Authenticity & Storytelling-Public Relations

so this week we are going to talk about storytelling and authenticity and why it is so important in modern public relations now i say modern public relations because if you remember one of the differences between modern pr and kind of the old way of doing pr is that the old way of doing pr was that fight for editorial space which remember was all about doing things that gets the media to show up and cover you because of your call that was really the only way to get your message out there was having the media write stories about you uh you know do interviews with you and your organization run your press releases show up to your events where modern public relations and i know i'm beating this point to death but if you learn nothing else this is this is kind of the big thing i want you to remember modern public relations is about fighting for mental space because we don't have to rely on the traditional media anymore we can rely on social media we have other ways to reach our audience so instead we need to cut through the clutter and get them to pay attention to you so storytelling and this idea of authenticity is an easy way to do it now for this particular particular lesson things are going to be a little bit different as always there is going to be a powerpoint uh there will be some videos that i'm going to drop in a couple that i'm going to link onto blackboard for you but this more than any other you really can just turn your screen off if you want to completely there will be a few you know again things that we're going to reference but that'll be on the actual powerpoint you can print out uh and you really can listen to this one kind of as a podcast and we'll get into why in one second so just to start why it's so important to know how to tell a story is there's a quote that i like that says there's a fine line between speaking and being heard and that is so true right because you can put your message out there but it doesn't mean people are necessarily hearing it or even you know for looking at this from an interpersonal standpoint there's a huge difference between making noise and actually connecting with people actually being heard stories are incredibly important in our culture whether it's something like looking at human history all of human history is storytelling we're telling stories of people in the past we're telling stories of events in the past and the history that we are more likely to remember the more likely that is going to sustain in our classrooms is the stories that are interesting we remember the rulers that were interesting we remember the conflicts that were interesting we don't really remember the ones that don't have a good story behind them now i'm not saying that that's necessarily fair but that's just the reality of it pop culture the entirety of pop culture is stories whether it's literally fandoms whether it's television shows whether it's the stories we tell ourselves it's still all about stories it is through storytelling that we ultimately learn our place in the world we're told stories of the world around us but there's a couple of things that we should try to keep in mind when dealing with this idea of storytelling that is where we're going to bring in today we have i guess we'll call it a guest speaker so we actually have my wife carrie who's going to be doing this particular lecture with us because we're going to do it kind of more as a conversation because she is much more of an expert actually in the field of doing public relations uh not from a philosophical standpoint or theoretical standpoint but definitely from an actual day-to-day working npr so kerry let's just start with so what is it you actually do for a living so i for my day job i am a public relations specialist for erie 2 boces so i essentially work for all sorts of different school districts running all of their social media public relations needs and then for my second full-time job i also own my own company that i do all the social media all the public relations um stuff for uh we're gonna have carry on in another point in the class later in the semester when we're gonna talk about social media specifically we'll look at how social media functions within you know owning your own business so we'll kind of incorporate some of that here but i'm just throwing this out there ahead of time because i will put some discussion boards up about this i know there are a number of people who in this class are looking at starting their own businesses carry your business what do you sell like what do you do so i have a apparel and accessory shop um which is also now a brick and mortar store so i make t-shirts i screen print um you know i make things like mugs and over the years it's kind of gone from being because obviously i've been there since day one it literally started sometimes we teased the old work you used to yeah this is something that used to be the button tree remember the button tree i remember her very first like work of art was a tree made of buttons and it was fine for the time uh but it's really evolved into more or less a lifestyle brand would you agree with that like a family lifestyle yeah i agree um when i started you know i didn't really know what i wanted to do so i was really making crafts right um where now it's more you know honed in and have a specific kind of niche and which is really important and that's that's a big part which we're going to talk about that's going to come up today later but if anybody has any questions you know about owning your own business even about some of the behind the scenes stuff about how you market all of that we'll cover all of that stuff when we get to the social media portion of the class which is you know towards the end of the semester but any questions anybody has drop in the discussion board just send me an email because we'll make sure that we actually address them because like i said i know there's a few of you in the class who are looking at starting businesses and some of you have already done so and are already doing quite well but we might have some extra you know kind of good information for you guys just to mention because you didn't mention it there actually is a third business that you run yes you completely forgot to mention that yes um because it's kind of on a hiatus right now yeah with covet it's kind of halted something yeah but it's a very um like in person personal business so i run a social networking group um called buffalo boss babe so essentially it's buffalo business women who get together and do networking