Part 2 Uncensored Thoughts From Decades in PR

Following on from last week’s episode, Catherine Ball journalist of 26 years and I talk about uncensored thoughts we’ve had from our combined 41 years in the PR industry 🤩

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to Dauntless PR Unfiltered. I've been so excited to record this one because we ran out of time last time and we had so much to say. So this is part two of our uncensored thoughts from decades in the PR industry.

SPEAKER_00 0:21

Okay, there was one thing that I was absolutely itching to talk about in the last one. So I'm gonna lead in with it now. Um, which is one of the biggest things that will get in the way of people getting really great bookings is having rubbish photographs. So it's not what you think it is, it's not, do I know enough? Do I have enough credentials? Do I am I confident enough? All the all the different things that people are probably thinking about that might stop them getting booked, it usually will come down to having rubbish images. So I'm gonna tell a little story about something, a real life experience I had as a journalist. So I had an amazing expert, absolutely knew her stuff, was phenomenal, had written books on her subject, I had done a big interview. It was to go over like multiple pages of the magazine that I wrote for, and I could not fault this person for like their expertise and their wisdom and their tips. All I needed from her, I don't, that's not gonna give it away. There's 50% of people are women. I was like, oh, should I say him or her? All I needed from her was a headshot, a headshot photograph. Not I didn't need huge images because we were going to be using like, you know, stock, nice stock images for the magazine, but I needed a picture of her to go with her bio at the end of this piece that I was uh writing. The plava I went through to get this one was almost made me switch her out for a different expert, even though she had ticked every single box because it was for a print magazine, so it has to be of a certain quality. You can't have a nice glossy magazine that people are paying. I mean, magazines are like about you know, about five five pounds. I don't know how much they are in dollars, but like you're expecting people to like buy this, it's almost like the cost of a book. You can't give them like greeny, pixelated, horrible images. So I needed a headshot that was one megabyte or more, and I was it was actually a call, almost like a comedy script between me and this woman because we were kind of, I don't know if we were WhatsApping or texting, we were doing something like that, and I was like going, Have you got any? No, I don't. Could you just take one with your phone now? I haven't got anybody with me to take the picture, just a selfie will do, and then eventually got her to send one and she like had sunglasses on, and I'm going, no, no, I need one that we can see your face. Then she sent one and it was like a very strange angle where you could only see half of her face. And I was like, No, it needs to have your full face in, and it just went back and forth. There was probably about 18 to 20 back and forth to get. Then she sent me one that ticked all the right boxes in what the image showed, but it was honestly the size of a postage stamp. She'd obviously taken it off a website that had compressed it down, and it was like something ridiculous, like nine kilobytes or something. And I was just like, that isn't gonna work. And at that point, I start to feel like I'm the problem because I'm coming back to her going, no, no, no, no. When actually, what I was asking was completely reasonable. Had she not been an amazing expert and I'd already done the interview and it would have been brilliant, I would have probably quit on like the second or third message about this image, and I would have just found somebody else. I actually can't quite believe how long I spent trying to get this. And in the end, I got something that just about worked, but it still wasn't great. So even the end result was just something that was. I think eventually she got somebody to take a picture on her phone and it had a whole face in it, and she didn't have sunglasses. Oh, I missed out a few funny ones. One time she sent me, one of her versions she sent me, had like about three kids and a dog on. And I'm going, no, no, just just you, just your head shot. So I had so many like failed attempts. But the reality of that was that would have cost her the booking if it hadn't been that I was so stubborn that I didn't want to waste the time I'd already spent on it. It was almost like that sunk cost policy. I was like, I've spent so much time talking to this woman, I need to make it work. Most people, and in most situations, that would have been a deal breaker, and we would have just moved on. And this person might have found that again and again because if she didn't have a headshot for me, then she's not going to have had a headshot for anybody else that asked. So, one of the things that I really want people to know is that that's not like a little extra thing that you don't really need to think about. Like, images are really important. It doesn't mean that you have to spend a huge amount of money on like photo shoot after photo shoot after photo shoot, but you do need to make sure that you've got a decent range of images, they don't always have to be professional, they could just be nice pictures of you, but pictures where you're on your own, preferably. If the story is about like your relationship, obviously have pictures of you as a couple, or if it's about your family. But if it's a picture, if it's you just talking about yourself and your expertise, you're gonna have some pictures that show your head and shoulders, but not just those. So sometimes people will would have been fine with my please send me a head and shoulders, but would have really struggled with other things. Have some full lengths, have some of you in different outfits, and it's amazing how many people who are absolutely amazing at what they do, but they have a lack of confidence about photographs. And I'm completely the same. I hate having my photograph taken, so I get it. But this is something that's really important to push through and make sure that you've got a few really nice pictures because and one photo shoot wearing one outfit also isn't gonna cut it. You're better off having some informal stuff as well, because it would look really strange if you actually think about the way that digital news works and how most articles now have multiple images in them. That's just how they are. Imagine if you scroll down, you're like, Oh, this person's amazing, and the picture of them head and shoulders, and then a picture of them in the same outfit looking to the left, and then you scroll down and a picture of them gazing to the right, and you just be like, This person has one outfit, just this, and they just sit in this one one photographer's studio, and that's what they look like. People want to see a bit of like life and vitality, and images can really get across like your personality and like draw people to you, so they're not something to view as a kind of a nice bonus add-on. They really are vital to having a good PR strategy and actually getting bookings in the media. It's something I was desperate to say because it's something that so many people they either don't realize it's important or they don't want to realize it's important because they don't like having the picture taken. In which case, I see you and I get it, but just do the pictures anyway, because you will your your media strategy will thank you for it later.

