This Used to Be a Thing! A Look Back at PR

0:18 MICHELLE KANE: Okay, Karen. Confession time. I'm going to reveal a little bit about how long I've been on this planet. But when I started, when I started in this business, a big part of getting a story placed involved an actual paper envelope. KAREN SWIM, APR: An envelope and stamps, right. MICHELLE KANE: And mail and stickers with addresses on them. KAREN SWIM, APR: Yeah. And and then was there a fear that it would get delivered in time so that it would arrive before the editor's deadline? MICHELLE KANE: You think? I mean, how did we live? We had to actually have our stories together well in advance, not just send it over.

0:58 KAREN SWIM, APR: Oh, yeah. Wow. MICHELLE KANE: Well. KAREN SWIM, APR: We are going to get into that today. So welcome back to That Solo Life, the podcast for independent PR and communication pros who are building a business. I'm Karen Swim, president of Solo PR Pro. MICHELLE KANE: And I am Michelle Kane, principal of Voice Matters. And yeah, today's a fun episode. We're going to take a look back and look forward, looking back at some of the communications jobs and tools and tasks that were once, you know, completely essential. And now, you know, it's like what you mailed press releases. Are you kidding me? But we're also going to look forward because this is not just a nostalgia episode. So don't hit pause.

1:42 We are going to look forward at one job that, according to some smart people, has not even been invented yet. So here we go. KAREN SWIM, APR: So grab a cup of coffee, tea, or whatever floats your boat as you're listening to this. Okay, so Michelle, I'm going to start us off with one because this, this really is amazing that it was an actual business for well over a century. MICHELLE KANE: Press clipping with actual scissors. Yeah. KAREN SWIM, APR: It's so wild to think. But Burrelles, which was a media clipping service, was founded, I think 1888.

2:23 And the story kind of goes that Frank Burrellw, he overheard two business people complaining that they couldn't keep up with what the papers were saying about their companies. And so he and his wife turned their kitchen table into an actual clipping bureau. Yeah. So people read newspapers, cut out the mentions, and they mailed them to their clients. Obviously, I was not working in PR at that time, but. MICHELLE KANE: Not way back then. No, they had scissors in 1888. I'm just kidding. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, I mean, that's that's wild, right? Because for a very long time, I'm talking well into the 90s, at least in my experience, you know, modern monitoring the media was physical. I remember we would get the big manila envelopes.

3:13 You would have to subscribe and, you know, give them your client's name or what all the things we put in a Google alert or, you know, these days and you'd get your clippings. KAREN SWIM, APR: That is wild to me. And, you know, I was kind of reading about this and apparently a lot of those clipping bureaus employed a lot of women because reading and sorting paper was seen as women's work. So, you know, when we talk about the people, though, that built early media intelligence, it was often women with scissors at long tables. MICHELLE KANE: That's fabulous. And of course, you know, infuriating that it was women's work. But hey, we sent men to the moon, too.

3:55 So anyway. Sounds like a theme for us this month. It really. KAREN SWIM, APR: Does. So the the end of the story. It's almost a little poetic because Burelles, which was the descendant of that kitchen table, they stopped their medium monitoring service in what? June 2024. Somewhere around there. Yeah. And the employees in Maine had still been clipping and mailing for years. Like, so that's like give and take 136 years. MICHELLE KANE: That's wild. It really is. But, you know, things change. And yeah, I, I imagine it must have been so strange that first day, right? In our PR world where we like, where's my clip book? I need my clip book because you used to show it to the, you know, so proud. Look, look at what we did.

4:38 It's kind of like when. Look, mommy, I colored you a picture. Yeah, yeah. KAREN SWIM, APR: For sure. The coverage report as a physical object. I mean. MICHELLE KANE: It's in the Smithsonian. KAREN SWIM, APR: Just present it with pride. And now the coverage report is a dashboard and the client asked for it before you've even finished your coffee, right? MICHELLE KANE: Let me pull a PDF for you. Right. So. Oh, gosh. All right. What's something else we miss? I miss it, and I don't miss it at the same time. KAREN SWIM, APR: Yeah. MICHELLE KANE: The media list as a book. And we're talking book. Yeah. Like Flintstone size book. KAREN SWIM, APR: Yeah. The directories, big heavy volumes with every editor and reporter and their beat and their phone number.

