We're returning strong! In this episode Stella interviews Lucy Hart, Executive Strategy Director at The Romans; the most awarded PR agency in the industry.

Often in PR there can be too much focus on media and not enough on the public. That's why this interview is so inspiring. Lucy talks about her passion for social anthropology and you can tell she means it. Its clear that her deep curiosity in people and the psychology of minds is one of the reasons her agency's campaigns make such an impact.

Lucy explains how The Romans global team work with their clients to make the magic happen. She explains their ideation process and the tools and data that feeds each of their award-winning strategies.

This is a special insight into an agency doing things differently.

Special Guest: Lucy Hart .

Gary is the founder of CoverageBook, AnswerThePublic and the new (free) PR measurement tool ‘CoverageImpact’.

We discuss how the last 15 years of working together in marketing and the last 10 years of Gary being a successful software founder in the PR industry has led to the launch of this new PR tool.

In a time when PR budgets are being cut and in-house teams are admitting its often down to lack of confidence in measurement, Gary believes its time for a step-change in the way the industry showcases PR activity outcomes. He also believes this should be accessible to everyone and not just those that can afford high-level measurement and analytics support...

Could this new free graph-generator tool that showcases PR outcomes be the answer to the PR industry’s biggest problem? Listen this interview and make your decision!

www.CoverageImpact.com

Special Guest: Gary Preston .

In this fascinating podcast chat Steph and I explore why this is; from pivot table and design skills to senior management experience being involved, we delve into what PR measurement needs to be a success in 2024.

Steph Bridgeman is the founder of ‘Experienced Media Analysts’. As well as help many teams win PR measurement and AMEC awards, Steph helps arm agencies and in-house teams with outcome insights that help them prove value and retain and grow PR budgets.

As well as win the awards Steph is also on the board of AMEC (association of measurement and evaluation of communications) so its safe to say, she in totally immersed and in the know on measurement!

She shares her opinion on where we’re at as an industry, but also gets practical on what we can do to improve processes, including;

Providing clear examples of what outputs and outcomes are and the difference between metrics

Exploring the word ‘Impact’ and what should and shouldn’t be included as a metric there

Steph shares how teams should review technology and how to cut out what’s not needed

And finally how to find hidden gems of skills around your organisation that can help analyse and visualise results.

Special Guest: Steph Bridgeman.

I have enlisted the help of PR powerhouse Stephen Waddington to help us do exactly this. So grab a coffee and listen to this 30 minute episode of the PR Resolution to set your 2024 off to the best start possible.

Stephen Waddington (AKA Wadds) is the Founder and Managing Partner of Wadds Inc. which is a professional advisory firm that helps agencies and communications teams with planning, strategic decision making and execution.

He is fully immersed in the UK and Europe PR industry; he's been the President of the CIPR, has held senior positions at global PR and marketing agencies Ketchum and Metia Group. He is the co-founder of Socially Mobile, a not-for-profit PR school and is also a current PhD research student at Leeds Business School investigating the contribution of public relations to management.

It's safe to say Wadds has a clear view on the state of play in Public Relations and what could happen in this year, 2024.

In this interview, we look back at 2023 and how the economy and government decisions affected the industry.

We talk about marketing and PR budgets, how we responded and how agencies were affected.

Wadds talks about the alignment we have as an industry with senior business leaders and the areas that hold us back; including truly understanding business and how PR communicates success. As well as highlight the issues, he also explains what we can do to improve these areas.

Wadds highlights PR talent, diversity and inclusion as an area that did move on slightly in 2023 but also needs a lot of work within teams and as a collective.

As well as some 2024 predictions, our conversation outlines areas of focus that will help you individually and as a team to aim high, better sell success and as an industry raise credibility a more senior level in 2024.

Special Guest: Stephen Waddington.

The music artist.

How does the involvement of a track in a PR campaign, advert, or TV show affect the artist?

What does it mean to the target audience?

Can it make or break an artist?

In this episode, Stella Bayles interviews Jelena Grozdanich, director of film and television at Columbia Records to find out.

Jelena explains how, just like brands, artists also have audience objectives & how the right partnership can be very powerful for both parties.

She shares the benefits of working with new artists and how finding a match of niche interest points between both parties can be mutually beneficial as often ‘niche interest points’ = a passionate and very engaged audience.

Jelena explains the changes to her role as the music industry has changed and what she expects to see emerge in the next 5 years.

Whether you’re a music PR or are interested in having music as part of your marketing strategy this episode is for you.

