Why Hire an Outside PR Firm for Your Cultural Attraction?

You’re listening to the Marketing Attractions podcast. Conversations on how nonprofit attractions are increasing attendance and sharing their missions through marketing. Your hosts are Ryan Dick and Jenny Williams of Attend Media. Jenny today’s topic, why hire an outside public relations firm? Jenny, I don’t know much about public relations. What do you know about public relations? Well, I, too, don’t know a ton about public relations because I’m on the paid media side. I think if you’re thinking of the marketing umbrella, a lot of times the paid me in advertising sits on one side and public relations sits on another side. Sometimes we mingle together a bit, but oftentimes our worlds are very, very separate. Today we’re going to actually bring in a guest who’s going to help walk us through what’s going on in the PR space right now. Yeah, I know on the paid media side, it’s, you know, it’s not a crystal ball, it’s not perfect, but we’re always held to these performance type of standards, like how many tickets, how many visitations do we drive? And I’m thinking that gets a little bit tougher, a little squishier on the public relations side. So I think that’s something that we’re going to address today and our guest is going to give us some tips for an in-house public relations team if that team is just totally internal. So here we go. Hi, everybody. We’re going to invite to the show Sharon Doer. She is the senior vice president of Wild Care and Conservation at Public Communications Incorporated. Welcome to the show Sharon. Hi, thank you so much for having me. I applaud you for bringing a PR person into your marketing world for this. We, we, we, we, can be friends. This is, it’s not our master. Um, okay, so for those, for those who do not know PCI, I mean you guys are really big in the, you know, cultural attraction space for public relations. You should give an introduction to PCI in yourself so everybody knows who you are. Yeah, so PCI, we’re headquartered in Chicago, but we work nationally. We actually work in several different spaces with healthcare and nonprofit and government, but the, the space that we’re known for with your team and the cultural institutions is, um, is the sector that I oversee, which is really focused in on conservation and wildlife and caring cultural institutions, mostly zoos, aquariums, botanic gardens, some sanctuaries, um, and other types of wildlife rehab. So that’s really, um, the space that we’re real well known. Um, and we do, um, we do pretty traditional public relations work for those clients and then we do also do some digital communications where we sort of bridge that marketing PR world gap. Well, why don’t we start with, um, a fun one? Why don’t you give us some recent examples of some really great ones you’ve had, um, with PR and some of your wildlife conservation clients? Yeah, um, well, the one that comes to mind is is the most recent one that I just love was a, was a big feature story that we, we secured in the New York Times for our client, um, Brookfield Zoo Chicago, so a local one for us, um, they had been really wanting to, um, amplify what people know them for when it comes to innovative veterinary medicine. And that’s kind of a complicated topic. And, um, so, so they wanted some help with securing, um, you know, um, big placements and significant placements that would get in front of the right people, um, to share how they are innovating in that space. So we got a big feature on, um, a kind of a pioneering project about blood banking for animals and what they are trying to achieve there at the zoo. So that was just a few weeks ago. So it’s kind of top of mind. Blood banking. Okay. I’ve never heard of that one. All right. It’s a, so PR says the things that we don’t say in advertising, right? And that’s not going to, that’s not going to help tick us necessarily. It’s not going to pop on a billboard. Yeah. No, no, no, no. Yeah, exactly. So those are some of the kinds of stories that we’re looking for for that client, but it’s to, it’s to achieve some very clear objectives. So, um, this is where they, there’s an overlap between marketing and PR and why they seem very different, um, the, you know, you start with what are you trying to achieve? What is your goal and then how do you measure it? And so that’s where we should always start with what are the stories? Where are we placing them? Who are we getting them in front of, and what do we want them to do with that? And then how do we measure that? Let’s go a little bit deeper there because, you know, I’m the ROI, the return on ad spend guy, you know, whether it be Brookfield or another client, how do you guys set up? Like a measurement plan. What are you tracking? And, and why like why do these public, like who is this fool? A lot of questions. Yeah. Before. Yeah. Well, this is where it gets, I think, a little bit more complicated than marketing. Um, I, I kind of see marketing as being more short term, measurables, uh, typically, you know, you’re selling a ticket. How many people showed up to the event? How many people clicked on a link? How many, you know, um, and, and people. And PR is more long game. So, um, I’m going to put on my veteran hat. I was in the US Navy before I got into this, uh, cultural space. Um, so I think about PR as being steering the aircraft carrier. You want to turn it in a certain direction. So an institution, maybe they say, we’re really known for this, but we want to be known more for this. Or there’s a whole pool of potential donors or sponsors or partners in this space, but they don’t see us yet. The way we’d want them to see us. So we need to open up some doors. And so PR is the one who’s working with them on that long game. Who is it that you need to influence in that way or what perceptions are you looking to shift or awareness you’re hoping to build? And then do you have the substance to do that, you know? So that’s where we start looking for what are the kinds of stories we could be telling? Where are those people finding information? So where’s the right place for it? Um, and so that’s what we’re doing. So I kind of