Abbie Fink and Adrian McIntyre discuss the evolving role of communications and public relations professionals within organizational hierarchies. The conversation kicks off with Adrian highlighting the longstanding advocacy for including communications leaders at the strategic table. He suggests that this inclusion is no longer just a desire for prestige; it is now critical for organizational survival. Abbie echoes these sentiments, expressing that the ability of organizations to effectively communicate their strategies internally and externally is essential for success.

As they discuss the traditional view of public relations as a secondary support function, Abbie emphasizes the importance of positioning communications teams as integral to strategy development. In an age where trust in institutions is dwindling, she advocates for a more authentic and transparent communication approach. She consider how often organizations may overlook the strategic insights that communications professionals can offer, instead relegating them to a role of mere implementation rather than active participation in shaping organizational direction.

Adrian introduces an insightful perspective on branding, asserting that branding is constantly happening through every interaction and touchpoint. He urges corporate leaders to recognize the interplay between reputational risk and economic risk. Both he and Abbie agree that communication professionals should not wait to be invited to share their perspectives; rather, they should assert their expertise boldly and proactively.

The conversation takes a turn towards examining the dynamics that often hamper effective client-agency interactions. Abbie describes the common scenario where decisions made by leadership may not fully consider the insights from communications experts, often seeking affirmation rather than genuine input. This environment, she argues, can stifle creativity and hinder the potential for robust strategic discussions. Adrian supports this point, highlighting the importance of clear, confident communication and the role that experience plays in establishing credibility.

As the episode progresses, the duo tackles the complexities of billing practices within the PR sector. Abbie candidly discusses the challenge of articulating value to clients when it comes to pricing. Drawing from her extensive experience, she asserts that the focus should shift from hourly rates to the overall value and outcomes provided. By establishing a clear linkage between the expertise they offer and the tangible impacts on client success, she believes agencies can cultivate stronger relationships built on understanding and mutual respect.

Adrian then challenges the audience to rethink their current measurement practices, emphasizing that relying solely on easily counted metrics can lead organizations astray. He posits that the most significant outcomes may be challenging to quantify but are nonetheless vital to understanding the true impact of communication efforts. Abbie concurs, citing the evolution of measurement practices that prioritize meaningful engagement over superficial metrics. She highlights the necessity of aligning KPIs with business objectives to ensure that public relations initiatives contribute to overall strategic goals.

In conclusion, Abbie and Adrian share a vision for the future where communications professionals are seen as essential strategic partners rather than peripheral players. They advocate for a collaborative approach that encourages open dialogue and embraces diverse perspectives. Ultimately, they hope that organizations will recognize the invaluable contributions of communications teams in navigating an increasingly complex and trust-challenged world.

Read the transcript and notes for this episode on our website.

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Copper State of Mind, hosted by Abbie Fink and Dr. Adrian McIntyre, is brought to you by HMA Public Relations, a full-service public relations firm in Phoenix, AZ.

The show is recorded and produced by the team at Speed of Story, a strategic communications consultancy for PR agencies and marketing firms, and distributed by PHX.fm, the leading independent B2B podcast network in Arizona.

If you like this podcast, you might also enjoy PRGN Presents: PR News & Views from the Public Relations Global Network, featuring conversations about strategic communications, marketing, and PR from PRGN, "the world’s local public relations agency.”

For years and years and years and more years, communications and PR professionals have been advocating to have a seat at the table. The idea is that comms leaders should be included at the highest level of corporate or organizational strategy and planning. And in many cases that’s not the case. It seems, however, that things have changed and this is not if it ever was just a self serving desire to be in the room with decision makers. This is now essential and could potentially be important to organizational survival in these turbulent times. The new role of communications — it may be the old role — is more important than ever. Abbie, what’s on your mind?

You know, thinking about strategy and developing your business strategy and how you will be bringing that information forward, whether you’re talking about it to your internal teams, whether you are talking about it externally to your potential clients, your customers. There’s so much more into how to get from point A to point B. And for a lot of organizations they consider public relations and marketing as a support function. It’s a nice to have. We may or may not be able to afford everything. So it’s kind of a, in some cases might be an afterthought. And you know, we often, as you said, say, bring your communications people to the table and we say it in such a way that, you know, that sounds rather obvious to us, but really in truth our responsibility and where we can best be helpful and we being your communications team is at that strategy session, those initial conversations and to think about us in the larger context really moves us from strictly support and implementation to really that tactical discussion around what’s going to be important.

