Jon and I recently had some fun strolling down memory lane as we recorded an episode of our Teaming Up podcast. The topic was our early December move to our new expansive offices in Scott’s Addition, abandoning the familiarity of our Shockoe Bottom home where we have held court for 19 of the agency’s 22 years. Moving, as most of you know, is not for the faint of heart. When we first pulled up stakes from our Shockoe Slip office, it was out of necessity – we…
Read MoreCue the music: happy birthday to us. This week, we’re blowing out four candles on The Phil’s b-day cake, marking an anniversary with many slices of gratitude to go around. The timing feels particularly appropriate, coinciding for the most part with Giving Tuesday. After all, when we created The Phil, we saw it in many ways as a gift to Virginia’s nonprofit community, a community that was long on heroic stories and short on places to tell those stories. Back then, we envisioned The Phil…
Read MoreI’m not sure we’ve saved the best for last when it comes to our three-part discussion of the Earned-Owned-Paid public relations paradigm – and if you missed our first two installments on Earned and Owned you can find them here – but the Paid leg of the stool is to my mind where the most magic happens. Let’s explain how to wave the magic wand. A long time ago – I dunno, maybe back in the 2010s – social media had an exciting, inbred element…
Read MoreWhen last we met, I was musing about the three-part paradigm that has come to dominate the public relations landscape. I’m talking about EOP – earned/owned/paid – a winning PR trifecta if there ever was one. My last installment focused on the “E” of the acronym, “earned media,” which no doubt is the progenitor of our profession. Placing stories in the news media is where public relations first took root, and it continues to be an effective strategy for raising clients’ visibility while amplifying it all with…
Read MoreI spent the first dozen years of my career in the federal government, and like much of the rank and file, I became adept at acronyms, those abbreviations that give insiders a sense that you know the lingo and leave outsiders scratching their heads. I remember that moment of clarity when I finally realized, for example, that NMI was not a popular middle name but stood for “no middle initial.” (Insert the sound of a palm slapping a forehead.) Suffice it to say that I haven’t…
Read MoreI was asked by a new client years ago, “What makes a good client?” The question took me aback. I’d always focused on being a good (if not great) agency; now here was someone on the client side (where I spent more than half my career) putting some of the onus of the success of the relationship on themselves. It was a smart question. Now, years later, here’s my answer… No TODAY Show-itis We used to say that the three warning signs that we were…
Read MoreI was talking the other day to a longtime journalist who, about a year ago, came over to the “dark side.” He took a position doing public relations for a nonprofit organization. His role as head of communications is not atypical – media relations, writing content, organizing webinars and a dash of community relations thrown in. Like many journalists, he has made the transition seamlessly, and the skills that he had as a reporter have translated well to PR. He’s enjoyed not having daily tight…
Read MoreI spent the first half of my career – if my math is right, about 22 years – on the client side, toiling in our profession in the government, at corporations and with startups. Most of that time, our communications resources were pretty self-contained – that is, we did what we could with the staffs and budgets that we had. There were occasions, however, when we looked beyond our walls for some added assistance. And there were three primary reasons we would retain a public…
Read MoreAfter more than five years of employing the EOP (earned, owned, paid) public relations model – for our clients and ourselves – I set aside some time to contemplate whether the paradigm had run its course, whether it was time to move on to new strategies and new ways of thinking. Short answer: It’s not. The EOP model (some call it the PESO model by adding “shared” into the mix) is every bit as effective today as it’s ever been. The combination of these interconnected…
Read MoreBlogging is a two-way street. As much as you can busy yourself with plans for new, yet-to-be-written blogs and fill editorial calendars with content ideas, it’s just as useful to take a look in the rear-view mirror at some of your past blogs to see which ones are engaging your audiences most. In that spirit, here are some excerpts from our top five most-read Gong Blogs from 2022: 1. Five Examples of Media Interviews Gone Wrong. Our most popular blog of the year actually was…
Read MoreSocial media platforms have emerged as some of the most effective tools for public relations practitioners. Sites like Facebook and LinkedIn provide us with receptive avenues for reaching target audiences, for telling stories that help shape brands and showcase a company’s expertise. But information on these platforms does not flow in just one direction. How audiences respond to social media posts tells us a lot about how interested and engaged they are with the nature of the content. Measuring the number of likes and shares…
Read MoreThis slow-moving car wreck that is Twitter has turned me into a curious rubbernecker – strictly professionally of course. I find myself craning my neck from moment to moment to assess the damage and divine whether there will be any survivors. So often in the near aftermath of such crashes, there remain way more questions than answers. First, a confession: I’m not a big Twitter fan. While I signed up for the platform not long after its launch, I never posted a single tweet nor…
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