In this episode, Larry and Mady sit down with Dr. Mimi Perreault, Assistant Professor of Public Relations and Mass Communications at the University of South Florida, for a wide-ranging conversation about crisis communication — and what we keep getting wrong.

Mimi draws on her background as a former journalist and PR pro to make the case for getting back to basics: face-to-face connection, authentic messaging, and knowing your audience well before a crisis ever hits. She talks through the real challenges of information fatigue, why social media is a niche tool — not a mass communication one — and how local journalism still plays an irreplaceable role when things go sideways.

The conversation covers long-term recovery storytelling, a sharp look at when brands cross the line from helpful to opportunistic after a disaster, and hard-won lessons from the pandemic. Mimi also shares a standout case study about a North Carolina sheriff who called out misinformation head-on after Hurricane Helene — and why it worked.

Oh, and Larry admits he'd be the first one running if aliens landed.

If you work in marketing, PR, or communications — especially with destinations, airports, or community-facing brands — this one's packed with practical insight.

IN THIS EPISODE:

• 00:07 - Introduction to Aqua Talks
• 02:39 - The Importance of Personal Connections in Public Relations
• 10:41 - Disaster Preparedness and Communication
• 17:37 - Crisis Communication and Preparedness
• 35:19 - Crisis Communication and Community Resilience
• 40:54 - The Impact of Empathy in Crisis Communication
• 46:11 - Communicating with Aliens: A New Era of Crisis Management
• 53:31 - The Role of Influencers in Crisis Communication

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

• The discussion highlights the transformative power of marketing in establishing meaningful connections with audiences.
• Emphasis was placed on the importance of returning to fundamental communication practices post-pandemic, particularly face-to-face interactions.
• Public relations professionals are increasingly recognizing the necessity of balancing technology use with personal engagement to foster relationships.
• The episode underscores the significance of disaster preparedness communication and the necessity for individuals to be informed about risks in their environments.

ABOUT THE GUEST:

Dr. Mimi Perreault (LinkedIn)

Dr. Mimi Perreault is an Assistant Professor of Media and Communications with a focus on public relations, journalism, and communications research and teaching. She brings a well-rounded background to the classroom and beyond, with hands-on experience as a writer, editor, and layout designer across print, broadcast, and digital platforms. Whether she's behind a camera, coordinating a team, or managing an event, Dr. Perreault combines academic depth with real-world communications versatility.

Welcome to Aqua Talks, where marketing meets bold, game changing ideas.

Join your hosts, Larry Aldrich and Maddie Dudley as they explore the art and science of cutting through the noise, capturing attention and fostering meaningful connections with your audience.

Whether you're a destination marketer, government contractor, or simply passionate about the transformative power of marketing, Aqua Talks offers engaging discussions, fresh insights and actionable strategies designed to inspire and inform.

Hello and welcome back to Aqua Talks. My name is Maddie. I'm the public Relations director of Aqua Marketing and Communications. This is a podcast for marketers.

Whether you're just getting started or you're a professional in the business, it is brought to you by Brensys Technology llc. And as always, I'm joined by my co host, Larry Aldridge.

Hello, my name is Larry Aldridge, President CEO of Brensys Technology LLC and AquaMarketing Communications. Today we're here with Mildred Mimi Perrot.

Mildred is the assistant professor of Public relations and Mass communications at the Zimmerman School of Advertising and Mass Communications at the University of South Florida in Tampa. I hope you don't introduce yourself using all of that every single time you introduce yourself.

No, I don't. I usually say, hey, I'm Dr. Mimi. Nice to meet you.

Nice to meet you also, Dr. Mimi.

I'm so excited for this.

Yeah, I'm very excited to be here.

I love my students, I love my work, and you got to kind of be a little bit happy because the things I study are kind of sad, but I study a lot of disaster communication. And what amazes me is that people are amazing and resilient and can do some great things when they're faced with adversity. So I'm excited.

Come here and share about what I've learned and just talk to y' all for a little bit about what y' all are doing too.

Well, we're glad to have you here.

I have two public relations professionals sitting next to me, so I'm going to be more of a prompt, just sitting to the side a little bit, but it'll be an interesting conversation.

Yeah, just sit there and look pretty.

I'm going to try. I have my bright red on today.

Fabulous. Before we get into the Q and A, we do like to talk about a trend within the industry.

I mean, so many things come to mind for me in terms of travel tourism. But just is something top of mind for you right now in terms of public relations trends that you're seeing that your students are talking about?

So we're talking a lot about AI, but we're also talking about like getting back to the basics with PR and the importance of face to face communication and how we've really moved away from a lot of that since the pandemic.

You know, like we're doing a lot more things virtually and we put a lot of emphasis on social media, but really where deals are made or broke, broken is that face to face relationship, that communication. And our students are struggling with that. They're struggling with how to connect with people and how to have that good interpersonal relationship.

And so that is a trend that I've actually seen talked about in several workshops and events with Public Relations Society of America and also with Public Relations Society of America Educators group and then also in our classroom.

Like we really want to bring these strangers in, like Maddie to talk to our students and help them to just learn how to connect on a very basic level.

Yeah, it should be pretty. Field trips today should be pretty simple. It's like put down your technology, look outside.

Yeah.

Let's see what's out there.

Yeah, I mean it's really important to make that connection.

And we start with some very basic things like the importance of making eye contact, which I've even found that I've gotten worse at because the pandemic. So I think they're all things that we can be reminded of and you know, getting back to the basics with relational understanding and communication.

I read a lot of self help books, actually. I listen to them.

I do a lot of audiobooks and the ones mostly basically for communication and not so much that I need help sometimes I do, but more or less communicating. And one of the one things that I've discussed or read in one of my those books, they called it the three foot world rule. Excuse me? Three foot rule.