And in today’s marketplace where trust is at an all time low and we have to be smarter about how we are presenting ourselves in an authentic transparent way. When our employees have at their disposal and in a lot of ways are encouraged to be brand advocates, we have to arm them with trustworthy, important, factual information. And it may be that there’s not been a time more important as right now in terms of thinking about your communications strategy and those of us that are in the position to help guide that from a leadership perspective.

I’m reminded of a client who’s also become a friend of mine who’s an expert in branding. He’s very fond of saying that there’s never not branding going on. Everything communicates: every touch point, every interaction, everything your clients and customers experience about your organization is your brand, not what you want it to be, not what it says in a beautiful brand book on the shelf, but the actual lived experience.

Interactions communicate. They communicate your values, they communicate your point of view, they communicate what you will and will not tolerate, whether you have a backbone or not, all these things. So what’s unique about his approach to branding is that it doesn’t just start with a sketch pad. It goes all the way through to training the teams and providing on-site support in those critical interactions.

In this case in the hospitality industry. It seems to me that corporate leaders, nonprofit leaders, government leaders — the enlightened ones anyway — need to understand that there is so much risk. Reputational risk becomes economic risk very, very quickly. And it’s essential that this whole ball of communication is orchestrated and conducted in alignment with the organization’s goals and the executive commitments.

The problem I can see, and I’m interested what you think about this, the problem is not all the firms or in-house experts who could provide this guidance have positioned themselves appropriately to be given the opportunity to lead the conversation. And you know, there’s a certain level of, well, you know, are you waiting to be asked or are you taking the seat at the table? I’m not quite sure because I don’t occupy that role with regard to the same kind of organizations. But I feel like there’s a lot at stake here and what’s called for is more boldness, more clarity, more conviction to communicate really what the stakes are. What are your thoughts?

Well, I’m 100% in line with what you’re saying and can point to a couple examples recently. I am aware that I am a trusted advisor. I know that I have earned my opportunity to be in the conversations and to have the right to share my opinion, my thoughts and base that in actual fact, in terms of things that have happened in the past, the difficulty, I think what happens is that, and this is no fault of leadership in particular, but you know, they have a certain mindset. They have, they have a direction that they want to take and in some cases they really are just looking for you to say yes.

They really don’t want to be challenged. They do not want to have the arguing back and forth or the debating. They just, they’re happy that you’re there, but they really are set that this is going to be the way it’s going to go and follow along or not. The hardest part, I think for us then is to weigh that direction with what we might believe is a different approach. And then where do we line up with, how do we put that forward in the same way.

And we don’t want to be in a situation where we come back to the CEO and say, well, we told you so. If you’d have listened to us, maybe this wouldn’t have happened. They probably already know that and there’s no point in us having to share it. But, you know, the trust and the boldness that you mentioned, I think comes with experience and comes with an increase in confidence that what you are doing and saying is correct and that you will stand by your viewpoint in the same regard that that CEO honors and respects that that’s the role that you’re playing. And the reason that you’re sharing that particular information is because you’re looking out for the best interest of the organization. That the experiences that we bring to the table, the reasons that we’re sharing this information with you is because we have reviewed, analyzed, understand, expected an outcome if we go in this direction or versus that direction.

And I’m hopeful that as attention is being paid, and this isn’t unique to communications and PR professionals, but I think as attention is being paid to authenticity and we expect the brands that we interact with and we expect the organizations that we support with support to operate in an open and trustworthy and ethical manner, that this concept becomes more universal. This idea that strategy is significant to the success of our organization.

And I don’t want to scare away anyone by thinking this has to be complicated or time consuming. You know, a well-organized strategy session sitting around a conference room table for 90 minutes can net out some pretty powerful things. It doesn’t have to be a complicated process if everybody at that table has the same vision and the same understanding of the direction of the organization. We just come to it with different opinions. Being open to those discussions, I think, is where again, we move from being a yes person or being just the support team to really being part of the strategic conversation and then moving, of course, into the implementation of the plan we’ve helped to develop.