think of marketing as the Swift Boats. You’re moving in, in and out quick, you’re getting quick returns, you know, and then they were, we’re turning the aircraft carrier over here in PR, but you work together, you know, the marketing and PR works together, but sometimes it looks like you have really different objectives, but you don’t, you shouldn’t. They should all be sort of head and toward the same North Star. But then that measurement game. So Ryan, what you asked was like, how do you, how do you measure it? And so it kind of depends on what that, that objective is. If your objective is, we really want to be known for innovative veterinary science or animal welfare or conservation science. And maybe there’s public perception research polls that you can do and do a year over a year and see, are you moving the needle in that direction? Or maybe it’s increasing a donor pool. You really want to bring in more donors and you, you know, there’s reason to believe that this type of, these types of stories or this type of work, there’s donors to be gained. So you start placing those types of stories and getting in front of those audiences and then is it resulting in new donors or increased donors? You know, so those are the types of things that PR is, is measuring is really starting with what are you trying to achieve and then measuring it? You know, something when I moved, especially around animal care when I first started getting into this space, I had a conversation with, I was a marketing director at a zoo and she was also brand new into the space and it was kind of like, what are you learning? Like what is different about this space than the other, you know, your career path? And some she said kind of like, shook me a little bit. She’s like, well, I didn’t know how to write a press release when one of our rhinos died. So I’m thinking geriatric care for like animals is something. Yes. Well, and it all comes down to, the PR school is reputation management. You know, you want to be the organization that people trust and like. And so, you know, again, where I think that marketing and PR sort of align is, you know, let’s say marketing is focused on a seasonal event, a new exhibit, something like that. You can have the best marketing in the world, but if people don’t trust your organization or don’t feel good about spending their money there, it doesn’t matter how great the event is or how great your marketing was, people aren’t going to show up. So PR is to make sure that people trust you, respect you, like you and want to go and spend their time and money there. So when you’re asking about the geriatric animals, I actually, I’ll tell you a personal story when I got to, I started out my zoo career after leaving the Navy. My first PR full time job was at San Diego Zoo. So I worked with them. Yeah, I have you heard of that little place. And then was there for quite a while and then had an opportunity to come to Chicago and head up PR and communications for Chicago’s Lincoln Park Zoo. And one of the first things when I came here is they were coming off of some kind of negative PR. Some they had had a few deaths, they had had some things happen, they had detractors. This was years and years ago. And they really, they got scared and pretty much just wanted to stay under the radar and it was time to come in and help rebuild that reputation for them. And one of the things we noticed as I was mining for stories and information was they had quite a few geriatric animals high profile individuals, you know. So and you start seeing that and even though these animals had lived well past their median life expectancy, they had a great life. They were being really well cared for. There’s the possibility just by chance if you happen to have several of them die in close succession that people might say, oh my gosh, what is happening there? Some things amiss. Your people’s trust in you might be compromised. That has nothing to do with reality. So PR’s job is to see those things before they happen and then work on how do I mitigate that? How do I make sure that people know the incredible care that these animals are getting? How do I help them make sure they know that these animals are really old? So that when they do pass, it’s more the the public response is one of sympathy, care and support, not speculation, accusation and suspicion. So and that just has everything to do with PR. You’re listening to the Marketing Attractions Podcast. Conversations on how non-profit attractions are increasing attendance and sharing their mission through marketing. Your hosts are Ryan Dick and Jenny Williams of Attend Media. Attend media is a media planning and buying agency, specializing in zoos, aquariums, gardens and museums. For more information, please visit attend.media. Now back to Ryan and Jenny. All right, so Sharon, when should a team look to hire like an outside public relations firm like PCI? Yeah, so I think it starts with what we talked about with what are your core objectives that you’re really looking to achieve? And then having an honest, critical assessment of what are your internal strengths and where are there some areas to bolster? So sometimes it can be in it and so here’s the thing first I want to say is it has nothing it doesn’t mean that your internal team isn’t capable or isn’t doing a great job. Sometimes bringing in an outside agency is really just to provide added support because we do find the cultural institutions. They don’t have a lot of internal resources and funding sometimes and so sometimes tapping an outside agency for specific needs can be really helpful. Sometimes that’s in times of crisis or issue where you see we have a reputational problem or we’re seeing there could be one. Sometimes that’s when we get called in. But there are other opportunities. I’m going to go back to talking about San Diego soon, which is where I started. And it’s funny you say, I think I’ve heard of that little place. Well, when I was working there many, many years ago, the goal and objective was they want to be the best zoo in the world. They are the world famous. They want to be the tourism destination. They want to drive