I assume you had some preconceptions, but what do you think, what was the number one sort of thing that you learned that they don't teach you in school, so to speak? Okay, so the reason that I was, and we talked about this the other night, I think, the reason I was, and continue to be, most interested in PR is that before I got involved in PR, I saw, okay, good films that no one saw, and shitty films that everyone saw, and the same with technology products, and the same with medicines, and the same, I mean, across the board, you name it, and there's this magic mumbo jumbo area where, like, something happened in between there in the ether, and people were making this happen, or people were learning about product X, or service X, and not product Y, but Y was clearly better, so what's the deal, and it just seemed so opaque to me, and I think the thing that I've learned most is, yeah, it's sort of that spin thing, like, I assume that there was this great, huge mechanism, and I think, in my experience, most of the time, 99% of the time, we are, 100% of the time, we are saying to clients, do the most authentic and transparent thing possible at all times, like, that is not transparent enough, that is not authentic enough, like, don't do that, do this instead, this is our guiding principle over and over and over again, and I think the magic mumbo jumbo is just being authentic and transparent, and that turns out to be actually a pretty hard task, particularly if you're at Merck, for instance, or even if you're at a startup, because you're trying to navigate through a lot of different obstacles, but it's actually fairly simple what happens in that mumbo jumbo area, it's just that it's very hard to actually do. In that little mumbo jumbo area, how much do you think just gets down to luck and chance?
2:02Golly. Golly. If any at all. So, I, you know, I have a client who got a thousand hits yesterday on their website from StumbleUpon. Right. It's like, that wasn't us, they can't control that, we don't control that, people out there are rating their site, saying it's awesome, and it's driving traffic. Yeah. So, I mean, the product is good, I mean, we can't do good PR for a crap product, just can't do it, and so I think, you know, if it's a good product, you know, luck follows, I mean, like I said, there are good movies and good products that don't get exposure, but if you don't have a good product, it's really hard. Right. You know, I think that it is a snowball effect, like good things start to happen to you if you're out there, and you're engaged in the community, and you're treating that community well, and you're communicating transparently, and you're doing all the sort of healthy things that you should be doing as a business, luck comes, right, eventually. Yeah, and I think that we're fortunate here, being a little bit more of an established agency, and you know, our boss obviously knows people, and often especially as a small community, I mean, we know who the credible people are who aren't, and we are fortunately in a position where we can pick and choose what clients we want to take on too, and we're not going to take on something that we're like, okay, this is a failure to start with, we know this doesn't go anywhere, we know these people are liars, and this is smoke and mirrors, or whatever else, and we can determine that. Right, so that if I come to you and I say, you know, I really want you to check out these guys, you're going to trust me because I would never bring you crap, right, so that I'm just a quality filter for you, basically, and that's part of that mumbo jumbo area, you know, it's like I'm helping filter, and so, and I'm also helping filter messages, or for our clients are helping filter down what's most interesting, right, they have this huge pitch, well, here's
4:02what's really interesting right in the sweet spot, or here's, so we're just, we're helping. But I think there can be, you know, just these circumstances, I mean, like you were just talking about, or South by Southwest last year, because, I mean, we represent them, and Twitter, just like blowing up at South by Southwest, I mean, it's something we kind of heard rumblings about before, knew they were going to be there, never could have imagined what huge buzz it was going to have, I mean, like, everyone was writing about Twitter, and South by Southwest really benefited, I can't say that we, you know, caused Twitter to be there. Yeah, I mean, it just happened, and then you run with it, and you leverage it, and you're like, this is awesome. Yeah, we did a viral video launch for another client last fall, and we ended up winning all these awards, and, I mean, we had a very set plan, and we did our very best job, and we're very successful at what we planned to do, in and of the PR of getting that video out there, but it just, I mean, it happens, right, when things do, they just take on the life of their own, and it is, in small part, because of the fact that Twitter's a really good product, and the timing was just right, but, at the same time, Twitter, I mean, added search this week, right? Yeah. Like, you can't find other people on Twitter until this week, it's really hard. Yeah. You know? But it still took off, so there was something, yeah, there was something magical, or something about the technology. Completely outside the realm of PR. And that is what we do here, is magic. Yeah. We make magic. That's right. Clients, or potential clients, who are a little skeptical about, like, needing PR. How do you convince them of the magic that you guys bring? Oh, interesting. For one thing, I'd say that we don't convince everyone. You know, if we're talking to someone. You don't want to convince them that you have magic. No, I mean, we don't want to convince everyone. I mean, people will come to us and be like, here's this, and we're like, you've got a year, honestly, before you need to start worrying about PR. You really need to get your feet on the ground, like, figure out what you're doing. I mean, we always like to come in early and help.
