That Solo Life: The Solo PR Pro Podcast

PR Pro Pop Culture Check-in

It’s time to check in on the latest in pop culture and PR. From recent missteps from the rock and roll world to shows trying to return to air during the WGA and SAG/AFTRA strikes, we talk about it.

 

Transcript

Michelle Kane (00:02):

Thank you for joining us for this episode of That Solo Life, the podcast for PR pros and marketers who work for themselves, people like me, Michelle Kane with VoiceMatters, and Karen Swim of Solo PR Pro. Hello, Karen. It's another week and here we are.

Karen Swim, APR (00:20):

Hi Michelle. We made it. We made it. It's been a week.

Michelle Kane (00:25):

Oh, it's been a week. And it hasn't even been a week already.

Karen Swim, APR (00:30):

So true.

Michelle Kane (00:31):

But our week is nothing like the weeks of some people out there in pop culture land. So we're just going to touch on that a little bit. I'm sure if any of you are following any of the hot topics right now with the Writers’ Strike, the Actors’ Strike. We know Drew Barrymore had some issues with that. We've got some stuff out of Florida, and Jan Winter stepped in it too with Rolling, rolling Stone in the Rock and Roll Hall. And not that we're saying this to just disown people, but there are some very instructive PR moments that some of these aforementioned people received well and acted upon and others have not. But that's okay. It's just like us and clients. Sometimes they listen, sometimes they don't.

Karen Swim, APR (01:21):

100%. And I actually, I love our pop culture PR segments because they're always fun and they're a nice break from a lot of the other things that all of us have to deal within our day-to-day. So yes.

Michelle Kane (01:35):

Yeah. Yes. Let's get into it. So Drew, I love Drew. I know she means, well, I think she most certainly was thinking of those members of her crew and those people affected by the strike and being off the job and what that is starting to mean financially for so many people that she announced. She made the decision to come back to work that was met with pretty significant backlash, which in turn, she then rescinded and is not going back. And I know we were talking off air about, I had seen Rosie O'Donnell posted something that was very instructive for Drew. In fact, Rosie, if you're looking to make a foray into pr, you nailed it. She just laid out three things, a apologize, B, change your mind and see, just state it like this and you'll be fine.

Karen Swim, APR (02:36):

I love Drew Barrymore as well. And I think that her misstep, of course, the first thing that was asked is who's advising her? People automatically assume that there was some failure on the part of advisors, but then other smart people asked. The question was, did she listen to counsel? My guess is that obviously she does have really good PR people that are on her team. My guess is that they truly did advise her, but that she led with her will and her heart. And I do believe that she was well intentioned, but very misinformed. So here's a thing that stood out to me. Number one, here's somebody who is an industry veteran. She grew up in this industry. That, however, is not always apparently an indication that you really understand the industry that you've been in for a long time. So she's been in it for a long time.

She's made a lot of money in the industry. She definitely is one of the privileged that is not feeling the strike in the same way, however, because she has a good heart. She wanted to do something good, but she missed the mark on this one and she forgot her audience. I don't want to spend people's money. But there's all kinds of ways that you can help people that work for you without affecting the wider industry and the issues and thinking about how this is going to play to the average American, many of whom are in her audience are also in labor unions, have family members in labor unions or are being impacted by workplace issues. So it was a great misstep. And so the lesson to leaders is just because you think something is right, and just because you're operating off of good intentions, it's really smart to have strategic counsel that will tell you the truth and to look beyond yourself and your perceptions and truly understand the impact on the audience.

(04:50):

And when you're a brand of that size, your impact on the larger marketplace. I have friends that have been on the picket lines. I have friends that are not multimillionaires who are being affected by these strikes. I have friends that are actors and friends that are writers. It is disheartening to see somebody show up for a smaller group of people because you want to feel good about it and you want to put a statement out saying, I own this choice. Okay, are you owning the big mistake that this is too? It was a slap in the case to all of those people that don't have Drew Barrymore as their boss, which is the majority of people.

Michelle Kane (05:30):

Right. So true. So true. And it definitely went against the whole purpose of a strike. And to your point, you're asking audience members to cross a picket line. And so there was a subset snafu with all of this where there were two audience members who the picketers gave them pins. They wore the pins, they were kicked out of the audience. So it's also a message to someone in her, or maybe you're not a talk show host. Maybe you're a c e O of a company. Yeah, you keep the 30,000 foot view, but you better keep your ear to the ground too so that your staff knows not to do that because Hello Drew, you're in the SAG after union.

Karen Swim, APR (06:16):

That's unfortunate, but has she been out on the picket line routinely? Has she been talking to people who are losing their livelihood, who cannot pay their rent, who cannot make their mortgage payments? Apparently not.

Because you can't hear these stories, you can't know these people. You can't walk in their shoes and make the decision that was made. And we've also seen the ripple effect, and this happens with companies that we work with too. One company does something and everybody follows suit bad or good.

We're seeing it right now in this whole return to office. One company finally pulls the plug and says, you've got to come back. And then we see a ripple where other companies follow suit because no one often wants to be first. And we know in business that it's all copycat. That's why they all talk in this stupid business jargon language, which is another part of our segment today. So now that she has pulled back and they are not taping the show, then other talk shows also announce that they also will be delaying their seasons. Correct. Is this painful? Yes, but that's a whole point of a strike, whether you're pro-union or not. I think that we're all people earning a decent living,

(07:42):

And that's all that these, they're not fighting to become billionaires. That's not what the fight is about. They want to have health insurance. They want to be able to have entry level positions. When it comes to actors, they want extras. Extra is often, it's almost like an internship into the business. They don't get paid a lot, but they get to learn on the job, they get to network, they get to be around, they learn the language of a set and how production goes. And one of the things that the studios wanted to do is to take extras in that background stuff and be able to AI it into 50,000 different other scenes movies. So imagine this, you go, you get paid a hundred bucks for your full day of work, and now somebody wants you to sign over the rights to that day of work for eternity so they can just drop you into other things. Yes, technology is here, but I am not a fan personally of technology, completely erasing humanity. I believe that the best use of technology helps us to do our jobs better. It works for us. It's not competing with us.

Michelle Kane (09:02):

I mean, that's just wholly unethical.

Karen Swim, APR (09:06):

I believe it is too. And so I've heard a lot of people just, they don't understand. They don't know what's going on with these strikes. And they really have this viewpoint that people in Hollywood all make so much money. And when I shared with people some of the residual checks that people make or some of the money that they make given year, they were shocked that it was less than they make at their, what they consider to be a regular job. We're not talking about tech executives. We're not talking about C-suite people. We're talking about people that just go to work every day. They have a job, they make a decent living. They were shocked to learn that people in this industry often make far less than they do. And it's because in every industry, you always have somebody on the bottom, somebody in the middle, and somebody at the top. Every industry that doesn't go away just because of the type of industry.

Michelle Kane (10:03):

And I think it speaks to a wider mentality, and I'm going to presume it's probably mostly an American thing. You always hear the pushback of, oh, they want this kind of raise. Why should they get that? It's like, do you understand? If they do that, it will eventually benefit you? This is not a competition. You are not meant to be jealous. Oh, so you want to be paid less, is that what you're saying? Pay me less. It's not a contest. We only have, look unions a lot of good, a lot of not so great, but we have weekends because of unions. We have, well, in most states right now, some states are bringing back child labor. We don't have child labor because of union. So them asking for what the value of their work is bringing these companies don't act like just because it's not an opportunity for you today. Oh, they're being greedy. Just shut up and go to work. It's like, really? Do you really want to be a surf? I don't.

Karen Swim, APR (11:09):

And it is a little shortsighted to actually be a member of a union that's on strike and make the decision that Drew Barrymore made. That's a more telling issue because people that don't agree with the unions and would love to see them go away, they don't like the collective bargaining. They want every individual to bargain for themselves. Nothing wrong with that point of view. It really isn't. So we're not here to say pro or anti-union or whatever. We're here to say that when you are running a business, you really need to take into account who you're speaking to and the impact of your decisions. And you have to rely on more than your own perception or your intentions. It just gets you into trouble every time. And this time it really got her into trouble. I think that she'll recover from it.

Michelle Kane (12:05):

Yes. I believe that

Karen Swim, APR (12:07):

She, over time has actually built a lot of goodwill. So I do think that she will recover, but it was just unfortunate that it had to take this turn. And we know that on a smaller basis, we probably have seen this with clients as well.

Michelle Kane (12:23):

Oh, definitely, definitely. And to be fair, same thing has happened with Bill Maher. He decided to come back Now, of course said no. And I think it was also what the talk and the Jennifer Hudson show, they were making similar decisions into which even if you're a talk show, it's like, well, who do you think is going to be your guest? But speaking of shortsightedness and not really having much of a clue, let's move on to the new president of the University of Florida, former Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse.

Karen Swim, APR (13:06):

We're looking at this purely from a PR lens. So, University of Florida, which is one of the top schools in the nation, and their model has been fantastic, has a new president, and his name is Ben Sasse, and he's a business guy. Nothing wrong with I get it. You bring somebody into a different industry because they have a different way of solving problems, a different perspective. I have no issues with that choice from a PR perspective. One thing that jumped out at us is that Ben Sasse has done some interviews and he is a businessperson, and he makes the mistake that so many PR professionals will instantly recognize. How many of you have clients that you have set up interviews with and you're trying, you have media trained them for thought leadership, and they cannot get out of their own way and speak like a human being. They just cannot speak like a person.

(14:10):

We have to tell you, we were working with a client and we had a partner, and the partner was a very large, very well-known household name company. And so the interview included our client, a smaller client and this household name company. And the reporter came back to us after the interview and applauded our client and their interview and their input and said basically that the household name company was trash because they could not speak like a human being. They just gave them a bunch of standard company jargon. So if you want to do thought leadership, this is the worst way to do it. It's the worst way, honestly, to communicate with anyone that phrase that you should communicate to be understood, not heard. And unfortunately, some executives, some business people, some regular people feel like they need to sound smart. They need to use all of the inside words.

(15:26):

When you are talking inside of your own companies, you do not need to do this. You do not need to prove that you have the glossary of terms that are used. Sometimes if you're a medical doctor, obviously you need to use technical language in certain positions. You have to use technical language within your job. But it would serve everyone well to learn how to speak a human being. And I want to read you an example of one of his answers. It is so completely, it's like, what does he even saying right now? I don't even know. I'll have to find the quote.

Michelle Kane (16:12):

I believe co-location was one of the words. It was just, I'm like, really? And I wonder because he was previously, he's the former senator from Nebraska. And you have to wonder, is he just not used to speaking things that weren't carefully crafted for him or is now that he's out of that world, he's just again refusing counsel and saying, nah, I'm good. I'll wing it.

Karen Swim, APR (16:42):

He was asked about his perceived invisibility on campus because there's been a lot of stuff on the campus about how he's not seen the previous president. The students don't see him. He's just not visible. And so part of his answer, and this is in quotes, and this is from New York Times magazine, and he says, and that requires us to unbundle cohorting community and synchronicity from co localities. And then he added, what will today's generic term professor mean when you disaggregate syllabus designer, sage on the stage, lecturer, seminar leader, instructional technologist, greater assessor, et cetera. So cohorting community and synchronicity from localities even mean, and what it

Michelle Kane (17:33):

Sounds like it hurts.

Karen Swim, APR (17:35):

Yes. What does that have to do with students saying they never see you on campus? Please do not do this at home, folks.

Michelle Kane (17:48):

Yeah, I mean, my university wasn't anywhere near as large as the University of Florida, but we knew who our president was. We would see him, we would see the provost, we would see them out and about saying, hello. It's a little strange, and maybe I'll give him a little benefit of the doubt. Maybe he's transitioning from being in the hyperbaric chamber of DC or maybe he just isn't, isn't really for…

Karen Swim, APR (18:22):

And I feel like this, feeling like they're so accustomed to speaking in this inside baseball language and it's a language of the privileged they feel as if they have to speak this language so that people know how incredibly brilliant they are. But the people who have an impact and are memorable, are people who know how to speak to you like a person. They don't need to use the big words. And we PR people, we love the dictionary. We love grammar, we love words. We love to bring out old words and use them in different places. But when you are communicating with people, it's so much more important to just be plain spoken and to be memorable. People will remember words that they can hold onto. They're not going to remember that you said unbundle cohort team. I want to even know what does that even mean?

Michelle Kane (19:32):

And honestly, as soon as you said synchronicity, I was already playing songs from the police album in my mind. So you lost me, Ben. But speaking of the police and rock and roll, our number three person who he has literally taken PR in vain is Jan Wener, who has come out with this book called The Masters. And he has truly and purely stepped in it or revealed to anyone who had any wonder of how he really is when he claims, well, I don't know if he was approached as to why are there only white men in your book? And he made some ridiculous claims that, well, I guess I could have interviewed one black person and one woman to be for PR purposes. Okay, that's not PR Jan, but whatever. But they couldn't be articulate. I'm like, I'm sorry, say what? I have three words for you.

(20:28):

Sister Rosetta invented the electric guitar rock and roll riff. If, and I kind of feel for the people that he did interview, I really would love to hear from them as if to say, yeah, I'm in that book, but that's not how I roll. Just incredibly tone deaf. And it really tarnishes the musical journalism reputation of Rolling Stone, even though he was just the editor and the publisher. He wasn't the writer, but all the coverage over the years, you're like, huh, why didn't so-and-so get featured as much? Oh, really? Oh, you don't think Stevie Wonder could talk about his music? Really? Oh, so yeah, he's in our, I don't even like to say doghouse because I love dogs. He's in our PR bad house right now. He

Karen Swim, APR (21:19):

Has been removed from the rock and roll board. Yes, he has from his position. And I think that those were great decisions. And Michelle, I mean, I completely respect you, particularly on so many topics, but you're a music nerd.

Michelle Kane (21:36):

I am.

Karen Swim, APR (21:37):

You are a music nerd. You love music. You know music. You can talk music. And it just hurt my heart to read words that you have one human being who has power, who communicated that there's only a certain subset of people that make music that can actually talk about it in an intelligent manner. This from someone who is not a musician, by the way, he's not a musician.

(22:12):

No. Here again, this goes to me. I mean, this is not a diversity, equity, inclusivity, and belonging issue because he is clearly biased, period. No amount of de I and B training would've helped this man. He really needs a mindset shift. But it is a good example of us understanding companies, organizations, strategic advisors, PR council, understanding the people that we connect to, our brands and our companies, understanding what their perspectives are, not just their intelligence on a particular topic. So I am sure that he achieved his status and position because he developed talents and he had some knowledge about this industry. But did anyone ever look beyond that over the years? Did anyone question why certain people weren't interviewed and why he held certain opinions or wrote certain things? So I think that as communicators, it's important for us to ensure that our clients are not attached to people that could damage their reputations because this rubs off on them. And Michelle, you nailed it. You started to look back and say, now I'm questioning decisions that were made under his leadership, knowing now what I know about this human being. Absolutely. So it can turnage great work.

Michelle Kane (24:00):

And

Karen Swim, APR (24:02):

Not because your organization sucks. I mean, no has had some problematic.

Michelle Kane (24:11):

Problematic, yes. And there's been an undercurrent of thoughts about this person's perspectives, but this just you. I'm like, okay, well thank you for confirming what so many of people have said. I won't repeat what one of my friends posted.

Karen Swim, APR (24:32):

I dunno this man at all. But his comments come across like a hateful, misogynistic, racist. Can I just be honest about it? Exactly.

Michelle Kane (24:40):

Yeah.

Karen Swim, APR (24:41):

So, basically you hate women and any other race.

Michelle Kane (24:44):

Yeah. They're not on the same par as your white male counterparts. And I'm like, yeah, I'm pretty sure that's the textbook definition. And I'm fairly certain of half the names you dropped that they would highly disagree with you. I don't dunno if David Bowie saying

Karen Swim, APR (25:04):

This out loud.

Michelle Kane (25:06):

Yeah, you're saying the quiet part out loud, which happens oh so often these days. And yeah, along that topic, if anyone's interested, there's that brilliant clip of David Bowie being interviewed on MTV in the early eighties addressing just that and calling them out to their faces. And it's just a beautiful for us nerds who love to see a good interview and how they can go, but

Karen Swim, APR (25:29):

We love it.

Michelle Kane (25:30):

Well, we hope you've enjoyed this time with us. We enjoy just looking at the PR perspective of these things as we dish a little bit. And if you've found this valuable to you, we would love it if you would share it around with your friends and colleagues. Check us out@soloprpro.com. And until next time, thanks for listening to That Solo Life.

 

From Barriers to Bridges with Mary Ellen Miller

In this episode, Karen and Michelle welcome Mary Ellen “Mel” Miller, APR, MBA. Mel is the founder and CEO of MarketingMel, a solo PR firm that strengthens relationships between organizations and the publics they serve. Mel draws on the breadth of her lifelong career as a professional communicator in her new book, “Fill the Dam Thing Up! Building Connections: Communicating throughout the Lifecycle of Infrastructure Projects.” It’s a discussion you won’t want to miss.

 

Buy the Book:

“Fill the Dam Thing Up! Building Connections: Communicating throughout the Lifecycle of Infrastructure Projects” is available on Amazon.

 

Connect with Mel:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/marketingmel/

@MarketingMel

 

Transcript

 

Michelle Kane (00:03):

Thank you for joining us for an episode of That Solo Life, the podcast for PR pros and marketers who work for themselves, people like me, Michelle Kane with VoiceMatters and our fearless leader over at Solo PR Pro, Karen Swim, and we are thrilled to welcome a guest today. Today we are joined by Mary Ellen, or as she likes to be called, Mel, Miller. Mel holds a special place in our hearts because she is an original Solo PR plankholder. Mel is an accredited public relations professional and the founder and CEO of Marketing Mel, a solo PR firm that strengthens relationships between organizations and the publics they serve. She and I are also fellow Rotarians, so shout out to the Rotarians out there. Mel draws on the breadth of her lifelong career as a professional communicator in her new book, soon to be a bestseller we called it now. That is called “Fill the Dam Thing Up! Building Connections: Communicating throughout the Lifecycle of Infrastructure Projects.” Welcome, Mel. Thank you for joining us today.

Mary Ellen "Mel" Miller, APR (01:12):

Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.

Karen Swim, APR (01:15):

Yeah, we're so excited to talk to you and love the title of the book and I won't spoil it, but readers you are going to love it from the introduction and you'll love the little story behind the book title and just in reading the note about how the title came about, it just was such a feeling of comradery and just good. And the book is packed, packed with lots of good insights and information. So good you're here to talk about it.