visitation. Anybody to come to San Diego, visit San Diego, best zoo in the world. That was the goal. Well, at the same time, they were doing incredible science and conservation work. They were investing really heavily in that, but that really wasn’t a marketing or PR goal or objective. They just were doing it because it was the right thing to do. And it was actually one of the reasons I came to Chicago because I’m personally passionate about conservation science and the CEO and Chicago said, well, hey, I really want you to tell stories about that. So I was like, you got it. But moving forward a few years, there’s change in leadership at San Diego. And changed objectives. They realized they are really a leader in conservation science and research, but we’re not sharing those stories. Meanwhile, they had this really capable, great team of PR specialists, but they were hired because of their skills and tourism marketing. So that’s what they knew how to do really well. And then suddenly the objectives changed a bit. And it wasn’t that we don’t still need to promote that institution as a great tourism destination. That’s still needed, but we really want to bolster some of our reputation building in this conservation science research space. So that was where they realized we need an outside agency who actually has that kind of storytelling that has that expertise to bolster and supplement the team and also kind of help the team with how do you start moving into that kind of storytelling because that was the goal. So those are, you know, every institution is going to have their different needs and reasons, but you start with what is your objective. And so for that case, it was the new leadership wanted to bolster their reputation in conservation and they needed, they realized that they needed an agency with specialty in that. So what is a typical engagement look like? Is it kind of, hey, this is our big goal and we think it’s going to take about a year and see later or just kind of curious on how you guys engage with that. Yeah. Sometimes they don’t know what they want. They sometimes there’s just, you know, we feel like people should know us better. We feel like we should be getting more stories out there or, you know, so we will help them really look at what they need to achieve and how they need to achieve it. I will give you another example that’s personal to me is a chimpeven. It’s a national chimpanzee sanctuary. All of those biomedical research chimps that have been in medical research for years through the federal government are retired down to Louisiana, this fabulous sanctuary. But they had a challenge because a lot of people thought they were just government funded, they were, you know, that was, and they’re not, they’re nonprofit. So they knew they needed to expand their donor pool because every, each chimpanzee being retired there means more money they need to bring in to sustain them. And they were increasing at a significant scale. So, you know, like 200 more chimps in a matter of just a few years. So they needed to expand that. So what we needed to do is that’s the objective. You need more donors, more people to know you’re a nonprofit, more people to know who you are and what you do. And then we started looking at where are those potential donor pools that getting that type of exposure would be really valuable. So we kind of identified the different markets where they believe there was, you know, donors to be reached. So then we looked at how do we get stories in those markets. And so that’s, you know, so sometimes a client will come to us just saying, here’s our problem and then we will help them build the strategy to get there. And sometimes people say, we already know what we need. It’s exactly this. Can you help with that? So it varies. So Sharon, I want to chat a little bit about just what the future of PR looks like. You know, every industry is changing rapidly with this little thing called AI. So why don’t we talk a little bit? I think you probably got a lot of different ways that you can answer this question. But why don’t we talk a little bit or kick it off with how AI is changing PR and how PR is becoming really even more important with those changes coming into search results? Yeah. I’m so glad you asked because it’s, the media landscape has been changing so much over the last decade or two and now AI has completely changed it again. And it AI is really making media, traditional media places more important than ever and owned content because those AI tools are scraping information off of the websites and off of news media. They’re not going to social media. So one of the things that we’ve seen over the years, especially with cultural attractions, is there was a, for a while, a shift away from traditional media and much more into social media. And we’re not saying there was nothing wrong with that. That’s where the audiences are. That’s where they’re getting information. That’s how you engage with your audiences. But now we’re seeing this really interesting shift when too much of their information and the story is just living on social and maybe they don’t have a lot of owned content or their websites not really great when it comes to the things they really want their audiences to know about them and maybe they’re not getting a lot of placements in national or even local media when people go in and are now just doing any kind of searches, even just in Google. Scraping the information off of news and websites and your reputation, how you are served up through AI may or may not be how you would like people to see you or think about you. So now more than ever, we are really trying to help our clients understand the value of own and earned media in addition to social media because there needs, always needs to be balanced in that channel strategy. But for some of them, it does mean they’ve been putting more emphasis say on getting blogs up on their websites that really emphasis a size certain parts of their mission and goals that they maybe don’t have been playing very well. So we know clients that say again with conservation and research for the animal side whether a aquarium or even the tannic