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The role of communications has changed. The expectations are higher. The margin for error is smaller.
Earning Your Seat is a podcast for communications leaders operating under changed expectations without a clear playbook.
Hosted by Dino Delic, Stephanie Lerdall, and Genevieve Brammall, the show places the hosts inside an experience many communicators recognize. Smart, capable leaders learning in real time how influence is earned, tested, and sustained.
Each episode features candid conversations with leaders across communications, data, media, and technology. Alongside those conversations, the hosts test ideas in real time, question what they have been taught, and confront where common advice breaks down under organizational pressure.
This is not aspirational thought leadership. It is a practical look at growth as it happens. How communicators earn trust, collaborate across functions, and lead with authority in a world moving faster than the role itself.
Pull up a chair. The work begins now.
Dino Delic: This is powered by Meltwater
Dino Delic: So you wanna maximize your brand's [00:01:00] impact. I don't mean being iconic or having a viral moment. We're talking about the ideas people have about your brand, the value it brings them, the associations they make in their head when they think about your brand.
Many businesses say they want to build brand awareness and recognition, or increased demand, but when you try to dig a little deeper and get some clarity on those objectives, they come up blank. The thing about pushing and proving your brand's impact is that it's not just an end goal, it's an entire process.
It's about understanding where your brand is sitting right now and where you want it to go. So to actually start working towards it, you need to ask the right questions. Our guest, Tim Markle, is here to help. He's an award-winning marketer and communicator, and the founder and CEO of Big Valley Marketing.
They work with tech companies to develop their marketing communication strategies, and he's seen many of his clients struggle with the same thing at the start of their journeys.
Tim Marklein: there are three typical objectives or typical outcomes that clients are trying to derive. So we're looking at, well, how do we improve the brand?
Brand awareness, brand equity, brand, whatever. So there's a brand dimension to this. There's a demand dimension to this. How are we impacting sales, driving revenue, building pipeline, helping accelerate deal conversion, et cetera, et cetera. And then there's a reputation element to this. So what is your current reputation?
How are you trying to evolve it? What are the perceptions of the company, et cetera.
Dino Delic: Who doesn't want their brand to look good? Right? But also. Who wants to actually do the hard part?
Tim Marklein: We're gonna say, okay, what is your current revenue? What is your target revenue for next year?
How many customers do you need to get in order to drive that? You know, grow from 20 million this year to 25 million next year. And we will sometimes get clients looking at us like we're, we've got multiple heads because we're asking those questions from a communication standpoint. I'm like, well, if the goal of this program is to help. influence, demand, or get people to buy more of your product. [00:03:00] Like we need to know, well, what is the before and after of that if you only need 20 customers and you know that they're all in the northeast of the United States or they're in a particular vertical market, like, okay, we can go do a very focused campaign in that context, which is very different than like, oh, we're trying to drive general awareness. And you know, very often the budgets are the same.
Dino Delic: You might think that this is where it starts to get complicated, because now you need numbers.
You need research. You need to come up with an answer to a question. You've just started asking about your brand. But actually this is where strategists like Tim bring business leaders back down to Earth so they can rewind to the very beginning.
Tim Marklein: there has been a tendency to gloss over or just. Move quickly past what the objectives are. so we have made a definitive change over the past year to now. That's gonna be the first, thing that we do in the first 30 days of any new client engagement and we're gonna go deep on that
Dino Delic: There's a lot you can do for your brand in 30 days, and we're breaking it [00:04:00] down right here.
Think of this episode as a playbook for turning data into influence. In other words, proving and driving your brand impact from the ground up even when you don't know where to start.
Dino Delic: In both of our companies, Tim and I have seen our share of clients getting off on the wrong foot when it comes to building their brand.
right? The reason why CL clients come to us is because they want to improve their measurement and they want to demonstrate their impact. And so often they come to us with strategic documents that mostly say things like increase awareness or demonstrate prowess in a particular area.
And so I get excited because I find that. There's one little thing that they probably forgot that we can show them. So I want to know how you approach that particular challenge? How often does it come up and where do you typically like to start with a new client engagement?
