Welcome And The Pitch That Worked

Chris Norton 0:00

Welcome to Embracing Marketing Mistakes, the podcast where we talk openly about the things that have gone wrong in marketing. I'm Chris Norton, and most of the PR people that I've had on the podcast have usually started in PR and moved into SEO and link building. Well today's guest has taken the opposite route. Britt Klontz was an intern at an SEO agency when she was handed an infographic, remember them? About writing the CV and she was told to just get it in Mashable. She'd never studied PR, so she found a blog post from one of the Mashable journalists explaining how they love to be pitched. She followed it to the letter and guess what? She got the coverage. In this episode, we look at why so many PR pitches actually fail and why that usually isn't the journalist's fault. Britt explains why a rejection can be the most useful reply and data that you'll ever get. So if you hire PR agencies like us or you work in one, there's plenty of stuff to take from this one. Here's Britt Klontz. Enjoy. Britt

From SEO Intern To PR Consultant

Chris Norton 1:05

Klontz, welcome to the show.

Britt Klontz 1:06

Thank you, Chris. It's so wonderful to join you. I appreciate your time and the opportunity to be here.

Chris Norton 1:13

Yeah, well, I mean it's a delight to have you. It's um I don't in I don't interview that many PR people on the show, really. We've had we've probably had a few people that I've worked with and a few people from the industry. But I'd especially from digital PR, we've probably had two people, I think, in the three and a half years that I've been doing it. And a lot of people tend to be comms people first, and then they move into sort of the the SEO, lead gen, link space. But you you came the other way, you came from the other way around. So do you want to walk me through a little bit about where you've come from and how you've got to where you where you are today? I think they'd be quite interesting to hear your story.

Britt Klontz 1:51

Yeah, absolutely. I love a little walk down memory lane. Um, so I, gosh, I went to school. We'll start with like what I went to school for back in call my college days or university. And I studied radio, television, and internet media. They threw in the word internet when I was a junior in college, and I'm so thankful for that. And um when I was in college, I was interning for an SEO agency. And I was, you know, on my first day, they specialized in creating infographic content, which is going to date me and feel like a dinosaur. But they did yes, yes. And they they were creating infographic content and they showed me what they were working on. I believe it was an infographic about how to make the a great resume before we had ChatGPT and all of that that people rely on so heavily now to make their resumes, I feel like. And it was all about best practices, and um they said we want you to get this infographic on an outlet like Mashable. Mashable was really big back then too. And it's still you know around today. And but it's a bit different. I feel it's a bit more tech focused.

Chris Norton 3:26

I haven't seen Mashable. I used to read Mashable quite regularly. I don't think I've read it in five, six years at least.

Britt Klontz 3:33

It's still around. It's kind of similar to BuzzFeed, maybe a bit now, but I do feel like they have a larger tech component. But um, back in the day, they had a journalist who wrote about uh job searching and workplace topics. And I did a bit of research, and she actually had a whole blog post about how to pitch her because I didn't go to college for PR. You know, I had no idea what PR was. And so during this internship, I just had a bit of time to be creative and kind of teach myself to be honest. So she laid it out really simply, had a blog post on her personal website about how to pitch her to get featured or, you know, pitch her a story idea for her column in Mashable.

Chris Norton 4:31

Okay.

Britt Klontz 4:32

And um, long story short, I copied that exactly and I heard from her, and she ended up covering the infographic. And then I was given the opportunity to pitch all of the infographics that they were creating at this SEO agency and do a little blogger outreach. I found my my niche, my specialty. And they were acquired by another SEO agency, which uh led me to Tampa, Florida. And while there, this was called Distilled. They were big in the SEO space. They were actually based in the UK. So that's kind of why I mentioned Yeah, they're um they were an amazing bunch, really good at hiring people. And um sorry, they BlueGlass was where I worked when I went to my next SEO agency that acquired the SEO agency I was interning for. So straight out of college, I started in that space, and then eventually I wound up at Distilled. So I'm kind of fast-forwarding through some details here. And uh that is how I moved out to Seattle, Washington, which is where I'm at currently stay. Uh at Distilled, I got to learn even more about SEO and more about gosh, guest posting we were doing back then, a lot of blogger outreach. We worked with a Christmas tree client, which was so fun. I got to work with some product and get the product to journalists, or not sorry, not journalists, get the product to bloggers who took the Christmas trees and created these beautiful settings in their home with them and talked about how they decorated the product. And then I did spend some time at a traditional SPR agency called Weber Shandwick for about a year. I went over there, worked for the Gates Foundation, Amazon, really big names, but no creative freedom. So thankful for the opportunity, of course, to have more of a global, like corporate experience. But I missed the creative freedom. I missed a small team.

