EP391: Navigating the PR Landscape for Mission-Driven Impact

Stacy Jones: Welcome to marketing mistakes and how to avoid them. I’m Stacey Jones and I’m so excited to be here with you all today. I want to extend a very warm welcome to Helen Sharp. Helen is the founder and CEO of Influential PR, a performance PR agency dedicated to supporting brands with a purpose that are sustainable and eco friendly. Helen is a visionary in the realm of public relations and brand storytelling, particularly for mission driven brands seeking to amplify their digital presence through data driven strategies and compelling narratives. With over a decade of experience in the field, Helen has collaborated with influential and sustainable organizations such as the Surf Writer Foundation, 1% from the Planet, Repurpose, Brewvie, and last Object. Prior to founding her own agency, Helen’s journey in the PR industry has taken her across continents from Buenos Aires to Los Angeles and Taiwan.

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Stacy Jones: Her diverse global experiences have enriched her perspective and approached public relations. Today, Helen, I are going to be discussing the transformative power of public relations and driving mission driven brands forward and the importance of crafting powerful narratives. We’ll learn what works from Helen’s perspective, what should be avoided, and how some businesses just miss the mark. Helen, welcome. So happy to have you here today.

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Helen Sharp: Hi. Thank you, Stacey. I’m so happy to be here.

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Stacy Jones: Well, what I always love to do is start off talking about what got you here today. You have gone to Buenos Aires, you’ve gone to LA, you’re now in Austin, you’ve had quite the journey. But what made you decide that, first of all, PR was going to be your shtick and then why? Mission driven brands?

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Helen Sharp: Yeah. So I’ve always. I feel like there’s a type of person that’s a PR person, and I’ve always been that type of person, a person that loves connecting people, that loves trying new things, that, like staying up to date on trends. And I think, like, what really got me interested in PR was connecting the dots between different businesses, different people. And then, you know, I worked in sales for a little while. I worked in publishing for a little while. And I think those two things really are what PR is about. It’s about crafting stories and connecting people. So that’s why I got into pr. I just love it. I love the field. It’s super interesting and it’s. It’s just the type of person I am, I suppose.

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Stacy Jones: And I so agree with you that sales and PR are aligned. Like, yes, you can’t have one without the other. The whole idea of sales is being able to tell a story that gets someone to purchase whatever your product is. And I think a lot of companies don’t realize that actually what a key concept storytelling is to their marketing and to their actual sales campaign.

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Helen Sharp: Yeah, totally. And also, I feel like sales is, it’s important to be an expert in what you’re selling when you’re in sales. And it’s the same with PR. You need to be an expert on whatever your client is doing so you can tell the story properly. And that’s why I, I got involved with, like, the mission driven, eco friendly brands because I’m a very conscious person. I care about the earth, and I was interested in that type of business and I was interested in serving that type of business. So that’s kind of like how I got into that industry. And I guess the first kind of in house PR job that I had, I worked, did a few kind of projects, and then I did, I worked with a reusable straw company during the Straw wars in 2018 when everybody was banning straws.

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Helen Sharp: And as I was working for this business, I was working not only to get their message across, to press podcasts, but also working with influencers and other businesses. And as I was working with them, they asked me, can you do my pr? You seem to know a lot about this industry. And so then I saw that there was a market, there was a need for public relations in this specific type of field. And I kind of always had that entrepreneurial itch to create my own thing. So, yeah, in 2019, I started influential, and my first client I took on for free, actually. I was like, I’ll give you.

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Stacy Jones: Yeah, it’s a case study, right?

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Helen Sharp: Yeah. Well, I gave them a free month. I was, like, listening. I killed it for this business. You guys are super similar. I’ll give you a free month. And then I still work with them today, so. Yeah. And I ended up just sticking to my guns and only working with those types of businesses. And my business grew through referrals and word of mouth. I never did any outbound. It was all, like, people finding me from different campaigns, finding me from press releases I wrote. And then, you know, I also had other companies coming to me that weren’t sustainable, that weren’t mission driven. And I didn’t. I just, I said, no, like, I’m not going to work with you. I’m sticking with this.