6:03And, you know, we've had, I won't name any names, but there are examples of companies that we've worked with, and that I've seen out in the market, that started too early. Absolutely started too early. And they just couldn't live up to what they built. And I guess technology, that's what it means to start too early, is you set expectations way too high, and then you can't deliver as quickly as people want to be satisfied. Absolutely. And, you know, I mean, what's a great example of this? Okay, Wikipedia, when Wikipedia was starting, there were a lot of people out there saying, this is never going to work. Like, no one's going to contribute this amount of information to something. No one's going to spend their time doing this. And the same thing's happening right now with semantic technologies. No one's going to mark things up. Or with Delicious, even, like, no one's going to mark their stuff up. Who's going to do this? And it shows you incremental value, and then you do more work. And it keeps showing you value, and it does more work, and it starts to build. And I put more in, and I get more out, and I put more in, and I get more out. But if it's set up so that this will change the world for you, if you put in a tiny little bit of effort, like, that's just unrealistic. And so, yeah, to Lauren's point, like, sometimes it's too early. There's two different kinds of companies that we pitch here. Yeah. There's the types of companies that do have the director of PR. Right. They know they want an agency. They always have an agency. You're basically submitting an RFP, and you're competing between three to five agencies. Right. And they're kind of companies that are maybe more startup mode, haven't ever had a PR function before. They haven't even considered PR. Maybe you're just bringing this to them as an idea, and you're working directly with maybe a CEO who isn't as well-versed in marketing. And I mean, there's several different, you know, obviously marketing functions and tools, and it's very important to have an integrated program. But looking at them, and especially for startups, saying what's the ROI of PR versus the ROI of putting one ad in, you know, an extensive publication or whatever else it may be. So, and just what we can provide for them, I think in terms of what we were talking about, being the eyes and ears, and being really just like back and forth.
8:09Right. Whatever. I think it's important for startups, and they see the value when we start like making connections with them, almost like biz dev type of function. Right. What's sort of the way you guys arrange your teams to handle client work? I mean, is it like Josh has this account, Lauren has this account? Yeah, we have on the lowest, lowest end, which is rare, two people on the team, which would be for a super small project. Josh has a bad team. That's right. And five people on a really huge account, but I think the norm is three or four, probably on 75% of our accounts. And that typically consists of a senior person, a mid-level person, and a junior person. Right. Who have different responsibilities. The senior person does senior person stuff, which is pretty obvious. Sure. Strategy, overall insight. Project management. Project management. And probably making sure you get paid too, right? Yeah. Exactly. Dealing, I mean, a lot of that same stuff. And then the mid-level person will be the day-to-day contact and will do a lot of the heavy lifting. And the junior level person will provide a lot of baseline support. Right. Paying attention to the Twitter and things like that. Yeah, exactly. And staying smart on things and just knowing what speaking opportunities are coming up. Right. What award opportunities. You know, what new conference is starting this fall that has never started before but might be a good fit. You know, what new publication, what's happening with InfoWorld this week. Yeah. You know. So given that there's sort of like two to four people per team, then how many clients can a team handle? So the team itself will be different for every client. Sure. Oh, okay. Does that make sense? So like on, you know, five runs, it's Lauren, myself, and another woman named Angel. Uh-huh. But Lauren and I, that's the only account that we work on together. Right. So, teams are chosen on expertise like we talked about, like security. A lot of times, interest.