Chris Norton 6:45

So what do you mean by creative freedom? Do you mean like you just weren't given the line the the you had to just write a release, you weren't allowed to do like come up with ideas and execute a campaign?

Britt Klontz 6:56

Yeah, there was not a lot of ideation. We were more um a second hand or a pair of hands for my point of contact at, for example, Amazon. They were their marketing team planned all of the campaigns and the events, and we were given the task of spreading that message and putting together press releases, getting it in front of the journalist, but there was no creative freedom.

Chris Norton 7:28

That would not be fun. I mean, I don't know. It's one of the best bits of the job, isn't it?

Britt Klontz 7:33

It is, yeah. And that's how I got back to Distilled. They welcomed me back with open arms. And from there, I noticed though, while I was away, that they had earned or gotten a few new clients, big clients, that had their own in-house content teams and in-house PR teams. So I was given the task of training these teams how to work together because they didn't necessarily need my support. It truly became more of a consultant opportunity. Right. And I started building out my own service basically for distilled. And my husband actually encouraged me to do this on my own. And this was 2019 before the pandemic. I was actually going in person to work with these teams and teach them all about PR and SEO and how we can work together.

Chris Norton 8:35

Yeah.

Britt Klontz 8:35

And I decided to take the risk. And ever since I've just been consulting on my own for seven years. So pronounce it VADA.

Chris Norton 8:46

Is it VADA communications? Is that right?

Britt Klontz 8:48

Vada Communications.

Chris Norton 8:50

Pronounce Vada, okay.

Britt Klontz 8:51

I know it's a bit confusing. Um, but yeah, so that's that's where I am today. Sorry, that took a bit to describe, but I am a dinosaur.

Chris Norton 9:00

And so

Consulting With In-House Teams

Chris Norton 9:01

are you are you work any do you work on your own or do you have other people that work for you?

Britt Klontz 9:05

No, I work on my own, just a solo consultant.

Chris Norton 9:09

And so a client now would use you to execute a so do you do you execute digital PR campaigns? What sort of clients have you got then? What sort of stuff do you work on?

Britt Klontz 9:19

I don't niche down. I kind of just have the opportunity to take, if I have a new lead come through, decide if it excites me or not. If it doesn't, I let them know. And I have some people in my network that I love to refer. But I don't niche down, and I really take my clients as case by case. Many, a couple of them I do more strategic work for. They do have their own teams. Uh, others I do act as an external counterpart to the teams that they have. They might have a content marketing manager and then they have an SEO person. They also have a VP of marketing. These are my favorite types of clients. And I come in as a PR because typically, if we have the VP of marketing who's meeting with us regularly, is collaborating with us often, they have that internal stakeholder support. And they typically tend to have a lot of trust between them and their bosses, right? So I love having them as far as support goes, because they can go if we have an idea, myself and the content marketing manager and the SEO person, if we're all on board with this same PR idea or PR campaign idea, and we're confident and excited about the opportunity to put this together and run with it. The VP of marketing, when I have that trust, has my back as well and is able to sell that properly to the stakeholders that'll give us the budget. And not only that, um, I work as an extension of their team. So I'm constantly brainstorming with the SEO and the content marketing manager on new ideas. And that involves, that involves a lot of education too, right? Like content marketing managers, they are and SEOs, they are very much like a PR person. It's just a different type of thinking. But they do know the audiences that go to the blog very well. They know what topics resonate most with their customers. And a PR just brings in the perspective of what's going to excite the journalist that we go out with this information with. What's the actual story? They're very close to the data that we're working with as well. So if we have that proprietary data to work with, they have access to it, they know how to get it, and they're already aware of some trends that we might be able to work with from the data itself.