um speaker panels we have a blog and you have a really good reach with all of those so before we get into like some of these specifics of storytelling uh so your personal brand is rusterier and then there's buffalo boss babes and then you run the social media you run pr for part of bo sees and then all the different school districts are in so what kind of reach do you have for rusteria and buffalo boss babes so rusterier uh reach or followers i i don't what's the difference okay so reach in see this is why i say carrie's really good at like the practical because i didn't know there was a difference yeah so reach is actually the number of people who absorb your content so they may not like share yes i forgot that's what they call it now it used to be called something different but basically they pause on your content so yeah you've got them in a little bit we used to call the differences that is public versus um audience and you okay so now it's reached versus followers specifically in social media that makes sense specifically so for followers i have around ten thousand on resterier i have almost five thousand on boss babes um also for the schools that we run we've upped our you know our reach and our follower account by like hundreds of percents just basically by showing realistic stories on those accounts so let's launch into it from there so i think that you just said growing your reach on school so let's talk specifically about working in schools so you work for boces which means you do as part of the team public relations for boces and then you work for individual school districts that buy basically into it so you do the pr for individual districts uh one of the things that i have found about boces and i only knew this since you've worked there is that it is one of the greatest resources we have in the area but people don't know about it because i think it tends to have not a great reputation because people tend to think of it as a very specific thing you don't realize that it's it's not just special education like yes that's what it is but it also has all sorts of vocational training like if i had known more about boces when i was in high school i probably would have went because they had all these tech programs and computer programs and all this amazing stuff and that's part of your job your team's job is to make it more well-known so this idea of storytelling i think really plays into it so how is it that you guys are kind of crafting the story of what boces is like how is it you're trying to formulate your messages um we do a lot of video because i think like visual is the most important thing for people since they don't really know what's happening at boces and it's really easy because we just tell our students stories it's that simple um and it's really engaging for our audience and we gain tons of you know recruitment for all of our career and technical education programs we have another program p-tech which is all recruitment-based so we do tons of videos we show people you know what it's like to be inside of a classroom basically so what's an example of a story you would tell i'm saying this because i know exactly what you're working on right now for work so i know you've been doing interviews so like what what's going on so we do student interviews um where we kind of ask students you know all about their experience at boces so that we can highlight the programs we can highlight students in specific school districts they kind of just tell us like things that they've learned about themselves by being in this program skills that they've learned what they hope to do with their skills once they graduate it's pretty simple interviewing but it helps us kind of create this bigger narrative about boces right and i think what i like so much about that you know kind of campaign that you guys are working on is not every company can do this but if you're something where you are a human services company i mean i guess actually most companies probably could do this in some way shape or form but it's going to be easier on some than others it's all about putting the face first so it's about kind of giving i don't want to use the word humanity because obviously they have humanity but it's it's putting the human element back into it it's people knowing like what is it that we're doing we're helping kids right so it's it's you're telling the stories of these kids like you said what they've learned where they're hoping uh to go with things and the important part of that is that it's relatable so even on if you are looking at the actual powerpoint some of the things that you want to try to do when storytelling is you first of all want to make it worthwhile so there has to be some reason that you're telling the story now we'll talk more about this when you get to social media but do you find with social media you can't just make frivolous posts you can make funny ones but that that's the worth in it there has to be a reason you're putting this out there yeah definitely um and that was kind of a misconception that i feel like happened in the last few years like people thought that more was better yes like quantity over quality was what it should be to get reach and followers and everything but it's actually the opposite yes because if you're putting crap out that people aren't interested in they're going to unfollow you they're you're actually negating your point at that point so when you put something out there it has to be worthwhile you also want it to be and this is actually a technical one um that this is actually like in the list of things you want to try to do with storytelling make it unforgettable basically saying like make it something that people are going to remember it i don't mean years later but 10 seconds later because there's so much going on put something in it that two minutes later people are gonna remember what they looked at so actually try to put some again some worth in it but i think a big part of it is that idea of relatability that stories should either be relatable or not relatable so what i mean by that is that this is going to kind of jump over into that idea of authenticity is that stories should either connect us to that content which is exactly what you're doing at boces right where it's all about connecting and we'll we have a video we're gonna look at uh in a second or your story should serve as a form of escapism so that's something i think we're seeing a lot in different like social media specifically so i'm just gonna put something again on the screen we've all seen images like this where it's