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I'm Josh Dilworth. I work for Cordon Valley Austin. I just does more in here.

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Should I say more about myself? Sure. I used to live in New York for five years where I didn't do technology PR.

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I did PR for big consumer companies like Gillette and healthcare companies,

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which was a very, very different experience both in terms of the content of the PR

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and also in terms of the experience of working for these much larger companies,

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which compares very differently to the experience here in Austin where we just do technology and we just do startups.

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We do a little bit of HP work, but that's mostly run by our San Francisco and Seattle offices.

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The nature of what I do and what the day-to-day looks like has changed quite a bit in the last two years or so.

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I'm Lauren Sell and I've been here for about three years. I work on about four accounts right now.

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My, I guess, account base ranges from even consumer electronics to, you know, deeper enterprise work.

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I love PR and I graduate from University of Texas.

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I think that's very different about this office and doing startup PR is that we have a lot more clients,

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all of them with smaller budgets than you would typically have at most other PR firms.

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And so we all here have our hands collectively in a lot more pots.

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Uh-huh.

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More pies.

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Or pies.

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Take what you want.

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Yeah.

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And we move fast and we, we are a startup office ourselves.

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So the way that we operate, it feels like a startup.

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So we're definitely working hard on the phones, moving quickly.

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We always have a client that has big news.

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You know, it's, it's a much different environment.

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And like I said that when I was in New York where there's a lot more strategic planning over a lot of periods of time.

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And because if you're a bigger company, it's not about getting the media attention.

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Everyone's already looking at you.

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Right, right.

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And so it's a question of what to do.

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You're always in the limelight.

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Whereas for startups, it really is like, hi, like, come talk to me.

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Take more risks, which I like here.

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Versus, you know, working for much bigger companies or corporations that have to go through tons of legal approval.

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And, you know, this manager and that manager.

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And by the time you turn around a program or a campaign, it's like six months later and totally watered down.

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And here it's just, make a decision, move, and you run with it.

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Would you say that with the smaller companies you work with, that they sort of outsource all of their PR to you guys instead of,

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like what you were talking about, it sounds like there's sort of internal PR that bigger companies can have or larger companies.

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And then you guys are just a part of that.

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That's a good point about who we report to.

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It really depends on the company because, I mean, some companies, when we say startups, I mean, we're talking to six people.

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Right.

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So we may be working directly with the CEO or founder of that company.

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But then some companies, if they're up to like 50 people or a little more, they may have a CMO and then a director of marketing or a director of PR.

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And so it kind of depends, but it's really, I mean, to be our age and getting to work directly with CEOs of companies and really having visibility into more than we would get to know just like being fed what we need to know from other companies is really, really great experience.

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So like the term that gets tossed around in PR world is a seat at the table and that's what you want.

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That's when you have the seat at the table, you can do the best job of doing your job, but that's also a big compliment to you, the firm or the PR person.

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Right.

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And so far as you are valued enough to have that seat and to have influence over the direction strategy of what's going on.

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Right.

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Right.

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We almost always have a seat at the table.

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Well, let me, let me ask you about that aspect of the job.

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Okay.

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Like, do you guys like seat stories for reporters quite a bit?

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What do you mean?

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So, yeah, seat's not the right word.

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Do you help out people who are looking to report on the industry?

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Yes.

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Right.

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And I mean, it depends on how deep of context a journalist has because certain journalists will come to us and say, who do you have?

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We know that, or someone with whom you have a very good relationship.

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Right.

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You know, like, we know that you guys know management.

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Sure.

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So, and we also know that you're in Austin.

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Right, right.

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So, who do you know in this case?

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In other cases, the reporter has zero idea about our company, maybe doesn't even know me at all, and the general strategy is like, hello.

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There's a bit of introducing people together and introducing different connections.

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Yeah.

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And then there's just the basic role of saying, here's who the clients we're working for are.

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Right.

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And what their deal is.

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Exactly.

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And there can be different kinds of examples.

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For instance, we have a semantic web technology client, and many publications are just starting to figure out who is going to cover that.

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Yeah.

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So, no one knows anybody, and it's kind of...

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Right, right.

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Um, and in other cases a client might hire us because they know that we've done particularly strong work with, say...

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Security.

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...beam reporters for security, or for social networking, or, you know, consumer hardware.

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So, when you guys came to the company, did you have to, like, bring your own Rolodex, or did the company help you out with that?

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Interesting.

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I started here as an intern.

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Uh-huh.

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Out of college.

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Well, I was in college, and then, you know, build up.

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But, I mean, that's the whole point, is that over time you're building this, you know, whole network of people, and you can't be self-serving.

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Right.

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And the more that, you know, you go to Denise Steuben, it's like, "Yeah, I'm going to give you information about five runs, but I'm also going to, you know, try to find out other companies for you, or point you in different directions, and be a bigger resource."

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And that's when you start actually making people come together.

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Right.

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And establishing trust with you.

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Exactly.

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They try to, like, grow specialties.

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Uh-huh.

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So, like, you know, maybe the first account I got assigned to was kind of arbitrary, because I had the time, and they had this need.

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But then, after a while, if I really got in sync, and, you know, made contacts in that, then I'm going to continue working on another security client, if it was security the first time.

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Right.

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So that kind of build up a specialty in that area.

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And is it kind of like a celebrity sort of thing, where you want to avoid being pigeonholed as being a security person, or being pigeonholed as you know?

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Well, that's interesting.

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To me personally.

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What do you think about that?

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What do you think about that?

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That's very interesting.

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I've never thought about that before.

