the zip local podcast ep 2

Since it’s our inaugural week, we doubled up! The second episode of The Zip features Ken McGaffin on local PR.

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Megan:
Welcome to the second episode of The Zip, a local marketing podcast created by Zip Sprout. Today, I’m speaking with Kim McGaffin, a 25-year PR and link building industry veteran.

Ken:
Oh, that’s old!

Megan:
Ken, how are you today?

Ken:
I’m feeling my age! I’m great. Thank you.

Megan:
Is it actually that you’re just 25 years old? Did I read that wrong perhaps?

Ken:
No, that length of time and perhaps more in the industry.

Megan:
Well, that’s actually why I’m talking to you today because you have a lot of experience. So, before we get started, I heard a little bit previously about your back story even before you got into PR, which I found really interesting. Because before PR, you actually worked in the local non-profit space, right?

Ken:
I did indeed, yes.

Megan:
Can you tell me a little bit about that?

Ken:
Yeah! I did that for 10 years and it was really… First of all, I traveled after university for 3 years and then ended back up in Belfast, then started working as a volunteer with the homeless, which my travels had given me some insight of what it was like to be homeless in a city just arriving. And I really loved that, and then after that, after a year of doing that, I then got head hunted by an organization that provided accommodation for ex-offenders. I got that job and was there for 10 years. After about 4 or 5 years, I became head of public relations and marketing. So, it was in that job that I really learnt all about PR. And, I suppose if you can do PR for a group like non-offenders, then you can deal with anything.

Megan:
Wow! How did that build your interest in PR? Was it interesting to learn the stories of some of these people that you were working with and then to be able to tell the stories to the general public?

Ken:
The main thing was…and I always had an interesting PR… my real interest in that organization was getting things done. And that’s what I was brought in to do. I had a very specific job to do. The first instance, which is an accommodation project, and then I did that and through that my bosses realized that I could do communications. So, I jumped at the chance of going into something that I just had a love of. That was it then. The rest is history, you might say.

Megan:
Yeah! That’s awesome. Can you tell me a bit about your first local PR project?

Ken:
The first project would have been for that organization extern, and it was really just after I got that marketing and PR job. One of the things that we were doing was looking at how do we fundraise. And, back in those days in Northern Island, particularly, the whole non-profit industry was very conservative, so we say, and didn’t do anything that was really exciting. And so, the very first thing that I did was get a local retailer to sponsor us.

Megan:
Interesting!

Ken:
To sponsor us to create an annual report about all the work that we did. And this was a large organization about 100 people all together. I then had my budget to go ahead and start collecting stories. And that’s really what I did. I went through the organization for 3 to 6 months, collecting stories, writing them up and then created an annual report…like no one in Northern Ireland had ever seen before. It was full of stories, and again, one of the things that I talk about there… There is a wonderful quote by the book, Alice in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll. It opens up with this statement, “What’s the use of a story,” said Alice, “without pictures and conversations?” And, I think I based my whole career on that statement. Because if you’re going to tell a story, you need to be visual, you need to have pictures and you also need to have people talking. You need to hear their voices.

Megan:
That makes a lot of sense. Yeah.

Ken:
I think that was a tremendous lesson to learn. And that’s what I put in that first annual report, and then it just went ballistic in Northern Ireland. We got television coverage, huge number of the press conference to launch it, and that really set us up for quite a number of years with really good publicity.

Megan:
And, what inspired you to work with the business? You know, to ask a local business to sponsor as opposed to asking some of your other previous donors to the organization?

Ken:
Well, it was we had no donors who specialized in doing that sort of thing. There were already lots of calls on those funds. It wouldn’t have been a particularly attractive thing for a trust fund, say, to cough up money for. So I thought, well, the best thing to do here is to approach a large retailer. They were a UK wide retailer, Marks and Spencers, who had a big presence in Belfast. So, it was them that I contacted, and they said, “Yes,” almost straight away. It was fantastic.

Megan:
And, did they get a lot of publicity along with the report?

Ken:
They didn’t ask for a lot of publicity, which was great. They were primarily interested…and back then at the height of the troubles in Northern Ireland…so they wanted to be seen to be doing their part in the community. And, that was their primary focus. Now, they did get a bit of publicity, of course. But that wasn’t their driving motivation, which was lovely for us.

Megan:
Got it. So they took a bit of a backseat, but they still got some of the branding?

Ken:
Yes, and that’s absolutely it. They took a backseat and allowed the organization to be the star, and that really was a tremendous approach to take. I think that we very much appreciated that.

Megan:
So, you’re talking a lot about how you thought of ways that previous people in the organization hadn’t really come up with to tell the story of that organization. How would you say that a good PR person’s brain works? What is it that you see, and that other good PR people see, that maybe other people don’t see in the world?

