Transcript
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Welcome.
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This is the Public Relations Review podcast, a worldwide award-winning podcast.
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Our experienced guests cover a wealth of current useful topics, including adapting to technological advancements, digital and AI matters, misinformation, media relations, fake news, crisis communications and much, much more.
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And, of course, your feedback is always welcome.
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Now here is your host and producer, peter Woolfolk.
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Welcome to our listeners all across America and around the world Now.
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Apple has ranked this podcast among the top 1% of podcasts worldwide and ListenScore ranks the podcast as one of the top 10% most popularly monitored shows out of the 3.5 plus million podcasts globally.
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So thank you to all of our guests and listeners for your continued support and if you enjoy the show, please leave a review.
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Now question to my listeners.
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In public relations, we know that branding is the practice of using public relations strategies to shape, promote and protect a brand's identity, reputation and image among its key audiences.
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What are some of the important factors in developing a brand strategy and why does that matter?
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My guest today specializes in strategic public relations and branding services.
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Now, as the principal of her firm, she focuses on innovative strategies to assist clients in enhancing their brand visibility and reputation.
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In addition, brand News is a content creator and manages clients' online reputation.
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So joining me today from Mount Laurel, new Jersey, is Alexandria.
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We'll just call her Alex, for today, Alex Hammond.
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She is the principal of Brand News and she is here to share her experiences and offer some guidance in these areas.
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peter.
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I'm so happy to be here and thank you for having me, and I'm looking forward to speaking with you further today.
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Well, let's talk about brands.
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When you meet or have a new client, how do you go about establishing what their brand should be or should look like?
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What do you do with them?
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So, actually, when I have a client that approaches me and is looking forward and you know, there's always various services that we offer.
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So I'm an agency that offers, obviously, public relations, like you mentioned, and branding services, online reputation management, which often leads to, like social media, digital marketing, website things like that.
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So oftentimes, when individuals or organizations, they come to me and say, you know, hey, I want to do X, Y and Z, I want to do public relations and I want to do I want my website to be better All of those questions, anytime, it doesn't matter who you are, what you are, what you've done, how long you've been in the game, whether you're a startup or if you've been around for a long period of time I always say there's two questions that you absolutely need to ask yourself before you even figure out what your actual next steps are.
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So I always say one, who are you?
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And two, why should people care?
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If you can kind of start there from the ground, from ground zero, and being able to answer those two questions, I think we have a really good starting point, really good starting point, and I think that's super helpful because a lot of times what happens is that companies don't really know who their brand is, or individuals don't really know what their brand is and they don't really know which direction to go.
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So I love being able to kind of work with these people and say like, okay, this is great, you know, this is.
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It's a blank canvas, is kind of how I look at it.
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It's not a bad thing at all, but I love being able to kind of sit down and start from the beginning just to make sure that we're all on the same page as far as what your brand is.
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So before we even get to the services part of being like, okay, great, we're going to start promoting you I like to again just kind of walk through that process in the beginning and kind of do some exercises to make sure that you, as that person, as that company, you know exactly who your brand is and what your brand is.
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So what sort of things are you looking for from them?
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When you say what is your brand, what sort of information do you need to hear what services they offer, how long they've been in business, what their philosophy is?
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Just what sort of information are you trying to extract from them?
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Absolutely so, peter.
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Usually I'm looking for clarity, so I'm not looking for anything that's too metal Like.
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Again, I love being able to sit down and work through that process with them.
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But, like you said, there are things that I am looking for, there's questions that I am asking.
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So, absolutely, what is your mission statement?
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What is your vision statement?
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What are you looking to do?
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Who's your customer?
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Who's your audience?
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What do you see pie in the sky?
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Who are your competitors?
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Who do you see yourself lined up against?
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Again, whether you're a startup, whether you're an individual, whether you are a large company, all of these questions are pretty much the same.
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Because, again, it's like a brand is a brand and everyone has it.
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Whether you're an individual or whether you have a thousand employees, everyone has a brand.