Tim Marklein: I'll maybe answer it two ways. So historically what I've seen. Is that, you know, we'll get into, you know, discussion after discussion, either in the new business context in our case, or kind of in the first few discussions after activating with the new client. And, you know, it quickly will get into, okay, this is the strategy of what we're trying to do, or these are the tactics.
Tactics that we're trying to drive. And there has been a tendency to gloss over or just. Move quickly past what the objectives are. So we have made a definitive change over the past year to now. That's gonna be the first thing that we do in the first 30 days of any new client engagement.
and we're gonna go deep on that and we've got specialists who work with clients to be able to figure out, okay, no, like. Uh, you say it's grow awareness, grow awareness from what to what over what period of time? Well, what are the blocks to awareness that you have right now? There's kind of also an implicit assumption very often in the public relations community that, oh, if we go get media coverage, therefore that's gonna lead to awareness. Well, that may or may not be the case. Are we getting media coverage with your target audience? Who is your target [00:06:00] audience? Are they reading the outlets that you're getting media coverage in, there's like a whole chain of assumptions that are there. And so we like to invest early on in the client relationship and even increasingly we're doing it in the new business process to be able to go make those chain of assumptions explicit instead of implicit. So a good example, we're working with a new client right now that is a European based company.
That is trying to grow their brand recognition and customer adoption in the US market. So, totally valid goals, but in order to really make those, you know, well-defined objectives, we need to know, yeah, grow a recognition from what to what? What is your current recognition? Oh, well, they don't have any market research, so they're kind of.
They don't have a baseline well, so we need to go do some legit research to be able to go do a baseline. And while as Meltwater customers, we would go do a baseline of media [00:07:00] visibility, or social media visibility using meltwater and that. like, that's not a proxy for No. if you're trying to grow brand recognition, how much do your customers actually, or prospects or other stakeholders actually know about you?
So, there's a set of things that need to happen there in terms of what research and measurement you can bring to bear. But there's also Planning discussion or a back and forth that needs to happen about how do we go make these assumptions explicit instead of implicit, and how do we go get very clearly defined objectives that can then translate into clearly defined KPIs that can track week to week, month to month, quarter to quarter, a year to year.
Stephanie Lerdall: So Tim, I am, uh, guilty of many of the things that discussing, or at least have been in my career. And I find myself today at a, what I would call mid-size organization. so we have. course goals to be data driven in our work. and we can answer many of the questions that you [00:08:00] ask, things like going out and surveying, to understand reputation, that's an expensive endeavor. So what are the things that you would tell someone, like you've got a mid-size budget, like you can do some stuff, but surveys are like out, What are the things that are right under people's noses normally that you can use, but they aren't?
Tim Marklein: Well both sides of that question. So on the survey front. I think there's an assumption that most people have in order to go do an effective survey, it's gonna cost you a hundred thousand bucks or more, particularly for brand tracking or something like that. And it can, it may, it doesn't have to. so I think there are ways to be able to go do targeted survey research or other things that can give you good data for less.
I encourage clients and we work with clients that go, like, help them reset those assumptions and, and kind of look at, well, what could you do to be able to understand that maybe the other side of that is. and this is where Plug for Meltwater here is where or other tools, to be able to really understand the awareness or the visibility for your company versus other companies in media coverage, the visibility for your company versus other companies.
In social media conversation, the same in AI visibility. So how are you showing up in the AI engines versus other AI engines? Uh, search is another one that we like, okay, well, showing up in search versus others. So all four of those are between kinds of media visibility, social visibility, AI visibility, search visibility.
Meltwater does a lot of that. There are other tools that you can use to be able to do those things now. You can do that for less than a hundred thousand bucks. And you can also build it in where, hey, you're tracking month in and month out. The trick is that they aren't proxies for what customers think or what your stakeholders think, but they can be used if you don't have the money.
It's like, okay, you can use those to be able to say, Hey, I may not know this. And as long as I'm being clear with people that, yeah. Just because our media share is 20% versus the other competitors, it doesn't mean our mind share is 20% versus the other competitors. But it's like, hey, it gives you at least some data so you're not flying blind.
