Part 2 will be posted tomorrow!
Today is part one of my interview with an expert in PR, Steve Turner! Tune in tomorrow for part 2!
About Steve:
Steve Turner Bio Steve Turner is the author of PR THAT WORKS-Real Strategies. Real Campaigns. Real Results and is the co-owner and principal of Solomon Turner PR in Chesterfield (St. Louis) MO. A firm he and his partner, Shelly Solomon, founded in 1990. An award-winning agency, Solomon Turner has been named one of the top PR firms in St. Louis for 17 consecutive years by Small Business Monthly. Mr. Turner has helped corporations, organizations and nonprofits build their brands and reach their marketing objectives for over three decades. Mr. Turner has worked with such brands as Anthony (Tony) Robbins Seminars, Brian Tracy, Coldwell Banker, Northwestern Mutual, and SSM Healthcare. A frequent media contributor, he has been quoted and/or featured in the Associated Press, Forbes, Everything PR, Industry Leaders, Parade, PR Week, Small Business Monthly, and The Wall Street Journal. He was named a Rockstar Publicist by Authority/Medium magazine and has appeared on TV, radio and podcasts. Steve has spoken to several business groups and organizations on public relations and marketing and is a highly-regarded speaker. His blog, PR THAT WORKS, has generated over 60,000 views and continues to grow. He also founded The PR Channel on YouTube to serve as an education tool for young PR professionals, business owners and students. Steve is a graduate of the University of Missouri-Columbia, where he received a Bachelor of Journalism degree. He has written hundreds of columns for blogs, PR journals, and books. His book, PR THAT WORKS, is available in paperback and kindle format on Amazon and other booksellers. For more visit https://solomonturner.com or https://getprthatworks.com.
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TRANSCRIPT:
Sean Jordan (00:07)
Well, hey everyone. Welcome to the Marketing Gateway. I’m Sean in St. Louis. And today we have yet another incredible interview on. Always excited to have folks on that know what they’re talking about. And our guest today knows his stuff. You’re gonna hear it. You’re gonna learn so much because he has literally written the book on PR.
And I mean literally because you’re going to see him hold it up. ⁓ His book is called PR That Works Real Strategies, Real Campaigns, Real Results. And I’ll tell you, I’ve read a little bit of it and it’s good. It’s good stuff. It’s got lots of case studies, lots of practical knowledge. And I actually am excited to read the rest. And I’m also excited to share this interview with you because you’re going to get to learn a lot more from Steve Turner. Now, Steve is also ⁓ at the firm.
Solomon Turner and they are a PR agency here in st. Louis and they are actually one of the top PR agencies in the area So he he has gotten to do so many cool things that he’s going to talk about in the interview But one of the things that he’s gotten to do is connect ⁓ all kinds of local organizations with media and help them to build their brands and help them to find ways to increase their presence in the market and they have partnered with
people like the Tony Robbins seminars with Brian Tracy, Coldwell Banker, Northwestern Mutual, SSM Health, all kinds of other folks. And they’ve gotten placement in like the Associated Press and Forbes and everything PR and industry leaders and Parade Magazine, PR Week, Small Business Monthly, The Wall Street Journal, so many other publications as well. So this is a guy who is going to tell you.
how to do PR right. He’s gonna talk about the positive sides about it. He’s gonna talk about how it can be used in crisis communication. He’s gonna talk about how it can be integrated into marketing. You’re gonna love it. Here we go.
Sean Jordan (02:01)
Hey everybody, it’s Sean and St. Louis on the Marketing Gateway and I have with me today a gentleman you’re really going to enjoy. His name is Steve Turner and Steve, welcome to the Marketing Gateway.
Steve Turner (02:12)
Thank you, excited to be here.
Sean Jordan (02:14)
And I’m gonna just warn everybody now that Steve has an incredible voice for radio because he’s done some sports announcing and things like that. So you’re gonna love listening to him. But Steve, let me begin by asking you to tell me something surprising that I don’t know. It could be anything that you’d like to share.
Steve Turner (02:30)
Yeah, I was a sports announcer and followed that career path for a long time after I graduated from Mizzou’s journalism school. And I actually broadcast minor league baseball games. And one spring I did the Kansas City Royals exhibition games down in Fort Myers, Florida. So a lot of people don’t know that they like the voice, but they don’t understand, you know, the background and all that kind of thing and what I had done. So that was fun.
