Source:
https://www.podbean.com/eau/pb-i6nry-142c341

One of our roles as PR practitioners is working with in-house marketing teams. Today’s episode was inspired by a recent article by Agility PR, 33 Comms Issues Keeping CMOs and Brand Managers Up at Night. Join us as we talk about their current pain points and how we can be a valued resource.
 
Read the article:
https://www.agilitypr.com/pr-news/public-relations/33-comms-issues-keeping-cmos-and-brand-managers-up-at-night/
 
Transcript
Michelle Kane (00:02):
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 VoiceMatters, and my wonderful co-host, Karen Swim of Solo PR Pro. Hi, Karen. How are you today?
Karen Swim (00:20):
I'm doing so well, Michelle. How are you doing?
Michelle Kane (00:23):
I'm doing pretty well. We're dealing with the haze from the fires in Quebec. Thanks, Canada. We know you love us. So it's, a Roseanne Roseannadanna world. It's always something. So we just gotta get through it. <Laugh>.
Karen Swim (00:43):
Yeah. We are also under air quality alert here, Michigan. So if you're listening to us, by the time this podcast drops, we hope that your air is nice and clean and clear wherever you are. You're not under temperatures that are either they're scorching or too cold, and you're having a fabulous start of your summer. Even though it's not summer yet, everybody has sort of resigned themselves to the fact that we're here. So, yeah.
Michelle Kane (01:10):
Yeah. Please go outside and take a big breath for us, <laugh>.
Karen Swim (01:14):
Yeah, please do.
Michelle Kane (01:16):
Well, speaking of nightmarish conditions, <laugh>,
Karen Swim (01:20):
Uhhuh, nice segue.
Michelle Kane (01:21):
Thank you. We decided to take on this topic today of things that make us lose sleep, things that might cause us to worry just things in the industry that may be real or manufactured in our minds. Talking about what's going on out there in the PR world and the communications world in general. I mean, we do touch on these things all the time, quite frankly, because we're here to keep you as sharp as possible. But we thought let's focus on some of our fears. <Laugh>.
Karen Swim (01:59):
Yeah. I love this. And this episode was inspired by a piece that Agility PR wrote, shout out to Agility. Hey, y'all. And, the title of the article, which we will link in the show notes, is 33 Issues Keeping, who's It Keeping Up Tonight? I forget
Michelle Kane (02:22):
All of Us
Karen Swim (02:25):
Keeping CMOs and Brand Managers up at night. So it was a really interesting look at, you know, several things, and I always like to know from the marketing side of the house, the pure marketing side of the house, and also from the brand side, what's troubling people, because often in our role as outsourced PR agency, the CMO is actually one of our primary contacts, and we work closely with the marketing team. So I found it really interesting and very on point to what others are seeing as well. So let's dive in.
Michelle Kane (03:08):
Yeah, absolutely. One, thing that jumped out of me was a, collection of four or five of the issues all, at least in my mind, speaking to what is sort of an attention deficit disorder that's happening out there. Yeah. many of the things keeping these CMOs up at night is, you know, optimizing the client experience, keeping customers engaged, aligning your brand with the consumer experience. And, really this just reinforced what I and many of my colleagues are experiencing, even when you're trying to either reintroduce programming that had been put on pause or that had been put online during the pandemic in-person events. And I think we're well past issues of participation in in-person events being because of fear of getting covid. But we're still all trying to put our finger on, well, how do we get everyone back? And we're coming to the realization of it's not just like turning the switch on and droves of people will return.
I have seen this literally across the board. Chambers, I have a friend who is displaying her photography, so she's having like a gallery event and its, you know, response has been underwhelming, even though before it would've been amazing. Now, I think one of the main drivers of that is really we have realigned ourselves of not running from thing to thing to thing. We, just aren't doing that to ourselves anymore, even though they might all be fantastic choices, but as a marketer, how do we reset those expectations? How do we handle that? How do we move forward while still serving our clients fun.
Karen Swim (05:03):
You know, it's also interesting that you bring that out because this article talked about, you know, being post Covid and, and you're right across industries while we are no longer in the heat of the pandemic and some of the protocols and things that prohibited us from doing things, we're st