At their worst, speeches can be cold recitations of facts and figures that no one will remember past the moment they’re spoken.

At their best, they can be soaring oration that change hearts, stick in minds and impact the world.

Which they are depends in some measure on the person delivering it. But even the best orator on the planet can’t turn a dry speech into a masterpiece. Good speeches begin at the writing table, but the very best speeches begin with a story.

During Ragan’s recent Public Affairs & Speechwriting Virtual Conference, Michael Ricci, former speechwriter and director of communications for House Speakers John Boehner and Paul Ryan, and Nick Lanyi, media relations and crisis communications expert for RCG, explored how to use speechwriting to project optimism and stability in even the most difficult times. The keys are in emotion, empathy and storytelling.

“Just the insecurity, the stress of everything going on in the world requires some empathy,,” Lanyi said. “But it can’t be faked, it’s got to be there. Sometimes words alone will be helpful, but you want to encourage your principal to be able to convey that.”

Why storytelling matters

Speechwriting, Lanyi notes, is a unique form of communication. People can’t follow along with what you’re saying in real-time. They can’t rewind or re-read. They have to be in the moment.

“If all you’re talking about is abstract concepts or lists or descriptions unrelated to anything human, people are going to lose interest,” Lanyi said. “Whereas if you have a story that is about people struggling to try to achieve something important and the ups and downs they go through, people’s brains actually literally get turned on. They’re emotionally connected and they’re much more likely to hear what you have to say.”

These stories can follow a very simple arc, not so dissimilar from the classic Hero’s Journey:

• Find stories involving human beings (occasionally cute animals!) that speakers can use to demonstrate what they’re talking about. It gives the audience someone to root for.
• Show what that person wants to accomplish.
• Show what stands in their way.
• Show what happens – the good and the bad.

Not everything is a story, but it can make an argument come alive.

“Almost every practiced politician is going to talk about healthcare or the economy and then very quickly talk about real people doing stuff,” Lanyi said.

Indeed, finding a humanizing figure is such a hallowed part of politics, it even has its own name: Lenny Skutnik. Read more about the real Skutnik and the speechwriting trope.

The importance of a villain

Of course, all great stories need a villain. At a minimum, this is an obstacle that the person in the story must overcome to triumph: an industry, your competition, broader economic trends. But Ricci found that personifying that villain has greater impacts.

When he worked for then-Speaker of the House John Boehner, the natural villain was his Democratic counterpart, Senate Leader Harry Reid. But for a long time, Boehner wanted to maintain good relations with Reid and avoided naming him in speeches. Instead, the villain was the nebulous “the senate.”

But once the speechwriting team was given the greenlight to make Reid a proper villain, the messages hit more directly. The response was stronger on social media. [Any specific figures to back this up?-MK]

“When people see the good and the evil in your story, it has more impact,” Ricci said.

Ultimately, facts rarely change people’s mind. Emotions do. Building speeches around humans is the surest way to get people to remember and act.

Watch the full presentation below.

The post How and why to craft speeches based around emotion appeared first on PR Daily.

The term “high tech” conjures mental images of gleaming buildings of steel and glass gleaming along the northern California coastline, or piercing through the clouds of lower Manhattan.

They probably don’t conjure thoughts of Iowa cornfields.

But John Deere is working to change that.

“We’ve gone through this tech journey to try to adapt ourselves from a traditional legacy manufacturing company to a tech company,” said Franklin Peitz, tech & innovation manager for John Deere. Those efforts include major activations at CES and now, a social media campaign with an influencer better known for his cellphone reviews than his knowledge of soil conditions and corn futures.

That’s entirely the point.

With so many people living in urban areas and having less interaction with the agricultural sector, many Americans don’t take the time to think of where their food comes from beyond the grocery store. John Deere wants to change the conversation from thinking of farmers are unsophisticated and old-fashioned to cutting-edge.

“These are highly complex businessmen and women that are operating across, at some points, 30 to 60 miles of farmland, and all these different pieces of equipment in different areas,” Peitz said. “There’s a lot of money invested in a farm to be profitable and productive and also sustainable. We’re trying to get that message out to the larger community outside of just agriculture in rural America.”

That’s where David Cogen, also known as TheUnlockr, comes in. With 770,000 YouTube subscribers and tens of thousands of subscribers each on Instagram and X, he’s best known cellphone reviews, though he also offers a series called Decodr, which offers deep-dive explainers on topics like how induction cooking works.

But he also has a deep passion for farming and food that he can trace back to his pandemic binge watch show: “Clarkson’s Farm,” headlined by “Top Gear” star Jeremy Clarkson.

“I started watching that show and just was fascinated by all the stuff that was happening. And it was shortly after that, John Deere offered me a trip to a farm,” Cogen told PR Daily.

That was three or four years ago. Since then, they’ve done several influencer activations together. And as John Deere’s influencer program grew, they kept getting one specific request: have an influencer do the farming rather than just visiting a plot.

“And so we thought of this idea: It’d be really neat to give someone the whole experience from soup to nuts, right from tillage all the way through planting and crop protection and then ultimately harvest to be able to understand agriculture, the challenges that our farmers face, and how they’re using our technology today to be more productive and profitable and sustainable,” Peitz said.

By May – or maybe sooner, as the Midwest has been unseasonably warm – Cogen will visit his temporary farm, 20 acres not far from Des Moines, Iowa to plant his crop. He’ll return several times over the growing season and be responsible for every aspect of the process, from what seeds to plant to applying herbicides, harvesting and even selling the corn.

He’ll be documenting it along the way with plenty of content for his social channels. He’ll also create both Instagram Reels as well as at least one longer piece for YouTube. Cogen is confident that even though his audience tends more to city slicker than field hand, they’ll find something to like in his farm-centric content.

“I think just following along the journey is valuable to everybody,” Cogen said. “And I think as long as I feel like I can capture the experience in a very authentic way, even through my bumbling and things that I’m going to not do well, because I don’t know what I’m doing.”

But he’s not alone in figuring out what he needs to do. In addition to John Deere’s experts, Cogen has also been teamed up with an actual farmer, who he refers to as his “phone a friend.” Chelsey Erdmann, a North Dakota farmer and rancher, will be Cogen’s mentor through the experience. Right now, Cogen says she’s helping him understand the complicated world of corn futures. As part of the PR campaign, she’s also helping John Deere’s message reach their legacy audience of agriculturalists with her own 80,000+ Instagram followers.

There is an element of danger here: Cogen could fail. And there is no plan B. But that’s just part of a farmer’s life, Cogen said.

“Regardless of whether I turn a profit or I don’t, the story is still there. And the things that I want to tell and show, it’s still interesting to for people to see it. Because it’s thin margins. And rain could change everything. It’s just fascinating.”

But there’s one payoff that Cogen is looking forward to even more than the possibility of a bumper corn crop: riding in the comfortable cab of a massive John Deere combine to harvest his corn.

“There’s a weird complex when you just sit in that giant machine, and you’re just like, ‘oh, have all of the power.’ It’s just fun.”

Allison Carter is editor-in-chief of PR Daily. Follow her on X or LinkedIn.

The post Why John Deere is targeting tech by sending an influencer to farm appeared first on PR Daily.

Mike Nachshen is president & owner of Fortis Strategic Communications, LLC. 

Once upon a time, you may have heard a senior communications leader say, “Storytelling is the most important skill a communicator can have.” 

If you were like me, you might have even believed it once. But in a PR skills cage match, strategy beats storytelling any day of the week. 

That’s not to say storytelling doesn’t have an important place in the Communications pantheon. It does. In fact, storytelling driven by strategy is one of the cornerstones of a successful communications effort. 

According to author, historian and philosopher Yuval Noah Harari we humans are “storytelling animals [who] think in stories rather than in numbers or graphs, and believe… the universe itself works like a story, replete with heroes and villains, conflicts and resolutions, climaxes and happy endings.” 

A skilled communicator understands there’s something in the DNA of our species that gives storytelling universal appeal and uses this insight to captivate their audience. They can turn the driest topic into a riveting call-to-action and deliver a message so effectively that the audience wants more.   

The true core of being an effective communicator isn’t in the telling of tales.  

It’s in the strategic approach driving the storytelling.  

Because without a communications strategy, storytelling is simply entertainment.  

Becoming a communications strategist isn’t something that happens overnight. It starts with asking hard questions and doing your homework. 

One of the most important questions a communicator can ever ask is, “What is the business strategy?” Just as important are the questions, “Who is our audience?” and “What do they really care about?” Together, these questions can guide an effective communications strategy.  

To understand the business strategy, you need to have an intimate knowledge of your organization’s business model. This means going beyond mission statements and talking points. It’s about having a fundamental understanding of what keeps the lights on and pays the CEO’s salary. 

The audience may not be who you initially thought they were. And once you do understand who you’re really trying to reach, it’s critical to dig deep and understand what motivates them. Go beyond superficial answers and interpretations and uncover what their true interests and needs are. 

This approach applies whether you’re at a Fortune 50, a non-profit, government agency or in any other kind of organization you can imagine. 

For example, I once worked at a publicly traded Fortune 100 technology company that was trying to bring a new product to market in the federal contracting space.  

When I was brought in to lead the communications effort around the project, the program director was beyond excited about what he called “eye-watering” new technology. He said “give me a press release” to tell “the whole world” about our revolutionary new capability. 

But after asking some questions and doing my research, I learned that our launch customer — the government agency that was paying us to develop this technology – was already all in. Provided we accomplished certain technical milestones, which we were on track to reach, we’d get paid.  

But communications still had an important role to play in this – and one that had nothing to do with telling our story to the entire world. 

The real problem – the business problem — was that our customer’s parent organization thought the project was a complete waste of tax dollars. They wanted to scrap the project entirely, and no amount of great storytelling about eye-watering technology was going to persuade them otherwise. 

But, after doing additional research, I learned that the parent agency was focused on solving an entirely different problem. Congress, the press and other important stakeholders were asking the parent agency a lot of hard questions about this problem. 

Our solution had the capability to solve that problem. But we had never publicly talked about that use case, because up until now, we’d only talked about how cool the technology was. 

That changed. 

Armed with a deep insight into what the business really needed to achieve to succeed, and what our customer and their parent organization really cared about, I was able to develop a communications strategy that looked very different from what the program director asked for. 