Sean Jordan (02:59)
That is so cool.
mean, I’ve never been the kind of person that thought I would be a good sports announcer, but I appreciate the people that can do it because it does take some ability and some focus to be able to both enjoy what you’re watching, but also to be able to comment on it in a sensible way. So it’s a skill for sure. ⁓
Steve Turner (03:20)
Yeah. And,
⁓ yeah, I also, ⁓ more on that point. When I came back to St. Louis in the eighties, a friend of mine hooked me up and connected me with different kinds of radio sports networks. So I was able to do some freelance and I covered the Cardinals in 85 and 87 when they had some really great teams. So that was a lot of fun. And I think I was at the last home game of the St. Louis football card.
That’s going way back, but yeah, before they moved to Arizona, I think I covered that game. So yeah, it was interesting. So that was kind of my sports career and then like the big idea better and got into PR and the rest is history as they say.
Sean Jordan (03:53)
Wow.
Yeah.
Yeah, well, and gosh, being connected to the Cardinals in any way makes you St. Louis royalty, right?
Steve Turner (04:17)
Yeah, it was fun. mean, you go down to the locker room and you get interviews after the games and you talk to everybody and the players and the Ozzie Smiths and the Jack Clarks and everybody in that era. It was a lot of fun. Those teams were great and a really exciting brand of baseball.
Sean Jordan (04:35)
That’s so cool. Well, you know, in this series on the Marketing Gateway, we’re focused on the St. Louis area. So tell me a little bit about how you came to live and work in St. Louis.
Steve Turner (04:45)
So I grew up here and then went to Mizzou and I wanted to pursue that career in journalism and radio sports and news. And I ended up going, my first job was part-time in Belleville, working for a radio station there. Then my first full-time job was in a small town called Rome, Georgia. So kind of cut my teeth there doing sports and news and things like that.
And then I ⁓ went to Nebraska for a while, ⁓ California, Memphis, eventually ended up in Florida in Fort Myers. And then when that petered out, I just said, I’m just going to move back to St. Louis. My friends were here. I grew up here at such a great time. Every time I would come home and see everybody, said, you know, why not? You know, this is home. So I moved here and haven’t regretted it. You know, got married here.
raised a family and so forth. it’s been a lot of fun. It’s a great town and ⁓ you know, you see a lot of sports athletes that are on the Cardinals or the Blues or a professional team. decide, well, I’m just going to stay in St. Louis because of the affordability of living and there’s so many convenient things and we have a great variety of restaurants.
And there’s all kinds of things to do that people don’t even realize until you live here and you start going to some of these festivals and drive around and outdoor restaurants. mean, you can really have a good time here. It’s kind of lost in the coverage of some of the bigger things that go on that seem to get national publicity. no, St. Louis again, bad news. But there’s so many good things here.
Sean Jordan (06:28)
Yeah.
I tell people all the time, you might have seen parts of St. Louis on the news, those are usually like one block. And the rest of us were all sitting at home going, what’s going on? It wasn’t anywhere near us. So yeah, that’s the way it is. And ⁓ many of us that lived around this area for a long time have these things that we wish other people knew about the city. Is there anything you wish other people knew about St. Louis?
Steve Turner (06:44)
Ha
Yeah, exactly.
Well, you know, ⁓ maybe overseeing when I think about it, we have great Italian food, obviously, with the Hill and, know, all those restaurants have spun out to the county and different places around town. You can get great Italian food now all over the place in the St. Louis Metro. It’s terrific. ⁓ Plus we have a lot of international cuisine now that is kind of sprouted up here in the last five years. So that’s something else. when people
Sean Jordan (07:07)
Mm-hmm.
Steve Turner (07:28)
Don’t think about St. Louis. And we have a great art museum. We have the Fox, the Muny for outdoor theater, you know, the symphony. mean, there’s plenty to do if you want to do it. It’s just, ⁓ you know, get off the couch and go out and see some things. ⁓ Yeah, I mean.
Sean Jordan (07:46)
I’ll be at the Fox next week, in fact, going to see Phantom of the Opera.