Media Literacy And Irrelevant Pitches

Chris Norton 12:17

Well, and what's the sort of biggest mistakes you see people making in in PR in 2026, then would you say?

Britt Klontz 12:25

Oh my gosh. It's such a good question. I really think media literacy is a big problem when it comes to PR and SEO and content marketing and the success of campaigns that are put together by these teams. And when I say media literacy, I know it can mean many different things. Um, it can mean a big problem that we have here in America, where there's no, we don't, we can't discern between real news and fake news, um, or something that's more biased and something that's actually factual. But what I'm talking about in this particular situation, and what I hear a lot on the podcast that I do called Digital PR Explained, where to give you a bit of context and context and your listeners a bit of context, I talk to journalists and I ask them, what stories do you like to be pitched and how do you like to be pitched? And we talk about a successful uh situation in which they worked with a PR person and had a great experience. Many times those conversations turn into vent sessions and therapy sessions.

Chris Norton 13:44

Yeah. And um I see a lot of journalists vent about PRs, though.

Britt Klontz 13:50

It's so great because whenever a journalist does vent about PRs on LinkedIn, I introduce myself. I say, you know, why don't you come on the podcast and we'll talk about this? And many of the nine times out of ten, I actually I want to say every single interview, the journalist has a problem with the irrelevant pitches that they're receiving from PRs. And I think a lot of factors contribute to this. I think AI, uh the ability for people to just put together pitches and then spray and pray. Um spray and pray. Yes, Chris. And that's a big problem. And I think that if we as PRs take the time to approach this as a human, read the work of the journalists that we want to build connections with, understand the stories that they want to tell, then we'll have much better, a much better success rate. We'll have a much better time interacting with them and getting working with them. And that is what I mean by media literacy.

Chris Norton 15:01

Yeah. I mean, I know what you mean, because I I remember the days of um is it Buzzstream. Buzzstream, the blogger, blogger outreach platform, and everybody was using everybody was using that, and bloggers became a big thing. So I was a blogger back in the day. Before, before I'm so old it I was doing it when it wasn't cool. I actually got the Mickey, um, I got the piss taken out of me in the UK because I started a blog in it was before the face the Facebook came out. And I and people kept saying to me in the in uh my agency that I worked in, uh, we were network agents in the UK, and someone I remember the account director turning to me and going, Why are you writing online? Who is going to read that? As if that's ever gonna take off. And I I actually got my next job from my blog, and my blog became listed in PR week and stuff. Uh, but but now things have moved on a lot since those days. Like, uh and actually I think a lot of it's coming, it's weirdly, it went it went away, and content marketing and all of these things, they all moved away from PR. And actually, there's been a like a democratization of media. I feel like the media is um the media is harder to understand harder to trust now and to understand the media, um, which media is best to go to. There's more PRs than journalists, which is unbelievable. It's crazy, isn't it? In the UK, there's more PRs now than there are journalists. Um and there's not more good PRs than journalists. There's a lot, there's a lot, there's a lot of spray and pray, and there's a lot of shit work. Some of the work, so having a podcast like we've got, we get pitched to all the time as well, like you do, I'm sure. And some of them are just outright, just you can you can see the AI ones where they crowbar a hook in. I suppose what I'm trying to say is what's the what your what your sort of hot three tips to getting coverage. If I'm a if I'm a marketing director listening to this thinking, why am I listening to two PRs talking? What's your what's your hot tips to getting a story covered in 2026?

Britt Klontz 17:02

Ooh,

Coverage Tips Using Proprietary Data

Britt Klontz 17:03

I think my number one tip, and I would even tell you this maybe five years ago, my whole career, is if you can work with your sales team and the say you have any kind of proprietary data that you can publicly share, I would start there. What kinds of stories can you tell with that proprietary data or the data that you're sitting on, even if it's anonymized, even you know, journalists are craving this type of information. And it's some it's info that and data that they can't get unless they work with you. So I love starting there. That's a hot tip that I will stand by for a long time, I feel. Uh, I'd also say think beyond the Wall Street journals of the world. You mentioned that journalists, there's not that many journalists, right? Like you see it all the time. Newsrooms are unfortunately cutting cost and laying off their news teams left and right. Mm-hmm.

