Transforming Communications Through a New Audience Prism | SXSW 25025 Panel

Recording of a session at the 2025 South By Southwest panel:

• Dr. Rochelle Ford, Page
• Rachel Konrad, Stanford Universty
• Johanna Maska
• Travis Pullman

View the session on the SXSW site, here.

Transcript

AI-Generated, some errors may appear

Johanna Maska: [00:00:00] I'm Johanna Maska and I am thrilled to be here with some real experts in communications who have shaped the news we've consumed about the brands that we love. Um, I have our panelists here, Dr. Rochelle Ford is the CEO of the Page Society. That's a network of some of the nation's most powerful communicators.

She has also served as president of Dillard University. Dean of the School of Communications at Elon University and a professor at Syracuse and Howard University where she has helped to shape the next generation of industry leaders. She has been inducted to PR Week's Hall of Fame, received the Arthur W.

Page, society's Distinguished Service Award and earned PSA's D Park Gibson Award for her commitment to reaching all audiences. Wow. Thank you for being with us, Dr. Forge. Thank you, Travis Apartment. [00:01:00] Is the US Chief Communications Officer for Philip Morris International PMI. He is leading the efforts to redefine public health messaging in a rapidly evolving industry.

A seasoned crisis communicator. He has man managed some of the biggest corporate crises of the past two decades from the GM bankruptcy to Carlos Go's arrest and escape from Japan to launching a sustainable farming startup backed by Martha Stewart and JD Vance. A three time expat. He has led global communication strategies across the uk, France, and Japan, earning a reputation for building trust and navigating high stakes moments.

Thank you

and, uh, Rachel Conrad is a lecturer at Stanford University's graduate School of Business and a seasoned corporate communication strategist. She has led held leadership roles at Tesla, [00:02:00] working directly with Elon Musk during the company's early growth, and IPO. Early and at early. I take your responsibility.

We'll get there. We'll get there. I left in thousand eight and at Impossible Foods where she has shaped brand narratives and global communications. She serves on the boards of several sustainably focused startups and advises on corporate storytelling and market disruption. Now, interestingly, like Rachel, who was in the early days of watching Elon Musk become a household name, I spent my early career introducing the US to a lesser known candidate, Barack Obama.

For eight years I was involved in shaping his image. From the presidential campaign to in Iowa, so the original one to the White House, uh, traveling with him to 42 countries around the world. There is definitely a joke here with all the folks we've worked with. What do Martha Stewart, JD Vance, Barack Obama, Elon [00:03:00] Musk.

And Carlos Goone all have in common, and it is us. Those is us on this distinction. Okay. But, uh, maybe it's when we specifically talk about some of those people like Elon Musk or President Obama, that we can begin to see what we're talking about here with the audience. Prism. Now I have a question for the audience.

Uh, who here has an impression? Of either Elon Musk or Barack Obama before you even hear what they have to say. Raise a a hand if you do so. A lot, a lot of people, and that is exactly the challenge that we're dealing with today. The news might look vastly different depending on who you trust. I brought a prism, uh, this is for Travis.

Uh, he had this brilliant idea to talk about the [00:04:00] audience Prism after Microsoft's, Frank Shaw came up with this concept at a Page Society event. And since that event, he's been thinking about this. So Travis, how do you define the audience? Prism.

Travis Parman: Yeah, so the, the idea caught on like wildfire as soon as it came out of Frank's mouth at the Page Society.

Um, and the idea is historically in communications, you could send out messaging and, and you could predict how it would be received, you know, and it would be received slightly differently, but pretty much, you know, you, you could guess how it would be received and count on that. Now you don't, you send that message out, it's like it hits a prism refracts, and it can be received in a hundred different ways from extremely negative to extremely positive.

Uh, and so in this splintered, fractured media landscape that we're dealing with now of a 24 7 news cycle, you've really gotta be more careful, [00:05:00] more thoughtful than ever about really thinking through how your messages are sent and received.

Johanna Maska: Rachel early in a company's growth, it seems like sometimes all a company wants is for the light to actually shine on them.

So what do you make of the audience prism, the opportunities and the challenges that a moment like this presents?

Rachel Konrad: Yeah,

that's a really good question. I, I actually had a, a question for the audience. Can I just see a show of hands here? How many people. Work for or interested in learning about emerging brands.

Okay, so not like the Nike's, Unilever's, et cetera, but the emerging ones. Okay, so good. So, oh wow. Okay. So at least half. Um, yeah, so I have spent most of the last 15 years working, um, for fairly obscure brands. Um, I was working for Elon at Tesla when he, he had some, uh, recognition. In Silicon Valley as a key member of the PayPal Mafia, but he was definitely not a household name.

And I started there in [00:06:00] 2008 when Tesla had just started selling cars. Right. Um, so the goal is not to understand this very sophisticated, uh, calculation about the audience prism. It's just to get out of grinding obscurity, right? There's. A lot of data that shows, especially if you're a VC funded startup, series A, B, C, the more people know you, the more money you get, right?