Steve Turner (07:49)
No, that’s awesome. Yeah, we’ve seen
that. That’s a great one. Yeah, I mean, you can sit here and, you know, and punch holes in the map and say, well, St. Louis is this and that. And it’s not New York or it’s not LA. Yeah, it isn’t. But we don’t have those problems either. You don’t have to sit in traffic for two hours just to drive two miles to the drugstore like you do in LA or, you know, New York. The prices are outrageous for about everything. And ⁓
you know, and it’s hard to get around there. So it’s just a different lifestyle. I think it’s a better lifestyle to raise a family. And especially if you’re not ultra wealthy, this is a very nice town and you can make friends and people are neighborly. Everybody kind of looks out for each other. It’s just a really nice, big Midwestern town and people really enjoy, I think, living here and raising a family here.
Sean Jordan (08:46)
Here, here, mean, you my family, we live in the Metro East, but, you know, we love taking advantage of all the things we can do here in St. Louis. And, you know, my kids are always begging me to go to the zoo or the city museum or the magic house or, all these other places that we have. So it’s fantastic. Well, let’s let’s talk a little bit now about what you’ve done in your career, which is after you got done with the sports broadcasting, you moved into PR. And I love the topic of PR. ⁓ Something that I mentioned to you, but I haven’t mentioned to our audiences.
one of my earliest jobs was working in PR. I worked in PR and marketing for a comic book company and I had to write press releases and I had to line up media appearances and all that other stuff for a very small startup kind of company. And I was doing it from my college apartment at the time, but you know, I did do it and it was fun and interesting. And I always wished I could make a career out of it. It just didn’t work out for me. But I’m so envious of those of you that get to do it, you know, day to day. But let’s talk a little bit about
Steve Turner (09:19)
okay.
Sean Jordan (09:45)
what I think is probably the elephant in the room, that there’s this idea that advertising and PR are the same thing. So what is the difference between them?
Steve Turner (09:54)
Yeah, there’s a big difference. Advertising is control. It’s all about message control. So with advertising, if you’re going to buy ads, you can choose what medium you’re going to use TV, radio, print, social media, you could buy ads on Facebook and you can schedule those when you want those to run. So you’re in full control. Plus you control the message. You say, okay, we’re going to have grandfather clocks at 20 % off this week. And you put a nice ad together and you
display that in print or on TV or social media, but you control all that kind of stuff and how much money you’re going to spend, et cetera. PR is totally different. The control lies with the editor of the newspaper or magazine or the producer of the TV news show. So they are in control and your message, although given to them the way you want it to be read and voiced, may not be exactly the same when it does turn out.
And you have no control over the length of the article. So if you get interviewed by, say the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and you think, this is great. This is going to be a long feature. And it’s, well, I was anticipating like 12, 15 paragraphs and it’s five. I mean, it’s still good, but it’s just not quite what you thought. And then they sometimes they’ll say, well, this is great. I also want to interview other people in your area to get the full trend story of what’s going on. So.
Instead of you being the ⁓ person in the article, there may be four five others that are quoted. So you don’t kind of have that domination like you would with ads. So the control element is the thing here that’s totally different with PR as opposed to advertising. So you leave the PR, you do the best job you can to work with the journalist to get your message out to say, you know, these are our assets. What can I give you?
Bios, photos of the CEO, videos if you have them to make their job easier. But at that point, they have to put it together and hopefully it’ll convey what you want to convey and do it in the right way. But you don’t have that control at the end. And, you know, maybe 70 % of what you were trying to get out there actually shows up on TV or in print, which is great.
Maybe you dominate it where they don’t interview anybody else, which is terrific. You’re the sole voice or they put other people on and you’re just one of many, but you have no control over the final product. So that’s really the big difference.
Sean Jordan (12:33)
Yeah, and I think when you’re talking to the media too, you one of the lessons I learned is that, because I started out as a journalist, I went to journalism school originally, dropped out, managed to McDonald’s for a while, that’s a story I love to tell, but ⁓ I realized at that time, it was the late 90s, and I just realized that journalism was changing its profession because I could see what the internet was doing. the old school, we’re going to get you in the St. Louis Post dispatch and they’re going to contribute so many column inches to this story.
and you’re gonna get it bumped or cut down if there’s something more important because this is a fluff piece, right? Like that kind of thinking isn’t as present as it used to be because we don’t have the physical papers anymore, but ⁓ papers and magazines at the time, were very, very controlling about what they would put in and they would decide whether they thought it was important or not. Nowadays, ⁓ you can get much longer things done online because there’s infinite amount of space. The problem is is that people don’t wanna read that kind of content.