SPEAKER_01 8:18

They do they literally make or break a story to good images, and I find as well that people have this like they want their images to be absolutely perfect, and so they only send the the very safe headshots that they got professionally made and they've only had one shoot. And you know, like you said just there, they don't have to be professional photos. I uh notice a lot of the time journalists ask me like specifically for selfies sometimes, like because they say that it makes it easier, like if they can just have ones that I've taken myself from my phone, because it it just makes things easier, like it doesn't matter, it doesn't need to be a professional photo shoot. So we're not saying like you have to go and do this professional photo shoot every month, but the photos have to be clear, they have to be good quality, they can absolutely be selfies, they have to be of you, of you in action, of you doing different things, uh, headshots, full-length shots, portrait, landscape, like a really good range, yeah, and keep updating them as well, because you can bet that if you've got a folder of images, and by the way, I wouldn't be sending the full folder to journalists, like pull out the ones that are actually relevant to the story, but if you've got, say, a folder of media images on the on your media kit or something like that, keep reviewing them because you can bet that if there's one image in there that you're not keen on or that's been used multiple times and you're a bit bored of it, you can absolutely guarantee that that's the one that will be chosen.

SPEAKER_00 10:09

Yeah. And remember that the aim is going to be that you are popping up all over the place. So you need to have a variety of images so that it doesn't just look really boring. So, what will happen if someone really only has one or two images, but they're in a lot of different places, is people think they've read that before. They don't they go, oh no, I've seen this before because they see the image first before they read the words. So if you if your Google search results are just you, the same image, the same outfit, it doesn't look like you're in lots of different places, it just looks like the same thing again and again and again. So it's really important to just have a bit of a variety, and it could just be as simple as every time you kind of do your hair and makeup, or you feel like, oh yeah, I've got a nice new outfit, just gets takes a quick picture of yourself, you know. It doesn't have to be massively thought through through, it can be quite informal. And one thing I will say as well is people tend to overthink how good pictures need to be to be of print quality. Like I say, a megabyte is plus is fine. The problems usually come from people uploading their images to social media platforms or websites and then taking them and saving them off those websites, which have pushed them down to being really small. If you've got the original images, it won't be a problem. So any old phone, unless you're carting around a Nokia brick, pretty pretty much any smartphone now will take a picture that is of perfectly good print quality, it's fine. And usually, you know, it's not like in the past, there did used to be a bit of a thing where you know, if you look back over old pictures, you'll be like, Oh, I can't believe how awful our pictures used to be, and they're all really blurry. And you did used to have to get someone with a decent camera to take a picture that isn't a hurdle you have to worry about anymore. You can literally get your partner or your friend or your neighbour to snap a quick picture of you doing something. You know, it's if you've got a book out, have some pictures of you with your book. It's all these things that people often don't think about, but can really make a huge difference.

SPEAKER_01 12:39

Like, think about how hard it will have been, like in the 90s, when you when you had to wait, you had to go through a whole camera roll, and then you had to wait for them all to be developed to see what comes out. It's not like that anymore, thankfully.