you know the instagramer is going on there glamour you're laughing right now karen we'll talk about this because we've all seen this yeah uh where it's you know instagrammers going on their beautiful glorious vacations or this one right here so i have a youtube channel that i found and i literally just searched escapism youtube what is this one this one's lost leblanc and as of a year ago it had 1.31 million subscribers and it's literally just this group of friends who just go around and spend lots of money doing cool things yep that's not relatable no at all but it is a form of escapism we're gonna come back to this idea in one second we're going to come back to this so i'm going to drop a link into blackboard for you for a campaign that carrie and one of her co-workers made last year that is one of my favorite things i've never been able to get through it without crying when we're in class in person we always watch it as a class obviously i can't do that right now so please go click on the link it is the this is me e2ccb video i'll drop it right below uh the lecture do you want to talk a little bit about what this video is where your inspiration came from and kind of like what the goal of it was so the video was for our opening day which is the first day that everybody comes back to work at boces um typically not this year but we all get together and um have a big you know kind of like a kick off like uh get everybody psyched to be here and do your job yeah basically and there's almost like a pep rally it's like an educational pep rally it is um we had a speaker last year and we made this video to kind of lead up to the speaker so we used the song this is me from the greatest showman and we just showcased you know kids from boces programs in their element and showed who they were and everyone is unique and everyone is themselves in the video and it was kind of magical what was your theme that year um it was actually unleashing your potential so it's again it's that idea of storytelling it's and here's the thing everybody has a story every company has a story every organization has a story it's why are you doing what you're doing it's what is making you special and maybe the things that's making you special is that you're totally normal if that makes sense like it's okay to be normal you can celebrate that but it's it's connecting to your audience and that idea of storytelling is one of the quickest easiest ways to do that sometimes people think there's nothing special about them that's okay too because sometimes your story can just be who you are you know like let's say you own a family farm that's a story embedded right there it's my favorite kind of story right to follow what's the history of that farm yeah what's the history of your brand what's the history of even why are you making youtube videos what's the narrative you kind of you know embedded throughout and authenticity is a big part of that of being your true authentic self so one of the big issues that i know a lot of people have had with these kind of instagram accounts is that they're great for escapism but they're not authentic at all so the idea of authenticity is that you're real you're a real person and it's part of that is that you're flawed it's okay to be flawed now this is a very different way of thinking than we had in the 80s and even in the 90s but i find that because of social media specifically people are actually embracing imperfection because we want to feel relatable we want to feel like you know we're like these people like we can understand them that they're approachable and that's one of the things again even on the screen if you're looking at the powerpoint we've really seen this because of social media because we're seeing behind the scenes because we're seeing instagram accounts where it's people's real real-world selves even if it's celebrities you know they have their very polished uh you know celebrity image but now a lot of them most of them have instagrams where it's them at home you know yeah in their dirty dishes or their kids misbehaving or not wearing makeup so why is authenticity in modern public relations so incredibly important and what are some ways you can kind of use it well i think you can go back to what you said before about like you know mental space is people don't want smoke and mirrors anymore they really want to see real people people only have a certain you know amount of head space per se like that they can absorb things anymore because there's so much going on so i think being like true to yourself and like truly yourself is the biggest thing right like it's very easy to fall in that like imposter syndrome loop where you want to try and fit into this like niche or whatever you know you think that your brand should be i'm instagram specific just because it's really visual um that was something that was a little bit more like curated like that was really pushed for a long time that you needed to have a certain kind of look on your instagram and it works for some people i'm not saying yeah it doesn't work like some of these escapism accounts they work yeah totally but there's another side of it yeah but i think like you know specifically if you're trying to like be your true self if you're trying to be your true self you really just have to be you you can't try to be like somebody else that you see on instagram or facebook or whatever you want it you know it's easy to kind of get caught up in that but just being your true messy self this is something we find with youtubers is that a lot of youtubers when they start they will kind of emulate their favorites and then i mean we even did this with our podcast um you know because we have a podcast together that for the first few you're kind of emulating people that you like until you find your own voice you have to be true to your authentic self now why do you think it is that people aren't interested in the in the smoke and mirrors anymore because there's so much of that in the world i feel like that at least you know doing something that you enjoy like going on social media because it really it's like an enjoyment if you're on social media like you wanna see happy pictures or pictures of people's dogs or whatever so if you're on there you don't want to shut people's dogs that's true i like to look at pictures of people's dogs so if you're on there you know you don't you don't want your time wasted time is valuable these days so if you're not going to get the content that you want to get you're going to leave right and we're even seeing this on large scale examples again