Sleepless in PR

One of our roles as PR practitioners is working with in-house marketing teams. Today’s episode was inspired by a recent article by Agility PR, 33 Comms Issues Keeping CMOs and Brand Managers Up at Night. Join us as we talk about their current pain points and how we can be a valued resource.

 

Read the article:

https://www.agilitypr.com/pr-news/public-relations/33-comms-issues-keeping-cmos-and-brand-managers-up-at-night/

 

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 wonderful co-host, Karen Swim of Solo PR Pro. Hi, Karen. How are you today?

Karen Swim (00:20):

I'm doing so well, Michelle. How are you doing?

Michelle Kane (00:23):

I'm doing pretty well. We're dealing with the haze from the fires in Quebec. Thanks, Canada. We know you love us. So it's, a Roseanne Roseannadanna world. It's always something. So we just gotta get through it. .

Karen Swim (00:43):

Yeah. We are also under air quality alert here, Michigan. So if you're listening to us, by the time this podcast drops, we hope that your air is nice and clean and clear wherever you are. You're not under temperatures that are either they're scorching or too cold, and you're having a fabulous start of your summer. Even though it's not summer yet, everybody has sort of resigned themselves to the fact that we're here. So, yeah.

Michelle Kane (01:10):

Yeah. Please go outside and take a big breath for us, .

Karen Swim (01:14):

Yeah, please do.

Michelle Kane (01:16):

Well, speaking of nightmarish conditions, ,

Karen Swim (01:20):

Uhhuh, nice segue.

Michelle Kane (01:21):

Thank you. We decided to take on this topic today of things that make us lose sleep, things that might cause us to worry just things in the industry that may be real or manufactured in our minds. Talking about what's going on out there in the PR world and the communications world in general. I mean, we do touch on these things all the time, quite frankly, because we're here to keep you as sharp as possible. But we thought let's focus on some of our fears. .

Karen Swim (01:59):

Yeah. I love this. And this episode was inspired by a piece that Agility PR wrote, shout out to Agility. Hey, y'all. And, the title of the article, which we will link in the show notes, is 33 Issues Keeping, who's It Keeping Up Tonight? I forget

Michelle Kane (02:22):

All of Us

Karen Swim (02:25):

Keeping CMOs and Brand Managers up at night. So it was a really interesting look at, you know, several things, and I always like to know from the marketing side of the house, the pure marketing side of the house, and also from the brand side, what's troubling people, because often in our role as outsourced PR agency, the CMO is actually one of our primary contacts, and we work closely with the marketing team. So I found it really interesting and very on point to what others are seeing as well. So let's dive in.

Michelle Kane (03:08):

Yeah, absolutely. One, thing that jumped out of me was a, collection of four or five of the issues all, at least in my mind, speaking to what is sort of an attention deficit disorder that's happening out there. Yeah. many of the things keeping these CMOs up at night is, you know, optimizing the client experience, keeping customers engaged, aligning your brand with the consumer experience. And, really this just reinforced what I and many of my colleagues are experiencing, even when you're trying to either reintroduce programming that had been put on pause or that had been put online during the pandemic in-person events. And I think we're well past issues of participation in in-person events being because of fear of getting covid. But we're still all trying to put our finger on, well, how do we get everyone back? And we're coming to the realization of it's not just like turning the switch on and droves of people will return.

I have seen this literally across the board. Chambers, I have a friend who is displaying her photography, so she's having like a gallery event and its, you know, response has been underwhelming, even though before it would've been amazing. Now, I think one of the main drivers of that is really we have realigned ourselves of not running from thing to thing to thing. We, just aren't doing that to ourselves anymore, even though they might all be fantastic choices, but as a marketer, how do we reset those expectations? How do we handle that? How do we move forward while still serving our clients fun.