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So, again, it's really just getting to the nitty gritty, getting to the bottom and just being like let's answer these basic questions and making sure that you have that identified, and it's fine if you don't.
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But again, we have to work through that process.
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So, again, getting your brand and understanding who you are and what you want to do, I think that's always a really good starting point before you even decide.
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I mean like, well, I want to go on, I want to be on social media and I want to be on TikTok, and it's like, okay, well, does your brand lend itself to TikTok?
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Like, what are you doing that you feel like your brand would be successful here?
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So all these questions that we're kind of extracting, like you said, just to help these companies and help these people get to where they want to be, because, end of the day, it's like you want to make sure, you want to set everybody up, set everyone up for success.
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So, again, identifying this from the beginning, the very first thing that, before we do, you know, is helpful for the long haul.
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Okay, so now that you've collected this information, how do you go about, uh assembling it to develop what that brand should be, what it should look like, uh how it's going to be presented from there?
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What do you do once you get all this information?
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so one of the things I always I also like to say is, in short, like, go to where your audience and go to where your customer is right.
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So if you know and you understand that your audience is a traditional audience so when I say traditional, it's the fact is that maybe it's a little, they're a little bit of an older demographic, so okay, then you know and you know.
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Going back to my point of like, well, is your customer, is your audience on TikTok?
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Okay, so, doing some kind of subjects like where is your audience?
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Is, you know, skews a little older, is your audience on TikTok?
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So maybe that doesn't lend yourself to that platform?
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Okay, so, like figuring out it's again, it's kind of like stepping back, because all the worst thing that you can do is spread yourself too thin as a brand, okay, so, again, it's kind of identifying those one or two or even three things that you do really, really well and again, understanding who your audience is and again, understanding who your customer is, because those are also two different things, and just ensuring that you know.
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Okay, this is where they are, I'm going to go to them.
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Don't be, don't have an ego that you think that they're just automatically going to come to you, okay?
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So I always say that what's easier?
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And, Peter, you tell me, is it easier for one person and when I say one person, let's say one brand to there's a hundred people sitting over there in the corner.
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Is it easier for you to go to them, right, like one person, one brand, to go and walk over to that corner to meet them, or is it easier to be like like, tell 100 people to come over to you?
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You tell me what's easiest, right?
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So I always try to like just kind of like simplify things a lot of times, because, again, it's like you know if and you can understand this if if we had everyone who understood how we think, as marketers, as brands, specialists, as publicists, you know, whatever kind of your, your background is, you know then we wouldn't have jobs and we wouldn't be able to do what we do and you know to love it so much.
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So I always say it's, it sounds simple, right?
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But oftentimes you know they don't understand that.
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So I always like making sure that it's it's, it's simplified.
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Let's just make it really, really simple for them and be like here's your audience, here's your customer, let's just go to them and we know how to reach them and figuring out again like what platforms um what mediums you know is going to is conducive for that well, no, I certainly agree with you, because obviously there's some variation there, because if you've got something that's open to the general public, for instance, uh, I don't know, a grocery store for instance, or something like that then I mean they can be just about anywhere almost anywhere.
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I mean nothing for kids, because obviously kids aren't going to go there on their own, but that gives you a lot, much larger targets to reach out in terms of platforms and other things like that to get information out.
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Exactly, yeah, and that's what, and that's what I say too.
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You know, again, it's one of the things like it's.
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I don't want to say that what we do is is simple and it does kind of take a special kind of person.
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You know, people like you and I, you can kind of just there's just something in our brains that you know, just like that switches, that switches, you know where.
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It's just kind of like being able to think and be thinking strategically.
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And I know, especially like considering your audience, right, they think they, they think like us and oftentimes like my.
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My favorite thing is being able to talk to a, you know, to a brand, a potential brand or a client who understands actually what we do.
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And I'm not saying when I say understand, there's a difference.
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I'm not saying that they know how to do, but they recognize and they realize the importance of what we do.
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So they understand.