Ken:
Well, I think again that word “story” is really important. Because a good PR person will see the world in stories and how it affects people. But the key thing that I would add to that is a sense of what’s newsworthy. That happens in two ways. That happens from things that are just in themselves newsworthy. If we have a huge report to publish and there’s some startling facts in it, well, that’s going to be newsworthy on its own. But then there’s all the… let’s say the mundane or the daily stuff that you do… that can be made into newsworthy stuff by a PR person whose able to understand what’s required to interest the media and who is determined to go through and doing that. It’s that second area that I really love. Because we were working with a difficult group, and so it was hard to get publicity for that. So, that taught me to be very inventive in the sort of work that I’m doing. The story, that’s the absolute foundation for it. The second being having a sense for the news… to know what is newsworthy. That’s really essential.

Megan:
Got it! So, thinking back to the example of the store that you were working with… Obviously, you were working on behalf of the organization, but for businesses who might be listening, especially if they are larger brands who are everywhere, when do you think that they might realize or start to think that they need local PR in a particular region? And, how would they think about the particular regions they might want to focus on?

Ken:
Again, I think any business… and this is a belief that I have… any business has a corporate responsibility to involve themselves with their community – be it a wider community or be it a local one. Of course, that involvement with the community is made up of lots and lots of smaller communities. So, my rational… my thought about that… is well, why wouldn’t they be interested? It’s great to see it from… “You know what, our staff work locally, our staff have families locally, our customers are local… why wouldn’t we want a presence in that community? And why couldn’t we benefit from it?” And I think it’s very important that a business organization realizes that, first of all, before they say, “Well, we’ve got this project coming up and that could do with a local bit of PR or a local involvement with the agency.” For me, that’s not the way to do it. Now, it might be a good start, but what I would really say to business is, “Listen, this is a very important part of your overall marketing. You can measure the benefit, you can put a value to it, and you can spread that right throughout the country.” So, any business that I’ve been talking to about their publicity, I would say, “This is a very important thing to consider.”

Megan:
When you talk about being able to spread it throughout the country… So, when you’re talking about local PR versus national PR, is there really a difference? Or, you know, can they both mold into each other?

Ken:
Well, there is a difference, but they are related. The difference, of course, is that the approach with local PR needs to be different. So you can get the same message across, but you need to get it across in a different way. Because… yes, big, huge national coverage is wonderful but if I say, go to local media in a city… be it Baltimore or Belfast or whatever… people there want to understand how that policy or that initiative relates to me here in my community. The local journalists want that local angle. And, if you can provide that local angle, and it’s not very difficult to do, then you provide an opportunity to get local coverage in that place…Belfast or Baltimore… but then take the same approach but change the story to fit your local people. So, it then builds up a fantastic network of main publicity, you know, nationwide publicity, but then a whole range of different local stories which reinforce that message and bring it closer to people. So again, I think the potential for that is fantastic.

Megan:
Got it. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So it’s just kind of building a national story out of a lot of local stories?

Ken:
Yes! Or, the two things running in parallel. Again, it’s the situation… The company has something that they want to get across. There’s a potential there in the community. One of the things they’ve got to do is find out about that community, to make contacts in it and to try initiatives that will work on a local level. So for instance, if you held a competition with regional and national and international finals, that’s almost taking that approach… that granular approach… that there’s different levels that the same message operates at.

Megan:
And, if you wanted to build a team to do this, would you recommend someone, if they have the resources, to find an in-house staff that maybe be a bit closer to the company’s mission or would you advocate to find an agency in each region that can help?

Ken:
I think that’s really up to the company itself, and it’s up to who is available. Is there someone on the staff that can do this, or is there any agency that specializes in it? One of the things about staff members is that they know the company very well, they may not know the community just as well, but they may have a certain [inaudible 15:02] and a certain authority going out to that. However, if they take an agency…and certainly it sounds like Zip Sprout is that way… that has built an expertise in hard to approach different communities. Again, there are approaches that work. A corporate brand could make many, many mistakes that, if they’d talk to an agency and worked with an agency, they could have avoided all of those mistakes. I think that, and as particularly as things…as things change so quickly today, it’s great to have experts on board that you can work with very quickly. In all the work that I have done in my career, I love having clients who want to develop their staff in-house. That’s brilliant. I love working in that situation. But, I think that has to go hand in hand with using external people that are brilliant in what they do. Because then you’ve got the potential for a wonderful learning experience. So, I’m not sitting on the fence on this one.

Megan:
Right, it’s kind of both.

Ken:
It’s both that you should think of. And neither on its own will provide the complete solution, but do them together, then you’ve got the opportunity for both parts learning from each other and there’s a tremendous synergy in that.