Karen Swim (05:03):

You know, it's also interesting that you bring that out because this article talked about, you know, being post Covid and, and you're right across industries while we are no longer in the heat of the pandemic and some of the protocols and things that prohibited us from doing things, we're still trying to figure out what normal is. And, and yeah. And everyone's trying to figure out how to do their jobs because consumer behaviors have shifted. But now the question is, well, we know that there were some shifts because of the pandemic, but we went from thing to thing to thing. You know, we went from, you know, pandemic thing to political thing to social justice thing to economic thing. And it's really hard to determine like, okay, what's the underlying issue? Because if you understand the issue, you can often then you can address it. But I'm not, I'm honestly not sure at this point. I believe that it's a combination of things. I think habits definitely change. I think our muscles are we're still learning to rebuild our muscles for socializing and gathering, and we're choosing, we're choosing fewer things, as you said, but then there's also the budgetary issues. Yeah. You know, look, everything is really expensive, and so people are being more discerning with their dollars and because they just are not going as far.

Michelle Kane (06:40):

That's true. That's true too. I, and I think it's, it's like you said, it's all of those things. And the frustrating part as a PR professional and a marketer is you feel so helpless because we are so used to nailing what the problem is and swooping in with three ideas to make it work, and Yeah. You know, I, I find that sometimes, even with, you know, a friend of mine that I help out, I'm just like, I wish I could have a hard and fast answer for you, and I don't, and that makes me feel terrible. So we're here today to tell you, don't feel terrible, because it is still, it is definitely something that is coming together now because I've never wanted to stay in downerville I'm going to flip that into, it creates opportunities for us, you know, to do things differently or, or just really re reevaluate things.

Karen Swim (07:33):

I think reevaluate unleash your creativity. But, but here's the most important thing that has not changed. You really have to serve your audience and go to the, Solo PR Pro blog and read our blog posts from yesterday because this, this leans directly into that. You have to really give people a story and make them feel and see themselves as part of this event. You have to make it more than just, Hey, here's a writing conference. Oh, here is a media relations workshop. There has to be more to that. So it's, yeah. It's, it's in how you tell the story around those events, around those things that you're, you're trying to get people engaged around. And, and I think that this is a great opportunity to hone our storytelling skills and understand that we have to tell powerful stories in order to get people to care.

(08:34):

Then we have to clearly articulate the actions that we want them to take. Quite frankly, I'll just speak for myself. There have been so many in-person events, and sometimes the subject matter captivates me, but then I'm not really moved by the way that they're telling the story about the content. I don't, this really benefiting me, and I don't see it benefiting me in a way that makes me want to put down dollars. Right. The conferences are not cheap. And with everything having gone up, I too am watching my dollars and being, you know, very conscious about how I'm spending and the stories are not grabbing me. So, as an industry, if we're not telling stories that resonate with other PR professionals, how is that translating into the work that we do for our client audiences or for our company audiences?

Michelle Kane (09:30):

Yeah, I think you, you nailed it right there. I mean, people have to see themselves in the narrative that you're putting, in front of them that way. It's, all part of the content experience, right? It's what we preach every day. You know, establishing your know, like, and trust. You need to make sure that the person that you are trying to do business with is going to get on board at that level of, oh, yeah, you know what? That's me. I really, I really need to do this, and, and I know I'm going to get something out of it as opposed to come to my thing. You know what to do. It's, it's, it's like the, it's like the old school answering machine messages, right? Hi, here's my phone. You know what to do. Well, no, no. We really need to hone in on the whole customer experience when they engage with whatever we put out there, content initiatives, events.

Karen Swim (10:26):

Absolutely. I mean, I see a lot of dry, boring facts or, you know, it's, you know, come because this fantastic speaker. Yeah. Okay, well, that person might be famous to somebody else, but not to me. I don't even know who that is. So

Michelle Kane (10:43):

Or, you know, I can find 'em on YouTube, right. .

Karen Swim (10:45):

Yeah. Like, that's not exactly enough for me. I need, you know, and so yeah. It, it is an opportunity for us to tell stronger, more powerful stories. One of the other things that jumped out at me from this list, there are a couple things. One is that ROI was at the top of the list. Yeah. we don't even need to go into this in detail because we've talked about it ad nauseum on this podcast. There is a critical need. So I want that to really sink in today. If CMOs are up at night, because they need to show ROI simultaneously, they're worried about budgets, and of course they're worried about layoffs because all of this trickles downhill. If you cannot demonstrate roi, your budgets get cut, your budgets get cut, and then you're still forced to show ROI. You're going to have to start making harder decisions.