You know, this touches on so many aspects of … on the agency side, it touches on how you respond to RFPs, if you do. It touches on your pricing philosophy, your service offering design, what are you actually offering and selling, and how are you billing? And, you know, the truth of the matter is that there are so many of these small, taken for granted practices that just reinforce the “vendor position,” if you will. You’re here to do this job. You’re an order taker. We’re going to tell you what we want, you’re going to deliver it on time and under budget. And if you don’t, we’ll fire you and find the next one.

Right.

And especially if you were right and we were wrong, it’s often easier to fire the agency than to admit you were wrong. So that can happen.

Right.

We could and maybe should have an in-depth conversation about all of those aspects of how PR and communications firms, public affairs firms, the outside counsel are responding by meeting the moment, as it were. You know, modernizing, adapting, adjusting, all those things. It’s probably time for hourly billing to go away, because it might be doing a disservice. And that throws a monkey wrench into so many things. I don’t even want to open that can of worms.

No, but I think there’s a valid, solid point in that. And you know, the hardest conversation I have with a potential client, well, actually with existing clients for that matter, is how much is it going to cost for you to do fill in the blank. And my answer, a little flippantly, is well, how much do you have? But, you know, I’ve been doing this work for 35 years. I can do things quicker, more efficiently than my colleagues that have only been in the business for 10 years. And it’s not because they’re not equally as qualified. It’s just I’ve been doing it longer, I have different resources, I have different experiences. And so to some extent, that’s what is being bought is my brain and my experiences. And so if we relate it to this larger conversation is how important is what I’m bringing to the table, to the outcomes we’re trying to achieve.

And to put a price tag on it in this, how much does it cost for you to do is a little bit of a disservice both to what we do and what you’re hoping for us to accomplish for you. So as an example, I have a relationship with a nonprofit organization. They are not a client in the sense that I’m on a regular, ongoing work, but they often call that they are embarking on something. They are aware that it could be somewhat controversial.

And before they go forward, can we have a discussion with you, Abbie, about where we’re at and what we think we need to be prepared to do? And we’d like to bring you in for X number of hours of consulting service. And okay, great. We battle out the financial component of it, but over the course of time and over the years of working with them, there’s no longer a question that my knowledge and expertise is valued.

And whatever the dollar amount is that I feel is appropriate for this particular engagement is never argued anymore. Because what I am bringing to them in their mind can’t be monetized in the sense that, you know, this is a cost versus this is what having her there helps us be able to do and ultimately maybe moves forward a project that couldn’t before or stops a project from happening because we talked about it and we as practitioners, as agencies that are putting together these responses have to have more confidence in our abilities and to be able just straight out say, if you want us to do this work, this is what it’s going to cost to do it and not be afraid and also be okay if they have to walk away because you are perceived as too expensive. I’d rather be too expensive than not expensive enough.

Well, a couple of thoughts here. The first one is, what you’re talking about points to the all-important factor, which is reputation, right? Your reputation is a function of your expertise plus your visibility, plus your consistency, et cetera. And so not only do these external advisors need to be very actively thinking about and managing reputation — I don’t mean “reputation management” the way it’s often discussed, even in PR, for example, like how do we bury negative comments or anything? No, I mean reputation management as in how do you actually build the real credibility and trust that allows you to not only command higher fees but deliver more impact?

Because here’s the thing. I know that organizations are really looking to create value, and what they’re thinking about and talking about is price. And I also know that consultants, agency owners and other outside experts are also wanting to create value, and what they’re primarily thinking about is cost, right? Because they need to run a profitable business. So they have to be a margin so that they can pay their people.

We all, as I am fond of saying, need to eat and live indoors. So there’s going to have to be enough in the thing somewhere in the middle. If we could change the conversation from the client only talking about price and us only thinking about cost, we could have a conversation about value creation. That would be exciting. That’s something, in another context, we teach at Win without Pitching, where we try to get people to think about how this whole process of communication as you sell expertise plays out.