Instead of talking about technology, my team and I focused our energy on creating a compelling story about how our solution could solve the parent organization’s problem. And we didn’t blast out a series of press releases to the world – we focused on placing our message where key decision makers would see it. 

The approach worked. Not only did the parent organization fund our progress payments, but they gave the customer additional funding so we could do more. 

Storytelling was important – but it was strategy that enabled my team and I to tell the right story to the right audience. 

Ultimately, strategy lies at the intersection of understanding and mastering the tools at your disposal, the organizational goals, the business landscape, and the needs of the audience. By digging deep into the business problem and constantly asking questions we can all become better strategic thinkers and communicators – and that’s no fable. 

The post Why strategy beats storytelling every time appeared first on PR Daily.

Data can tell beautiful stories. Having hard numbers can give credibility to anecdotal stories and elevate a ho-hum business happening to a broader trend story. 

But there are major pitfalls to dealing with data, too. 

“Data without insights is chaos. It’s too much to digest,” Trovon C. Williams, senior vice president of Marketing and Communications for the NAACP said during Ragan’s recent Future of Communications conference. 

Along with fellow panelist Matt Ward, head of Communications for Corebridge Financial, Williams stressed the need to give shape and context to numbers. Getting your hands on cold, hard data is great, but it’s only the first step. 

You have to marry data with creativity, Williams said, in order to create a beautiful picture. 

Here are 10 tips to do just that. 

1. Data is only as good as your inputs, Ward said. If the data is flawed, the story will be too. Ensure you’re pulling the right information from the right sources. 
2. But how exactly do you know what the “right information” is? Ward said that at Corebridge Financial, they just flat-out asked their audiences what kinds of data they’re most interested in. From there, they tied that data to goals, built tactics and then measured. That allowed them to build a story around why their data matters. Your data must have a purpose, Ward advised, that ladders up to something bigger.  
3. Who are your audiences for data-based storytelling? It can vary widely, from journalists you’re pitching to existing or prospective customers to internal audiences – even your executive leadership.  
4. Telling stories to leadership helps them contextualize your victories, Williams said. Your CEO might not care that you’ve hit a million Instagram followers, but if you can explain that most of those customers are directly in your demographic sweet spot and are engaging with content, suddenly that milestone means a lot more. 
5. Make sure you’re customizing data for each individual audience you’re reaching. “Your data allows you to be a smart creator,” Williams said. No one is speaking to a single audience, so use data-driven insights to segment your messaging to your target. 
6. Authenticity is determining what things you have the right to talk about and own, then using the data to substantiate themes, Ward says. “If you’re meeting people where they are, you have a higher chance of being authentic.” 
7. Sometimes being authentic means finding the gaps and realizing where you aren’t meeting the moment, Williams says. The NAACP is in history books – and they’ll stay in history books if they don’t read the data right, he said. 
8. Using the same messaging across platforms is lazy and does not allow us to reach our audiences as we need to, Williams said. 
9. When you’re working with data, there’s an inclination to include everything. Simplify. Pick one or two points, Ward advises. 
10. Help news outlets tell the story you want them to tell by providing the data necessary to support it, Williams said. 

Numbers can seem cold and matter-of-fact. But in the hands of a skilled communicator, they can form a foundation for stories that appeal to a variety of audiences. It’s merely up to us to coax those stories free and get them in the hands of the right people at the right time.  

What are your tips for better storytelling through data?  

Allison Carter is editor-in-chief of PR Daily. Follow her on Twitter or LinkedIn. 

The post 10 tips for telling better stories with data appeared first on PR Daily.

Lisette Paras is founder and president of Gravitate PR. 

Ask any PR professional what can help a company validate its messages or story, and the answer is unequivocally “data.” Whether it’s in the form of findings from a consumer survey, aggregate information from a company’s technology platform or commissioned analysis from a market research firm, an organization that possesses data is storyteller’s gold.  

 Research can help to reinforce a company’s messaging and perspectives on a topic or trend. It can be used to educate and interest key audiences. It can be used as a form of thought leadership for the company, helping position them as an authority. And it can be maximized across a variety of functions and channels – whether that’s sales teams using the data to support conversations with prospects, or PR teams using it to create news to help drive media coverage.  

Given the value placed on data within an organization, it’s natural for companies to look to maximize this with PR efforts, writing and launching “state of the industry” style reports. Unfortunately, I’ve come across many companies that have spent an exorbitant amount of time and resources on gathering data and compiling it into a report – only to find that its efforts to drive attention to it fall flat.   

Here are the top five reasons why PR efforts to amplify data-driven content have been unsuccessful.    

1. The data fails to tell a compelling narrative. 

After analyzing the data, but before writing a report or compiling it into marketing or PR assets, it’s important to look at it through the lens of what the overall narrative should be. How do all the individual findings tell a bigger story? What are the most interesting aspects to highlight and why? What are the takeaways for the key audiences who would benefit from reading the research report? It takes a skilled, data-driven storyteller to not just interpret data, but interpret it into a compelling narrative. Attempting to write the narrative before the data is interpreted won’t work. 

2. The data is too complicated.

There can be a risk of having too much data. Even if there are dozens of data points and findings, it’s important to not overwhelm the viewer/reader by having a barrage of information thrown their way. Instead, storytellers should be selective in the data they choose to incorporate and use it to ladder up to a compelling set of messages, narratives and takeaways.  

Even if the company operates in a highly technical and jargon-laden industry, it’s critical to communicate the findings in a way that is simple and straightforward. If the data is somewhat complex, use real-world examples, anecdotes, or charts and graphs to illustrate the impact of the data.  

3. The data is overtly self-serving.  

While commissioned research inherently has some connection to what the company does or stands for, the data needs to tell a story that doesn’t sound like an advertisement. Some version of, “Fast food company’s research finds that hamburgers are good for you” is going to get more skeptical eyerolls than interested eyeballs reading further. A company shouldn’t be looking to use research as the main way to aggressively sell its products or services – such verbiage is better used for direct sales tactics than for expecting it will resonate through PR.   

4. The data is not statistically viable.

Conducting research can be an extensive and expensive endeavor. Particularly for companies in a niche market or focused on a specific audience, insights from a small number of respondents may already prove immensely valuable. However, sharing this with media outlets may not be as effective as the data needs to be statistically significant for reporters to find the research credible in speaking to a topic or trend. As a rule of thumb, for U.S.specific reports, it’s safe to have at least 300 business decision makers for enterprise-level research, while consumer-focused surveys require at least 1,000 respondents. If the research extends to additional countries, then these numbers will need to be further adjusted to what is considered statistically viable in those markets as well.  

5. The data is not maximized across all channels. 

There’s a ton of effort involved in creating a report, from coming up with the topic for a data-focused report, developing the methodology, crafting the research questions, analyzing the findings, and drafting, editing, and finalizing the copy and other supporting materials (whew!). So it’s certainly critical to make sure that there’s a clear strategy, plan and timeline from the onset of how to maximize visibility.  

While the report may be the main asset, it can also be sliced and diced into different materials – a brief video, presentation or series of blog posts – and incorporated into sales, marketing, and PR-focused content. This content  can be uploaded onto the company website, corporate social media pages, injected into editorial op-eds. Moreover, the breadth of the data means that it doesn’t need to all launch at once – rather, compelling research has a long tail in which it can be referenced well after it’s unveiled, sequentially through a series of channels.  

Strike gold once, keep mining   

Setting up a data-driven storytelling program can take some time at the onset. However, once you’ve developed the right approach, it can be a rewarding, ongoing endeavor! As an organization’s business and industry evolves, so should the data it extracts to help refine and progress their stories. Data should not only be used as a strategic and creative initiative to support a company’s goals, but also be clear and compelling to the audiences a company is aiming to reach. If PR professionals want to strike data gold, they’ve got to know how and where to dig.  

The post 5 mistakes in data-driven pitches appeared first on PR Daily.

Jennifer Daniel is associate director at Craft.

In today’s digital age, content is king – but not just any content. For PR pros and brand storytellers, the pressure is on to craft written material that captivates, informs, and drives results. Whether you’re writing for email marketing, social media, blog posts, or op-eds, here’s the ultimate listicle to elevate your content creation game: 

1. Don’t bury the lede: Respect your readers’ time and grab their attention from the get-go.  Free tools like Headline Studio can analyze your headlines for optimal traffic, engagement and SEO. 
2. Feel the feels: Just as a painter uses a palette of colors to create a vivid canvas, the best writing evokes a spectrum of emotions in its readers – whether happiness, sadness, or inspiration. Pose relatable questions that tap into universal human experiences, and don’t shy away from literary devices like metaphors, similes and allegories to further enhance your copy. 
3. Take it from Twain: Would you use an SAT word at a bar? Would you call a banana a yellow, elongated piece of fruit? Most likely not, so don’t use it in your social media caption either. Ditch the jargon, and remember, “don’t use a 5-dollar word when a 50-cent word will do.”  
4. An anecdote is the antidote: Humans are innately drawn to stories. They provide context, make abstract concepts relatable and ignite emotions. Whenever possible, share case studies, statistics, and testimonials to build trust and credibility, especially in an age of information overload. 
5. Buzz off, buzzwords: Say goodbye to cliches like “innovate,” “disrupt,” and “unprecedented.” For a refreshing take, check out Lake Superior’s list of the most overused phrases from 1976 – present. 
6. Ignite a spark: Opt for language that evokes curiosity, challenges perspectives, or paints vivid imagery. Propel your narrative forward with strong statements like: “In a shocking move by Congress…” or, “It’s disheartening that…” 
7. Avoid platitudes and hedging: If it goes without saying, don’t say it. Additionally, words like “just” and “actually” can express hesitation or uncertainty and lessen the impact of your writing – stop using them.  
8. Less is more: Practice the rule of thirds, and when you finish your initial draft, shorten it by ⅓. You can also take a page out of Axios’ playbook: the Smart Brevity format is becoming the gold standard for concise, yet impactful reporting. 
9. Understand the relationship between repetition and retention: Consistency builds trust. Whether it’s your brand voice, visuals, or values, studies show that people need to see a message at least seven times before it sinks in. But you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. For example, try repurposing a blog post into an infographic, podcast or video series for social media. Each touch point should echo the overarching brand message to ensure resonance.  
10. Different strokes for different folks: While your primary audience should always be at the forefront, today’s digital terrain demands a versatile strategy. Dive into analytics to segment your audience by behavior, preferences or demographics, and ensure your content mix resonates directly with these specific sub-groups. 