Mary Ellen "Mel" Miller, APR (01:52):

Thank you. Thank you. Karen,

Michelle Kane (01:55):

What brought about you to write this book?

Mary Ellen "Mel" Miller, APR (01:59):

Well, I realized that it was a really unique project in that it was just a 25 minute drive from my home here in northeast Tennessee, but yet it evolved experts from across the world coming in here to keep a dam safe and to keep people downstream safe because ultimately that's what this project was all about, was safety of the downstream public. What the issue was in a nutshell was what's called internal erosion, which is the number two cause of dam failure in the world, and a muddy seep was discovered at the base of the dam in October of 2014, and also a sinkhole was discovered in the parking lot adjacent to that. And the experts quickly realized that the lake on the opposite side, which was really the majority of people I dealt with very well-to-do lake homeowners, who naturally were rather upset when their lake had to be drawn down approximately an additional 10 feet below the winter pool level.

(03:00):

So it became a rather low lake then for the duration of the project, but we always had the support of top management. The CEO came in and said, this project's going to be done, it's going to be done safely and right, it's going to take five to seven years. Of course, the people were very upset to hear it would take that long of a timeline, but there was a tremendous amount of community outreach as you can imagine. That's really what this book is about and it really does appeal directly to your audience folks like us. I was brought in as a contractor on the project, so I full-time had the experience in the community and in broadcasting and in pr, all those kinds of things that helped with the outreach. And I would say if I was to sum it up in just two words, it was relationship building.

(03:45):

As I mentioned in the book, you start out with people, the presidents of the local lake associations with their arms crossed in front of you, just nod at all thrilled that you're there to actually help them clean up the lake on their annual cleanup lake and bringing crews and really showing them that we're here to support showing them that we're here to support. In terms of charity outreach, that was huge. We had a committee of workers on the project. There were about 200 workers on the project, 24 hours a day for several years actually, and they voted to support both the local food bank and also Marine Corps choice for Tots. So every holiday season we were there and we were the largest givers in the whole region While we were there, we knew it was very uncomfortable for the people. We were causing them major discomfort in that the lake had gone down significantly.

(04:38):

But the flip side of that was we wanted to do all we could in the community and in terms of community outreach to help folks while we were here. So it was a fascinating story and the international aspect, to answer your question, Karen and Michelle, it's not every day that you're in northeast Tennessee and you're hearing accents from Britain and France and Italy and Australia. It was just so fun to, and we all came around together at the conference room table every single morning. All the leaders were together and making the plans for the day. So

Karen Swim, APR (05:13):

There was a phrase early on, and you used this in the book that jumped out at me and it's “angry neighbors” and this, when you interrupt people's idea of comfort, there's anger. But when I read it, I realized that this is not limited to infrastructure projects today. We really are surrounded by angry neighbors. There's such anger and a lack of patience in our culture. So talk about how you dealt with that and what lessons you drew upon to deal with a constituency that you needed and you wanted them to become advocates and somebody that you actually needed to communicate with that you started out from a platform of them being just angry

Mary Ellen "Mel" Miller, APR (06:04):

And understandably so justifiably so if you had paid the kind of money they had to have, the lovely homes they have up there, I certainly get how they felt that they didn't want their lake to go down. They still had some water and they still had, we made sure they had access to the water, but it was quite different from the way they were used to. And I think it was twofold. One was the relationship building that I mentioned by showing up month after month in the Lake Association meetings, they started to realize I was for real. I wasn't just flying in and flying out and I lived here to add to that. So I was really here to help them and listen to them. And through that listening, that active listening, that really amounted to environmental scanning. And that's where I picked up on the issue of vegetation management.

(06:49):

As a lake comes down, vegetation comes up if you think about it. And so that was the next thing that they were very concerned about and we were able to address that head on. We enabled crews, we brought crews into mulch and helped to eliminate where the neighbors wanted. It eliminated, as I mentioned in the book, there was actually one fishermen who didn't want his yard cut. He wanted it safe for future fish habitat. So we did what they wanted and what they asked. That was one. The second thing that I think is really important is to engage the people who start out so adversarial. And the one example that I used, I call 'em the three amigos in the book, and the fun thing is that they actually came around in the end and we were very helpful to one another, but in the beginning they started out adversarial and what we did was give them a job, so to speak, and by that I mean a volunteer role in that very vegetation management role that I just mentioned.

(07:48):

They were the ones that knew the neighbors, they lived there. So they went out ahead of our crews and talked to the neighbors and helped us with the knocking on doors and said, “Hey, these crews are going to be coming through on boats in the coves. Is that okay?” They'll be coming through on Monday or whatever. And that helped tremendously. It might sound funny to say give 'em a job, but it really worked. And another tip for a PR pro would be frequently asked questions. So often you start to hear the same thing over and over or in a case like that, because they were noisy, the amigos might've thought that they would have special insights into the project. What you do instead in our project manager was really clear on this and it was a great point. You don't give them special insights. You take their questions and you put them out on the website as FAQs and then everybody gets those answers at once. No one gets special treatment.

Karen Swim, APR (08:39):

I love that.

Michelle Kane (08:40):

I love that. And it's so true. Those that are most invested usually are the squeakiest wheels. So why not have them join the team and become invested in the outcomes? That's phenomenal.

Mary Ellen "Mel" Miller, APR (08:55):

Well, thank you. It worked out terrific. We actually started having meetings with him every two weeks and it was funny to watch a turnaround like that and it was definitely, I always said this project was turning around an aircraft carrier. You weren't turning on a dime. This was a seven year project, so it took a while, but it worked.

Michelle Kane (09:13):

Wow. Certainly a huge aspect of the relationship building for sure. How has this differed from other projects you have worked on?

Mary Ellen "Mel" Miller, APR (09:22):

Well, I think the size and scope was what was just so huge. And you asked why I wrote the book. I guess that that's another aspect that I realized just how big it was. And also I realized that infrastructure is a major issue in this country. As I was starting to write the book, that bus, many of you remember, it actually was dangling off a bridge in Pittsburgh. You're from Pennsylvania, Michelle, you remember that? I do. And it was like, oh my gosh, this timing of the situation of our infrastructure in our country. Thankfully no one was killed there, but it showed you that we are going to have other major, major projects in this country that are going to need the same kind of outreach. And that's why I wrote the book as well,

Karen Swim, APR (10:03):

Which is a great point. And you're right, that is a significant issue that I think many of us are aware of, myself included. I think about that, I talk about that, but I never thought about the opportunity for PR pros. And so it's good that you brought up that point that our help will be needed and that there will be lots of these projects in the future. So as we're all looking to future-proof our careers and we're thinking about how we're integrating AI and some of the technological advances, that's a good point. And you brought that up in the book about environmental scanning and be aware of what's around you and start to look at those things and proactively address them in a way of offering your help. That's a great tip.

Mary Ellen "Mel" Miller, APR (10:54):

And it's funny that you say that because when I first heard about the project, another APR who became my boss, I just think the world of her, she's the one that encouraged me to get the APR actually, she put out a notice to our local public relations society that she was looking for a person that basically it was an exact fit of my job description, could work with the community, be comfortable on camera, whatever, all that kind of stuff, and be a PR pro. And so I had two college students with me that day. I told you I'd like to surround myself with sharp young people. And we were coming back from the meeting and I said, man, what a great opportunity. And I think that's the way we see it, but so many people see it the opposite. And so I tell in the book about how I am sitting at the dentist and my mouth is open and he is like, “You're going to do what?!” - that other professional people that I think have very stressful jobs are thinking that I'm nuts to take on a job like this with community outreach with a bunch of already angry neighbors.

(11:50):

But I thought it was a fun challenge, as you mentioned. And I think that's the way solo PRs fly. We take on the challenges and we're ready to do it. And the other thing that was really big in the book to me was to realize it's a long game. You really have to have resilience and you have to be willing to just keep chugging along and plugging along. And I actually had this vision towards the end of the project after so many years of seeing massive drills on top of the dam and huge construction equipment up there to, I put this picture from July of 2014 as my screensaver, and it was kids frolicking at the beach because there's an actual beach area there at the base of the dam where the public loves to swim, but it had to be closed throughout the project.

(12:39):

And I just kept looking at that picture from, let's see, I posted it in the fall of 21 and the project officially, we had our celebration in ribbon cutting, May 25th, 2022. So I was staring at it for that long and I just kept seeing that as the long game, we are going to get to this again. And I share in the book on that final day, first we had the ribbon cutting with all the stakeholders and it was great, beautiful day in May. And then we had the public come in and we had our subject matter experts all available to talk to the public. And that was really fun. And the partners in the community, including the three Amigos, the local fishing groups, various groups like that, and I was sitting on, I was waiting for my family. They were coming in because they wanted to see it of course. And this family comes up to me and they said, is it okay? They were very timid, can we go swimming? And I said, sure, absolutely. And it was like there they, they jumped in the water and I snapped pictures and I was like, there it is. That's the vision. So I think we have to cast a vision as solo PR pros that there's something good to come in the long run, even though there may be challenges and hills along the way.

Karen Swim, APR (13:49):

And I'm glad that you said that because I was going to ask with a seven year project, and that's different from a lot of our assignments. While we may have clients that long, there are a series of projects along the way. It's not one long assignment. So I know that along the way there was probably moments where it seemed like there was not a lot of activity sometimes where it was more challenging. How did you keep yourself fueled and refreshed during this very long project?

Mary Ellen "Mel" Miller, APR (14:22):

Very long project? That is a great question because it was hard, and I really appreciate the things you do when you talk about the challenges we have with the difficulties of what we do. We're dealing with crises a lot. But I did things like honestly taking my lunch break at the picnic table and being outside and going for a little walk at lunchtime, that sounds really simple, but I think you just have to give yourself that little mental break in the day. That was a big one. I made sure that I was up, see, I was actually physically removed from the main project group. I would go up there every morning and meet with the main project group, but I was in an area where the public could get to me and I could get to the public. And I had two armed guards with me because speaking of stress, someone had threatened to blow up the dam just before I arrived, but this is what we deal with.

(15:17):

So we had to have armed guards protect the site itself. And then indirectly me, because I was in the same trailer with them, it was a very large trailer that we had maps and cartoon type drawings of the project itself. We had a model dam that was very useful in teaching the public and in teaching school groups as well that we showcased there. And then as I mentioned, so much community outreach. There was an eagle's nest that we supported and it was like a live eagle. People love those things. They turn their computer on and they watch 'em for hours. And so we supported that with the local power company at the time. And we got, I remember having a picture of the eagle out there. He had, or she, well, both they're paired, had nested on private property right along the lake. So that was a fun thing to do. But in terms of those kind of mental breaks that you take like a walk or making sure you're around a lot of people when you get the opportunity to, I didn't even usually take regular lunch breaks, but occasionally I would with a couple of friends. And that was a big treat for me just to get out and talk to people about something different.

Michelle Kane (16:24):

I think that's a really good point.

Karen Swim, APR (16:25):

It's so simple things that we take for granted that we do need and we have to build those in. And I know for many PR pros like you, I normally don't take lunch, but the days that I get out of the office and go meet somebody for lunch, it is, it's different and it refreshes you and you feel so energized after that.

Michelle Kane (16:47):

So true. Especially in such a long slog like that, it's important to remember that part of what we do is to keep ourselves replenished. It's not irresponsible to step away for 15, even 15 minutes or oh, goodness,  an hour.

Mary Ellen "Mel" Miller, APR (17:03):

Right? That's a big treat for us. But sometimes you need it.

Michelle Kane (17:07):

Yeah, definitely

Karen Swim, APR (17:09):

You talked a little bit about planning and for those of us who have gone through the accreditation process, we are well familiar with RPI, but you talked about 10 step plan, share with us how that plan worked for you, because I sometimes feel like everybody doesn't get it like a plan. You've got to have a plan, and we may be speaking with people that are outside of the PR profession that listen. So talk about that a little bit and talk about the process you used.

Mary Ellen "Mel" Miller, APR (17:45):

Oh, well, I'm really glad you mentioned that. The planning. Planning. There's a quote that I used from General Eisenhower in the book, and of course I'm not finding it this very second because I'm looking for it, but it's basically that once you get into battle, basically for him you have to have the plan, but then it's kind of like the plan may go by the wayside, but you had that initial plan. I'm paraphrasing him greatly here, but it's so important. And he's exactly right. So you have that initial plan. I had an overarching communications plan that I would update annually and give to the project manager and then kind of subsets of that as various projects within that communications plan would come up throughout the year. I use Fern bon's 10 step PR plan. There's actually a link to that URL in the book because I use that plan all the time, Karen.

(18:37):

And we learned about that in our APR process. But it's just some basic steps to follow and how you start with your strategies and objectives, what your first goals are, and then you drill down more into your tactical work of how you're going to execute that PR plan. So yes, that's important. And then the other thing, this is really simple, it's just a basic spreadsheet, but every week or then I think it went to every other week when I would meet with the managers, and that's another really important thing, be sure you get a seat at the table with the top management. That's very important for the PR pro. But when I would meet with them, I would give them that updated spreadsheet on what's going on in the community to date, what we've just finished this week or last week and what we have coming up. So that was a really good way to keep track and it's so basic, just a little Excel spreadsheet and where you are.

Karen Swim, APR (19:29):

So true. I love it. So true. And I love, we do have to, I always say that you hold everything with an open hand, so you plan, but you realize, and you talked about this, you talked about the project leaders that you started with were not the project leaders that you finished with. And it's a good point because we see that a lot with just in our day-to-day client engagements where leadership changes or there's staffing changes. And so you may start out with a CEO, but that CEO may not go the journey with you. So how did you manage those transitions on top of this massive project? Talk a little bit about the strategies that you used to keep things moving and to keep the momentum and then having to develop new relationships along the way because things were changing and your team sometimes changed.

Mary Ellen "Mel" Miller, APR (20:20):

Well, the team was fantastic, and the reason they changed was they were so good. They got promoted into other positions. They were really on a showcase project. And so when they did so well there, they got promoted up, most of them. Well, the project manager lasted through most of it, and then he got promoted onto a much bigger project towards maybe the last year or six months. So he and I worked very closely together. And then I just adapted the new project manager who came in. She was awesome. She was kind of his handpick. She did not like to go out into public events as much as he did. He was really great with the public speaking events. She liked to be a little bit more behind the scenes. But then we accommodated that with actually a project moves in phases. I cover that in the book as well. And so the project technical director actually ended up really stepping up at that point. And actually his group was called the Asset Owner at that point because they were under the DAM safety heading. And he was terrific at going out and doing those public things. So they filled in the gap. Well, and I guess I was just so fortunate to work with such fantastic professionals that it was a pretty smooth transition when it came to working with different leadership. They made it easy.

Michelle Kane (21:35):

That's so important as well. And even what you touched on is having that seat at the table. I don't know that our equal professionals out there that we often work with realize how important that is. I always say I don't have to know everything, but I have to know everything.

Mary Ellen "Mel" Miller, APR (21:55):

That is well said. And the vegetation management I mentioned is a great example. And I've recently started some public speaking at Rotary Clubs. Michelle and a couple of engineers trailed me out of one because they wanted to buy my book. It was really sweet. And I'd already ran out of books. That was really fun. I'd sold three and I had two more in the car. So they followed me out and they said, you know what? We would've been thinking about the caisson, but you saw the vegetation management. And I said, well, that's where I operate at 30,000 feet. But all three of us do here. And our listeners as well, we're paid to operate at 30,000 feet. They're paid to worry about the caisson because that's really important.

(22:37):

And by the way, that was the solution. They built an underground cutoff wall that was kind of the showpiece of what they called the composite seepage barrier. So it was literally a barrier built within the earth and embankment that cut off pretty easy to explain, cut off the seepage. And then they also had some berms they built around it and they did some drilling and grouting as well. So it was kind of a three phased effort to repair the dam. And they did, and they did it safely. And that's the good news on time and under budget,

Karen Swim, APR (23:13):

That's music to everyone's ears, isn't it? Seriously able to achieve that. We could talk to you about any of these topics that you cover in the book for an entire hour, but as we near the end of our time, I want to personally make sure that people know where to get this great book because there, it's fun. It's a fun read and you write with such warmth and it's so relatable. I've never worked on infrastructure projects like this, but I completely relate it to the way that you laid out the story in the book. And it's a good read. And I do believe that this will become a bestseller. And I believe that there's probably more books in you, Mel Miller, so talk where they can pick up this book.

Mary Ellen "Mel" Miller, APR (23:59):

Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate your support, both of you. I appreciate you having me on this podcast. They can pick up the book on Amazon right now, just Google it, “Fill the Dam Thing Up.” The book will show up right away. And then I've just caught the book on audio, and Isaac, the sound engineer is sitting right here and he is editing away. So it will show up on Audible in the very near future. And then I ultimately plan to do an e-book as well. But you learn on this author journey, and one of the things I've learned is there's some different formatting you have to do for e-book. So I'll come back with that, but I plan to have it on all three channels available to people that like to read in different formats.

Michelle Kane (24:37):

Fantastic, fantastic. So we thank you so much. And where else can we find you online? LinkedIn, I assume, or

Mary Ellen "Mel" Miller, APR (24:45):

Oh yes. I love LinkedIn and I think that's the perfect social media platform for what I do because it's not just the PR pros, but it's also the project managers who work with the PR pros who are out on LinkedIn. So that's a great one. I'm Marketing Mel everywhere, “Marketing” and then M-e-l, so my nickname as was mentioned earlier. So just feel free to connect with me. Twitter, you name it, I'm out there. So look forward to connecting.

Michelle Kane (25:10):

We are so grateful that you took your time to spend with us today, and we hope everyone out there pre-orders the book and please do hook up with Mel on LinkedIn, make sure you follow her successes with this wonderful book that we can all learn so much from. That's what I love about this profession. We learn from each other and we thank you for listening today to our audience. If you enjoyed this episode, we invite you to share it around and I mean what's not to enjoy with this episode. And until next time, thanks for listening to That Solo Life.

 

Book Club Fail and Business Development

Book Clubs start with the best of intentions, don’t they? In today’s episode, Karen and Michelle turn their book club fail into an opportunity to amp up your business development for a great Q4.

 

Transcript

Michelle Kane (00:02):

Thank you for joining us for this episode of That Solo Life, the podcast for PR pros and marketers who work for themselves, people like me, Michelle Kane with VoiceMatters  and my ever steady captain of the ship over at Solo PR Pro, Karen Swim. Hey Karen, how are you?

Karen Swim, APR (00:18):

Hello, Michelle. How are you doing? I'm doing great. It's good to see you after the Labor Day holiday and we did some pre-recording, give ourselves a little bit of a break, so it feels like I haven’t seen you in a while.