Whenever you're within three feet of a stranger, introduce yourself, find out, ask them what they do. Find out as much information as you can about them. And that helps with loosening you up, that helps with communicating.

Have you ever heard of anything like that before or does it make sense?

Well, I was thinking about like elevator events, you know, like where you, you're an elevator confined space or like an airplane. Right. Like there's certain things that are okay in certain settings that you wouldn't feel comfortable doing just randomly.

I do think that our devices take away from that opportunity because they, they instantaneously put us in our own worlds.

Yes.

And, and so I do think the intention of reaching out, you know, reach out and touch somebody, you don't necessarily touch them, but you know, like connecting with someone in some way. I think that three. That three foot role is prob. Way to think about it.

I have lots of fond memories when I lived in Washington D.C. of random people I met in elevators and their dogs. Super cute dogs. And I learned so much about dogs just by being the elevator.

So now I have all these trivia facts about dogs as a result of my talking to strangers in elevators.

And even when you get out talking to strangers, when you think about it now or when you look at it, everyone. A lot of people outside have headsets on. So it's hard to even communicate when you're outside and just meet new people.

And you can meet new people that could be a business partner one day. It could be, you know, a good friend.

It could be someone that you spend the rest of your life, you know, talking to every other weekend, but no one communicates with.

You have a friend you made that way, like a stranger.

I met most of them, a lot of people. I just walked up to people and started talking to them.

I love that I need to do more.

Growing up, I mean, dating was different. Dating, you just go out and you just like there's people everywhere. You just walk up to them.

To me, it was usually the conversation starter was say something stupid and get them to laugh.

No, I think that's great. Yeah.

I'm going to plug the article that I just wrote, which is about AI and love how there's just been this big pendulum swing and I'm such a hopeless romantic. We were bonding over this earlier. I'm hopeless romantic, and I think that's what probably makes us good writers too.

But that in the dating world, there's so much technology that's infiltrating real human connections.

So rather than people sitting down and having a conversation face to face, like if they're in an argument over text, then they'll put it in ChatGPT and make sure, does this sound good or how can I make this sound better?

So they're using AI Although it's a really helpful tool to then make them sound like a different version of themselves or like a more polished version of themselves.

Yeah, it was. Dating used to be fun when. Well, never fun, but it was fun, I guess, because you could just say stupid stuff. I got a date one time.

Being out, someone came to the bar, bought a drink next to me, and I just said, you forgot to get me one.

Oh,

that was it.

Yeah. Now you'd have to worry about somebody filming you and then like going on Reddit and saying some random guy at the bar said, xyz. Right.

Like, so you can't really even do that anymore. That's hard.

Before I went to basic training in the Air Force, there was a guy where we were at the MEPs, where you sign up. Excuse me, sign up, but you have to go through all your tests and everything.

And he looked at me, I looked at him, and we called it gritting on each other when you give someone a mean look. And it was instantly we disliked each other the next day. Before, when we got shipped off, we literally had to sit on the bus together.

We just started talking today. We're still best friends.

Aw, that's lovely. All because you had to sit on a bus together.

Yeah, because we had the force to talk to each other.

That's great.

But I have to agree with you in terms, like, I know I said the pendulum swing earlier from, like, very online to now in person, communications being prioritized. I'm actually hosting a media dinner this month in two weeks, and it's in person in Ohio, and we're having about 25 people come to the media dinner.

And just seeing everybody face to face is then going to, like, develop that relationship and establish this fabulous rapport with people we've never met before. Wouldn't have had the opportunity to meet otherwise, rather than just emailing back and forth. So I'm definitely aligned with that. I love that. Yeah.

That's so cool. Yeah.

Well, okay, let's get into the questions.

I know.

We have plenty.

Yeah, we could have sat here and talked about this for next.

I know. Yeah, we should. We should schedule. I want to hear about the media dinner. Why aren't you having one here? That sounds so fun.

It's for an airport in Daytona, so. Daytona International Airport, our wonderful client. And they have new routes from Daytona to Akron Canton.

It'll be my first time in Ohio, so I'm still learning everything. But in Cleveland, we're doing a media dinner with a bunch of reporters and content creators because they want people from there to come here.

Yeah.

We could talk about our clients all day, but we want to hear about you.

Oh, that's lovely. Thank you. Well, I mean, I don't feel extremely. You know, I'm usually here to toot horn for my kids, you know, and talk about all the work.

And my students. I have amazing students, so it is kind of nice to sit down and talk about the things I'm really passionate about.

You mentioned some of the things that you talk about sadness, so I guess we'll just jump right into that sadness preparedness. What does proactive disaster communication look like before hurricane wildfire, public health crisis even hits?

I don't know what hits is, but I'm about to find out. And I didn't know that there were wildfires in Florida until.

Oh yeah, recently we had one actually pretty close.

There were quite a few. I looked on the map and it showed where all the wildfires are. Currently. I spent some time in California driving down I80.

It's nothing to see the whole hillside on fire. But in Florida, I never, never even knew that happened.

Yeah. So I guess I should start by saying I'm not originally from Florida. I am from Texas. And Texas has a coast also. So I'm originally from Houston, Texas.

I lived there probably longer than I lived anywhere else in my life. I lived in Houston, but When I was 12, my parents moved to the Texas hill country.

So I grew up with tornadoes and hurricanes and I actually remember my mom picking me up from school in a flood at one point when I was a kid. And so natural disasters. And I kind of joke with my friend Christoph, who also is a disaster researcher about this.

They've kind of just dictated my life. And disasters at large scale. Disasters, crises. My first semester at college was 9 11.

I do feel like I've always had disasters on my radar and this idea of disaster resilience on my radar. What makes good disaster preparedness? That's a question.

