Welcome & Opening Interaction | 2025 Page Up Annual Conference

Elizabeth Owen & Jordan Rittenberry. Intro by Page CEO Rochelle Ford.

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Transcript

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Anywho, hi, everyone. Good morning. Oh, come on. Good morning. All right. We are out here in sunny California, so we've got to show our energy.

So I'm so excited to be with you today. I am Page's new CEO. I just started in January, and it has been an amazing experience.

This is my first Page Up annual conference. How many others? This is your first conference. Welcome. We're like twinsies.

So I am so glad that you all are here. Whether you've been part of our community for years or you're just joining us for the first time, welcome.

Page Up has always been a place where community… Communication leaders come together to learn, to connect, and to lift one another up.

Page Up is such a vital part of our Page community. You are the experimenters. You're the builders, the collaborators who turn our ideas into action.

You're not just preparing to lead. You are leading. And you're leading the way for other communicators, for all of our professionals together.

And so I'm so excited that you all are here, and I want to thank particularly the Page Up Operating Committee for your leadership of Page Up.

And a special shout-out and thank you to Amima Ubaqar. God, Amima's going to kill me. She's like, you have known me for like five years.

Will you please? I have it right here. Abu Bakr. Yes? Thank you. Yes, Amima, I love you. I appreciate you.

Thank you for your leadership. From the insights that all of you will continue to learn. Thank Through our benchmarking initiative, to the energy that each of you are bringing to programs like Think Thursday and to Spring Seminar, you are helping to shape how communicators everywhere show up in this new era.

This is a year of incredible momentum for Page, for Page Up, and for the entire profession that we serve.

I want to thank the Conference Planning Committee and all the volunteers who have made this event possible. You've created a program that captures the spirit of Page Up, strategic, curious, and deeply connected to each other.

And I hope that over the next few days, the next two days, that you will take full advantage of that spirit.

Meet someone new. Share what's working. Share what's not working. Ask big questions, and don't be afraid to ride a few waves together, although the ocean might be cool, so you might want to metaphorically do that.

On the other hand, the reality is it's with great pleasure. And I'm I'm so excited to introduce our co-chairs of this year's Page Up Conference, Elizabeth Owen and Jordan Rittenberry, and I want to officially kick off what I know will be an expiring event and an energizing few days together.

Jordan and Elizabeth. Well, that's some kicky walk on music. can make things happen. All right. Welcome, welcome. We are so happy that you are here with us at the 2025 conference.

Thank you to Rochelle for the remarks. And we just have a couple of things that we wanted to cover before we get started here today.

As Rochelle mentioned, we did kind of come up with a little bit of a surfing metaphor. Part of that is because we're at the beach, but part of that is actually just because because So So So So So So So So So So So

Each of us is facing the uncertainty of the day, and I feel like, don't know about you, but there's a lot of words, unprecedented, feels like we're all saying that one quite a bit, but just as we are generally people who like to know what's going on with our stakeholders, what's going on with our messages, we're finding that the circumstances are changing sometimes daily, and the stakeholders that were previously aligned, maybe they're not anymore.

The messages that we worked so hard, they're not landing, and we have to find a way to communicate for our teams, for our organizations, and to build our reputations with a degree of clarity that can sometimes be hard to manage, and I really don't want to belabor the surfing metaphor, but sometimes we do it beautifully, we do it gracefully, we pull off some tricks, people like, who know, they're clapping for me from the sidelines, but like, let's be real, sometimes we get clobbered.

So, today, tomorrow, we're going to hear from people who are doing it, excuse me, and doing it well. We know that many of us…

Come here because we want to invest in our professional development, and Jordan, I'm just thrilled to be here with you.

You've made this very fun, and I'm hoping that the things that seem so hard, the questions that are sometimes difficult to navigate, are easier when we are able to leverage the insights of our peers in this network.

So thank you all for making the time to be here, and thank you for being along on this ride with me.

And thank you, Elizabeth. And yes, it's been interesting with the planning committee over the last probably three months we've been getting together, talking about the session that we were putting together, the number of times we had to pivot and change course and say, well, actually, that might not land, or this is a hot topic.

So we've constantly had to sort of move and adjust, even over the course of just three months. But I'm really proud of the agenda that we've put together.

You're going to hear from over 50 speakers over the next day and a half, from peers, from thought leaders, and other people in the industry, really tackling those issues and having just straight talk with one another.

Additionally, we hear time and time again that some of the best parts of the PageUp annual conference are the times where we spend outside of this room, the peer-to-peer networking, the time.

The we were together at dinner, the time we were at lunch, just really connecting and having those conversations. So we've carefully curated quite a bit of that, and we look forward to the next day and a half with you.

