Digital PR Done Right: Earned Media Strategies and Human-First Pitching | Britt Klontz

Speaker A: Hi, I'm Gianluca Ferrelli. Welcome back to research session. Today we are having a guest from the other side of the pond will respect me. She lives in a, uh, place in a city that I know very well. I visited it many, many times. She's a wonderful person. I had the pleasure to know her quite recently here in Valencia and She is a PR consultant. As she says in her LinkedIn, she helped brands earn media and attention and considering the media she share in this classic image in LinkedIn which is the affect of post for NBC News, Real Simple, Net, Wallet, Wallet, USA Today. So on is on she claims is the person that we need to talk about digital PR today. She is the founder of uh, Vader Communication and she is Brit Clones. I hope I pronounce it well. Your. Your name and Sonia. Hi Brit, how are you doing?

Speaker B: Hi, Jean Luca. Uh. Oh, thank you for such a wonderful introduction. I'm so excited to be here. There's just been so many, you've interviewed so many search legends and I'm honored to be here as your guest. Thank you.

Speaker A: I mean legend. I invite people that I steam in their work and also as human beings. That's the only requisite to be a guest of a search session. Don't need to be, you know, super guru, something like this or a super nerd in AI. Ah, for instance. But you have to have my respect for the work you do and you have to be a nice person. So someone I respect also as a, as a human being, you feel the two things. So I going to change my usual starter question, my icebreaker. Obviously I'm not going to ask you how SEO is going is treating you lately, but let's focus on your specialty, how digital PR is treating you lately.

Speaker B: Honestly, it's treating me well, but it's asking a lot of me in return. PR is basically one of the only channels left that can influence what AI tells people about your brand or who you are. So the job got bigger, but it also got more defensible and I will take that trade. Also, the bar for what's actually worth pitching has never been higher. And I think that's a really good thing. The era of volume and all of that, like spamming and spraying and paint praying, is ending. And whether people like it or not, the PR pros who are leaning into the quality pitching right now are going to be really well positioned in my opinion. So all that to say I'm busy, but I'm super optimistic.

Speaker A: That's cool. That's cool. And yes, digital PR and PR without even the digital. Because I always remember that digital PR e substantially is public relation done well also for digital space. But many times things that are happening offline ever an echo on digital. So they are interconnected and people usually, I don't know why forget that classic marketing can be a powerful driver for online visibility too. And yes you are saying that digital PR is one of a few things that really, really matters for earning the right visibility. Also in AI search and you were saying is no time anymore for spamming. And I think that we are, we saw it already in these last few months. People who tried to trick list Google with the listicle spamming or with the mass production of content generated by AI, they are seeing the dark side of it, uh kind of tactics. I'm curious when you are approached by a potential client, how many of these clients actually are asking you where are someone, where are anyone that is uh also asking you can we do something that can trick AI or no?

Speaker B: Well, let's see. I think that would be a red flag for me.

Speaker A: I uh, would. Yes, but in the first email let's

Speaker B: say if they have that question. I think of course there are ways to quote unquote trick AI that have or uh, might have short term benefits. Short term, short term, wow, can't say that word right now. Short term wins. Like the listicles that you mentioned, right? I believe this is a little more SEO focused than what I'm used to speaking about. But I believe that the SEO the listicles were, you know, Google was pulling listicles and you were able to rank in AI based off of the list that other blogs and websites have out there for best X software, best X company, blah blah blah. But as you mentioned Gianluca, those listicles are no longer performing well or as well at least. And Google AI tools are also reading your consistent messaging across the web. And I think generic corporate speak coming back to pr, it doesn't lose the journalist, it also loses the algorithm too at the end of the day.

