PR Potpourri: A Look Back at Q1 2025

That Solo Life, Episode 298: PR Potpourri: A Look Back at Q1 2025

Michelle Kane (00:12):
Thank you for joining us for this episode of That Solo Life, the podcast for PR pros and marketers who work for themselves, people like me, Michelle Kane, with Voice Matters, and my wonderful co-host, Karen Swim of Solo PR Pro. Hey, Karen. Here we are.

Karen Swim, APR (00:27):
Good morning, Michelle. How are you doing this week?

Michelle Kane (00:31):
Doing all right? Doing all right. We are all living the dream of being a communicator in 2025. It's a glorious thing actually, but it's interesting times as always, right?

Karen Swim, APR (00:44):
I would say interesting is a big word that aptly describes this year.
Michelle Kane (00:50):
Yes, yes. The whole lot of it. And we've just, I don't know, seen so much lately, experienced so much, and it's like we're just going to do a little, as we called it, a little potpourri of what's happening in PR these days.

Karen Swim, APR (01:09):
This episode could not be contained by a single topic, and so there is so much happening that we decided to have a little fun today and kind of skirt through a few different topics.

Michelle Kane (01:21):
Yay. So what you got?

Karen Swim, APR (01:25):
Well, one of the things that I'm noticing is what's happening with PR tools these days?

Michelle Kane (01:37):
Let's see. Some of them are lacking. Some of them are, you got to be kidding me. You want me to pay how much? And yeah, I don't know. It just feels like even beyond tools, it feels like in certain ways, what felt like a nice sweet groove maybe 10 years ago. And not to sound like, get off my lawn, things just seem disjointed. I don't know if it's just me. It's like, okay, well that works. And I think it could very well just have to do with the fact that our entire landscape, our entire playing field of PR is in such flux, and I don't mean that necessarily in a bad way. I mean, certainly decimation of news outlets is bad, but as we always say, that just means we need to be more creative and when we can certainly get our messaging out. But when you're trying to create something like a tool, which of course takes time, effort, study, and then it's here, and suddenly you find, oh wait, the industry is up there ahead, and so what do you do?

Karen Swim, APR (02:55):
It's really sad to me, as you said, that there was a time in our lives when we had a tool or tools that we needed and we would pay for those two tools and we would get a plethora of things that were important to our jobs. And I feel like what we have been seeing is higher prices, but less utility to our day-to-day jobs. So for me, where I see things falling down, media monitoring, you are nickel and dimmed depending on what you want. And if you are someone who pitches trades and pitches, other things like newsletters and other outlets where your Publix actually are, good luck getting a media monitoring service to find all of the mentions. It usually means a manual search or using a different tool to do that. So you're paying for something and you're paying sometimes for the media database, which also these days is sorely lacking. And I don't know that that's the fault of the PR tool companies because there's a lot of movement, but it just, like you said, it's so disjointed, but prices keep going up and you're left wondering, what am I really paying for when I'm having to do so many manual workarounds to get what I need?

Michelle Kane (04:19):
Yeah, that's very true, especially with the ever-changing newsrooms. We can't really hold it to these tools to keep up that quickly and at that pace. And just even as you lose personnel, I'm sure that they're losing point people too to even keep them updated. So yeah, I don't know.

Karen Swim, APR (04:45):
I also though feel like there might be an over-reliance on automation and AI, and they've lost a step and they've lost us in the process. More and more people are just turning away and saying, why am I doing this when I could really put together something on my own to get at what I needed. Analytics is another area that I feel like in some ways, depending on what you're looking for, you can get better analytics from non PR tools than you can from the big PR tool makers trying to pull together just simple things to show impact. It is really tough. It's hard. You have to hack together a bunch of stuff, and I don't know about you, but if I'm paying for a service, I honestly want to be able to go to that service and run monthly reports that give me the information that I need, that I can then customize my reports. I don't mind customizing my reports, but can I get the information that I need without having to dig through 10 different places to get at that information?