So the more life you have, the more cash runway you have. So same thing at Impossible Foods. You know, when I first met, I. The CEO, pat Brown, I, um, he was working for a company he created called Mei Inc. I don't know if anybody of any of you would eat a Mei Burger, right? But that ended up becoming Impossible Foods.

So I've really been at the very beginning of, of these companies and. Really the way you want to go is you just, you wanna get out there, right? You need massive recognition, but you're a startup. You can't afford to have, you know, a Nike level, uh, marketing campaign [00:07:00] or Pepsi level, et cetera, yet you're competing against those companies.

So how do you do it? So you have to really take a, think different approach, whether that's with. Earned media or free influencers who are aligned with your mission, you have to take a completely different approach. You, uh, so that's, that's what I wanted to talk about. You guys are big industry veterans and really understand what to do when you have millions of dollars in budget, but most of us here maybe are a little bit more obscure, like we're trying to toil just to get some recognition.

Yeah. It's a very different game.

Johanna Maska: Well, and we are going to take audience questions, so please get your questions ready. There is a mic and uh, I will call for questions. Uh, but Rochelle, while Rachel has been in the disruptors community, it's, it's so fabulous to have you here because you run the network of communications professionals from the largest companies, uh, some who might need to be a little bit more careful.

How do you see those companies best [00:08:00] navigating this new audience Prism?

Rochelle Ford: Sure. I think one of the things that's most important is that you lean into what your company's corporate character is. What is your purpose, right? How do you own that purpose? How do you own that values? And then you're consistent with it no matter who you're talking to.

And you also have to remember that your employees, your employees really are that initial stakeholder group that you have to be able to communicate with. Mm. And so, but it's about consistent telling the truth. And always proving it with action. And so, but you do have to be more cautious. Cautious to some extent, because you have to make sure you are thinking about your purpose, your values, and you're communicating through that.

Johanna Maska: That's so interesting because, uh, you know, it is, uh, a moment in which the truth can even reflect differently depending on the prism sometimes with people seeing the world differently, you know, it really matters when there's a crisis. We've all seen [00:09:00] crises, uh, where organizations lose control of the narrative and sometimes they lose their reputation.

Um, I believe Tesla is seeing some issues right now that maybe we could talk about. And Travis, I mean, pick a crisis. Uh, an exec sneaking out of house arrest. Seems one, but you know, uh, bankruptcy of America's major auto industry, uh, JD Vance and Martha Stewart. I'm just gonna leave that one there. Can you all share a story about managing a crisis or rapid response situation?

What happened and what did you learn that's important for this day and age?

Rachel Konrad: I'll go first. Yeah, sure. Um, so I could, gosh, most of my career has been in crisis communications, and that's kind of by design. I love working at really disruptive startups, and when you're at a startup, you know, really the goal is, again, to get out of obscurity and to do that, you have to inherently position [00:10:00] yourself against something, usually the incumbent industry, that's what's.

Really, uh, weird about my job is that like the classical marketing advice is just, just focus on your own positive story of growth and momentum. And mine is like, no, let's rip down the, the incumbent industry and throw grenades as we're, as we're walking forward, right? And, um. So I would say, I mean, I've been in a lot of crises, but, um, the biggest, one of the best funded, um, whisper campaign against me and my company was at Impossible Foods when, um, you know, this is a company that makes an alternative form of protein that is nutritious, delicious, vastly more sustainable than beef from cows, but, um, but is made purely from, from, uh, plant proteins, um, and plant plant ingredients.

And obviously when you have a really good product in that category, big beef isn't just gonna lay it, lay down and take it, right. They went on this pretty much unlimited funded campaign to to take us down to Disparage Impossible and the entire [00:11:00] category by any means possible. They hired probably the sleaziest, lobbyist and PR person ever.

Richard Berman, right Center for Consumer Freedom, the Sleaziest organization ever created. Um, they even created a Super Bowl ad maligning, plant-based foods. Right. So what do you do when, when that's the case, right? I would say that you gotta fight fire with fire. We created a, a mock Super Bowl ad against them.

Uh, launched it at exactly the same time, tried to run it in every social channel where they, they, they were disparaging us. And you know, I think that we had some interesting effects for a while. The problem is that. When you're up against an incumbent, especially, you know, US Cattlemen's Association, um, they're gonna, they're gonna go in for the long haul.

So they literally spent millions of dollars to advertise their, their Super Bowl ad, um, all year long on Fox Business. Right. And we couldn't do that. We're a startup, so we gotta get pretty scrappy, pretty creative. But if you [00:12:00] don't really position yourself as against something, especially in the world of startups, you're kind of positioning yourself against nothing.

So, uh, that's, that was my big takeaway in, in crises is that you gotta create a system where there's winners and losers, where there is frankly enemies and heroes and you gotta position yourself on the right side of history.

