Need a jolt of PR wisdom as you're navigating the COVID-19 crisis (or ANY crisis) for your organization? Then this episode of #MsInterPReted offers it in spades...
As the public relations profession absorbs its share of the COVID-19 impact with job, contract and revenue losses, practitioners are seeking to help their clients and employers craft truthful, productive and forward-looking messages.
Yet examples of both good and poor PR practice abound, in the current environment. How is COVID-19’s global societal impact bringing out the best – and the worst – in brands’ public relations and marketing communications?
Two veteran practitioners who – like Kelly and Mary Beth – are no shrinking violets about speaking the unvarnished truth as they see it, Julia Angelen Joy and Molly McPherson join #MsInterPReted with the latest they’re witnessing from the PR front lines of the crisis.
Show Notes
Included in Kelly’s and Mary Beth’s discussion with Molly and Jules:
- What to do as an independent practitioner, when faced with sudden loss of bookings and business
- How a “rising tide lifts all ships” mentality in the PR profession and a sense of connectivity between public relations professionals will help our community of colleagues
- Why being bold and calling out bad PR examples is important for the improvement of the profession to elevate trust and ethical codes in public relations
- Entities doing PR wrong or right during COVID-19: WeWork, Gov. Cuomo, Texas Roadhouse, the tourism / hospitality industry, mega-brands versus small-businesses (among other examples)
- What happens when there are disparate value systems, mixed motives and disconnects between leaders and staff
- How PR needs to be mobilized to fight fear that’s pervasive in teams, organizations, communities and entire societies right now
- What it means to “have the difficult conversation” to acknowledge from the beginning of a crisis situation that a crisis is – indeed – happening (and how skipping this key incremental step is a major mistake)
- Why information-hoarding is one the most common – yet most damaging – behaviors leaders engage in, that damages (or even destroys) trust
- What roles ACCOUNTABILITY and TRANSPARENCY play in the current crisis
- Is COVID-19 the PR industry's “moment of truth” to prove our worth in serving our clients / employers AND the public… and if it is that moment, are we making effective use of it?
- Observations of small and regional PR firms being the culprits of bad PR pitches tied specifically to coronavirus
- How LEADERSHIP is the common (yet uncommon) thread that must undergird strategy and basic good decision-making
- What it means when “doing the right thing” can mean completely different realities to completely different entities (such as a commercial retail interest versus public health official)
- Use of humor as a coping mechanism by individuals (such as on social media) versus as a connectivity tactic by brands in their advertising
- How strategic communicators should help brands stay human and real in this crisis
- How COVID-19 is going to force companies to build better, stronger cultures of communications
- How being labeled an “essential” versus a “non-essential” business factors into messaging and decision-making during COVID-19
- And much more.
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What is Ms. InterPReted?
Public Relations stands as one of the most misunderstood, misinterpreted areas of business and organizational management. With Fletcher Marketing PR Founder and CEO Kelly Fletcher and Senior Strategist Mary Beth West, we’re here to turn around PR’s own bad PRess, cut through the nomenclature, and demystify public relations as the best pathway to create, grow and amplify the roots of positive management, communications, culture and careers -- for success that matters.