Content marketing is an art and a science. And with these tenets top of mind, you’ll be well on your way to creating content that is compelling and impactful.

The post Crafting content that connects: A PR pro’s guide to digital storytelling in the modern era appeared first on PR Daily.

As your average vertical video creator grows up, so too do the marketing and PR industries that rely on their creative labor. These individuals who concept, script, draft, shoot, caption, publish, distribute and publicize the content they create — often on behalf of brands  understand more about their role, importance and stake in the future of social media than ever before.

This evolution in the social and mobile-first video space is driven by a variety of factors, including: More states and cities implementing TikTok bans on government devices, a demand for transparency and demonstrable authenticity in brand content, influencer snafus and pitfalls by major brands.

In PR Daily’s recent Social Media Crash Course webinar, experts from major brands — and even the U.S. military — gave us a look at where things are and where they’re going with creator partnerships.

How has the creator and influencer economy changed?

Since TikTok’s surge in 2019 and 2020, the boom and continued growth of the creator economy made the case for brands to connect with audiences on a more personal and less curated level.

Scrappy, conversational content became a primary mode of entertainment for billions of people — driving outsized brand awareness and even sales for brands that tap into it. Audiences seek relationships with creators and value the brands that they do.

This sped up the marketing creation process and made it more critical than ever for brands to engage via this medium.

“When people go to look for information, if you’re not out there with your brand and marketing what you have to say about an issue, somebody’s going to talk on your behalf,” said Alan Black, director of corporate communications for the U.S. Naval Surface Warfare Center Dalgren Division.

Today, creators and influencers are savvier than they once were. It’s no longer just celebrities and traditional influencers asking to be paid for a relationship with their audience.

“A lot of them are requiring payment. And that includes micro-influencers, nano-influencers, macro and superstars, which is not surprising and their work needs to be counted for,” said Jonathan Pinkerton, senior social media manager for Hyatt.

“The shift I’ve seen is we are more likely to be able to partner with a lot of international influencers for less compensation, though over the past few months we’re starting to see some of them up their costs or require payment.”

How do these changes impact brand-creator partnerships?

Reels and TikTok are no longer just about entertainment — they’re about discovery. 40% of Gen Zers use these platforms instead of Google as their primary search engine, whether it’s to keep up on current events, find a good book to read, or to figure out where they’re going to eat or go on vacation.

That means creating content with searchability in mind — using descriptive keywords and alt text, for example — is critical to brand success in the vertical video format, and a collaborative relationship with creators can facilitate that objective.

“Take some time to evaluate what your strategic direction is for your organization, what your goals are, and be realistic about what your staff capabilities are and the volume that it’s going to take to enter into a new social channel,” said Adeta Gayah, director of social media and content at Visit Orlando.

“We do a mix of people who are trying to get us the reach and really tell our story on a larger scale,” added Pinkerton, “and then we also have folks who are going to create content for us so that we can own the content from our own accounts.”

Some brands may find that partnering with multiple creators for single videos or one-off campaigns creates more impact. “Ideally we always go in one on one just because we know how vast and how big the influencer and creator market is right now,” Pinkerton continued. “But we always hope that it’s a relationship.”

One thing he looks for is how quickly a creator will turn around quality content: Meeting deadlines signals an interest in an ongoing creator partnership.

Another key is tailoring the content to the platform it appears on. Despite the platform similarities, Instagram audiences differ from TikTok audiences in demographics and content preferences. Hyatt and Visit Orlando use more produced, POV content on Instagram, inviting viewers to immerse themselves aspirationally, while TikTok creators tend to star in their videos, and demonstrate themselves staying at hotels.

As for finding these people and ensuring that they’re appropriately aligned with the brand’s objectives, Gayah said that Visit Orlando uses Klear when vetting influencers to ensure that they will speak to the correct market or demographic, as well as Sprout Social to measure success.

How can marketers and brands prepare?

Expect to pay creators of all sizes: Functions of generating income from social content, such as TikTok’s creator fund, are now split so many ways among an increasing pool, that it’s no longer a means of surviving. Creators who are looking to establish relationships with brands will expect to be paid.

Embrace your niche: TikTok and Reels creators have set a new standard for expressions of brand authenticity, transparency and purpose. Those brands that lean into their interest communities — those that can benefit and learn from a brand’s expertise, products, services and fandom — are in a position to contribute and engage in a meaningful way with people who share their passions.

Pay attention and measure: Ensure you’re up on the latest regulations, content moderation policies and community dynamics of each platform and are moderating opportunities, risks and benefits.

The post How brand-creator partnerships are evolving appeared first on PR Daily.

PR pros love referring to themselves as storytellers.

But what does this mean in practice? Especially if you’re working for a company that maybe doesn’t naturally lend itself to storytelling — say, a B2B firm or a SaaS product?

Pamela Anderson is PR lead at Next PR, and works with many of these kinds of businesses to share their stories with the media and their broader audiences. She believes that any business has a tale to tell — if you know how to look.

“Really, the way to get people to touch into some of those emotions more is to connect it back to your brand values, your mission, your vision,” she told PR Daily during a recent interview.

Here are some ways that she injects the concept of storytelling into the industries she serves — and ideas on how you can too.

Founder forward

There have been at least three movies telling how Peter Parker became Spider-Man — four if you count Miles Morales in “Into the Spider-Verse.”

Why? People love an origin story. And that applies for both superheroes and companies.

“In the B2B (space), in the software space, I would say a lot of the traditional storytelling you’re gonna think of is that founder story,” Anderson said.

Many companies are good at tying the founder to their core principles for internal communications, but many overlook it as an external tool. The key, Anderson said, is to connect it to your core principles and values.

“What does founding your company evoke for you?” Anderson queried. “And then taking it to the next step and say, okay, how can we bring that to your customers? And to those who may be reading about you as well?”

But what if you don’t have that founder story to lead the way? What if you have a problematic founder or just a dull story?

Anderson says in some circles, there is a movement away from founder origin stories. After all, we’ve seen that go terribly wrong with the likes of Elizabeth Holmes and Sam Bankman-Fried. Tech journalists in particular are becoming more cautious about lauding a founder.

But that opens the door for a new storyteller: your customers.

“I think those are sometimes even better place to start than necessarily your founder, especially when you start getting into telling stories for certain communities, you want to make sure it’s authentic, and that person is from the community,” Anderson explained. “And so you should be looking kind of everywhere within your communications.”

But it’s important to make your request of a customer as simple as possible. Explain to them the benefit in it for them if they take this step, and do all that you can to soothe their nerves. That might mean offering media training, or offering to let them do the testimonial in the format that’s easiest for them, whether that’s a video, a written piece or even a facilitated interview that you then turn into a finished piece.

“You can find that comfort zone instead of just asking, broadly, ‘could you tell your story for us on every medium in every (medium) possible?’” Anderson said.

In the vein of getting the medium right, our stories are getting shorter. These days, they’re often contained in a tweet or a TikTok, not an epic poem told over the course of many nights around the fire.

How can we condense these stories to a single bite?

“It’s really narrowing in on, this is the most important element for PR professionals. Or in writing, cutting back,” Anderson said. “Because when these emotions and these human stories really start to be put into writing … it can get very long. So it usually takes a couple iterations to get the story right.”

The power of consistency

A story gains power the more it’s told. But often in PR, we forget that we must keep reinforcing a message over and over again. A story that’s told only once can seem inauthentic.

Anderson pointed to two moments many brands seize upon: Juneteenth and Pride.

“We’re going to see a lot of brands start to tell these, hopefully, impactful stories about what their company means to that community, how they’re supporting those communities. That can seem very inauthentic if they are only doing it during this one month of the year and if they’re not continuing to reaffirm in multiple formats why this is important to them,” Anderson cautioned.

Ultimately, good storytelling simply sticks with us, long after an ad is forgotten, Anderson said.

“Companies come to me and say, ‘I want to be a generational brand, I want to be one that that sticks in people’s mind for more than just this one moment in time,’ then storytelling is a very key component that they have to have in their marketing mix.”

Allison Carter is executive editor of PR Daily. Follow her on Twitter or LinkedIn.

The post Incorporating storytelling into a B2B campaign appeared first on PR Daily.

In a hectic media landscape where negative news can go viral in an instant, one PR pro reinforces sharing positive stories, whether through integrated comms strategies or finding pitch-worthy material internally.

Dan Landson, Southwest Airlines’ public relations advisor, likes to soar above the negativity and combat it with messaging that garners interest from internal stakeholders, the public and, of course, the media.

Landson will speak about the ins and outs of integrated communication strategies at the PR Daily Media Relations Conference, June 5-6 in Washington, D.C. Read on for a sneak peek at what he’ll discuss and learn about his initial interest with Southwest.

You don’t have to look far to find your stories

Southwest Airlines is one of the larger airlines in the country. When transporting over 130 million passengers in the sky annually and employing over 66,000 people, there’s bound to be some media coverage along the way.

Landson talked about his initial interest with Southwest after meeting a flight attendant at his first job at a grocery store. He said that discovering those employee-centric moments are culture-building stories that should be told.

“It’s those stories that bring us together but if you don’t hear about those stories, you’re not going to know that Southwest exists as an employer of choice,” Landson said. “But as a PR professional, we get to tell amazing stories of our 66,000 employees. There are incredible people that work for us.”

The mechanics of integrated comms

Landson said that a lot of positivity can come from telling those stories, among others, and sharing good news externally and internally.

“In public relations, it is so important to be aware of all communication activities that are happening,” Landson said of being in sync from beginning to end. “Whether that’s a marketing email or an internal email or internal story and then how does that affect your external story and external messaging? They all have to be intertwined. They all have to be scheduled appropriately and also all have to be written in a manner that’s easy to understand by the audience’s that you’re trying to reach.”

Honing in on integrated media strategies also requires PR pros to build trust, Landson said.

“You’ve got to be able to really lead the conversation to become a trusted counselor among your peers and counterparts at your business and your agency,” Landson said. “You want to become the trusted voice, the trusted seat, and the more trust you build, the more visibility you have, the better chance you have of building and developing stronger and more impactful communication strategies.”