You have to, unless it’s a specialized publication that’s like an enthusiast publication or something that’s built for readers, you have to distill it down just because they won’t talk to you if you have a long story to tell. And so I found that PR, when I talk to folks that are in PR, they often have to figure out how not just to make sound bites, but how to make things that appeal to social media or that appeal to YouTube or appeal to other forms that we use online just because people’s attention is so short.
Steve Turner (13:59)
Yeah, exactly. So that’s, that’s another challenge of what we do in PR. So how do you boil down your message in the sound bites, ⁓ you know, 30 seconds, a minute photos, short reels for Instagram, Facebook, even tick tock. So it just depends on where your audience is, but you do have to manufacture assets that fit the target audience you’re going after. And if it’s an older, sophisticated audience.
a longer form print or digital article may be really great. But if it’s a very young audience that’s, you know, into consumer goods and they’re looking at 50 different things, it has to be short, grab their attention and move on to the next thing. But you’ve got to make that impact in a lot less time. And that’s where the whole ⁓ nuance of this profession comes in. The ability to scale down that message into a few words, a sentence or two.
some imagery that makes sense and get people, look at that. That’s really cool. Yeah, I need to click on that website and see what it’s all about. That’s the goal with the crowd. So you have to figure that out and what are the best approaches to get them to do that.
Sean Jordan (15:14)
Well, and I know, Steve, you have literally written the book on PR that works because that’s the title of your book that you have. And yeah, there it is right there, PR that works. So ⁓ you’ve literally written the book on this. So I want to ask this question because I’m sure you’ll have a great answer for it. What are some ideal scenarios for using PR?
Steve Turner (15:21)
Just happened to have a copy.
Well, I think any company that wants to build their brand and in a way that gets them to connect better with their customers and stakeholders is ideal for a PR campaign. Or they have a specific objective they want to accomplish and it’s something finite that they can measure with sales or revenue with the help of the sales department and marketing people. So they have some tangible evidence that this is working.
So those are all great things to start from. I don’t like, and we’ve done this, it just depends on the owner of the company. Sometimes I just want to do media relations to get out there, see their name in print and everything, which is fine. I mean, there’s a place for that, but that’s not the end goal. That’s not going to move the needle probably for you. mean, people are going to say, was great. we saw you in the paper, blah, blah.
But what happens at the end of the day is it really doesn’t impact sales or revenue. So what was the point? What was the objective? And if you can’t define that, you really need to think hard about why you want to do a campaign in the first place. But ideally for companies that really want to take a strategical and tactical approach to building their brand PR is great for that. And it’s a long term game, but it enables you to connect.
with your customers and audience that advertising just can’t do. I mean, you you can run in a Facebook ad and find a self product, click here and buy a battery pack for five bucks or whatever. But you know, the story behind the company takes it to a different level. Who’s the CEO? Why’d they start? What’s their history? Are they on their second generation? Maybe they’re on their third generation of ownership. What’s their background?
What do they bring to the table that’s different? What’s their competitive advantage? What power they different than every other battery company that’s out there. So all these things can be done with PR that you can’t do with advertising. I mean, yeah, you could buy big ads and publications and stuff, but people don’t pay attention to a lot of that. Especially when it says advertising at the top of the page, it’s like, ⁓ so, ⁓ you know, if you could get the right editorial and the right
publications that reach the audience you’re trying to reach, then PR is ideal for that. And most companies should be doing it, even on a very small scale, if they have a budget to do so.
Sean Jordan (18:09)
And I tell folks all the time, there is a credibility gap. If you have more control, you have less credibility because people recognize that it’s advertising. But if you put yourself out there in the world and you let somebody else who’s independent talk about you, people actually think better of you. Even if what’s said about you can be critical in places. And that’s why movie reviews work. That’s why product reviews work. That’s why ⁓ talking about companies that have both good and bad sides to them.
can still see a bump in interest in those companies because people know more about them and they want to try out the things that do work. So by putting yourself in the hands of others, it seems very devastating at times, but it actually can benefit you quite a bit because the audience will be a lot more receptive to it.