So shall we? Let's do it. So in the opening question, on the raise of hands, it looked like probably about a third of the folks here, it's their first PageUp annual conference.

And I think that that tracks with, you know, years past that we've seen. But Elizabeth, you've been to a handful of these.

Tell me, why do you keep coming back to PageUp? I'm a middle schooler, so I was like really tempted to do like a six or seven, like six, seven joke.

I think I've probably been to about four of these conferences. I've also participated in the PageUp or Page FLE program, which I highly recommend if you have the opportunity or it's possible for somebody on your teams.

But one of the reasons that I keep coming is time and again, I have learned things. I have grown professionally.

And and. I'm. The first event that I went to, actually, when I think I got a little bit hooked, was we were considering doing something, and there was somebody in the audience that Kelly McGinnis, my boss, was like, make sure you find that person.

And so we went over, and they were so generous with their time. They shared with us what they had done, how did it work, what did we need to be on the lookout for, who were three or four other people that we could contact.

And then Brexit happened, and we all, like, were, oh, my gosh, how great, we're in a room together talking about these events and what's everybody doing.

And it just was a wonderful kind of feeling, and that, like, solidarity and being a phone-a-friend when somebody else needs it or having it when you need it is just incredible.

So I'm a big fan. Love it. And for me, it really comes down to, I think, within these four walls, we are peers, right?

And I think when we're outside, it's agency, in-house, academic, it's client versus competitors. And I think this is the chance where we really get to do.

have like real talk with one another and really be vulnerable. I think inside the pitch room, I certainly know everything.

But this is the chance where we really get to ask questions and have a conversation with one another. And then that was an agency joke, by the way.

I'm very subtle. But with that, let's kick over to Slido. So everyone, if you could get your phones out, we want to really lay the groundwork for the conversation and see sort of where we all are and what we want to get out of today and tomorrow and see sort of what's the baseline that we have?

Yeah, I feel like everybody's done Slido, but just QR code, the questions will come up, you'll get to respond.

And then throughout both this main stage session, as well as some of the others, there are mic runners. And so if you've got like a passion about something, or if we see like one table seems to be having a little bit more fun, and the rest of us are having FOMO, we might send the mic runner over to you to see what's going on.

So with that, let's kick it off with our first question. Great. And the first one is like, what's the We'll you next

One thing you most need to figure out before you leave here. So take a couple seconds and these will automatically adjust.

It's hundred percent. That could be one person. AI, yeah. I think next time we'll tee up the Jeopardy music.

Ooh, that would have been a good idea. All right, so it feels like we've got about half of the participants coming in.

Some of you guys might still be thinking about what it is, but this managing constant change, making the most of AI, really pretty significant.

Looks like there are fewer people maybe positioning themselves for the next role, although we do have an incredible panel on that one, and I have a feeling that's going to be super popular when we get to that.

Yeah, maybe a little shy early on. Yeah. Nobody's going to tell that you're looking for a job. All right.

The good news is I think the managing change, making AI, and like how do we package this up? These are all things that are on the agenda.

So So hopefully you guys let us know at the end of the session, but hopefully we'll make good on that promise.

Let's kick out the next question. What is one challenge that you've cracked in the last year that you would be willing to share with a peer?

I love it. It's quite a balance already. Yeah, it's amazing. All right, just for fun, and because it's like early in the morning, is there anyone, can we see, raise the hands?

Who are the folks here who think that they have done something amazing with change communications or have something to offer their peers?

24% of you said. All right, so if that's something that you're looking for, these are your folks. We're going to have breakouts.

There's going to be lots of options. What about AI integration? Who are our AI gurus? It's a little bright for me to see, but hopefully the rest of you guys are taking note, because I need to find them, too.

What about team development? All right, we've got Rochelle with Badoumima. All right, can everyone see the hands? I'm serious.

guys are going to want to grab them. Crisis management. Little cohort right here. Measurement and analytics. This was a big topic during the benchmarking discussion yesterday, so I would expect that that's going to be a lot of conversation.

And then what about executive positioning? All right. Did we miss anything? Did anyone think, like, oh, I wish they had said this, because I would like to share case study?

Nothing. All right. And anyone willing to share what the communication challenge is, what they cracked this year? Anyone willing to share?

It It It's is. It's early, it is early. All right, go on to the next one. Let's do it.

Great. And this one is what is your biggest concern about your organization's reputation right now? I thought it would be a blend of crossfire and invisibility.

Yeah. Like either too close to the sun or completely far away. Are those the kind of calls you're getting?

Yeah, more often than not. And often how to stay out of the cross. Yeah, there's actually a balance of the two.

How do we stay out while still communicating, but make known what we're actually doing and getting credit in the industry?