Johanna Maska: So create the friction. Yeah. Lean into it. There was a lot of friction that you've dealt with.

What do you think? Yeah, so I guess

Travis Parman: my favorite crisis was the Carlos Gunn scandal. Did anybody see that? Any of the documentaries read any of the books?

Johanna Maska: This is wild for anyone who does not remember this, the exec who really brought back the company and had brought, so he went in to basically overhaul the company, got rid of a bunch of people, but hired back more people, was hugely successful.

Fell under house arrest. You can probably tell the story, uh, better. But he what ended up getting smuggled out Japan, uh, is, uh, guilty until proven innocent. So he was under house [00:13:00] arrest. And he got himself smuggled out in a box under the covered darkness, essentially to get out of the country. And is still like on the on, yeah.

Yeah. He on the lamb.

Travis Parman: In Lebanon now, so, and Interpol Fugitive. It's all fun and games until your chairman is an Interpol Fugitive. Now I have a template for that.

Johanna Maska: I, I think you may be the only who has the template, but, but when, I mean you, when

Travis Parman: you get called to, you know, and up to the executive floors to say.

Hey, um, we've got some news for you. Um, the chairman has been arrested and is being held by the Tokyo authorities. How many people and how many hours is it gonna take you to put together a news release and a press conference to be able to explain this? So you get to work and it forces you to focus on the simplest messaging possible and to calm the situation.

Mm-hmm. So in this case, one of the important things was to remember. This is going to create [00:14:00] turmoil for employees because it's going to send the company into a tailspin. Uh, a chairman who had been overseeing three companies, Renault and Mitsubishi and Nissan. And then suddenly the idea is that they're left rudderless.

So pointing to, we've got a deep bench of executive strength. We're participating, uh, in the investigation with the authorities, uh, and then giving the employees something to cleave to. So that business can continue as normal to the extent that it can.

Johanna Maska: Well, you've talked a lot about the employees being your number one, uh, you know, communications asset.

And it is interesting to me because in our campaign in, uh, early Iowa, our motto was. Really respect and power include, so it really was communicating with that key audience of employees. What, what do you think, and under crisis, what is it that you've [00:15:00] observed as some of the best models of getting the truth, uh, whatever that is out to your audience?

Rochelle Ford: Well, I think you, you do have to make me consistent. And constant with your messaging, and so having it out at particular times of when you can expect it and making sure that you're updating that home base, what's going on. Because part of what you're doing when you're going through a crisis, whether you're trying to.

Fight, bring down and create additional dramas. When I heard from the startup of land, which I, I don't think I've ever taught that in a class, so I'm gonna make a note of that. I teach, teach my class next time. I, I do. But it is also, you have to remember that you're managing for tomorrow. Mm. Is not just the crisis that you're in today, but you have to think about what happens next.

And what are those next future steps? And so you wanna make sure you take care of that home base, but you're also trying to say how do you recover from it? And how do you learn from it? Because whether you're sm. I don't have stories like that ling [00:16:00] someone out of a country or, you know, having a whole beef industry try to take you down.

Um, the reality is, is that you, you have to learn from that. Yeah. And what are those lessons learned and how do you move through that? And, and I think that you, you also have to continue to, to lean into those basics. And I think as a communicator, and I think you said this. And you demonstrate this with, with it, is that you do have to be calm.

Mm. You've gotta be patient and you also have to be good humored. You will get through this. Yeah. And I think there might be different types of light at the end of the tunnel. Yeah. But there can be. Wow.

Travis Parman: And, and it's also, it's alignment on strategy. Messaging is one dimension of it, but where, um, the communications function really comes into that executive presence.

Is being able to align all of the other executives and functions on a strategy forward, not just the messaging.

Johanna Maska: Well, and that, [00:17:00] that is key to some of the successful businesses. The communications is not a support function. It is really a seat at the table shaping the company. Um, we do wanna take audience questions, so if you have a question, please go to the mic.

Uh, right back there. Sorry. I don't know if there's, I don't think it's. It's a wired mic. So if you can go back to that mic. Um, I know we'll take a couple, uh, quick questions and then continue on, uh, talking about authenticity in communications. Yes. What's your question?

Maria Alejandra: Hello? Hi. Um, Maria Alejandra. I'm, I work for the National Reproductive Justice Organization for Latinas.

Um, I have a quick question about crisis comms. You all talked about how we have to attack and obviously make sure that people are getting, um. Becoming aware of this. How do you prevent burnout while also keeping momentum about the issue?

Johanna Maska: Oh, that's a good one. Especially in today's age. It's like news is [00:18:00] coming at us 24 hours a day.

How do you prevent burnout in the midst of a crisis?

Rachel Konrad: I'll, I'll take a whack at that one. So when I worked for Elon, it was 2008 to 2011, and to be honest, it was a lot of 80 to 100 hour weeks. Um, there's really no way to prevent burnout. I did it for three years and I moved on, right? So that is one way to do it.