Speaker A: Yes, I think you said something very important and you say it's the corporate brand. You start actually implying the brand voice, the correct tone of voice of the brand able to be consistent in the messaging with all the brand principle and not let's say try to mimic a language that unfortunately still quite a few persons are still insisting that should be used for being retrieved by AI like you know these complicated with very misunderstood the concept of chunking or uh, this concept of writing, very simple with tongue point and list or something like this. And I think that actually consistence of branding both on your side, both on your social, both on 30 party side forums, blah blah blah is what making AI as well as normal people understand that this brand is this brand because of this, this and this. So I totally agree with you with this and that. Maybe it's. I'm going to put it very simple maybe I hope it's not simplistic to make it understand actually Google first and then also AI. What we want to do is try to mimic how people think in order to offer what people want to see as a search result. So why faking be consistent and be the answer that AI and Google wants to give a consistent and talking about AI as a digital pr, how you use AI for your work.

Speaker B: Do I use AI for my work?

Speaker A: Yes. I mean as an SEO for instance I use AI for doing certain types of works like individual patterns in a uh, huge list of URLs, etc. Etc. Etc. Maybe you, I don't know, maybe you are using AI for some specific in the background work that you have to do when you are searching something, searching idea, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker B: Yes, definitely there's. I think I'm on the whole idea or thinking that AI should be used as a tool but not as something to do your job. I think that's how I'd sum up my approach to AI. So I do use like Claude and I used to use ChatGPT a little bit to brainstorm ideation new content ideas. I use it sometimes to monitor certain trends. Right now I use it a lot for reporting and I do trust it with syncing to my Gmail and when at the end of the day I'll have sent X amount of pitches and it's a lot of work to then look at the pitches that I sent and then summarize to my clients what was said in those pitches, what angles did I take? Because I'm not templating any of my pitches. I'm truly taking the time to read the journalist work and understand what they like to write about and what their audience like to read. So AI, that's maybe one of my favorite uses at the moment is to say please check out, you know, prompts. It's all about what you prompt it. Right. So be very specific about what types of emails you want it to analyze and ask it to summarize what sorts of pitches and angles and types of outlets were pitched to today or in the past two weeks. My reporting typically I'm reporting bi weekly to My journalist, I mean, sorry, wow, to my clients who are monthly. So it's hard for me to sit down and accurately say, here are all of the different angles and pitches that were sent over the course of a two week or four week period. And AI is fantastic at summarizing that for me and iterating that to my clients in a way that's concise, in a way that makes sense and doesn't bombard them with all of the details either. So let me know I can sync it with like my tool that has open rates. I use Mixmax and ask it to then let us know what the open rates are. Response rates, you know, I don't really care much about. Journalists will often write about something you pitch them and not tell you at all. So response rate can be a really bad indicator of success. So I really like to use AI right now at um, the moment for that purpose. But I don't lean on it at all for writing my pitches. I don't lean on it for writing press releases if I ever need to write a press release. Journalists will see right through the corporate AI speak trap. And there are just so many telltale signs that they'll be able to spot

Speaker A: right away with you which ones are the most common.

Speaker B: So usually there's no specific human detail. It's hedged language that commits to nothing. And there are compliments that are so generic it can apply to any journalist. There's a Barron's analysis that I read late, like a couple weeks ago, I forget the name of the report, but it basically looked at corporate documents and earnings calls and SEC final filings and it found certain phrase constructions had essentially just exploded since 2024. So is like you know them well, I'm sure in today's rapidly evolving landscape or we are committed to fostering a culture of blank, blank, blank or.

Speaker A: Oh yeah, so classic.

Speaker B: Yeah, the classic ones. But I mean like a lot of incorporating that into their press releases right now and their pitches. It's crazy.

Speaker A: They're always changing landscape.

Speaker B: Yes, exactly. And these phrases, they barely existed two years ago and now they're everywhere.