So yeah. Impressive to see measurements so high. I was hoping to see actually feeling pretty good be a higher number than it is.

All right. So we're all glad that we're here. All right. Let's move on. I think this is one that we are all in the next session.

Then. We have two sessions this morning that are going to touch on big-picture issues, but one of the sessions this morning really is about managing reputation at its highest level.

We're going to hear from Rob at Harris Poll with the Axios Reputation Management, and this is one that we want to talk about because I think that everyone's really trying to figure out what to do.

So I think the case studies that you're going to hear from the panelists will hopefully be super practical, things that we can take back.

And I know already I was like, oh, I wonder if I could invite you guys to come and talk to my team, because I think it's going to be super, super practical.

Great. And yeah, so the next question. How far is, what's the biggest gap in your team right now? And this will be the last one that we do, I think.

I see bandwidth coming up quite a bit. A lot of communication. Teams are getting smaller and smaller, being asked to do more with less as a result of AI, how do we operate more efficiently?

That one we're hearing quite a bit about. Budget shrinking, yeah. Yeah, just to plug, I do think that for those who went to the benchmarking session, this is something that came up yesterday.

It was sort of like, are you doing more with less? I don't think any of us were doing more with more, but if you're in that lucky boat, we all want to know how you're doing it, so please let us know.

But again, that was something that a handful of people went to, and I think that if you're interested, it certainly felt like there were a lot of insights, both sort of like industry-specific as well as across the page membership that try to give you a handle of like, what is the budget and where are teams investing?

But certainly, I think that one of the things that we are hoping that we sessions over the next couple of days do give us is like some sense of like, how do you start to tackle bandwidth, and is AI this like solution that everybody proposes that will be, or are there other vectors?

Thank you for indulging us. think that like many of the speakers are in the room today, so these like little insights I think will help them shape and tailor their remarks.

So with that, we do have a couple of things that we wanted to cover just in terms of like the basic housekeeping before we get started.

We mentioned at the top that there have been a number of people who were really instrumental in pulling this conference off.

And I do just want to ask if the members of the committee that put this on could please stand up.

Most not everybody is in the room. So round of applause for these folks. They scoured their contact list. They reached out to clients.

And really, we do appreciate everyone who did that. Yes. And I love that they're front and center. Really appreciate it, guys.

Yeah. Next up, we also wanted to acknowledge the page staff. There are a number of people who are behind the scenes.

It's actually been amazing because I feel like I get emails from so many people, so face to a name, I've really appreciated.

But this is truly a Herculean effort, so let's just do a quick round of applause acknowledging the Page Staff.

We also could not do this without the sponsors of this Page Event. Many of those sponsors are here today and they have read ribbons on their badges.

Hopefully you've noticed that and if you have the opportunity to say thank you, we'd love to. Just a couple of quick notes about the sponsors who have so generously contributed, whether that's for breakfast or lunches or last night's receptions.

We really do want to say thank you to Greg at Muckrack, Travis Day and Public Relay for the events last night.

We also want to say thank you to 360 PR and Mubidala for sponsoring sponsoring all of our breaks. Thank you to those bronze sponsors.

We also have large financial contributors who have given at least 20,000 plus, and those sponsors are recognized at all of our major events, and those are the 1983 circle.

I think I might be off with the slides. I'm sorry about that, if that's the case. There we go.

Burson, the Grossman Group, Muckrake Southwest. Thank you very much. All right. Moving on. I'm going see what the slide says before I talk.

All right. We also have several of these folks are here today, so let's make sure and find them and say thank you.

And that's first up, Gagan McDonald, the Harris Poll, Heineken, Hill & Knowlton, and .600. And finally, these are the Friends of Page.

You may have seen some of the folks who are here who are wearing these badges or pins, rather. These are folks who

If made personal contributions in the amount of $500 or more, if you are not a friend of Page and you'd like to, I bet they can make that happen and you can get yourself a pin as well.

So thank you to all of those folks for their generosity. Let's go ahead and give them a round of applause.

Over to you. Great. And finally, please make sure you're joining the conversation on social media using hashtag PageUp Annual and then on Instagram at AWPageSociety and on LinkedIn at PageSociety.

Note that a few of these conversations today will be under Chatham House rules. We'll make sure that is clarified in advance of the session.

But otherwise, please feel free to share. Also, if you haven't already, download the PageUp app. It has all of the information that you'll need over the next day and a half.

It has the agenda. It has the list of speakers. If you've downloaded it previously from another event, you might have to delete it and reinstall.

I had to do that. But once you do that, it… Automatically updates with all of the new content. So please make sure you're using the app and sharing online.

So with that, let's dive into a great day and a half. Let's do it. All right. Well, I have the very great pleasure of welcoming our first speaker to the stage.