Chris Norton 18:12

AI journalists have been swapped for AI in the UK. There's a story out last week about um Reach Group have re removed 200, 220, I think it was, journalists just last week. And they said they're replacing them with if you look into the news, they're replacing them with AI. It's it's quite it's quite frightening from both sides, I think. I am an I'm an optimist, so sorry anyway. I think it's fascinating the AI thing and the journalist thing because we're outnumbering journalists. It's it's we've got to be more interesting than than your average PR, haven't we, to tell that story.

Britt Klontz 18:49

Exactly. We really do. And these journalists, they're they're very talented, and to lose that human component is sad and a disservice to journalism. So that's where I stand as far as AI taking over their jobs.

Chris Norton 19:10

Yeah.

Britt Klontz 19:11

I think too that what is happening is that these journalists will find other ways to continue their craft, especially those that have a following. And that is why you see so many substacks and journalists creating their own media outlets, um, media um businesses. And they're going to start small. And as a PR, you're you would be doing yourself a disservice if you overlook the Substacks that they're starting or their own media platforms that they're starting. Even if you were to say there's just not as many readers of their Substack as if we were to get my client or my company in Wall Street Journal. Well, one day it could be pretty big. And also, I would argue that the the people who subscribe to that Substack or follow along with that specific journalist work, no matter the platform, are likely more engaged and a better fit as far as audience goes than perhaps the readers at the Wall Street Journal, who could be more general readers, consumers, like yourself and I, who are just interested in various topics. The people who follow journalists because they write about a specific beat and they've built their own platform around their expertise are exactly who you want to get in front of in order to stand out and to increase your brand visibility in front of audiences that really matter.

Chris Norton 22:04

Yeah. Okay. I would ask you, what is this podcast on embracing market mistakes?

Turning A Rejection Into A Win

Chris Norton 22:14

Give me a campaign then that's that's gone spectacularly wrong and why. Ooh, I love this. Because we'd always go into campaigns that have gone like this. Is why I love the podcast. Because it's like we go through, oh, this has gone really well, you should do this. We do that as well, like I've been interviewing you about. But actually, I find this stuff when people tell a story about something that hasn't gone quite well and what they learned from it, it could be really, really useful. So, do you have anything?

Britt Klontz 22:42

Yeah, I think the way that we got in touch too was I wanted to talk to you about my how I believe that just because you get a no from a journalist doesn't mean it's the end of the road. And it doesn't mean you should completely shut the door with that building that relationship. In fact, it's a great sign that they got back to you. It means that they're very collaborative and they're interested in prohibiting. Perhaps receiving a story idea that will work for their audiences or readers. And this is something that I've always done instinctively, but I didn't have the language around it until a guest came on to Digital PR Explain. So I want to give her proper credit because she's a genius. Her name is Shara Seigel. She's at Mission North. It's an agency based out of New York City. And she put a name to this. She called it rejection is redirection. And I love that. And ever since I spoke with her about her experiences with rejection and turning a no into a yes, it's been a more intentional part of how I work a pitch too and approach PR in general. And let's see, a recent example. Speaking of trade publications or the, you know, the more smaller outlets that you and I might not have heard of, but say you're working with, um, I'll give you a more real example. My client is in freight, I mean, sorry, my client does invoice factoring. They're a bank of sorts. And we did this analysis on temporary labor, and there was a bit of data in there around the construction temp labor costs. It wasn't a piece, an article on construction in particular, but there was some data around how temp labor um impacts the construction industry. So I did a bit of research around what magazines, online magazines and outlets are focused on construction. That's something that I can't just just think of off the top of my head. And there was, I pitched an editor at the name was, I'm gonna start this over because I have it here in my notes. I pitched an editor at Metal Construction News. And what I did wrong was I led with the stats. I led with the stat around that was specific to construction, but I bombarded him with so many other stats from this campaign that he got back to me and let me know that he doesn't see the connection, that this wasn't a no necessarily, but that he didn't see the connection as to why this data mattered for his readers. And he did give me a really nice uh framework too to go back to the campaign and think about how I can revise it and tailor it for his audiences. Um, his template was I need you to explain because of X and Y, now is precisely the time to Z. So because of like the labor market in the construction industry, X, Y, and Z, here is what you should be thinking, or how you should be approaching hiring as a construction company. And I didn't have that in my pitch. So I went back to it and had the opportunity to re to rework it and send him a brand new pitch. I said, You're right, I ate humble pie, and I got back to him with a more refined email around what mattered most to his readers. And he ended up writing about it. He appreciated it. And now I know too, if I want to pitch him another story, I really need to think about the template that he provided me. But that template works for all other outlets, right? Like just really honing in on what's going to matter most for that, those readers at that publication and the beat that that journalist covers. Most people would have taken that first reply as a no and moved on. And he basically became a co-editor of my pitch, and I was willing to listen to it, and that's key.