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Like when we're asking these simple questions from the beginning, when we're first talking to them, when we're first vetting them, when we're first vetting their clients, and we're asking these questions albeit they sound silly, but truthfully it's so helpful and I love like I always send my clients an onboarding sheet when I first start working with them.
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It's like great contract signed, here's an onboarding document.
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It is a pain in the butt but once you kind of go through it, it's long when you kind of answer these questions, like I said, but it's going to set all of us up for success and it ensures that we're all on the same page as far as what we want to do and how we all ensures that we're all on the same page as far as what we want to do and how we all like what we all will be like, what we deem success, you know.
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So I think doing things like that and being like okay, like going back to what I said in the beginning, it's like mission statement do you have a mission statement?
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Do you have a vision statement?
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Do you have a boilerplate?
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You know what's your slogan?
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That's fine if you don't, you know, but making sure that, because sometimes again, it'll kind of trigger things with you know your client saying like oh wow, you know I don't have that.
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Oh wow, we actually that's great, that's something I didn't think about, we need to think about, and it's like yeah, that's what we're here for.
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You know, we kind of think the big picture, but we also, you know, get to the small stuff.
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That is super important, that seems unimportant but is actually really, really important for us, you know, as marketers, to do our jobs Well.
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As I listen to you, I mean you're absolutely right about collecting all that information to help develop, basically, who they are and the image that they want to present.
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Then I guess the next step you know you want to get to is, once you have the shape and who we are and those sort of things, you have to begin to promote them.
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So what sort of avenues do you use to promote?
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And again, I'm sure that's going to depend upon what they do and who the audience is.
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So I will say, one of the things I always I tell clients is like I truly believe in an integrated approach.
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So whether you're coming to my agency and you're just like I want public relations and that's fine.
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You're like we have a social media specialist or we have a digital specialist and I'm like that's great because we're still going to be working together, I find it very, very important that you can't work in a silo, anything that we do.
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So I always like to think of an agency as an extension of an organization, right?
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So sometimes where if there's resources are limited or they're like hey, we, you know, we're in a little bit of a pinch, we need some.
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So all of those things, I again like to think of an agency as an extension, and I've and I've been lucky enough that I've worked in house and I've worked agency side and obviously now having my own agency.
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But, with that being said, I always say I'll just use, for instance, if a client comes to me or a potential client comes to me for PR services, and I'm like Great.
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So typically, what I do and we all know, and that's a whole different conversation is what does public relations, what does media relations?
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What does that look like for this particular client.
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So, if we're going to go again the traditional route.
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You know, if it's something where you want to be in you know op-eds, you want to be a thought leader, you want to see yourself on, you know television, doing expert interviews, if you want to see yourself in print or digital edition doing interviews, all of that.
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So I will work with the client again, identifying one what their, what their niche is again, what their industry is, making sure that it's you know.
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Hey, again, I always say this the pie in the sky.
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Where do you see yourself?
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How would you deem yourself?
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The successful media campaign.
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Doing all of that can ensure you know, and working with the client on different pitch angles, topics, staying relevant.
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This is the one thing about you know, again, what we do.
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It's always about staying a step ahead, and not only a step ahead of like the client, but staying a step ahead of their competition and knowing what they're like, what the competition is doing, because I think that's super important.
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And oftentimes, again, like you know what we do, there isn't really sometimes a clock in, clock out, especially if you want to be really, really good at it.
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But you know I'm lucky and I'm blessed that I enjoy what I do.
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So that's something that I kind of thrive.
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I thrive on, but, with that being said, now say, for instance, peter, where we have a successful media campaign and I think, a lot of times where it's like, well, it doesn't just end there, so what are we doing?
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Because I always, again I go back to if the tree falls in the forest and nobody here like, did it really happen?
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You know or?
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did it.
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So if we did all of this great work in the media, whether we're on TV, whether we're on print, but what if our again, now we go back, did our audience see it?
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Did our potential customers see it?
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So, working with our uh, you know, the digital or social team, just be like, hey, here's this really great piece that ran how are we repurposing this?