Building media relationships

Landson said that media coverage might not always be favorable but navigating through turbulent skies can go a long way.

“As we say, we can’t ensure anything but what we  can do is really get to know our journalists that cover the industry,” Landson said. “Get to build relationships with those who ultimately become a trusted individual that you can go to bounce story ideas off of, help pitch proactive and exclusive stories with. Ultimately, bringing them to your front door to show them your company’s ways so that they have a much better understanding of what you’re trying to do and what you’re trying to accomplish.”

Landson talked about grappling with Southwest’s issues in December where major flight delays stranded thousands of passengers.

“This was an unprecedented situation for our company and our communication team,” Landson said, adding that the team came together quickly to figure out the best communication tactics.

“Every day we regrouped to discuss what worked, what didn’t work, what we can change.”

Landson said the company listened to journalists and what they needed for coverage, took that information back to the team and regrouped their strategies.

“One of the most important pieces of being in public relations is listening to your audiences,” he said.

Sherri Kolade is a writer at Ragan Communications. When she is not with her family, she enjoys watching Alfred Hitchcock-style films, reading and building an authentically curated life that includes more than occasionally finding something deliciously fried. Follow her on LinkedIn. Have a great PR story idea? Email her at sherrik@ragan.com. 

The post Southwest’s Dan Landson talks gaining media traction through positive storytelling appeared first on PR Daily.

Hopefully by now you’ve at least begun to explore some of the ways generative AI can fit into your communications workflow. If not, take a second to get some inspiration.

But maybe you still aren’t getting the responses you want from ChatGPT. Maybe what you’re getting is too general or too specific. Maybe it’s still not answering your questions at all.

Think of generative AI tools as calculators. They can do a lot of work for you, but ultimately the human being still must give it the right inputs to work with.

That’s where crafting a great prompt comes in.

AI can’t read minds – yet. So it’s up to us to guide it in such a way that it spits out answers we can use.

Here are a few tips for writing prompts that will make generative AI tools work better for you.

Be specific.

An AI tool isn’t a search engine. Even if it’s integrated into one, as with my personal favorite tool, the Bing/ChatGPT integration, you still talk to it in fundamentally different ways to get quality responses. Whereas on Google you’re likely typing in only a few words or a sentence at most to get results back, you can easily write a whole paragraph on ChatGPT.

For instance, you might want to tell the bot what you’re working on so it “understands” your purpose. You might want to give it a word count to stick to, a style to write in or even tell it what audience you’re writing for. You might want to give it text to edit, evaluate or condense. The more information you can give it, the more likely it’s going to find what it needs in the prompt.

But, you might say, if I take all this time writing an uber-detailed prompt, couldn’t I just have completed whatever task I wanted the bot to do on my own?

Maybe! It depends on what you’re asking the program to do. If you want it to compile information, explain something for you or write a first draft, you might still save time even when writing a long-winded prompt — if the results are good.

It’s a conversation.

Another key difference between an AI chatbot and a more typical search engine is that you can have a proper conversation with a chatbot. Each Google search is separate, though it may “remember” what you’ve clicked on before with the use of cookies. But with a ChatGPT session, you can have a proper back and forth where the bot is able to remember and reference what you’ve asked it for previously.

For instance, you can ask ChatGPT to write something, and then to make it shorter. Or funnier. Or to add details in or to edit according to AP style. The Bing/ChatGPT integration will also provide prompts on next questions to ask that could help you add to or improve your response — take advantage of these. You are limited to 20 back-and-forths with the bot (this apparently helps cut down on hallucinations), but that’s enough time to have a pleasant chat with your robot friend and create a collaborative, useful product.

Keep it simple.

One nice thing about generative AI technology is that you can speak to it in plain language, because it’s been trained on vast quantities of everyday human writing. So when you give it commands, talk to it like a human, avoiding jargon, long sentences or ambiguity. Give it instructions like you might an intern on their very first day: clear, crisp and specific.

But above all, remember that this technology is still “learning” and evolving. And so are you. The best way to write great prompts is to write more of them. See what works and what doesn’t, along with what makes sense for your workflow and style.

Any tips you’d like to share with the class?

Allison Carter is executive editor of PR Daily. Follow her on Twitter or LinkedIn.

The post 3 tips for writing better ChatGPT prompts appeared first on PR Daily.

Managing the communications of a consumer-facing company in a highly regulated space comes with challenges, some ethical and many, many procedural. To the genetic testing company 23andMe’s Director of Communications, Andy Kill, working alongside the regulatory teams and legal teams is just part of what he does every day.

“A portion of the product is regulated by the FDA, some of the reports are governed by the FDA, and then there’s other information in the product that falls outside of the FDA’s scope, like the ancestry side of things,” he explained. “We have a drug discovery business as well, which is highly regulated.”

The company was founded in 2006 and provided easy access to genetic testing, which at the time forged new ground for both the FDA and 23andMe and resulted in frequent communications between the FDA and the organization — some which made the news.

“A lot of it is working closely with our regulatory and legal teams and knowing what’s in bounds, what’s out of bounds, and how we can creatively use PR and comms within the confines of that to story tell,” said Kill.

Ahead of his session at PR Daily’s Public Affairs & Speechwriting virtual conference, Kill shares how he stays true to 23andMe’s mission, the storytelling tricks he uses to get coverage in the press, and why his organization leads with science.

Identify and build upon your organization’s purpose

Having a strong mission statement can be a guiding star for companies looking to connect with external audiences.

“The mission of the company is to help people access, understand and benefit from the human genome,” said Kill. “From a communications perspective, [we look at] what we are prioritizing and if it backs up to helping people.”

23andMe stays true to their purpose in several ways; for example, their tests provide information to consumers that helps them identify health risks. The company also builds on their mission statement with work on their FDA-regulated drug discovery business.

“We’re able to find new drug targets based on human genetic information, and potentially develop new medicines that can help people,” said Kill. “That’s the ultimate fulfillment of that mission.”

Not only does a clear mission statement help an organization stand apart in a crowded market, but it also helps the communications team focus on what’s important. “All of our communications ladder up to that mission,” Kill added.

Human stories resonate with customers

When it comes to sharing 23andMe’s mission externally, Kill looks holistically across the company for inspiration. “People find[ing] family and meeting for the first time [are] great visuals for broadcast,” he said. “[Those] customer stories tend to resonate.”

Another area of focus is the research group. “We have over 13 million customers at 23andMe and about 80% volunteered to participate in research,” said Kill. “They’re answering survey questions, and looking at those alongside aggregate anonymized genetic data, we pull out different trends in terms of specific health conditions or genetic risks.”

Any genetic information that is shared by 23andMe meets the most stringent guidelines — a requirement of its regulated nature. “All of that [data] has to be aggregate information. It can’t be any individual level information. It has to be deidentified and it can only come from customers who have elected to participate in research,” said Kill. “[There are] ethical guardrails in place.”

But all that work is worth it when that pitch lands. “Whenever we do studies on common conditions those resonate really well,” said Kill.

Be as transparent as ethically possible

“The strategy is ‘Lead with Science,’” said Kill. That mantra has helped guide 23andMe to success. “The company’s been focused on publishing consistently, not just research, but also publishing on the accuracy of the product through our different FDA authorizations.”

Kill suggests leaning into transparency wherever possible and keeping open lines of communication within the company as well as externally. One of the departments he speaks with: the ethics team.

“We have an in-house research ethics team that we can consult with anytime,” said Kill. While guardrails exist to protect consumer data, having the ethics team on-hand to discuss a potential research story can be handy. For example, during the early days of COVID-19, the team was developing data around the loss of smell and taste phenomena.

Of course, there are still some pieces of misinformation Kill’s team continues to battle against. “It’s often reported that we’re a part of investigations [using] genetics to crack cold cases,” said Kill. That’s false. “23andMe doesn’t participate in law enforcement investigations.”

Join Kill at PR Daily’s Public Affairs & Speechwriting virtual conference on April 4. Kill will speak alongside speechwriters and communications leaders from the U.S. Navy, Edelman, IBM, the U.S. Department of Labor, and more. 

The post Build upon your company’s purpose, transparently and ethically appeared first on PR Daily.

Adam Kiefaber is a longtime communicator, leading public relations teams at large financial services companies. Follow him on LinkedIn.

For the past decade, every corporate communicator has been trying (and likely struggling) to tell its company’s innovation story. Most of the time, the storylines focus on the tech and ideas of the future and rarely include a look to the past.

Procter & Gamble (P&G)has been regularly enhancing and producing products for more than 180 years under iconic, trusted brands like Charmin, Gillette, Oral B, Pampers and Tide. The company’s website says that it believes “in finding small but meaningful ways to improve lives–now and for generations to come.”

To better understand P&G’s story and how the company shares it, I interviewed Shane Meeker, P&G’s corporate storyteller and historian – and I was surprised at what I found out.

How communicating your past can help your future

Like other Fortune 500 companies, P&G celebrates its history. It has archives and a corporate museum, which is now called the P&G Heritage Center.

When Meeker, who started working at P&G 26 years ago, was asked to take over the Heritage Center, he was surprised by what he didn’t know.

“Since I was someone who had previously worked in the business, I immediately thought to myself that I would have loved to know that this was all here,” said Meeker, who has managed the Heritage Center for the past 11 years. “I knew of the archives but didn’t realize how much was really here and how it could have helped me with my work.”

With the help of his team of storytellers and communicators, the P&G Heritage Center has grown to be more than a celebration of key dates and product launches in the company’s history. It has become an employee destination where colleagues break silos across brands and functions to creatively dream up new ideas.

“It is so important that you don’t get siloed in your area of the business,” Meeker said. “You have to ask yourself if you actually know the innovations that are happening across your company and if you are keeping up with them because it might just spark the idea you need.”

There are many interesting stories at the Heritage Center about cross-brand innovation. One company favorite is about an oral care engineer, who after determining what was needed to whiten teeth at home had to figure out a way his product could stick to teeth and keep out the saliva which would reduce its effectiveness. To do this, the oral care engineer worked with an expert from P&G’s plastic food wrap function. The result was Crest White Strips, which had nearly $80 million in sales in 2018.

“These stories need to be accessible,” Meeker said. “And you must also be proactive in sharing them because these are key innovations that could get people thinking differently.”