Speaker A: You know, one story, you know, that verb of it that I never, never saw. And I mean it's 22 years when I'm doing SEO. I'm mostly working and connecting with the English speaking SEO world clients. And before I was working in television, obviously I was speaking a lot English because I needed to contact, you know, I don't know, Metal, Golden, Mayer, uh, Warner for buying TV rights for about four movies and TV series. And one verb that I never heard of was delof. And I, I discovered because I saw it share the A um, fantastic story by linguistic. And it says the, the English language that I use can tell you who were the people analyzing for the model and training for the model, the model with English. And he said because depth is something that nobody in the US use, nobody in the UK use but it's used a lot in Nigeria. So that means that probably a massive number of training data has been built thanks also to the work of pro world countries workers like in Nigeria or other countries that were substantially cheaper for the OpenAI and all the other models. And that this is quite amazing to have seen this language because so you can understand why all of a sudden we started to use because then people started to use like speak like an AI. Like Thrive. I remember Thrive. I never heard it, heard it so much before and so on and so on. Yes, it's coming from uh, a linguistic study that was a quite surprising and fascinating finding for me. Okay, so you use for reporting usa. Okay. Also for some times for understanding, you use tool for instance for understanding the operator and things like this. So KPIs for the outreach phase of a digital PR campaign. Before AI, a classic KPI was links. All. Uh, the KPIs are changing now that links are not anymore. I mean they still are very important but they are not the only metric to track how they are changing the KPIs for a digital PR campaign now that we have also AI. Ah.

Speaker B: I recently had the honor of talking to our friend Rand Fishkin and he and Amanda Natividad coined the term zero click marketing. And I think it has a lot to do with like my answer aligns a lot with their thinking around this topic and that's that in a zero click world, in this AI world that we're living in right now, I believe that where you get mentioned matters just as much as whether you get mentioned. And another thing or I guess report that I'll reference right now is one that BuzzStream published, Vince Nero and it was about spraying and praying. And what they found is that more pitches, sending more pitches, more quantity over quality really doesn't drive more results. The more that it drives or uh, what it actually drives is more blocks and more unsubscribes and it will give that PR a worse reputation on the next pitch that they send. Your media list is not a renewable resource. And when it comes to framing that actually lands with agency leaders or your bosses like reporting, framing the wins and framing the value, you know, 2/3 of all queries now get answered without a click. So 15, let's just say 15, okay? Mentions on sites or blogs that no one reads. They're not just bad for your client's brand, but they can sometimes be invisible to the AI tools that are shaping what people actually, uh, believe. So one great placement in a publication that your audience actually trusts and actually reads, that's what gets cited and that's what's beating the answer. But I'm not just talking about the New York Times and the Wall street journals of the world, and I'm not talking about all blogs. There are very valuable blogs out there. Let's just talk about SEO and marketing for now. Right? Because that's what we're experts in and most of your listeners are. And we all know the HubSpot blog, that's not one of those blogs that I feel is worth overlooking. Like that's an um, important blog that a lot of marketers read. So if you represent a company in the marketing space, a software company in the marketing space, if you're a marketer yourself who wants to become known around as the expert on AI search, I would prioritize getting mentioned or you know, I would prioritize building relationships and helping the writers at the HubSpot blog out versus somebody at a journalist at the Wall Street Journal. But I feel like right now, if you search for perhaps like a very specific topic about AI search, Google will be polling, I bet HubSpot blog posts to help answer that question. Am I making sense?

Speaker A: No, no, you're totally right. This is the old classic of target the places where your audience is substantially.

Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.

Speaker A: Uh, I mean, in the New York Times could be cool once because I mean it's prestigious and eventually, eventually it would be, but it would be should be done with a lot of attention. So understanding who is the journalist who constantly talks about Google, for instance, and who is in what section, in what frequency, what are the inside the Google world? What kind of specific topics does it talk about? Search or just Google as a corporation, as a company, part of the comparison Alphabet. And so bingo. In that case you can try to craft a piece content which can be just thinking of targeted targeting the journalist more than people that are influenced by the journalist because so you can let's say put the feet in the door. And eventually obviously if he's going to decide you he's going to influence also people that you really want to target. But I want to say ask it. Ask you something. Yes. If a spray and pray tactic. So bombarding journalists made me remember one thing that was shared in a conference where I was talking recently in Manchester. I've Manchester and your UK colleagues and you know UK digital PR is very strong. They are saying that they notice something like this but probably the continuous pitching journalist with such a frequency they start to see journalists bouncing them um, more and more and more. Is this the consequence of the spray and the spray and pray tactic? Right.