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So, working with them, it's like are we sending out?
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Do you have a digital newsletter?
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Do you have a website?
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What's your linkedin page?
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What's your instagram page?
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Is this on your face, like making sure that everyone sees it on every potential platform?
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And you're repurposing it, like you know, because I think it's important, you know, because that's the thing is like being able to do a media and pr campaign of re-earned media that shows credibility.
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So this is just another piece and it's another piece of content which is important for social media and for digital.
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You need content, right to put up.
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So here's a piece of content right here.
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So now we're repurposing this really great media piece for content.
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Maybe you're also doing sponsored posts, you know, putting a few dollars behind it so more people outside of your audience catch it.
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So it's like things like that, being able just to kind of work with them, also important.
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One of the things that I love working with clients is doing kind of similar to what we're doing right now.
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Like plenty of people were in a space where it's podcast, people love doing podcasts, people love talking, people love having their own personal platform and, especially since media traditional media is changing, you know, now it's kind of like you got to create your own news and you got to create your own newsroom type thing.
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So I think, working with that, creating videos, videos again another piece of content.
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So it's like, okay, we have all this, this rolodex of videos that we all put together.
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So now that we have these videos, what are we doing with it and how are people seeing it, you know?
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So where is it going?
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Is it going on your youtube again?
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Is it going on your website?
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Here's content.
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It's like, wow, we actually have four or five pieces of content now for our, for our social media platforms.
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That's five pieces that we don't have to think about anymore because we did it.
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You know, like things like that.
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So I love again sitting down and just being able to to figure out.
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It's not again, it's not hard, but again it's just figuring out like where your, what your platform is.
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You know, linkedin.
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I always say and we all know it's a little bit more buttoned up.
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So some content, that video content that you're going to do for LinkedIn, isn't really going to perform as well maybe on Instagram.
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So it's also again realizing certain things aren't a copy paste and I think brands also need to.
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They need to do that.
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Again, it goes back to what I said if there's one person over here, a hundred people over there, what's easy?
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So just knowing and recognizing that as well, that what you do on LinkedIn may not do well on Instagram, may not do well on Twitter, slash X may not also do well on on Facebook.
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Let me let me just add something in there right quick, a couple of things that you mentioned thought leadership and videos.
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Yeah, thought leadership can be tricky sometimes because people maybe see themselves as a thought leader.
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But you know what have you done?
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You know thought you done.
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Thought leaders, they have to be respected, they have to have done something and at certain levels, whether it's some good ideas, some projects you've put together, public speaking, accomplishments, that you have, those kinds of things Just to say you want to be one because it sounds like it's a good idea is not enough.
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Thought leaders, the people you know they can see through those kinds of things.
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You know, do you write editorials for your local newspaper?
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Do you write articles?
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Are you a public speaker?
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What do?
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First of all, what do people think of you as a person If you don't have those kinds of credentials?
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and personality, then that's not going to work very well.
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The other side of videos I mean, I've had to repurpose videos as well and you know you have to look very, very carefully at what it is.
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I did some work for the airport.
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We did an introductory production, an in-house video for them that ran, I don't think, maybe about 15 minutes or maybe 10 minutes.
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But then they called us up a few weeks later on and said look, we were going to this event and we want you to squeeze this thing down to five minutes.
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Oh, my heavens, you know, because it's just part of a presentation.
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Well, you know we've got to decide.
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Well, let's sit down and talk about what it is you want people to see, and then we have to rewrite a new script for the thing you, and then we have to rewrite a new script for the thing, you know all those other kinds of things.
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So people have to understand all those things that go into it, and that is the complexities of it.
00:18:19.810 --> 00:18:29.522
But how do you go about constructing the thing so it's a viable piece to transmit who you are in a reasonable, likable way.
00:18:29.983 --> 00:18:47.000
Right, yeah, I mean, peter, those are all great thoughts and it's funny because any anytime if I'm with a client and I'm shooting just a really quick piece of content for them to go on their platform, so one of the things we can, all you know what's the one thing we would say, like what's your elevator pitch?