Megan:
So, back to when you said you’ve seen companies who maybe didn’t consult agencies and made some mistakes… What in particular would you say is a huge, local PR fail that you’ve seen? Do you have a good local PR failure story?

Ken:
Ok, well, the best one to give you is one of mine. One of my PR fails. Again, it goes back to Northern Ireland and… I’m a big football fan, and my local football club [inaudible 17:20] saw my success on the media and the sort of stuff that I was doing, and they offered me a part-time role as their marketing manager. So, I lived in Belfast 40 miles away, and I traveled back to my local town to help out on the weekends with marketing. I remember one of the events that I ran was to get an ex-manager of Manchester United to come to Northern Ireland. The first night that I had him, we did a concert – an event – in Belfast where he was an after dinner speaker to a tremendous audience. There were hundreds of people at this event, and it was a huge, huge success. And then the next night, I was taking him 40 miles down the road to my local town, where I thought, “Gosh! This is great. I’ve had such a wonderful time in Belfast that it’s going to be even bigger in my local hometown.” When I arrived and brought him into the hall, there were 7 people there. My mom and dad, their two best neighbors and then 3 other people. What had happened was that I had made a mistake. I had approached it as if, “Well, I’m the professional here, I really know what I’m going to do.” And even though I tried to work with the local people, etc., etc., I didn’t give them ownership of it, so they didn’t seem involved. They hadn’t got the opportunity to become involved, and it was a mistake that I made. I thought, “Right, I can do this in the big city.” I come down to my own town and “Wow! It’s going to be brilliant.” It wasn’t… So, I had an arrogance there in terms of my approach. I felt that this was going to be fantastic. But, what a lesson it was for me… You’ve always got to work with local people, you’ve always got to get them on your side, and you’ve also got to give them the opportunity of flourishing and developing and being pride and being a part of something. That’s the mistake I made… I would always say to any business or any organization who’s encouraging this sort of thing in the community is to involve the community, empower them and take the lead from them. Because if you do that, then you’ve got a very good chance that they’ll be on side, that they’ll support you, rather than them being resentful that you flew in, and you said, “Oh, I can do these great big things.” And they said, “Ha-ha. Let’s watch this fella fail.” So, it’s that dynamic, and it was a solidary lesson for me… a very difficult lesson for me to get. But, I’ve never made that mistake again.

Megan:
No, that makes a lot of sense of how to combine the national and the local. Is that if you are coming…if you are a national brand and you’re working for a big brand…is to always remember that are locals that you can activate, whether they be people at a franchise store or local people related to brand…or even local customers, really.

Ken:
If you can make them the stars of the show, then you’ll succeed.

Megan:
Yep, that makes a lot of sense. So, final question… If you could grab lunch with any marketer, let’s just say, whose brain would you want to pick over lunch?

Ken:
Wow! Ok, there’s quite a number I would think of… Let me tell you who I would pick, a company I absolutely love their approach to story. And that’s the clothing company Patagonia dot com. They are fantastic. You know, for an organization that encourages long term use of their products, their clothing and they do videos on items of clothing that have lasted 15 years, 20 years and longer. And, they actually have content that says, “Don’t buy our new products. Repair your old!” and it’s just brilliant. I think there’s a tremendous sense of business there behind that company. First of all, that they are very successful company. Secondly, they have the business nose to recognize that we can’t go on wasting the resources of the planet… that we’ve got some sort of corporate responsibility. And the third thing that they’ve done is just to encourage their customers to tell their own stories about their clothes that have lasted for years. And it is a fantastic resource. Any brand that is thinking about generating customer stories, go to the Patagonia site and you will see some tremendous examples. So, what I would love to do is sit down… not with the head of the marketing team, but with one of the local representatives… and find out what they do in their job and what they love about it and what are their successes and failures. So, that’s what my choice would be.

Megan:
That’s a great story, and I love how their mission seems almost counterintuitive to their brand because you think a company would want you to buy as many of their clothes as possible, but obviously, it’s working for them. Their mission is making people maybe who wouldn’t otherwise be customers become customers.

Ken:
And, it goes right back to my very first example when I created that annual report. Of course, all the other charities complained about us using money to create something that was high production, story-ful type of publication. You know, sometimes you’ve just got to go against the flow, you’ve got to take the chance and see where it gets you. Certainly, in Northern Ireland, it was a wonderful experience to do that. And then the next year, there were many charities who thought of the same model. So, that was really satisfying.

Megan:
Yeah, well, that is a great story. So, Ken, thank you so much for speaking with me today about local PR.

Ken:
That’s terrific. And all the best Megan. Thanks for asking me.

Megan:
Alright. I’m Megan Hannay. Stay tuned next week for our next episode of The Zip. Have a good day.