Modern PR - Combining PR, Influencers, Event Marketing, Podcasting and Brand Collaboration

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Welcome to today's episode.

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Our guest today is Jordanne.

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She runs her own PR marketing agency and she's been doing it for 15 years.

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She helps businesses with PR, influencers and event promotion.

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Welcome to the show.

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Thank you, I'm so excited to be here.

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So, before we jump into a story about some of the marketing you've done, that you're most proud of, why don't you give us a minute or two of context about who you are and what you do?

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Yeah, my agency is called Julep Publicity and, like you said, I've been working in PR for going on more than 15 years now and 2021,.

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I received my accreditation in public relations from PRSA just to really deepen my knowledge of the field and the practice.

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I started my career working in agencies, so I worked in a lot of different agencies.

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I worked in-house, I worked for government agencies as well and, yeah, I now just really try to work with brands, primarily like female, family and food brands, and with leaders who have purpose and want to make an impact.

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Awesome.

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So let's jump right in.

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Why don't you go ahead and share with us a story about some of the remarkable marketing you've done, that you're most proud of?

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Yeah, One of my most recent examples was working with a company called Post Pamper.

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Post Pamper is San Diego's first postpartum retreat.

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I'm a mother of two little boys.

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I personally was able to relate very closely to this brand and understood the importance of postpartum care, and so what this retreat does is they take women.

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As soon as you leave the hospital, you can go to this luxurious hotel and have 24-7 care, doula, night nursery, nutritious meals and food.

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All of you're just taken care of and pampered right after giving birth.

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And so one of the challenges with this client is that part-time retreats are not common here in the US.

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There are only a few throughout the country.

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They're common practice overseas.

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So with this, there's a major education hurdle when it comes to communicating about this service.

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So as I started working with a client, I realized, you know, we're going to need more than just media relations here.

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We're going to need people to actually be able to see, touch and feel the experience that Post Pamper offers.

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So that's exactly what we did.

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I combined media relations, so we got placement in Forbes.

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We got placement in San Diego Business Journal because we wanted to be hyper-local.

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We got placements in the local news scene.

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But in addition to that, I helped Post Pamper set up a launch party and at that launch party it was at one of the hotels, La Berge in Del Mar in San Diego, and I invited influencers in the area, I invited media, we invited other healthcare practitioners as well who would be major stakeholders when sharing the word and spreading the word to new moms.

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And what we did is we actually set up a room at LaBear's just off of the launch party so that people could walk through, they could experience it and they could get a sense of the actual offering and what Post Pamper had to offer.

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So we had a great response.

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We had close to 100 attendees attend this launch party, tons of influencers, influencers with hundreds of thousands of followers new moms, pregnant moms so it was a very relatable experience for these influencers.

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And one of the results was I had a local, smaller media outlet attend locally San Diego, and the editor came out, attended the event again, got to experience it in real life because of that education hurdle just something that it's a little bit harder to communicate via email.

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She was so excited about it so she did a podcast interview with the founder after the launch event and posted a reel about it on her feed and the reel went completely viral.

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So I think it's had over a million views, which has resulted in almost a full booking of Post Pamper.

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So these series of events, like all of the things combined, really led to a really impactful result for the client.

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That's amazing.

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So one of the things that I've noticed is that PR has really changed over the last five to 10 years.

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Part of it is because how journalism has changed and the way reporters work is they have less resources and things have really evolved on that side.

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But it's also that the four things combined you mentioned is a different combined PR strategy.

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So you had the media and you had local media, but you also then had the influencers and you had an event.

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So you were doing event marketing and then you had podcasting and the combination of those things is really what got you the ultimate reach that sold it out.

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Yeah, exactly, and I think that's needed now.

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Media relations definitely serves its purpose, but it looks so different than when I first started in my career.

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When I first started out, we would go to New York City, we would do desk sites, you would get your placement in a magazine that everyone picked up and read, and that was it right.

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That was the gold standard, and now media relations aren't moving the needle like they used to.

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So really, a multiple pronged approach when it comes to communications and PR, I think is critical to success.

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So you can't be single threaded.

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You have to have this multifaceted approach where you're thinking about the different ways to get to that reach, because I don't know that people read as much print publications as they used to, and I think they read stuff online, but even the reading the news online is just one piece of it.

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Exactly, and even another thing that I forgot to mention it was insanely successful with Post Pamper is I did brand outreach too, so we had major brands like Kool Skincare, Boppy Baby Products, Honest Baby Products all engage either with the launch party or Post Pamper itself, and so having additional brand collaboration and support was another element that I think is really important and valuable when it comes to PR.

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It's you're building relationships with stakeholders, and stakeholders could be the media, but they could be influencers, they could be other brands and they could even be healthcare providers, in this case, in the local area.

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Yeah, so I think PR is really starting to just expand beyond media relations.

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And it's interesting.

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You said at the beginning that you work with very specific types of clients and I have kids myself, so the example you give resonates.

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I think people do need a different experience after having kids and it's an important topic.

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It's a mission-driven topic, if you will, much more than, say, software Not that there's anything wrong with software, but it's a lot more sort of hits at home.

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If you will, then software is an experience.