So I tend to look at it like, Hey, what data can you put in place? Start there, but also be clear about the limitations of the data so you can help people see, hey, well if we wanna go answer that question, we need to go do this other thing. It doesn't mean we shouldn't do the media visibility, but like, I think every client should be tracking their media visibility, tracking their social visibility, their AI visibility, their search visibility, and doing survey research and doing some of these other things.
but I think you need to start somewhere and then go over the course of a couple years, be able to layer those things in and look for the moments where. The pressure point in terms of the conversations that are happening or the problems that you're trying to solve internally necessitate, oh, now in order to go solve that problem, we need to go do market research.
Dino Delic: Sometimes the data you need is actually sitting somewhere you haven't had a chance to look. Because of data silos, the bigger an organization gets, the more likely this is to happen. Different teams might have different objectives.
Different teams might have different objectives and different ways of working. And maybe because of pressure, or maybe because of good old imposter syndrome, people tend to get defensive about the way they do their job, so they go off and work in their own corner of the house. It's a lot more common than you might think.
I've had trouble getting research data from other teams. Many times it's not because people are selfish, but it does prove that there's a lack of smooth working relationship between teams. No alignment, no happily ever after.
Tim Marklein: Well, there, there's some other, other factors at play in terms of, because we, I mean, we do marketing and communication, so we're usually working with a number of different stakeholders in the marketing and communications and content teams, et [00:12:00] cetera. there is a like, hey, being proprietary about data that can factor in.
I mean, there are functional silos and then there are data silos or research silos that both come into play here. And I think part of the challenge in integration there is that while we might like to say, I mean marketing and communications are so interrelated, I can argue that marketing is a subset of comms.
I can argue that comms is a subset of marketing. Either way kind of doesn't matter, but. When you get into the nature of what maybe people who are doing media relations do, there's a lot of opportunistic, real Tim kind of dynamics that are happening there. But you go to an advertising person and it's all pre-planned and pre-programmed and kind of highly structured, and so there's almost not enough foundation to be able to have.
Just a functional conversation there about how do those things work together? I think back to earlier in, I dunno, 20 years ago when, when, you know, websites were becoming so critical for business and, and like I went to, a web marketing conference and you know, somebody there was talking about influencers and.
The web people were like, well, how do you engage influencers? And you know, the couple of us who were in the room who have a PR background, were like, well, you call them, you pick up the phone. but like if you're building websites, you're creating a website, you're creating content on a website, people are engaging with you.
Another firm that I was at had engagement was one of their big things that was emblazoned in the conference room. Well, the web people thought engagement was, somebody's engaging with my content on the website. Yes, that is engagement. The PR and the social media people were like, Hey, I'm talking to people one-on-one, one on a small group meeting here and yeah, that's engagement too. But that's where I think some of this integration falls down, is that the functional understanding across disciplines is where it starts to break down. And then you've got these data silos that make it even harder.
Genevieve Brammall: Yeah, I agree. I feel like, um, there's so much, um, gold in this conversation. I wanna take you back a little bit just, to the point that you were making originally about the setting of objectives and really understanding what that baseline looks like. I've been, uh, judging this week, the biggest PR awards, in Australia, and it was so incredibly insightful to see, Submissions that knew what they were doing when they set out to do it, versus the ones that were retrofitting their nomination or you know, their submission to the criteria where they clearly didn't actually have objectives to start with because they couldn't even articulate what the challenge was they were to solve. I think to your point, there is a bit of fear sometimes that communicators have around defining the objective in case they don't achieve it. and I'm really big on trying to remove the fear, like data actually empowers rather than, [00:15:00] um, disempowers.
And, and for me, I feel like if we can listen, we can do massive campaigns. I've got a really big one on the go at the moment and I'm trying to move a group of stakeholders that is really big into a space that says, let's not have an objective that is esoteric and not measurable because. That just makes everyone feel good'cause it's written on a piece of paper, but we're not gonna be able to actually demonstrate anything aligned with that. You're asking about a feeling, or an emotion. Like, I, I can't measure that quantifiably in a short space of Tim. So, I do find that it's that little bit of fear around, Being, being held to account.
Tim Marklein: Yeah.