Chris Norton 27:37

That's good. That's good. I mean, it's good to listen to feedback and tweak it and change it. Um I I do think that like niche titles,

Niche Media And AI Search Visibility

Chris Norton 27:45

all these journalists that start in their own media, like they're there. I feel like there's going to be um an eruption of niche, niche, smaller, better audiences where people will really listen to them, you know, um rather than just like your national um so for in the UK, uh in the UK, our audience, you know, you can see if you get a piece in the on the BBC or in the BBC, a lot more people see it. In the national newspapers, you've got the Daily Mail, the Times, all these different, you've got the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, etc. etc. I I do think though, there's a there's a bit of a this this sort of democratization of media that I talked about earlier. I think I do feel like there's um more niche like areas to go into and actually you can get a deeper you could actually get a really good result for your client if you you go to these niche smaller titles, you could actually get rather than chasing that Wall Street Journal uh or BBC piece, it could have a much bigger impact. What do you what do you think? What's your take on that?

Britt Klontz 28:48

I agree completely. Also, podcasts. Sometimes um there, I go look into podcasts that influencers in the industry that my client works in uh put is out there, like what's most influential? What are those people listening to? It's another way that people consume media. And gosh, the parasocial relationships that people build with these podcasters too. That's huge. That's so important to be able to leverage uh if you can, right? If you have the right story. You know, strategies or sorry, publications and podcasts in your strategy because the AI search or AI search um is pulling from these publications. So for example, uh there's one of my clients. Actually, I'm gonna use the uh factoring company as an example again to keep it straightforward. I work really closely with somebody on their team who is the freight factoring operations manager. And she knows the industry like the back of her hand. She has been in tr in this trucking industry in general for 15 years. And since she's joined this company, she has a lot of customer-facing interactions. She is who works with the customers day to day. And she knows how, for example, high diesel prices are impacting the cash flow of the people that they support, the customers that they have. And I love talking to her because she is just a wealth of knowledge. She has inspired story ideas that I would have never thought of as somebody who's pretty removed from day-to-day conversations with customers and has can go on these trade publications and read the stories, but it's just so much more valuable to talk to someone like her. And what we've been doing is I act as a journalist. I interview her often. I also have my co-part or my counterpart, who is the content marketing manager at that company, who's my day-to-day contact, talking to her, picking her brain all of the time. And together we come up with content ideas to pitch on her behalf for contributor column opportunities, which are at these trade publications. So in this instance, um, trucking freight publications, where we want to get this client um a byline and the opportunity for her to share her insights with their readership as an expert in the space. And we've lined up a pretty consistent column on one big uh trade publication in the freight fract. I mean the freight space. Um and when I Googled her name recently and the company name, so her first and last name, and then the company name, I went into Google AI mode and they it is very accurate in telling me who this person is, what her expertise is in. And when you look at the sources or the citations that it's referring to to inform the AI mode, you see that it's pulling from these contributor columns. And they're saying this person is an expert on cash flow as it pertains to the freight factoring, I mean the freight industry. Uh, it is pulling from her LinkedIn profile. So every time that we have a byline go live or publish, or any time that a journalist references her commentary in an article that they're writing on the topic, we have her publish it on her LinkedIn profile, say where she was mentioned to further validate her expertise on the topic. Because Google AI mode is pulling from LinkedIn profiles to help inform the results that it'll show someone looking for that answer. Uh also, gosh, what else? Expert commentary. Oh, podcast. She is the go-to person right now for the trucking industry's um financial woes on a SiriusXM podcast, which is huge. People in the trucking industry are very likely to have a SiriusXM subscription and are listening to this particular podcast because this podcast talks about topics that matter most to people who own freight companies. And it's just constantly talking about, you know, political situations, repercussions, what it means when diesel prices rise, what a new potential ruling could mean to the industry, as far as like working visas go. That was a big one. And their expertise uh provides journalists, or her expertise in particular, provides journalists another layer of information that they can gather to help put together these articles and these stories that they're writing to explain the topics to. Um I hope that answers your question. Yeah, it does. I feel like I keep going, I could go on and on. So please pause me anytime.