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It depends, because I've certainly been on account that, I mean, not every enterprise technology is that sexy, and I don't want to be pigeonholed into this one certain area.

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That's true.

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But, I mean, I also think it's a good thing.

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It's how I'm going to take myself into the future and sell myself as, you know, a value.

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Right, right.

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It's building up that knowledge base, too.

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I mean, we can get pretty deep with some clients, and if you have a little bit of context going in, at least from the industry, then you can better understand exactly what they do.

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In the beginning, there can be an antagonistic relationship between journalists and PR people, because they need something out of you, and you need something out of them.

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And how that is negotiated is sometimes happens very smoothly, and sometimes a little not so smoothly.

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And I think over time, like if you have developed a specialty, you've also developed longer term relationships that, in many cases, resemble very real friendships.

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There's kind of two roles so far that you guys say that you do, and one of them is, if you already have media attention, sort of controlling that attention.

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And I don't mean to put this in a cynical way, just for lack of a better way of phrasing it, you can tell me if there's a kinder way of putting it.

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But essentially, you kind of control the way that attention is given to a company, and then the understanding of that attention, sort of the conclusions that people make, or things like that.

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And then it sounds like the other part as well, if you don't have attention, just getting attention, the high, we're bigger.

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Right.

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And are there other sort of functions that you guys do for PR or AR?

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I think we're also the eyes and ears.

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I mean, more so than just always disseminating information and really having that pulse.

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I mean, they rely on us to see what their competitors are doing, what else is going on in the industry, where do they need to be, and when do they need to jump.

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Right.

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And then, so how do you, what's sort of the medium for delivering that, I don't know, market intelligence or competitive intelligence, as it were?

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Do you like do monthly reports or just call them?

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We tend to rely less on more formal reporting here, because I think that we need to react faster.

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Yeah.

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So, I mean, it's just every day we come in, you spend like an hour just trolling through publications that matter to our clients.

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Sure.

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Or, you know, reading whatever, and just lobbying it over.

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Hey, you know, here's the idea about this.

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Right.

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Or, do you want to react to this?

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Maybe you should go post on that.

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Or, you know, whatever it might be that way.

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And then, obviously, when we have bigger strategy meetings, you're going to bring in a whole bunch of ideas, or what you found out in the last month or two, and use that to generate what your strategy is going to be moving forward.

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It's pretty typical to do a 90-day plan, a six-month plan that roughly charts out, we're going to have a product release here.

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Right.

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We know that at the end of the year, this is going to have, we know we're going to have some new hires, we're going to raise funding on date X.

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And so, that roughly hewn plan can be plotted out far in advance.

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But, I mean, the nature of PR is that it turns on a dime.

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It's so dependent on the news cycle and the behavior of your competitors.

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Right.

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And so, particularly with startups, which can be very nimble, even if they don't have the resources, you know, if they're trying to disrupt, they really have to take advantage of that nimbleness.

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Yeah.

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And so that really involves ear to the ground, knowing what's happening, staying on top of the news, staying on top of the blogs.

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What is everyone talking about?

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What are your competitors doing?

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You know, and how can we best communicate the differentiators that make your service or your product what it is?

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And so what's your gut feel for this sort of long-term strategy that you and your clients might think out when it actually pans out?

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Well, I mean, there's no secret among this crowd that software development deadlines are a complete joke.

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Absolutely.

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I don't think I've ever developed a six-month plan and actually stuck to it.

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Yeah.

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Ever.

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Right, right.

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I think it more or less just makes everyone feel good.

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Yeah, yeah.

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But, I mean, the reality.

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Yeah, I mean.

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Well, it's good to have a long-term vision and goals and place that you're good at.

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It's good to know, like, of a whole country, at least which state your connection client is in, so you know which direction to go.

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And, for instance, there are some clients, you know, sometimes we want them to have less attention because they're in a product development cycle and they're not going to have a lot of news.

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And they're, honestly, everyone in the company is hard, heads down, all hands on deck, working on whatever it is that they're working on.

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And so we may, you know, it's not that we always want to have chatter going on all the time.

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And that's sort of when the strategy, or maybe the client has a limited budget, right?

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So I have one client right now that has a very small budget and they really want to save their money up for a huge October announcement around RFID.

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So, you know, sometimes there are other mitigating factors, too, that don't necessarily have to do with the news cycle or what's happening day to day, right?

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And I think back to what we do, I mean, when you first, when you think PR, people that don't, you know, know what we do on a daily basis, it's spin or, you know, making up this news or coming up with something.

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And it just feels very fake.

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But I think more of what we do when we sit down with companies is listening to their story or listening to what they have.

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Sometimes we can pull out nuggets that maybe they wouldn't recognize, or we can pull out ideas or, you know, news that they might not think is news.

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And it's being deliberate with timing and finding the right audiences, whether that's a conference we really think they should be at, whether that's, you know, certain types of publications, whether it's, well, hey, you know, you've been going after these folks for so long, but did you realize this might really appeal to, you know, this set of people or, you know, what their strategy is?

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It is true that I've noticed that having third party input for companies is pretty, pretty invaluable, just because it's really trapped in your own walls, because that's what you have to do. So it's nice.

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Well, and we like you lay eyes on probably more companies intimately than anyone else. I mean, we have the view from the inside, we get the demo months and months beforehand, we see the pre alpha version, we know what's going to happen.

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I mean, for 30 plus companies, you know, in this office, you know, and the same with you.

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And across industries and making parallels and even just connections between clients.

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I mean, we've brought clients together on like joint causes that they might have never considered and it's worked out well, which is the fun part of being an agency.

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Right, right.