When you talk to scholars or even practitioners in disaster and crisis communication, they're all going to have really different perspectives on this depending up on what their focus is. But I think there's two things that are very important.

The first one is just being aware of where you are and your surroundings and what the risks are in the area you live in. Right. So like knowing about those wildfires, knowing about hurricanes, if you're in Florida, what does that look like?

And the second one is knowing what your capacity is as an individual and as an organization, if you're part of an organization. So I think those are the two things that really indicate how you should prepare and what you should think about.

Sadly, I don't spend a whole lot of time and research in the preparedness area because we do a lot of work in that area. We actually do lots of education in Florida in the school systems through different organizations about preparing for hurricanes.

I was really impressed the first year that I moved here. I've lived here about three years in the Tampa area.

My kids came home with a little sheet from the Hillsborough county schools about what do you do in a hurricane? And what to tell your parents about. Right. And so I think they do work really hard in this region to educate children from a young age.

That said, you do run this risk of, like, over educating people to where they don't actually use those skills. And so being able to know exactly what to do is imperative. You know, what would you do if there was a wildfire in St. Pete?

I don't think we necessarily have one in St. Pete, but, you know, what would your strategy be? So thinking through those things, having a plan, you know, just like we teach kids about fire safety, Having a plan for what you're going to do.

When I joined the Palm Beach Post as a reporter, because that was one of my first jobs out of college, I had this really great boss named Tom peeling.

And I think the first or second day I was there, he took me down to my car and asked me to open my trunk and looked at my trunk and was like, what's in your trunk that's going to help you in a hurricane?

Because it was the middle of hurricane season, and I hadn't really thought about that, but because he had that conversation with me, he was like, no, you need to have this and this and this and this in your car in case you need to go be a journalist and do what journalists do in a hurricane.

And so that really has changed my perspective on just personal preparedness, but also just thinking about how if I'm prepared, I can help other people and I can do my job well. Right. So I don't know if that answers your question.

No, definitely, actually. But thinking about what you'd have in your car. Me, I was thinking a flashlight and a bat.

A bat. Okay.

Some alligators.

Oh, alligator bat. Okay. Well, I was like. I was like, is this like Stranger Things where he has a bat with all the nails on it? But.

But that's just me.

Yeah, no, that's. That's cool. No, I don't know. Yeah. So, I mean, water is important, right? A bat for alligators.

You know, I actually have asked people, like, what do you have in your hurricane preparedness kit? Somebody told me they had a fishing pole, so you go catch fish if they're hungry. So the bat isn't too far off,

but that's coming from a northerner, so.

Yeah. Well, you probably are used to, like, Snowstorms.

We got 15 inches last week.

I know that's a lot.

And I was out in it. I love driving in snow.

I do not. I do not love that. I'm a Texas girl.

So Larry's Gonna swing at the hurricane.

I'm gonna swing at the alligators and the alligators.

Yes.

Or the Demogorgons. Sorry, sorry.

No, no.

You never know what's going to, what's going to appear in a hurricane, though. You got to be prepared.

Yes.

But being a northerner, as soon as they say that there's a hurricane in the Atlantic, I'm already gone. But when I was, I was stationed at Tyndall Air Force Base, we went through quite a few hurricanes when I was there.

So I'm really curious. I mean, there's so much discussion about fear versus education.

Is there a difference between communicating risk and communicating uncertainty and which is harder for organizations to do?

Well, and then like, along that vein too, like you talked about over communicating fear or over communicating to potential audiences versus actually educating them. You said there's a fear of like, over educating them.

Yeah, I think. Well, I mean, it's, it's like, I think we all had this experience with the pandemic.

And I hate to say, like, you know, Covid was like a hurricane, right? Because it wasn't necessarily. But I do think there is such thing as information fatigue, right? Like, people do get tired of hearing something.

You have to add some sort of nuance to it. You have to, like, you know, I think, I think you have to empower people because otherwise they're like, oh, I'll just leave Florida. Right.

Or that's not really going to affect me.

That's not going to be something that I deal with because I'm in whatever zone, you know, hurricane wise, or wildfires don't happen here or it's never flooded here before. We're in the mountains, right. So you hear all those kind of conversations.

I do think that risk communication, you know, you can do a risk assessment as far as, like, insurance goes, and that's not my industry.

I do have a former student who works in the insurance industry and we've had some interesting conversations about, like, how do you assess risk versus how, you know, actuality of something? There's always a percentage of risk, right? Like, you could, you could have a hurricane in the middle of the country, right?

You could have the effects of a hurricane. Like, just like they did up in North Carolina recently, you know, like, they hadn't really thought about how that would affect them there.

But I, I mean, I was in, I, I'm in circles all the time where I hear people talk about these things. And then my question is, well, I'm here hearing this. Who isn't hearing this, right?

So Intentional risk communication, I think, goes out and finds people who haven't heard the story before and helps to frame the story in a way that makes it relevant to that person. Right.

So now, because of what happened in Texas with Camp mystic last year, every single summer camp in the United States is aware that there are risks that they didn't think of before. Right. And they've revisited their crisis communication strategies and their evacuation plans and even stuff that has to do with fires.

And it was really interesting because last summer after that happened, I was at summer camp with my kids at a local summer camp.

I was volunteering there while my kids were there, and they were talking about how they had used that as an opportunity to rethink things, to reevaluate risk, to think about sewage problems that they had, to think about electrical issues that they had. So I think that there's always some sort of risk and that crisis and disaster can provide that opportunity.

I think that you have to get uncomfortable with the uncertainty to a certain degree. Like, a lot of us really want to have control over everything in our lives, right? And there's a lot of anxiety when we can't control those things.

But there's always a certain degree of chaos that exists. And so the more comfortable you can become with that chaos and that uncertainty, the more agile you're going to be to adapt to the crisis.