going back to celebrities i remember when like jennifer lawrence for example first became super popular the thing people liked about her is she was down to earth like she literally tripped and fell up the stairs when she was getting her academy award like people like that people like that you are normal and i think that that idea of authenticity is becoming really really really important uh because you had said looking at pictures of people's dogs i do have this on the screen that i think is really funny a lot of dog adoption places have actually started kind of creating uh like personalities for then stories for their dogs because it's actually skyrocketed adoption i've seen that it's so good oh that's what i have on my screen yeah there's a kennel then uh i think it's florida in orlando yes that will put dogs in harry potter houses because you're more likely to adopt a dog that's in the same house as you yeah or creative it's so creative or here's another one and this is actually a local organization where they give these long-winded oh yes i've seen this bio so this one says uh that chloe used to work at eerie insurance but she switched to geico's because all of her clients did too like it's these long-winded things like it says she gets paid more with geico too and sometimes she gets to bring her foster mom to work with her like it's just funny like this dog works at geico yeah there's another one benji likes pringles he often wonders why do we drive on a parkway and park on a driveway it's giving these dogs personalities yeah and i know for myself if i were to read something like this and it made me laugh i might actually be more likely to adopt i'm likely to adopt the dog no matter what but it it helps because you're creating a narrative about it or here's another just kind of cute one i'll point out that the the visuals on these are like professional which is a huge factor i think so and again this is if you're listening to this strictly as a podcast format the powerpoint is available to you you don't have to watch it as a video so you can look at this uh so we actually carrie and i have a couple of dogs that we had adopted from a local rescue their photos are incredible and when i was there the one time i literally asked i said like who does your photography and she said like oh we have some photography interns that come in and do it because having really good photos helps with the adoption process because it kind of adds to that you know visual storytelling this is something that i think is really cute no november 13th is world kindness day in pittsburgh they have renamed it the national red or excuse me national cardigan day in honor of fred rogers they do the cutest things all of the babies at i believe it's upmc university of pittsburgh medical center will be put into little fred rogers so mr rogers cardigans and khakis is part of world kindness day which look to be handmade i think they are i believe that yeah it is the cutest thing and this gets so much attention because i only started doing this like a year or two ago and then fred rogers widow who is still alive uh has been touring it and visiting the kids or the babies at the the awards now the reason they do this in pittsburgh is because if you don't know mr rogers is from pittsburgh or was from pittsburgh um mr rogers neighborhood was filmed in pittsburgh so this was always just something really cute that i've always thought was just a fun little thing that it's it's this really good example of authenticity but it's a really good example of storytelling as well is it something that's visual it's worthwhile it gets you know both the attention of the actual national news but it also just gets into people's mental space as well like i remember seeing this and it cut through all of the other clutter yeah you know are these pictures of these dogs wearing you know hufflepuff scarves it cuts through all of that clutter so this is them like being themselves truly you know pittsburgh being proud of what's already there and yes developing a story around it which is just really unique so you were just talking about cause i'm gonna back up again for a second your brand uh wisteria so your your clothing apparel lifestyle brand uh authenticity is really important you said it took you a while to kind of find your voice how did you manage to hone in on that well i shut everything else out basically i was really trying to create for others and then i finally realized like that's not what i wanted to do from the beginning of it so i started creating for myself yes because you have to be true to who you are that's what makes you authentic you can never be authentic if you're faking being somebody else yeah so i just started creating things that i would want to wear i would want to you know wear well i'm going to leave that in i'm not even editing that um or even the fact that like our children so we have three children have become your primary models like our family are our models so i think that's something that's really interesting you're not even gonna like that i'm gonna talk about this i find it interesting that you are a family brand and our family has become a brand in of itself because of on your instagram you show the mistakes you show dirty dishes you show the fact that one time um there was you know a photo shoot you did with noah who was like four or five at the time who didn't want to do the photo shoot so he was screaming at the top of his lungs and you posted those photos they were funny and people liked it like people liked that things weren't perfect people like that things uh get messy so the fact is like our family has actually weirdly enough become part of your authentic brand because resterior your brand has been invited multiple times to do different i mentioned this in a previous lecture that you're friends with some people in the news and it seems like any time there's like a dry spot in the news they're like let's call the reinhardts i'm sure they got something going on and i'm always like no i am not going to be in this photo shoot that is funny that is true so it's actually funny that you say this it sounds so douchy it really does but it's just something that happens well it's funny because i actually tried to separate the two it didn't work and it didn't work i tried to you know i i in my head people only wanted t-shirts right you know what i mean like they only wanted to see what was relevant with the rest area but that's not actually the truth like they can buy a t-shirt anywhere they're buying a t-shirt from me because they like our story they