(11:44):

And this is happening in every industry. Right now. We're seeing marketing budgets being cut. We know that marketing budgets are always the first to get cut. They're always the first to get cut, because CEOs do not see the ROI. Now, if they saw marketing as a sales driver, and they could make that connection that this spend is actually driving in business, and rather than cutting it right now, as we're trying to drive to the bottom line, we need to increase it. Mm-Hmm. , clearly we're not doing a good enough job at demonstrating that line. And as outsourced PR people, again, if you're not comfortable with ROI please learn. There's so many resources to help you to get better at reporting metrics and showing your value. And we can no longer say, well, you know, these things take time. Well, you know, there's not always a direct line. You have to align with what your clients care about most. And today, that's money. And, and guess what? It was, it was money 10 years ago. It was money 30 years ago. Because no one wants to spend, if they're not seeing a financial benefit, they have to see the financial benefit in their decisions. And so it's up to us to make sure that we make those connections.

Michelle Kane (13:07):

Yeah. Even more importantly, because we know that their first instinct to cut is the last thing you should do, because how else are people gonna know about you? But okay, CEOs,

Karen Swim (13:22):

And, and we know that, but here's, you know, yeah. Just go back to story again, right? Yes. We know that every single marketing, PR, communications professional knows that it, it's the wrong decision to make. But are we telling the right story to the people who hold the pen? Are we, are we making it powerful enough for them? Are we articulating it clearly enough that it's not just something that we all know, it's not inside baseball knowledge, but that it's something that they now know, understand, have internalized, and are working around not making those cuts. Right. And if the answer is no, they don't get it, then we have to point those fingers back at ourself and go, okay, let's roll up our sleeves and figure out how to do a better job of demonstrating this. Because clearly we're not doing that. And, and, I mean, it's happened to me too. It's happened to all of us. And I think we have to hold ourselves accountable. Like, okay, where did I miss it? What information did I not provide and did I not tell the story in the right way?

Michelle Kane (14:33):

Yeah. And, and I mean, that's a huge point that you're making because it comes back to the, another thing that we, we keep saying is, you know, everything communicates. So you're not just storytelling for the brand or for the client. You need to be storytelling to the client as well.

Karen Swim (14:51):

Absolutely. And storytelling that plays into another thing. So here's something that really jumped out at me on this list. It said that 15% of the nightmares that they've listed in this post had increased this year. Yes. And number two on the list was aligning brand and consumer expectations. And so I found that incredibly interesting because I was just reading a piece that talked about how brands are really struggling. So consumers, you know, we went through this, you know, the pandemic and all of the things that happened, and consumers had a heightened demand for brands being corporate citizens. They wanted brands to be active in, issues in national issues. They wanted them to speak out about policies, they wanted them to speak out about social justice. The tide has turned a little bit in that we're here in the United States, and you know, I'm sure this is true in other countries because every country has had their political turmoil of late.

(16:07):

There is this turning of the tide where the divisions are so deep and where issues have become so weaponized that no matter what a brand does, they're going to make someone unhappy. Yeah. And so we've seen this with Bud Light. We've seen it with Target, we've seen it, we've just seen it across the board where, you know, even libraries, which used to be in my mind, a center of neutrality have become a lightning rod. And so it's really difficult. So, you know, you're c of a company and you want to stay true to your company mission, vision, and values. You want to stay true to your audience and be supportive of your audience. You want to be a good corporate citizen. But if you speak up about things, then you risk, like, Bud light, they said, you know, there was a quote that said they're taking a permanent 15% haircut.