So I do think a little bit of education that is targeted and relevant. Also, you run the risk of. If you don't acknowledge there's risks, you can run into really big problems.

For example, if you're an airport, like the Tampa airport or another airport, and you're still trying to fly, you know, planes, and there's a hurricane coming, and you haven't said anything on your social media or anything about that, then you could kind of run into some problems there. Right. Because you're not acknowledging the risk that people might have. I don't know. That's a roundabout.

No, that was fabulous.

That made me think about beginning classes of history, text technologies, of just, like, how there have been so many ways to communicate things over the years. Like, this was the first. Milton and Helene were the first hurricanes where I actually experienced. And this was really scary.

The police cars driving around with their microphones on, saying, like, if you're in this area, you need to evacuate. Which I wasn't in a flood zone, but I was seeing the videos of them driving around doing that.

So you're not just thinking of reaching out to whoever's on social media. You're thinking of our grandparents who are probably going to be reading the paper or listening to the radio or maybe none of that.

They're just in a bubble and they also deserve to be safe as well. So thinking of all those key components are really important to successful.

And that goes back to that face to face component. Right. Like you really do need those people on the street going door to door. Yeah.

And that and educating people about risk, like literally knocking on the doors. And I think post Hurricane Katrina we've seen a lot more of that kind of approach to like hurricane leading up to the hurricane.

But yeah, I think, yes, that's something too that you have to think about is not everybody's on social media. Social media is not a mass communication method. It's a niche communication method.

Listening to you sprink brings so many more conversations to my mind.

Yes.

Have there ever been organizations or have you ever been called upon to help prepare or build disaster preparedness plans?

So I personally have not had the role in doing that. I do a lot of consulting with people about. I used to do a lot of social media consulting. I haven't done that recently.

I've taught a crisis communication class at pretty much every university I've been at. This is the third university I've taught at.

I taught previously at East Tennessee State University, which is in Johnson City, Tennessee, and then at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. Boone is where I started teaching crisis communication.

One of the things that we used to do in that class is we would do a risk assessment with clients in the community, like nonprofit organizations, small businesses, and talk to them about their most likely potential for a crisis. And a lot of times those were disasters.

They weren't specifically hurricanes, but like we had a bowling alley we were working with and they were right next to a creek. So that was part of their risk assessment. They hadn't really thought about if the creek floods and actually during hurricane Helene, it flooded.

So they were, you know, I think this, that process helped them to be more aware of the potential for that to happen.

Yeah.

And I've, I've spoken on panels in the past about my research. I've done lots of conversations with journalists.

I spend a lot of time talking to journalists about, you know, good sourcing practice, you know, what kind of organizations they should be interviewing and who they should be talking to to get good, good stories. So what's ethical practice for that?

And then recently, more so students of mine who in the past are in public relations or communications roles really trying to figure out what's the Best message to put out. How can I tell this story effectively? And not really with preparedness for them though, more so the long term story.

What does the long tail look like? How is this going to affect the relationship people have with our organization, et cetera?

You'd be surprised some of those creeks that just look like dry water beds, how quickly they can flood because a lot of it's just there for drainage. There's really no water. There was a time in Pittsburgh a few years ago, I think we got about 8 inches of snow. It was like 30 degrees one day.

The next, like two days later, we had, like I said, about 6 or 7 inches of snow. Two days later it was up to 60 and it rained three days in a row. So all that snow melted and it rained, flooded everywhere.

Flash flooding is a really big problem, especially with snow melt. I know that's a problem in Colorado. My sister lives in Colorado. You know, that's a big problem in the mountains of North Carolina.

I mean, those people had pretty little creeks behind their house and all of a sudden there's 30ft of water. I mean, like, it happens really fast. In Texas, we had a lot of flash flooding.

Where I grew up, I first started driving and I remember when I went through my driver's ed class, it was an online class, but they said like, Lou, water crossings, basically, if there's more than 2 inches of water, don't drive through it because 2 inches of water is normal runoff. If it's higher than that, that's dangerous. So those visuals, and it was a picture, like it's a visual picture.

I do think that visuals just like when we're watching the map of the hurricane kind of come in and where it's going to go, the projected meteorological pattern, those things are really helpful for people to see. Like, you know, what is it going to be like in their area. And there's some great online tools about sea level rise.

So I won't get too much in that where you can see, like if there was six feet of water at your house, what it would look like for your house. Right. And you know, maybe you should move your car if they're projecting six feet of water, you know, in your area.

So I think, I think that those are things a lot of people don't think about, maybe because they don't want to think about it because it's scary. But you can also empower yourself.

A lot to know, oh, well, if I live in a street that's going to flood, I need to move my car to A parking garage and it'll be safe. Right.

So this kind of conversation excites me so much because I mean when you're talking about preparedness, you're really talking about the difference between life or death situations. But also I love that you are a pro in the long term overall brand or like perspective of somewhere that has been affected by crisis.

We work with destinations as well as airports.

So a lot of it isn't really that momentary storytelling or I don't want to say story that makes it sound like it's a lie, but truth telling, telling the facts and then there's also then after the fact, like realistically, what parts of the destination are able to be accessed?

Like just because one part of briefly talked about Asheville when I was doing the presentation to the PRSSA at USF and we briefly talked about Asheville and how though there are parts of the community that were shut down, there were other parts that really needed that economic drive from tourists to come in so that they could rebuild. And people were doing this very conscious tourism then as a result of that.

So what are some of your top points or key components to long term public relations narratives after a crisis?

Yeah, I think cultural context is so important. We can talk about niche communication, we can talk about.

You can't really have a one size fits all approach when you're telling crisis stories or storytelling after a crisis. I don't know exactly what to call that. But when you're trying to convey like what is going on in your community, what does it look like?