like me they like our family they like you know what we're like the whole package so it was funny because i i did try to kind of separate the two into two different things now that being said it's not like you need to incorporate your personal story and family into everything if you have like a video game channel where you do play throughs incorporating your family into it makes no sense but if you're a lifestyle brand maybe it does and i think a lot of it also depends on what your story is so i've mentioned before a lot of you know this um but our kids are adopted so we adopted them out of foster care so like people were along with us for that whole journey which is how i think it became kind of a part of our story kind of became part of like the brand yeah so like you do fundraisers for foster care like it's it's kind of part of the story yeah i think so it's funny because when i first started wisteria like we couldn't post pictures of the kids faces so i would post like you know headless headless kids right all the time so it's funny when you know they were able to actually be faces in my instagram it was like i actually went through your old instagram and it is funny because like if you don't realize that's what the situation was there's like six months where they're just a bunch of headless kids in all of your shots yeah i should mention this wasn't just like random kids the adoption had been approved like we knew it was happening but it's like a six month to a year wait uh for the courts to open up to give you an actual adoption date so we weren't just like creepily stalking children and putting shots of headless children on your instagram but i think it's interesting because it's again that idea of authenticity have you found just in your own career that people who are that fake authenticity struggle you know what i mean like they they're trying too hard because there's a term called manufactured authenticity which we're going to talk more about in a second which is the idea that you are faking the flaws you're purposefully making yourself look authentic but in an inauthentic way yes i've seen that i i don't know that i can speak specifically to that but i have seen a few people but it seems to crash and burn pretty quickly because people see through it so i'm going to uh drop another video in i'm going to try to drop it directly into this video right now so it's going to be about six minutes long um from lindsey ellis who's my favorite youtuber and essayist um where she talks all about this idea of manufacturing authenticity now this segment we're gonna look at is part of like a full 45-minute essay that she did i will link the entire essay into blackboard for you but what she does in this one is she's breaking down cake youtubers uh people who make cake on youtube and looking at how they are starting to kind of fake this authenticity the secret to yolanda's success is not of course the calls to action those gradually rose as her subscriber count did if you look at earlier episodes of how to kick it you see that there are very few calls to action and most of them are requests for likes and subscribes with subscription services merchandise and camp cake being gradually added through the years and months early episodes are actually very conventional and more in the vein of your typical food network show but about five months after the channel launched in the flower pot of cake episode published on may 5th 2015 a new element is introduced then i measure then i measure the circle [Laughter] do i look tired no circumference the giggle you hear is the voice of producer jocelyn mercer and her presence in the series interacting with yolanda from off-screen only increases from here to the point where now it's a feature of the show gym leaders i guess they're actually like in gyms and then so you work your way through the gym so it's a workout game this element proves engaging and in the following months there is a correlation of increased interaction between the production crew and the host in effect yolanda breaks down the facade that is production she jokes with her producer she jokes with her cameraman are americans gonna get mad at this probably sometimes she even jokes with her editor who is not in the room the series went from the occasional fourth wall breaks to fourth wall breaks being a part of the show's identity oh that's a that's a good one yo just if you could just hold that yeah yeah perfect yolanda and her producers have effectively figured out not only how to market a curated version of her personality but with how she interacts with her crew i don't think there's technique because as good as yours and the interactions with the crew make the show feel more authentic you feel like you're just you know in the room hanging out laughing about this elaborate cake that looks like a giant turkey now pop your turkey cake in the fridge i'm doing way too much of this this falls into line with the appeal of youtube in general that it strips away the polished facade of television to give you something more real we should send every rapper a newsletter without this info use the same just use the same word every sentence in the song ends with the same word yolanda can get away with her 11 000 calls to action per episode not in spite of this fourth wall breaking format but because of it owning the fact that a polished production like this is in fact a group effort this isn't just a show you know we're just hanging out laughing about this cake we're just having fun around when yolanda gomph started using the joshing with producers gimmick her sub started going way way up and by mid 2016 she's well passed a million subscribers and around this time on july 26 2016 venture capital funded startup craftsy began publishing the first episode of their own cake show hey guys welcome to man about cake craft c was a startup service that specialized in hobby and lifestyle tutorials and craft education that was launched in 2011 by a bunch of former ebay executives one of the contributors who featured in content behind this paywall was pastry chef and sugar artist joshua john russell want your stencil resting against your cake board to help make sure it doesn't shift around who began starring in content for craftsy in 2012 but in november of 2014 the company raised another 50 million in vc financing and lo and behold they got their own fancy cake show starring joshua john russell featuring drastically improved production values and a whole new format one that seems strangely familiar by the way the milkman came today and dropped this on my