How admiring your past failures drives innovation

The most popular exhibit at P&G’s Heritage Center is its Wall of Failures. It quotes JG Pleasants, the former P&G VP of R&D from 1955-1969, that reads: “No company can afford the luxury of rediscovering its own prior knowledge.”

Under Meeker’s watch, the wall itself has grown in popularity and now has a digital touchscreen that can be continuously updated and studied by visitors who can learn more about the projects that didn’t work – along with write ups of what the original objective was, what happened and why it wasn’t successful and what could have been done differently.

“The Wall of Failures doesn’t look back, it looks through,” Meeker said. “It can help you learn what not to do and what to be careful of. The higher-level learning has made it so popular that people want to access it all the time and constantly request for more examples including ones that happen outside the company.”

While the focus of the wall is on failures, Meeker pointed out that it is important to remember that not all these failed ideas are bad. He notes that many could have failed for other reasons, for example, it may have not been the right time or had issues in its initial design. One favorite story that is told on the wall is about Tide PODSÒ. Despite being launched as a new product in 2012, the original idea for the laundry detergent pacs at P&G failed in 1960.

These stories are so powerful that Meeker says it is important to be proactive in his communications. By driving more awareness to the Heritage Center, its Wall of Failures and making it more accessible through digital tools, he hopes his colleagues will be more aware of its value, so they are not surprised – like he was – when they see it for the first time.

The post How communicating your company’s history can help the business appeared first on PR Daily.

Storytelling is one of the most ancient and sacred concepts in all of human history. Starting with our long-distant ancestors weaving myths around fires that kept the darkness at bay and evolving through the centuries to include writing, painting, music, dance and more, it’s a complex concept that still strikes at the very heart of who we are as a species.

In communications, we often say that one of our most foundational skills is storytelling.

But what does that mean in practical terms? Not just as a pie-in-the-sky concept, but as a skill we practice every day to improve our craft and reach our audiences?

I posed this question to my LinkedIn network and received an array of thoughtful, often intensely personal answers. Selected responses are provided below, lightly edited.

Let’s “talk story”. Those are three words my family uttered to me nearly every other day during my childhood growing up in the Pacific on the Island of Guam. It is an islander version of hello, how are you, tell me a story. An invitation of sorts.

My family in their own jolly way would mandate that every person they see walking on the street, accept an invitation to visit. And storytelling is an islander way of passing on history and wisdom. Every person in the culture can “talk story” which means every person is a teacher and every person holds wisdom to share, if you accept the invitation.

Amira Barger, executive vice president, Health Communications & DEI Advisory, Edelman

Storytelling is about finding a concise and emotionally impactful way to share information with your designated audience.

The most important storytelling questions are “who is this for” and “why is this important.” Are you trying to delight your audience? Scare them? Inspire them? Is your audience job seekers, potential customers, others in your industry?

You may start a story with “once upon a time” if chatting with kids. You may start a story with an industry stat if chatting with investors. There is not one simple formula, but always consider how you can tell a story that is concise and compelling to the people you are talking directly to.

Mandy Menaker, director of communications, Orchard

Storytelling celebrates humanity in any situation. All of the basic concepts of a story are there, including characters, conflict, and overcoming challenges. A skilled PR practitioner has the unique ability to identify and tell the story found in even the most mundane, everyday events.

Chris Ehrhart, communications manager, Corcentric

I think the art of storytelling in business is less about entertaining your audience and more about using imagery and humanity to make your audience empathize and equate themselves to a protagonist whose problems you’ve successfully solved.

Jordan Whitt, senior manager, digital marketing, Apex Benefits

Storytelling is the basis of why we communicate in the first place. The story is the foundation of the “why.” It is the bridge to connecting with audiences. Stories come in all shapes and sizes. We all have a story to tell because we have something to inform or persuade. To shapeshift narratives. Change perception. Generate conversations. We have the power to tell the “why” and get people to understand or even see your viewpoint. Storytelling also builds trust between you and your target audience. Without trust, people will not believe or care about your story. News is new. Storytelling and communications interconnect with one another.

Yesenia Reinoso, nonprofit communications manager

Storytelling is the careful transfer of information and emotion around a specific idea, topic, piece of news or opinion. In practical terms it is the art of communicating information in a way that paints a very clear picture for the receiver from a specific point of view. If crafted correctly, it should evoke authentic emotion, which removes bias. Storytelling should bring harmony between the messenger and the receiver. If done right, the use of imagination, prompts, questions should all kick in and the receiver should be left with enough detail to make an informed, high-level, opinion on what’s being shared.

Sarah Mawji, independent PR & marketing consultant

What are the throughlines in these responses?

• Storytelling unites us as humans.
• Storytelling draws on empathy, emotion and authenticity.
• Storytelling requires a clear idea of audience and purpose.
• Storytelling paints pictures.
• Stories can be found in everything.

What does storytelling mean to you, and how do you incorporate it into your communications practice? Let us know in the comments, or connect with me on LinkedIn.

The post What storytelling means to communicators appeared first on PR Daily.

Storytelling is more than an action. It’s a philosophy that we must construct and weave through every aspect of what we do as communicators, Joe Benarroch, EVP of Communications, Global Advertising and Partnerships at NBCUniversal, told the audience during the opening keynote of Ragan’s Future of Communications Conference, part of Communications Week 2022.

Benarroch came back time and time again to the idea of building your storytelling philosophy. It’s a way of differentiating yourself in the job market and creating a communications strategy that your team can understand get behind.

“It’s not easy sometimes to get people to rally around (your philosophy), but if you center yourself in it and you believe in it, naturally and organically your activations will start to shape around it and you will have built your own case study,” Benarroch said.

Empathy and values

One cornerstone of these philosophies should be empathy. The importance of this trait has only grown since  outset of the pandemic, when we all had to speed up our internal communications plans by two years and really start listening to each other about how we were doing personally and what we needed socially. It’s the foundation of good storytelling, too.

“Empathy is a really, really big thing,” Benarroch explained. “It is a mainstream leadership quality that we all need to take. If you’re leading with pure empathy, you’ll find yourself listening more, you won’t need to be the person speaking all the time, and you’ll be able to get that philosophy out there.”

Part of that empathy is creating safe spaces for diversity, equity and inclusion work. Listening helps us elevate voices besides our own and reach the audiences we all need to succeed. As you move along your DE&I journey, find partners who share these values to take part in your platform and build with you.

“When you partner with a platform that has equal values, there’s mutual benefit there but also an accountability on both parts to keep those values high. It consistently pushes both organizations,” Benarroch urged.

Storytelling for internal and external use

We often think of storytelling as something we project. But in fact it’s something we as communicators reflect.

“Communications isn’t a separate function of the organization. It’s just a pure reflection of how the organization functions,” Benarroch said.

That applies whether communicators are programming a town hall for our CEOs or speaking to a group of journalists we want to become storytellers for us. Benarroch explained that getting ink shouldn’t always be the goal of external communications. Rather, it’s about bringing reporters to a deeper understanding of your organization and helping them connect the dots between you and the broader world. If you accomplish those goals, the press will come in time.

Ultimately, Benarroch left attendees with the idea that developing our communications philosophies helps us refine what kind of resource we want to be for our organization — and how we can do that in a consistent way that furthers our overall goals.

“Talk about not just activating on daily needs, but how you want to ultimately get from A-Z in a way that articulates your strategy.”

The Future of Communications Conference continues Wednesday.

Allison Carter is executive editor of PR Daily. Follow her on Twitter or LinkedIn.

The post Philosophy of empathy: Lessons from NBCUniversal’s Joe Benarroch at Ragan’s Future Comms Conference appeared first on PR Daily.

With social media, it’s fairly easy for brands to connect with their audience and communicate directly with them. This can be an effective way to create a relationship with potential customers. However, it is important for brands to be strategic with their social media use to maximize their impact and return on investment.

Creating content that is engaging, informative and interesting can be a challenge. When brands are creating content, it is important to consider what type of content will engage and resonate with their audience. Two of the best ways are through storytelling and developing an understanding of their pain points and how you can best address them. This will help develop content that customers are interested in. And while that all seems doable enough, there are a few secrets to success.

[FREE WEBINAR: How to develop a comms plan … that actually works!]

At Ragan’s Strategic Communications Conference in Redmond, Washington, Gina Michnowicz, CEO & chief creative officer at The Craftsman Agency, shared some of those secrets.

Michnowicz broke down how to tell a story through all different mediums and stressed the importance of the images used to convey emotion and ultimately connect people to your brand.

Storytelling evokes emotion

“It doesn’t have to make you cry,” Michnowicz said. “Sometimes it’ll make you laugh, sometimes it’ll make you feel heard and all those things are important and those are important emotions.”

From TikTok, YouTube, Twitter, BeReal, Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn, there’s space for stories, but how you deliver the content is what’s important, the chief creative officer said.

“Each platform has a different reason for being and tailoring your content to apply to that is so critical,” Michnowicz explained.

For instance, TikTok is where all the relevant things are happening right now and for the most part has the best organic reach, she said.

“There isn’t another platform that gets you that — how to become successful on TikTok is having content that tells a story,” Michnowicz continued.

Publishing is queen

“Content is king, but the queen is publishing and she wears the pants,” Michnowicz said. “It’s all about publishing and how you do it and taking that long-form YouTube video and splicing it for TikTok and Reels, so you don’t have to create for every platform and take what you have.”

Brands that commit to publishing content that involves telling a story in a fun way, often do well.

An example Michnowicz used was Miller Genuine Draft’s seltzer announcement. After teasing that they’d be “launching” a seltzer, instead of announcing a new product, they released a video showing cases of hard seltzer being strapped to a rocket and getting ready to send the trendy low-cal beverage hurtling into space.

This was a bit of a detour for the beer company, but the risk paid off.

Michnowicz said the marketing efforts resulted in lots of press coverage, social currency and increased the company’s beer sales substantially.

“If you have a customer base and there is something that they’re asking for and isn’t part of your fit or want to tell a story in a different way, sometimes there can be a way,” Michnowicz said.

Guiding principles

The chief creative officer shared some guiding principles on how to be successful on social media and beyond.

Stay true to your voice: Even when you’re storytelling, you’re telling these unexpected moments, you still have to stay true to your voice, you can’t depart too much.