Genevieve Brammall: I was gonna say, um, to Steph's point around comms being she's sitting in the, in the marketing function and that collaboration piece is, um, that's where I sit too. But I haven't always sat in the marketing function, and I do believe that. Um, and there's great debate, around the world, on this topic, but for me, It [00:16:00] does mean that we are all one team, one dream. So, that access to information is very much shared. And my view on the tools that I've got access to is the more teams that know we have them and the more teams that use them, it actually empowers the data that I am then sharing because more people understand it. So I'm an open book. I'm at an open house if anyone wants to. know, come and get a demonstration on how Meltwater or, or any other, measurement tool that we're using. If anyone wants to use it. come and meet and, and I've had two meetings already this week with Meltwater introducing 'em to different people within our organization on that very point, because, um, it can only make us all better at, um, if.
Dino Delic: We can't talk about working with other teams without getting into working together within your team. So let's say the silos open up, cross-functional teams actually cross their functions together and you get the [00:17:00] data that you need.
Great. Well, what now? Your team has to be armed with the right skills to actually work with the data. And by that we mean both the analytical brain power as well as certain personality traits. Okay, sure. We can call them personality hires. Why not? But let's have Tim break this one down for us.
Tim Marklein: building on kind of what you just said. I think another critical success factor in this is, well, I'm a big believer in the value of research and analytics professionals. I mean, there are, you know, there's a big difference between somebody who kind of can bring some research and analytics.
Knowledge and experience and skillset to the table who might be digging into a, a Meltwater dashboard versus somebody else who might be digging into a Meltwater dashboard, which doesn't mean like, I'm still a believer, hey, make sure everybody has the data, but where I find very often that people will fall down.
It's like, oh, we've got all of these tools and so we're pulling this data point and this data point and this data [00:18:00] point. But what does it actually mean? And as the person who's pulling that data or interpreting that data, do they know what, what the context of that data is? And we all know, like in a Meltwater context, if you're Boolean or non bullion, if you're going that way.
Search string, like are you including news releases or not including, I mean, there's so many parameters there that can impact, well, what's in that data and how that data gets interpreted. And then, oh, well now you get like, okay, the comms team might understand that. Now you're getting to an executive who may not understand those things.
So there's so much value in, as I said, I believe in the research and analytics professionals and the role that they can play in this. But I think every communicator needs to know a certain amount, uh, about this. And then everybody should have a phone in front. Like, who is the consultant?
Who is the expert, who is the analyst that you can go bring in? you know, as opposed to just looking up something that's easy, like I'm really trying to figure out what's going on here. and you know, if you don't have that person, then you can learn it yourself.
but I also feel like there is a role for an analyst in every communications team or a measurement person in every communications team, or at least somebody who's playing that role, whether full-time or part-time.
Stephanie Lerdall: I'm thinking about this topic a lot, Tim. and we like to talk about minimal viable products a lot of the time. Are the minimal viable skills that you think have to exist on a communications team? Like if you were gonna hire somebody who's going to do some work, but also know how to measure it, what do you need?
And what I'm thinking about is. You're describing the best measurement approaches as connecting a bunch of different data sets, right? Like revenue, web traffic, AI visibility, et cetera. But all those nuances you're describing that just meltwater data exists with all that data
Tim Marklein: Right.
Stephanie Lerdall: So do I need someone who knows all of that data, or do I need a technologist that can put it all in a, you know, what are the skills that I need?
Tim Marklein: Curiosity I think is huge on both sides of that. So having somebody who is really interesting, curious, and is gonna dig into things, That really helps on the measurement front, because that's the person who's gonna ask, well, why?
And okay, yeah, you want media coverage? Why do you want media coverage? Well, because I think it's gonna be, okay, well why do you want that? Like, asking the why and how question. So yeah, and curiosity is huge. The ability to interview, so ask smart questions, which it helps for like, hey, you're curating content, you're curating story, you're curating point of view, but it also helps in the, the measurement context as well encourage is another critical one be, and this goes to another topic that Dino Delic and I have talked about before about consulting is you need to don't want order takers. But particularly I find that. You know, whether you're working in a situation where communicators and marketers are working together, or an executive versus somebody on the front lines with the team, a lot of Times the executive doesn't have all of the knowledge about things like, you know, you need to educate the executive about that.