5:24 MICHELLE KANE: Yeah. Circle the names of the pen. Or you'd xerox the pages in your sector and pull out your highlighter. KAREN SWIM, APR: Wow. MICHELLE KANE: Yeah. Oof! I'm having a little flashbacks. KAREN SWIM, APR: Can you I mean, so I wasn't in PR at that time, but gosh, probably half the people that changed jobs before you got that book. MICHELLE KANE: Sometimes. But it was also kind of a time where people stayed in their jobs a lot longer. That's true. KAREN SWIM, APR: That would not work in. MICHELLE KANE: Yeah. No no no no no. I mean, shoot even you know, scanning the contact list at the end of a, you know, philly.com these days, you're like, oh, yeah. Oh, you're over here now. KAREN SWIM, APR: Yeah.

6:04 MICHELLE KANE: Yeah. KAREN SWIM, APR: Well, in those media books have now become databases, you know. Right. Cision and Muckrack. And, you know, there were predating those. There were others. And so it lives in software. MICHELLE KANE: So yeah. KAREN SWIM, APR: But I, you know, I think in a way back in those times that it was probably we learned a lot about and the reporters actual work because we were reading and we had to flip through a book and we had to really put some thought into who might care rather than just clicking a filter. MICHELLE KANE: Yeah, that's so true. So true. I mean, databases have made it faster, but also easier just to, you know, not get to the right person even if it's saying, yeah, yeah, I agree. Yeah I wish yeah. Yeah.

6:56 KAREN SWIM, APR: So I, you know, while we're on the subject of, you know, talking about physical things. Yeah. The press kit, remember the press kit? MICHELLE KANE: A folder with a little pocket with things in it. KAREN SWIM, APR: Folders and pockets. This is, you know, this. So I had this weird remembrance of does anybody remember Kinko's before it was Fedex? Kinko's. MICHELLE KANE: Oh, heck. KAREN SWIM, APR: Yeah. Around. MICHELLE KANE: Yeah. KAREN SWIM, APR: Our teams lived in there. And I was at that time I was in marketing, but we lived in those places. They were like our second offices out in the field. A folder with a pocket and, you know, black and white glossy photos or later color photos, eight by tens.

7:38 MICHELLE KANE: Yeah. KAREN SWIM, APR: NASA, I guess used to send those out to for launches. And it just, it was like a whole production, right? MICHELLE KANE: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And honestly, someone's whole job some days. Just stuffing those, right? No one was, at least in my agency. No one was above stuffing an envelope or. Yeah, you know, running to Kinko's to pick something up or. Yeah, yeah, we were all in. All in. KAREN SWIM, APR: But now the Prescott is digital, right? It's a it's a, you know, it's a page on a website or. Yeah, a link to a folder and photos are downloaded and nobody, nobody has to add stamps or, you know, do all the stuff that junior people used to do and stuff envelopes.

8:23 MICHELLE KANE: Yeah, yeah. Which, you know, it's kind of a bummer because that grunt work was also an apprenticeship of sorts. And I would say not just that it kind of gave you time. It just gave you time where you weren't using your entire brain. KAREN SWIM, APR: Yeah. MICHELLE KANE: And you could maybe think about the work. You just your brain had a little more time to wander and breathing room and not to get too off track, but I, we are sorely missing that these days. For sure. KAREN SWIM, APR: We are. I mean, and when those go away, like what happens to the apprenticeship. MICHELLE KANE: Right, right. And, you know, let's think about that. Right. So, you know, we're still looking backward here, but how about how the news itself used to travel, right? Like when you had something to announce it wasn't as simple as a post.

9:10 KAREN SWIM, APR: True. MICHELLE KANE: You know, there's. KAREN SWIM, APR: True. MICHELLE KANE: Aside from stuffing the envelopes. KAREN SWIM, APR: Yeah. I mean, so yeah, we had the wire and that came along and, and that was wild when, you know, for its time when it first started. So rather than sending a messenger, oh my God, messengers. MICHELLE KANE: Bicycle messengers, time, shout out time and courier service, right, two, five, six, two, seven. KAREN SWIM, APR: And you didn't send a stack of mail copies to all of the papers. You'd send one release, you know, using these new wire services and it would go out over get this, a private teleprinter network to about, you know, a dozen outlets at once.