How is this going to help us rebuild? Right. I think that they're also very cathartic for people who are involved in them.

So if you can have some sort of community element where the group comes together and forms that narrative together. The other thing is trust. And I'll put a plug in for local journalism.

I do believe local journalism plays a really big role in crisis and disaster long term response. As you know, local newspapers are disappearing, local news organizations are going away.

That collective narrative, when you don't have a place people can come together and share that, it makes it so much harder for communities. Yes. We have hashtags like Florida Strong and Mountain Strong where I move from in Boone. It's high country strong right now.

Those hashtags are great, but there's a rallying behind that that you really have to harness locally. And then that external message like what are we sharing externally? I think a really good case study of this.

I think it's in a textbook that I've used In my class from Kathleen Fern Banks. So I want to give her credit for that. But it's about the Malibu wildfires.

Well, that's a huge region.

Yeah.

And even though this was a very large fire, like they had pretty much contained it to this one area and it was starting to affect tourism in that area when people were like, still come to the beach, you can still go surfing, you know. And so they launched this campaign that was really like with the local people. Like, share with your friends that they can still come visit.

Share with them that it's still safe to be here. Right. And we've definitely seen that in Florida.

Like, you know, even with the devastation we had for Milton, the mountains have done that with Asheville. So I do think that like the best brand is the local people. If those local people can share.

Hey, by the way, we're doing so great and we want to do better and you can help us. Right? I think that makes a really big difference in the long term story.

You know, there is a crisis communication cycle with media and communication that's very much so like a grief cycle in psychology.

And so you do have to kind of understand that there's certain touch points in that, in that phase, in those phases where people are not going to be okay talking about certain things and you can't move forward.

And I think that the people that make the biggest mistake with this is honestly like politicians, because they're like, oh, I need to run for reelection and I can harness this event as an opportunity. And people are like, I don't care about you running for reelection. Like, I want my house back. Right. And they move on too quickly.

So I do think you have to kind of let people, you know, wallow in their sadness a little bit so that they can bond and then take that and harness that and make it a power to kind of bring you through to that one year anniversary, five year anniversary, ten year anniversary. And that can really become something that strengthens your community. The other thing I think is identity is important.

Like when we talk about the person who's talking, okay, the person who's the spokesperson, right. If this person is so focused on moving on that they can't acknowledge and be empathetic and they also are pretending like nothing happened to Them.

Right. You probably, like, we're all in this together. Hashtag. Sorry, I use a lot of hashtags, but we're all in this together. Right.

We kept saying that during COVID and I feel like it was much more effective when people were able to share their stories of, like, well, this is how it's affecting me. And so I understand, like, we may not be dealing with the same things. Things, but we are. We are all in this together.

We're all dealing with challenges. Right.

And I think that's also a good way to think about is acknowledge your personal identity in relationship to the crisis or disaster that you're facing or your organization's identity. Right.

So what I'm hearing.

Oh, sorry.

Well, I was just going to say you gave a few great examples already, but I'm going to mention it anyway. When does disaster messaging cross the line from helpful to opportunist? Opportunistic.

Oh, yeah.

There you go.

So this is actually great. I just did a case study on.

For publication with a colleague, and we were looking at some of the stuff in Kerrville, Texas, which is about 30 minutes from where I went to middle school and high school. So it's a community I'm very familiar with. And we were actually asking that question, like, when does something become opportunistic?

Because we saw after that, you know, everybody loves. Kendra Scott is a jeweler. Grocery stores, of course, are like, hey, we're donating stuff. We're helping. Helping people.

You see, like, celebrities come on. And they're like, oh, I'm gonna go take care of this, or I'm gonna do whatever. And there's this big bump for them right in recognition.

People are like, oh, well, Kendra's Scott did that. I'll go buy something from Kendra Scott's website. Nothing against Kendra Scott, you know.

So we looked actually at James Avery Jewelry, which is a local jeweler that makes the bracelets for the bracelets that the kids at Camp mystic wore. So the charm bracelets, and they are located in Kerrville. And we looked at their messaging and how they were covered in the news.

And one of the things that we found is their ability to be close to that community and be part of that community and have that narrative already established about their values and their orientation to that community, really helped them to. Helped all the employees who were facing the issues with the flood there, but also helped them to kind of set the pace for a very positive narrative.

And it wasn't opportunistic at all. Right. Like, it was kind of a tangential crisis that they ended up in the middle of because of these charm bracelets.

And so I think that you kind of have to think about. I've been thinking about this because this is something that I. I think we all want that, that bump in our social media engagement.

You know, we all want, like, to get recognized and, you know, jump on the. This is an opportunity. Like, we've kind of been taught that's the way you cope. But I think what works the best is that proximity factor.

So even if it isn't something that is in your community, if you can find a way to connect to it in an ethical way. So think about it as if it was, you know, your cousin's house washed away. How would you interact with that?

And if you can convey something that's encouraging and empowering in that way, I think think that shows your true values and standards. Right. And do something that's in line with what your company was doing previously. Don't change your branding because of a crisis or a disaster.

Look back to your values and see what aligns with those values, because then you're going to be consistent with your branding. Right. And so, you know, for James Avery, they had a faith as part of their mission.

They also had, like, you know, sharing things with generations, the tradition of, like, being in the Texas Hill country and having Texas branded stuff. So creating a Texas charm to raise money for victims of the flood was not out of character for them. Right.

And I think 100% of the money they raised for a certain number of days went back to the survivors of that. So it made sense. But now people are coming back and buying, you know, things from them because they see that connection.

So you are co editor of Crisis Communication case studies on COVID 19 multidimensional perspectives and Applications.

You touched on it earlier about information fatigue, but I'm curious about what you think other mistakes were during the pandemic in terms of communications plans.