10:09Right. So, you know, what's Web 3.0? Who knows what we're doing? Oh, I know. You know, please pick me, Mom. Yeah. You know, and that can be why you get on a team. And in other cases, it may be that you've never worked on this type of technology and you're really interested in it. Yeah. Or you use it in your personal life, but you've never been able to take advantage of that knowledge. Right. Or there are lots of different reasons. But always on the team, there'll be one or two people who already have deep expertise. Sure. And then the third person. Basically, we each have a certain number of hours a month, depending on like, you know, the billable hours. Like August is a really long month, September is short, whatever. So I might have 20 hours on one account, 40 hours on another. But so that kind of depends on how many accounts I'm going to have. Right. Right. So like right now, I have four or five. Right. But I mean, at times I've had seven, which honestly was a lot. And at times I've just had two or three. So it really depends. Yeah, right. So because if you have, you know, a really small client that's paying, you know, $5,000, $4,000 a month in PR, I mean, that's about the lowest end you can really pull it off for. And then there are other clients who may be spending $15,000 a month. Right. So the number, like, you may have four clients, but, and they may be all equally important in terms of, right. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So your mind shares may be split equally, but the, you know, your role on each one. Right. It may be different. And it's rare that you would be assigned to be the primary account lead on four accounts because that would stretch you too thin. Yeah. So maybe in a support role in one and a primary role in another. Right. So it's always kind of like a mix. So do you find yourself engaging with sort of local, regional media people here in Austin? I mean, is there, or is it, have things changed such that people are actually located doesn't really matter? Yeah, but not as much. We had a client ask us about this the other day, about us not being in New York, you know, for certain types of media. But I really, I mean, I think it's becoming a virtual world.
12:11And I think face-to-face is always better. I mean, like, getting to know you, having lunch, it's a totally different relationship than I just randomly emailed you. Right. And as you know, I mean, you're traveling left and right too. Right, right. But yeah, I mean, like South by Southwest Interactive, and people come in here, how many people we meet and are, like, buddies with now, press, or whoever it may be. And then also, obviously, you know, the clients that are Austin Local and care about Austin Business Media, we do have those relationships. But I mean, we also do in the Bay Area, just because we have so many clients in the Bay Area. So we work with them. Right. We fly out. I mean, we'll fly and we'll do what we need to do. Yeah. But I think, I think it is virtual. I think a lot of individuals at our client companies are even themselves remote. Yeah. Or are on a flexible working schedule. Do you find that the local media sort of cares about technology and stuff? I mean, do you get in a lot of conversations with the local paper, like the Statesman or the weekly paper? I mean, it just really depends if you're impacting the local economy. I mean, like, if your client is hiring, then yes, they care. Yeah. Or has had an IPO or something like that. Right. Yeah. But product news. What do you think the other outlets nowadays? I mean, you mentioned Twitter and blogs and a couple of things. But how has that evolved over the past few years? A lot. Yeah. To ask a dumb question. I mean, obviously a lot, but we try to be very targeted about it, right? Right. So we don't, a lot of our clients have said to us, you know, that hit in the New York Times didn't move the needle very much, but the GigaOwn coverage did. Sure. Other clients are telling us something very different than that. And the reason is that the people that they're selling to and the people that are interested in their product vary demographically. Right. And so for us, it's about finding the right match, not necessarily about saying podcasts and vodcasts and life casting, it's new, it's cool, let's do it.