Michelle Kane (05:52):
Yeah. It almost feels like sometimes you have to customize your work to fit the parameters of the tool. And it's like, well, that's to say the least a little backwards. That's not how this works. You should work with us to an extent and understand, and again, I get it. It's like writing a large ship. You can't just flip a U-turn and make things so true.
(06:21):
We've just experienced kind of, I don't know how to say it, which is dumb because here I am on a podcast, but we've both experienced this lately of just, and I am not even saying, go for the gold sticker, but do your job. And I know as PR people, we do wear many hats and sometimes, most times we wear them gladly, and we're happy to just get her done because that's what we're accustomed to. That's what we do. But I feel like more and more we're hitting these walls. Why do I have to ask for that? Why do I have to almost go around you and get it myself? And I think I know part of the answer. It's just our society right now, we're all tired, we're exhausted. Everything is uncertain. So I get it, but

Karen Swim, APR (07:16):
Come on, people help us out. I wonder if it is all fatigue because I'm finding myself setting the expectation of not relying on people doing their jobs consistently from day to day. And so that puts a lot more work on us. And just normal everyday things, you can't trust people to follow up when they say that they're going to follow up. You can't trust that you are going to get the information that you need in one ask. You may have to ask five times. And that means a lot of creating your own tickler system, of reminding yourself to follow up with people who can't be trusted to just do what you've asked them to do or what you're paying them to do. And this is not only N pr, this is in everything. And so I'm tired and I'm sure I'm tired and I have a job. So I think every living human being must be feeling the same thing. And I don't know the solution to this, but because I don't know if other countries are also experiencing this, and other countries are much better than we are at taking time off and having rest here in the United States, just you have to be dead to get time off around here. It's really disgusting to me. So maybe,

Michelle Kane (08:48):
And even then, hey, your health is failing. Could you turn that thing in this week before you expire? And I know that's kind of only half joking, okay, I could see myself doing that because I am that ridiculous. And American,

Karen Swim, APR (09:03):
No, it's really true and it's really sad. And I wish that we could have a major culture shift around making it normal to take time off. I had a colleague that was sick recently, and they felt they just kept working. It's not that bad. What's the barometer to take time off in this country if you're sick? Should you not just be able to walk away from your job for a couple of days so that you could focus on your own health? Do you have to be super sick? Is that what qualifies as being comfortable to take time off? It is this culture and it's so deeply embedded into our mind that somehow taking time off is bad. It's horrible. We are not supposed to do that. Oh, you just have a respiratory thing or you just have a sinus infection. Keep working. Oh, they haven't wheeled you in the surgery yet. Keep working. You got your phone. I need this stuff. Just, I don't know. It's true. We need to back off so that we can all be more effective at our jobs, I think mean, and we can't be effective if we're all stinking tired.

Michelle Kane (10:21):
Well, and it has a high price because we've been on this habit trail for decades. And what it does slowly is it chips away at our perceived humanity of ourselves and each other and the give that we give each other. It's lacking because, well, I'll power through you power through. We're not human. We just keep going. And I don't think it's an intentional toll, but it does take a toll. You have to realize, Hey, yo, I'm not a, this is not, sometimes even they make you pull over to wait for your fries. So calm down. And this is from someone who, I'm not going to lie, I worked through covid. I thought, well, I don't need to be flat on my back. Let me just work slower. And I'm like, you're an idiot. I'm like, yeah, I know. And I think to myself, when you were working in an office, what made you stay home? Probably just the idea of, well, I don't want to spread this, so I'll stay home. If it wasn't contagious, I probably would've limped in, which is so dumb. I'll call myself out on that. It's just dumb.

Karen Swim, APR (11:39):
It's true. And I suppose that is a good point. When you're working from a home office and you are not exposed to colleagues. I mean, I do understand if you have a sniffle that's annoying, but it's not affecting your ability to get work done that you would keep working. But when you were hacking and you've got issues, why not just take the time off, even if it's a day or two, to just rest and recover and then come back to work and let that be normal and okay it, we just are not allowing sufficient time for people to deal with their life or recover from illness or grief or whatever is going on. And I do feel like we're seeing the collective toll of that.