Michelle Kane (00:33):

I know, right? We're getting back into things because back to school, even though I hold firm that summer's not yet over until the autumnal equinox. And I know here those of us like me on the East coast, you are more closer to the center of our country, we're having some delightful record heat this week, so that's wonderful.

Karen Swim, APR (01:01):

The weather has really reminded me about how your experiences can shape your responses to things.

Michelle Kane (01:09):

Oh, is that not so true!

Karen Swim, APR (01:10):

It's a good thing to keep in mind with our clients. I have five, six Brazilian families on my block. I love that. And I was talking with a couple of the neighbors the other day, and it's been in the nineties and humid, so it has not been pleasant to people like me who don't do well with those temperatures, but they are thrilled to pieces and they just want to make this last. And so they were saying like, “Oh my God, isn't this great? Do you want to take a walk later?” And I'm like, “No, no, I don't, as a matter of fact, want to take a walk and this oppressive, horrible, hot as hell, heat.”

Michelle Kane (01:57):

Exactly.

Karen Swim, APR (01:58):

I just want to take my dog and go in the air conditioning. That's what I would like to do, but they're so happy. And I thought, for me, it's super uncomfortable and I feel like I can't breathe. And for them, they're just like, amazing. Let's enjoy every second of it. And I'm like,

Michelle Kane (02:17):

You enjoy for me. Okay.

Karen Swim, APR (02:20):

Yeah. So yeah, our experiences definitely shape our perceptions and as we're putting together campaigns for clients and messaging, it’s a good thing to keep in mind that what we intend is not always the way that people will receive it. And a good example of that is our Book Club Fail. Michelle and I are starting a book club where we read a book together and we were going to share with you our findings. And so we have a list of blogs that were recommended for communications professionals, and there was one that caught our attention, and the title is Surrounded by Idiots: How Ineffective Communication Causes Chaos. Now as communicators, we obviously thought this book was about client work, and this will be a fun read and a short read. Turns out,

Michelle Kane (03:20):

No, not so much. We failed our own challenge. No, it was definitely more of a DISC-ish kind of approach, and it was really about not about communicators at all. So…

Karen Swim, APR (03:37):

Yeah, it was for leaders who do not know how to communicate now. So I guess the idiots they're referring to are sometimes the people that we encounter in our work.

Michelle Kane (03:51):

That's put in such a loving way, Karen, but yes, yes. So yeah, we were so excited and so pleased with ourselves. And then, yeah, so maybe the next book we choose, but you know what, isn't this really what happens with book clubs? Does anyone really read the book? They just go for wine time and giggles. So with that, we're going to talk about other challenges because Karen has launched a cool challenge over at Solo PR Pro. Do you want to talk about that a little bit and share with our audience and invite them to come on this challenge with us?

Karen Swim, APR (04:32):

I do, I do. I do. I'm so excited about this. Ridiculously excited.

Michelle Kane (04:38):

That's good.

Karen Swim, APR (04:39):

Yes. So we launched a 21 day business development challenge, and if you have had any encounter with me, you know that I am somebody that likes to keep it pretty simple and I don't like things that are complicated. So true to form. This is super simple. The idea of this challenge is to help us all to build that business development muscle with consistency. So we're inviting you to participate by choosing a business development activity or two, not 10, not 15, one or two activities, and then just spend 20 minutes a day on that activity. That's it. Super simple. And there's a blog post that was published yesterday that outlines our thinking. But again, super, super simple. And it doesn't matter if you are in the communications industry because this really business development is for everyone. And so if you want to join in and follow along, we invite you to do that.

 

So I'm excited about it because I think that when we participate in business development and rather than just waiting around for passive referrals, it energizes our business and it gets us to thinking about how we're talking to people about what we do. It gets us to reconnect with previous prospects and previous clients, and good things always happen because you definitely reap what you sow. So when you're participating in business development activities, new business will come. It definitely will, and it helps us to stay in that positive mindset. This has been, it's been a weird year and we've been surrounded by a lot of challenging news about the economy and layoffs, and we've had to fight against that. We've had to keep ourself in our bubble of staying positive and just continuing to do the things that we know work while hearing all these messages that tell us life is not good. So I think this challenge is perfect for right now because the end of Q3. So it sets us up for Q4 and a strong start to the new year.

Michelle Kane (07:04):

Yeah. Oh, absolutely. And a lot of this is what we already know, but it's so hard. I could be speaking for myself, probably some of you out there when it's yourself, it's so hard to just do this. And really it's thinking about this. Whenever we try to engage on these challenges, I like to frame it of how is this going to make me feel if I do this, it's going to set me up to feel more confident no matter what the day brings, because I know that I am working on business development. So if God forbid, something falls off, you're not scrambling. It happens. It happens to the best of us of, oh my gosh, so-and-so just called to quits and what am I going to do?

Karen Swim, APR (07:58):

Well, on that note, I have to say personally my team, we made a decision at some point this year that we weren't going to do business development because we were tired and needed a little bit of a break to be just fully transparent. We just didn't, like, I don't have the bandwidth for this and I just need a break. So we knew that things were going to roll off and we were going to have a bit of a slow period at some point, and we did, and it was beautiful and welcomed. And then we were like, okay, we're refreshed. We're ready. Let's hit the business development gas pedal again. And we did. So I want to share with you one tip that you may or may not be doing, but again, sometimes we overlook the simple things. We try to overcomplicate this stuff.

For myself, I keep all of my leads in a separate, I have a tag set up in my email and I push all of the lead emails in there, and that allows me to go back and track who I've talked to. And then it also allows me to stay in touch. So even though I am really good at maintaining connections with people and staying in touch, and I genuinely like the people that I meet, there are some that kind of fall through the cracks. Maybe we did a proposal and they decided to go with somebody else or they changed directions. So I go back through those and I reconnect with people. So I did that after our little business development break and set up some meetings, which led to some new proposals, led to some new referrals. And so I encourage you to do that because we know that referrals are our, in the communications industry, it's our number one source of business.

The problem is we are passive about it. We don't ask for referrals. So we don't talk to our current clients on a routine basis about, “Hey, I've got some time on my calendar. Would love to work with another company like you. Do you know anybody?” We don't ask don't for more business from our current clients like, “Hey, we're doing a great job with this department. Are there other departments that we could support you on? Are there other initiatives that we could jump in on? Are there other things that we could be doing for you?” We don't open up our mouth and we don't ask. You've all seen this where you've gotten an email where people write in the signature line or their email, say, invite you to refer them business. Do you do that in the emails that you send? Do you do that in the social media posts that you are putting out on LinkedIn?

Do you invite people to refer business to you and are you clear about the type of business that you want? I would venture to say that most of us do not. If you are a blogger, are you inviting people to send you business? You have to let people know that you're open for business and tell them what kind of business that you want, and don't be shy about it because you have something valuable to offer. But yes, looking back at former clients, existing clients and the people that you've already talked to before, don't be afraid to go back. Even if you we're down to the final three of a bid and they went with somebody else, don't be afraid to reach back out and say, Hey, we chatted back. It's been a couple of years since we've chatted, and yes, I did go back years. Just wanted to catch up and see what things are happening and what new initiatives you're working on. Reach out and make that connection. And even if they have left the company, then connect with somebody else in the company and say, Hey, I last chatted with so-and-so. I know that they're no longer with you. Wondered if you would be interested in setting up an appointment to chat about what you're doing, reach out to the person if you could find them on LinkedIn at their new job and say, Hey, I saw that you changed positions and the last time we talked, you we're here. Would love to catch up on what you're doing. So don't overlook that because you already know the person. So the first step, it's not like it's a cold lead. Don't be afraid to be assertive and ask for a meeting and get caught up, and that can lead to things for you.

Michelle Kane (12:29):

I think that's so true because I think so many of us, not that we try too hard in that phony way, but we think, oh, it's got to be a program. It's got to be put together. It's got to be the best thing, and it's got to be so ready, no, just keep it simple. Not only are you spending less precious energy on it, you're just doing the basic thing of touching base and being, again, being helpful, being that potentially helpful person. And maybe it's even making connections too of saying, depending on how you met them, ”Hey, I know we met at blah, blah, blah, and you were considering whatever it was and just wanted to check and see if you found the resources you needed.” Those are great sideways ways to touch base with someone. And it's so true. You don't have, because don't ask and oh, how many of us do that? Pointing that myself, right? It's like, oh yeah.

Karen Swim, APR (13:35):

I'll tell you though that my motto and I shared this with clients is that nothing is ever wasted. And I'm like that pretty much in my life. I'm somebody that likes to ring every last drop of usefulness out of everything in my life. So I'm like a dog with a bone. If I have a pitch and it doesn't get a secured opportunity, I keep all those pitches too. I keep them in client folders. I keep them grouped and categorized. I may go back to a pitch two years later because it's relevant again and something comes up. And so I never let go until I've gotten everything that I possibly can out of it. And it is like done. It's ripped, it's done.

Michelle Kane (14:25):

It's like never, no stone left unturned.

Karen Swim, APR (14:30):

I'll never let it go. I do not give up. But honestly, when it comes to business development, I have honestly had clients that have closed more than a year after an initial discussion a year. I just didn't let it go. Talking to them, there is one client that was, oh my God, one of my favorite clients still to this point, and I do love all the people that I work with, but we talked through, we started talking when she was at one company, three companies later in the client, three whole companies.

Michelle Kane (15:14):

Well, that brings to the forefront a really important aspect of business development. It doesn't happen overnight. I mean, you might have those unicorns or someone contacts you and by the end of the week the deal is sealed, but so often it takes months, six months or a year just because of the day-to-day of the potential client. They may know they have a need, but budget's not approved, but the product's not ready or this isn't right. Everything has to align. So there's two sides of that coin, right? On the one side is if you have a significant gap in your workload that can stress you out. But on the other side, it's kind of nice to know of, okay, this, it's like I say to so many, I say, it's a slow burn. It's not going to necessarily have someone come to you today.

Karen Swim, APR (16:14):

Yeah. That's why you have to keep your pipeline filled because you're going to have people at various stages. You are going to have those people that are longer leads just with the media, but you're also going to have those short-term hits. You're going to have people that are ready to pop. And that's why consistency is really key, because you're always nurturing relationships and you're putting more in that pipeline. So there's always someone along the path of becoming a yes. And so if you're doing business development every day, you're not going to have to wait six months until you close something. You really aren't because you're active. You're putting yourself out there. And even if you say, you know what? My business development activity is going to be thought leadership via LinkedIn. If you're on LinkedIn for 21 days and you're providing information and thought leadership, and you are letting people know that you're accepting work, someone is going to reach out to you. You just have to have that attitude of openness that they are going to reach out to you or you're going to connect with somebody that you then make a step and say, Hey, I saw that you were doing this because you're in that mode of developing new business and developing new relationships, and so your efforts can put you in front of people that are ready to go. And they were like, “Hey, we were just talking about this. We're looking for a PR agency.” I mean, that's happened to all of us.

Again, that's why you need to have a mix of opportunities and consistency. So think about it. If you're going to people that you've already talked to, maybe it's somebody that you talked to a few months ago and they just weren't ready, but you go back and now they're ready. Maybe it's somebody that you worked with before, then they didn't really need ongoing pr, but now they're like, Hey, perfect timing. We wanted to do a six month project or a four month project or a three month project. That's a piece of business that would not have happened if you didn't think to reach out. So getting started and just doing it over and over and over again, and once you develop the habit of consistency, then you'll be able to carry it forward. And then you won't be in that position where you're like, uh oh.

Michelle Kane (18:40):

Like an unread book for book club.

Karen Swim, APR (18:44):

Have the safety net cushion. Let's just be real. Losing business doesn't feel good. And you're like,

Michelle Kane (18:55):

Right, right. And it's funny, and I tell myself all the time, when that day comes, it's also, it's usually, it's always, well, I'm not going to say always 99% of the time, it's nothing personal, it's just business. Even though I know in our profession we tend to get attached because we're so invested in the success of the client, it does hurt and it's going to hurt. But that's okay. That's okay too. So just roll with that. And I think even if you take one of these tidbits from today, not the don't read the book for book club, but one of these great business development tips are, heck, just read the chapter titles. You'll be fine.

But we do hope that you'll join us on this challenge. It's 21 days, and I love, Karen, that you framed it that you can start on any day, but do it this month. Do it this month so that you're not still saying, I'm going to start in November. Start when it feels right for you. So this is no pressure. We want you to be cool, calm, and consistent in your business development. So check out the blog at soloprpro.com. Check all the other goodness out there too. If you felt this was valuable to you, please share it around to your friends. Share it out on your socials. We would really appreciate that as well. And until next time, thanks for listening to That Solo Life.

Charting the Changes: Reviewing the State of the Media

The media landscape is constantly changing, making it harder on journalists. Naturally this affects how PR pros do our jobs. In this episode we talk all about it, including some points from recent survey results from Cision and MuckRack.

 

Transcript

 

Michelle Kane (00:03):

Thank you for joining us for this episode of That Solo Life, the podcast for PR pros and marketers who work for themselves, people like me, Michelle Kane, with VoiceMatters and my ever steady co-host, Karen Swim of Solo PR Pro. Hi Karen. It's another episode. Here we are.

Karen Swim, APR (00:20):

Hello Michelle. We are here. We are steady eddies. What's the female version of that? Is it steady? I don't know.

Michelle Kane (00:35):

I'm sure we can think of something

Karen Swim, APR (00:37):

For sure.

Michelle Kane (00:39):

We're creative like that.

Karen Swim, APR (00:41):

I'm so happy to be here. The older you get, the more you celebrate every single day that you are waking up and jumping out of bed.

Michelle Kane (00:52):

That's a good motivator. I will say it's true. It is true. I'm going to totally bobble this point because I forget the meme. It was something, oh, I think it was a Marcus Aurelius quote actually. Something about something to look forward to each day - for an ancient dude, he has some timely advice and I thought, yeah, I think I shared it with my thought of, yeah. “Okay. I'll tell myself this on Monday morning.”

Karen Swim, APR (01:19):

We're live, we're here and we're doing something that we love. We love this podcast. We love getting together and chatting. That's true. And just inviting a few of our friends to listen in with us.

Michelle Kane (01:32):

Yes. So we hope you are ready Today we are spurred on by a couple of reports from Cision and MuckRack talking about the state of journalism today, which as we all know, if you're listening, you may have already made a face, but hopefully we're just going to talk about this a little bit and try and bring out some of the brighter points to keep our tools sharpened.

Karen Swim, APR (02:02):

And I think as both of these reports mentioned, the more that we understand the challenges that journalists are facing, the more that we understand how to be problem solvers for them because obviously for communications professionals, journalists are definitely one of our audiences. And so it's important to learn how we can be more collaborative and more helpful. And there are a couple points that really stood out for me that are troubling.

Michelle Kane (02:32):

All right. We'll do the bad news first. Hit me with the first point.

Karen Swim, APR (02:37):

So the bad news is these studies show that there is less trust in CEOs as credible sources.

Michelle Kane (02:50):

Yeah, that one stood out for me as well.

Karen Swim, APR (02:53):

And aligned with that, this makes sense that one of the biggest challenges for that, journalists said, that they've experienced in the last 12 months, and this is from I think the Cision study, is that their challenge is maintaining credibility as a trusted news source. So you have them battling against misinformation, this label of fake news, combating those accusations and maintaining credibility and then not trusting that we are helping with that at all. So concerning,

Michelle Kane (03:37):

And I could totally see why. I mean, there are the nefarious sorts out there who are all too happy to use credible news organizations to spread their misinformation and disinformation. And that's not to say that journalists don't fact check. Of course they do. But yeah, it's a really tenuous spot, which puts us the PR pros in a really difficult situation because,

Karen Swim, APR (04:04):

And I hate to say this because I know that the majority of our audience, there are some that are coming up in the profession and emerging. The majority of our audience knows this, but I think it's always good to remind ourselves too, because in the heat of the moment when we deal with a lot of things that journalists do not realize, there is pressure from clients, there are the demands that they don't see. There are the requests that we push back on. There are things that we educate about, but I think that it is critical today to educate our clients thoroughly about the role that the media actually does play. The media is not part of your marketing team, and unfortunately, if you don't have something that can advance a story forward, that adds value, that presents something that the reporters' readers will be interested in hearing, you're going to have a harder time getting coverage in credible publications. So to be credible, don't see this as an opportunity to push forward the name of your company.

I understand the struggle is real and I have beautiful clients, wonderful clients as we all do, but we all know that sometimes it's really hard for companies to get out of their own way. You ask them a question and they immediately default to company speak and the company line, and it's hard to say, “No one cares. Talk to me about beyond your company. Talk to me about the issues that others in your industry are facing. Talk to me about the challenges your clients are facing. Give us a point of view of that. Give us some instruction, help us the way forward.” It is hard, but we've got to do the hard work because, and especially in the season, we are now in an election season and we all know the battle for what is that

Michelle Kane (06:25):

Bandwidth.

Karen Swim, APR (06:28):

The battle for the bandwidth of reporters is going to shrink, but also in the season more than ever, we've got to be part of the fight disinformation solution. So we've got to help news organizations to truly be valued again and to be seen as credible. And we can be a part of that by offering up valuable, credible information. It's rough out there,

Michelle Kane (07:00):

But one of the tools or the brighter notions of these surveys, this is from MuckRack, is one way that our clients can help that cause. And rather than just casually think, oh, the media is just here to be my mouthpiece, they said journalists as a whole plan to spend more time on YouTube, LinkedIn, and even TikTok. So as we've often said, every company has the potential to be their own media company by putting out your own information on your own owned channels, while journalists are planning on spending more time there probably to learn more about you, maybe to vet you. So keep that in mind as a means of presenting, supporting evidence or more deeper information as they consider whether to cover your story.

Karen Swim, APR (07:59):

Yeah, I mean the MuckRack survey, I love this because I feel like journalists, they can sometimes not be fair to us in the way that they view us, but they also get us, I consider them part of our people. And this was really cool. When asked about their optimism about their profession, 58% said that yes, they were optimistic about the journalism profession. That's more than half, so that's good. 42% were not, but that's okay. Things will improve and understand that they're impacted by the same things that are impacting everyone else. They're seeing shrinking ad revenues, which means shrinking resources for them, more pressure with less resources, less job certainty. Many are switching jobs, many are trying to find other ways that they can make a living at doing the thing that they love doing. So it's rough out there.

