduled meetings, more regular meetings, using consistent channels. And, you know, like you Bryan, when COVID first in March, we're going, "Oh my gosh, what is this going to mean?" You used a video communications tool as our executive as our president and CEO to communicate with employees, very emotional visually. So we could just be there with you and hear from you. And I think that's a really important channel that top leadership are using a little bit more.

But I think also the same principles of employee communication always need to be there. You need to be transparent. You need to be empathetic more than ever. I think during this last year, we've realized that with employees, and use those frequent channels that you do. Everything from having a town hall on Zoom to video messaging, to the emails to communicate regularly. And I saw a study recently that I was surprised that some company's employee communication really just fell off to the side where like 35% of managers didn't even do employee reviews last year. And another study showed that managers were uncomfortable with sharing negative news via virtual or Zoom. So that's probably an area that everyone needs to work on. It's not as easy to have certain conversations than having them in person. There's probably more work that needs to be done in terms of employee communications for companies with work from home, I would say.

Mark Mathis: Well, now that we're opening up a little bit more. It makes me wonder a little bit about how event marketing is going to fit into the modern PR plan. Do you think we'll see the same resurgence or interest in making that a vehicle for companies to get their word out?

Lori Davis: I do. I mean, webinars were great. It got us through, and I still see a place for webinars and online virtual conferences as well as hybrid events where people come in person and you also live stream it and have ways for people to interact that way. But the recent client, large special event that we had, the first one that we're just getting out of the gates now that we're opening back up was so well received by the attendees.

People are happy to be out and around other people again. And there's always a place for special events in public relations. I mean, if you look at having a VIP event, you know, to have to allow your customers to really have that brand experience and help land new customers to doing a thought leadership presentation of your executives at a conference that helps build the brand's awareness. You're still going to have networking events so that you can help build those brand relationships. You know, even award ceremonies is part of PR. Putting a nomination in for an award, that helps enhance your brand reputation. Like I said, this event that we did for a government agency, it's a way to get out and engage with constituents. You can solve real-world problems that way together in a room that way where there are panels and Q and A's. And still at niche B2B trade shows, too, I think about that.

You know, Mark, you and I have attended a trade show in Las Vegas that we did for one of our clients and just the number of trade journalists that are there, the bloggers and influencers that are there, and what you can do at one of those events or a Day on the Hill event, for example, going in and meeting with your legislators. I mean, those are all different publics, I would say, within, you know, public relations, but there's so many great reasons to have events and to help your brand through all different cycles of your brand engagement for your customers.

Mark Mathis: Absolutely. Lori, thank you. That's great information. We could probably go on for another 30 minutes or so, but I really appreciate your insights and the time. So that is today's episode of Amp Up podcast. If you like the insights and the things that you've been hearing, please go to amperagemarketing.com.

And if you get a chance, would you please rate and review us? We would certainly appreciate any feedback you can offer. So for Bryan Earnest and me, Mark Mathis, thank you for listening. And we'll keep telling your PR story.