Chris Norton 35:14

No, no, it's fine, fine. You you're not you're not you're not you're not digitally real. Um I was gonna ask you about like what's the tech

The 2026 PR Tech Stack

Chris Norton 35:21

what's I hate this expression, but marketers in this list marketers listening to this will know I'm about tech stack then for a PR in 2026. What what does a tech what's a tech stack look for for like? What sort of technology are you using in 2026 then?

Britt Klontz 35:37

Gosh, I only recently started investing in my tech stack.

Chris Norton 35:44

Really? But you must use loads of software to do digital PR, right?

Britt Klontz 35:48

Yeah, it can be expensive. I do in I don't want to sound like a sponsored ad, but and I'm still figuring out if it's worth it, but I do use Muck Rack. Okay. Which can be very expensive. Um, but I find it helpful to discover.

Chris Norton 36:09

I've never used Muck Rack. What does it have for the Cision?

Britt Klontz 36:13

I think Cision is maybe something that more UK agencies are familiar with. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris Norton 36:18

We've got Muck Rack. I think people use it.

Britt Klontz 36:20

Okay. It's like a media database. And you can go into it, look for publications that cover um different industries, even journalist information, their contact information. It'll share with you what stories they typically like to cover. Sometimes journalists share how they like to be pitched with Muck Rack, and that information is in there. It's not super common. It's also I use it to track coverage. Um, and there's probably other, you know, use cases for it that I just have only scratched the surface of its capabilities, but it's just me, so I have limited time. And so I do invest in MuckRec. I do invest in LinkedIn Premium. I'm not pitching journalists on LinkedIn, but I use that because I just find it valuable. Um actually that was probably not necessarily something PRs need, though, unless you're running your own consultancy. Um I what else? Mixmax is something I use to track email open rates, but I think I should be using Streak because I hear it's free.

Chris Norton 37:41

Mix Max, what was that called? Mixmax.

Britt Klontz 37:43

It's like a CRM uh software. Mixmax.

Chris Norton 37:46

We yeah, we use HubSpot. We've got HubSpot for our CRM. I've used it for about 12 years, 15 years. It costs a fortune, but it's really, really good.

Britt Klontz 37:55

So I've never used HubSpot.

Chris Norton 37:57

Well, they they get you, they're clever. Have a free CRM. You do it, and then you you stick all your stuff in it, and then you're like, oh, but you could have this cool feature. And you know, I'll get more of them. Oh, but you could have this. Look, and then before you know it, you're thousands of pounds down. Yep.

Britt Klontz 38:14

Uh that's really it. I also use Ahrefs to look at sometimes that catches coverage better than a Google search or even um my Muck Rack. But the number one tool for coverage right now that I'm loving is Rand Fishkin's AlertMouse. And okay.

Will Ockenden 38:36

I interviewed him the other week on the pod.

Britt Klontz 38:39

Yeah, yeah, he's great. And um, he's so Alert Mouse is really nice because it's way better than Google Alerts. And what I really love about Alert Mouse is that it's pulling uh coverage or sorry, mentions on social channels. So LinkedIn. I also support PR for this is so much more, this is one of my more fun clients, but the Seattle Christmas market. So this is like so traditional PR. I love it.

Chris Norton 39:11

You you sound like you've got a bit of a Christmas specialty from what you're doing.

Britt Klontz 39:14

I guess. Yeah, unintentionally. Unintentionally.