We could talk about mistakes because we've had lots of times to think about all the mistakes we made. Right? Yeah, I think they always say hindsight's 20 20.

I do have to put a plug in for my co editor, Sarah Smith Forgiero, who is a professor at utampa. And strangely enough, neither one of us lived in Tampa when we started writing that book or working on it together.

And it does have 20 chapters that feature different authors from all over the world, scholars in their own right in different areas like advertising and interpersonal communication. We have a specific chapter that's on parenting in There we have one on education, rural versus urban health centers.

So we have a lot of perspectives represented in that book. I know people are like, oh, the pandemic that was six years ago. For some people, it's still really real.

And especially in rural communities that had limited access to health care, and now, as a result of other budget cuts and economic issues, often really are facing issues like that again. And then, you know, we've recently seen some issues with, you know, debates around health care for children as well.

And so I do think that the stuff we learned in Covid is still applicable. That said, like, I wish that we could all be in a room together and talk about all the things that we did wrong and what we did right.

I think we got a lot of things right, too.

But one of the things that really Sarah and I learned through that process, because, you know, we're writing this book in the pandemic and we're getting authors to contribute, was just the value of empathy, the value of understanding where people are and what they're facing can be so powerful on so many levels. And I think I keep going back to that, but just making that human connection and also knowledge of things, the space that you're in. Right.

So the response to Covid is very different in a rural hospital than it is in Tampa, Florida, where we have so many hospitals. Right. Like in Boone, North Carolina, where I used to live, there was one hospital for like every hundred miles.

You know, here we've got a hospital on almost every corner. It's a very different situation.

And so, you know, that made me really aware of the healthcare situation in the United States, that it's not a one size fits all approach.

And then also what you say in a small community or in a community where you are a trustworthy voice, be that if you're a public official, you're a trusted company, that impacts the way that people react. If you've built up trust with those people before the crisis, they're going to trust what you say.

And there's a lot of gravity associated with what you say. And I think that the pandemic really taught me that a lot. I had a lot of people who were like, oh, you study this stuff?

That would reach out to me and ask me, oh, is this information accurate? And then I would spend hours trying to find good sources for what the information was.

And so I felt very responsible for keeping hundreds of people that were on my Facebook feed safe during that time. And I know that that's just me as a person. I was not in a role managing a hospital.

I was not a police officer or a public official or somebody at the health department. And so I do think that those are all things that we kind of took away from that.

And just the I'll talk about being close to people, being in the same space with people. I think we've kind of forgotten that a little bit now.

You know, like, I think it helped us to really realize how valuable it is just to sit in a space like this, sit in a classroom, be able to look at the eyes of your students and not have to be like, please turn on your camera. You know, like, I think that for me, it's. That's made such a difference, and I really value those conversations so much more.

And it was very formidable.

So I actually have a case study which I agree with you wholeheartedly that it's not public relations, isn't just media relations. You're also worried and concerned about the people that this is happening to.

Like, that empathy piece is the most important and should guide communications.

But I have an example, sort of establishing a relationship early on and then during a crisis, it helped one of our clients because we were then able to gather our thoughts and explain it to this reporter. Rather than them going to other sources or looking for anything online, we had.

We were able to sit down, organize it all, and sort of say that we were saying the truth, but we were saying it from a, like, boots on the ground perspective of, you know, sometimes news can really blow things up and make things seem like they're out of proportion. Like you said with la, the fires. I thought LA was on fire.

No, it was the Malibu Palisades, which is a far smaller region, and they can do the same for hurricanes, too. So we had a relationship with a reporter who then later she was supposed to come in destination actually before the hurricanes.

But then when she was doing reporting on the hurricanes, she was able to get the information straight from us, which

is really helpful because we established that relationship. Yeah, that's awesome. I think that's important that you can. Can you have those established relationships? Right. Because that builds that trust.

Yeah.

Before we wrap up, if another public health emergency emerged tomorrow, what should marketing leaders prioritize in the first 48 hours?

I think clear, accurate information is always important. Acknowledging the information you have and the information you don't have.

You know, we always talk about in crisis communication, the worst thing you can say is no comment. The best thing you can say is, we know everybody's dealing with something really hard right now. We're also dealing with something very hard.

We want everyone to be safe. We want to be able to provide you with stuff to keep your family safe. Right. That's our priority.

I think that makes a really big difference in the first 48 hours, I would say. The second thing is, like, how can you help people prepare for that? What is that going to look like for them? How can you help them manage that?

So if you have apps that people can manage their health on, or you have, like, if we end up in another lockdown for, like, the pandemic, I'm praying we never do. But, you know, like, what are things that people are going to need to do to keep themselves sane? Right.

Like, I think Spotify did great marketing with us. They're like, here's like, podcasts that will be beneficial.

While you're, you know, locked in your house by yourself, here's an app where you can order your groceries. I mean, we used to never get groceries delivered. Now you can pick up groceries anywhere. I still pick up my groceries because it's super convenient.

Helping people to kind of figure out how your company fits with their identity in that crisis can really be powerful and engaging. I think the worst thing you can do is be like, hey, I know you're gonna be stuck in your house. We're having a 20% off sale, so you can buy our.

Our workout gear or whatever. You know, make it a little bit less like. Like you're trying to sell a product and more like you're trying to form a relationship. Right?

Yeah, yeah, I.

That's.

I mean, that's my approach for, like, overarching communications goals. Even on social media, I've been finding just this ad fatigue. Like you said, information fatigue.

Everyone is just sick of being sold to because every avenue we look at, it's advertising. And our paid media team does a great job, but advertising is everywhere, and we're just trying to be sold and give our money places.

And it's so much better to have a story and a feeling and a vibe instead. Yeah.