door i don't know why i put it in this container is it bad that i find that incredibly sexy it is sexy sword baby is about to be born what bird did that come out of it's like a robin's egg no robin's eggs are very very pale oh hey i'm the guy that makes novelty cake t-shirts and uh joshua has all of them our birthdays that's our birthday it's for the viewers these guys are miked uh james who's that guy that's mike say hi mike what's up mike hello that's a lavalier mic didn't name the dragon go ahead brandon frank the tank like the sound cop from the producers on how to cake it is either the onboard mic or from yolanda's lavalier mic but a man about cake everyone on the set has a lavalier mic like this this is a lavalier it's not it's it was a thor joke and then you start to notice other things like their use of props tommy celebrate that was the best thing that ever happened to me guys i didn't notice there were balloons right above me ah balloons or their use of sound effects [Applause] [Music] i'm gonna i'm gonna kill these balloons that pop was added in post you are fired you're fired their use of relationships within the show trim these corners you better wash that knife do you see this shirt that does not say maybe i will cut you yeah you know we're just some guys joshing around just you know being bro bros making some cake as you do a weird and unnatural dynamic that russell calls out in the very first episode of man about cake joining me is my all male crew which is not weird at all that four guys would just be hanging out talking about cake but that's what we do and when you spend hours watching this show as i have you start to realize that this wasn't just a natural dynamic between the host and the crew that eventually got incorporated into the show like and how to cake it this was part of the pitch the banner for their youtube show isn't just the host it's the host and these three guys facing away from the camera you go into their website and there are like bios for each of the camera guys you know camera guys but they don't have surnames or any defining attributes and their eyes are blacked out like they're in goddamn witness protection so it's like this entire show was built around this scaffolding of bros joshing with each other while making a cake let's that was the best thing that ever happened to me [Music] so what she brought up in the video is that this is something we're seeing a lot especially on social media where it's it's in this man about cake basically what's happening is that they're scripting things that are meant to feel unscripted where they're creating this fake authenticity where all the behind the scenes you know scenes crews are wearing the microphones where they're adding extra sound effects and it works for them because obviously they've got you know millions of subscribers but it reads artificial for example so like the podcast that we do together even our intro and our outro was something that we did to try to make it relatable so even just as a for instance i'm gonna play it for you so this is the intro to our podcast so before i do our podcast is basically about our family it was our adoption story it's just about how we we so we got all three of our kids at the same time uh you know we didn't have them one at a time i know now that we look back i don't know how we survived that uh but we didn't you know we don't mess our kids up one at a time we equal opportunity messed up but we don't get the first one and then mess them up and then fix it for the second no no no we screw ours up all at the same time that's what our podcast is about so we wanted the introduction of our podcast to reflect that so those of you in the writing for media class i've actually played this for you in that class this is the intro to our podcast ready shot go thank you [Music] so that is our son uh who was probably three at the time now how he actually managed to record that was that he was literally just playing he was just playing and i think he was was he counting i don't i think he said like ready set go one two three like he was doing something yeah he was like trying to i don't know but it works because i wasn't even down here when you guys did that no i know you weren't so it works because it represents the podcast but it feels authentic it feels like that's really part of the story and then this is our outro which is the best thanks for listening a nickel party so again what that is is he says thanks for listening and then i need to go potty and then that's me actually laughing now i will tell you that that's not 100 authentic because he didn't actually say thanks for listening i need to go potty he said thanks for listening in a separate clip he was talking and just being like this is fun mommy i need to go potty and then i did laugh for real that part's real yeah i just place the two together so technically it is a bit inauthentic but it it perfectly represents what our brand is uh and people can relate to it people people like it now what's funny about that is we felt kind of bad that noah our youngest was the only one who was in it so we decided we were going to try to record some of our older daughters who at the time would have been like five and eight uh and get there as well it didn't work did it no because they watch youtube because it wasn't authentic yeah so they tried to be like this personality yes and it really wasn't especially our oldest who was eight at the time so she kept trying to be like hey guys thanks for listening and it just didn't work where we needed more of a casual overheard sort of thing not something that sounded so scripted because it didn't feel authentic i'm gonna mention to you and ask you about this carrie have you heard of the bone appetite scandal no but i know about bon appetit okay so this is fun so in class in other semesters where we talk about this i bring up bon appetit it's kind of the textbook example of how to use this idea of authenticity and storytelling to your advantage so just give you some background bon appetit is a food brand so it started in 1956 as a magazine and bon appetit as a magazine has always catered to more wealthier crowds uh it's much more of like a foodie sort of james beard new york city high-class la chicago sort of crowd but they realized back in the early thousands that that crowd was quite frankly dying out and that they needed to appeal to the younger generation and younger generation foodies are very different than the older generation where it's much more like starch and very strict so what they did was in 2012 they launched a youtube