Chris Norton 39:18

Yeah.

Britt Klontz 39:18

Um the Seattle Christmas market is so traditional PR because it's event marketing, it's event PR and social media, a big component of that. And I found Alert Mouse to be so useful for really monitoring what people were saying on TikTok, on Instagram about the Seattle Christmas market in real time, pretty much. I mean, I didn't need to be monitoring it in real time, but it was able to quickly tell me like, here's um what sort of food options people are loving. Or when there was somebody maybe who was having an unpleasant experience, it was uh able to alert us in time to be able to um help that person out and help them, you know, get a have a better experience at the market.

Chris Norton 40:12

I suppose the question I've got is what the hell are they doing at Christmas market in September?

Britt Klontz 40:17

Oh, oh, this isn't

Social Listening For Live Events

Britt Klontz 40:19

until November and December.

Chris Norton 40:21

No, I've guessed that. I was just thinking during summer, I was just imagining wandering around a Christmas market going, Oh no.

Britt Klontz 40:28

Yeah, but if you want that, you can go to Leavenworth, Washington. And there's Christmas all year round there.

Chris Norton 40:34

It's like I I used I used to actually, one of my clients used to be Hallmark cards in the UK. So we've got Hallmark cards in the UK, and um they've got like this uh in their headquarters, it was in Bradford. It's not now, but it was it was in this big house in Bradford, right? And I remember wandering through, they had a full, a full whole it was massive, it must have been about two squ a mile square or something. But inside they had a full Hallmark store, all like Hallmark cards. So you you'd all the marketing people that worked in the build in Hallmark could wander around looking at Hallmark cards, and you got to feel for what the products look like in store. But it was quite very quite interesting. But then right um further through, you went through the marketing team, they're all laid out in the different, you know, the usual open floor, open plan office. But they had a full Christmas team, right? And every day was Christmas Day. And I was just like, this would drive me insane. I all all day, every day is Christmas Day. They've got to like just that's how they have to think to all ideas. So yeah.

Britt Klontz 41:36

That's wild. That's wild. Yeah, it's it's an it's a fun one, but you know, my activities don't really pick up until it opens, which is ch is fun, but uh a challenge sometimes, you know, because as PRs, I don't know if you have this, but I am not uh super comfortable uh waiting for a campaign to publish because I'm like ready to go. So I'm just you know, I'm always anticipating Christmas now that I have them as a client because and I'm counting down the days, which I never did before.

Chris Norton 42:18

Yeah, yeah. Well, I've had we had Hallmark for years. I did Hallmark, Siwee, we've done interfloras all Christmas as well. Oh fine. Um that's the fl floral brand. Um, I was gonna ask you, what's like the riskiest thing you've recommended to a client that's actually worked?

Britt Klontz 42:35

Hmm. Let's see. Um that's a great thing.

Chris Norton 42:39

PR is about risks. PR is about risks.

Making B2B Data Work For Consumers

Chris Norton 42:42

Often a client won't allow you to do anything risky. So you've got to like they always say think outside the box. Yes. Then you come up with a campaign and they never get they never go for the one that you really want to go for. They go for the one that's safe, that's not gonna get as much coverage.