14:12Right. Like, start, run out there, make McKinema, or, you know, just do it, do it, do it, do it, do it. Yeah. But for certain clients, that absolutely is their demographic. And so, yes, let's do that. The early adopter. Like, how does that work? Precisely. And so that's the kind of thing that you would talk about in a meeting and say, who are you selling into? Are you trying to reach the CIO? Or are you trying to reach someone way more junior? Right. Are you trying to reach the general consumer? Are you trying to reach the tech early adopter? Are you trying to reach, you know, the weary traveler? Or, you know, who are you trying to reach with this? Right. And so then we would tailor the program based on our knowledge of what is going to reach those specific people, right? Yeah. And then it's just more tools than your tools. Back to new media and how it's changed our approach of, you know, how we're distributing news. I mean, like, we were talking with our boss before we did this just to kind of get thoughts on the whole industry and the change over time. And I think it really started to happen two or three years ago when we first came in here. But, I mean, it used to be that there's this plethora of IT publications, you know, print and whatever else. I mean, back in the boom days, there's hundreds. And whenever you had company news, it was like, you'd write your press release. A week before or two weeks before, you'd pitch to journalists. You'd have the briefing under embargo. Then all the news would come out nicely on one day when your release hit in this plethora of publications. And now there's so much consolidation that, I mean, reporters that were pitching it, like, Network World or Computer World, they don't just have one week. They're covering, like, a hundred weeks. So you're not only... They're covering business process management and Web 2.0. Yeah. And do you think that's because they've consolidated, they've laid off a lot of reporters? Yes. Absolutely. And, I mean, huge conglomerations of publications are just shrinking. Right. And, you know, a lot of them have really disappeared or gone to online only or, you know, whatever it may be. Because that's a whole other debate of what's an online hit versus a print hit worth. Because some of our clients still want to see things in print.
16:12But we're finding a lot of times that online make people more red these days. Right, right, right. Well, we don't have any framed online things. Yeah, I can't do it. We need to get some of those digital photo for, you know, and stick the online hit right in there. And once news is out there, I mean, a lot of bloggers don't honor embargoes. Or it's just changed the kind of approach and the deadlines. And I think where it was very much a, like, set process before, it's not that way anymore. You guys do both press relations and analyst relations. And what do you think, how do you think AR stuff differs? It depends. Because talking to someone like you versus, you know, some of our other clients, all the matters to them is getting in the magic quadrant or top of the forester wave survey. Right. And they pay these exorbitant fees. Exorbitant fees. And pretty much we just call and we can book a briefing and we're going to get their feedback. Which, you know, we can decide to take into account or we can decide to quote them or we're going to keep them updated with news and that's pretty much the relationship. Yeah. I mean, as you know, the analyst game really runs the gamut too, you know. And a lot of our clients have very different perspectives. I mean, we're having a lot of clients really coming out against Gardner lately and, you know, Forrester and, but also scared at the same time, you know, to... Don't want to piss them off, but don't want to pay their escalating fees, et cetera, et cetera, and it's, it's a hard thing to negotiate because the first, you know, the magic quadrant and the wave matter in a very profound, you know, but at the same time, you know, as a startup, you don't always have tons of money to throw at those sort of things. And so, is that, yeah, I mean, it's something you negotiate and decisions you make based on your resources. The initial briefings works a lot like a press briefing. So, either we'll email or call, or a lot of Gardner and Forrester, I think nowadays almost, unless you have a relationship with the analyst directly, they prefer that you submit through an online form
18:15that says, here's what we are, and then they get back to you, I mean, with relatively quickly. And they'll say, you know, these are the right analysts to talk to. We like to have all four of them want to call with you, just one of them. And then they'll work it out in terms of, from their perspective, what's most important. Right. And then, after that, you know, the ongoing relationship is negotiated or not negotiated. Based on that, just does the company find them helpful? Is it important for their market and for their space? Was it great feedback, but they're not interested? I mean, you know. A lot of times, I mean, when we brief an analyst before, it's yes to get their feedback, and then also so that, you know, they can then process that news or whatever it is. And then when we pitch the story to a reporter, it's like, oh, you know, if you need a third-party reference, you know, here, point them to someone. And it depends on different industries. I mean, sometimes there's an analyst that we may be buddies with that we know they want to get coverage and publications as well, so they want us to point to them. And so we'll maybe point to them over other people. Where other times, you know, if you have to, like, they have more process and they maybe get covered plenty and they don't really care about it, then it's kind of a two-way street. And sometimes, like, for certain news announcements, we'll go to someone and really make that our main analyst briefing and point to that person mostly for that announcement and then to the next announcement, maybe it's someone else. You know, and we kind of make that decision based on what the news is. Thanks for spending all this time. Thank you. It was exciting. Yeah, absolutely.