But this also brings us around now to the client side because there’s a whole bunch ... I mentioned a bunch of features on the agency side. There’s a bunch of features on the client side preventing this too. You’re working with a specific person who may or may not have unlimited budgetary authority. They may have been given a certain amount, and that’s what they have to spend. The budgets for PPC ads are in a separate silo. The budgets for social media management are in yet another silo. Maybe this is an event. So now the PR firm is brought in because you’re an events expert, but really we only want you to think about the event because all that other stuff is being handled by all these other people. Maybe you’re dealing with a mid-level director or VP, maybe you’re dealing with a C-suite level comms professional. That’s always great, right? How do you think about and navigate those client side relationships? Because where you enter the organization in many ways determines the impact you’re allowed to have.

Well, and if I had that answer, we’d be somewhere else. But you know, it’s a valid question, and typically when we are brought in it is in all likelihood at a communications level, somebody who’s responsible for that. Doesn’t mean they are the professional person. I mean sometimes that falls with within HR. It could fall to the administrative assistant to the CEO, who’s been told, “go find us a PR firm.” They do their search and they find the top five and they call and, “can you come in and do PR for us? And you start asking the questions of which they have no answers because they just had the task of finding something…

Yeah, ChatGPT now gave them the five people to call.

Yeah, right, exactly. And to be perfectly honest, as much as I enjoy having those conversations, those are probably not the best client for us in that the initial investment, what we can bring to the table is not being given enough attention in the first place. So I’m not suggesting that the administrative assistant cannot be our point of contact if that person is given enough information, enough authority to manage it correctly and not just be the appointment setter to get us in the room. We have to have access to be able to do that.

And it’ll go back to and I asked this question to anyone that inquires whether they come to us through that type of inquiry or through our website or whatever, “What is driving that decision now that you need to hire a public relations agency? What is it that happened that said we need to bring in outside support?” And if they can answer that question, however they answer it, but if they have an answer, then at least I have a point of reference as to where we’re starting from and how much of what we do do they understand?

And is this being given enough consideration back to what we started as a strategic move for the organization versus, you know, “We have to check this box. We need three press releases and a blog post. Go find somebody.” And if we get to the real meat of the reason why they’re hiring or looking to hire, we can at least evolve that conversation to a place of making more sense and then ultimately being able to share with them how we go about the work that we’re doing, why our experience is such that would make sense for that organization.

What we bring to the conversation, what we bring to the table, and all things being equal and we get to that point, the conversation then about how much does it cost shouldn’t feel as difficult because you have now told them what it is you can offer to them. There are great agencies of all sizes that can offer basically the same types of work. They come to it with slightly different experiences based on what they’ve done before.

We all have different pricing structures, at least in terms of what makes sense for our own particular business. But they shouldn’t be buying what we do on price. It really should be about what we bring and how important this investment is in your brand, in your reputation, in your customer acquisition efforts. This is how that happens. And you know, I will get asked, “What’s the ROI? What am I going to get back if I hire you?” It’s a very difficult question to respond to. It’s not a one-to-one thing. One press release doesn’t equal three clients. It just doesn’t work that way. So I have to talk in more esoteric type terms. “Well, we open up the doors and we do this and we do that.” Well, that’s harder to understand if you don’t have a full grasp of what communications actually does. And to your point about this is the person in charge of social, this is the person in charge of events…

If all those individuals see communications as part of their team, we have a much better chance of being successful and we have a much better chance of moving from support to strategy and a much better chance of being part of the larger dialogue and being at that table on an ongoing basis.

Now, ordinarily, that would be a perfect ending point to this episode. It was eloquent, it was well spoken. There’s one more thing we gotta talk about, though, before we end this conversation: the things that hold this in place. So we talked about structures and practices on the agency side. We talked about organizational hierarchies, budgets, things on the client side. The third thing, and the thing that holds it all together, is measurement.

What do we measure? And it comes out of what you were just saying. The truth is that if you count peanuts, you’re going to get valued in peanut butter. I don’t know if that’s true. I just made that up. But that’s a weird way to say: what you count, what you measure, is a really important part of answering the ROI question. And we need to think bigger and more creatively about what we measure, because here’s the simple truth. And I think we on the PR and comms side have known this for a long time, and I’m not sure we’ve always been fully honest about it.

