Is PR Worth the Effort?

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Podcast Transcript

Loren Feldman:
Welcome Paul, Sarah, and William. I appreciate you taking the time. I want to start today with an article I recently highlighted in the Morning Report. It was based on the anonymous comments of a PR agency insider, who basically argued that PR firms need better PR. It said that many firms are too focused on getting that first retainer check, and they don’t spend enough time talking strategy and setting expectations with their clients.

Sarah, we’ve talked about some of these issues a little bit in previous episodes, but I just wanted to give you a chance to respond to this. I certainly don’t want to put you on the spot to answer for all of public relations any more than I’d want to answer for all of journalism, heaven knows. But I’m wondering if you found the piece credible?

Sarah Segal:
I did not. To me, it read like a disgruntled employee that doesn’t get to have say over the biz development that the person’s senior executives handle, and is disgruntled about his or her or their—

Loren Feldman:
I think the person was identified as a male.

Sarah Segal:
Okay, him. Yeah, honestly, it was a rant. For a communications person, honestly, they did not articulate their points very clearly to me. That said, there are a couple of things in there I agree that is an industry problem, in general, about people coming into and seeking PR when they’re not ready for it. And even my agency has had that problem where you go through the whole RFP process, you land the client, and then you realize when you’re in the onboarding segment, that they don’t have a lot of the foundational items that they need to really go big and leverage PR. But you don’t necessarily know that when you’re pitching and working on getting a client on board. So you kind of, after the fact, realize, “Okay, these guys don’t really have all their ducks in a row in order for us to do an effective PR campaign.”

Loren Feldman:
William, do you have any or much experience hiring public relations firms?

William Vanderbloemen:
I don’t know what any or much is, but I’m on my fourth one.

Loren Feldman:
Okay.

William Vanderbloemen:
And not because I keep hiring the wrong one. I just hate paying the retainers. I keep thinking, “Golly, the world of information is flat.” The idea that somebody can call a friend and get you a placement should be dead by now with the internet, but it’s really not.

Loren Feldman:
Could you explain that, William? Why should that be dead?

William Vanderbloemen:
I don’t know, Loren, you and I are old enough—maybe Paul, not Sarah—to remember the word Rolodex. You know, that’s why you hired a search firm. They’ve got a great Rolodex, or to go all Heidi Fleiss, a little black book. Everybody’s got the same Rolodex now. It’s LinkedIn. Like, I can get anybody’s number. I don’t have to call a switchboard to get through.

Loren Feldman:
I bet Sarah has contacts that she makes use of.

Sarah Segal:
Well, here’s the thing. It’s not about the contacts anymore, because we all know that the number of people being laid off at news outlets is atrocious right now. So there’s a constant churn and turnover of the right people at the right outlet. What it is, is about an understanding of how to work with reporters; an understanding of their deadlines; an understanding of the things that they’re looking for, the assets; the understanding of getting items to them in a fashion where it doesn’t make more work for them.

We actually do something that’s really abnormal for most PR agencies. We provide our clients with our media lists. They have full access to them. They can look at their emails. And honestly, we’ve had people ask us whether or not we worry about those clients going off and trying to do their own PR, and they never do, because it’s a lot of work. It’s not about just emailing Loren at The New York Times and saying, “Hey, cover me.” That’s not going to get you a story. What it is, is about cultivating the right angle that meets the segment of whatever they’re looking to cover and appeals to them as a writer. And most businesses don’t have the bandwidth, time, or understanding of the industry to do that.

Loren Feldman:
William, in those situations that you were describing, did you feel as though you were on the same page with the firms you hired, that expectations were set appropriately before the contract was signed?

William Vanderbloemen:
Some better than others. I think what I have probably wrongly assumed is, it’s easier to find people and get in touch with them so PR wasn’t necessary. But every time I hire a good PR firm—a good one—we end up growing. And the part of me that is Dutch, which is allergic to overhead, is like, “Golly, do we really have to write that check?” But every time we do, with a good one, we grow.

The very first firm I hired was a firm that was recommended to me from my attorney, who also represents a lot of our clients. And it’s a guy up on Times Square, and he’s got a fairly good size firm—and not one of them is a Christian. And I’m sitting here trying to market a book on pastoral succession in Christian churches. That was the reason we hired the firm. It was like, “Let’s go get our name out there,” and that sort of a thing. And I thought, “There’s no way these guys are going to even understand what I’m doing.” And when we started, I just talked to him on the phone, or whatever. And they finally said, “If you’ll come up here, and sit down with us, and figure out a strategy, we can get this done.” And they were absolutely right.