And you need to, in a lot of cases, go breakdown assumptions where they might say, we don't need to care about that. We've, I dunno, we've got a particular executive this week who was like, oh, the only thing we need to communicate to the outside world is these four points about why we're so great.
and it's like, okay, I get where you're coming from. You feel like to me part of this is breaking down. Well, why are you coming at it that way? And it's because, oh, you feel like people haven't heard those four things, so okay, let's go work with you to be able to go bring that to life. But at the same time.
That's not good communication, right? Because nobody wants to go If somebody shows up at a dinner party and all they're talking about is themselves, or all they're talking about is their products, like they're gonna be alone in the corner. So how can you go relate to where other people are? So how do we go educate or train or coach or challenge or whatever with that executive and, and I feel like that [00:22:00] is one of the biggest skills that exists in the people who are most successful in communications, but I think needs to be more pervasive and we need to go invest more Tim in like enabling people to go have those, in some cases tough conversations. But it really is about kind of showing up where, hey, I'm an expert in this. Let me help you learn from my expertise and combine it with your expertise. And together we're gonna land at someplace better.
Dino Delic: Now it's Tim to put together the dream team, assemble the Avengers, or whatever the kids say these days. The analytical and soft skills we just talked about are all important, of course, but now more than ever, for your marketing comms team to be successful, you'll need to fill some very specific seats.
Tim Marklein: On that broader team makeup I do believe a lot, and actually it's how we have built our business, is around having a team of experts. I mean, your business is different than my business, and so everybody's gonna build it a little bit differently.
But, I do think the days of. Everybody in comms being a generalist, which is kind of how it has played out over the years, they're not totally over because there is a role for generalists and ultimately you need a mix of generalists and specialists. And I do believe, like for us, we've got a market intelligence team, which is a set of people who are doing research, analytics and measurement all day long.
That is a very different skill set than the. Content practice, which is our people who are storytellers, story producers, designers, writers, et cetera. And that's also a very different skillset than the media and influencer team that we have who are working with reporters and bloggers and podcasters, and analysts all day long.
They're not only different skill sets, but there's also a different rhythm and flow to it. So like the media people are like on deadline with reporters all day long, back and forth. The content people need is focused on Tim to be able to write a good piece. And the research analytics and measurement people are a little bit in between because a lot of it is digging into the data, but also then how do you go explain the data or go deliver a presentation to a client.
And so. There's different skill sets, but also different rhythm and flow to that. And so if I'm advising a client on how to go build a team, you need a mix of those things. If you can afford to have most of those, or if you've got a smaller team, what is the right mix of those things that you need for the scope and scale of where you are?
And either way, I think it needs to be a mix of generalization, and specialization. unless you're a one person show, in which case you don't have any choice, you are the generalist. then like what percentage of these things do you need? I don't think you, every team needs a full-time dedicated analyst.
So it might be, Oh, we need a quarter of Tim analyst, or a 50% analyst. you know, I think if you've got that, how do you go then celebrate and cultivate that skillset, but also celebrate that work and give them the opportunity to really go. Be a great analyst and present the information and go help people understand what's behind it in the same way that you would for the Media Relations Pro, who just got the great story and the Wall Street Journal and content writer who just wrote this really brilliant point of view, view piece, like all of those things need to be celebrated.
Measurement, research, analytics and measurement have too long been a backroom function. They need to be a frontline function. So as you're. Kind of building out the team that they have to be kind of co-conspirators in that way.
Dino Delic: As you all know, this is a communications podcast in the year 2026. So of course we're gonna talk about ai. We've spent the greater part of this episode talking about the people you need on your comms and marketing team, the skills that they need to have, and the importance of aligning with other departments in your organization.
So it's clear that the humans in the company continue to play a significant role in really driving the success and establishing the brand, but. There is nothing wrong with getting a little help. We believe that AI is a tool, not a replacement for the human element. And here's the ideal setup. Humans build relationships.
Humans craft the brand's narrative through smart, relevant campaigns and understanding the audience, AI is simply there to help you out with the little things.
Tim Marklein: I don't know. There's a concept in the tech world called Trough of Disillusionment. I'm probably right now personally in the trough of disillusionment. actually we are fully embrace AI across our practices. We're experimenting, we're doing a lot of great things with it, but there's also like, as we're doing that, all of the warts, all of the problems, all of the challenges are showing up.