But if you want to create a system where you can stay managing this for a while. Um, I think one way to do it is to keep the core communications function fairly small, right? Um, I've been in a position where I've owned all of communications, marketing, sustainability, you know, these huge teams, and that is really, really tricky because especially if you're leaning into disruption, you need to basically presume that 50% of your job is crisis.

And when that hits for you, especially, you gotta, everything else has to come off of your schedule for 1, 2, 3 days, right? Sometimes even longer. [00:19:00] And, and so if you have a really big team, it makes it pretty hard to do that, right? Things are just fall, fall through the cracks. So I try to have a awesome deputy and a pretty small team, and I usually, um, like rely on a lot of other people internally and make sure that they know that when a crisis hits.

I'm gone, I'm, I'm dealing with the CEO chairman, one or two other people and that's it.

Johanna Maska: Well, and you can almost, you know, kind of think these through these crises through beforehand to some extent and try to plan for what your response is gonna be. What is it that you've seen?

Rochelle Ford: Absolutely. A lot of teams do.

Not everything is a crisis. Mm. There are some issues that you know are going to arise within your sector, and you should be planning for those and have somewhat of a game plan to deal with them now. Here's the elephant in the room. How many of y'all are feeling the pressure right now of a gazillion issues all happening at once and everything feels like a crisis?

[00:20:00] Yeah. Uh, most people around the world are feeling that if you're in a comms position. We used to always say, well, you would go into a war room and you'd have that core group of people who are handling the crisis du jour, but it really wasn't necessary to have a crisis. Every day something would happen that you define as a crisis.

Every day can't be a crisis. And so what people are beginning to do, and this is what a lot of our page members are talking about as we're having these conversations, is that we're redefining what that war room is. Everything can't be a crisis. So we're leaning back in to think about truly. What is our purpose in this?

What are our values in this? Who are the stakeholders that are most affected by these things? And how can we build relationships with them? And how, what are the, going back to that prism, what are those channels that we need to have? And again, we used to, you know, how many of y'all got like over-reliant on email and listservs and things within your companies and organizations that may not be your [00:21:00] friend anymore?

And so we're talking about coming out of that traditional thinking. You have to have some sort of mediated, and we're bringing executives around to the floor, talking in meetings and interpersonal communication so that you can really hear. What these grievances and things that are going on, and then be able to take that feedback into the new type of war room that's gonna help you to redefine and to be able to continue moving forward with purpose.

It's so, and

Travis Parman: I, I think there is opportunity in the situation room to delegate the room to delegate some of the activities so that you're not all experiencing that same level of burnout. But the reason it's so difficult is that core group that you have. Who understands all of the nuances of the situation and provides that consistency of strategy and narrative.

There's, there's hardly any escape for them. There is. They've [00:22:00] got to see it through.

Rachel Konrad: Yeah, I, the other thing I was gonna mention is this, this idea that it's not all a crisis. Again, that might be true at Nissan, right? Which makes, uh, 40, 40 different models of cars has 80 different plants around the country, uh, around the world and has tens of thousands of employees.

But if you're an early stage company and you have one product on the market and you have a team of 20 or 50 or 200 people. Everything is an existential threat. It really is. And if you don't take that attitude, then you could be killed in 1 24 hour news cycle, right? So you actually really do need to jump on stuff very, very quickly.

And I would argue that it's not a question of deprioritizing, something is not a crisis. It's being able to jump on the crisis. And deprioritize everything else. I work with a lot of startups where they're like, we have this, this one year calendar of social content. And I'm like, that is bullshit. Like [00:23:00] if you are thinking about content for March of 2026, you don't understand how social media works.

It thrives on news jacking and, and, and crises and attention weaponize that, use that, right? Like actually see crises. As your best friend. That's really how you get through.

Johanna Maska: And at the same time, an organization like yours that's probably feeling like, oh my God, you know, the burnout. There's some degree, and you said this before, you know, sometimes, uh, leaders will throw their whole selves into things, but sometimes that shows that they're not disciplined.

Yeah. Um, so really stepping back and making sure you have the discipline. Now, uh, we wanna take more questions and I think that we, we see more questions, but I also wanna get to, people do want authenticity. They want brands and leaders to sound human. So how do organizations create that real authenticity with their audience, and where do data and analytics fit in?

How should they shape [00:24:00] audience focused communication strategies?

Travis Parman: I love that. I'll jump in. So on the authenticity and the voice part, I think that's critical because we're in an era of being bombarded with communication. Even more now that a lot of it is being generated. Yeah. And sounds really similar.

So finding a unique voice, one that potentially has a little bit of humor in it, one that is different in some way, I think is critical to break through all of that other noise and to get people to pay attention. And you'll hear when you hear about those, oh, we've got a year of content planned, all of that.