Timestamps
3:44 - Do you have an audience strategy for your artists?
7:29 What kind of difference or impact have you seen by placing an artist on a particular show or a particular game?
10:33 How important do you think it is for a brand and artist to be aligned?
15:27 Use of music on TikTok and Instagram
17:23 How do you measure whether a partnership has been successful?
26:00 Where do you see the industry developing in the next 5 to 10 years?
29:00 What do you do to maintain the work and life balance?

Special Guest: Jelena Grozdanich.

This interesting breadth of experience has a one key point in common; PR. and specifically how PR coverage helps attract investors and gains funding.

Margo experienced this first hand when her concept design of the sneaker that made music with movement, had stayed static as an idea for years until it went viral. Through the vast amount of exposure and engagement Margo was able to gain the attention of investors and engineers she’d only dreamed of years before.

Margo now shares her PR to investment strategies with start-up businesses and charity organisations so they can do the same.

This episode is absolute gold for any organisations that need to raise funding. It’s also a brilliant example of the true power of PR.

Special Guest: Margo Neely .

We delve into the research results including the types of business that see this success, the PR approach needed to gain these results and specifically how important a CEO or founder can be in the process.

This conversation is fascinating, not just because of the correlation the research found between PR and financial funding but because both Darryl and Richard have so much experience in this area of PR work (b2b and reputation) and importantly how to measure it.

Darryl is the MD and Co-Founder of performance-driven marketing and comms consultancy, Hard Numbers.

Richard is the co-managing partner of evaluation firm CARMA. He’s been awarded CIPR President’s medal for his service to PR, he won the AMEC Don Bartholomew Award and of course was also the chair of AMEC between 2016-2022 too.

Together they share wisdom and practical advice from their own experiences throughout the interview.

We cover;

• How they researched 64 startup unicorn businesses & analysed over 65,000 pieces of coverage
• We look at the sectors that have the most potential for funding
• Darryl shares tips on how best to work with busy senior leaders & why a ‘Get to text’ approach is best
• I challenge correlation vs causation in the results and Richard shares brilliant wisdom in how we can all apply these lessons to our own measurement plans.

Special Guests: Darryl Sparey and Richard Bagnall.

I interview global head of data and analytics - Allison Spray alongside PR Agency One MD James Crawford.

James and I co-wrote two chapters in a recent PRCA paper; ‘Data literacy in PR’. We looked at how to use tech to build confidence and improve data use as well as a chapter on how to build a ‘data culture’ in your team. It was the latter chapter that Allison Spray’s team at H&K was noted as a great example of hiring in data expertise alongside training PR practitioners.

In this interview, we go behind the scenes and get into the detail.

I find out how Allison has increased confidence in data across all H&K teams

We reveal the data team’s interesting recruitment process and the mix of skills and sector-specific backgrounds Allison looks for.

Allison and James share how they work with clients to gain the data and tech they need upfront

Allison also shares tips on how to get started, whether you’re a small team looking to up-skill or planning to to build a data team within an agency

Since the H&K data and analytics team has developed and established the agency has won the most amount of awards ever in a year. Coincidence? or does increasing PR confidence in data work? I’ll let you decide…

Special Guest: Allison Spray.

Held in November its the perfect time to learn and refresh your approach ready for new KPIs in a new year.

There are just over 4 weeks of events and content releases from AMEC (Association of Measurement & Evaluation) members and most are available for free to all.

In this special episode of the PR Resolution Podcast I interview the Global Managing Director of AMEC; Johna Burke.

• We share the best of the month and what not to miss!
• Johna explores common PR measurement challenges you might be facing and directs you to the best resource to fix it
• Johna shares the trends in measurement & highlights from AMEC award entries this year

For the full calendar:
https://amecorg.com/measurement-month/measurement-month-2022-events/

For further help on measurement go to:
https://resolution.coveragebook.com/

Special Guest: Johna Burke .

So, in this episode I catch up with the original founder of our PR tech; Gary Preston to share the details with our listeners first!

We start with our journey; our agency pasts, and the measurement and reporting experiences that led to the birth of CoverageBook.

Gary shares his aims for the second version of the platform; making every PR practitioner ‘an accidental analyst’ and how he hopes confidence in measurement will return with credible metrics and simple reports.

He talks about industry measurement as a whole and compares to his experience in digital marketing. And why some PR software claims of attribution and artificial intelligence is having a negative effect on measurement learning and development.

Yet with the right confidence, he believes by 2023 digital marketing teams will be coming to PR to learn how to showcase and measure their work in a credible way….

Listen now to find out more ;)

Special Guest: Gary Preston .

In this episode I interview Effie Kanyua, the Director of PR & Comms at publisher 'Hearst UK' which includes Harper’s Bazaar, ELLE, Good Housekeeping, Cosmopolitan, Men’s Health and Women’s health, media titles many of us sell-in to!