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How do people deal with postpartum depression and get the care they need after they've had kids?

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It's definitely a transition and so I think that's a story right, because it matters.

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And I think that's why having the founder on that podcast and then it went viral because it is the type of client you're taking the story then resonates with people versus hey, here's a new product launch widget.

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That doesn't get the same sort of traction, right.

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I would argue that it depends on the audience.

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With a software client because I've been doing this for a long time and under agency umbrellas, I've worked with all sorts of clients, including major software companies, and it really just depends on your target audience.

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So I think if you're going to an AWS conference and you have a software that you're launching there, the story is different, but there's still a story there and it's valuable to that audience.

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When it comes to software projects and things like that, positioning leaders as thought leaders and what they can offer to that community is really valuable.

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So, yeah, but with this particular story it went viral on instagram, but that makes sense.

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There's a lot of women on instagram who are pregnant or have been pregnant, and so it resonates with that audience.

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It's the right channel.

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Absolutely.

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So.

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I'm not being negative about PR for software companies.

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I actually was just making the point that I think everyone has a story to tell.

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But what I actually, when I've worked with software companies for the last 20 years, what I've told them is you have to tell a story announcement or a service announcement, because that in itself is not interesting, and software companies can have interesting stories too, like I worked with one, and the founder's story was what was interesting is that he has started this company and he bootstrapped it for four years and then he built it up into something really big and successful without getting any funding.

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And then he built it up into something really big and successful without getting any funding and he talked about how he did that and how he built a team and there was a story there that was beyond just the software that they were offering.

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That was interesting.

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So there's always a way to tell a story, but you have to have a story in order to get coverage and traction in this multifaceted approach, right?

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Yeah, exactly I think a story or ataceted approach, right.

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Yeah, exactly I think a story or at least an experience, right?

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So, with PostPamper as a good example, I really felt, because the education hurdle I needed to set up an experience and let influencers and media create their story through their lens of that experience, and so I think that's another important element, but absolutely the story.

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That's what PR is all about, right, sharing your story and communicating that.

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I've always had to educate founders and CEOs that I've worked with is that news outlets and I would say even influencers, and the new multifaceted approach as an example an example.

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They're not there just to be a promotional bullhorn for you.

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You have to find the story for them.

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That's always the biggest thing of why is this news, why is this a story?

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Why should people care about this?

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That's the hard work in PR that I've always had to flesh out with people and the best stories get the best results, and I think you have a second story you were going to share with us like a double header today.

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A second, oh, yeah, this is just one.

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Talking more specifically about impact, and I had a client that I work with.

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It's a global nonprofit called the Life you Can Save and they're a meta charity, so they research and evaluate other charities that are in extreme poverty and do a lot of research and data to make it easier for donors to donate.

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And one just great example of the power of PR and taking it a step further is I got my client on the Rich Roll podcast.

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Rich Roll podcast is a very well known podcast that has millions of listeners and instead of just letting the interview just run, what I propose to do is take it a step further and because it's a nonprofit, we had the ability to really engage the audience.

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And with this I propose to the Rich Roll team can we do a donation match so that your listeners can actually, if they're inclined or inspired by the story, after the interview they can go to a landing page, they can get a free copy of the Life you Can Save, which is a book, and then they can make a donation and we have a donor who's willing to match that donation and the result of this was $15,000 in donations, which was matched up to 30,000.

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So a total of $30,000 in donations accompanied with 1000 books requested, which is huge for our organization.

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So I just share that example because you could just let the interview go and leave it at that, or you could push it a step further and see what types of action the audience can take from that.

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So it's a fun example to share because the 30,000 in donations anytime that goes to a nonprofit is fun and very impactful.

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The power of podcasting.

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It's a whole new channel that's really been growing in popularity in the last couple of years and I love that interactive approach to it Instead of just blasting a message out.

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Having a really good campaign and offer there, the matching offer was a fantastic execution to engage in the podcast channel.

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Are you seeing across your clients a big trend with podcasting?

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If people are putting creative strategies into it that they can get good results from podcasting.

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Yeah, absolutely.

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I think it's so valuable in a couple of different ways.

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One, you get to share your expertise, position yourself as an expert or a thought leader.

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Two, you get to reuse the content when your and share it on your own channels.

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So in my opinion, those two things are even more valuable than getting, like, the direct leads, which obviously is a great benefit.

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But what I think is most beneficial with podcasts is being able to showcase your skillset on someone else's channel, like I'm doing right now.

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Absolutely, absolutely so.

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Is there any final words of advice you could share with marketers who are listening about the new world of PR we've been discussing?

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If you were having a cup of coffee with them and they said how do they win in this new world of PR that we've been talking about here, what would you say?

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I would say multiple like facets when it comes to PR.

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So multiple pronged approach is going to be best, and focusing on different areas collaboration, media relations, events and influencers is the new way to go, and not to just be siloed into one avenue of PR.

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That would be my suggestion.

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Awesome, great advice, I think.

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So appreciate you being with us today and sharing these stories and this advice.

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I'm going to link to your agency's website and your LinkedIn in the show notes so if people want to reach out and learn more, they can do so very easily.

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We appreciate you spending time with us today.

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Thank you so much for having me.