Michelle Kane (09:05):

It really is. It really is. The more that the digital and print advertising landscape changes, the harder it is for all of us as a result. Really, even those of us in the communications field, those of us who do that kind of work with media buying, you're like, okay, I might be making this decision away from a print piece, but that means I am creating my own trouble.

Karen Swim, APR (09:29):

And I know, just to give you guys some positive ways that you can sort of combat this, clients are going to be clients. Make sure that you are setting a tone consistently, because unfortunately you say things in the beginning and it flies out of people's heads. So you have to consistently set a tone that public relations is not confined to media relations. And so we also have to look for more robust ways to tell stories to connect with our audiences. We have to be innovators and not just rule followers. We should be creating new paths forward when it makes sense to work with the media, help them by having publishable content that is a game changer. When you have good meaty publishable content, don't limit the things that you pitch to just your client's point of view. Reach into their client base, reach out to adjacent experts and enrich a story with credible sources.

If you have a healthcare client and you're talking about an issue, grab a medical expert and get a publishable quote from that expert to really provide more meat to that journalist and to help them not to have to hunt down other sources. Again, it's all about credibility and quality information that's going to speak volumes. Do provide them with rich sources from your own experts. So rather than just provide a quote, I interview all of our internal experts, and I have always, for years, used Otter AI to record and transcribe those calls, provide a transcript of the questions that you ask the experts so that because the journalists may find other nuggets within there, don't be afraid to give them, feed them a lot of things that can really help them to do their jobs. And again, in this season, it's about being creative. Maybe you add in an audiogram in addition to the things that you're sending. We love audiograms as podcast.

Michelle Kane (11:49):

We do. It all comes down to what are you trying to do as what are your clients trying to do? Right? They're trying to present themselves as the solution to their target audience's problems. So rather than just blasting, here's our new thing, okay, well why does that matter? What pain points is that going to resolve? And this is true for PR and marketing. How are you going to enrich or better someone's existence, whether that's making their business more money, making their lives easier, solving a major issue in society, how are you contributing? And like Karen, like you just said, adding all those different layers, plus that helps the journalist. I mean, having something that well-formed in story form. If I'm a journalist and I'm just presented with a few pitch points, okay, now you do it, or something that's crafted and really nearly ready to go in today's landscape, which are you going to be more inclined to go for?

Karen Swim, APR (12:53):

I completely agree. And don't be afraid to help on things that have nothing to do with you.

You can help a journalist out and say, Hey, I saw that you were working on a story. I know somebody that can be of help. And it doesn't have to be a client. Jump in to help on things. Check in with the journalists that you work with often and ask what are they working on? Can you be of help? Can you be of assistance? And most importantly, let's all just always be respectful that we're all under the same pressures. Life is weird for every single one of us. Journalists are human beings who are also going through the same challenges as the rest of the world. So be kind and make the most of their time. Their inboxes are overflowing too. As someone who gets pitched a lot, I have a heightened sensitivity how annoying it is to just have your inbox clogged up by things because people had an agenda that had nothing to do with you. It's annoying and having it hit you in your email, in your social media inboxes and having to go to all these places and read through a bunch of garbage can really make you not a nice person. It's funny because Kami and Misa did a newsletter this week and she talked about showing up in people's DMs and how she, who someone did that to her on LinkedIn, and she is the sweetest, but I was laughing. I completely get it. You want to just go off on people and say, “Did you even bother to read past sentence one?”

Michelle Kane (14:43):

You're just

Karen Swim, APR (14:44):

Throwing up here like, Hey, let me sell you this. I don't want that.

Michelle Kane (14:48):

No. And the worst is when you go on trust. I think this happened moreso on Twitter back in the day. Alright, right, I'll follow you. And you'd immediately get the DM, go buy my thing. I'm like, alright, goodbye - block.

Karen Swim, APR (15:03):

Yeah, it's so again, be respectful, be kind, be judicious. And we really do have to be more thoughtful, more intentional in crafting those strategies for clients and make sure that they understand that PR does not solve every problem in the world. Make sure that you're attacking and setting expectations appropriately about what you can do and what you can't do.

Michelle Kane (15:37):

Yeah. Very true. And I have to give a little demographic shout out to Generation X actually got mentioned in the MuckRack executive summary that journalists are looking are targeting both millennials and Gen X. They're their most commonly reported target audiences. I know it's sad, but it's just nice to be remembered. Everyone seems to between you at the Silent Generation and Gen X. It's like, “Hi, we're right here.”

Karen Swim, APR (16:09):

Yeah. I don't even know what to say. It is nice to be remembered because people really seem to forget that we exist. And the really sad part is people have misconceptions and they target generations, which I think can maybe be a mistake because characteristics that are not confined to generations,

Michelle Kane (16:35):

I'll never forget it was a conference or something and one of the keynote prisoners was, I guess the Millennial Mom was the target persona of the season and all the things they were ticking off that she wants. And I just said to my friend, I said, well, Gen X wants that too. We just don't talk about it all the time. We're over here in the corner with our Billy Idol scowl just getting it done.

Karen Swim, APR (17:02):

That's something that maybe communication professionals can help open the eyes and eliminate the way that sometimes you're targeting people that are tech savvy. That's not limited to an age group.

Michelle Kane (17:16):

Goodness no. No, it's not.

Karen Swim, APR (17:19):

There are people that share those characteristics and I don't know, we seasoned solos maybe can show them what's up because we're out here showing out and living our very best professional lives and the kids cannot keep up.

Michelle Kane (17:39):

Right. Well, you know what? Right there, I mean, there's a hook. Why are personas always attached to age and station in life?

Karen Swim, APR (17:50):

We need to change that. Life is changing.

Michelle Kane (17:53):

Yeah, exactly. Just because I tick a certain bunch of numbers on your form doesn't mean that my experience matches everyone within that space.

Karen Swim, APR (18:07):

Love it, love it. Love that thought. Love it.

Michelle Kane (18:11):

I need a nap now. That was a lot.

Well, we hope that this has been a valuable time for you. It's always good to check in just to see what the landscape is out there with our friends on the journalism side, and always to be considerate of how we do our jobs in the way that we help our clients, but also that we help this ecosystem of journalism that we of course depend on to help us all thrive.

So if you did find this valuable, we would love for you to share this around. Please share our podcast. We would just really appreciate it. We would make sure that somehow chocolate magically appears in your lives and all good things. And hit us up at solopro.com. Sign up for the newsletter there. Check us out, leave questions, comments, and until next time, thank you for listening to That Solo Life.

 

The Great PR Migration

If you’re thinking of diversifying your PR practice or pivoting away from day-to-day client work, this episode is for you.

 

Transcript

Michelle Kane (00:17):

Thank you for joining us for this episode of That Solo Life, the podcast for PR pros and marketers who work for themselves, people like me, Michelle Kane, with VoiceMatters, and my wonderful co-host, Karen Swim of Solo PR Pro. Hello, Karen. How are you doing this week?

Karen Swim (00:34):

I'm doing great, Michelle. How are you doing?

Michelle Kane (00:37):

I'm doing pretty well. Yes, yes. As this episode airs, we're hitting that mid-August stride, which means change for so many. For some of us it means “Leave me alone. I am still having summer.” But for others it means going back to college, getting ready to go back to school, or just getting ready to go enter another rhythm of life. But that sort of speaks to what we're going to talk about today, where our topic is the PR migration, and just things that we're seeing amongst our colleagues and in PR in general. You know, many people are pivoting away from PR or just starting to dabble in other fields, like education or maybe even something completely different. So we thought, hey, let's talk about this and see what we might be able to encourage our listeners.

Karen Swim (01:31):

Yeah. Isn't it interesting, I'm seeing, I get a lot of the emails now from PR people that are selling services to PR people rather than doing PR. So I'm not sure what's behind the number of PR people that are still in the prime of their working years, still have lots of road ahead of them that are like, let me pivot over to something else. If it's just a genuine shift that we're seeing, because maybe it's been driven by the climate that we're in.

Michelle Kane (02:03):

It could be. And you know, it could be just a certain number of people are just feeling that need to shift. I know sometimes even within a job, right? Every few years or so, you just need a little something new, a little different challenge to keep life interesting for yourself. And I wonder how many of our listeners are having those moments of kind of putting their head up and going, huh, what else could I be doing?

Karen Swim (02:34):

That's such a great point. You're right that in a traditional job, you don't typically do the exact same job for year after year after year after year, your responsibilities shift, you get a different role, you change companies, something changes to keep you on your toes and refreshed. And so it could be that, although I have to say that given some of the challenges that we face today, I can certainly understand those people that are leading the profession because it's just become really difficult to succeed. You know, <laugh> great example, Forbes now has a policy, it does not, you know, there's different brands of Forbes, but Forbes has this policy now that if they put out a query, they do not want anyone except for the expert to respond. They will not take pitches from PR people, and they call out PR people specifically.

So they say, “PR people: do not pitch us, but ask your source to contact us directly per Forbes policy.” So that's an interesting shift, and yeah, one I hope doesn't spread to other outlets. I also almost think “Sure, good luck with that,” because journalists take for granted the amount of value that we truly do bring to that relationship. And some of what we control and avoid to make sure that they get the very best piece of information possible and that they, that communications are streamlined. I think that they are seeing us maybe as an annoyance, but

Michelle Kane (04:20):

Oh, ok Forbes.

Karen Swim (04:22):

…we know the back story on a lot of these things. So <laugh> Yeah. I mean, I could particularly see people poking their head up and going, okay, what else is out there? So I'm seeing people do things like sell everything from business development for PR people. So there are PR salespeople who want to sell you on how to sell clients on your behalf or things like tools that we use, from databases to pitch tools to all kinds of things that we utilize. Yeah, I'm seeing a lot more of that.

Michelle Kane (05:00):

Yeah. And can we just do a shout out to some of those companies solo PR pros are not really into buying at the enterprise level? We are solo shops. Yes, we would love to be your customer, but there's usually maybe 1, 2, 3, maybe five of us. So just think if you get 10 solos to buy your product at a decent price point, oh, there's your enterprise. Anyway. Ok, rant off <laugh>.

Karen Swim (05:28):

I agree. We could do an entire episode on the PR industry and the tools market. And, at the PR industry in general, it's very unfortunate that in so many instances, everything is directed to large agencies or in-house PR people. We just get overlooked quite a bit and that's very sad because we do the same job. And we deliver value just like everyone else. And a lot of times referring those very big companies, which gives us the power to make referrals and to make recommendations. So Yeah. That's too bad.

Michelle Kane (06:11):

Yeah. And I think maybe a lot of these pivots, like you said, has a lot to do with the way that pure PR has changed for many years now. It's grown to be an integrated process. So, if you're a PR pro who just really isn't interested in learning about digital marketing or any of the integrated pieces, then yeah. It definitely would be a season to say, “Hmm, you know, what, where can I transfer these skills? How can I do that? Is it time to do some teaching?” Is it time to, I don't know. I mean, we know a couple of our, our colleagues…

Karen Swim (06:53):

Yeah, we have people that are writing books, that are doing courses that are becoming coaches for PR people. Becoming consultants in some other way or, you know, going over to the media side and becoming journalists in an area of specialty. We even have a couple of solo pros that are running for office, which is really cool. So I mean, I think the great thing about communications is that it's such a fantastic skillset that really allows you to leverage that in any other position that you would choose to create for yourself, or if you're choosing to go and work a traditional job, there's so many skill sets, you know, our crisis management skills, our strategic skills, our storytelling ability. I mean, there are just so many things that we do that are so important across the board. And so I feel like in terms of our careers, we have a lot of options that are open to us.

Michelle Kane (07:55):

Yeah. I even think, and of course this partly falls under the PR umbrella, but I was thinking this morning of a situation I'm dealing with of even in the nonprofit world of dealing with sponsors, you know, how certain things that you might say yes to, how that can color your perception to others and just ways to make your systems better, your thought processes better. These are all of the bases that we cover in PR, whether it's an outright deliverable to our clients. But I mean, come on. It's who we are. We're always doing it anyway. <Laugh>,

Karen Swim (08:39):

Yes, we are.

Michelle Kane (08:40):

Troubleshooting

Karen Swim (08:41):

I'm trying to think of some of the more interesting pivots that I've seen outside of, you know, becoming a politician is definitely, but I guess, you know, really that feels adjacent in some ways as well.

Michelle Kane (08:54):

Yeah, yeah.

Karen Swim (08:55):

What would you do, Michelle?

Michelle Kane (08:57):

Oh my gosh, <laugh>. Oh my goodness. What, what do I want to be when I grow up? <Laugh>, I, I joke that I want to be a lady who lunches someday, who just does this stuff for fun. But that's a whole different, Michelle <laugh>, you know…

Karen Swim (09:15):

I think there are a lot of pros on any given day who would join you in that.

Michelle Kane (09:20):

<Laugh>. Yeah. That might be. But being realistic, you know, I don't know, maybe something in education, there's something in me that always pulls towards that world. Even counseling to a certain degree. These are all career choices that I dallied with. I knew for myself that I didn't quite have the temperament to do the whole full day in a classroom situation, you know, of that kind of teaching. Similarly, when I was younger, I shifted from being a psych major to duh, you're good at writing <laugh>. Partly because I knew I didn't have it in me at that time to be any kind of counselor <laugh>.

Karen Swim (10:03):

I love that. And so many solo PR pros do teach. We have a lot of educators, some that have moved towards doing that more than PR for clients, which, you know, I just think that there's such a value to the education industry, but yeah, we have a lot of educators. I think that that's natural. I think that most PR pros really have that ability to teach.

Michelle Kane (10:32):

Oh, yeah.

Karen Swim (10:33):

Because we do quite a bit of education in our work, and so I think that that feels like a natural fit for so many people.

Michelle Kane (10:39):

Yeah, that's so true. Well, how about you?

Karen Swim (10:41):

Outside of being something in the dog industry, I would love to do that, you know? You know, I have plans to open some kind of a cafe where owners can’t just dine with their dogs, but where it's like a combo doggy day camp / cafe where people can relax and meet friends, but their dogs can have a concierge and be taken care of.

Michelle Kane (11:07):

I love that.

Karen Swim (11:12):

I'm working on courses and stuff too. I’d love to do more content creation and again, teaching sharing, right?

Michelle Kane (11:21):

Yeah. Right.

Karen Swim (11:21):

Helping others with their careers.

Michelle Kane (11:24):

Yeah, so true. So true. Sidebar about the dog combo thing. I once told my groomer, I said, “You know what, you need to open up a day spa <laugh>, so that when my dog's getting groomed, I get like a little mini facial.”

Karen Swim (11:37):

I love that we would all have a day at the spa <laugh>, not just this guy.

Karen Swim (11:42):

There's a lot written about the dog economy as they're calling it

Michelle Kane (11:46):

Dog economy.

Karen Swim (11:48):

We're spending a lot on our fur babies, and more and more people are, you know, embracing it. Thank you, everyone who's doing that. Dogs are really, truly a part of our family. So yeah, there's big opportunities in that market.

Michelle Kane (12:03):

Absolutely. Yeah, there's, I think that's the beautiful thing about what we do, because we don't come to our desks every day and move widgets from one page to the next. Our jobs are really creative. So that lends itself to transferring that whole mindset to everything you do, you know? Yes, it really does. So, the beautiful thing about doing this line of work is you may discover some hidden talents along the way that you never realized it. Let's say you're pitching a certain story about a certain company or their new initiative, or maybe it's a nonprofit. Just think how big your world gets. So if you're not thinking about a pivot now, start thinking in that way of, okay, you know, these people that I meet, it's not just, “All right, I'll do this thing, and then next…” Follow up with that person and learn more about what they do just because it interested you.

Karen Swim (13:07):

Yeah. And we certainly have it. We've even had people as guests on our shows - Major come to mind. She has a popcorn company. She still does PR, but she has a very successful popcorn company. By the way, she's got a new flavor out, so go check her out. So the sky is really the limit. If you have something else that you're interested in, by all means you can pursue it in addition to doing PR. And some of us pursue, you know, we have our own side gigs, because for me, I think of my side gig is something that I want to pivot to in retirement. And move away from the day-to-day client work and move over into doing something a little bit different. So yeah, there's lots of interesting examples out there, and I think that we should all be thinking about that. And with this economy, it's been a wake-up call for, I think for a lot of people that it's very helpful to have multiple revenue streams, and that's always been the case, but there are ways to achieve that. You can achieve that through investing, of course, but it doesn't hurt to have like a Plan B for yourself.

Michelle Kane (14:22):

No, that's so true. It's interesting, just this last week, I have made myself be more conscious about doing more voiceover auditions just because, you know, it's to the point where the mechanisms are in place that it's not so arduous. Before I would have to print out the script and hook up my Yeti, and now it's like, oh, let me plug in my headphone here and bing bang, boom. And just say to myself, well, doh Michelle, you can do that in the first 15 minutes of your day. Now, did I do it today? No, <laugh>.

Karen Swim (14:57):

I love that though, because that's okay. You're so perfect for that.

Michelle Kane (15:00):

Aw, thanks.

Karen Swim (15:02):

And you're right, there are so many different avenues and channels right now that are looking for that, so yeah.

Michelle Kane (15:10):

Yeah.

Karen Swim (15:10):

That's so perfect. I love it. I love it. I'm so here for it.

Michelle Kane (15:15):

Oh, we'll see, we'll see. But I see too, I've seen some people, they're not PR pros per se, but they're in the comms business, just either niching down on what they do.

Karen Swim (15:26):

Yes.

Michelle Kane (15:27):

As opposed to being something for everyone, you know, they're deciding really, snd I think too, it's probably a combination of post pandemic, the economy, everything, just really determining this is what we do really well. We want to focus on this. And with that comes opportunity for collaboration to fill those gaps that it's, it's not to say, well, we only do this.

Karen Swim (15:50):

Definitely. Well, Katie Boos, great example of that.

Michelle Kane (15:53):

Yes!

Karen Swim (15:55):

She really found that she loved the thought leadership. And so she specializes in that. That's what she does. She doesn't do any of the other things anymore. She specializes in that. Helen Ne is someone that I met through lunch club. She's a PR pro, not in the us but in the UK. Yeah. She also made a pivot into thought leadership in a different way where she started out hosting these veil interviews with CEOs and enterprise leaders, and now she's turned that into a whole thing. So she has a studio, and that's all she does.

Michelle Kane (16:26):

That's fantastic.

Karen Swim (16:28):

So, yeah. We should have Helen on the program one day too, to talk about it. Yeah, that would be great. She's a solo like our audience. So yeah, there's so many creative things that we can do, we have so many talents that we can use them in so many different ways.