(17:04):

They're, those people are gone. They're not coming back. You may as well lower your expectations to meet the new reality. So this is true of companies. And so if you're a brand, you know, they would rather stay out of this. Trust me. They would rather just stay out of this and, and let the people have their say and just keep doing their thing and serving all of their customers with, with the things that they have to offer. But the audience is not allowing that, except the audience is so polarized. Right. That were almost a no win situation. And we PR people this, this hits us squarely in our wheelhouse because Sure does. Finding that crisis management, we are exercising those muscles like never before. I mean, yep. We are ripped in the crisis muscles, muscle department. I wish my abs were as ripped as my crisis muscle

Michelle Kane (18:02):

. Oh, if only that would work. Oh my goodness. That would be wonderful. Cause

Karen Swim (18:09):

We're really having to be so sharp, and we're having to question everything, and we're having to prepare brands that even when we have done all of the right things, even when we, we are 100% on the side of Right. Someone will be mad. Someone will be mad.

Michelle Kane (18:27):

Yeah. You know, and it can be very exhausting because it, it even comes down to even social media posts of do we say anything about this? Do we say, you know, do we just wish anyone anything? And Oh my gosh. And you know, I believe that at the crux of it all, truth still matters. Truth should still be our paramount core value. And from there, you need to work with your clients or help your clients navigate. Okay. What are these hills worth dying on, so to speak? You know, it's, with, with beer, it's a different question with libraries, a completely different question. I know I've shared with Karen, I'm working with our local library now, and it's just, the onslaught is maddening. And, you know, I guess to our advantage, it's not really based in truth, but it's still a brush fire that we have to deal with's.

Karen Swim (19:27):

You know, honestly, every brand should have a matrix of the issues. Yes. And when they're going to respond. One of the things that drives me crazy are things like, happy Memorial Day. Well, you don't say Happy Memorial Day. Cause Memorial Day is honoring fallen soldiers. It's actually a very solemn Right. Very serious holiday. I get it. You know, in America, if, if there's a holiday, we're going to have a cookout. We're going to w party. Except it really isn't a party type of holiday. No. I don't care how you spend it, you know, that's fine. Like, Americans are gonna do what we're gonna do. Hey, we got a day off, we are going to celebrate it. But in the way that you communicate to your audience should be appropriate. And brands are super guilty of this. How many companies have Memorial Day sales? Why are you having a Memorial Day sale Right. On a somber Holiday. Right. And, and by the way, how hypocritical are we? Other countries look at us and they're like, we don't understand America. You guys flyflags all the time, and your military people wear hats that, that have this stuff on it. And we're not even allowed to wear uniforms in public. And we never do this except for, except for on designated holidays. Right.

(20:49):

America, the patriotic country that flies flags all the time. And our military people walk around and we're thanking everybody for their service everywhere we go, me include it. Mm-Hmm. on the holidays that actually matter. , we don't spend them doing the things that they were meant to. How many of you are going to Veterans celebrations and really honoring our military? Right. Or shopping the Veteran's Day sales on Memorial Day. We're out here saying, happy Memorial Day. Well, what's happy about a bunch of people who died for our country? So

Michelle Kane (21:20):

, I know. It's, we're, we're, we're a little special as a culture,

Karen Swim (21:28):

You know, I mean, we're out there, you know, I see companies now that have turned their logosnto the pride colors. But

Michelle Kane (21:36):

Where are you the other months of the year?

Karen Swim (21:38):

Where are you the other months of the year? Yeah. What does your company really look like? You're celebrating every month, you know, native American Month, you're celebrating AAPI month, you're celebrating Black History Month, but you're a company that has zero diversity, like none. Right. Right. And so we have to, we have to exercise sanity in terms of our communication, and we have to be authentic. Right. And if you are not doing these things, then

Michelle Kane (22:10):

Don't participate

Karen Swim (22:11):

These prompts in these months to take action rather than just join the club and turn your logo a different color it. Right. It, it's just disingenuous. It's not Okay, don't do that. We know that PR pros know these things. And so our message to PR pros is stick to giving wise counsel. Do not be afraid to stand up to clients and always provide the right advice, because we know that, you know, that these things are absolutely insane. But you have to, again, this is communication. You have to communicate this to your clients, and you have to be willing to stand behind that and tell the stories that they understand why you can't just do these things. Why you can't be copycatting what everybody else is doing. I mean, I, I'm looking at all of the stuff and I'm like, wow, this is really fascinating. Mm-Hmm. and so not aligned with who you are as a company, but okay.