Speaker B: Uh, I would say so. I would, I would back that theory.

Speaker A: So it's not, it's a classic. It's not about how many campaigns you do but how good are the campaigns you do. No, but you were saying also something before now. AI usually gives this answer directly. How are you working in order to. Okay, I know that these topics could be used by AI craft veransa but I wanted to at least having a link inside pointing to my client website where the campaign is living. So this is coming for us. SEO would be information gain. So to find to create such a compelling content that can be replicated uh, as such in the same way by an AI. What is your process in order to. Okay, we need to up the game. How do you up the game?

Speaker B: There's a lot of different strategies. It depends on I guess it can depend on what the company does that you are representing or that you're brainstorming around. It can depend on if you have subject matter experts at that company who are credible and credentialed. That's key. They're not fake experts and can have some media training, can confidently speak on maybe a podcast, maybe to a journalist over the phone, over a zoom call, maybe go in person and have a meeting with a journalist and can talk about what they're an expert on in a way that's not salesy but in a way that is them being a resource to the journalists who are writing about the industry that they are experts on. So that's one way that I think subject matter experts and really prioritizing and taking advantage of their expertise and their knowledge bank and creating content with that. I think that's a uh, gold mine of opportunities that perhaps a lot of content marketers aren't taking advantage uh of at the moment.

Speaker A: I remember that the classic is where so called data driven content so retrieving a lot of data in order to then creating a piece uh, of content which narrates this data. I think it's great secondary strategy Sometimes we. I've seen so many also because I'm a judge for a content search award and Uh, I saw so many campaigns that I started to see getting bored of all these kind of campaigns just made of data, data, data, data. And sometimes I think that for instance, if you have the opportunity with your client and also with uh, developers and designers and so on, maybe a tool, creating your tool based on the things they sell, if they are E commerce or a real estate, creating better moves, creating things that are also going to serve better conversion. At the end of the day, that can be a good way to combine campaign with internal conversion rate. But I wanted to ask you something. One of the classic old critics of digital PR was maybe still is that you are creating a campaign. The campaign is ssx, but then you know, the campaign pass. In your opinion, and I'm going to cite another friend of ours, which is Ross Simmons. What is the best way to make the campaign that you push so much effort to create and to promote and to learn to last the most. So that is going to be somehow not, let's say not maybe nevergreen, but lasting more than the classic 15, 20 days of Byron effect.

Speaker B: I love Ross Simmons work. And yes, I, I think a lot of agencies will make that mistake. They'll invest so much time and money and effort into creating one report, and there's so much more value in that report than just pitching it to journalists who might want to talk about it or might want to report on the findings. With my clients personally, whenever we do invest that time into creating a report, especially if it has, if it's using and referencing proprietary like internal data, I always encourage them to repurpose that, uh, content. You can repurpose it by thinking about what are other topics that relate to this report that we can perhaps fashion or repurpose for a bylines contributor column in a read publication. So, search engine journal, let's stick with search, I guess in this instance. And search engine lands, maybe the Moz blog. Like what, what other stories can you tell with that data that you can then pitch to write about at, uh, these publications? Because then you're repurposing all of this work and time and money and effort that you put into creating this big report and you're continuing to talk about it. I mean this byline, this might go live like three months after the report has published. As long as the uh, information is still fresh and it makes sense to write about still. That's a great way to repurpose report content. Another way is of course basically the same strategy, but a different format. Thinking about what podcast topics you can pitch if you Have a qualified search subject matter expert at your company who is confident enough to speak on a podcast about this topic. What podcast topics can you pitch to relevant podcast hosts who want to hear more about this topic from a qualified expert who can share more insights and go deeper into that specific topic? So, yeah, byline, contributor, column opportunities, Podcasting, sometimes. There's also a lot of newsletters out there, and people who run and write these newsletters are just so steeped and devoted and knowledgeable in the industry, and there are opportunities to perhaps partner with them. Um, sometimes they might, you know, it might be a sponsored fee, but I'm not against that. Like, I know I'm a pr and I do believe that, like earned media, I still rely on many earned media tactics. But I don't discount or overlook certain pay for play opportunities. Especially if it's a newsletter that's read by hundreds of thousands of people in that industry. I think it makes sense to pay the newsletter author whatever fees they might be asking sometimes to collaborate with them. And in that collaboration, you might be able to use the report data. Those are just tactics.