Michelle Kane (16:49):

Yeah, we do. We do. And I think it could be an, an instance of, okay, we've all been through a lot in these last several years, and it kind of feels like the vibe is, okay, let's stop and take a beat and take a breath and see, okay, where am I? And just check in with ourselves. And I think that's good to do periodically no matter what's happening. But I realize we're all coming out of some serious survival mode. But we just wanted to get you all thinking today. So if, hopefully this has inspired you, we say that every week because we always try to inspire you, but we really do want to hear from you. What would you want to do? If you could do anything in your next career pivot? Hit us up at soloprpro.com, share this around, talk about it with your friends. Until next time, thanks for listening to That Solo Life.

 

Talking About My Generation

From Gen Z to Millennials, Generation X to the Silent Generation, all the way to Boomers – has there ever been a time when members of so many generations shared space in the workforce? In this episode we talk about how the generations and work together and learn from each other.

 

Transcript

Talking About My Generation
That Solo Life Episode 211

Michelle Kane (00:17):

Thank you for joining us for this episode of That Solo Life, the podcast for PR pros and marketers who work for themselves like me, Michelle Kane, with VoiceMatters, and my wonderful co-host, Karen Swim of Solo PR Pro. How are you?

Karen Swim, APR (00:32):

Hey, Michelle. I'm really, really great. One day we are going to have to put together a video of our bloopers, which includes one this morning <laugh>, and put it on YouTube so that people can have a good laugh with us.

Michelle Kane (00:45):

That's right. That's right. Because, you know, as super polished, as we always sound here, <laugh>, it's not always the reality. And you know what? That's okay. Life is messy, and we're going to talk about that a little bit today. We're focusing on the generational divide and how sometimes, especially if you are in an office or if you work on a team with everyone ranging from Gen Z all the way up to Boomers, you know, sometimes work styles differ, tech appreciation differs. And  not to be ageist, because I think sometimes that flows both ways. I've encountered supremely tech savvy Boomers, and I've also encountered not so native Gen Zers, because we all have adapted and used that kind of thing. Things from the tech world in our own way and just, just really work styles. Our experiences inform what we bring to anything and sometimes in the workplace that is intensified. So, we’re going to dig in a little bit on this today.

Karen Swim, APR (01:46):

Yeah. You know, the reason that this topic is so important is because we do, we have like all of these generations in the workforce. And that's crazy, right? I don't remember when I was the age of our Gen Zers, and at the start of my career, I honestly don't remember this many generations being employed at the same time. So times have really changed. And I know that as someone who is nearing the end of my career, it's sometimes difficult to adapt your style. It does take work. It takes being open and flexible, and there are things that we know, knowledge that we have, experiences that we have that can sometimes be frustrating when it seems like we're not being heard or we're not being valued. And I imagine that honestly is true of every generation. So, we all share that. We all want to be heard, we all want to be valued in our work, but as solo PR pros, you know, we're dealing with clients. And so we're in a bit of a different position in that we're not directly managing all of these generations, but we are corralling all of these generations, and we have to communicate internally across the divide. And so, it's well worth it to understand kind of what motivates them.

Michelle Kane (03:16):

Very, very true. And I don't know, I try to look at it this way, right? Just with communicating in general, in a professional setting, I like to vibe off of, well, how are they communicating with me? Are they leading with email or do they prefer hopping on a Zoom, or are they phone call oriented, or are they text oriented? <Laugh>, which I will reserve for a precious view, <laugh>, because I know for me, having to bop around different screens makes me crazy in the head. But that's also why I have a texting app in my browser. So I guess that also speaks to how we make our own accommodations within that realm too, to work in the best way we can while bridging and meeting them where they are.

Karen Swim, APR (04:13):

And I think it's really important, obviously we want to always be client friendly, but in terms of being really inclusive when it comes to generational preferences, I think it's also important to talk about these things as part of your onboarding process and really solidify what channels you're going to communicate through. Because to your point, I end up with people that use Microsoft, Microsoft Teams, people that use Slack, and so you can have things coming in and scattered directions. And so it's important for us to say what really works for us, and to talk with clients and negotiate that right up front and explain why. Because we want to have the communication streamlined. We don't want to have to look a lot of different places. And maybe those conversations should include like, what's the best way for quick questions and messages?

And then for everything else that you need to have - history attachments, that type of thing - usually email does function better for that. So have that conversation. Don't make assumptions because a person is a certain age that they're going to have a certain preference, because while there are these big buckets for things, that's not always true. You know, I don't really line up with the generation that I was born in, in many, many things. <Laugh>, I line up with the generation that comes after me more. And I know that that's true of many people.

Michelle Kane (05:48):

Yeah, that's very true. And you know, a lot of times too, it's, I think especially as communications professionals, sometimes we bat around so many ideas in a session that we might forget. I always love to follow up somehow in writing, whether that's a Slack message or an email just to say, “Hey, here's what we talked about, blah, blah, blah, blah.” But like you say, that comes with the onboarding process and of just agreeing how we're going to work together. You know? And I don't know, I, I don't like to say that I'm blind to the generations because they definitely bring different things to the table. But I like to always adopt a person-first attitude over, oh, you're young, you'll do, you know, I'm not the person like, you young people, go set the timer on the thing. I don't understand it. <Laugh>, I try not to be “get off my lawn,” although I have had moments in the past. But to their credit, in those instances they were put in an environment that they just were unprepared for. They were unprepared for how working in an office worked and that really wasn't their fault. That's not the background they came from. And so that's a real thing that many of us may encounter along the way.

Karen Swim, APR (07:08):

I think, you know, one of the things that I find the most challenging about working with so many generations is that everyone has these perceptions about the other generation. And sometimes everybody can be negative about everybody. So yeah, you have a younger generation and I want to speak to Gen Zers, just because a person is of a certain age, please don't discount them and please don't devalue what they have to offer. Being older with more experience doesn't mean that you don't understand things and how they work now. So sometimes I feel like you're shoved to the side because of your age. We know that ageism is a very real thing. I know people that are older who have been laid off and very much are still in the prime of their working years that are not being given jobs because they are too experienced.

And we all know that that's code for being of a certain age or just flat out, you know, you interview with somebody that is 30 years younger than you and they look at you differently. So I would encourage younger workers to open up their minds and to have a more positive attitude and accept that just because someone is not your age doesn't mean that they're not with it, that they don't understand the trends, that they can't do their job, that they're going to be stuck in the mud or inflexible, that older workers have something to offer too. And by the way, older people really want to contribute to the workforce. And for many of us, again, that time in our life, because we've lived longer than you have, we've hit that point. These are our prime working years.

Michelle Kane (08:57):

And we <crosstalk>

Karen Swim, APR (08:59):

You on the other end of the spectrum. Sorry.

Michelle Kane (09:01):

No, no.

Karen Swim, APR (09:02):

On the other side of the spectrum we can sometimes have an attitude of either feeling like you have to guide the younger workers and you can discount what they don't have in your experience and not take seriously their approach or their ideas. And so I think for all of us, I would say let's start from a place of respect, mutual respect, and treat everybody as a colleague and as a professional. Hear one another out, listen, even when it may be different than the way we do something, because that's going to make work better for all of us.

Michelle Kane (09:39):

Yeah. I couldn't agree more. And leave your perceptions at the door, you know, to your point on the older quote unquote older workers. We've seen the things, you know, we've seen a lot of rodeos and sometimes, you know, we could say, okay, this is probably going to go this way. It's not presuming that, oh, you just don’t know. And I think too, I think all of us along with our perceptions have to sometimes check our attitudes. And it, it could be something that we say without realizing it, or it just comes out of our mouths. We go, oh, didn't mean to say it that way, <laugh>, but you know, at the end of the day, we're all human and stuff happens. But, I agree, it is wild to think that there are at least, goodness, what - five different generations all in the workforce at one time.

Karen Swim, APR (10:30):

Yeah.

Michelle Kane (10:31):

That is wild. It is just wild to think about. And it's kind of exciting, like, rather than look at it as, “Oh no, we're not going to get along.” It's kind of cool. Right? I mean, can you imagine really at what time do we have the opportunity to bring not only a breadth of experience, but also fresh minds and ingenuity all together? How cool is that?

Karen Swim, APR (10:58):

And I think we can look and say the things that we built, it's really exciting to see it through someone else's eyes. To do it in a new way and to see how we can keep improving and keep moving the profession forward. It can be difficult for us when we do have those clients that have the wrong attitude and view older workers as not up to the task because of our age, but then vice versa. You know, I know that younger people probably feel the same, that they are also unfairly judged sometimes by their youth. And so I think we have to work together as generations to make sure that we are not being discriminatory towards anyone because of age. That we truly are all working towards inclusivity and judging each individual their merits.

Michelle Kane (11:55):

Yeah. And so how, what are some ways that we can do this as solos? Of course, the easy one is get an intern. The Philly PR Association that I belong to, we're working really hard on this. We have a board level position that is focused on college relations. And it's not just, “Hey, kids come to our event.” It's really looking at ways to interact with these young professionals just entering the profession and creating that relationship. Because we know we all benefit from it. So however that works for you in your solo world, try and seek that out. Sometimes as a solo shop who probably works out of a home office, you may be reluctant to bring an intern on thinking, well, goodness, it's not like they're going to come and sit in my kitchen every day. But there are ways <laugh> to engage with an intern where that doesn't have to be the case. You don't have to give them a little cubicle next to the copier that doesn't exist because you're not in a traditional office.

Karen Swim, APR (13:01):

In addition to hiring an intern or bringing on somebody that's a different generation or mentoring. I think also when you're in a situation where there is someone of a different generation, make time to get to know that person and what they care about. And I say that's true of everybody. For me, that's part of my client relations is that I definitely want to understand what's important to the company, what the goals are, what they need. But on an individual level, with every contact at the clients, I really want to understand what's motivating them, what's important to them, what are the things that you're trying to accomplish in your job, because that allows you to really establish that one-to-one connection. And so I think that that is really important. Detroit PRSA is doing an event where they're combining baseball with mentoring the younger professionals that I thought that that was a very cool thing.

So maybe you want to get involved in PRSSA too, the student chapters of the PRSA, they are sitting right alongside professionals and learning things. And it's really very valuable for students that are still in college who want to go into the communications field. So yeah, I encourage older workers to, to, you seek out mentoring opportunities. I encourage younger generations to seek those out as well and to be willing to be mentored. But I encourage us all to just be kind, respectful and understand that everyone has something to contribute.

Michelle Kane (14:48):

I agree. You know what, be a good person is basically <laugh> our message today.

Karen Swim, APR (14:55):

I know Solos do that day in and day out. I think that we want to just continue to motivate you to keep doing what you're doing and spread it because while we in the communications field know and practice this, the world around us doesn't always, and so <laugh>

Michelle Kane (15:14):

Yeah. Not so much <laugh>.

Karen Swim, APR (15:17):

Let some other people in because unfortunately everybody hasn't gotten that memo.

Michelle Kane (15:25):

Yeah, yeah. So, as we do in many ways blazing the trail lead by example and you know, if enough of us start doing that or continue to do it, there will have to be some kind of ripple effect. I firmly believe that. And I also believe that you are wonderful if you're choosing to spend some time with us today and listen to us, please do share it around. That is probably the nicest thing you could do for us, is to share our content and tell a friend and check us out at soloprpro.com. And until next time, thank you for listening to That Solo Life.

 

PR Skills for Any Season

No matter where you are in your career, we hope you are always seeking to learn something new, whether it’s sharpening your existing skillset, meeting with other professionals, or taking on an entirely new challenge. Join us for this episode when we talk about honing your PR skills in any season of your professional life.

 

Transcript

Michelle Kane (00:01):

Thank you for joining us for another episode of That Solo Life, the podcast for PR pros and marketers who work for themselves like me, Michelle Kane, with VoiceMatters, and my wonderful co-host Karen Swim with Solo PR Pro. Hi, Karen. How's it going?

Karen Swim, APR (00:17):

Hi, Michelle. It's going really well. How good doing this week?

Michelle Kane (00:21):

Hey, can't complain. Can't complain. Things are moving along, so it's good. Even during the sleepy months of summer, things are popping, so I can't complain. <Laugh>,

Karen Swim, APR (00:33):

Definitely this summer has been anything but sleepy, let me tell you. <Laugh>.

Michelle Kane (00:38):

For sure. For sure. And you know, what we want to talk about today is something that sometimes you rely on those sleepy moments to catch up on, which is professional development. How as busy solos do we make the time to keep our tools sharpened? So I'm just going to touch on some points of things that we've been talking about as far as in what areas should you be seeking to learn more? Just learn more about, it may not be something that you practice on your own, but to just have knowledge of it so we can best serve our clients.

Karen Swim, APR (01:16):

Yeah. I always like to think of professional development in two buckets. One as personal satisfaction, you know, to sharpen skills that I really enjoy or that I just really have a desire to get better at. And then two, to either acquire or improve skillset where it's going to matter most to the clients that I serve. And so I think that's really important because the way that you can protect your ability to develop business and to develop higher value business is by understanding what are clients searching for? What do they need? Are there any gaps? And what types of skills are they looking for? Easy way to do that is to read job descriptions and see what people are putting out there, see what people are talking about, and that'll give you a clue as to what really is in demand.

Michelle Kane (02:09):

Yeah, that's so true. So true. And one of the things we've been thinking about as public relations becomes a more integrated practice, you know, you'll hear it the phrase “integrated marketing and PR.” I mean, that's how I present myself, that's how I came up actually. But even if you don't practice the marketing end - knowing about it, the basics, what's new out there right now, you know, what isn't so new, everything comes around again, or as I always preach to my clients, look, we went from fax blasts to email <laugh>. It's like, it's nothing necessarily new, but you should be familiar with some of the tools and just the basic principles, and there are plenty of resources out there. You don't have to kill yourself to get there.

Karen Swim, APR (03:07):

For sure. I absolutely agree. I was speaking with a PR pro last week that had a good reminder because this professional had said, with all of the social media channels that have popped up since, you know, Twitter has been going through whatever it's been going through <laugh>, there has been a fatigue among all of us, and you just are sick of it. Like you're over it. We join all these things because we're communications professionals, but they had joined Threads immediately and started to play around with it, tested and understand it, and shortly thereafter, a client had sought their counsel on Threads and they were like, I'm so glad that I had actually been there, had gotten the lay of the land and could actually give wise council. So it's things like that, it's being ahead of your clients, right?

And, you know, looking ahead to what you believe, because we're smart people. We have the ability to envision what's going to come and what trends we expect to see. Let that be a factor in what skills you decide to develop. You may decide that there are some skill sets that are worthy of taking certification courses. So maybe it's, you know, a series of workshops over the rest of the summer to get certified in something. Maybe it's something that you want to go and take a class at a, you know, local college, or maybe it's a conference that you want to go to that is going to help you to develop those skill sets, but, you know, be strategic about what you're developing, because I know that many of us love to learn things, and that's great, but we all also had a finite amount of time. So you want to be wise in developing things that are really going to enrich your personal satisfaction in your career, but also increase your value to your clients.

Michelle Kane (05:09):

Yeah, that is so true. And also because I know we've all had this happen at least one time across the span of our careers, when that new shiny thing comes out, and there's the client that's gung-ho and just wants, oh, I saw all about this. I want to be in on the shiny thing now. And

Karen Swim, APR (05:25):

Yeah.

Michelle Kane (05:26):

You know, not that it's the end of the world if you're caught off guard, but it's nice to be able to say, well, <laugh>,

Karen Swim, APR (05:32):

Absolutely. That's the best feeling in the world. Yeah. And I celebrate that particular professional because I love when that happens. But that's who we are as solo PR pros. And, let's not forget, one of the bits of our job is to be able to acquire new skill sets and move into new directions quickly. In other words, we're very agile. And when you're in a traditional type setting, you really don't have the ability to do that. You can't just go off and learn whatever you want and decide to incorporate new things into what you do because you don't have the time. And then it's not like you can go change departments on your own. You can't do that. You have to go through channels. And so I love that about us, is that we can quickly respond to market changes. We see something coming and we can hop on it and learn it. Of course, you know, we can't take about, talk about professional development today without addressing AI.

Michelle Kane (06:32):

Right. Speaking of things to keep track of. And, the essence of that is knowing how to use it, right? Finding out what prompts can serve you well, not just to help you work smarter. Because, and, and I know we've talked about this plenty of times before where it's, at first it felt like cheating, but when you realize that the quality of the output still needs you, it's a huge, huge help. So how can that help you think of new ideas help refine your proposal, help refine your, your strategies, your plants, just so you're not starting from scratch every time?

Karen Swim, APR (07:15):

Yeah. You can use AI to do any number of things, but here's where your value really begins to increase, as well as you learn to use AI for not just the simple, not just for ideation, not just for coming up with maybe some brainstorming headlines or brainstorming content. You start to understand how it works.  And then you begin to understand how to counsel your clients in incorporating AI. Then you're ahead of the game when clients are like, well, can't we just have AI write our blog posts? And then you can counsel them on the strategic way to incorporate AI and how yes, you can have AI be like a little writer's assistant in developing content. So how much of human time and how they can streamline? So put yourself in the position of really learning this tool, understanding what it can and cannot do, understanding the limitations, understanding how to counsel clients through the databases that AI is pulling from the things that they need to check for how they can you, you know, refine AI to really deliver content in their brand voice and aligned with their brand messaging.

So the better you get at it, now you're a strategic counselor in that area too, and you don't have clients coming to you saying, well, can't we just use AI to do PR? Or can't we just use AI to do this? And it's like, yes, you can absolutely use AI as a tool in all of these situations. Here's the best way to do that. And then got them through that, and then bring them into the world. If you were using AI in smart and strategic ways, they're share that with clients. Like, here's what we did. I think that transparency is really important.

Michelle Kane (09:08):

Yeah, absolutely. And you know, I totally appreciate a lot of the reticence against it, but it's here. So you definitely want to be the PR pro who knows about it and knows how to use it, even just a little bit, get your feet wet.

Karen Swim, APR (09:27):

Here is the true reality. We do talk, we have this concern about AI taking away jobs or clients prematurely believing that AI technology can replace a human being. This is not new in the history of mankind. Humanity has evolved. Humanity has developed so many things technologically. So with every new tool there came a new way to do things. Some jobs have gone away. We no longer have certain jobs. We no longer call 411 for information to get someone's phone number. We hit Google when we're looking for a number. We don't even use a phone book. So operators don't exist anymore. And if you watch old movies, you know that there used to be operators that actually had to connect actual calls. They sticking those things into the plugs and connecting one call.