Steve Turner (18:55)
Yeah. So ⁓ PR is phenomenal for sales tools. So you have this arsenal of different things you can give to a sales team. So as they go out and they make their pitches and they try to open up new markets and new customers, Hey, here’s an article. It’s not just us saying we’re great. Here’s the wall street journal saying we’re great. The St. Louis post dispatch. Here’s a TV feature that we were, you know, the centerpiece of, you know,
So, you you start getting these things. There’s a digital article where somebody said, we’re great. So all of sudden you’ve got like 10 things and you can send those out to prospects. And these are phenomenal sales tools that maybe competition doesn’t have and really elevate you with somebody that’s a buyer. So it’s like, well, who are these guys? ⁓ wow. Look at all this stuff. This is amazing. Look at the credibility they have because of Wall Street Journal, the Post Dispatch, the Business Journal.
All these people wrote about them one form or another. It raises you above the above the average company that’s trying to do the same thing you are and gives you a lot more credibility. And I think it’s exciting. I think there’s a level of excitement when people see this stuff. And it’s not only with customers, but it’s also internally. Things are going on inside the company. And I think employees see this and it gets them excited. And it also helps with recruiting.
If you think about it, would you rather work for a company that’s out there all the time in the media doing great stuff, exciting events, getting covered by TV and in print and things like that, or work for a company that has absolutely no brand awareness at all? So, you know, the top recruits are going to go after the top companies. They’re going to send their resumes there first before they kind of fizzle down to, you know, the lower end.
Well, they’re kind of in the beverage business, but they’re not Coke. They’re not Pepsi. You know, they’re not this or not that. ⁓ so, you know, if I could just get in with somebody, you know, Joe’s Cola and Paducah, you know, that may be a start, but yeah, it’s not where I want to be. I really want to be with one of the big guys, you know, as opposed to somebody you’ve never heard of.
Sean Jordan (21:09)
It’s so true. It’s so true. if you’re in the news, you’re newsworthy, right? So people just automatically their ears perk up because, well, I’ve heard about them. They must be doing something good, right? So unless you’re the villain of the week because you’ve been mass layoffs or had a crisis or something, in which case PR is also very useful for helping you out of a jam. And we’ll get to that in a minute. But let me ask some situations where PR is not the right tool, but people are still trying to use it anyway.
Steve Turner (21:35)
Yeah, I think people that say, we’re going to do PR and immediately increase sales. That’s the wrong mindset. As I kind of mentioned, that’s not what it’s for. It’s a long term game where the credibility and the relationship building is at the top. it’s, I mean, there are instances where you can increase sales.
and we’ve seen it where articles have come out and all of a sudden you get a call out of the blue from somebody, a big company that, you know, wouldn’t have known about you otherwise. And they saw an article and say, Hey, this is real interesting. What do you guys do? You know, how do you do it? How could you help me? And we’ve seen that. And some of those results in really big time relationships, but that’s not what the idea of PR is all about. So.
For people that think, we’re going to get an article in the paper and that’s going to increase sales 20%, that’s not the game. But the game is to build that credibility that enables you to get those sales and work with the salespeople and again, create that arsenal for long-term gain. So if you understand that going in, that we need advertising, but we need PR, that’s when PR is going to be effective for you and work. A lot of companies, interesting, they’ll have a
growth plan, for example, everybody does, you where do you want to be in five years, two years next year? You know, what’s our long-term growth? How are we going to get there? Who are we going to have to get on the bus to make that happen? And these kinds of situations. Well, what about public relations? Where does that fit in? And yeah, in order for us to grow 50 % in the next couple of years, people, more people need to know about, about us and who we are what we do. All right. So you could buy the ads to sell your product.
But how are you going to do that? Well, we need the PR to help with that. So if you go in with that mindset, then you can apply the public relations activities to meet that. And OK, what strategies do we use with PR to get there? What tactics? Do we do special events? Do we do news conferences, depending on what it is? Do we go out to the public in different ways? ⁓ Do we do brochures? mean, newsletters.
I mean, there’s a myriad of things besides just media relations that can work for you to build your brand and build awareness and get you to your goal. So at the end of the day, if you look at the ROI, if I’m a CEO or a CFO and I’m like, well, we spent a hundred thousand on advertising and twenty thousand on PR, but look at the growth. So this is a great marriage. We’ve got the money going in the right direction. So let’s keep doing this.