gardens they’re doing a lot in that space. Sometimes that doesn’t place a well on social. People want fun and entertaining and light and so a lot of that stuff plays really well on social and says some of those deeper, more reputation building stories aren’t finding their way on social. If they’re not blogging about it or really making their website useful in that way and they’re not earning traditional media stories, there’s a real chance that as people are like, is this a good zoo? Do they do an, it could be that AI is going to serve them up as just an entertainment venue, right? It would be really damaging to the reputation. So AI is really transforming how we evaluate where clients have needs and where we need to channel their storytelling and reputation building. So one kind of area, I know you said it’s going away from social, but how about reddit? So we know, especially in a lot of other industries, this comes up quite a bit about how the content there’s actually being scraped and pulled into some of these AI reviews. We see a lot of conversation about zoos. I think a lot of that like ethical conversation also happens in reddit, which can be like a very, very deep rabbit hole, right? But is there a way that you’re working with anybody or making recommendations about maybe how to approach a channel like that for better content? Yes. We are encouraging our clients to not only be thinking about legacy media and not only thinking about the big social platforms like they tend to think about the Facebooks and Instagrams and TikToks and, you know, where are people getting their information? That’s the heart of public relations is where are people talking about you and where is your reputation being shaped? And then on the other side, we are seeing where there are legacy credible reporters that as newsrooms are shrinking or transforming or being, you know, bought up by corporations and consolidated the growth and sub-stack and then creating their own audiences. And so these are known reporters that are really building credible audiences that, you know, that are following and trusting them. And so these are also spaces that we’re working with our clients to identify and to know where they need to be monitoring, where they need to be telling their story. It’s a constantly evolving media landscape. So where are you getting your information from is shifting quite a bit? Any other things that you think are changing that is worth calling out in terms of the PR landscape for the future? Well, I mean, it’s all changing really fast. And so that’s, you know, you asked earlier when you bring in a PR agency and sometimes that’s another area where it’s just monitoring landscape that an agency that might just have more bandwidth to do that because they’re doing it for a lot of clients and they’re doing, you know, we know how strapped a lot of our in-house colleagues are. I know from having come from in-house where you’re sometimes a one person team or maybe you have one other person helping you out. You just can’t be in all the meetings doing all the things and keeping an eye on the landscape when it’s changing so fast. So that’s just where I think another way to think about how to engage an agency and on that note too, there’s some people just don’t even really understand how to engage an agency. They’re like, I know I need help but I don’t know, you know, and sometimes they don’t ask them to do the right things that would be really helpful. So we find ourselves kind of coaching clients a lot and how they can better engage and where there might be some needs that we could be filling that they’re not even thinking about. And this is one of them. All right. So you talked about how internal teams can be strapped. I like that word. And you’ve got a ton of experience in the zoo side, on the animal side. What tips or what advice or, you know, what’s the playbook that you would, you know, for audience listening, that PR director there going, all right, Sharon, I’m with you so far. You know, give us, give us some advice like what would you do? Yeah. Yeah. Well, one of the best things that I think in house teams can and should be doing is actively and proactively reaching out to their in house subject matter experts and being a journalist, serving in that role. It’s, I know it’s, it takes time. You know, but some of the, one of the things that sometimes we see, and I would say is, when we see it happen, we sort of try to help shape a different strategy is sometimes in house teams sit back and wait for subject matter experts, internal resources to tell them what’s newsworthy to give information. They’ll create a Google forms to submit information to the PR and marketing department. And other such things. And that can be helpful for certain things like we have an event coming up or we have a program through education or some other thing like that. But that’s not where you’re going to get the reputation building stories. Those you have to find it because no, most people come in to PR, they often come from a journalistic background or journalistic training in some way. And so you’re kind of expecting that some of these other folks have what you have and they don’t. So we often find that once they find out about something, it’s already too late. It’s no longer newsworthy. So, so it’s really create an internal beat system where you have a, a interview with subject matter experts at a certain trajectory of time. Depending on what those experts do, it could be monthly if it’s say animal care people where there’s constant changes in an animal, you know, with, with animals. They die, they’re born, they get pregnant, they have challenges. That’s a changing dynamic all the time. But some other professions, they move on a slower trajectory. Science, probably the botanical side where you could maybe do quarterly meetings. But that’s something that we have implemented with clients have helped them even when we only come in for short amounts of time and then kind of get them a good system in place and roll off. It’s really to help them start acting like the internal journalists to really mine out what are the great stories. What is a