Michelle Kane (12:29):
Oh, yeah. Yeah, definitely. Definitely. I mean, it's been over 20 years since I've been to London, but that was one of the things I picked up on just the vibe of the city. This is a vibrant city, a major city in the world economy. And I just didn't have that sense of even on the train platforms during rush hour. And I'm sure I'm like, I'm sure all people work very hard every day, and yet here we are and oh,

Karen Swim, APR (12:56):
I at least hear them talking about, and we work with global companies and we do see them taking far more holidays than we do here in the states. I understand no place is perfect, but I just here in this country, we could definitely use a collective exhale.

Michelle Kane (13:17):
Yeah, and I would say I think it's especially true here in the Northeast. We're insane. Yeah, I'll say

Karen Swim, APR (13:23):
It. So continuing on with our top mini topic day. Being a communicator right now is really interesting in managing your Publix and really breaking through with your messaging. And so you already have the media outlets, which is a challenge. Journalists are under assault, true journalism is under assault, and you've got a shrinking number of outlets. You've got local outlets going away, which is devastating. I cannot believe there's not more outrage about that. And you've got media companies that control huge percentages of the media, but our publics are also problematic because human beings have such a different barometer these days of what qualifies as important to them, important enough to listen in, important enough to tune into, and I don't know if this is the social media effect, but a lot of the public is swayed by aesthetics. So they look at the prettiness of it all versus the facts and the quality. So
(14:45):
We see, for example, there is an entire social media account, only one that I know of. There could be others that are providing updates on Luigi, the young man who murdered a man in cold blood. And that to me is horrifying because I do not care how good looking he is, sake, I do not want updates. I do not want to support a murderer, that man that was murdered. You could say whatever you want to say about his character about healthcare. But it's interesting to me that the public really makes these decisions about, and so they're all in. There's enough people wanting information that there are social media accounts dedicated to it. So as PR professionals working in that environment forces us to focus not only on what we do so well, which is messaging and ethics and responsible content, but then being able to package that in a way that's going to break through to an audience that really prizes prettiness.

Michelle Kane (15:54):
Yeah, I think it's the price we're paying for the popularity of reality tv. I'm not saying it's all bad
Karen Swim, APR (16:02):
True,

Michelle Kane (16:03):
But it's that, I mean, we've seen it bleed through into our coverage of politics or even it's either that or everything's treated as a sport, right? What's the latest, what's happening? And I had a little mini rant myself and my television last week of all the hoo-ha over the NFL draft, and it's five days long and all the bombast of it, which is fine, but next time I hear a football fan trash my Oscars, I'm going to remind them they have a lunch and then they have a three hour award show. I don't want to hear it all of you people taking off for the NFL draft. But anyway, back to what we're talking about. Yeah, I think it is. It's that sensationalism of everything, and it does make it challenging. I was going to say difficult, but no, it's challenging to break through in a meaningful way. You feel like you have to almost go that route, and it's like, really? No, I'm not going to do that. But I think that that makes it all that more important that we do as best we can, and sometimes this is how we have to outright position things, is this is a solution to a problem that's making your life hard. And here is how what we have to say can help make your day to day better.
(17:31):
And I get it, and I think it does speak back to that fatigue. Face it. Sometimes at the end of the day, I just want the brain candy. I can't process anything else. But at the same time, it's not good. Anything like your diet, you shouldn't just be eating Tootsie Rolls.

Karen Swim, APR (17:51):
I love that you use that word sensationalism because I think you hit the nail on the head and you're 100% right. It is a lot of brain candy. And when people grow used to that steady diet, then it makes it harder to feed them the good stuff. So for communicators, I do think it's not impossible, but we have to adhere to our integrity and we can't lower ourselves. It's almost like, remember when the tabloids were a bad thing and we didn't look at tabloids as true journalism and they were relegated to a certain part of our reading category and they weren't taken seriously. And now it feels like everything is tabloid journalism.