Evergreen that we can use at any time. And I'm like, evergreen means never seen because it is not relevant. It's bland, it's almost pointless. You've got to find an opportunity to get into a niche, into a crack and really leverage that to be meaningful. Um, I think on the, um, I, I always also say it's easy to get into a lot of corporate speak, so I'm like, if you wouldn't say it [00:25:00] to grandma at the Thanksgiving dinner table.

Don't try to say it to anybody else. Don't try to write just for, you know, sounding like you're smart. Do it in a way that you can relate to people, that people will remember, that people can relate to, that people can repeat themselves. So I think that's what's key on the analytic side. I think especially getting into targeting.

Um, and finding the best channels to reach people. I think that's where analytics are really coming into play for next generation on precision targeting of messaging.

Rochelle Ford: Mm. Anyone else wanna jump in on this one? So, you know, when you were talking about, um, authenticity and data, how many of y'all are using the generative AI to write your emails?

And you think that creativity you can use the AI follow that?

Johanna Maska: Is anyone using AI for communications functions? I mean there, there are lots of opportunities with ai. There's

Rochelle Ford: opportunities with ai, but you can also sound like a robot. Yeah, [00:26:00] and you will know, and it's very easy to to detect that this was AI generated.

And you can tell now when somebody has used it to fix up their email to you, and it sounds just like everybody else. So you can't lose that creativity no matter if you're a stable brand or you are a startup. That human creativity, you can't get around that without being human. And breaking it down to what grandma was saying, I'm, I'm still trying to make sure my mom understands what I, I do.

Yeah. Um, it's gotten, it's gotten easier. Uh, 'cause now the roles are a little bit more clear. But, but, but what I'll say is that you have to be able to break it down, um, and into those simple terms, but that again, it's going to take that human element. Everything can't be con cons considered, just automatically generated.

But at the same time, people are putting aana AI on their org charts because they recognize that you're [00:27:00] speaking. Now some to the web.

Johanna Maska: Someone who's using AI a lot for communications is Elon Musk. We, we want some more questions? I think I saw some more people. So if you have a question, please go to the microphone.

I know we do wanna talk about ai. I see the question here. We got go. All right.

Jason Dressel: Hello. Um, hi friends. Thanks for the discussion. Uh, Jason Dressel from History Factory, A proud page member. So, uh, great to see you, Rochelle and Travis. Uh, I'm gonna cheat. I'm gonna ask two questions. Um, the first question is, uh, from your collective experience, are there any longstanding practices that you now consider, uh, completely outdated and recommend, uh, communicators not continuing to, um, to implement?

And, uh, the second question is, uh, measurement. Uh, how do you all measure, uh, the performance and, uh, and, and comp and consequences of your, uh, communication strategies and tactics? Thank you.

Johanna Maska: Hmm.[00:28:00]

Who wants to take that? Those are good

Travis Parman: questions. Yeah, I can,

Johanna Maska: I know the, the thing you would just stop doing altogether. One of the most recommend

Travis Parman: wasteful things that I see now is. Relying on a news release to try to get news. So there are still a lot of people who just want to shove out a news release, and it's like when you troll for Phish, you know, just wait, wait for the bites to come, versus really, um, having those relationships in place.

It, I, it's almost pointless. Um, I think these days

Johanna Maska: a relationship is better than a, a blast. Yeah.

Travis Parman: Mm-hmm. And

Rachel Konrad: I think that the big, so I do a lot of consulting with early stage companies throughout Silicon Valley, all over the world actually. And I think the biggest cardinal sin in the worlds of comms, marketing, creative brand that a lot of companies fall into.

As a startup, right, is [00:29:00] trying to replicate the incumbent strategy for comms and marketing with zero budget, zero legacy, zero awareness, right? And so these amazing startups, whether it's AI for ed tech or whatever, they'll bring it. They get dazzled by some mid-level manager at either Nike or. Apple and they're like, we're gonna bring in apple's head of creative and it's an absolute cluster f*ck. Like, can I say that? Yeah. Well, because they comment and they're like,

they're

like, well, we need like $4 million just so we can have a blimp strategy. And we need $4 million just to uh, do the regional Super Bowl ad buy. And then we need 15 million to hire, uh, you know, red Antler or whatever the buzzy brand, you know, creative agency is so that we can actually do the creative and it's like.

You, you'll bankrupt your business. Mm. Right. You will. You will [00:30:00] devalue your stock. You will frankly reduce the value of your own options, your own equity significantly in order for what to write. Some cheesy ad jingle. It's, it's a joke. Mm. So when I come in, one of the first things that I do, I say this to the CEO and they're like, oh my God, you're right.

We need to get rid of half of our staff. Right? Because they don't get startups. They just don't, and that is the single biggest sin I see amongst early stage companies. You know, like half of all of you, right, of very entrepreneurial LED organizations. Lean into your own voice, your own mission as opposed to trying to replicate the playbook of the incumbents because you, frankly, if you're rivian our fearless, you know, sponsor here and others.