Speaker A: Yes, totally. Totally. And another great digital pr. And I know, sure, you know her, Lexi Mill, once she told me that the best strategy for a, uh, PR professional is to create bonds with each other in the sense not only having a sort of a contractual relation with them. So I prefer this content and I give you this content and you promote this content. Not, not just this kind of cold relation, but something deeper, uh, like really starting to know them to be between brackets, with many brackets, a friend for a journalist. So helping them with creating. Okay, you don't have to worry with, uh, the multimedia assets for this piece of content because it's here, it's prepared already. You have just to verify. And eventually she was saying, try the ones that you really care for to be your, in some cases for certain kind campaigns, um, to be your co author. So asking them for, I don't know, opinions about the topic and so on and so on and so on. So how much is important to create a strong relationship with a journalist for a digital pr, I think it's important.

Speaker B: But I also think that, uh, they're journalists right now, especially whether they're in house, whether they're freelance, whether they're running their own substack or newsletter. I think they're managing far more variables than we ever see. And the ones who build good PR relationships are the ones who respond even when they can't use you right now because they know the good ones come Back. So one of my favorite, I guess my motto when it comes to PR is just to be a, uh, a resource, be a helpful human. And a lot of times you can ask some journalists to be put on their source list and they might have a email whenever they're in need of a source. Whenever they're writing a story and need more data or information, they send out a email to their source list, their contacts and they ask, they say, here's what I'm working on, here's who I'm looking for, here's what I'm looking for. Pitch me. And one of my favorite things to do is. And it, it helps other PRs out as well and other people that I know and love is to, you know, be like, oh yeah, I actually know somebody who, who, let's just say, like, you know, let's. This is so random. But I know somebody who created an ultrasonic knife and they'll be a great source for this journalist. I have no clients myself in this space, but I know somebody who has his own data, who can confidently and passionately speak to the product and the topic. It's a no brainer. Just connect them with the journalist and they'll remember when you, as the PR introduces them, um, to somebody who is going to, you know, be a great source and likely contribute to the story that they're writing. And that just helps build that bank of trust over time. Might not give you immediate value for your clients or your job, but it builds that trust over time.

Speaker A: Yes, tonally. And in a recent podcast, because I forgot to tell in your introducing you that you also are a podcaster. And I really recommend everybody here to go to the website of uh, breed and see the podcasts are there and they are shorter than mine. So you, you don't have any excuse for not watching. In one of your episodes you were talking with, let's see if I pronounce it well, Sara Oshara, um, Siegel on Mission north and she was talking, let's say, summarize, synthesizing of rejection as redirection. How can you transform an initial rejection as, as in, in a whip when it comes to digital pr?