And so it's hard to say because I think some of this will shake out more over Tim. I think where AI ultimately becomes most valuable is when it gets integrated into specific workflows. So the couple workflows that where it has been valuable for us, warts and all is from a writing assistant standpoint, it is very valuable.
I'm not a big believer in particularly in a lot of that. Types of situations that we work, like where we're writing really valuable point of view content for a client. Like, okay, we're not gonna have AI write that, but AI's a brilliant editor, like I, I've spent my career as a great writer and like I get a lot of value every day from, uh, the tool that I use to be able to kind of like, oh, flag me.
Oh, you're using this too much or your tone is offered some other things off where I want it to be. So writing. assistant, not writing, but writing assistance I think is really valuable. I think it's a great research tool. I'm a big fan of perplexity from an answer engine standpoint, and I get, at this point I get a lot more value and a lot more productivity from asking perplexity for about any number of topics or, Hey, tell me about this company, or who are the competitors in this, or what are the different buying criteria in this space?
I get that so much faster and more productively there than I do with Google. So that's a key area. There are pockets of those across the marketing communications mix, but right now there's an assumption that it is actually improving productivity. I would say in the short term, it's actually challenging productivity as much as improving because we all have to learn these things and you're spending so much time correcting the mistakes or trying to.
Work through hallucinations and other things there where it's like, it's probably a productivity wash in the long run. It's gonna be fantastic, but there are a lot of kinks to iron out. There are a lot of warts to get rid of, and also we need to bake it more into the workflow of other tools as opposed to standalone kinds of projects.
Genevieve Brammall: I did just wanna ask you the, the one question that we're, uh, attempting to ask all of our guests, just to see where there's commonality and, and I suppose, um, some fresh thinking. If you were advising someone who is a comms leader, really trying to earn their seat at the table, the one thing that they can do is take the first step towards that today?
Tim Marklein: I'm gonna go back to a theme that we've already talked about, the objectives and the KPIs, And specifically alignment around objectives and KPIs because it's not really, this isn't really about like. Setting the objectives and KPIs like, okay, Dino Delic can set some objectives and KPIs and great, he's good to go with it.
But like in the organizations that you're talking about, it really is alignment. So how do you align between you as the communications leader and the CEO? The CFO, the head of marketing? The head of product, and. Both the definition of the objectives and KPIs, and then the alignment around those objectives and KPIs.
Because if you can do that, then everything else becomes that much easier because it cuts out a lot of work that you. Would do otherwise do that is wasted Tim or chasing something that doesn't matter. but also in those questions and then those interactions, you get to the root of the issue and get to the heart of, like, Jen, some of the things you've talked about with your campaigns where, oh, we've got a clear sense of this is the audience, this is what we're trying to, we're trying to have them go from here to here, like. That's what you wanna get to. And so the objectives and KPI definition becomes the context to be able to go dig into that and align across functions.
Dino Delic: I think this is a perfect place to end the episode, but before you press stop, let me give you a little more. Our conversation with Tim Markin really went to a lot of places. It started with a simple question of how do you prove your brand's impact? And then it led us down this rabbit hole of breaking through data silos and building a capable comms team.
But really it's all about going back to basics, building awareness for your brand, improving its reputation and driving demand. So you need to know where your brand is coming from, and you need to know where to get your data. It can be in places you can easily find like search analytics, social media engagement, and customer surveys.
It can also be hidden in other departments, which means you need to build relationships with those teams. So you need the right people on your team, and you need people with technical knowledge for working with your data. And you also need to have them have the soft skills like curiosity and courage to really push them towards the company's goals.
Man, we need a lot, and it's easy to get lost in the source when brands are expected to chase growth faster than ever. But let this episode be a reminder for you to just go back to the what's and the why's. Once that's clear to you, everything else will follow.
Dino Delic: Earning your seat isn't about passively absorbing. It's about executing. So take a moment and reflect and think about how you can use what you've just learned in this episode to grow, recalibrate, and improve. Thanks for listening. I'm Dino Delic Deli. We'll see you next time on the next episode of Earning Your Seat.