Loren Feldman:
William, if you had doubts about whether they could do it, why did you hire them?

William Vanderbloemen:
Because my attorney told me to, and he’s pretty smart.

Sarah Segal:
Well, isn’t it Bill Gates who said that if he had $1 left, he would spend it on PR? The problem with a lot of PR or when people are hiring agencies, some of them go in thinking it’s going to be the Band-Aid or the fix that is going to change their bottom line. And PR and building brand credibility takes time.

You’re not going to become the sweetheart overnight. It rarely ever works like that. And people are impatient. We’ve had people be, like, “Well, we really want to be in The New York Times within the first three months of the relationship. Can you guarantee that?” First of all, we don’t guarantee anything. We guarantee you that we will provide transparency. We guarantee that we will regularly pitch you out. We guarantee that we will literally guide you along to everything that we’re doing in our activities. But sometimes your story won’t stick.

Loren Feldman:
Paul, do you have any or much experience hiring public relations firms?

Paul Downs:
None. But I did manage to get in The New York Times first try, so… [Laughter]

Loren Feldman:
How’d you do that?

Paul Downs:
I called a guy. It was crazy. He paid me. It was amazing.

Loren Feldman:
Actually, I think you emailed him first.

Paul Downs:
Emailed him first. Yeah. So, I’m sorry, Sarah, William, you guys just went about it the wrong way. [Laughter]

William Vanderbloemen:
So, I’ll say, Loren, looking at the article from this recent Morning Report, one of the things it outlined was lack of a strategy session. And I learned from my PR firm, the first one I hired: Let’s do a strategy session. And it worked. Now, they were very expensive. And we used them for a campaign, like a six-month campaign leading up to the launch of the book. I think one of the things that helped was, I positioned my job for that six months as to be on call, if they needed it. Like, the pope opened a Twitter account one day, and they needed commentary for Fast Company within the next hour. “Okay, I got it.” So I think I had to learn that it’s not just them. If they need it done right away, I need to make them the priority to make it work. And I don’t know, Sarah, if that’s true from your perspective. But—

Sarah Segal:
Yeah, you have to make the reporters a priority. And we’ve had where people are like, “Well, sorry, I don’t have time to talk to that reporter today.” And we’re like, “Are you kidding me?” Like, you have to bend over backwards. Otherwise, they’re never going to call you back. I have a question. Can you walk through, what was your strategy session with them? I’m very curious as to what—

Loren Feldman:
William, before you answer that, did you have that session before you hired them or after you hired them?

William Vanderbloemen:
After. One of the best book titles I’ve seen in a long time is the Covey book, The Speed of Trust. I trust my attorney, and he told me a few people who these guys had worked with around their books, and I knew the results. I’m like, “Okay, fine. I’ll hire them.” And then we did the strategy.

Sarah Segal:
So how did you go about developing that strategy?

William Vanderbloemen:
Well, first of all, them learning what in the world I do. I mean, this is not anything other than a point of data. But every partner in the firm was a Jewish guy who had no idea, like, “So how does a pastor get hired? What is that all about? And what are you trying to do?” And we were a brand new idea to the church—forget people who didn’t go to church. So they just needed to understand, like, “Who are you marketing to? Who do you want to reach? What persona are you trying [to use]?”

So they had to understand what we were doing, and who we were selling to, before they really said, “Okay, now I get it.” And for me, it was: I know how to write content for pastors for headmasters of Christian schools, for CEOs of nonprofits. The real trick is, how do you write content that will reach board members who are in any number of different industries? And that’s where we went to the PR firms and said, “We need the business community to recognize us for what we do.” And they did a great job. They just charged a bunch of money. And we were so much smaller then. And we said, “We’ll do a six-month campaign, and that’ll be it.” They’re still doing great. I think they’re still growing and doing quite well, and we stay in touch.

I’ve used PR firms when I’ve written a book. The next book we wrote, we decided to go with a smaller group that was a little less expensive, that, frankly, had connections in the church world. And it wasn’t very good at all. And, you know, it may just be that you get what you pay for. It wasn’t a bad person, but we just got very few placements. And we were a much more reputable, larger, well-known company at the time.

Third firm we hired was just on a one-off. It was people who were uniquely placed for a brief season of time, where I had great access to their contacts. And it worked great for that season of time. But when they changed jobs, it all changed. That’s a pretty nebulous answer. But you know, we’re putting a book out this fall, which I think is going to be pretty amazing. And it’s a business book, so I did a targeted search for: Who are the best business book PR firms out there? And made a decision.

Loren Feldman:
Wait, you didn’t go back to the ones you were happy with last time?