SPEAKER_00 12:54

That's just giving me a horrible flashback to um when I was a news journalist, which was kind of millennium time, so kind of 2000 around then. And there were a few times where you'd you'd usually try and go out with a photographer. There's a few times I was sent with a little camera, and then we had to take it and get the film developed to go with the stories I was writing. And I was the nerves I had over the fact that this film camera might not have actually captured anything publishable. I'm so pleased that none of us have to worry about that anymore. It was a fraught time, but yeah, it it used to be a really big thing, making sure that you had images that were that were decent enough to use. But now let's take advantage of the fact that we all carry a fantastic camera around in our pockets and take more pictures and not overthink what you look like. You're probably not gonna love every image that is published of you, but when you look back, you probably will. You'll you'll look back and you'll go, actually, I look great there. But at the time, we often can't see it. So just don't overthink it. Ask someone who's a bit more objective and be like, is this a good image? Or or should I pick some others? Because some people will hate every image of themselves, no matter how great it is. But get past that because that is not worth it, it's not worth your message not getting out because you're not keen on having your photograph taken.

SPEAKER_01 14:28

It is such a big thing, isn't it? It really is, and also, you know, like it's just that whole mindset of wanting everything to be perfect, and that's creating a block. And it's not not just with images as well, like that mindset of, oh, I can't talk about this until it's perfect, I can't talk about my message until it's perfectly refined, I can't do this until it's perfect. The the phrase I hear a lot is I just need I need to get my ducks in a row. You know, it's like this image that everything, it's this idea that everything has to be perfect before it goes to press. But actually, we're ever evolving, you know, and we can ever we can ever evolve in the public eye because we're never going to reach that point where everything's perfect.

SPEAKER_00 15:22

What I tend to find is those people who do let this sort of perfectionism stop them moving forward, they very rarely actually do move forward. It it there's always something.

SPEAKER_01 15:33

Oh, then there's it's all it's what you look for, isn't it? If you look for reasons not to do a thing, you are absolutely gonna find it. If you look for reasons to do the thing, well, that's what you're gonna find. So it's a choice, it's very much a choice.

SPEAKER_00 15:48

And one of the best things about being in the media is that you can you can pivot, you can refine your message as you go. That doesn't mean like go out having no clue what to talk about and make shit up as you go along, but you absolutely, if you discover that actually you've been saying this thing, and maybe there's something a better way of describing it, or maybe you've come up with a new phrase for that, you just add that in as you go, like you don't doesn't all have to be set in stone because that's another that kind of pivots nicely to another kind of point that I think is really important. That over I've seen a lot in the time that I've worked in PR is that the people that do the best are the ones who are flexible on what they'll talk about. Um so being as well as being a perfectionist kind of holding you back and wanting everything to be perfect, being really, really fixed on what you will talk about to the point where it's like I have this one thing and that's all I'm gonna talk about, also can really struggle. You want to be embracing different ways of talking about the things that matter to you. Might be sometimes you're doing a bit of storytelling and you're telling a story about yourself or a client and how it showed up. Maybe sometimes you're giving advice, maybe sometimes you're commenting on things happening in the news. You want to be flexible in how you share what's important and not just say this is this is how I want to present it. Because once you've kind of done that once or twice, people are gonna be kind of like, okay, well, you've done that, what's next?

SPEAKER_01 17:38

And if you haven't got something to say, people really get that with the socials, don't they? Generally, like people really, really get it with the socials, like they know that if they're just gonna talk about one thing in a specific way and just repeat that over and over, then people are gonna get bored. But in the press, people tend to well, not every not everybody, like some people really get it, but there are also some people who are like, Well, what's the point if it's not my exact thing? The ones who who get it are always you know the ones who do the best, isn't it? And I can see where it comes from because in marketing, we're very much told knees down, knees down, knees down. A lot of people categorize PR with marketing, but it's very different, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 18:32