Um, if, if you are trying to replicate the Hyundai Kia playbook for sponsorships, right? Hyundai Kia usually is the one that sponsors more professional sports than anyone, right? Or if you're an early stage beverage or food brand and you're trying to replicate the playbook of Red [00:31:00] Bull, you will bankrupt the company.

And most, most people in comms and marketing don't get that, and it blows me away. So what can you do to hack it? How can you, I mean, yeah, what's the, like one takeaway that you would suggest to people who are trying to hack it? Yeah. Well, I mean, I think leaning into earned media, right is, is more about setting the agenda, creating the dynamics, and setting the agenda.

So you lead a discussion on something and you have thought leadership. That's one way. And I think in the other really important way is user generated content, right? Let your true believers be the people who, um, who persuade the non-believers you don't have to do it all. Right? That's what we did at Impossible Foods, right?

Like, let the true believers, whether they're, they're, they're, they're animal rights activists or health advocates. Or sustainability people, let them persuade you to, uh, to, to try the product. And then you can rely on [00:32:00] marketing. You have to rely on conventional marketing to some extent, uh, by allowing them to like give us all toothpicks that say impossible burger that you put in your burger and stuff like that.

But it's partnerships with peta. Yeah. Fundamental. Fundamental core message has to be what leads. It's not marketing jingles and and conventional incumbent playbook stuff. Rochelle,

Travis Parman: and to your point on. The, it's gotta be about the outcomes too. When you talk about how do we measure performance, it's gotta be related to the business outcomes and is communications actually supporting that?

Um, because another one of the things that could stop tomorrow are these media reports that say you got 1 billion impressions. That means nothing to anyone. And people smile and nod and, and say, great. And half the time the communicators can't use that context to understand how well they really did.

Rochelle Ford: Yeah, I think that that's a critical thing is that it's not about the impressions, it's about the impact on what you're trying to drive.[00:33:00]

Are you trying to drive sales? Are you trying to move the needle on Capitol Hill? Or you know, in your local community, are you, what are you, what is the behavior? What is the awareness you're trying to get at? What are the attitudes that you're trying to get at to change, right? And what is the behavior?

What do you want people to do? And so you have to lean more into those behavioral items. And are you tracking, so go back to the analytics piece. Are you tracking what happens from what you did on shared right on shared media that you know, social media, right? Are you tracking where people are coming to from your website?

How are they getting. That information was driving them, you'd be able to track that and what they do once they get there. So you have to be able to use that. But the, the, the thing that, that, that you said about earned media and you've mentioned about, um, you know, kill the press release. I agree. Kill the press release, but I think we have to stop the reliance on earned media.

Johanna Maska: Mm. And the media climate's changing. It's [00:34:00] changed. I mean, how do you even like find your audiences and you've got a shrinking reported force and some of it's being written by AI and they're having issues. That's why

Rochelle Ford: AI is now your target audience. Okay. The ai, you're, you're writing for that. That's who you're, so, you're.

I'm sorry. I know you've got questions. No, no. This is,

Johanna Maska: this is, I'm, I'm moving to ai. I just said, oh, here we go. So, but that

Rochelle Ford: becomes your target audience is what you have on your website. What is the long form content that is discoverable? Most of our websites are so poorly done, and so we, you need to lean into that and to make sure that you are really.

Ensuring that it's not just site engine optimized, but you have really thought about all of those search terms and things, and are you gonna grab it and is AI going to be able to discover it to generate the content and fight the mis and disinformation that's out there about your organization [00:35:00] because it's also gonna grab things and on issues that are simply not.

True.

Johanna Maska: We were talking about this earlier in the inputs that AI is taking depends on the AI creator and, uh, what they're, you know, allowing. So there may be some website. I mean, we, we had this with President Obama where we had senators claiming some trips cost millions of dollars when they didn't. And that now has become news because it was in a press, you know, in a story in an Indian newspaper.

And now it's generated into ai and Alexa is telling you this information. So how do you think companies need to think through AI and communications in a very different way? What's changing the game and what's hype?

Rachel Konrad: I mean, I don't know. I'm, I use, I use ai, I use chat, GPT-4, I use Claude. I don't have a problem with [00:36:00] it.

Except when it comes to creating your core narrative, the reason why your company exists or your personal brand, right? One of the classes that I teach at Stanford, I make all of my students, um, rewrite their LinkedIn about bio, right? And inevitably, this is what I get. I get some, this, this literally happened last quarter.

Um, the most badass awesome student in my class was this short little skinny woman from China who it turned out. She put herself through Stanford Business School, which is a lot of money. Wow. Based on, um, her poker winnings in Texas, Holden. Wow. Okay. So the legalities of these, and she, she wanted to go, she wanted to go into venture capital and I was like, oh my God.