Tell diverse stories: Bring in diverse segments and be inclusive.

Take risks: Step outside the usual box or comfort zone and go for something out of the norm.

Apply relevant current trends: TikTok is a great place to start looking for trends, as well as Twitter.

Give more than one way for people to consume: Having different ways for people to consume content across platforms is important.

Consistent but not boring: Showing up as the same brand every day is important for your audience.

Isis Simpson-Mersha is a conference producer/ reporter for Ragan. Follow her on LinkedIn.

The post Secrets to success on social media and beyond appeared first on PR Daily.

Let’s face it, all communicators can use help refining our social media strategy. No one has it all figured out, and the tools at our disposal are always evolving.

Most communicators struggle not with the ‘how’, but the ‘what’. What should your organization be sharing on social media? What do you want the world to know about your organization? Your employees can help you answer these questions when you include them in your brand storytelling. Spotlighting employees can showcase your internal culture and values in action through their experiences, while simultaneously enhancing your employer’s brand to attract future talent.

Ragan and PR Daily caught up with Kate Seegraves, communications manager at the silicon component manufacturer Silfex to ask her a few questions about social media communications. Seegraves will be a speaker at Ragan and PR Daily’s upcoming Social Media Conference being held in person at Disney World, Orlando September 21-23.

[RELATED: Join us Sept. 21-23 in Disney World for our Social Media Conference]

Ahead of her session, read on to learn more about Seegrave’s plans and approach to including employees in her storytelling strategy.

Ragan: To start with, why did you get into communications and if you hadn’t what do you think your career would look like?

Kate Seegraves

Kate Seegraves: I started my career as a reporter for a daily newspaper and gradually found my way into a corporate communications role. In many ways, it felt like a natural extension of where I started: storytelling, helping people make sense of complicated information and providing them with context and critical details are important to helping people understand the world we live in, now more than ever.

Ragan: In your experience, why are social media communications an important part of any organization?

KS: Social media is a useful tool for connecting with internal and external audiences. When you focus on your people and values, it reinforces company culture, promotes engagement, and helps employees feel connected to a bigger purpose and meaning.

Ragan: How can organizations break through the noise to start conversations that cultivate community?

KS: Start with your people. They are the heartbeat of your organization, and their stories, thoughts and experiences are the most authentic part of what we do. Tapping into their voices and sharing their stories resonates with others because the underlying themes — like passion, purpose, commitment and pride of work — are universal.

Ragan: What do you think is next for social media communications? What should organizations be doing now to prepare for tomorrow?

KS: I think audiences are working toward becoming more conscientious consumers of social media, and as a result, communicators will have to adapt thoughtfully and transparently. I’m a mother of three, and I challenge my kids to think critically about the content they’re reading and watching; as these younger generations come to expect more from the organizations they follow, we will have to raise the bar and prove we’re worth their time and attention.

Ragan: At this year’s Social Media Conference, you’re headlining a session on spotlighting employees with social storytelling. Can you give our readers a sneak peek on what they can expect to learn?

KS: Including employees in your storytelling strategy is something I feel strongly about because I have seen it work so well at my company and elsewhere. During the session, I will discuss some best practices to showcase internal culture and people in authentic ways that promote engagement, as well as how social media can be used to extend internal communication.

If you’d like to gain new insights and social media communications strategies, join us at Ragan and PR Daily’s Social Media Conference, where speakers from TikTok, Volkswagen, Intel, Facebook and more will share their ideas and success stories. Register today!

The post The Road to Disney: Why employees are essential to your social storytelling strategy appeared first on PR Daily.

Once a niche of focus for investor relations, ESG has gone mainstream. Consumers, employees and the media all want to know how your mission is driving your actions — in a way they can comprehend.

Communicators have the task of using great storytelling principles to bring these stories to life with impact and meaning. In this white paper from Ragan Consulting Group, “How to make ESG part of your communications strategy,” you’ll learn ways to make your ESG storytelling compelling and effective.

This primer will provide you with nine key areas for evaluating the success of your content and other helpful tips including:

• Why ESG matters for all organizations, not just publicly held companies
• How to elevate your ESG reporting, content creation, publishing and distribution
• Using data as your “secret sauce” for success
• Finding stories where data and humans meet
• Why ESG content should be part of your regular mix
• And more

Download Ragan Consulting Group’s free guide today and start telling the story of your organization’s ESG mission.

The post How to improve your ESG storytelling without greenwashing appeared first on PR Daily.

You’re a writer and you know you need to make a video. You know you want it to serve marketing and raise awareness.

Great! Now what?

For people who work with words all day, being thrust into the world of video can feel overwhelming. But as long as you know your purpose and your production capabilities, figuring out what comes next can be templatized to make your job easier.

This video grid from Ragan Training walks  you through five common types of video, what they’re best used for, and even a handy dandy style guide.

For a printable PDF version, click here. And visit RaganTraining.com for more resources like this.

The post Plan your next video with this story grid appeared first on PR Daily.

As the great Neil Young once asked, “Who will tell your story?” The answer to that question is different for every brand.

Ensuring your brand’s leadership and subject matter experts are prepared to tell the story of your company at both in-person and virtual events is key.

During an April 2022 session of Ragan’s Brand Storytelling Conference, industry experts Cheril Clarke, founder of Phenomenal Writing, and Ashley Brown, clinical communications senior strategist with Atrium Health, shared their best practices for communicators looking to coach their C-suites to brand storytelling success.

Here are three tips:

1. Choose the right leader to tell your brand story.

The best person to tell the story is whoever can bring the most authenticity to the job, says Clarke. That could mean being someone who is the most knowledgeable or enthusiastic, among other traits.

Oftentimes, that person is the CEO — but sometimes it isn’t.

“I think a little bit to consider it the medium,” Clarke says. “If it’s video, then it could be several people telling [the story], especially if it’s the origin story of your firm or company.”

It’s all about finding the person who can educate and motivate audiences to act, she says.

2. Help leaders appear confident and comfortable on camera.

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, many events and speaking opportunities moved to virtual forums. Yet, Brown explains that many public speaking best practices have remained the same.

Brown shares her tips for prepping leaders and subject matter experts for on-camera interviews and speaking engagements:

• Avoid loud clothing prints or flashy jewelry.
• Make sure your camera background is nice — good lighting, no virtual backgrounds.
• Work on using your hands less.
• Educate leaders about the technical nuances of video.

Clarke suggests advising your leaders to stand in front of the camera when presenting or speaking at an event.

“It just gives an extra air of authoritativeness,” she says.

3. Find great sound bites to repurpose across comms channels.

If your speaker is reading from prepared remarks, it’s easy to pre-write social media nuggets to publish during the event, Clarke says.

Once you push those pre-written sound bites, you have an opportunity to link out to a summary or even the full video of the event.

“Also, keep in mind where your audience is — perhaps they’re on LinkedIn, perhaps they’re on Twitter,” Clarke says. “Depending on the company, you may have more people on Instagram, if you have a more visual audience.”

PR pros, what are your best practices for brand storytelling? Let us know on Twitter @PRDaily.

The post 3 best practices for helping leaders be better storytellers appeared first on PR Daily.

For the team behind Discover Puerto Rico, it’s always been a challenge to educate consumers about the island’s unique travel offerings.

“As a territory of the U.S., there is an inherent challenge that I think has been in place for a long time, which is just educating people on the U.S. mainland that Puerto Rico is part of the U.S.,” explains Leah Chandler, CMO for Discover Puerto Rico.

And that’s a missed opportunity in the luxury travel market, where visitors can avoid the hassle of getting a passport and exchanging currency to simply sit on a beach.

“They think there’s a lot of barriers to entry when in fact traveling to Puerto Rico is super accessible and easy with over 200 direct flights a day,” Chandler says. That’s the challenge that faces the comms team, even more so than the need to rebuild trust and identity for an island that has come to be known by its devastating losses during recent hurricanes.

The keys to audience education are continuity and innovation, says Chandler.

Chandler says continuity is shown by stressing the message about Puerto Rico’s accessibility in every piece of communication the team creates, from press releases to TV ads. For instance, every TV spot has a stamp that reminds viewers “no passport required.”

Rebranding an island

Puerto Rico has always been a bit of an underdog in the destination marketing game, Chandler says. Apart from confusion over its American status, Puerto Rico has also had more than its fair share of crises.

Whether you look at the effects of Hurricane Maria, where island residents were without power for months, or devastating earthquakes— not to mention a global pandemic — the travel destination needed a fresh start.

While working to bring Puerto Rico to new audiences, the team was simultaneously looking to update the crisis playbook — a familiar endeavor for communicators in 2022.

Discover Puerto Rico is a fairly new marketing office, opened in 2018. The good news when the office launched was that most consumers didn’t have a negative view of the island. They mostly just didn’t have much knowledge of the island and its offerings at all.

“Puerto Rico was sort of a shoulder shrug for the consumers that we were testing,” says Chandler.

But the island was also unprepared should a new crisis hit. There wasn’t an official crisis comms playbook for the tourism industry in Puerto Rico before Discover Puerto Rico’s launch in 2018. Creating that playbook was the second big undertaking for Chandler and her team after doing market research about consumers and their knowledge of the island.

“It really is a Bible for us,” Chandler says. “I think we have 25 scenarios, from natural disasters like hurricanes and earthquakes to shark bites and bomb threats. It is something that we take very seriously.”

And Chandler maintains a good crisis playbook should never live on the shelf for too long, even if you don’t have a reason to use it.

“It’s something we kind of live and breathe,” she says. And because the team was constantly working on their playbook, they were more prepared for COVID-19 than some.

“Because of the impact of Zika in 2015 and 2016, we actually had an air pathogen play in our playbook,” says Chandler. “We had a plan for airborne illness and contagion that we were able to immediately pull.”

The pandemic was still unprecedented, she agrees, but having that chapter in the playbook allowed her team to get a head start and move faster when the crisis first started to disrupt travel in 2020.

Getting creative

And as an underdog, Chandler says her team was forced to work smarter than other destination travel operations.

“We’ve really have to push on innovation and make sure that we’re bringing concepts to the table to reach people in unique ways and really disrupt the regular tourism advertising sea of sameness,” she says.

One example of innovation is the activation around its campaign “Sunshine to Spare.” Working with PR agency Ketchum, the team looked to leverage the sunshine and warmth of Puerto Rico into a recognizable brand.