Yeah, and this is so I am constantly telling Luana that I'm gonna have like a t-shirt business with slogans on, and I I'm dying for you to up to for you to do this, Catherine. But like one of my big ones that I would just wear on a daily basis is PR is not marketing, it's just it's they are too we they're often put together, and this is where the confusion arises. They're not the same thing, so the same techniques and tactics do not apply. And if I kind of liken it to, you know, if there is an element with marketing where you are having to kind of be like, okay, marketing is you you go into it with what I would call a buy my shit mentality, you're marketing your product or your service, that is the purpose of marketing. With PR, you can't be as overtly buy my shit, because let's think for a minute, like if you if you're watching a chat show and there's an actor on, you know that the actor is on there to plug their latest film. We all know that, the host knows that, they know that, the audience know that. But we play along and they talk about some other stuff. If they literally went on to that chat show and they said, Hello, I am here because I really don't want to be here. This is the seventh interview of the day, and I am exhausted. But I have done a film. The film is called This, it has this age rating, and it is available at cinemas now. I just want you to watch it so I can go home to bed. Nobody would be interested, would they? They'd just be like, Oh, okay, that's terrible. Like it's too stuck to this is why I'm here, this is what I'm doing. So when you only think about what you want to get out of something, that usually comes up with a really bad interview because you're just thinking, I need them to know my book is out on Amazon and they can buy it now, or I need them to know I have launched this new program and it starts now and it costs this much. People don't respond to that because it's the equivalent of an ad that they would skip past, something that they would actively opt out of. What they want to know is the Jews. Like, what are you saying? Like an actor might talk about the film, but they usually all talk about like what inspired them when they were doing the role, or what interesting things happened on set, or you know, maybe they've got a really funny story involving a co-star, or maybe they made some life decision based on being inspired by the script, or whatever. They they talk about the exciting stuff, and that's what works best in the media. Like you have the thing that you want to publicize, you have your message, but you've got to think of exciting, new and different ways to package that. That's like that's the deal. That's kind of the deal that we understand with celebrities that we don't want to see them go, I am here, so you buy my stuff. We get that, but we also need to get that about ourselves, and people who do really well in the media also tend to do well on their social media because exactly the same is true. Like people want to see and hear and get let into a world and feel. Find out exciting stuff, and you know, they don't want to hear. I have got five great tips, but I'm not going to tell you any of them because you have to buy my book. They want to hear, like, what can you do? Because then they're opting in. And I think this is a really important thing that if somebody reads an article about you or listens to you on a podcast or hears you on the radio or however they come across you, and they then go onto your social media and follow you, or they go onto your website and they sign up for your email mailing list, they have actively opted in because they want to hear more. They haven't had to kind of go, oh no, opt out. Whereas if you're sort of just in someone's face going, buy for me, buy for me, buy for me, usually that makes them want to come up with reasons to say no, like, oh no. Whereas if they are interested in what you've got to say, then they're actually coming from a place of tell me more, and that's what brings you effective results.

SPEAKER_01 23:02

Well, it's like when ads first pop up, the initial reaction is annoyance, isn't it? And I'm not saying that ads are bad. I, you know, I've done ads myself, I will do again. I'm not definitely not saying that. But there's a hurdle to get past, and that is the first reaction being that you've annoyed somebody, you've just popped up on YouTube when they were watching a video or on the socials, or you know, it's not what they came for. But with PR, what they're coming, they're coming for you and your story and the information. They want they want to be entertained, they want to be interested, they want to be hooked in by what you're saying, like they have come there voluntarily, so you don't have that initial kind of annoyance. And I'm not comparing PR with ads, by the way, they're completely different, but just that initial reaction. If somebody's in a in a PR piece, it's that people are there because they want to be, they want to know all about it.

SPEAKER_00 24:03

Yeah, it's kind of not an either-or. So we're not saying don't do ads, do this, but it's saying don't treat PR like it's ads. Acknowledge that they are different and they have a different role and a different purpose, and you can see the pros and cons of both formats and like work within that. So I think it's when people are treating PR like it's an ad, and wondering why journalists aren't snapping their hands off. Well, when all they're wanting is, well, I want to come on your podcast and tell people to buy my thing. And they're like, Well, I want guests that are interesting, and that the you see, you have this kind of thing. Everybody knows, like I was saying about the chat show, everybody knows the real purpose behind it. That doesn't mean you can't have some fun and share some interesting stuff along the way. Exactly. Make it entertaining. That's it, just share the juice. Well, I think that's probably time for us to start wrapping up.

SPEAKER_01 25:05

It is, it is. There's still so much that we could talk about, but we will leave it there for today. As always, we love to hear from you. Questions and comments to hello at dauntlesspr.com. See you next time.