9:57 MICHELLE KANE: Oh, magic a dozen outlets at once. Yeah. Crazy. Yeah. What are you going to do next? Invent a fax machine? Oh, wait. KAREN SWIM, APR: Yeah, but, I mean, you know, think about it. That was miraculous. MICHELLE KANE: That was a big deal. KAREN SWIM, APR: And then, you know that that was replaced by faxes and then, you know, email came along and now your announcement goes to a platform and an algorithm decides who sees it. So, you know, it's kind of fascinating to see how all of these changes made the distribution easier, but the attention harder. MICHELLE KANE: So true. Right. Almost makes me want to mail a hard copy of the next release.

10:42 I do you know, it used to be hard to send because it was, you know, it was very exclusive. Oh, you can't know how to reach these people. Only in the industry. Right. But now it's easy to send so hard to get noticed. KAREN SWIM, APR: Yeah. That should go on a mug, right? MICHELLE KANE: Yeah. We still have to start that. Start that Solo PR swag. Yeah. I'll be in there. Yeah for sure, for sure. Okay, one more category. And it's jobs. Big category. But because, you know, sometimes the thing that disappears isn't just a task, it's a title, right? I mean, we're seeing this now, or the thing that appears is a title that nobody's ever heard of.

11:24 KAREN SWIM, APR: I mean, honestly, it wasn't that long ago that social media manager wasn't a thing. Right. It was probably in the late 2000 that it wasn't really a job. It was just somebody in the office who was, quote unquote, good at Facebook, got handed the keys. And then eventually this turned into a whole career with a the title a team and an actual budget around it. MICHELLE KANE: Yes. If if you're lucky, I still see the random job listings out there of someone doing like, we need a front desk receptionist, slash social media manager. And I'm like, yeah, but you know, yeah. And you know, the early version, it was usually whoever you're young, you know what the kids like.

12:06 I'm like, yeah, but your target's a 45 year old woman. Does not matter. You are young, you know, or whoever happened to have a personal account and had a clue how to do things. KAREN SWIM, APR: Yeah, yeah. MICHELLE KANE: Yeah. KAREN SWIM, APR: Well, I mean, that's kind of the point, right? That it wasn't really planned. The work showed up first, and then the job title came later. MICHELLE KANE: So yes. KAREN SWIM, APR: And you know, that's the pattern that we are kind of going to lean into now because that brings us to the future. MICHELLE KANE: And this is where I really got interested, right? Because you sent me this article from Ragan. KAREN SWIM, APR: Yeah. It's called, I think the title of the article was The Comms Job that isn't on an org chart yet or something like that. Anyway. So Tricia Taylor, she's somebody who leads communications and change management at Coca-Cola bottlers and cell service.

12:54 And she told Ragan that she thinks there's going to be something around an AI transformation communicator. And the other phrase that she used was a workforce translator. MICHELLE KANE: I love that so much. I want to be that when I grow up. What does it mean? KAREN SWIM, APR: Yeah. So it's so it's kind of interesting. It's somebody who sits right at that intersection of, you know, all of these big changes that are happening quickly. AI return to office, hybrid work, cybersecurity culture, but they communicate in a very people centered way. So the way that she talks about it, she says it's not just explaining the tools, but it's helping people to adapt to a new way of working while staying empathetic and connected to the person.

13:44 MICHELLE KANE: Love that. And honestly, it sounds like what you know, we good comms people already do. Yeah. But you know, with a new spin on it. KAREN SWIM, APR: Yeah. And I. MICHELLE KANE: Get. KAREN SWIM, APR: The point that she was making is that this is not just coming out of nowhere. Right. It grows out of where communicators already sit in partnership with HR and IT. So she calls connection communications the connective tissue between strategy, human behavior and implementation. MICHELLE KANE: That is fantastic. That's a great way to phrase it to connective tissue.