“We partnered with a climatologist at the University of Puerto Rico, who actually helped measure the sunlight in Puerto Rico and assign a value to it that we were able to derive into our own unique color,” explains Chandler. That color was then branded by Pantone.

Now with its signature color, Puerto Rico can enter conversations that aren’t specifically about travel to the Caribbean. Perhaps a consumer wants to choose the color of the Puerto Rican sunset for a special room. The color also appeared at New York Fashion Week through a partnership with designer Christian Cowan.

Live Boricua

In its latest campaign, Discover Puerto Rico is hoping to set itself apart form other travel destinations by highlighting what it sees as its best competitive advantage: its culture.

The campaign, which it calls “Live Boricua,” hopes to highlight the special mix of African, Native American and Spanish heritage that defines Puerto Rico. (Boricua is a word for someone of Puerto Rocan birth or descent.)

The campaign also marks a return to normal operations for Discover Puerto Rico after years of pandemic crisis response.

“We are kind of getting back to basics,” says Chandler.

“The essence of Live Boricua means to ‘live like us,’ and promises a deeper and more meaningful experience for travelers,” says Jean Paul Polo, Emmy-award-winning director of creative strategy for Discover Puerto Rico. “It was incredible to work with fellow Boricuas, from renowned director Mariem Pérez Riera and award-winning still photographer Steph Segarra to my colleagues at Discover Puerto Rico and the local talent we cast as this is our moment to define what it means to experience our way of life and have it become part of the everyday vernacular outside of the Island.”

And the tag line “Live Boricua” offers yet another opportunity for educating a target audience. The term “Boricua” is familiar to Puerto Ricans and the diaspora that still have strong ties to the island. “They know what Boricua means and, and their hearts are filled with pride when they hear it,” says Chandler.

For those who aren’t familiar with the term, it’s an opportunity to be introduced to something new, while still holding onto some of the expected parts of the pitch: the white sand beaches and the colorful iced beverages.

To reach these two audiences, the team is executing a two-pronged strategy. For markets that need less of an introduction to Puerto Rico — New York, Orlando or Miami — the Puerto Rican culture will be proudly on display. And for audiences that are still learning that the island exists, the campaign will have more of a traditional destination marketing feel with images of beaches and the expected Caribbean vacation panorama.

But soon, those markets too will be introduced to the Boricua lifestyle. For Chandler and her team, the hope is one day that everyone will know exactly where Puerto Rico is and can’t resist the urge to “Live Boricua.”

The post How Discover Puerto Rico is educating audiences about island heritage appeared first on PR Daily.

Jumping up from the hallowed, wooden bench of Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium, the lingering reverberations of mandolin strings from the Punch Brothers’ final chord struck deeper than the palpitations of my heart.

Despite standing in a hall of 2,360 other music lovers, it still felt like I was alone with the music.

At the time, I chalked that memory up to it simply being one of the most powerful concerts I’d ever attended. But as a communicator, I’ve come to realize that there is much to learn from the art of bluegrass music, and that we, too, can create intimate connections with individual audience members in a crowd.

Bluegrass music emerged in 1940s Appalachia as a synthesis of many cultures and backgrounds The genre is a fantastic example of the beauty that can come from embracing inclusivity and creating an exchange of diverse traditions and experiences.

The genre typically features acoustic, stringed instruments (think guitar, mandolin, banjo, fiddle, stand-up bass) playing high energy, instrumental improvisations, unique harmonies and complex chords. Famous bluegrass musicians include Bill Monroe, Ricky Skaggs and Alison Krauss, and “newgrass” has emerged over the last couple of decades with bands like Nickel Creek, Yonder Mountain String Band, Sierra Hull and my personal favorite, Punch Brothers. Other stars including Dolly Parton, Chris Stapleton and even Steve Martin have found some of their notable successes in bluegrass music.

So, why does any of this matter to us? What can communicators learn from the greats of bluegrass?

1. Build your band
Good bluegrass music is all about having the right mix of skilled people who know how to listen to and communicate with each other. The best bands take time to understand their audience, zero in on each member’s strengths and, throughout a performance, empower every musician to take the lead. The very best bands have become so in-sync that they can anticipate each other’s actions — if someone breaks a string, a fellow bandmate can step in at a beat’s notice to keep the music going.

Much like in a bluegrass group, teamwork is paramount when carrying out a communications strategy. It’s all about having talented, passionate people who know how to listen, understand their audience and use their strengths to build effective messaging that resonates with others. Sometimes this means serving as the melody and being out front with the message, other times it means supporting as the harmony that elevates the story to a new dimension. In tough spots, it also being there to help keep things going if a string breaks in your team.

Take a moment to think about your band of fellow communicators. What are some things you can do to become more in sync, better anticipate what’s next and build a cohesive team that connects?

2. Sing (or strum) your story

Bluegrass songs share some of the most authentic and memorable stories, and those who perform them are the storytellers. Often, these songs come from familiar experiences that draw in the listener. In a bluegrass vocal, the melody is crisp and clear and is usually supported by unique or complex harmonies. One of the most distinctive identifiers of great bluegrass music, however, is when the story speaks without ever saying a word – commonly called an instrumental.

A great example of an effective instrumental is Nickel Creek’s Elephant in the Corn. The musicians paint a vivid picture for the listener through their selection of notes, accents and musical phrases, a range of dynamics and intentional deviations of tempo. If the listener closes their eyes, it is easy to visualize the story they are telling, and when it ends, you want more.

As communicators, you already know that we are also storytellers. We want our stories and our messages to be authentic, clear and memorable. We want to connect with people in a way that allows them to put themselves in the narrative and sing our song with us. In the same spirit of bluegrass, we can accomplish this in a variety of ways – whether being intentional about the words we choose, the examples we share or the visuals we create. In the end, we want to leave our audience wanting more!

Some of the best communicators let their work speak for itself. Many times we’re the ghostwriters, the behind-the-scenes team making it happen without having a byline or being in the spotlight. I want to encourage you to take one minute to reflect — think about the stories you are sharing, the power of your messages, the impact you are having on your organization, your customers, your communities and be proud — you are instrumental.

3. Set the stage
I’ve never been to a bluegrass concert in a stadium or a giant arena. Some of the best pickin’ I’ve ever heard was around a small picnic table behind a music barn on the outskirts of my rural Georgia hometown. Some groups even do in-home sessions to truly build a meaningful space to make the music matter.

Like bluegrass musicians, we know that creating the right setting for connections and conversations to happen is essential. Now, with people in a wider variety of workplace settings (on-site, hybrid, remote), there are even more opportunities to find the right venue for your message. Sometimes the widespread, large format messages are necessary and right, but other stories require a more focused and personalized approach.

Think about the stories that resonate most with you – how are they delivered, who shares the message, how many people are in the space and where are you in the mix? Let that experience help you shape the venue for your next communication.

4. Practice makes perfect
As an amateur mandolin player and vocalist, I have looked at the extraordinary talent of musicians like Ricky Skaggs, Chris Thile and Dolly Parton on many occasions and thought, “It comes so naturally to them. I could never do that.”

Don’t “fret,” as this illusion of natural talent is just that —an illusion shaped by decades of hard work. The man that inspired and encouraged me to play mandolin was self-taught. He traveled frequently for business and spent his evenings in a hotel practicing his chords and riffs until his fingers were cracked and sore — then he would practice some more. When I saw him on stage, I was captivated by the ease with which he perfectly picked his notes, solos and trills, and it seemed like he created this magic on the spot. It wasn’t some enchanted secret. Yes, he had talent, but what I saw was the result of practice, of learning from his mistakes and from his continuous quest to be better every time he took the stage.

When we communicate, we want to create that illusion, too, capturing attention with our words and our message in a way that seems effortless.

May our shared successes continue to be the result of ongoing practice (maybe even with some cracked and sore fingers), learning from our mistakes and our relentless quest to be better storytellers every time we pick up our instrument.

Ashley Bush is the director of communications and giving back at Southwire.

The post Here’s what communicators can learn from pickin’ the brains of bluegrass appeared first on PR Daily.

For Samsonite, telling its story of sustainability and environmentalism has become a high priority.

For 2022, the luggage company is highlighting its efforts to make its products from recycled materials, as well as environmental benefits of its bags’ durability.

“In our pursuit of sustainability leadership, we recognize that the most sustainable product is one that lasts,” says Ezequiel Hart, Samsonite’s global head of sustainability. “It’s straightforward: a product that lasts twenty years, for example, will have one-quarter of the impact over that period relative to four products that each last just five years before needing to be replaced. So, our priority is to ensure that our products are built to last.”

The brand is also pursuing a special Earth Day campaign, partnering with Iris Worldwide, part of the global Cheil Network. The campaign is using photographs to tell stories about sustainable travel in different cities, “unpacking the decisions that travelers make.”

(Images courtesy of Samsonite)

Samsonite chose to work with Iris on the campaign because of their shared values around sustainability.

“Our approach toward building even more sustainable product & processes is a constant evolution as we continue to learn,” says Nicole Adriance, senior director of brand marketing at Samsonite. “Iris has a similar corporate policy.  This notion inspired the campaign territory — and we decided to lean into the idea that we are ALL on a journey, as a company, as marketers and as consumers.”

The intended message of the campaign? “Sustainable choices don’t have to be difficult.”

“A series of mindful, small choices can lead to a big impact for our planet,“ says Adriance. “Let’s inspire one another to be mindful about the micro choices we make when we travel.”

The campaign chose to focus on images because of the storytelling possibilities. “We wanted to visually depict some of the choices consumers can make when traveling sustainability,” says Adriance. The images also afforded an opportunity to show off Samsonite’s products.

Lessons learned  

What advice does the team have for others looking to create messages for Earth Day?

“Storytelling is everything,” says Adriance. “When it came to this year’s campaign, it was important that we do more than take pretty pictures of our sustainable products.  We wanted to invite consumers into the dialogue – we are challenging ourselves to make more mindful choices, and we want to learn from our consumers about the choices they are making to travel more sustainably.”

As an example, the team worked with its influencer partners to create an online conversation about sustainable travel, creating a dialogue that reached untapped audiences and offered crowd-sourced solutions.

“The more dialogue we can create across channels, the better,” Adriance says.