Elaine, this is awesome because every VC plays poker, including Texas, Holden, and her bio was this optimizing solutions for performance driven iteration of solutions management. And I'm [00:37:00] like, what? What do you even do? I can't tell. Right. So it is like goes back to this authenticity. You have to be authentic and there's, you know, to Rochelle's point, there are too many websites that are just full of pablum

you know, bullshit, frankly, to fill space. You don't even know what the company is, right? So lean into your company's kind of dazzling uniqueness and, and give me more of that. That is really the key. It's just in the era of ai, the more you can be true to yourself, the better. That's, I go back to that every single time,

Travis Parman: and that's what's going to become rare and precious.

Johanna Maska: Yeah.

Rochelle Ford: Yeah. Yeah. And, and I think you also have to encourage people to engage with it. You know, there's a lot of fear that, you know, you know, AI is gonna take over the world and all. Yeah. We have to lean into that. And those who, there's something called the fear of being obsolete. And a lot of employees, no matter what department they're working in, whether it's your comms [00:38:00] department or your engineering or your accountants, everyone is worried about the fear of becoming obsolete.

But we have to encourage people to play in the AI space. And how can it make you a more efficient at what you do? That we're gonna give you time back in your life. Right to spend on things that will bring you peace and bring you joy. But then we're also going to make sure that you are strategic in order to lead in the revolution or the evolution and not be left behind.

But we have to encourage people to embrace it and create safe spaces to experiment in it so that we can. Use it and use it wisely.

Johanna Maska: Hmm. We wanna take more questions if you have more questions. The other thing we wanted to talk about is we're in this always on media world. Um, you know, there's a lot of news every day.

Some of it, you know, is frankly, it's unfortunate that we're not talking about the [00:39:00] ideas behind it and often talk about personalities, but people are being flooded with content. So how do organizations, even if they're trying to jack that news or you know, hit that they want it right now, how do they capture attention and gain that influence?

And do, if you have a question, go to the mic.

Rachel Konrad: I would say on that one again, it's just like, with crisis comes, you need to see it as an opportunity, right? So one of the companies that I'm working with right now is this Copenhagen based AI company, and they were like, what do we do? Our messaging sucks. How do we reorg, you know, to, to get the, the, the more relevance out.

And so I. Start talking to them, and I'm like, you know, the rest of the world, the mainstream media gets it wrong, right? Where they're, they're pitting the entire AI race between the United States, you know, Nvidia, Google Meta, et cetera, versus, uh, China Deep seek. But actually a lot of the AI. When it comes to biology and manipulating [00:40:00] biology, it's actually coming outta Denmark, right?

So why don't you lean in there and pitch a story to the local version of the Wall Street Journal and the Economist and the Financial Times about how actually Copenhagen is really where the race is happening in Europe. And instead of Europeans being like, oh, we lost the Race to America, say, actually we've got a bunch of interesting startups here.

And we did that. And of course the Copenhagen Media go crazy for it, right? So whenever you can see a big set of stories coming, you gotta tie your own message to that in some interesting way. That's really key. And most of the time. People in who think about it very conventionally, don't do that. They're like, I'm just telling.

I was always told as a marketer, I need to tell my own positive story of growth. This is just bullshit in this day and age, like you have to latch on to the prevailing memes you just do.

Travis Parman: And back in the day, you used to be able to rely on a halo placement like a USA today. [00:41:00] And everyone saw it and knew about it.

Yeah. Yeah. Now, it doesn't matter whether you get the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, you've gotta take that and make sure that you're getting it back into channels. Mm-hmm. That audience is important to you actually will see.

Rochelle Ford: That's interesting. What do you think? I think it's, it's the same part.

You have to drill down to who your audience actually is and, and. You want. Yes. You want that big wow. You want that excitement, but you have to be able to put it into the media where your audience is going back to that prison where we started. Mm-hmm. Where are they going for the information and how do you, everything that you do, so part of it is a.

It definitely is that transactional. You're sending out stuff, right? But it's also engaging and creating that relationship.

Johanna Maska: Well, and I don't see any last questions. I know that we've got, uh, she's running. We do, we have another. We have one. We have one and we have about Thank you. 10 minutes. Everyone down based on this,

Allison Goodman: um, I think this is

Johanna Maska: a little off.

Allison Goodman: Hi, Allison Goodman from [00:42:00] duck duck do based on the changing media landscape, in addition to of course, trust and third party validation. Um, how else can you prove the need for earned coverage in tech companies when you can't necessarily attribute installs to it? It might be more of a tech. Tech question.

Rachel Konrad: Yeah, I mean, I think there is unquestionably value to earned media.

You know, CEOs who tell you like, oh, I don't care about getting a front page story in the Wall Street Journal. They are being delusional, right? It is highly valued. It's highly valued. If you're raising money, it's highly valued. If you're raising, if you're trying to find high net worth individual consumers or whatever, it's still really highly valued.

And I think that, um, having your message. Conveyed by a highly credible source, whether it's the Wall Street Journal, New York Times economist, et cetera, gives you a level of credibility that your own corporate copy will never ever match, right? Like there's just, we did a [00:43:00] study at Impossible Foods back in, must have been 2020, about, um.