channel early youtube videos were very traditional pbs style this is how you make a recipe but in 2016 they developed their new youtube channel which was personality forward so it was they hired a bunch of young chefs who basically would cook for you but it was more about their personality so that goes back to the video we just watched about cake where it gets to a point where you're not watching for the cake you're watching for the personalities of the people who's making the food the food they're making is totally irrelevant and it became super super popular so they rebranded themselves from bon appetit now the magazine still existed to the ba test kitchen so i personally i'm gonna go to their youtube page this is funny that you're bringing this up because i actually met their social media manager at a conference that i was at oh my god i forgot she's the one that like started this yeah i forgot about that so this bon appetit ba test kitchen uh youtube channel was crazy successful because again it was personality forward it was all about like the personalities they would leave in the mistakes they would leave in at times that they messed up royally they'd even edit together compilations uh in within episodes of them messing things up and it was relatable there was a great story behind it and it got to the point where it almost felt more like a sitcom like people were watching you know this youtube channel because it felt again like a sitcom so if we just kind of scroll down a little bit i'm gonna show you can see a lot of these i've actually watched like we've got millions of views on all of these channels so i had used this in previous semesters as a great example of what to do because again it was all about the personality do you know the scandal that happened well if you'll notice that once the quarantine started they actually started doing something really really cool because they had a bunch of uh pre-recorded content let me go to actually their videos in chronological order they had a bunch of pre-recorded content that they released but once they went to quarantine it actually became fascinating because they started doing the show from their homes which worked because again it was about the personalities of the the chefs so they would even do things that were really cool that was like um household gadget or kitchen gadget um scavenger hunts so it'd have like two of your favorite chefs and like a list would pop on the screen and they'd have to find uh you know a corkscrew or oregano like it was really great and this once again was a model for what to do so your social media manager that you met at conference was doing everything right well you'll notice the last video that was posted was four months ago so what happened i don't know the editor in chief adam i forget his last name right now had some photos discovered where he had done brown face in a halloween costume so that kind of launched an investigation into okay how did this happen then a number of the uh chefs um specifically the ones of color were then basically saying how unfair and how racist the kitchen was that the only chefs who were ever paid for their extra work were the white chefs the white chefs basically in a roundabout way confirmed to this saying like yeah we've been getting paid for all this stuff we didn't know you weren't and they were tweeting their support but at that point it didn't matter yeah damage was done and it shut down the entire of bon appetit they have not released a video they have not acknowledged it in four months wow they've gone radio silent that's bad it's bad now as of the time you're listening to this who knows if something has changed i'll i'll drop a disclaimer no not on their youtube channel all right so i'm jumping in here for a second so this is next day after we've recorded this editing amber i literally am editing this lecture right now talking all about the ba bon appetit va test kitchen scandal and i decided i was gonna jump over to their youtube channel so i could just confirm something uh that i just wanted to double check and when i did i discovered that they actually started literally the afternoon that we recorded this lecture they uploaded three new videos so we went from four months ago and then having nothing to three new videos here's what's fascinating about it remember the thing they got in trouble for was that they apparently were basically being discriminatory uh in the test kitchen at the higher level so the editor-in-chief was fired from his position even just scrolling through the thumbnails are you already noticing a difference here there's a lot more diversity in these thumbnails than the other ones now that's exactly what it should be i am not even remotely in any way shape or form saying that's the problem i think the problem is that bon appetit didn't know how to handle this scandal so now we all of a sudden have this video here that says why we joined bon appetit so this was the first video they did once they came back but they went about this in the wrong way because look at this if i click on this and open this [Music] check out this like to dislike ratio oh my gosh now i'm fully going to acknowledge some of the people this like this are ones who don't like change or are ones who straight up probably are racist i'm not for a second going to say that that's not going to happen in a like to dislike ratio like this but a lot of the people in this also just don't like the way bon appetit handled this because they brushed the the controversy under the rug and then they're trying to rebrand without ever acknowledging the way that it happened in fact the top comment on here is talking about the six parts of a good apology expression of regret explain explanation of what went wrong acknowledgement of responsibility request for forgiveness all of that is stuff that we actually talked about now this is a bigger breakdown than what we talked about this is the official breakdown um we talked about it in the simpler terms the first thing is to admit fault and then you go from there except in their response it seems as though they aren't doing of course i'm on an ad here let's skip out of that for a second so yeah it's the way they're rebranding i think is really really interesting i think this is going to be a very interesting case study to see what happens with this over the next couple of months so even if we go back to the other videos i went through and i watched some of these ones as well the formatting is completely different than it was before and i think that's fascinating because the format of