And I think authenticity goes so far nowadays. And question is, what is authentic? I mean, I think my students are mainly Generation Z. Now. I'm a millennial.

I have a really different idea of what advertising is. When I'm watching TV and an ad comes up, I'm like, this is normal, Right? You know, Generation Z, they're on demand.

They can eliminate ads if they pay enough money. Right. They don't really think of it that way. They think of it as, I'm avoiding the ad. They don't realize the ad is trying to sell them something.

They're like, oh, if I have enough money, I can get away from it. So it's more of like, they have more empowerment to avoid that.

My daughter's generation, she's 14 and she's almost an Alpha, I guess us, whatever the next generation is, I think we need to watch these people because they are skeptical of everything. They don't believe anything. They know it's AI when they look at it, they're like, that is AI. I'm not going to trust that.

Or this influencer is just trying to sell me stuff. Mom. They're not, they're not trying to be cool. And they can tell who's authentic and who's not. Like, I mean, I would say they have a BS meter, right?

But they are so much better at that than we even were. And I think we need to be aware of that. We need to think of them because they can see it. They can see it so much more clearly.

And it's because they're digital natives and they've grown up around this and this is how most of their interactions are. So they really have a good gauge on it. That's a completely different direction. But I think they even more so value that face to face communication.

Now with all the things we're seeing about how bad cell phone use is for you and, and TikTok uses for you, I think they're about to rebel. I really do. I think there's gonna be a big rebellion and we're gonna go back to a lot of in person authenticity.

I wouldn't be me if I didn't ask this question. As a communications and PR specialist in today's AI and digital world, if you saw aliens land, how would you communicate that?

Oh, my goodness.

I am a big fan of Independence Day, the movie, and they just did the new one, you know, so I think about aliens a lot and then, you know, part of me wants to be really humorous about it. Be like, are you sure you saw what you saw? You saw?

That's what everyone thought you saw, right?

I don't know if aliens landed. I think it'd be part of me to be kind of excited. I've always loved space.

I grew up in Houston and, you know, space was very much so a part of my culture as a kid because of the spatial program during that time and. And you know, like, I've always, I've never doubted that there's aliens.

I guess I'll just say that I've never Doubted that there are aliens that exist, which I know a lot of people have. I think I'd be surprised. But I think, you know, first of all, like, what is this a crisis? I guess we'd have to decide if it's a crisis.

Are they friendly aliens? Are they not friendly aliens? Right. So maybe some sort of evaluation of that.

And then, you know, I would probably jump to the, like, let's connect with them. Let's try to create, you know, some sort of communication method. And how would we, you know, who would be responsible for doing that?

Yeah, I don't know. I haven't thought too much about that recently, but I think my son would be really interested in my answer to that question too. So I'll have to.

I'll have to really think more about it. What about you?

I. Everybody would be asking where Larry went. I would have been the first one to run.

You would have ran?

Yeah.

Oh, I thought you were saying you would have gone with the aliens.

Won't be there to find out. They'd have to chase me.

Well, where are you going?

I don't know.

Are you gonna go to Mars?

I would be going in the opposite direction.

You go the opposite direction? Yeah. I don't know.

I watch those movies when they hover, get as far away as possible.

Get as far away as possible. I don't know. I like, liked space movies. I mean, I was trying to think of other space movies I liked. I'm big of Apollo 13 fan.

That's probably not a good one because it's a scary one and it's real, but. Flight of the Navigator. Do you ever watch that?

Yes, I have.

Okay.

That's an older one.

I know. That one's good. It takes place in Florida too. Yeah.

Most recently it's been Aliens and Predator.

Aliens and Predator?

Yeah.

Those are really scary.

Those are the ones you don't want to hang out.

I'm a big Star Trek fan, though.

Yeah.

And some of the aliens on Star Trek are really cool. Like, they were really, like, really cool people.

Unless you watch Guardians in a galaxy. Then you think everyone's friendly.

Yeah. Or got a sense of humor to a certain degree. Or has daddy problems. Yeah, all the aliens seem to have daddy problems.

Just. Huh. Interesting. Sorry.

Marvel's interesting.

No, I love it. I just learned the other day that Contact. That's an alien movie, right?

Yeah.

It had a Pensacola tie in, which is our client, Pensacola International Airport. So I had a reporter say that to us on the phone the other day. I only know Pensacola International Airport. From contact. Never knew Pensacola.

Pensacola is a cool place. I've driven through there recently. So yeah, it's pretty and it definitely has so much potential with all the cool things that they're building there.

And yeah, it looks like a place I want to visit again.

Yeah, the airport's doing expansion too, so that'll be all built out soon. But enough about our clients. I'm just going on about them again. Curious if you have a case study to share with us.

I know you talked a little bit about your book, but something you're really proud of that you've worked on.

I mean, I'm really proud of that piece that I worked on with Dr. Kelly Burns recently on James Avery because it does represent a part of the Texas that's very dear to me. I also, you know, I grew up going to, going to summer camp. My kids are Girl Scouts. I was a Girl Scout. I grew up going to camp during the summer.

So it was a big part of my life. So I'm really proud of that case study.

I think another thing I'm really proud of is started working on some workshops for journalists about long term resilience stories and like sourcing.

And I recently had a piece come out in the Journal of Applied Communication that talks about best practices in disaster and interacting with PR professionals and PIOs after disasters. I'm very, very proud of that work.

I'm also working on a project that is on invasive species communication, which is kind of tangential to natural disaster communication, but very much so with an environmental focus that involves some scholars from New Zealand and also from the United States.

Just looking at the different ways that we frame how we talk about invasive species and the risks associated with it, but also how to empower people around those issues in their own environment. I'm having trouble thinking of one specific case study. I've been doing a lot of stuff about Hurricane Helene and Milton recently.