Speaker B: Oh, I love talking to Shara. Yes, I interviewed her for Digital pr, Explained that's my podcast, gosh, many months ago. But her episode continues to be one of the most popular ones because it's an evergreen topic and there's so many valuable learning lessons that PRs can take away from her conversation and her incredible insights. And a lot of it was around how a rejected source Pitch is not a failed pitch. A, uh, freelancer or journalist, reporter, whatever you might title them, whoever's writing this piece, whoever you pitch, they might be developing that story for months. And some of them do store away or organize your client's information for a future story or maybe like months from then, maybe it's not a good fit for the story they're writing at, uh, they're writing at the moment. But months from that pitch, they'll remember or they'll maybe they might not even remember that you sent this pitch. They might go into their inbox and look up certain keywords, right? SEOs know keywords super well and could, you know, use them in the emailing. Use them in your pitching because a journalist will go back to their inbox, put in these keywords and review the old pitches that they received. If they are in need of a new source who's credible and has the expertise. And they're likely to pull up that email you sent months ago and be like, oh, yes, this person is a great fit for the story that I'm working on. And you'll get an email out of the blue and you might have totally forgotten that you ever sent the pitch. But it happens all the time. And none of that honestly has anything to do with the quality of your pitch per se. What I've learned from interviewing journalists on my show is that they're just really hard to get. They're usually the ones doing the interviewing and like I said before, they're managing far more variables than we ever see. So, yeah, rejection, even if you're hearing crickets, don't give up and keep your head up because it is likely if you're sending, sending the pitch to the journalist and they actually cover the gist of what you're pitching, like that is actually their beat. Relevance is key. They are more likely to come back to you in the future and respond to your email months later.

Speaker A: And um, if you had to mentor a new person, that is, who wants to be a digital pr? Tara, the first thing you say to this person in order to somehow insert this idea about how to do digital pr, how to be a digital PR person from the very beginning, gosh, oh

Speaker B: my goodness, that's such a good question right now. Personally, I'm really leaning into encouraging others to go to in person events. They don't have to be big conferences, just look locally here in Seattle, I try to attend once a month. It's the Digital Marketing Collective and it used to be called SEO Beers. It's run by Sean Huber and it's a great way to not only like of course network and meet other people in the industry, but to also just bounce around ideas and have more conversations about what's working and candid conversations too. What's working, what's not working, what are you excited about, what are you not so excited about? While also like a lot of our, our chats might not even be around SEO or marketing or pr. Like we're just there to connect as human beings first and foremost. But those conversations, those local meetups, that's where the moments happen. That's where the magic moments happen in my opinion. They're again like trust building environments. So right now I'm um, I'm encouraging people to get out more and that includes myself. I can be a hero.

Speaker A: So yes, and I mean for m me. Not that I'm the most let's say extrovert person in the world, but I immediately knew that I mean I live in a wonderful city which is Valencia visited par me in Valencia is not really in the center of the world for, for the digital landscape. So I always forced me and started to first tending and then pitching and then creating connection. And even if in my case in real life the moments are not as many as love to have at least be always present with in the private group for instance like Facebook group, a slack group. All these things. And something that I learned from the early days when I was a uh, most global associate is also because it was my committee, it was comment. If someone is saying something interesting, comment on his post, comment on his LinkedIn post or Twitter post or whatsoever and start conversation. Don't be afraid to start a conversation. Even if the things that you are going to tell and happened to me many times in the past are totally bollocks and so stupid. Do it because if not you are not going to take the cost. The behavior to create, to create a behavior to talk bothers and to exchange it. Yes. And usually people are not so bad that sometimes the events of life and what's happening, what's becoming viral on on social can make us believe usually especially in our industry people are quite gentle and I mean they tell you that you say this stupid thing but sometimes the ones that are really aggressive telling you these are uh, a very small minority. So I would suggest the same go out, try to force yourself creating habit to interact with others and you uh, know, citing again our friend Rand serendipity. Serendipity is so important in our job.

Speaker B: It's so true. And even you mentioned Facebook groups like Women in Tech SEO, they have wonderful Slack community. And so many people there, myself included, spent years interacting on Slack and with the community there before ever going to a conference. And it's such a great way to dip your toes into networking and you know, make connections but with people before meeting them in real life. That way when you get to the conference you're like, oh yeah, I know so and so. And you meet them in real life and it's like you've known them forever. So if you are introverted and and quite shy like myself, Slack groups are such a great way to not only like in Women in Tech SEO is not only a great way to learn from others if you don't have the opportunity or the ability to travel or maybe leave your house, but it's also a great opportunity to build your personal brand as well if you really want to become known as an expert on whatever topic interests you and whatever topic you study.