William Vanderbloemen:
No, because this is not marketing toward Christians at all. There’s not one Christian reference in it. It’s a leadership book, and it’ll go to the larger business public, like the Daniel Pink, Adam Grant kind of audience. And I want to—

Loren Feldman:
So you think the non-Christians at the firm you used last time to market to Christians won’t be able to help you with this one, which is not aimed at Christians?

Sarah Segal:
It’s because they were expensive. How much is expensive?

William Vanderbloemen:
Well, isn’t that a great question? You know, I talked to them. I mean, this was eight years ago when I used them. They’ve really pivoted more toward consumer goods. And they could work with us, but it would not be their specialty. So I’m like, “Well, who is the best at marketing business books in that really small space?” and made a decision based on that.

Sarah Segal:
Going back to the question of being expensive, like what is expensive to you, in terms of book PR?

William Vanderbloemen:
If it’s costing me more than it would cost me to hire a really great top-level employee, then that’s a lot.

Sarah Segal:
How much would a top-level employee cost?

William Vanderbloemen:
I’m not gonna go that far.

Paul Downs:
C’mon, it’s gonna be north of 100 grand, right?

William Vanderbloemen:
It’s well over a six-figure line item on the budget. Put it that way.

Sarah Segal:
Okay, I’m sorry. I like to know these things.

Loren Feldman:
So does everybody who’s listening, Sarah. And I’m curious, do you think that sounds like a lot, too?

Sarah Segal:
No, I mean, honestly, when you hire an agency, the benefit that you get is you get a team of people, you get access to all of the tools that we use. We have media databases. We can pull your TV appearances. So you’re not just getting the headcount, you’re getting access to a full suite of research and data that we have available.

But people don’t want to pay for PR. I get a lot of people with sticker shock when I talk to them, just because they don’t understand that there’s a lot of stuff that happens in the background that they may not be aware of, these tools that we invest in to do it. But I did have one question for you: I want to know, when you said that you researched and looked for PR agencies that are good at doing new books, how did you go about that? Is it through referral or Googling or?

William Vanderbloemen:
A little bit of everything. I mean, I stalk for a living. So it’s as random as—this sounds awful, but—literally, running into Malcolm Gladwell at dinner, to, “All right, who does Daniel Pink use? Who does Adam Grant use? Who does—” and just try and do a convergence around it. Maybe it’s because I run a really niche business that I’m a believer in the niches. But I was just wondering, is there a firm or two that, this is who those guys all go to? Like, they know that one thing.

Loren Feldman:
Wait, did you go up to his table and ask him who his PR person is?

William Vanderbloemen:
Well, I’m not gonna go into the conversation, but yes, I did. I am that guy. We have a number of mutual friends who he’s done podcasts with and for, and so it was fine.

Sarah Segal:
So if you’re going to the places that people in your same space go to, what incentivizes a PR person to pitch you as an expert, or Malcolm as an expert? Like, that’s the problem. If you all know the same person, like you’re—

William Vanderbloemen:
I beg to differ, Sarah. It’s about when books get released. They’re not going to pick me if they’ve got an author who has the same launch date. This is all about building a campaign around a book and a concept. And Malcolm Gladwell is not going to present himself as an expert on spotting talent and what talented people end up showing as their traits.

Sarah Segal:
But you asked that question when you’re vetting them, right?

William Vanderbloemen:
Absolutely.

Sarah Segal:
Okay.

Loren Feldman:
I want to go back to Paul for a second. Paul, you mentioned that you haven’t hired PR firms, but you have gotten in touch with reporters, and if people didn’t realize it, you were actually referring to me at The New York Times.

You sent me an email. And I have to say, I responded because it was a very unusual email. It was very genuine, and you told me things that business owners often don’t want to talk about, including the fact that your business was not doing well and that I might be interested because you would be willing to talk about what it’s like to go through bankruptcy. Happily, you didn’t end up having to do that. But that was the start of our relationship. William, similarly, we had a mutual friend who introduced us, and we wound up having lunch, which led to you writing for me at Forbes. First, Paul, did you consider hiring a firm before doing that?

Paul Downs:
All right, I don’t think that my experience is replicable. So we could tell the story all day. [Laughter]

Sarah Segal:
I don’t think so either. But I do think what you did was, you gave a reporter access to the bad stuff, which is what most people try to insulate themselves from. You were willing to say, “All right, I’m going to show you what’s going on under the hood.” And that’s what reporters want. So yeah, you can do your own PR, if you’re willing to show your cards. A reporter’s gonna say, “Yeah, if you can give me unprecedented access, we’ve got a relationship.”

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