The things that are the easiest to count are not always the things that matter. And the stuff that matters is sometimes innumerable and uncountable. So we do have to learn how to have grown-up conversations about things like brand and reputation without pretending that we’re going to be able to devolve it to a single report we can have a junior staffer run once a month and take very little of their time to do it. It is more complicated. It may be more customized, client by client by client, because what matters to one organization probably should be different than what matters to another. And how you count that and reflect that back in your reporting and how you are accountable for the results — even the word “count” is in accountable.

This really matters. And because I don’t work in a PR firm, this is an area I have less direct exposure to. But I am very concerned that the software platforms that we pay a lot of money for are helping us count the wrong things. And this is the last piece that is holding — maybe not the last, but it’s one of the other major pieces holding this whole thing in place. All right, Abbie, what do you have to say about that?

I’m long enough in this business that we used to count our success by how big the clipbook was that we turned into the client at the end of the month. If we had a three-inch clipbook in January, we better have a four-inch one in February, to show that we were better and more successful.

For people who weren’t around back then, you’re talking about the thickness of the thing, right?

Right. The thickness. You would cut the articles out of the newspaper and the magazines and you would paste them on a piece of paper and you would give this notebook to your client and say, look how great we were.

Column inches were measured in actual inches.

Yes, and we were great. I mean, look, those still were outcomes. But the better question now is, “What’s important to your business, and is what we are doing capitalizing on that?” The Public Relations Society of America has several years ago introduced what is referred to as the Barcelona Principles. And it’s an attempt to measure sentiment and action and positioning.

Trying to take, it’s a, that’s a very subjective sort of evaluation, but it’s looking at things other than how many column inches were we able to generate. As an agency, we have evolved those things into what we affectionately refer to as your key pillars. So what are those things that will move the business in the direction you want? What are your key messages? What are the KPIs, the key performance indicators that you are using in other aspects of your business?

And what is the role that we play in maximizing that? I don’t have the perfect solution that says, a well-placed article, well-placed publication that reaches your target audience will ultimately lead to 52 inquiries to your sales team that will then close 10 sales. I can’t make that absolute direct correlation, but I can very much make that dotted line that says if we are able to be positioned in this niche publication that aligns with your target demographic, that allows you to position yourself as a leader and an expert, and your sales and marketing team follows up on the inquiries that come in or uses that article as part of their marketing materials.

And we ask the questions to the inquiry: Where did you hear about us? Where did you learn about us? What do you know about us? We can start to see this full circle moment that some of that relates back and we can then turn around and say the ROI on that investment was these touch points, these opportunities, et cetera. That gets better the more all of us have this discussion. And we all — we being the communications industry — all agree that we are no longer going to measure column inches, that we are no longer going to say our success is built on how many stories we placed, but rather the quality of the output, and its ability to capture what is important to the business, and the action that’s being taken as a result of that, is where we can start to really build that credibility around the work that we’re doing.

It is one of the most difficult things, I think, next to the pricing component, but is one of the most difficult things that we get asked and that we have to manage within the client relationship, is both of us — both us and the client — understanding what is measurable and what role we play in impacting those important elements of your business in order to be measured.

Thanks for listening to this episode of Copper State of Mind. If you enjoyed the conversation, please share it with a colleague who might also find this podcast valuable. It’s easy to do, just click the Share button in the app you’re listening to now to pass it along. You can also follow Copper State of Mind in Apple Podcasts, Spotify or any other podcast app. We publish new episodes every other Friday. Copper State of Mind is brought to you by HMA Public Relations, the oldest continuously operating PR firm in Arizona. The show is recorded and produced by the team at Speed of Story, a B2B communications firm in Phoenix, and distributed by PHX.FM, the leading independent B2B podcast network in Arizona. For all of us here at Speed of Story and PHX.FM, I’m Adrian McIntyre. Thanks for listening and for sharing the show with others if you choose to do so. We hope you’ll join us again for another episode of Copper State of Mind.