Speaker A: Yes, totally, totally. And let me go through my notes on your LinkedIn. You share, but you have a specific. I don't remember if it's a folder on your PC or a uh, physical folder. I don't know where you put the things that you have done and the successes that you have achieved and what is important for you, this folder. And when you open this folder, what is the campaign that you remember with more pleasure?

Speaker B: Oh, that's such a hard question. My folder goes back decade, like probably 11 years. So it's so hard to choose my favorite email or my favorite win. I'll just say, like, I think there's so much power in reminding ourselves of the little wins, especially in today's digital marketing world, like where an algorithm, um, or some Google change or change the way we search sounds so scary and could be so detrimental sometimes to our future or might seem. Seem that way in the moment. Right. I think it's so important to just remind yourself of those small wins that made you proud because they build up over time and it's so. It's so easy to forget about those wins, especially if you're like someone like myself who can be pretty negative. I think that's one reason why I have this folder. I like to call it the Humble Brag folder or the Little Wins folder. And, and when it comes to campaigns that I'm proud of, I will say the one that I'm talking about a lot recently and it's fresh on my mind. I'll tell a little bit about that story. I keep it anonymized right now, but Basically it was for a client of mine in the freight factoring space. And it's a regulatory data campaign that we worked on together. There was in, uh, their industry and we're seeing a whole forum with over 8,000 public comments in the Federal Register. And the client I worked with, they used AI sentiment analysis to find the actual story inside all of this data. And it wasn't to write the pit, it was more to read the room and the, uh, gather the feelings and again, the sentiments of that industry. And I ended up, we created a whole article that lives on their blog about how the industry felt about this ruling. And I found an executive editor at a trade publication that covered specifically freight trucking news. And he had been talking about this ruling. He actually had an article that interpreted the feelings of the industry differently. So I went to him with this data saying, like, here's, you know, an unbiased look based off of, um, an AI sentiment analysis of this forum saying how the industry's feeling. And we bucketed the feelings and broke it down further. And the executive editor, he actually did respond to me and I'm going to be talking to him for my podcast as well. I never hear from editors usually, unless maybe they've published it and then I thank them for writing about it, but typically they'll just write about it and they won't let me know. This editor, he responded and he was like, I usually don't like AI stuff, but that was a really good use of it. And that's the proudest I've been of a campaign. Because the strategic hurdle wasn't the pitch. It was just convincing ourselves that the data was the story before we ever talked to a journalist.

Speaker A: That's cool.

Speaker B: I love how it all came together.

Speaker A: So that's cool. That's, that's cool story. And yes, I think that again, it's also a perfect conclusion for our talk. But before concluding our talk, let's talk a little bit about talking of talking about digital PR and so on. I'm, um, a curious person. This is somehow a classic question that I, I usually do face to face. But for instance, when I was young, maybe because I'm that generation that grew up with Indiana Jones, I wanted to be an archaeologist. Then I understood that maybe wasn't really my, my kind of work. Not because I don't like story, but because Drake Ancient Cricket didn't like. But in your case, before entering the digital pr, when you were a younger student, what was your idea, uh, of I want to really do this kind of job? Maybe you're going to tell me. I want to be an astronaut. It would be really fun. But what was the kind of job that did you dream about when you were younger?

Speaker B: When I was really little, I. I love musicals, so something in musical theater would have been an absolute dream. But I'm shy. Then I. I actually studied journalism and went to school with the idea of becoming an investigative journalist. Or perhaps, you know, journalist of some sorts. Maybe a meteorologist even. I really fascinated by weather trends and lived in Florida. Loved the idea of studying a hurricane.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Somehow I need.

Speaker B: Yeah. So now I'm here though, when I guess sometimes journalists call it going to the dark side. Bringing it back to Star Wars. I thought I'd become a journalist, but I ended up becoming a pr.

Speaker A: But maybe the fact that you study to be a journalist, this is.