Or maybe you say, maybe we could do a little bit more on the PR end. We’re getting some good response. So maybe the budgets are a tweaked or you’re putting more money into PR and less into advertising. So it’s just, you know, it’s how you measure it, what your goals are and where you want to be. But if you approach it with that mindset, your results are going to be better and you’re going to be happier at the end of the day.
Sean Jordan (24:45)
So it seems like some of the mid-sized companies that I’ve worked with, when they’re thinking about PR, they’re often thinking about it in the negative sense of, ⁓ we messed up and we need to rehab our image in some way. And so we’ve got to call in the PR specialist to help us to deal with the media fallout, or we’ve got to deal with the problems that have been caused so we can try to regain our footing. So PR is kind of thought of as a fixer for these problems as opposed to something that’s more the positive benefits that you’ve been talking about.
So what would you say to companies that are thinking about PR that way?
Steve Turner (25:17)
Well, I would say a couple things. First of all, let’s talk about the immediate situation. If are you really having a crisis? Now, just having a few sentences in the newspaper on page 40, where they say, something happened that, know, Miles laboratories and, you know, people are upset about it because of this. I mean, is that a crisis? You know, in this attention span?
that we’re dealing with in this media frenzy for, you know, really top line news that, you know, people look at for a day and then it goes away. Are people really going to even care about that kind of stuff? So you have to consider, is it really a crisis? It can be. I mean, if it’s a major fire, yeah, we’ve got an issue. Somebody obviously gets killed, you know, for some reason, you know, something happens as an explosion. Yeah, I mean, that’s a crisis.
And a lot of things can develop because there’s somebody that works there that gets on social media and starts talking about, all these negative things are happening at the company. my gosh, this is the worst. They’re not really a whistleblower per se, but they’re on social media squawking away. Well, then their friends start squawking away about it. And then somebody in the media will read it. And all of sudden you’ve got a TV crew there. Well, if it’s really bad, all of sudden the local people start doing stuff.
And then the national trucks start showing up with reporters and it’s like you want to avoid that situation at all costs. So, you know, it varies. think it’s wise to have a crisis communications program in place. So, you know, in case there is something, if you have a big plant and there’s an explosion or a fire or something goes wrong, you know who the spokesperson is going to be.
You know, where you’re going to funnel the media so they’re not near the plant. You’re going to have a staging area. I mean, you’ve got to have all these things thought out in advance. So it’s not like a feeding frenzy. Otherwise, you’ll just have people from the media just trying to jam as close to the building as they can get. They might even get there before the police do. And that can be a real nightmare. I mean, that would be a real crisis from a PR standpoint. So ⁓
I would say just kind of see what it is. mean, I think a lot of people think a crisis is a bigger deal than it is. You know, what you think is a crisis may not be a crisis at all. So you just kind of have to see how it plays out and how the media comes out. I had a client call me ⁓ about a situation with a problem with some kind of a sewer pipe.
And it was out of the metro area. was like on the outskirts. And they said, my gosh, you know, this is horrible. The water’s leaking. Traffic’s backed up. I think we’re to blame for this. I don’t know what what’s going to happen. And I, you know, we were talking about it. And after a while, he called back. says, well, I don’t know if it’s that big of a deal. And then the company they were working for actually decided that they were they’re a big company. So they just said they were going to take control of the whole thing.
Well, and I said, you know what, where you’re located, it’s very difficult to get a TV crew out there. mean, that’s, you know, an hour from downtown hour. I mean, in an hour back, I mean, unless it’s somebody got shot or something, they’re not going to cover that in this day and age with a very small newsroom, limited reporters, limited camera crews. You’re not going to get somebody out unless it’s a really big, big deal. So, uh, yeah, it went away. I don’t think there was any mention of it at all anywhere.
And it turned out not to be a crisis at all. But I mean, people panic and you never know. But you have to think these things through. And the worst thing you can do is make it a bigger deal than it is and start issuing letters, you know, to the producers of the TV stations. ⁓ you know, last week, you know, we had this explosion or this fire and, you know, nobody even knew about it except the people that worked there, a few.