I ask Effie about her journey from agency consumer comms to her in-house role at one of the world's largest publishers and the flip of objectives in helping to grow media, rather than target it.

We discuss;

• How media consumption has changed in the last year
• How Hearst media titles have had to adapt & change business objectives
• What it means to drive readership to media
• The importance of internal comms right now
• And how the Hearst UK PR team measures multi-media PR for a diverse set of stakeholders

Effie’s honesty and insight is fascinating. Whether you work agency or in-house this episode is for you.

As always, let me know what you think @stellabayles on Twitter.

Special Guest: Effie Kanyua .

It has been an on-going challenge in Public Relations to understand the true volume of people arriving on news sites due to publishers' secrecy on traffic figures. There was further focus on this topic recently, when UK news site, The Guardian reported that The Telegraph online is planning to link journalists’ pay to traffic and popularity of their articles.

So, in this episode, I interview digital communications consultant Andrew Smith on his research into publisher traffic.

We discuss:
-How readers arrive at news stories
-Where the traffic comes from and how they interact on-site
-Publisher traffic growth strategies
-How the ‘pay for views’ model could work and the problems that could come with this
-Traffic and data tools available to journalists and PR people

No matter what country or industry you practise PR in, this episode is relevant to you all.

Special Guest: Andrew Smith .

It’s impossible to influence and change opinion without a full understanding of who you are talking to and how they feel. And with more data available than ever before, where on earth do you begin that kind of research?

Step forward Alex Judd, Alex is the head of Impact and Planning at Clarity PR. Alex is passionate about combining the art of communications with the science of research and data.

In this episode we discuss:
The difference between researching B2B and B2C audiences
What we can learn from advertising audience segmentation
How avoid looking for insight in an echo chamber
How to get buy in from stakeholders
How to get started in you’re an audience insight beginner

Special Guest: Alex Judd .

Share of voice is worked out very differently in Public Relations in comparision to other areas of marketing. This is mainly down to earned, owned and paid media all having different data and what we're allowed access to.

At the end September 2020, Mark Ritson wrote an article for Marketing Week, which pitched why 'share of search' could be a better alternative measure of how popular a brand is among consumers.

When I read the article, it struck me as a more sensible integrated way of looking at marketing success. However, I needed the help an expert to learn more!

In this episode I interview marketing attribution expert, Russell McAthy, founder of Ringside to help us learn more.

We explore:

• What 'share of search' is
• How it considers consumer view over the brand marketing teams!
• How all of the marketing activity affects it
• How PR teams can explore it

If you do PR for a brand that also has lots of owned and paid marketing activity, this episode is for you.

Special Guest: Russell McAthy.

Cole is the author of the best-selling book, ‘storytelling with data: a data visualization guide for business professionals’ and, through her courses has helped thousands of people around the world tell better stories with their data, but what does she think about PR data?

In one of my favourite interviews to date, Cole and I explore;

If naturally right-brain people can tell great data stories

We cover the Barcelona Principles 3.0 updates & how it’s possible to communicate outputs & outcomes visually

Why getting to know your report readers is SO important

And why starting with data is actually the wrong place to begin your measurement journey..

Special Guest: Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic.

Russell has been helping businesses attribute success (often revenue) to various lines of marketing for years. Without his insight into customer behaviour, millions in marketing budgets are likely to have been misspent.

The term 'attribution' has come up a lot recently in PR recently so, I wanted to get back to basics. Russell and I cover what 'attribution' means, how PR fits into overall marketing evaluation and how you can talk about it to your stakeholders.

Russell also tells me about how an update to cookie data happening in February 2020, that is going to make a MASSIVE difference to PR and paid, and we all need to know about it!

Get ready to learn.

Special Guest: Russell McAthy.

Sentiment is difficult, but without it we’re not fully evaluating Public Relations. So what steps can we take to fully analyse our work?

In this special ‘measurement month’ episode I’m joined by AMEC members and analysis experts, Steph Bridgeman, head of Experienced Media Analysts and Maya Koleva, head of Insight at Commetric to share their knowledge.

We cover how to manually track sentiment, how machines are learning what positive and negative descriptions are in social and news posts, how to tackle international campaigns and steps you can take in your own evaluation. This really is relevant to everyone in Public Relations.

Special Guests: Maya Koleva and Steph Bridgeman.

Katie shares her thoughts on why impressions are a misleading metric in reports and how PR teams can attribute organisational goals to social activity.

If social media is part of your campaigns this year, this episode is gold-dust.

Special Guest: Katie Paine .