Episode 52: Crisis Communications with Chris McCloud, Part One

00;00;08;17 – 00;01;32;21
Rick Hoaglund
The world of public relations may seem like a far cry from a tool that you would use in your daily life. Whether you’re a big business owner, you run a small store or even your personal brand, public relations is already a part of your strategy, whether you know it or not. In a Forbes magazine article entitled “Why is PR so Essential for New Businesses?” the authors point out that there are many reasons. The authors of this article are a group of selected executives, and the reasons that they point out apply to anyone who’s selling themselves in a job interview or to draw attention to their online profiles, and more. It’s not just businesses that benefit from public relations strategies, by the way. Forbes top five reasons for adopting a public relations strategy are: Number one, you need to establish a deep stakeholder relationship. Number two, your business identity must be consistent and trustworthy. Number three, you have a chance to create your own desired brand narrative. Four, you have a story and you’d better tell it. And five, you want to connect with audiences and build goodwill. Today we’re talking to Chris McCloud, a co-founder of Pendulum PR. Chris, tell me a little bit about the world of PR like like, what is it? Let’s just start with something very basic. What is PR?

00;01;32;21 – 00;02;39;04
Chris McCloud
Well, firstly, if you ask ten people that question, you’ll probably get ten different answers depending on, you know, what their view of PR is. Public relations is what PR stands for, and it is just that. It is, you know, relating to the public. It is a, usually an organization or a company’s way of communicating with the public, and usually in multiple different ways to, you know, make sure that the public knows what they do, who they are, you know, why they’re important, most consistently, to any number of different, different audiences. And, you know, it’s critical in shaping a brand’s image, building trust, building credibility with the public. And it involves a number of different communication disciplines. Media outreach, storytelling, strategic communications. Those are all part of, of a good PR plan that ultimately, hopefully helps create positive perceptions and helps companies and organizations mitigate potential reputation risks.

00;02;39;06 – 00;02;55;00
Rick Hoaglund
So if I’m a small company, is it important that I have a PR strategy? I mean, I guess I guess I understand it for large companies, but what if I am, you know, if I own a couple of grocery stores or I’m a guy that owns a hardware store, is it important to have a strategy for that as well?

00;02;55;02 – 00;04;08;02
Chris McCloud
Without a doubt, depending on how big you are or how big your audience is or what your goals are, that, that communications strategy or that public relations strategy can change. Public relations in what we do, in our, at our company Pendulum PR is, is really just a part of, an organization’s overall communication or brand plan. If you own grocery stores, you might attack a public relations or a communication plan a bit differently than if you own a service based organization or if you are a mission driven organization. But in any case, no matter what your business is, no matter what your organization is, you have a mission. You have goals and you have an audience that you want to communicate with. And so public relations works and should be utilized by every organization. That doesn’t mean you have to hire a professional to do those things. But every organization would benefit from a strong public relations and marketing and branding plan.

00;04;08;05 – 00;04;29;13
Rick Hoaglund
So when I think of public relations and it’s probably just because I’m kind of old, I always think of, you know, outreach to the, to the traditional newspapers and television, but I bet you that it’s much different now. Like today’s public relations strategies are very different than just traditional media. What all’s involved in that?

00;04;29;15 – 00;06;11;28
Chris McCloud
Well, you’re not wrong that with the evolution of life in general, that public relations is probably changed, evolved as well over the years. And I get the question a lot: What is the difference between PR and advertising? And one of the things I start with is, is that public relations does focus on earned media like news coverage. It’s not as much about paid media, but in today’s world, those two things complement each other more than they don’t. In other words, we have clients that run the gamut. We’re in industries from aviation to health care to consumer tech to public affairs. And more times than not, our agency works with our clients on a number of different levels. Earned media is definitely one of those things. Working with the news media, working with reporters and news outlets, whether they’re traditional news outlets or digital news outlets, which are, you know, growing obviously exponentially, at this point. But we also work with them on a number of other platforms. Social media drives most conversations. I myself get most of my information from social media. Whatever your platform of choice is, they’re all doing it. I think, you know, a lot of times as an older person myself and, you know, I just turned 50 today, as a matter of fact.

00;06;12;00 – 00;06;13;02
Rick Hoaglund
Happy birthday.

00;06;13;05 – 00;07;05;07
Chris McCloud
Thank you. I don’t necessarily get my news from Tik Tok, but my 13 year old daughter does, and my 22 year old daughter does, and my 19 year old son does. I’m more of a Twitter or an X person. I’m on Facebook. All of these platforms deliver information. I think sometimes we get bogged down with news as the buzz word, but it’s really just information. How are you taking in information? Where are you? Where are the sources? You are going to get that information. And as an organization who’s trying to communicate with different, audiences, you need to understand where those audiences are going to get their information and what sources they trust to get that information, so that you can communicate effectively with that audience.

00;07;05;09 – 00;07;09;29
Rick Hoaglund
Does a PR effort use influencers?