We don't need that anymore. There's something that no longer exists, but with jobs going away, new jobs enter the marketplace. And so it's clear that it's up to us as PR pros to upskill ourselves. Companies need to do this with their workers and present opportunities to upskill them as well and prepare them for future work. But for us, that's our job. And so, not just learn AI a little bit, get good at it, learn ai, learn what you can do with it, push it, you know, check it, you know, you can't break it, but you can really learn a lot. And I would say become really astute. Like I am gobbling up courses, workshops, every information, every time somebody releases prompts, I'm like, okay, that's great. Let me try that. Lemme refine that because I don't want to be left behind.

Here's the other area of AI though, that doesn’t get talked about a lot. Learn about the ethical consideration so that you are able to, with confidence, guide your clients in its use. There are some things that I'm seeing that are frightening, and I feel that communicators and professionals need to advocate against those types of uses and we need to stand up for perfect example is what's happening in Hollywood now with studios wanting Yeah. The forever rights to someone's image. This hits intellectual property issues, copyright issues and just power, you know, the power of, you're taking away the power of people to earn a living. So I think there are so many things in this area that if, if this is an area of passion for you, ethics is one of my passions. Become well-versed and what's happening in this, in this area of technology. And you can, again, use this in your client work or in your personal branding work.

Michelle Kane (12:39):

That's so true. So true. It's here, so get good at it. Do yourself a favor. It's kind of fun. I know I'm weird, but whatever.

Karen Swim, APR (12:49):

I mean, here are some other things that you might not be thinking about. Maybe you are bilingual or trilingual and maybe your language skillset sets have fallen by the wayside. Practice your non-native language because

Michelle Kane (13:04):

Oh, I like it.

Karen Swim, APR (13:05):

Especially if you’re thinking about moving into different markets. And you know, one of the things that we can do when there's economic turbulence in a region is that we can just deliver business in other regions.

Michelle Kane (13:17):

Yeah, that's true.

Karen Swim, APR (13:18):

Maybe you serve a local market, but maybe now you're going out into a different demographic. Maybe you're only US. And are there opportunities that, for example, in other countries that you're missing out on. So, your language skills could be another professional development thing that you do that allows you to now open up and grow your business in a different area.

Michelle Kane (13:40):

That's a great idea. And another thing that I know we've talked about, but it doesn't come to mind right away when you think professional development, is that we are all business owners, so brushing up on our business owner skills, spend time with other entrepreneurs. I have to tell you, our local chamber recently had a forum where it was four founders, business owners, and they just shared their story. And three out of the four, I was nodding my head thining, oh my gosh, you two really, you know, like, oh, we started out and it was dodgy and well, this, that and the other. We weren't sure, but we learned and we did, and blah, blah, blah. Try and seek out those kinds of forums. I'm sure there are Ted Talks or things online, or if you want to hear this one hit up, indianvalleychamber.com, it's on their YouTube page.

It was people from totally different industries, but they all had the same experience when they were starting. And also talking about kind of like how it started, how it's going. Spend time with other business owners and learn from each other. That's where, you know, sometimes we silo ourselves in our PR and marketing worlds. And of course we have to keep up with our industry, but spending more time, you know, what's the word? Horizontally across different spheres of professions is going to help you as well.

Karen Swim, APR (15:07):

That really excites me, Michelle, because you're right, business acumen is another skill that is worth developing. You know, I, like you, I also try to put myself in the room with people that are further along that are smarter than me always about business and really looking at, you know, my financial management of my business and, you know, really seeking to improve, like really starting to look more closely at like profitability, getting better at me, you know, how I measure success and getting better at managing and being a CEO. Those are skillsets. That's professional development as well. And also the soft skills of business. You know, yes, we're all communicators, but guess what? Learning, upping your speaking game, becoming a better public speaker, becoming a better writer. These are things that I know that we do, but we are, we should always be learning. We should always be growing and developing. None of us will ever reach perfection. So there's always room to go to grow. So don't forget about the things that you might be taking for granted. I know that we're great writers. I know that we're great communicators, but it doesn't mean that we can't get better.

Michelle Kane (16:25):

Yeah. And I know for me, I have to tell myself this, you know, ask someone out to lunch. If it's someone that you know is doing something in business that you really admire or you think you might be able to learn from, everyone's got to eat. Even though, no lie, I'm usually doing the desk picnic, which isn't the best thing in the world. <Laugh>.

Karen Swim, APR (16:47):

I love just meeting with people. And you know, sometimes it's been by Zoom, but I will tell you in was that last month, I'm getting my months mixed up, but at some point I got to talk to a bunch of solo PR pros in a single month.

Michelle Kane (17:03):

Yes. I remember that.

Karen Swim, APR (17:05):

It was amazing. I was so inspired. I was also very tired because I had some other stuff going on and then I got really behind in work. But I was so inspired by everyone that I spoke with and it really gave me motivation as well. I was there to listen and to encourage, but I got as much as I gave and may and I would say even more. And so don't discount getting together even with another solo. And if you live far apart, do it over Zoom. I am going to try and organize some Zoom network meetings in the fall. I'm going to need August to recover <laugh> <laugh> have a little summer downtime. Plus we're working on some new programs for Solo. But yeah, talk to people. It's, you would be surprised at what a boost it is because I think in this post-Covid era and whatever times we're living in right now, it's easy to forget that we've hit a little bit of a comfort level and we're in a groove. And you may be going back to in-person conferences, but we're saying even on a smaller scale, just grabbing somebody and saying, you know, let's have coffee over Zoom, or Let's meet for coffee. Let's meet for lunch. Let's take a walk together and chat.

Michelle Kane (18:28):

Yeah. I think that's so important. Well, we hope we've inspired you today. Tickled your brain a little bit. Got you thinking about new and different ways that you can work on your professional development. And if you do value this, please share it around, share it on your socials. Hit us up with your comments at soloprpro.com. And until next time, thank you for listening to That Solo Life.

 

”Hi, Barbie!” A PR Pro Pop Culture Check-in

It’s a “Barbenheimer” world and in this episode we talk about the savvy and work that went into this massively successful campaign. We also touch on what’s going on with the platform formerly known as Twitter (it’s still Twitter to us).

 

Transcript

Michelle Kane (00:02):

Thank you for joining us for this episode of That Solo Life, the podcast for PR pros and marketers who work for themselves like me, Michelle Kane of VoiceMatters, and my wonderful co-host, Karen Swim of Solo PR Pro. Hey, Karen, how are you? Or should I say, “Hi, Barbie?”

Karen Swim, APR (00:19):

<Laugh>. I don't know what Barbie I am today. Hi Michelle. How are you doing today?

Michelle Kane (00:26):

I am Holding It Together Barbie today. <Laugh>,

Karen Swim, APR (00:30):

I might be, I'm, you know, I think saying Not Sure What Barbie I Am Today is probably pretty accurate for most days of the week for me lately.

Michelle Kane (00:40):

Oh, I hear you. I hear you. It's, I don't know why. I'm always surprised when I'm surprised by how days can unfold <laugh>.

Karen Swim, APR (00:48):

Yes. This summer has been particularly eventful for, for most people. I'm finding it's not just, just PR pros. In my past, in my past PR life, <laugh>, summer is always a quiet time.

Michelle Kane (01:05):

Yeah. No more

Karen Swim, APR (01:07):

I don't know. I don't know anything anymore. I don't know if it's going to hail or snow or rain in the middle of August. I don't know. I just don't know. So that's the way that I approach my days these days.

Michelle Kane (01:23):

Exactly.

Karen Swim, APR (01:24):

Optimism, knowing that anything could happen. And you know what? We used to say, when pigs fly, and now that just doesn't even seem out of the realm of possibility

Michelle Kane (01:35):

I hear that might be being worked on. Who knows? I'm sure <laugh> No, sure. <Laugh>.

Karen Swim, APR (01:40):

Elon Musk is figuring that out.

Michelle Kane (01:42):

Oh, goodness. I'm sure he is. So, as you might've guessed, today's episode, we're just going to do a pop culture PR check-in because as this is airing, this will hit right after the second weekend of Barbenheimer. So I don't know if many of you have seen either Barbie or Oppenheimer, but there's a lot to admire about the PR that's gone into it and just, there's just a lot of points to consider, especially through the PR lens. I mean, first of all, that even though I know personally and across the board it's been really challenging to get people to engage in the way they did in the before times, especially in-person events, things like that. Just because our priorities have shifted, our time, the way we spend our time has changed. Anyway, all that to say, in the midst of all that, a ton of people went back to the movie theater. To either Barbie or Oppenheimer, they’re smashing records. So it's pretty amazing. And unless you've, you know, truly been checking out this summer, and if you have good for you it's kind of hard to miss any of the promotion for either Barbie or Oppenheimer. And I have a pretty low, low bar for being annoyed by this kind of thing, and I'm not annoyed yet. So they must be doing something right, <laugh>.

Karen Swim, APR (03:12):

Yeah. I think from a PR perspective, and many PR professionals have noted this on social media, that this was really a masterclass in a great execution of a campaign. So a couple of things that stood out to me from the communication side for Barbie in particular is that number one, it just reinforces what we as PR pros know to be true. That having a strategic plan that is comprehensive and robust and the time to be able to execute that plan means everything. Because this did not come together in months. This was a plan that rolled out over a long period of time, and it was a campaign that incorporated not just that lever of earned media, it was paid, it was the PESO formula. It’s beautifully done. It also stood out to me that going into the planning of the messaging, they understood that there were people that don't like Barbie. Maybe not passionate activists against Barbie but the people that just don't like Barbie or have an issue with it. And rather than trying to navigate around that, they leaned into that and considered that their audience as well and developed messaging that embraced the detraction. And I thought, beautifully done, because sometimes we want to avoid, you know, the “antis” <laugh>. Right. And rather than doing that, they fully embraced that. And I thought that that was genius.

Michelle Kane (05:07):

Yeah. They really did. I mean, even for those who have not seen the film, I won't reveal a whole lot. But there's definitely the acknowledgement that Barbie is somewhat problematic.

Karen Swim, APR (05:20):

Yes.

Michelle Kane (05:21):

But as anything, many things are full of shades of gray. And what I thought was incredible was that even though Barbie's a Warner Brothers film, Oppenheimer, I believe is with Universal, they played well together. I mean, they're building on the whole Barbenheimer of it all. What sticks out to me, like you said, with this long game, I mean, it started with the set photos of Ryan Gosling and Margot Robbie in their full on neon roller blades, to make people take notice. And that was, gosh, easily, at least a year ago, to make us say, “Oh my, what is that? Oh, so this is how it's going to come together. Okay. I'm intrigued…” and just, then go about our lives. But even, I don't know if you saw the photos of I think it was Margot Robbie and Greta Gerwig at the movies holding their tickets for Oppenheimer. And then, everyone was kind of returning the favor of I got my tickets to Barbie of I just, that collegiality that built up, “Hey, you know, we're all in this together” and “There's enough room for everyone.” Let's, you know, as the little jingle says, let's all go to the movies <laugh>.

Karen Swim, APR (06:34):

I think the first trailer was, it was a weird one for Barbie. And they didn't realize that it would be so popular. In full disclosure, I have not seen the movie. Yet. So, my discussion about this is purely from looking at it from the comms perspective, and what I've read and what I've seen on the story behind how this all came together. I know that this was a well-executed campaign because I’m actually planning on going to see a movie that I probably never would've planned to see. Because there's something special about having this environment again, of the summer blockbuster and having everyone talking about it, because let's face it, with streaming, you know, there's a pocket of people that may talk about something, but it's not the same as when something grabs hold of the culture and people are dressing up and they're excited. And I'm here for it. I love it. I'm so glad. This makes me very happy.

Michelle Kane (07:53):

Yeah. And it shows that we can have those experiences again, where everyone is, let's say most everyone, is excited about gathering together and just really getting involved or getting caught up in the excitement of it all. So that's been encouraging and it's just been a fun ride all around just to see how this has rolled out and to see how it continues to. And it also speaks to another thing that we are hungry for - original stories. I mean, certainly, you know, Oppenheimer's a real person, Barbie's a doll, but, you know, just refreshing to see something that doesn't have a “part six” at the end of it. I think we might be at the end of those rides, but who knows? What do I know? I'm not a studio executive.

Karen Swim, APR (08:41):

You know what I love? So yes, Barbie has been problematic as a child. It wasn't necessarily problematic for me. There were issues that even I, as a small child realized playing with my Barbies, and I gravitated towards, you know, my personality  gravitated not towards Barbie and Ken, but you know, towards Skipper, who no one remembers. But over the years, obviously as I became an adult,  I really began to have issues with it. And what I kind of love about this, and this segues into something else we can't avoid talking about, is that the Barbie brand has evolved over the years. And they've evolved their brand in a way that was acceptable to their audiences and they attracted new audiences. It was exciting to me to listen to one of the teens on my street and see her bouncy, happy about wanting to go see Barbie and her knowing Barbie from the cartoons.

But they didn't, you know, they didn't run away from the problematic past. This is part of the whole story of Barbie, and they understood that Barbie's embedded in our cultural discussions, it's an icon. They didn't rebrand arbitrarily. They could have done that. Mattel could have created something else and just steered away from Barbie in the problematic era, but instead they did not do that. I'm going to say that in my opinion, that's the smarter way versus Elon Musk and Twitter running from their problematic past. And I don't know if that was the motivation and rebranding something that it has been such an important icon in our history. Twitter is Twitter. We grew up with the Twitter bird, with the Twitter sounds, the bird sounds, it's has meaning, it has cultural significance, good, bad, ugly. I'm not quite sure why this company would lean away from what has been such an important institution for people and one that's recognizable.

Can we just talk about brand recognition? It's baffling. Why would you change the name? Which to me feels like a personal, very egotistical thing in that here's a person who names his children these, so it feels like this was personal and not a brand decision, which completely disregards your audience that it's there, or at least to win back and you have an opportunity to win back new fans. You really do, because no one has replaced Twitter as of today. There are lots of other social media platforms they're not catching on in the same way. There's still something different about Twitter, although people are now not participating there, myself included, because it's a trash platform. But I just, you know, just to contrast, here's a company that did it right and owned the failures and mistakes and went through some really hard times where they were really not the beloved brand, but they didn't change their name and forget they didn't try to trick their audience. Like, Hey, we're this now <laugh>.

Michelle Kane (12:22):

Yeah. I mean, I'm seeing a couple of things. The, the first is, and forgive me, I forget the reporter's name, but he brought to light that this is not Elon's first rodeo with trying to rename something “X” apparently when in 2000, when he was leading PayPal, he wanted to do the same thing and he wanted to make it almost like in in Asia where they have the WeChat, he wants this “X” to be an all-purpose thing. And it's like, okay, well even if that's your intent, what sense does it make to completely trash the running thing you bought, decimate your staff? I mean, there's something off there that we all know, once you get into that stratosphere of being a billionaire, you're not making rational decisions. And the other disturbing trend is, I was just reading comments of a thread of people pointing out this very thing, this doesn't make sense. It's not good business. It got you in trouble before, it got you ousted before. And yet there's still the fan base of “Oh no. Secretly he is the super genius that knows what he's doing. You just wait and see.”

Karen Swim, APR (13:32):

And not to take anything away from Elon Musk, he is brilliant. Let let's just be clear on that. No one is disputing his intelligence.

Michelle Kane (13:51):

I am…<laughs>

Karen Swim, APR (13:52):

What I am contrasting is that I feel like this particular business decision is, it's just a bad decision. And it's not something from a communication standpoint that any of us in this audience would ever have said, sure, let's do that. Because there's no reasoning behind it. And again, as public relations professionals, part of our job is protecting our publics. And I feel like this really dismisses your publics and I'm totally not sure that it's going to lead to the ultimate goal of winning back advertisers or having people want to pay a premium to use this service. I think it just continues to drive away. And maybe that's the goal. Maybe it's to drive away all of the old users and turn this into a political platform that is very much focused on one political party or one political point of view, and have it be all brand new. And, and if that's the goal, then have at it, you know?

Michelle Kane (14:49):

Yeah.

Karen Swim, APR (14:50):

Go, do you, be you. But I certainly am not spending any money on this platform, and I'm barely spending time there. Pop in there. Yeah. On occasion, because it's, it's a habit that's hard to break.

Michelle Kane (15:05):

Yeah. Yeah. I mean it's, it just, it makes no sense from a real nuts and bolts, let's do real business point of view. It just doesn't, and you're right. It dismisses anything that makes sense from a communications standpoint. So I don't know. I mean, we're we're definitely not on the same page as they are, maybe not even on the same bookshelf as they are. So it's just interesting to watch. And I didn't know anything about the whole PayPal thing until I read that article.

Karen Swim, APR (15:37):

Now, let's be honest, on a smaller scale for we communicators, this has happened to us with clients. We have clients that have wanted to change the name of the company or have a brand new logo for absolutely zero reason at all. And so, I can only imagine, I don’t know if there are any comms people left at Twitter, but clearly not. And so, again, for us to do our jobs well, and if there are any non-PR people in this audience, and you are thinking of engaging with PR people for us to do our jobs well, it really requires for you to trust our strategic counsel, our expertise, and understand that if we're saying no to you, it's not because we are trying to limit your vision. It's not because we are not visionary ourselves.

It's not because we don't like you. It's because we do have our eye on the big picture. But our picture includes your publics, it includes your brand equity, it includes the reputation of your company. And so we're taking a long view and a broader view than you might be looking, and you may have a different vision, but it's worthwhile to have that discussion and not just pull the plug on something without having your comms team involved and having you guys come to a point of alignment. I mean, trust the people that you have hired and take their advice. Sometimes you're still going to go off and do what you want to do. I get that. I've dealt with this too, where companies just changed the name and you have either come in after they just did it, and you're like, “Why?”

Michelle Kane (17:32):

Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>

Karen Swim, APR (17:34):

Or you are unable to move them off of what they want to do, and so left to their own devices, people will change the name sometimes.

Michelle Kane (17:50):

Oh yeah.

Karen Swim, APR (17:51):

I have engaged with companies where they already have a new name, and it’s a name that's so hard to SEO and so hard to monitor. Sometimes companies choose names that are simple, but they're so simple that they get confused with like a million other things. And so it fails the SEO value, or it's unique and weirdly spelled, and then it's hard for anybody to find. So, you know, these are things that we all think about.