14:25 But you know, because it's both a compliment and a warning. Right. And how often have we talked about companies who don't think internal comms are necessary or important and how that hampers them more than they realize? Right. Connective tissue. It's essential and it's also invisible until it either tears or is non existent. So you know that don't have. Don't let your company get bone on bone knee pain. You need your connective tissue. KAREN SWIM, APR: That is such a great point Michelle. And you know, she's careful to be honest about it. She says that they're not making promises that the roles won't change.

15:08 Tasks are becoming automated. We know that roles are evolving. We know that too. And, but we also know that new roles will emerge that don't exist today. MICHELLE KANE: Yeah. Much, much like the, you know, emergence of a social media manager. Right? The work arrived, the title followed. KAREN SWIM, APR: Yeah. Yeah. Well, but then there was another article, PR daily ran an article at the end of August and from two leaders and they talked about what they call the chief integrator. MICHELLE KANE: Oh, talk to me about that. KAREN SWIM, APR: Yeah. MICHELLE KANE: Sounds yummy. KAREN SWIM, APR: Yeah. They describe this new kind of leader in big organizations. That's part chief of staff, part strategist, part futurist. And this person doesn't own media relations or employee comms or crisis they own. Here's this word again, the connective tissue between them.

16:01 So same phrase, which, you know, I thought was interesting. MICHELLE KANE: Yeah, that is really cool that they're both coming to the same metaphor. That's awesome. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Love it. KAREN SWIM, APR: But they talk about, you know, these people are often accountable for integration, but they also don't have any authority to make it stick because the work still flows through business units and teams that don't report to them. And so they're under resourced because strategy and, and, you know, integration get treated as overhead while crisis and customer comms always gets funded. MICHELLE KANE: You know what? I've lived this.

16:42 This was me in nonprofit comms. Yeah. Yeah. You you're you're you are the connective tissue. I'm like, yeah, but nobody's listening to me. So yeah, that's very familiar. Everyone agrees. Everyone agrees it's important, but nobody wants to either enforce it or pay for it. KAREN SWIM, APR: Wow. MICHELLE KANE: Yeah. Yeah. KAREN SWIM, APR: I think we probably all seen a version of that and, and are seeing new versions of that today as everything is changing in the workforce. MICHELLE KANE: So yeah, for sure. KAREN SWIM, APR: So they made a prediction and they said, I think this won't surprise us. Ai is going to take over a lot of what we think of as execution, drafting, adapting for social, you know, that first pass outreach, right? The roles that shrink are the ones that are built around volume, and the roles that grow are the ones that orchestrate strategy, integration, measurement and relationships.

17:39 MICHELLE KANE: Which does loop right back to, you know, the apprenticeship question that that was raised earlier, right? If the stuffing envelopes work is gone and the first draft work is gone. KAREN SWIM, APR: Yeah. MICHELLE KANE: Which is a lot of ways you get mentored as well, right? How, how are we going to make sure that the up and coming generations are learning the discernment and the judgment? KAREN SWIM, APR: I, I think that's a really excellent question. And I don't think, as far as I know, that anyone's fully answered that. And. MICHELLE KANE: Right. KAREN SWIM, APR: You know, but but I do think that that is a really important question for our industry to consider. MICHELLE KANE: Yeah, for sure, for sure. I think there's we have to make a way for people to still experience things at an entry level and learn because otherwise you're, you're never going to get properly seasoned.

18:29 You're going to be like a bad cast iron skillet. But it's not entirely theoretical because there's an actual agency that is doing this. MikeWorldWide is an independent agency and a day they named Dave Aglar, their chief integrated media and innovation officer. Just in May he reports straight to the CEO. Oh, lovely. He oversees the integrated media, the research, the analytics, and the creative and leads their AI efforts. Just wow. It makes sense, right? Good for them. KAREN SWIM, APR: But there's a title, you know, again, that just wouldn't have even made sense like five years ago.

19:09 Right. And then, you know, it's also interesting that they bought a firm that specializes in change management and workforce communication. So that sounds like the market is voting with money, not just with essays and articles. MICHELLE KANE: That's true. That's true. So let's dig into this a little bit, right? We are not a large corporation with an org chart we're solos. Right. So what does a job that doesn't exist yet mean for us? I think it's going to be a good thing. KAREN SWIM, APR: I mean, I kind of think so too. I think it's actually a little bit of a gift because, you know, companies can't create job titles overnight.