Speaker B: I think it helps things.

Speaker A: But yes, this is what makes you. Helps you one of the many things, but helps you win the journalist station.

Speaker B: I think it helps.

Speaker A: And of all the classic journalist which was your. Your me that your role model. I want. I really love this journalist. I would. If I have to be a journalist, I would really love to be like this. My voice, men and women.

Speaker B: I've always loved Katie Couric. A lot of people know her. And then back in my hometown, I really respected a journalist. I think she recently retired, but her name was Laurel Sowers. I loved watching her on the local news station. So, um, those are two of my favorites.

Speaker A: Yes, the local news which are the classic somehow forgotten people. And sometimes I remember when sincerely I never did digital PR seriously. But in the very beginning when as an SEO I was doing everything. I remember that I was always looking at local news as for inspiration because sometimes the kind of. I mean nationwide newspaper or magazine usually pass put very, very little. Just a, uh, footnote news for this kind of news that actually are the ones that are really meaty. But can you open an idea? And usually this kind that you can only find in written by some amazing local journalists who already got deep into specific weird case. I remember one. Um, it was a very weird campaign, but it was cool to do it because it was a client of mine who sells, you know, the light in the. In the taxi in the airport, you know, all the lights is the person the uh, company who manufacture this kind of light for the airports. So I remember that I. In one of local news here in Bali, Silver was news about. I don't know how to call it but ufo once they were called a ufo. So I started Saying okay, that would be a good idea. I mean airport. Very random idea. M so I started to investigate probably because this journalist was really into this kind of topic. I discovered another article where it was discussing all the patents that the US government created for creating Ovni's. So okay, this is fantastic. So I created from this I start, I talked to him, I substantially asked him to write it for me in a more extended way. I work it with a designer in order to make all recover all the original draws and so on and so on and so on. It was really fun and obviously it had quite a success. It was for an Italian company so it added quite a success also because as the first time where we are going to site brand it's is not really to target everybody but target the ones that are really into this kind of stuff as your first audience in order to make them make this story go viral so that it's going to pick up somehow. That's why I always like this kind of local journalists and um, sometimes they really are the forgotten heroes. Yeah, underpaid heroes too.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's so true. I mean and they're working crazy hours, so many downsides but they do such an important job. And isn't it funny how just like the foundation of you know, good storytelling is really what you're talking about as well and how as long as you're doing that in marketing like you're doing a good job if you can really be a storyteller.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. That's why I really like when I have clients and I know that they need to improve the visibility, the recognition of the brands. I like to have so many friends in the digital PR industry and eventually recommending so. So to do a good job. I always have for myself a sort of executive production role. But it's a great way I I know that I couldn't do it so. Because it's a job that needs full attention, full concentration all the hours of the day. And that's why always go with people like you or boutique agency or big agency if you are of the kind that kind of enterprise company that are really able to do and know how to do that kind of thing before concluding and say hello to you behind you on the crowd. I saw your cat.

Speaker B: He's gone now but yeah, he's my dog Corbin. He's a 11 month old half border collie, half cattle dog, half Australian shepherd, half Boston terrier. Absolute mutt who's insane but I love him to death.

Speaker A: Cool. He was really gentle. Didn't interrupt us.

Speaker B: Yeah, he's. We had a long walk this morning, so he's good.

Speaker A: Okay. So Brit, it was a pleasure to spend this hour with you. I really hope that maybe in the future to have a second conversation maybe, I don't know, inventing some um, small panel of digital PR person to discuss about ideas, brainstorming and all of this and see a good discussion, constructive discussion about this topic. Thank you again a lot and I wish you all a wonderful day.

Speaker B: Thanks Gianluca. You too. It's an honor. Thank you so much.

Speaker A: And um, thank you to all of you for having the passion to stan me and the good idea of listening to Brit until the end of a episode. Remember, I hate this part. But remember, subscribe to the channel so we can make it bigger and grow and ring on the bell to be notified about new episode coming. Thank you and bye bye.