Michelle Kane (18:16):

Yeah. We're not in here to be Debbie Downer. We are communications pros. We're not just here to blow out your messaging. We're here to consider how you are perceived and look out for you on all those points. I've had that too. And sometimes it takes, sometimes it does come around in a couple of years where if a certain aspect of something has been branded and named and I've counseled and said, you know, that's going to make your, your, your potential audience think too much. They're not exactly going to understand. It's not going to be perceived as you wish with everyone who sees it. And at the end of the day, it's going to be confusing. So sometimes, if it's not an earth shattering decision and the whole company's not going to tank as a result, let it play out. And eventually it comes around to, oh, that wasn't working. Interesting. Okay, let's try this. <Laugh>,

Karen Swim, APR (19:21):

I mean,

Michelle Kane (19:22):

Yeah,

Karen Swim, APR (19:22):

Facebook just did it, right? They became Meta,

Michelle Kane (19:27):

Yeah, <laugh>,

Karen Swim, APR (19:27):

But it's still called Facebook. It's still called Instagram by Meta. Yeah. But it just, X puts me in mind of XFiles, <laugh>

Michelle Kane (19:38):

And then there’s this little thing of Microsoft owning the, is it the patent or the trademark for “X”?

Karen Swim, APR (19:46):

Yes. And it's a black and white logo. Like Okay. The Twitter bird was iconic. Twitter was iconic. Yeah. We're not going to say whatever he wants to call tweets. It's a definite contrast to the, you know, colorful neon, fashion forward Barbie and their whole message and the Barbie brand. So good on you.

Michelle Kane (20:25):

Kudos.

Karen Swim, APR (20:26):

I mean, this is to me like what you would submit an award for, because they really did the doggone thing. And while we also know that I love this interview, and I believe it was Vanity Fair where the comms person shared that, “I've been doing this for 35 years and this level, like of success has never happened.” I love that he was transparent about that, because once again, we have people that see successes, you know, in the areas that we play in.

Michelle Kane (20:56):

Oh yeah.

Karen Swim, APR (20:57):

They want to duplicate it. So they say, “oh, well they were on TikTok, so let's go on TikTok.” And then they jump to these shiny new tools and they want to do stuff. And then they're like, “well, why isn't this working?” Or they'll, they're like, “well, wow, look, so-and-so was in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, and okay, let's go there.”

Michelle Kane (21:14):

Yeah.

Karen Swim, APR (21:15):

But do you have anything to say, really? Are you, do you think that that's what really got them to what you're seeing? Because there's a whole lot of things that happen in the background that you don't know about. Let's talk about those things.

Michelle Kane (21:31):

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And, I love that they said that too, because it's true. And I'm sure that at the time when they were scoping this out, they were hopeful, but they definitely did not have certainty that it would play out the way it did.

Karen Swim, APR (21:49):

No one could have predicted when this movie came out, where we would be in our collective consciousness - that we are turned out, we're tired, we haven't had a lot of fun. Life is life and really hard. And so there was a little bit of magic and a little bit of luck, right? And we know that that's happened to even other viral campaigns that weren't on this level but were tremendously successful. Sometimes there's just a little bit of fortune that favors you. However, what's that saying? Fortune favors the prepared, they came and they brought their A game. And they did a really great job. And so yes, there was a little bit of fortune, but they were prepared for that.

Michelle Kane (22:38):

You know what's going to happen? This is my prediction. Twitter is going to be renamed Barbie <laugh> since it's popular, without regard for patents or copyrights.

Karen Swim, APR (22:52):

Because it's popular, bright and shiny, Elon Musk would immediately <laugh> put the hammer to that. It's not a mathematical formula. I'm thinking that he's going to be like, no.

Michelle Kane (23:09):

Oh, well, yeah. Right, right. Exactly. Well, the new alleged name for tweets, “xeet,” I guess X E E T. Yeah. when I saw it in print, it just made me think, being a Philly suburban girl, it made me think of our slang for “Did you eat yet?” Is “jeet” J E E T <laugh> I was like, jeet? Oh, what? Is Elon asking if I ate already. What? Oh, okay. Whatever. Next tweet.

Karen Swim, APR (23:34):

Already I'm an ex tweeter.

Michelle Kane (23:39):

I tell you, I think I'm

Karen Swim, APR (23:39):

officially an ex tweeter, so don't look for me there. <Laugh>.

Michelle Kane (23:44):

Yeah. I certainly don't spend as much time as I used to, which is, it's a bummer because it brought so much to our world. But you know, what do they say? The only thing constant is change. So there you have it.

So we hope you've enjoyed spending this little time with us, checking on some pop culture things, maybe encouraging you to get in line, buy some popcorn, and enjoy some cinema therapy, as I like to call it. But whatever you choose, we hope you value this content. And if you do, please share it around. Please follow us on all the Solo PR channels. And until next time, thanks for listening to That Solo Life.

What the Writers Strike Means for All of Us

The issues and circumstances that led to the current writers and actors strikes -- with corporations devaluing the creativity, expertise, and contribution of workers – mirrors what is going on in the larger labor market, whether you work as a traditional employee or self-employed. In this episode we talk about how this touches our solo PR world and what to do about it.

 

Transcript

Michelle Kane:

Thank you for joining us for this episode of That Solo Life, the podcast for PR pros and marketers who work for themselves, people like me, Michelle Kane, with VoiceMatters and my ever wonderful co-host, Karen Swim of Solo PR Pro. Hi Karen. How goes it today?

Karen Swim, APR:

Hello, Michelle. I'm doing good. How are you?

Michelle Kane:

Good, good. Rolling along. Can't believe we are looking at the end of July. It is wild. Ugh.

Karen Swim, APR:

Wild is a huge understatement. Yes, I am very much looking forward to getting on the other side of this and hopefully recapturing in August as a little bit of me time.

Michelle Kane:

I agree, and that's usually how it goes. I don't know why I am surprised that I'm feeling this way because just the way the work cycle goes, there are things happening, things going on, and why everyone's out and about, you know, hanging out on the beach and enjoying the boardwalk and things. And I'm just like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Later, later, later. And then by the time I'm there in August and September, they're all, back to school. I'm like, stinks to be you, <laugh>.

Karen Swim, APR:

Well, you know, it's interesting because in my industries that I work with, typically this is a quiet time. Everybody is on holiday, they're away. And summer is quiet and then it ramps up hard in September.  This year, you and I have joked and I said that I feel like my life is a grocery cart running, going downhill, and I'm chasing after it, and I just can't run fast enough or long enough to catch it. I just can’t. I've never been so far behind in stuff. There are people that have emailed me that I haven't answered. If you're listening today, sorry, it's not personal. It's just I can't catch up. And every day I go back and I do something that I'm neglected. Okay, that's one of the hundred things that's hanging out there, but yay <laugh>,

Michelle Kane:

It has been a little bit like that. Yeah. I think just the way certain projects have happened, there were a couple that I thought, oh my goodness, you know, when is this going to happen? And now it's like, Ugh, now what's happening?

Karen Swim, APR:

Now it's happening and now it's blinking on and on and on. That's another part of the story. It's like, can we just end this? Like, is this ever going to be over? Are we ever going to be done with this?

Michelle Kane:

Yeah, I know. I know. But then I also know that me personally, like, yes, I like summer, but I also like summer spaces <laugh> not during peak season. So I'm definitely a spring and fall summer girl, if that makes sense. Like catch me in May, catch me in September, then I'm ready to do Summer.

Karen Swim, APR:

<Laugh>. I'll tell you, I'll take summer whenever, however I can get it. It'll be nice to just have days where the weather is decent, it's not storming, and we can actually outside. I don’t know. That would be my ideal day.

Michelle Kane:

I think that is a big part of it, because where we both live, Canada keeps blowing smoke in our faces and that's an issue as well.

Karen Swim, APR:

Now we're stuck indoors. Any new TV shows?

Michelle Kane:

Yes. So actually our point, we did not just come here to moan about our to-do lists or the weather, but as I'm sure most, if not all, of our listeners know, there are a couple of strikes happening. Certainly the WGA, the writers have been on strike since May and now SAG/Aftra, the actors, have joined them in solidarity and they bring some very important points to the table about compensation and the value of their work so we're going to talk about that and also about how this affects some of us, because certainly a lot of comms pros work in the industry or even work in segments that intersect with the industry that a complete work stoppage is certainly affecting. But you know, the SAG/Aftra union is bringing to the fore the issue of it, basically, it's not the 2%. It's not Tom Cruise that's suffering, it's the working actors, the, I forget, what did they say? Is it 13% of their union qualifies for health insurance?

Karen Swim, APR:

Which I mean, so yeah. Let's frame this.

Michelle Kane:

Yeah.

Karen Swim, APR:

So even though these are unionized workers, I think the broader issues hit the entire labor market including people like us solos, because at the core of this is how do you value people and the creative and intellectual talent that they bring to the supply chain of their output. And there's such a huge disparity when you see - so writers have to earn $26,000 in order to qualify for healthcare. So just keep that in mind. $26,000, that seems like a very small number. So you have that, but then you have these heads of studios making 192 million. They definitely have healthcare and all of the benefits, and I'm not, this is not a rant against millionaires, but it is something that we're seeing play out across the spectrum. And when you throw automation into it, which is a part of their negotiations as well, they want to be protected from -  I would label it as the unethical and inhumane use of artificial intelligence because I'm a technology fan, I love innovation, but innovation is not a replacement for human beings. It's something that can help human beings to work more effectively. And yes, there are some jobs that will go away, but other jobs will be created. We've seen that over history. However, we PR people are also creative people. How many of us recently have had people believe that our work or expertise doesn't deserve, first of all, the amount of money that we charge, they don't see the value. And then how many of them are replacing the writing portion of our jobs? You're thinking that they can replace the writing portion with AI. So the writers are standing against this, but it's this mentality that scares me because you have things like the actors, one of the things that came up in the actors strike is that studios wanted extras to sign away the rights to their images for life forever in perpetuity.

Michelle Kane:

For $200. For $200. Yeah.

Karen Swim, APR:

And in many cases it's less than $200. So you have an extra that goes onto a set. And if you've never been an extra, it's a fascinating experience, particularly if you're trying to break into the industry. Yeah. If you want to break into the film industry being an extra yields, tremendous benefits, it's like, it's akin to internships where you get to be in this environment in which you want to work. You learn things, you learn about the different roles. You learn about how the set works for writers. This also is happening where you're taking away this environment of learning and development because with the writers, they have these things called mini rooms, which means that those writers are not even getting to interact with the rest of the show. So they're not getting to interact in a way that traditionally writers' rooms have happened. And so you're limiting their ability to see the whole picture and to learn and to grow professionally. And so,

Michelle Kane:

Yeah. And to do good work because if you have a room full of 12 writers of varying degrees of seniority, I mean that's where the good stuff happens. If you have your four core senior writers and oh, okay the others are going to come in on Thursday…

Karen Swim, APR:

Yeah. Well the mini rooms just happen within a bubble. They're not interacting with all of the people that the traditional writing rooms get to interact with. And you're not learning about the things, of how your content works on set. And so, again, this is not just about diminishing it, it is diminishing it, it's a value proposition, but it also is bumping up against fear and greed from a certain sector. And we're seeing that play across corporate America as well as people focus on dollars and cents, are they devaluing what humans bring to the table, the creativity and the intellect that we have to offer. And so, you know, I think that, that we all have to be aware of, yes, this is a union, whatever you think about unions, whatever you think about Hollywood. But these issues mirror what's going on in the larger labor market. And yeah, anything that happens in the labor market is going to affect every human being whether you work as a traditional employee or you're self-employed as we are.

Michelle Kane:

Yeah, it's true. It's true. And you know what? Those that are making these, what I would call shortsighted decisions, if they pull back and realize, okay, that might make your next couple of quarters really sing and look fantastic, but how's this going to work for you 10 years down the road, 20 years down the, down the road when people don't want your product because it's not any good? And you know, I'm sure the few at the top, they're like, well, I'll just hang out on my yacht and it'll be fine. But it's,

Karen Swim, APR:

Yeah,

Michelle Kane:

I don't know. I mean,

Karen Swim, APR:

Imagine, as a viewer you are watching a TV show and it was filmed in Hawaii and you see the extras and you know, two months later you see that same exact scene manipulated by AI and like five other things. Is that fair to viewers? I mean, I think that viewers, you're also diminishing the intelligence of the people who watch these things, who consume your content. We are not stupid. We notice those things. And you know what? Extras, even though I sort of hate that name of extras, because I think acting happens without words as well, I think that they're vital to creating and setting a mood and a tone. We look at all those things. We notice it, we appreciate the depth and breadth of the, the entire creative process. And it is meaningful. So to somehow chop that up and say, it doesn't matter, we can just AI our way into this or we can AI our script.

Michelle Kane:

Yeah.

Karen Swim, APR:

Because machines are not human beings. And they can crank out words, but they can't crank out nuances, emotions, and personal experiences. If you've ever read articles about how scripts came together, about how ideas came together, about how an actor was in the moment and created something that wasn't on script, AI cannot do that. Oftentimes people developed entire series based on personal experiences or they bring something to their life, or you're in the writer's room and somebody goes, Hey, how about this? And then that, that reality makes its way into the creative process. Can AI do that? No, because AI is not a living being who's interacting with other human beings and has that to bring to the table. So yes, it's helpful in circumstances.

Michelle Kane:

Right. Case in point. So, the new Indiana Jones movie. They used AI to create a younger version of Harrison Ford. However, it was still Harrison Ford, 80-year-old Harrison Ford doing the acting. They had the luxury of having a catalog of all of his reactions from all of his films that he had done with that same studio. So, I don’t know if you've seen him describe this, he said, they put the little dots all over his face and he still did the dialogue. But then they did the magic using him. So that's a great use of AI that came in really handy. It kept you in the story. What would not be cool is if they took that whole catalog of Harrison Ford and brought him back as Han Solo in a hundred years. And I guarantee he would probably haunt them. <Laugh>. Yeah. That's the last thing he would want. And honestly, it's just like you said, it's so cringy and unethical.

Karen Swim, APR:

Yeah. Imagine this, imagine that they did use this to create the next Indiana Jones movie and they paid him zero or they sent him a check for 4 cents. Because lots of actors and writers are receiving checks, residual checks for 4 cents. It costs more to mail the check than what you're receiving when you get something for 23 cents, 27 cents. Don't believe me. Go on social media. Follow the WGA strike hashtag and you'll get lots of information on the writers strike. So imagine as a public relations person, as communicators, we often write things. Can you imagine like somebody using you one time for something and then taking your work and profiting from it over and over and over and over and over again, rather than hiring you. Maybe they throw a bone your way and say, “Oh, we're going to send you 10 cents.” Because that's what they think it's worth.

Michelle Kane:

Yeah. I think recently Mandy Moore said that for a streamed episode of This Is Us, an incredibly popular, profitable show. Don't quote me on it. I mean, it was under a dime.

So that is literally what they're renegotiating. They just want to be paid fairly. And I get it, we're in capitalism. The CEOs are beholden to their shareholders. They're beholden to make their shareholders richer. You'll still get rich shareholders, you will still get rich. In fact, you might get richer if you fund these creatives in a way. Yeah. I mean, let's face it, I think Tom Cruise in the last two years, and he's not my favorite person but in the last two years, he has been leading the way to get people back into movie theaters to keep that business going. Why? Because he knows it's good for everybody. And if they can't realize this, that funding good, creative content is in their long-term best interest, then that's just really sad and unfortunate.

Karen Swim, APR:

Well, another unfortunate trend that we're seeing play out in the labor market, and you know, again, this hits our industry as well, is that this, this reluctance to present people with professional development opportunities and kind of easing out those entry level people. So we're seeing this with the many writers rooms and not giving people a chance to advance their career. We're seeing it with the actors and the background actors. We also are seeing this in corporate America where people new to the workforce are not receiving training on how to work. All of these things, this is the same issue, played out differently across various industries. We need people entering professions. The reality of our life right now is that there are more open jobs than there are people to fill them. The entire global workforce has aged. There's a map out there somewhere that shows how this aging population impacts the entire workforce.

We're getting older, the median age of US workers has risen. And so if we're not willing to train and we're not willing to give opportunities to people entering our professions, where does that leave us in the future? That's a little crazy. And it says to me, is this where we are right now? So we don't want to pay the people that have the experience. We want to take whatever we can from them. And then we want to, you know, use AI to like cover it up and do other things. But we also don't want to help people to do what we do. Like there's, there's a disconnect there. This is all going to come back and slap us.

Michelle Kane:

Bite us. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and you know, at both ends of the spectrum, I think there's ageism at both ends of the spectrum. And what I'm seeing a lot is people applying for what they are told are full-time jobs and then once they're hired, they're only given part-time hours. Well, there goes their opportunity for health insurance, there goes their opportunity to make their living. I'm not saying it's all corporations, but some of the corporations who are bemoaning the fact that people don't want to work, well, they do want to work, they want to be able to provide for themselves. And I'm pretty sure even if you don't love your job, you still like the feeling of contributing to society even if you don't realize it. So if they're not provided the proper platform, like you say, with proper training, and that could be as simple as we know, Karen, everyone's talking about Gen Z, they don't know how to operate in an office. Well maybe, just maybe, you need to start a program to help that, to help nurture them, nurture their intelligence, you know, nurture the gifts that they bring to you. And if you say you're looking for full-time, hire them for full-time.

Karen Swim, APR:

The reality is I think that we need to, we as communicators also need to make sure that we're not playing into that narrative. And we don't allow companies to play that narrative because it's actually, it's erroneous. Gen Z, how do you learn to work unless people teach you to work, they don't teach you how to work in school. Education does not do that. No, education does not teach you how to live your life. Education does not teach you those subtle nuances about how to conduct meetings or how to participate in meetings or how to engage with your coworkers. Those are things that you learn on the job. And so I have seen a couple companies that are stepping up and coming up with training programs that are teaching these soft skills to younger workers. Unfortunately that's not being normalized. And it’s to all of our detriment that there's not this investment in the next generation of workers.

Because if we're not teaching them, how would they learn? They come up with their own rules that may not match what your expectations are. And then you get mad and you say, well, Gen Z's lazy. Well, they're really not. Maybe, maybe they're onto something. Maybe they're not willing because they live through the Covid years and they see how quickly our lives can shift. Maybe they're not willing to work 12 hours a day in an office. Is that being lazy or is that being smart? Maybe they've decided that, you know what? Work cannot be the number one thing in my life. It is a part of my life, but I also have this other life that I'm going to tend to. Is that being lazy or is that being balanced? So I think we're unfair to them as well. And, we hold some responsibility for that, which, you know, that whole generational thing is a topic that we'll delve into at some point on this podcast.