Michelle Kane (23:19):

Yeah. I mean, that's the main thing, right? You want to make sure that your clients know who they are, they know their identity, they know their, their ethos, they know their why. And, just work with that. Just, you know, and, and it's okay. I mean, if you don't jump on all the bandwagons, it doesn't mean you're not supportive of those issues. Yeah. And in fact, in many ways, it makes me feel like you're less exp exploitative of it. Right. if the, the, you know, walk your talk, if you do that every day, 365 days a year, you'll be much better off. You'll be more trusted. I'm not saying that all the companies that jump on the bandwagons are disingenuous, but you, you guys know what we mean, . It's,

Karen Swim (24:08):

Yeah.

Michelle Kane (24:09):

It's just so much better if you're just authentic every day of if someone can look at your, your client's brand and say, I know, you know, most of the time they're good people. I know they try. At least I know they're trying, they're trying to do the right thing by me and by their employees. So, you know, working from that angle, I hate to call it an angle, but working from that position yes. I think will serve you best. And of course, serve your clients best.

Karen Swim (24:38):

I completely agree with you. That is such a good point. And so, yeah. You know, it's, when I read through this list of issues, and as we've talked through this today and, and we barely, you know, obviously there were 33, we could go deep on any one of these 33. Yeah. It's, you know, it reminds me why public relations always ends up on the list of most stressful jobs,

Michelle Kane (25:04):

Right.

Karen Swim (25:04):

. And we want you to know that we see you, we care for you 365 days a year. We do, we do. Whether or not we're recording that, we have your back. And we understand that it's really tough. And so we want you not to be awake at night worrying about these issues. We want you to look at these lists and we want you to just sit down, you know, take some notes, reflect on your practices, because our goal is to always learn how to manage things better. And we should all do great work. Be proud of the work that we do. Be proud of where you are today, even as you strive to grow. Tomorrow, you know, every day is a chance to do better than you did the day before, but we want you to also, at the end of a good day, we want you to just lay your head down at night and sleep and not have night terrrors or not be stressed out and, and not be, you know, popping in acids because your clients have you in such angst. This work is tough. Yeah. And it's complex, but it's also rewarding. And it can be very fun. And you should feel good about the job that you're doing and not lay awake at night. Leave that to the CMOs. If, if they want to not sleep at night and have night terrors more power to you,

Michelle Kane (26:23):

Let 'em,

Karen Swim (26:24):

My job is to try and help you not to have that experience. I'm gonna do my part. I can't control everything, but when I'm working with you, my job is let's all get a good night's sleep. .

Michelle Kane (26:36):

Yeah, no, so true. Because, you know, I know as you and I have joked off, off air, it's like, yeah, when I actually get good sleep, it's amazing how much better I feel. Oh, it's all about the sleep. Oh. And, I know how hard it is sometimes to put those thoughts down and put them away, but what I tell myself is, there is nothing I can do about X, Y, or Z in the next six to eight hours. So I'm just going to put it in a little box and I'm going to sleep.

Karen Swim (27:05):

And by the way, you are so much better equipped to handle all of these issues when you sleep at night. So

Michelle Kane (27:11):

Oh, amen.

Karen Swim (27:13):

Issues. Keep you up at night, get a good night's sleep, and you know what, you'll wake up in the morning and you will live another day to tackle them all.

Michelle Kane (27:22):

That's right. You'll be less likely to freak out on someone, which is always a good thing, .

Karen Swim (27:26):

Yeah. On those days when you haven't slept well or you're just not feeling it, just make sure to protect others around you. It's like, yeah, I'm not peopling today, .

Michelle Kane (27:41):

Exactly. Exactly. Well, we hope we've provided some inspiration or some moments where you can just nod along and go, yeah, that's, that is what we're here for. Andif you're getting value out of us, please share us around tell people to come listen to That Solo Life. And until next time, thanks for listening.