Michelle Kane (18:41):
Totally.

Karen Swim, APR (18:42):
And the nuggets of nuggets of news and information that we get are far and few between. I of course enjoy those. I still enjoy those rare long form stories that really delve deep into issues and present it in a way that you're getting all of the sides and you can make decisions on your own. The reporter's not leading you down a path, but they really are taking you into the heart of the story. Unfortunately, sadly, I do believe that journalists, again, I want to say journalists and not content people, journalists want to do that. Journalists want to do the job that they signed up to do, but they are often not allowed to do that, to keep

Michelle Kane (19:31):
Working. Yeah. Yeah. I've seen that locally. There's a journalist in Philly and just a couple of things have come up and people got their hot takes in, and he took his time and he ended up being right and getting the facts. And he said, this stuff takes days easily, if not longer, to get it right. So he's not going to do the hot takes, and he's right. I mean, I saw it way back in the nineties when hard copy became a thing. Hard copy became a thing right around the time that the news budgets were slashed, and they were expected to have a little more infotainment flavor. And that blurring is not healthy for us as a society. Not at all. I'm not saying you shouldn't have fun, of course, but our local news still had fun. They did the wacky public interest stories. You could still have fun. But I think the ship has sailed so far out. There's no returning back, but hopefully we can realize what's truly good for us and get back to to it somehow.

Karen Swim, APR (20:37):
Yeah, I think as PR professionals, no matter what industries you serve, whether you are in manufacturing or healthcare or B2B Tech, which all sounds very, very different from B2C work, I think you're right that we have to find ways to present stories in a variety of ways, staying true to who we are, staying true to our clients and their messaging, and of course to their brand, but maybe serving up things that humanize the content. I think that that remains vitally important. And as PR pros, we know that there's always a way to tell a story no matter how mundane, no matter how complicated a topic is, there's still a way to tell a story. And I think today we are required to do that. And I think we have to look at mixtures, long form content, short form content. I think we do have to build some fun in there and have a balance. It can't all be hard, heavy, complex. We have to mix it up a little bit for our audiences or we're going to lose them. And I think that we have to be creative or work with, collaborate with the creatives to bring things to our audience on different platforms and not rely on the tried and true.

Michelle Kane (22:06):
Yeah. No, that's so true. And you know what? The good thing is? We as humans, we still crave story. We want stories that are compelling, that make us feel, that are well told, that have purpose. So in the end, we'll be okay. We'll be okay. It's just really bizarre world, but we'll be okay.

Karen Swim, APR (22:27):
It's kind of bizarre, but we say this all the time, public relations professionals are among the best of us. And I love that our profession attracts many because of the ethics that we hold dear, because of the unique part of our jobs where we really are not only serving our clients, but serving their publics as well. And I think that that keeps us honest. And I think that this profession attracts people who at their heart are extremely compassionate and human-centered. I'm sorry for all of us that life is so tiring right now. I wish that I had multimillions and could send us all on a great big fat vacation. I promise I would take you all away and let you have a chance to breathe for at least a week. I'm going to make that my mission. We should do a solo PR pro trip.

Michelle Kane (23:34):
Just no cruises. No

Karen Swim, APR (23:36):
Cruises, because sorry to the people who love cruises. To me, it feels like being trapped on a floating germ factory. But that's me. If you're a cruise person, no offense intended, but these days I've been cured of that cruise bug. No, thank you.

Michelle Kane (23:57):
Well, we look forward to those golden sands one day, but we hope that you've gotten some value out of our time together today. And if you have, please do share this episode around. We would truly appreciate that. Hit us up@solopro.com with your thoughts, with your ideas of things you'd like us to talk about. And until next time, thanks for listening to That Solo Life.