00:18:47.000 --> 00:18:57.847
You know, and I always say, and you know, like we're joking before we started recording, but kind of similar to that, where it it's like think of a press release and people are familiar with the press release and the format of it.
00:18:57.847 --> 00:19:05.994
If people still do press releases, it's typically the most important information is at the beginning, right, and at the end, it tends to kind of not as important.
00:19:06.055 --> 00:19:09.020
It's a little bit more fluff, but you got to think about it.
00:19:09.020 --> 00:19:14.920
With the times that we're in with people like we scan, we're much rather watch videos.
00:19:14.920 --> 00:19:17.655
Even when we watch videos, how how much are we watching?
00:19:17.655 --> 00:19:30.778
I'm I'm guilty personally of if I someone sends me a video, you know, or a meme on on instagram, I chances are, if it's, if it's a video, I won't watch it, you know, because it's like, oh, how long is this video?
00:19:31.039 --> 00:19:43.124
That's literally what I asked myself, so exactly to what you were just saying, where it's you know, if you're at a presentation and you're just you know, and they say, hey, we've got a pivot, you only have about five minutes or you only have two minutes.
00:19:43.124 --> 00:20:11.061
So being able to think about it's like if I okay, if I have two minutes, knowing that I probably need to capture these people in 30 seconds, otherwise I'm going to lose them, making sure that what you're saying from the beginning, those first 30 seconds, is really, really compelling absolutely you don't lose them, absolutely okay so I, I and I think, like I said that, I think that that's something that can be true, like said true for for again, all of our platforms.
00:20:11.221 --> 00:20:26.669
Whether it's a press release, whether it's a video on instagram that you're posting, if you're, it's a long form video, anything that you do, I always say like shorter is better, and that's oftentimes where it's, you know, you don't, when you're, when you do what we do, oftentimes, like we don't, we can't really do fluff.
00:20:26.669 --> 00:20:28.057
Think about news.
00:20:28.057 --> 00:20:31.326
You know the, the editors and writers who don't have time to read.
00:20:31.326 --> 00:20:37.369
So we've got to make sure, in the first couple, you know, couple of sentences of the email, that it's actually something that's going to be beneficial for them.
00:20:37.369 --> 00:20:39.811
Um, and understanding their time is important.
00:20:39.811 --> 00:20:46.987
That, like, we want them to write about it, but we know that we don't, you know, often have a capital audience, um, you know whether it's a good relationship or not.
00:20:46.987 --> 00:20:48.757
So we got to, we got to get people quick.
00:20:48.916 --> 00:21:20.938
We, we, we, as consumers and as an audience, we don't have a long attention span and you know, I, I'm I'm speaking from personal experience, from being on both sides you know how well, let me say, and I agree with you about the length of it the also the other thing that has to be considered too is the complexity of the issue, and maybe you might not run across a lot of those, but somehow, and there are some issues that can be complex, so it might take a little bit longer than five minutes to completely understand it, because right what's worse than is either.
00:21:21.057 --> 00:21:33.070
You know, you didn't say enough, so they still don't understand it or maybe a little bit longer, so at least they get a grasp of what it is and exactly so forth, yeah, and then also like to your point.
00:21:33.413 --> 00:21:36.757
But that's why it's important to have always a good call to action, right?
00:21:36.757 --> 00:21:46.104
So I think it doesn't matter, like again, if you, if you don't have much time, you're like OK, what, what is, what are the do at the end of this?
00:21:46.104 --> 00:21:50.047
So again, whether you're in front of people and you let them know, you're like, hey, this is who I am, this is what I do.
00:21:50.047 --> 00:22:00.517
This is why it's beneficial for you Knowing that you're.
00:22:00.517 --> 00:22:01.823
But it's like what do I want them to do?
00:22:01.823 --> 00:22:10.162
Do I want them at the end of this, if I'm at a conference, do I want them at this end of the conference to come up to me asking for more information?