But today it's all about workers' rights and how this is shifting and how it really does impact us. And from a practical standpoint that everyone can find accessible. What happens when the content creators go away? Because fall TV now has officially already been disrupted. So enjoy those reality shows and reruns because that's all we're going to have for a while. And you know, if you don't have people making movies, promoting movies, entertainment is going to stink. And, and that's going to affect jobs. I mean, yeah. I have friends that work on moving construction sets. They build sets. There's no movie making happening right now. They're not working. What about the people who clean the costumes? What about the food caterers? They're not working either. What about all of these people who normally buy things that can't buy things because they are not working? This is everyone's issue. And I know sometimes people get caught up in numbers, like, actors make so much money. Yeah. They really don't.

Michelle Kane:

Oh, they don't. And I'm glad to see those that are out there stating that fact that yeah, we're the, we are the lucky few.

Karen Swim, APR:

Yeah.

Michelle Kane:

And you know, even with the AI stuff, if they're trying to pull this with us, what chance do those who aren't at this point in their careers, what chance do they have? There's definitely going to be a ripple effect. And you know, look, unions have done a lot of good, they're not perfect. But if you enjoy your five day work week, thank your union. If you enjoy weekends, thank your union. Someone's got to draw the line because if we did not have them drawing the line, trust, the rest of non-unionized corporate America would be far worse than it is.

Karen Swim, APR:

Yeah, and the math is Right. Whether those people are in the union or not, giving a voice to these issues that I think we all need to be aware of. And I think one of the key things for us as communicators is understanding and protecting our own intellectual property. And standing strong for the value that we deliver. Because I honestly do see this, this environment that we're in currently that is wholly focused on economics with a shortsighted view to the value of communicators. So you see companies that you know, and this happens in economic downturns. What are the first departments to go? Marketing and communication. And we know that's problematic. Companies don't care. They only care about how those numbers look right now and moving forward for the future. And they, I think that at some levels of the company, they realize the steps back that they will take, but it's a risk that they're willing to accept. But again, our profession is also being devalued and media is definitely going through dramatic shifts as well. And so I feel like these issues that apply to Hollywood writers also touch the journalists that we interact with.

Michelle Kane:

Yeah, absolutely. Well, we've given you a ton to chew on this week. So we hope you found this time valuable. And please, we want to hear your feedback. Visit us at soloprpro.com. Hit us up. If you found this of value to you, please share it around. We would love that too. We love spending this time with you. And so until next time, thanks for listening to That Solo Life.

 

Let’s Talk About It: Race and Inclusivity

As communications professionals and as people living and working together in a society we need to talk about the realities of race and inclusivity. And in today’s episode we do just that.

 

Transcript

Michelle Kane:

Thank you for joining us for another episode of That Solo Life, the podcast for PR pros and marketers who work for themselves, people like me, Michelle Kane, with VoiceMatters, and my wonderful co-host, Karen Swim of Solo PR Pro. Hi Karen, how are you today?

Karen Swim, APR:

Hello, Michelle. I'm doing great. So glad to be back from our little one week break. How are you doing?

Michelle Kane:

Yes, I'm well, thanks. Yes, it was, you know, even the things you love the most, it's always nice to have a little break, but yeah, I'm glad to be back at it, and talk with you today. And today we're going to talk a little bit about race because a lot of the work we do, we have to counsel our clients on how to handle situations, diversity programs, all that kind of stuff. And let's face it at the end of June, the Supremes dropped some nasty bits. So it gave us a lot to talk about. That was quite the day, June 30th. I'm working and listening to them, I'm like, oh, great. What now? Oh, wonderful. So…

Karen Swim, APR:

Well, the Supreme Court decision has certainly ignited a lot of discussion and reaction. In addition to that, without surprise, social media served up another little bit of scandal. But it has, I believe that it has also launched some very beneficial conversations. Kristen Bell, who I love as an actress had a dinner party and shared a picture of who was at the dinner party. And that has just invited a lot of criticism about the lack of diversity that was at that dinner. And so we want to unpack this and talk about, we just, you know, sometimes you have to confront this thing that we don't like to talk about. Talking about race is uncomfortable. It's not the fun topic, it's not the light topic, but as communicators and just as entrepreneurs and people in business, it's an issue that we should not be shying away from. And I believe that we have to have these discussions and we have to have an understanding, and we have to do our part if we are going to counsel clients to do the same.

Michelle Kane:

Agree, agree. And, also I think in recent weeks, and I sadly do not recall the entities, but I think there were three or four corporations who just let go their heads of diversity. I mean, really, what gives? And so, it's really disturbing. It's concerning and we definitely have to be conscious of it so that we can both help counsel clients and really just make our own mark.

Karen Swim, APR:

I heard the word that we live in post-racial America. That is the biggest lie that I've ever heard in my life. So let's clear that up. And let's talk about, again, when we talk about race and we talk about diversity, I want to remind you all of another forgotten class of people. And those are people that have visible and hidden disabilities. Yes. So we, if we're really talking about being inclusive as a society, we have to look at all of these factors and we have to make it okay for people to inhabit these spaces. What do I mean by that? Last week there's a Latino family that lives on my block. My neighborhood, my particular block is super diverse. It's really weird in Michigan to have a block that is so diverse, thank you auto companies for bringing people from other countries to live on my street because yeah, we are a little United Nations here and I love it.

So there's a little girl - a lot of the kids come down and they ride their bikes. I have kids on either side of me and the little girl has a dog that I've met and I've met her family and I know that she speaks Spanish. So we were talking about something and I said something to her in Spanish, and she answered me in English and I said something else to her in Spanish, and she answered me in English. Now, these roles are usually reversed. Because I was usually the one that can understand the Spanish fast enough, but can't always get my words out fast enough, so I'll answer in English. And she said to me that it felt weird to speak Spanish outside of the house, because when our family came here from Mexico, her parents instructed them as they were learning English, to not speak Spanish outside of the home.

That was heartbreaking to me because I know so many Spanish speaking Americans that feel that way and feel like they will be judged and treated differently. And they're not wrong because I've experienced this myself. When I’m in the park walking and speaking Spanish to my dog, and people pass me by and they are mean to me because I'm speaking in another language. So I know that this is true, this is not okay. So when you say post-racial America, when people are afraid to own their own culture, speak in a language that is other than English, by the way, you want to know how many people in the world speak Spanish? We always want to think that English is the dominant language, Spanish is spoken all over the world. There is no shame in having this as a second language. And people should not be embarrassed to speak in their first language in public. Right. That is painful.

Michelle Kane:

Yeah. Yeah. And it's a tradition that's been handed down through the centuries. You know, we did it to Germans, we did it to Japanese, we did it to all kinds of people. And it's, I don't know where this insecurity comes from. No, actually I do. It's a lot of these problems in our society come back to fear.

Karen Swim, APR:

Yes.

Michelle Kane:

Fear of, of the quote unquote other fear of, well, how's that going to affect my security? And you can't lie the societal forces around us sometimes they play into that to their favor. I was so internally angry over the weekend when I got wind that my former church is doing a culture and civility series. And I'm like, oh, here we go. Don't go there. And the current pastor said, “Okay, in Hollyweird now they have certain quotas to be considered for an Oscar.” And I know where he was going. He was going against the LGBTQ community. So I thought, you know what, let me look this up because I'm, I'm 99% sure he is dead wrong. I'm like, no, it's because of #Oscarssowhite - that's why if you weren't, if you were any bit mature and intelligent and loving as Jesus wanted you to be, you would realize that.

Karen Swim, APR:

There is this attitude that somehow being inclusive is tied into extreme woke. And we've made that an evil thing. But let me be really clear with our communicators and with our business people, diversity does not just happen. You have to be so intentional about inviting people into your spaces. So the affirmative action piece is really distressing. Not because I believe that you should be less intelligent and get accepted into these spaces, but because there again, there has to be some accountability for being intentional about bringing diversity into a space. And now, rightfully so, the legacy system is being challenged.

Michelle Kane:

Good,

Karen Swim, APR:

I find it pretty disgusting to be honest with you, that in this day and age that we're saying that just because your parents went to a place that you have a right to be in that same place. And that's what you considered when that definitely favors one class of people. And that's wealthy white people. And so you're ruling out so many people that don't fit into that, which is the majority of people. Can we be honest about that? Because wealthy white Americans are a small percentage of our overall society. So you're leaving out others and that's not okay. You're benefiting a class of people just because their parents went there. That shouldn't be a thing for education, whether it's private education or not, it just should not be a thing. People have the ability to enter a school without any of this. However, we haven't done a good job of making education equitable.

So challenge yourself, institutions, to think about what you're going to do to make these spaces more diversified. And that includes with your teaching staff, because those are overwhelmingly slanted as well. And so we need to be intentional. I know the Kristen Bell thing seems different and people are saying, well, you know, there's this group of people that are like, well, these are her friends, that's fine. However, let's remember that in this group of people, they belong to an industry. You want to know what happens when people within an industry get together? It's networking. Deals are done. This is where power is exchanged and shared. And when that power remains with a class of people, we never change. We never become diversified. This is true of Hollywood.

It's true of so many industries where deals are being made. You only have the same type of people in a room, whether it's on a golf course, at a country club, at a chamber meeting. If you don't have diversity in the room, guess what happens? You never diversify. We have to be the ones as communicators to guide our clients into not giving up on to on DEI and B, but to be very, very intentional and to hold themselves accountable for opening the door for people that are not all of the same race, gender, and ability. We have to, we have to do that. We owe it. This is something that, again, this has nothing to do with woke and this has to do with humanity. It has to do with making us better. And guess what, I could cite you statistics all day long on how all of these things actually benefit your bottom line as a corporation. Why wouldn't you want to do something that leads to employees being more engaged, more loyal to your company and making more money for your corporation? It would, if you look at it from that perspective, like, this is good business. You're stupid not to put some effort and some muscle behind diversity.

Michelle Kane:

You are so correct. And you know, we battle that in our hyperlocal chamber. It is Whitey McWhiteville around here. They are welcoming communities. It just isn't that diverse. Now, at the same time, we have a significant batch of businesses that are Hispanic owned. And it is a struggle to get these communities, you know, like how do we engage the Hispanic business leaders? You don't want to create like a, a little offshoot of it. You don't want to say, well, here's the Hispanic chapter. No. I mean, we want you to come on in. How do you do that without being too pandering or where there's no animosity. But I think too, it's just pulling back big picture, the white community, so to speak, has been, let's face it, in charge for a very, very long time, specifically white males.

And it is interesting to see how it then distills into fear of, oh, I, I might lose my footing. And I'm not saying that this is always conscious. Sometimes it is for sure. I think it's been so ingrained. And it's like, you know, really? What's the worst that can happen to you? I mean, if I'm applying to a school, I want to be, I want it to be on my merits. If I don't get it, fine. If someone else gets it great. I, who, who cares? Who? That's could just be me. For me, I want to learn, I want to know why things happen. I want to know real history that doesn't, as you know, those doing the the bastardization of the word woke would say, “That's going to make me feel better about myself.”

No, it's going to make me want to do better and realize what someone's sitting across from me, what their story is. I don't know. I mean, I am, but two or three generations away from a people that were, they were attempted to be murdered and exterminated in Ireland. So I I get it a little bit. And I really believe that that generational knowledge comes with you. So it's really concerning. It's always riled me when I see things happen that are just unfair and unjust just because of who you are, what faith you practice, what language you speak. I mean, thank God Gaelic is having a comeback just because of the cultural value of it. It's just kind of fun. But my goodness, for a while, if you were in Ireland in the 1700’s and you wanted to speak your native tongue, you’d be killed.

Karen Swim, APR:

I agree.

Michelle Kane:

Sorry, we'll bring it back to modern times.

Karen Swim, APR:

<Laugh> History will bear out that Yeah, this racial reckoning in America is nothing new. No, it really sadly is not. And there have been so many different ethnicities of people who have been oppressed and who have been made to feel shame and who have been forced to fit into this homogenous view of what it means to be an American. And I mean, that is really sad because again, going back to humanity, you, you, humankind is beautiful. I love that we're not all the same. I love that we all come from different backgrounds. I love that. I love that we have all these beautiful different traditions that we can share with one another. And we should be able to live in a world where we view people as people. We are not there yet. And so no, as communicators, I think, you know, some of the things that we can own and we can do is that we can make sure that we have messaging that is inclusive, that we make sure that even for our media relations efforts that we put together talking points that are inclusive so that the media says the right things about what our clients are doing.

Perfect example. Don't say “special needs kids,” you would say “children with disabilities” - it's people first language. You want to respect that they're not their disability. That's not what identifies them. They're a human being that has a disability. And I even hate the word disability these days because I believe that we all have different abilities. I believe that none of us is perfect. And I believe that because it's the truth. Not a single person is perfect. We all have something I need reading glasses. Some people need glasses all the time. That means that you don't have perfect eyesight. What does that mean? That means that you have to be accommodated.

That means if you're a kid in school and your vision is not good, that you may need to sit closer in class. So we need to start thinking about, again, all of these ways that we're different and learning how to open up our spaces to make room for everyone. I think it's also important in our messaging that we don't take for granted. And humor can get really tricky, by the way. Don't take for granted that everyone will share the humor or get the inside joke. Again, people who are not native English speakers often struggle with that because they miss the context. They hear the laughter, but don't quite understand how. That's funny. So if you're using humor in your messaging, you want to be mindful about who your publics are and make sure that your message will not be lost because it's targeted to a very narrow group of people.

So I, you know, these are things that we definitely can know and we can also, you know, if you do internal comms, you have an opportunity to work side by side with HR on making sure that things are inclusive internally. Now I get that we're not involved in the trainings and things that can happen, but companies definitely can be intentional. And as a communicator, you need to stand for that and insist that things are not put together. Strategies are not put together. Messaging is not developed, branding is not developed from a very narrow lens, but that you're looking at it from various perspectives to ensure that what you're trying to say is really what you're going to say.

Michelle Kane:

Yeah. And honestly, at the crux of it, at the center of it, this is how we should always look at communications. If we truly know who our audiences are, you want to be respectful of them, their backgrounds. We're certainly not saying that you should be afraid to say anything. It's just like, okay, well who's in my audience? Whether it's internal or external. Okay. How might this message land with them? Keeping in mind too, just the current temperature and tone of our society something that might have hit a little differently 10 years ago is not going to hit the same right now. So we know you're all smart, we know you get this, but it's good to talk about this. And I think too, over time, and because as a nation we've not done a great job at this, is because we really haven't had the conversations. We haven't had the hard conversations of, oh, well gosh, what was that really like for you? Because I need to learn. And that doesn't matter if you have gender, race, physical issues - until you've truly walked in someone's shoes, you can't.

Karen Swim, APR:

It's absolutely true. And yeah, I mean, we say this, we're addressing this topic because again, as communicators, it's important for us to tackle and to turn over these things and to have these discussions and make having these discussions be very normal. I think. You know, someone says to me, “Hey, you know that I struggle with this when people do this and I feel a little left out of that space,” that drives awareness for me and helps me to do my part to make things more inclusive. Because just because I am a black woman in America does not mean that I get to take a pass on intentionally driving toward diversity. I do not get that pass. I have a responsibility to be inclusive as well. And I have a responsibility, just like all of you, to our clients. But here's the thing, clearly we have work to do because we're not there yet. And so, no matter how smart you think you are and how open you think you are and how diverse you think you are, we're not there. We're just not there. That is our reality. And this again, has nothing to do with political agendas. It has nothing to do with wokeness. This is about humanity and it's about being effective at our jobs and helping our clients to be effective at what they're doing as well.

Michelle Kane:

And you know what, it's so much better to try to have the conversations and maybe step in it and move forward from there than to not have the conversations at all or not have the awareness at all.

Karen Swim, APR:

Agree. I mean, as communicators, we cannot be shy about bringing up the hard stuff. We have to address hard stuff all the time. We have to ask clients uncomfortable questions because we don't want things to come out later that harm our efforts. I've said to clients, like, this panel does not work, there's zero diversity. You have a bunch of men that are all the same race. Like, this is not okay. And so I think we have to get comfortable saying those kinds of things. We have to get comfortable saying could just stop inviting black people to only speak during Black History Month.

Michelle Kane:

Oh my gosh, right.

Karen Swim, APR:

I mean, could we not do that? Yeah. I don't know. I'm saying <laugh>

Michelle Kane:

Just, just saying <laugh>. No, it's so true. And they're difficult conversations. It can feel awkward, but I think once you start having them, it feels less so. And I think you will find that it feels good. I know that sounds weird.

Karen Swim, APR:

Yes. But, and I would say please be mindful. You know, Kristen Bell, I have empathy and so let me be clear, we didn't share this story because we want to have her bashed or to have her cancelled because I'm not a fan of cancel culture. I am a fan of reconciliation and healing. But she is someone who wrote a book about diversity.

Michelle Kane:

<Laugh>

Karen Swim, APR:

She wrote a book about diversity. She advocates for diversity and then she shares a picture that's like, really? Girl, do you not have any, were they just not invited to dinner? Are there people not at the table that are missing? Maybe all the diverse people are, you know, still swimming in the pool. I, don’t know what's happening. You really missed the mark. So, yeah.

Michelle Kane:

Yeah. Did she post it to her Instagram?

Karen Swim, APR:

Oh God. She posted it to her Instagram and poor baby. She, she like a lamb to the slaughter.

Michelle Kane:

Girl, just keep her,

Karen Swim, APR:

Where's purple? Where are the purple people in your picture? ‘Cause I'm not seeing purple. I'm not seeing any color here.

Michelle Kane:

It's also like, ooh look at all of us fabulous people, especially during a writer's strike. Like really <laugh> and I, not to say, I know they're being supportive.

Karen Swim, APR:

<Laugh>. I agree. But you know, how often have we as communicators, God bless her PR people. How often have we been in that situation where we have clients that don't make the connection between who they are as a corporation or who they represent. And things that they might share publicly. I've said to clients that even when you're doing things and you have interviews that are about your personal life and it has nothing to do with the job that you hold, please remember that that job that you hold as the CEO of a company or a founder, they're intertwined. And so you want to make sure that there's alignment and you do have to be mindful of that. It doesn't mean that you should be fake and inauthentic, but it does mean, think. You have to think about these things. You can't just do things without thought. That's just not a good move. And it'll ruin the good work that you really are trying to do.

Michelle Kane:

Agree, agree. Well, that was a lot that we brought before you today. But we hope it gets you thinking and we hope that you will continue this conversation with colleagues and others and let's just keep that door of conversation open. And we appreciate you for giving us your time. We would love it if you would share this around if you found it of value. Check us out at soloprpro.com and until next time, thanks for listening to That Solo Life.