ba wasn't the problem the problem was the discrimination so it's almost like they're dealing with this surface level without addressing the cause that's going to be the problem and that's why i think that first video has such a large disregard like ratio so i'm going to jump back to the regular lecture again i'm literally editing this right now saw this and had to just drop this in as a little insert because this is literally changing in real time and i'll give you more updates throughout the rest of the semester if i happen to see them come now what i think is interesting is that for my knowledge the magazine is still going forward now this is going to be some controversial way of doing this but why do you think the magazine was able to continue because they appeal to white people they appeal to old white people who quite frankly a lot of them don't care the young people the diverse audience who was following their youtube oh they cared and once again sure totally shut them down but yeah really interesting so this is a weird example of now crisis management so basically what happened is it just obliterated their story of this being a good time authentic family and now it's became something else so yeah this whole idea of of you know maintaining the the image is really really important so when we get to social media again we'll have carrie back on to talk more about some specific details ask some specific or answer specific questions we will look at a bunch of social media examples for that one actually going through some things on facebook and some things on instagram and how do you actually do a lot of the stuff and how do you kind of curate your your images and your visuals so just in your advice carrie when dealing with public relations one of the things that makes it so incredibly complicated is that there's no one way to do it like we can talk about the theories of it all day long yeah but it's something you kind of learn as you're going as you're trying to find your market but do you have any just you know practical advice that you can give because you've done pr in so many different ways and you run so many different things how do you actually do it how do you actually connect with your audience um well you listen to your public and what they want um like for instance you know when i started at boces specifically we did no video then we did a video and our audience absolutely loved it so now we do the majority video um yeah that's true because when you started you didn't even do video like we kind of crash taught you how to do it and now you produce way more videos than i do yeah um and honestly like it's what our public likes um public relations is a hard beast everything that you're gonna do is different especially if you're working for multiple like if you're working for one corporate thing you can kind of get your flow going and um but in my case like i work for you know seven different you know school districts slash businesses and they all have different audiences yeah so you kind of have to just figure out what works for you and and that's where you can kind of look at other accounts and get some inspiration but still be true to yourself so so i think to kind of summarize that and the advice i always give is there's a few things you need to do one be flexible because you have to know that things are going to change things are changing and i know you can agree with this things are changing in the field of pr even what it was five years ago it's not now it's just it's happening so quickly so you have to be flexible i also think versatility is a big one i've talked about this in lots of other classes that's why as a department we teach classes in public relations we teach classes in theory and we teach classes in filmmaking because if you want to be a filmmaker it's still important to understand public relations because you have to know how to market yourself you need something to set you aside from other filmmakers for example i have degrees in film uh making and public relations and that's gotten me every job i've ever gotten yeah because companies don't want to pay for both so if they can get somebody who can handle the pr and the film together that's great as a pr person nowadays it's just assumed that you can make videos and everything else and everything else so knowing how to do all that stuff is becoming extremely extremely important and then the last thing is to know that reputation in public relations is incredibly important the big question that constantly comes up is how does a person develop a reputation the advice i always give is be good at what you do for a very long period of time yeah you have anything you can add to that because i don't think there's any other way to do it no yeah see that's a very simple answer that's how you build a reputation how you gain a following is slowly uh we'll deal more with this when we get to social media but just as a for instance care how long did it take you to gain 10 000 followers 10 years yep and that was on rasteria now boss babes went quicker yes because you had a lot of way different exactly one audience is like they have to buy stuff versus yeah boss babes is more they get something back out of it themselves but it takes time yeah you and you have to be consistent you have to be good for a long period of time and you just have to keep up with it yeah i think that's the best thing you can get or advice you can really give and that whole idea of be true to yourself figure out what your voice is and know that it's going to evolve and that's okay but you kind of have to stick with it so i know that this uh this particular unit like i said was completely different from other ones because this was definitely much more of a podcast and a discussion but this is also where i fully acknowledge that if other people know a lot more than i do about a subject i should just have them do it and when they live in the same house as me in the middle of a pandemic and we're stuck together in that same house it just makes sense so any questions that anybody has about social media about running businesses anything at all i will have a discussion board that is going to be there for the entirety of the semester drop any questions in there i will answer them as we go otherwise we'll address all of them in the actual social media unit when we get to it later in the semester

Channel: ECC Rinehart

Views: 45

Rating: 5 out of 5

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Id: f4SBv9S84b0

Length: 49min 37sec (2977 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 14 2020