19:51 It takes budget cycles, approvals, headcount conversations. But, you know, a solo practitioner can decide tomorrow to offer the service and put a name on it. MICHELLE KANE: Yep. Before it's a job. It's a service we create. KAREN SWIM, APR: Yeah, exactly. And this has always been one of the advantages of being solo is that we can move quickly. We can pivot without having to go through all of that. So if a client's rolling out AI tools or they're reorganizing or they're going through a merger, which God I'm seeing a lot of that lately. Yeah. And their employees are, you know, anxious and confused. Someone right. Has to translate between leadership's plan and the people who are actually living through it, and a solo PR pro who understands change, who knows how to talk to HR, IT and legal can turn that technical language into something human, and you can offer that right now.

20:51 And you can even do it as a fractional engagement. MICHELLE KANE: Absolutely. It ties right back to our previous conversations about fractional pricing, right? Yeah. A company that doesn't have a budget or doesn't want to create a full time job in a house for a full time chief integrator, you know, they would happily hire an outside consultant to take care of that for them. It's a no brainer. Yeah. For sure. KAREN SWIM, APR: And I mean, to be clear, this is this is us. This is you and I talking and kind of interpreting it and looking ahead. This is this is not something that the article said, but it really does seem like the natural spot for, you know, independence.

21:32 We were used to working across functions, and we're used to being the translator in the room. And so we're used to being hand at work without the authority that should go with it. MICHELLE KANE: Right? Right. Which means we already know how to run this. We know how to survive it. You know, they're that authority and resource bind that they're in. KAREN SWIM, APR: We do. I mean, we've been practicing the skill for years. MICHELLE KANE: Yes. Okay. There's one more really cool thing from Tricia Taylor's piece. She describes the skill mix as technical fluency about AI, but not expert. And then strong emotional intelligence, strong strategic communications, and strong organizational insight.

22:21 KAREN SWIM, APR: Yeah, I mean, I, I do love that she says she doesn't know who's an AI expert because let's face it, we've all been dealing with AI at this level for the same amount of years, and it's not a decade. This is all still very much evolving. And so I thought, you know, I honestly thought that that was refreshing because it does lower the bar for the technical part. And it raises the bar for the human part, which is where, you know, the majority of solo PR pros and communicators, period, are comfortable. MICHELLE KANE: Yep, absolutely. You know, we know how to listen. We know how to read a room. It's essential that we know how to do that. And we know how to say the hard things kindly, don't we though?

23:05 KAREN SWIM, APR: We do. We do these days. Sometimes it's it's we have to really remember that skill. SPEAKER 3: But that's why we have each other. We go into the solo PR pro group or we call each other and go, oh my gosh, yeah. KAREN SWIM, APR: Totally agree. I mean, so I mean, this was kind of fun though. So we look back and, you know, from the scissors, the glasses, the directories, the stamps, You know, all of those things are gone. But the thing that's, you know, underneath all of that is that, you know, helping people understand each other hasn't gone anywhere. Yay. So the tools change, but the translation is really the job.

23:46 MICHELLE KANE: Yep. Yep. And I think that's, that's really all we're trying to say. You know, the task disappear, the translation and the capacity to be the translator. Yeah. And that's great for us. KAREN SWIM, APR: Yeah. And if you're a solo out there wondering, like, where do I fit into all of this? Exactly. That's where the solo PR pro community is for. So we figure out the new things together long before it has a title. So come find us at solo PR pro. Com and if you know it's something that you're interested in, you can be a part of our community. MICHELLE KANE: Absolutely. And you know, if it's something you'd rather talk through privately, send us an email. We'd love hearing what you're seeing and experiencing out there in your own client work. You know, so share that with us.

24:33 And of course, we'll have all these articles in our show notes, as always at that solo life.com. KAREN SWIM, APR: Yeah. And I may send us an email or hit us up on social media and tell us, you know, like, what's a task that you, you were just sure that it would never go away. We'd love to hear that too. MICHELLE KANE: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I still use the odd envelope well, for things like birthday cards, but yes. Well, until next time. KAREN SWIM, APR: Thank you for joining us on That Solo Life.