story? Yeah. Yeah. We just talked about how much everything’s changing. So 25, 26, 27, Crystal Ball, what is, you mentioned, you know, on the, on the plant side, I mean, come on, you know, some species of Latin, Latin, plant name. Is that really going to get on the New York Times? Like what, what’s kind of like your criteria? Yeah. Okay. I like the author. There’s rare plans. There are people doing surveys of biodiversity loss that are, you know, publishing studies that are really important and there are audiences who want to know about that. Things have changed. We’ve talked about the channels have changed. Attention span has changed, you know, how fast you might have to get information out, but something that has not changed. And I would say that this is the study is what are traditional news, values or news pegs. And this is something that we have not seen transformed. There’s about nine of them and they are consistent across decades. One is timeliness. It has to be new to be news. And so that’s the critical piece of it. Every news story has at least one, but usually two or three news pegs. There’s about nine. But sometimes we see in house teams miss the boat because they find out about something weeks after it happened or a paper that published last month. And it’s like that would have been great if I knew before it published, right? So timeliness is key. It’s newsworthy because it’s new. Proximity. So just based on is it close to your audience or close emotionally to your audience, right? So that’s where you say the plant thing. It’s like there are audiences who are super into that. They care about that. So the proximity to either location, geography or emotional and impact, of course. How many people are impacted by that thing? Sometimes there are studies that are really important, but for a very small pool, we call that inside baseball, right? It’s like this is incremental. It’s really important for the small community of researchers who are in this space, but that’s not going to go wide for the broader audience of people who are visiting your facility or to readers of the New York Times or listeners of MPR. So have to think about how you shape a story, how many people are affected or could be affected by that new change. And so this is where it’s easy because a lot of these attractions are prominent institutions in their communities or sometimes in their entire sector, right? So that little thing called the San Diego Zoo, want to be the best in the world. So not just known locally, but sometimes they grow to that prominence. And so that could be celebrity prominence. It could just be a key figure. So if you have important people visiting your facility that can add to the news value. And then conflict, we all know, we say it bleeds it leads, there’s conflict, there’s controversy, there’s some kind of a competition of competing viewpoint. And with that it could be, we always thought that this species was XYZ, but new research shows us something different. That is actually a point of conflict and that can be newsworthy because it kind of challenges something you always thought you knew or a community of people thought they knew. And then there’s just novelty, biggest, best, first, only. It’s super unusual, weird, it’s unexpected. So those are just a few of the kind of news pegs. And it has not changed over time. This is really journal is a 101. But that’s what your in-house team can be going and asking questions when they go meet with experts. And I say it’s journalism 101, but that’s because people who went through that profession were trained up on what makes a news story. We should never expect that your researcher or your person who’s doing the seed banking at your botanic garden or your educator or anybody else is thinking in those terms. That’s not their training. So it’s really the PR folks who should be asking the right questions to get out the information that’s going to help them do their job better. And are we still doing four page press releases? Like how do we know? Well I’m going to tell you there is still a space for press releases. I know there is an entire category professionals who are like, “Oh, the press releases dead, it is not dead.” I’ll tell you that. However, I do see some people who feel like everything needs to be a full press release. But that’s where it doesn’t. Reporters want a tip. They just want, they want you to know like of those news pegs we just talked about. What’s the news here? And sometimes it’s just a really quick down and dirty email that says, “Hey, I got a hot story for you. This, this, and this. It does this interest you and I can get you more information.” I know reporters who refuse to look at an email. They really do not set, or not an email. I mean, I press release. They will not read a press release. They’re like, “Give me, give me the tip. Tell me what the story is. Do not send me a whole press release.” So yet on the flip side of that, there are, as we talked about the shrinking newsrooms and the changing media landscape, there are a lot of small, especially in hyper-local outlets that don’t have the bandwidth for reporters to go write all those stories themselves. So some of them really will just pick up that press release and run it as is. And shamefully, some of them just put their own byline and it is like the press release word for word. So there’s still a space for a press release, but it’s just knowing when you do a press release and when you want to do a direct pitch and tip to a reporter. Jenny, share is selling me a little bit on this public release. Oh, finally won him over. This has been great. If people want to get in touch with you, learn a little bit more about PCI, what should they do? Yeah. Well, go to our website, pcipr.com. I’m also on LinkedIn, Sharon Doer, feel free to connect. We love the cultural attractions community. And we would love to do some good work together. Thanks for the time, Sharon. Thank you so much. Thank you for listening to the Marketing Attractions podcast. If you have a suggestion for a topic or would like to be a guest on the show, please visit our website at marketingattractionspodcast.com. [MUSIC] [BLANK_AUDIO]