00;07;10;01 – 00;08;31;03
Chris McCloud
It can. Sure. And again, I think that all depends on, you know, the type of industry, that you are working with. I think it depends on your, you know what, and what audience you are trying to communicate with. You know, you can kind of throw out tradition at this stage of the game anymore. More and more clients are now trying to think outside the box, or at least we, as an agency, try to get organizations to think a little bit more outside the box. What is it that you’ve done in the past? How has it worked for you? Now let’s see if we can find some other ways to stretch that potential and to reach, a larger target audience through maybe thinking outside the box. Years ago, you probably wouldn’t have thought Snoop Dogg and Martha Stewart would come together and do collaborations. That’s just one example of maybe a, a nontraditional collaboration. But now you see those things all the time, and you are seeing brands try to stretch themselves, try to reinvent themselves with, different types of public communication that years ago, maybe you wouldn’t have ever thought that brand would be involved with.

00;08;31;05 – 00;08;43;23
Rick Hoaglund
When a company comes to you and they’re interested in your services and you take them on as a client. What are some of the things that you’re searching in the company to determine what’s the right strategy for them? What are you looking for?

00;08;43;26 – 00;10;21;28
Chris McCloud
Well, one, I want to understand what type of audience they’re communicating with. You know, every, every organization has a specific, you know, a target audience. Here’s the priority, whether it’s, you know, men 18 to 25 or whether it’s adults 18 to 65, there’s a, there’s a, there’s a specific window of, of, of, you know, the audience. You have to define who the audience is first. And we really do try to get, take a deep dive with our clients. We really need more than just surface level information. Anybody can get on to a website, look at who you are and make a determination about, you know, what your organization is all about. But as an agency, it’s our job to take a deep dive and really get involved with that company as if we were, a part of their internal fabric. You know, you asked earlier about the different types of, of PR and communication. There’s public communication and there’s also internal communication that is part of the PR spectrum that we work with clients to help achieve. Meaning, how do we communicate with our employees? How do we communicate with our constituents, people that are tied to our organization directly? The public obviously is, is one piece of that. But you really need a different approach. You need different messaging. And you really need to study the audience to really understand how to truly and most effective communicate with that audience.

00;10;22;00 – 00;10;46;14
Rick Hoaglund
What if a company decides that their target audience is very different than what they had originally set out for? You know, a company that says, we were very conservative and maybe it’s a clothing line, a conservative clothing line. Now we want to go to a younger audience because we believe that the market might be better in the industry to go for that type of audience. Is that a huge undertaking for a company? I mean, this is changing their public face.

00;10;46;17 – 00;14;41;28
Chris McCloud
Oh, without a doubt. I mean, if you are changing your audience, then you are changing, you know, the, the type of communication and your change, you need to be changing your messaging to, again, adapt to and meet that audience where they are. And it’s, it’s not as, obviously the, you know, meeting them where they are includes. Okay, so if we’re going from, I don’t know, let’s just say we’re going from, you know, an age group of, you know, 25 to 45 and we’re going to reinvent that to 18 to 25 year olds. You know, you that group speaks a different language. That group trusts a different, different platforms to get their information. That group expects, in order to build trust, that group expects you to talk and look and feel a certain way. And it’s different than, than the, the audience that you might have been going after before. So, you know, obviously there’s all kinds of, of, of other factors that would, that, that would help you build, rebuild your brand. I mean, at that point you are talking about a brand rebuild, and there are companies that do that. Now, I personally don’t do a lot of brand PR as much as, as other people in our, in our, company do, our firm does. But, you know, you look, you just, just turn on the television and you’ll see older brands trying to, you know, capture a new, a new audience. You know, whatever that brand might be. You know, we, we talk about, and I don’t even want to name examples, but but just turn on the TV and you’ll, you’ll see, brands that are constantly, maybe not reinventing themselves, but they’re definitely tweaking their brand. They’re definitely wanting to stay in front of the audience. If you have a clothing company and let’s just use our age group as an example, you know that middle aged group, and they were a hip, incredibly hip brand when I was growing up. If they are still doing the exact same things they did before, chances are my kids are not paying attention to them. But there are brands that say, okay, well, we need to keep Rick and Chris, on the hook. We want them to think we are relevant and cool and, and, and worthy of, of their loyalty. But we also have, you know, Jacob and Maggie and Sophie that, you know, this new generation that we also want to attract. And you will see companies that have completely different messaging strategies and branding campaigns for completely different audiences. I think of, I’ll use one as an example. Buick is doing that as we speak, and they have been doing it for, you know, over a decade trying to rebrand. When I think of Buick, I think of my grandmother and grandfather’s car. But Buick is, is changing the way that they market to, to those audiences. Car manufacturers are a, are a great example of that same thing with Cadillac. They are not selling necessarily Cadillacs to people that would be my grandmother and grandfather anymore. They are selling them to a younger audience and not, and younger than me. They want 35 year olds to pay attention to that. They want the, the youngest possible, demographic that has money to pay attention to them and keep them as an option for when they go to buy their next car. And you watch those commercials all the time and you see how they communicate like that for sure.