Britt Klontz 43:00

So go on, what I have such a good one for this. So um it's a this is kind of gonna get meta, but one of my clients is a social listening agency, uh, and they work with big brands in all different kinds of industries: Applebee's, Target, pharmaceutical companies, hotel chains, um and like just all sorts of industries. They I don't know if they exclude any. And they're owned by a much larger agents or uh marketing company as well. So there can be red tape. And I have to be careful, right, about the messaging that goes out and what we refer to them as has to be very buttoned up. And we did this pretty B2B report using their proprietary data, which was amazing. You know, I love that. And we took anonymized the information, of course, but segmented it by industry to say what social media channels brands were most responsive when it comes to customer service, um, what was the average response rate, what industry is the most responsive, things like that. And but it's very like could be considered pretty B2B. It's not necessarily saying like, hey, if you want to get in touch with Target and because you have you've received the wrong order, your best bet is to go into their DMs and message them that way and you'll get a quicker response. Um but that's information in there that could be extracted and polished up to be more consumer facing. So originally I was taking this report and pitching it to journalists who write about marketing topics or Perhaps journalists who talk about social media, like socialmediatoday.com is one publication that I really wanted to cover this report. And even trade publications, because the finance industry happened to be the most responsive, as well as the pharmaceutical industry. So I thought that was very interesting and pitched this to even marketing, uh, pharmaceutical marketing publications. That's actually a thing. So pitching this information to them. But what I really wanted to do was get the more consumer-friendly stories out there. And I was able to convince my point of contact to let me test that out and go to investigative journalists that talk about consumer stories. So best time to buy a flight online, for example. And also fraud, but that's totally separate. But that's also how I refined my search when I was looking for who to pitch, like consumer fraud stories. And what I did was I sent it to a journalist who was in Philadelphia, who the article she published was the best times to buy your flights, probably for like Labor Day or something, because this was recent. And uh I went to her with this information. I said, We have this report. This is my client, this is what they do. They have this report on um the best ways to get in touch with a brand and all of this information that consumers can use when they have a problem and they really need attention. And she loved it. She wanted to talk an interview to my and she wanted to set up an interview with my client, and my client is so polished and wonderful. I had no reservations about putting her in front of the journalist. I was super excited to do that, to get her on camera. But of course, you know, we had to be careful about she was very hesitant in case the journalist might have any gotcha questions. So there was some educating on the client side to assure her that this journalist was writing a story to that uses our data to help consumers make better decisions and, you know, be more proactive and get better results when they have issues with brands or uh something they ordered online or something, or say they're traveling and they have an issue at a hotel, anything like that. Um and yeah, it went out with a it went off with a hitch. The segment turned out to be so fun. The consumer journalist was quizzing the news anchors on data or questions that related to the study, like you know, asking them what they think, what they think is the best way to get in contact with the brand. And uh the interview with my client was so fun and it turned into a human interest story, sort of too, because the journalist asked her how she utilizes this information in her day-to-day. She's a working mom. She recently went to Whole Foods, got an expired product, but didn't realize it until she got home. So she let Whole Foods, she went on Instagram and DM'd Whole Foods and said, Hi, I was shopping at this Whole Foods location. The yogurt I picked up was expired. I just wanted to let you know so that you can take it off the shelves before other customers purchase it as well. And um, they she wasn't even asking for a free product or anything like that. She just wanted to let them know. And they ended up giving her um and shipping it right to her house that same product that wasn't expired. So it was a really interesting, you know, story about just from her personal experience, but also how people can use this data to better their lives when it comes to shopping and their day-to-day. So yeah, that's a recent example. Love it. Of a risk. Uh maybe not one on my part, but for them it was a risk.

Chris Norton 49:26

Yeah, it will be. I mean, I like the yoga store. It's not I mean anybody that can get in contact with any um uh brand, these days it's so much easier than it used to be. I remember when I we were doing the first social media campaign for and uh I was telling Sony about doing it was what wasn't called influencer relations, it was going to be blogger relations, but they didn't know what a blogger was because bloggers blogs were so new. And we were telling them all about people could then get their product and review it online, and they were terrified. It was just the oh my god, we don't look people to I don't want people to have our product, and like how can we control this? We're like, you you can't, and look at how things have moved on with your example. Um, Britt, so you've been on this show now and you've you've um you've got to say your piece. If you were us, who's the

Who To Interview Next And Contact Details

Chris Norton 50:11

next person you'd interview on this show and why?

Britt Klontz 50:14

I mentioned her earlier, Shara Seigel at Mission North. She's just a wealth of knowledge when it comes to PR and is really doing it right, like approaching it from uh as a human as a genius when it comes to coming up with story ideas. And she has, I'm always seeing her talk about her successes on LinkedIn and um how she works with journalists who put together a super fascinating story that somehow ties in one of her clients, which is PR Perfection. So I would talk to her.

Chris Norton 50:51

Okay, cool. And we've just talked about how brands can get in contact. How can people get in contact with you, Brit, if they want to get hold of you?

Britt Klontz 50:58

LinkedIn is the best way, but also probably via email, and that is Brit, B R I T T at B R I T T, and then my last name, Klontz.com.