00:22:10.162 --> 00:22:20.589
I feel like that's even more important than anything you kind of have in the middle, because if you can't really get your point out in the middle, at least you're like okay, well, just call me, call me later, email me later, we can talk about it.
00:22:20.589 --> 00:22:21.275
You know further.
00:22:21.275 --> 00:22:26.166
So I always say like, who your intro is and maybe who the end part your call to action.
00:22:26.394 --> 00:22:33.108
Well, you know, that makes me think of another thing too, and that is maybe looking in a different direction, and that is protecting one's brand.
00:22:33.108 --> 00:22:45.862
You know, that there needs to be some specific actions taken, depending upon what the issue is and how do we go about protecting this brand from disinformation that's incorrect or perception that's incorrect.
00:22:46.255 --> 00:22:48.276
Yeah, and I always think so.
00:22:48.276 --> 00:22:51.855
I've done a good amount of work in crisis communications.
00:22:51.855 --> 00:23:05.478
It's not my favorite part, but I think it is very much a necessary skill that I truly think all publicists and marketers should have some sort of concept of what crisis communications is.
00:23:05.478 --> 00:23:23.707
I think where companies get in trouble, peter, is that they don't actually have anyone, whether on their team or someone on retainer, that has crisis, has a crisis communications background, that is able to kind of step in instantly because what's the worst is like.
00:23:23.707 --> 00:23:30.175
A lot of times, what happens with companies is that here's a crisis and it's like oh, we need to find someone.
00:23:30.175 --> 00:23:36.528
That should not be your next step your next step is oh, we too late crisis, let's, let's, let's activate.
00:23:36.788 --> 00:23:38.240
You know like it should be, like let's.
00:23:38.240 --> 00:23:48.201
You already have your crisis come team, whether it's ceo, whoever your your c-suite is, whoever your hr, what you know, whatever the issue is, but you have, like your next step should be activate.
00:23:48.201 --> 00:23:53.317
We have a crisis meet in the boardroom 30 minutes, you know whatever 15, 30 minutes, and let's go.
00:23:53.317 --> 00:24:23.240
It should should not be like we have a crisis, we need to interview and hire people to do this, like because that now it's getting bigger and bigger, you know, but I think people need to understand and also, like, when you have some sort of crisis situation, it's not so much the what the crisis is, it's pretty much how you respond, it's how your brand responds and how they recover, and that's a good I would say a good judge of how good of a like overall strategy that you have as a brand.
00:24:23.240 --> 00:24:35.057
Because, again, it's not really like you know things happen, but it's really just how you're going to recover and that's truly what the crisis teams should be in charge of and really what they should be managing.
00:24:35.486 --> 00:24:41.494
Not so much the crisis that happened, but what are we doing in a week and what are we doing in a couple weeks to kind of just bury that?
00:24:41.785 --> 00:24:46.336
Well, you know that crisis communication is an important issue for me as well.
00:24:46.336 --> 00:24:52.035
I mean, I've been in some real heavy-duty ones and I've seen people who are sort of thrashing around at them.
00:24:52.035 --> 00:25:00.692
But the first thing you need to do is have a team and you need to have a plan.
00:25:00.692 --> 00:25:08.615
That's in place already, and you're right, somebody should have some sort of skills at handling these kinds of things, because I was just talking to someone the other day.
00:25:08.865 --> 00:25:11.493
When you compare, I was looking at the thing.
00:25:11.493 --> 00:25:13.871
One is what was it?
00:25:13.871 --> 00:25:15.836
Cracker Barrel was one.
00:25:15.836 --> 00:25:18.473
And the other was the Seafood Place.
00:25:18.473 --> 00:25:19.690
They were two different things.
00:25:19.690 --> 00:25:24.214
I mean, they were both crises, but the Seafood Place I forget the name of it right now.
00:25:24.214 --> 00:25:30.390
But anyway, they sort of say well, look at us, we were kind of silly, that was fun, we were going to fix this.