00;14;42;00 – 00;14;56;27
Rick Hoaglund
How do you know if your strategy, your, your public relations strategy is working? I guess one is sales, but, and how much, what is the time frame for that? Is it an immediate turnaround or does it take a while.

00;14;57;00 – 00;17;15;21
Chris McCloud
Yeah. The best way to, to measure that and a mistake that sometimes organizations make is they don’t have a baseline. Where, where are you at right now? What are you doing right now? Who are you communicating with right now? How are you doing it? And, and what are the results right now before we start anything new and, and then defining your goals. But, you know, before you enter into, any kind of a public relations campaign, what are the goals? The goals might be sales. Obviously if you’re a retail brand and you are selling something, you know, your goal is to, is to sell more of, of that, that thing. If you’re a service based business, you know, you might want to get more clients, but there are many other organizations that aren’t involved in, in business in that way. And a lot of the organizations that I work with on the public relate, on the public affairs side of things, the nonprofits the government funded, the public, the public funded entities, they may be just driving awareness. So how do we measure those things? Well, you make sure that when you enter into a campaign, if it, you got to drive an audience somewhere on those types of campaigns. So your, you know, how you measure the success might be in, well, we’re we’re driving far more traffic to our website because we can see it in the Google, Google Analytics. We are you know, we are engaging with the public more. We are driving our audience numbers up on our social media platforms. We are getting people to sign up for different things. You know, there are many ways to tell whether your organization is, is meeting its goals, but you need to define those goals before, you don’t define them midway through. Now what you do, what you do is you set the goals, and then a good PR campaign will constantly adapt. It will constantly look at whether we’re reaching the goals, whether we’re not reaching the goals and make adjustments throughout the entire campaign so that you maximize that, that campaign’s potential.

00;17;15;23 – 00;17;36;29
Rick Hoaglund
So when we’ve talked about PR, we’ve really talked about PR on a, on a scale that’s a business or something. Is there a PR for individuals? And I’m not talking about just actors and actresses and musicians, but if I’m, if I’m actually out there, maybe I’m wanting to find a job. Are there PR strategies I should use for myself?

00;17;37;01 – 00;19;05;17
Chris McCloud
There are PR strategies that you can use for yourself. Absolutely. I think, you know, a lot of times we think, when we think of individual PR, we think of what might be called a publicist. You mentioned actors and actresses. But there are, you know, many other, you know, do you think Bill Gates has a, has a PR, has PR effort underway for himself? Of course he does. And he is an individual. You know, it doesn’t have to be just actors and actresses. There are, you know, there are philanthropists. There are, you know, activists. There are, you know, all kinds of of different individuals that have individual brands. You know, Elon Musk would be, you know, an example. Not to get political, Donald Trump is an example. And, you know, there are, there are, there are very formal PR efforts for individuals. There are, there are efforts that are just kind of, of winged and, and, you know, but, but at the end of the day, all of those people that I mentioned are true to their brand. You know, they are, they are true to their brand and they know their audiences. And they know what their audiences expect. So, yes, there is absolutely, you know, there are there are PR efforts and individuals can certainly take advantage of, of public relations strategies.

00;19;05;19 – 00;19;28;20
Rick Hoaglund
So I know we’re going to talk about what, I’m going to ask you a question that I want you to get, want you to get too into the weeds because we’re gonna talk about it in our next segment. But, tell me about how PR works when you have a damaged reputation. Is it an important tool you need to have in your toolbox and always be ready to pull out? I mean, what, how does, how does that work?

00;19;28;22 – 00;20;52;12
Chris McCloud
I don’t, I don’t think it matters what organization you are with what, what industry you might be involved with. What your missions or your goals are. Every organization should be mindful of reputation management. It is far harder to fix something reactively than it is to be prepared for it proactively. And that is where a good crisis communication or a reputation management strategy begins is to be aware of or be as aware as you can be of what those pitfalls might be and start to be, you know, start to, to have a preparedness plan. I liken it to a family, every family, you know we, you well, I used to see those here and see those, those public service announcements all the time, you know, have a family preparedness kit. What happens in a, in your home if there’s a fire? It, it will be far less likely that you will escape unscathed in a fire in your house if you don’t have a prevention plan, then if you do have one, understand where the routes are that you’re going to take. Understand how you’re going to get out of the house. Understand what the do’s and don’ts are. If there is a fire in your house and it is very, very applicable in a really relatable way, that example.

00;20;52;15 – 00;21;25;20
Rick Hoaglund
In the next episode we’ll explore using PR during a crisis. What are the tools businesses and individuals can use to keep the goodwill, the brand, the connections that you’ve already established at a time when it’s definitely not business as normal. To hear that episode, and other episodes of OnTopic with Empathia, visit our website empathia.com. Follow us on social media @empathia and subscribe to OnTopic with Empathia to hear new episodes as soon as they go live. I’m Rick Hoaglund, thanks for listening to OnTopic with Empathia.