Sean Jordan (29:30)
Ha
Steve Turner (29:33)
And you start sending out letters and apologizing. And I’m like, no, no, no. Don’t make a mountain out of a molehill. You don’t need that. So yeah, you really have to analyze the situation and determine if it’s a crisis. But if you do have the kind of facility, a large plant or a business with a lot of employees, you do need to have some kind of a crisis plan in place.
just in case and keep it handy, just don’t bury it in the back in the library somewhere. You want to have it close in case something does happen. And you can say, okay, know, Bill, you’re going to take charge of this. You’re our best spokesperson. You’re going to do this. We’re going to put a staging area out here. You know, all these things are in place. So you know what you’re doing and everybody’s rowing the boat in the same direction.
Sean Jordan (30:25)
That’s such great advice. And I think, you there’s an element of leadership to it too, where if you don’t give the media something to understand and follow, they’re going to start looking for their own narratives and their own angles. And a lot of times those are wrong. They’re not even accurate to the actual facts. They’re just the things that they can see or the limited information they can collect or the witnesses that are willing to talk to them. And so they may do more damage by getting the narrative incorrect than by being directed to
listen to the official story and then if they want to question it they can but there’s a lot more to go on ⁓ when there’s somebody directing them and trying to help them to see okay these are the actual facts and the things that we need to focus on and the things that we’re doing to rectify this.
Steve Turner (31:07)
Yeah, you know, in most cases, it’s good to cooperate with the media if you can and make sure they have the right facts and the right angle. mean, ⁓ if it’s a major deal, you don’t want to hide from the media. ⁓ You know, in most cases, and I talk about this in PR that works in the book, is you see most companies just send out a letter. You know, we realize that we had this issue. We’ve worked to fix it.
Sean Jordan (31:12)
Mm-hmm.
Sure.
Steve Turner (31:36)
You know, the right people have been brought on board to remedy the situation. We apologize for any problems this has caused our customers and stakeholders, whatever. And, you know, we’ll do better in the future. You know, that’s the kind of thing that you see all the time. And usually that’ll suffice. People say, okay, well, we did get a response and, yeah, it’s a PR letter, but, you know, that that usually works. We used to see, and maybe not so much now.
I don’t know if you remember the Wall Street Journal, they used to run these full page article ads where a CEO would apologize for a big deal. mean, everybody would panic, but it was the same game plan. They must have had the same crisis PR person advising him for every company because you would see these massive articles and they all kind of like read the same for different companies, but it was kind of the same idea. And then it was signed by, you know, so and so CEO of company X.
Sean Jordan (32:13)
yeah.
Steve Turner (32:34)
then I was like, well, yeah, that’s like, that’s like step one, you know, run a full page ad on the Wall Street Journal apologizing. And, know, almost every week you would see one of those from somebody. mean, it was almost ridiculous, but, um, yeah, I mean, thank goodness. I don’t think anybody does that anymore. I don’t think there’s a
Sean Jordan (32:41)
Hahaha.
You gotta wonder
if it was to keep their stock price ⁓ from dropping too much. They were trying to get ahead of that.
Steve Turner (32:58)
That’s a,
yeah, I mean, if it’s, I mean, you have, if people are dying because your product’s tainted or diluted or something, that’s a whole different story. But, uh, yeah, I mean, for the average thing, I mean, you know, so what, I mean, nobody got hurt or, you know, a few products went into the wrong hands or something like that. Uh, you know, we’re recalling 20,000 cans of soup.
Sean Jordan (33:08)
Sure, of course.
Steve Turner (33:25)
I mean, yeah, get, you know, we get all that, but ⁓ let’s not make it a bigger deal than it is and, you know, fan the flame so the media keeps jumping back on it. And, you know, it’s, ⁓ let’s jump back on this story. This was never resolved. There we are in week two, week three. Yeah. You don’t want that. You want it to go away and have people forget about it.
Sean Jordan (33:45)
Definitely not.
Sean Jordan (33:50)
Wow, I am so excited to have been a part of this interview because I learned a lot. And guess what? We’re not even done because Steve and I went and talked for another half hour after this, and we’re going to put that up as part two on our next episode. So I want you to check that part out as well. He’s going to talk a lot more about his book. He’s going to talk a lot more about his expertise and his experience. And you’re going to learn a lot about PR and it’s going to have you thinking a lot differently about how it can be used.
He’s even going to explain how it can be used for small business. So look forward to that. I’m Sean in St. Louis. This has been the Marketing Gateway. See you next time.
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