One of the case studies that I'm working on is assessment of local, local kind of messages on social media after Hurricane Helene. So we looked at specifically the problems with influencers spreading misinformation and how local officials responded to that.

So specifically a sheriff in North Carolina who basically was like, no, you, you guys are stupid for listening to these people. Like they're not even here, they're not even helping us. And by listening to them, you're actually hurting us.

So if you want to help, these are the ways you can help.

And he really reframes the conversation around like, get off your phone, stop watching TikTok and actually do something to help these people, which to me was amazing. It's almost like he was dad sitting down, having a conversation with. In the video he released, being like, hey, you kids are making a mess here.

Stop doing this. Right? And he's very convincing. And I think it really made his community proud of him, right?

Because they felt like he was really going to battle for them, maybe battle, going to bat for them, even trying to hit all these bad stories that had kind of filled the media sphere and that a lot of people from outside the region were paying a lot more attention to do. And I think sometimes that's easier, right?

It's easier to acknowledge, you know, like, what do we respond to in this day and age when people put out bad information? Right? That's a. That's a whole conversation. I love. Molly McPherson has a podcast, and she.

She always says, like, sometimes you just need to be quiet and listen and see what's going on and then figure it out. But in this case, like, he just hit it right on the head. I mean, like, he was like. Like, no, this is not part of what we want to do here.

This is not going to help us recover. And if you're listening to these stories, you're also part of the problem. And I. And so that's a really strong case study.

I can't remember the name of the county he's in right now off the top of my head, but that's a great case study that I've really. I've dug into, and I'm really enjoying that piece a lot. So, yeah, I mean, I guess that.

Is that a good study? Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, just that writers as well as influencers are trying to make things as interactive and clickable as possible.

So sometimes they'll show the worst of the worst because that's what gets the most attention, not because it's the reality of the situation. I think there's a balance of both because, you know, like, boots on the ground.

Local journalism, of course, that you shouted out earlier is really important during crisis or crises.

But, like, when the roof flew off of the top of the trough, for example, I saw it because my friend lived in an apartment and just, like, posted it on their story. But there's a difference between that and spreading misinformation and doing things just for clicks.

Influencers can be really powerful in setting the tone right? Especially if they're local and engaged and they have a tie to the community. Community. They're part of that identity, right? They're facing the Issue.

We have a great influencer here in St. Pete, Dr. Beach Gym.

She's a ER professional and she, she talks a lot about children's health in Florida, but she also lost her house or her house flooded in the recent hurricane and she's had to lift her house up to comply with that. And she talks about that process all the time on her social media. And I've learned so much from her. She's a local person, she's an expert.

She's not an expert on hurricane recovery, but she's an expert on children's health. But I still have learned so much about hurricane recovery and about what happened in the area and what happened in that community because of her.

When I live over the bridge and in Tampa and I don't see it every day, which is really different. So I think that those kind of people can be like journalists.

They can provide an, I wouldn't say like, not necessarily objective, but they can provide a real life, boots on the ground picture of what it looks like.

And I think that is that authenticity like we were talking about before, you know, like authenticity can make such a big difference if it's real versus if it's a pseudo event or a fabricated crisis or a paracrisis. Right. Oh man, this happened to me. And it's actually like four blocks and you're house is fine.

You know, you know, like, so that, that goes back to your question about authenticity and stuff as well.

That was great case study.

Yeah, yeah.

This has been fantastic.

Yeah.

Thank you so much for coming on.

Yeah. No, this is fun. I'm sorry it's over.

I know, me too.

Yeah, I, I mean, I was gonna say if anybody wants to have more conversations about this, we can do a media dinner and.

Yeah.

Talk about disasters.

Oh my gosh, that would be so fun.

I mean, one of the things I have to do is put a plug in for. I do this great research. But I have. Heroes are the first responders.

The people who are members of the voluntary action committees from all over Florida and the United States are people who work for FEMA and volunteer their hours. Those also local first responders, those are the heroes. And I do have to say that those people, they make or break our crisis response.

And I'm so grateful for them because they do put their lives on the line. They take time away from their families. Time is your most valuable resource.

They go through all this training to be able to be there and staff shelters and distribute food and make sure that people are safe.

And so one of the things I think we can also do as communicators is to really highlight their stories and show people that they are the reason we have a good story to tell. Right.

That's beautiful.

So I just gotta put a plug in for them there at the end.

That's a good idea, actually.

Yeah.

We can have a media dinner.

Yeah, let's do it. Yeah, it'd be fun.

Okay. We're already planning. That's great.

Yeah, perfect. I don't know, is there anything else that I should have shared that I didn't hear?

Yeah, that was fantastic.

The question you always ask at the end of any good journalism interview is,

do you have anything else to add?

Is there anything else that you have to add? Or is there a question I should have asked that I didn't? Right. Yeah, I think y' all covered everything.

That was pretty good.

This is really, really fun. I was so nervous, but now, like, I feel like I could do this every day.

You killed it.

I'm gonna give y' all a run for your money on your podcast. Yeah.

Well, we definitely want you back.

Okay. Thank you. It was such a pleasure to be here with both of you. Yeah.

Yep. And if you wanna learn more about Dr. Mimi, please go to aquatacs.com, we'll have all of. We have all of our info there.

Check us out on social media and listen to us wherever you get your podcasts. See you next time.

Thank you so much for this show.

Thank you for joining us.

Thank you. Thanks, Bonnie. You've been listening to Aqua Talks, where marketing innovation takes center stage with bold ideas and actionable insights.

Ready to take your strategies to the next level? Visit aquataks.com to book your free consultation and explore resources that empower you to thrive in today's fast paced marketing world.

Until next time, stay bold, stay inspired, stay imaginative.