For others looking to create campaigns on sustainability or climate, Adriance recommends thinking in the long-term, not just targeting immediate success.

“It’s not just one action, and we are all learning,” she says. “This year’s campaign and product developments are just two of the facets of our commitment to sustainability concerns.”

And commitments shouldn’t start and stop with a single campaign. For example, Samsonite is also actively partnering with One Tree Planted, a 501 c(3) organization with a mission to help global reforestation efforts, donating 20,000 trees in North America in the last two years.

“So, my advice is to just start,” says Adriance, “because we are all on this journey together.”

The post How Samsonite takes Earth Day beyond ‘pretty pictures’ appeared first on PR Daily.

As organizations in all industries embark on ESG (environmental, social and governance) communications journeys, I believe Hawaii is well-positioned to lead the way.

Engaging in corporate communications through the prism of ESG is quickly becoming best practice for communications teams and spokespeople, regardless of industry or geography. ESG encompasses a wide range of issues from sustainability to social justice. From a corporate communications standpoint, it boils down to consistent communications that embrace corporate values, reflect stakeholder concerns on issues like climate change and diversity, and focus on the substantive ways organizations are working to address the great issues of our times.

Given the massive impacts of our worsening environment and the global movement resulting from the death of George Floyd, ESG is now a front-burner concern for the private sector. Shareholders and consumers are holding corporations and their leadership accountable at every turn.

Lessons from Hawaii

While ESG is a relatively new buzzword for many businesses, its underlying concepts have always influenced business in Hawaii. ESG practices are deeply entrenched in the Native Hawaiian and Asian/Pacific Islander values that guide Hawaii’s business community, such as mālama (stewardship), ho‘ohanohano (respectfulness) and kuleana (responsibility).

These values have placed Hawaii at the forefront of ESG action and communications. Hawaii was the first state in the nation to set a 100% renewable energy goal and is well on its way to reaching that goal by 2045.

It’s no surprise that ESG best practices can be found in Hawaii. The underlying values and concepts are the basis of our society. We are the most diverse region in the U.S., with a large population of mixed race and indigenous people. With our strong emphasis on community, finding ways to respect and celebrate differences is something we continually work at. We are an island people, close to our land and water.

Concern for the environment is grounded in Native Hawaiian values and our residents’ understanding that island ecosystems are fragile and require both personal and community action.

Here is what I believe others can learn from Hawaii companies and their leaders’ communications styles:

1. Leadership. In Hawaii, leaders do not stand aloof and apart. They roll up their sleeves and pitch in, joining others to do what is best for the community.

Being an island state means not only that we are aware of rising sea levels, but also that we will inevitably cross paths with the same people time and again. Accountability and reputation are everything. Leaders understand this and they model it every day. They take into account how their decisions will impact the community and their relationships.

CEOs are spokespeople, but first and foremost they are parents, neighbors and community leaders.

2. Execution. Nowhere is the ESG mindset more apparent than in our work with clients in the sustainable agriculture space. Here, companies must walk a fine line of cherishing the land, respecting local farmers, and being culturally sensitive while also enacting change in a way that maintains natural resources and biodiversity for generations to come.

Companies here are fine tuning a blueprint for sustainable agriculture that the rest of the world will follow.

3. Community. Corporate communications here focuses on employees, the community and, sometimes literally, the people who live next door to a business.

Building relationships with stakeholders is crucial. It requires patience and must reflect our culture. We see time and time again when companies come to Hawaii from the continent and fail because they may think they understand what it means to maintain authentic values, but they often do not take this seriously enough. For example, speaking and acting with humility is essential, so posturing leadership styles often backfire, whereas simply showing up and “talking story,” contributing meaningfully to nonprofits and working on community issues offers success.

4. Diversity. The influence of Asian and Pacific Islander (AAPI) values in Hawaii reflect the state’s status as the most culturally and ethnically diverse state in the union, and this shows in the way we work and communicate.

Native Hawaiian culture also influences the behavior of people at all strata of society. Family and community are revered. The land and water are cherished. Everyone is worthy of respect. Taking care of each other is deeply ingrained. Being humble is important. So is kindness. This sets the tone for an inclusive workplace.

We have reached a tipping point in corporate communications where actions speak louder than words. The focus on ESG has presented an opportunity for corporations to fully embrace their values and be rewarded for effectively communicating their authenticity.

Now is the time to seek out successful examples of this mindset. Hawaii is proud and humbled to contribute to the cause.

Lori Teranishi is CEO and founder of iQ 360, a communications and business consultancy firm headquartered in Honolulu, Hawaii

The post ESG is more than a buzzword for Hawaii business leaders appeared first on PR Daily.

Good speechwriting requires a knack for storytelling and an ear for spoken language, but it’s also a skill that can be honed with practice.

Here are three tips speechwriting pros shared during Ragan’s Speechwriting and Public Affairs Conference on March 31:

1. Don’t be afraid to get personal.

The best speeches and public remarks come from a place of connection, says Katye Riselli, speechwriter for former First Lady Laura Bush.

In speeches Riselli helped craft for Bush, she would lean heavily on Bush’s personal experiences and anecdotes to create context for the overall purpose of the speech.

It’s not so much about what gets said, but rather how it’s said, Riselli advises.

It can be difficult to personalize speeches if you don’t have direct access to your principal. In those cases, David Levey, a veteran speechwriter and public affairs officer, recommends reaching out to their close friends and confidantes.

Getting familiar with a principal’s former speechwriter is what helped Alexandra Robinson, a deputy speechwriter for U.S. Department of Labor Secretary Martin J. Walsh.

“It made it so much easier when I came on board,” she says. “Even though I was starting from scratch, I really wasn’t. I felt like I had an ally who was able to get me through what I needed to learn.”

2. Inclusive speeches are better speeches.

Shannon Marone, public affairs manager with Brunswick Corporation, says inclusive writing starts with people-first language.

She advises using terms like “we,” “us,” “together,” and “collaborating,” in her words: “not making it about just the person who’s speaking, but drawing the audience in.”

Research is key. Consider reaching out to the organizer of the event your principal is speaking at to get a better idea of who your audience will be and what will best resonate with them. Knowing the makeup of the audience makes it easier to create a personal story, Robinson says.

According to Riselli, using inclusive language gives a speaker the opportunity to say “I see you” to audiences.

“In our world today, we’re more wired for connection, but people are lonely,” Riselli says. She argues that inclusive language builds trust by developing a shared identity—a “we.”

3. Use repetition to generate “earworms.”

“One of the tricks of the trade, for speechwriters, is repetition,” Levey notes. And the magic number in his view is three: “to be able to say things three times in three different ways, with the same meaning or with the same keyword.”

This repetition is what helps to create buzzy sound bites and shareable takeaways for audiences and media to repeat following a speech.

The key to repetition is to keep is short and sweet, Levey says. “No one asks for a refund because a speech was too short.”

He advises reiterating your key message at the beginning and the end of speeches, because that’s when people will be listening most intently.

PR pros, where did you learn your speechwriting tips and tricks? Any wisdom to share? Let us know on twitter @PRDaily.

The post 3 speechwriting tips to find the perfect sound bite appeared first on PR Daily.

It’s hard to tell a successful story about your organization when audiences still have larger questions about your mission and purpose. At these junctures, a carefully considered rebrand can engage internal and external audiences alike around a narrative that says what you want it to.

Ahead of her session at Ragan’s Brand Storytelling Conference on April 13, we caught up with Michelle Russo, CCO at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, to learn how she holistically guided the institution’s first major rebrand in 50 years by telling purposeful brand stories rooted in authenticity and credibility.

Ragan: What do you consider the most crucial elements of an effective brand story?

Russo: Start with your mission and purpose, and the stories about your brand will surface naturally from there.

This month, we are celebrating the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s 110^th anniversary with an origin story that includes the local chambers of commerce whose original leaders had the foresight to create the powerhouse organization we are today. Because the U.S. Chamber and state/local chambers sit at the intersection of business, government and citizens, our legacy of service to society spans America’s most challenging times — from World War II through the global pandemic we are recovering from now.

As a member service organization, our brand is not only about us and our work, but also a symbol and manifestation of the vibrancy of the American business community and the dynamism of the U.S. economy.

Every brand must resist the temptation to rest on the laurels of its legacy and ensure that it stays relevant for generations to come. Over the past year, we leveraged the occasion of a new CEO to transform and modernize the Chamber into an organization whose whole brand equity is greater than the sum of its parts.

As we continue this transformation journey, the Chamber’s brand story remains rooted in purpose. We have received this positive feedback across our key stakeholder groups — from our Board of Directors to our employees and from our corporate members to our partners across the country and around the globe. We attribute that success to the authenticity and credibility the brand has always had while we evolved it to keep base with the pace of business.

Ragan: When starting to tell the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s story about launching a modern brand identity, what’s your first step?

Russo: We are a powerful player in Washington at the intersection of business, government and citizens, but the way we had been showing up [implied] that we were a government institution.

The Chamber’s old logo was not doing the work of representing our story and it was not [representing our] purpose in a digital world. We needed to make sure that what we believed on the inside  was represented on the outside.

One of the first things we did when we were making our case for our new brand identity was show people a slide cluttered with U.S. agency logos, and ours was buried within it. It was apparent to everyone how quickly we got lost within the many government seals.

Now, we have a brand identity across visuals and voice to help convey the critical role we play in serving our members within the ecosystem of government, business and society — at the global, national, state, community and local levels.

Ragan:  What’s the biggest storytelling lesson you learned from the process of the rebrand?

Russo: First, a rebrand is only as successful as the power you give it. Not only should it change the way you look, but also it should change the way you behave.

For example, we leveraged the new brand in a holistic way for our premier annual event, State of American Business. We brought to life our new CEO’s vision in myriad ways.

Not only did the new brand show up in our graphic design, but it was a muse for rethinking the entire event. We evolved from a podium speech to a Ted Talk style presentation with a dynamic visual background. We changed our marketing strategy and brought in new audiences. We reached new levels of engagement, re-energized our core audiences and inspired our employees to reimagine the impact of their work.

Hear more from Michelle Russo during Ragan’s Brand Storytelling Conference on April 13. Learn more and register here.

The post A rebrand should go beyond looks to influence behavior, says U.S. Chamber of Commerce CCO appeared first on PR Daily.