What is the most valuable type of media? Is it earned media? In our case, we used A-C-N-B-C article about us. Is it, um, influencer media? We used Katie Perry dressed up as an impossible burger. Oh God. Which she did for free, by the way. 'cause we didn't pay influencers back then. And then the third one was our own, uh, like web copy, social media hit.

Right. And um, it was something that a creative designer spent like hours designing and things like that. Right. Any guesses of what was the most valuable? Perry? No. Interestingly, Katy Perry, I thought that's gonna be the most valuable. It got, I don't know, 50 million hits over social media across all of it.

But two days later when you asked people what did you, what do you remember about, about Impossible Burger? They do not remember anything. They remember Perry, but they don't remember. Impossible. Right. And um, the social media stuff that we created took a [00:44:00] lot of time, but it was very low memorability. The CNBC article because it's forcing you to read.

Right. Even if you just read the headline, you remember it. So it's just, it's just unequivocally false to say, oh, no one cares about media anymore. They do, yeah. Right. It might be newsmax or infowars or something now. Right. But they definitely care about it.

Johanna Maska: Yeah. They care and they want that, that, uh, reliable source that they trust and, and.

Rochelle Ford: That's the point is that the reliable sources have changed.

Johanna Maska: Of course. Yeah. Yeah. They look

Rochelle Ford: like podcasters and things now. Yeah. Podcasts are

Rachel Konrad: solid credibility if you get your company on podcasts, not as an advertiser. Right, but, but as a, as a guest, oh my God. That is really, really high value right now. And that's got a long tail because people will keep listening to it for two years.

Well,

Travis Parman: and paid prescription. Paid subscription platforms. Yep. If people want the knowledge, if they want the analysis of what they see in the headlines to the point [00:45:00] that they're willing to subscribe to it, then that's incredibly powerful and I think that's a direction that we need to hit next too.

Rachel Konrad: Yeah.

Or

free, free tip to any one here in comms if you're launching a new product. Um, and you can get Axios newsletters to cover it the day of the launch. Sales just went up, you know, like it is, it is just PR is still very, very relevant.

Johanna Maska: Very interesting. Now, uh, as much as we'd love to continue this, I'm afraid our time is ticking down.

Uh, so we are gonna get final thoughts from the panel. What's one major trend that you believe will shape audience communications over the next few years? Thinking about our prism, one major trend, I think we

Rochelle Ford: should start that in.

Rachel Konrad: Yeah, I just, I, who wants to start us? I think that we are at peak bullshit right now.

There is so much glazed copy marketing plum and just, there's no other way to say it. It's just bullshit out there that most consumers don't differentiate between brands. When [00:46:00] you're just telling your positive story of growth and solutions management. It's just such bullshit, and I think we are going to see an erosion of that because guess what?

Consumers actually still want products that improve lives, that solve the existential crises that we're facing of climate change, of our public health crisis, of biodiversity collapse. They still want and need those products. So if you actually are lucky enough to have created or to work for a company that is legitimately subverting the status quo and is doing something positive for humanity.

Leverage the fuck outta that. Like lean into the mission and go for it. Right. Don't bland it out with generic copy that I think land it out. I'm hoping that we're there. Don't land it out is a good quote card for this panel.

Travis Parman: Yeah. And it's, uh, analysis of and context that people are seeking and so the more that you can provide that, I think the better off you're going to be to be able to, to break through.

Rochelle Ford: Yeah, absolutely. You have to be able to [00:47:00] prove it with action. You know, we oftentimes talk about OPR. You know, this is the hype. It's a hype. It's a hype. No. No, it's about the action. Can you prove it with action? How you restore confidence in what any of us are talking about, whether it's a startup or it's a legacy brand or what have you.

You have to make sure that whatever you do, you're leading with corporate action. Are you actually doing something authentically, truthfully about it? Can you demonstrate it? And then are you communicating the why? That context? Yeah. How is that leaning into your purpose? How is that leaning into your value?

The why? Matters. And if you can hit that perfect intersection, what we see over and over again is that that confidence in you and your reputation, it keeps going up

Travis Parman: because it's much more about that dialogue that you can create among your target audiences than what you're speaking out to them.

Johanna Maska: Mm. So creating ways that your audience can communicate with each other and be.

Part of [00:48:00] this, uh, I know my, my son is, uh, into Duolingo. I think they have created some sort of a social media audience. So, uh, you know, we started today talking about this prism. Uh, the way that we see communications, um, through these different audiences with multiple perspectives. And what we've heard about is that we don't just deliver a message, we navigate.

How it's being received, how it's being refracted, how it's being reshaped, depending on who is listening and who you want to listen. So the challenge and the opportunity is understanding how to reach audiences where they are, build trust and create real connection in an era of fragmented media and shifting perspectives.

Thank you so much for our fabulous panelists. Thank you. Don't it out.