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Helen Sharp: And it was great because it let me grow sustainably in a way where I could bring on team members at a pace that felt right in, you know, growing the business which has also been amazing because I’ve kept the same people that have been working with me since I started. So I’ve been, like, slowly growing and keeping those people and taking on the business that I can take at the right time.

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Stacy Jones: And it’s not hard switching over from, you know, working in the business versus owning a business and then being a one woman shop is very different than when you start actually plugging in employees underneath you or even freelancers. And it’s not just about managing them and keeping them happy. It’s about making sure everyone’s working towards your mission and your voice and align to your core beliefs of how you want to do business.

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Helen Sharp: Yeah, totally the trick. Yeah, I know. And I think the people I have working with me actually had worked with them before in different ways. And I don’t know, I think it’s also just a trend right now to everyone seeing what’s going on with the planet and wanting to work with mission driven brands. So they’re totally in. Like, that is what they wanted. We recently did a rebrand and it was like, okay, what do you care about? And they were like, we care about supporting these brands. We care about these missions. So it’s fun. And I think also, like, the trend with press and media want to write about these types of companies as well.

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Helen Sharp: So it was fun to start it when I did because it wasn’t really quite there yet as a trend, but now it’s really gotten to be something that’s super important.

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Stacy Jones: Well, you found your why. So congratulations.

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Helen Sharp: Yes.

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Stacy Jones: And so when you’re working with a new brand, what are the first steps that you do? So, you know, obviously you want to know what their story is and so how you can better tell it. But how do you drill down into uncovering the essence of who that brand is and how storytelling will help them?

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Helen Sharp: Yeah, I think first it’s like figuring out if they’re ready for PR. I think that’s a really big problem when companies start too early. So, so knowing that they have this product that’s ready, they have the website, they have all the things that they need to actually start with a PR plan that is strong. They have a strong brand, they have the messaging down. We do help with messaging and how we’re going to share it with media, but it is really important to make sure that they already kind of have that figured out so that you can spread the word in the right way.

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Helen Sharp: We send a document that has a list of questions just about how they want to be seen and, you know, dive deeper into, like, who they are and how they want customers to see them, how they want to find them and all that kind of stuff.

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Stacy Jones: And so what is the next step after that? So you’re like, okay, you have your website, you have your product. You can actually make sales happen. When I get the entire world wanting to buy from you, what happens then?

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Helen Sharp: We, so we work pretty closely with all, very closely with all of our clients. We like to say that we’re like an in house PR team rather than just like a normal agency. We are a smaller agency. We’re boutique. So we want to feel kind of like we are part of their team. We are family with them. So we create a type of, you know, communication strategy with them and internal communication to make sure, you know, that we’re talking as much as possible, especially in those first few months. It’s super important to really get on track with them and that you’re, that you’re talking about their brand with your contacts, with these editors in the right way and you’re using the right messaging. So it’s just kind of, you know, weekly meetings.

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Helen Sharp: If we need to do more than weekly meetings with the client, of course we do that, inviting them to slack and then also creating a pitch calendar where they can see exactly what we’re going to be pitching every single week. We’re aligning with the marketing team and making sure that any special days that are going to be in their marketing mix, that we’re also pitching those days as well so that we can, you know, if there’s any sales coming up or especially for our brands, like, Earth month is a really big deal, an earth day and those kinds of things.

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Stacy Jones: April is a busy month for you.

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Helen Sharp: Yes, exactly. So, yeah, just aligning with that, the team and keeping an open communication is super important. And that’s what we set up right away is just like, okay, when are we meeting? Get into our slack? Some companies or, like, some, there’s, we have some clients that don’t like slack. So it’s like, okay, we’re emailing, you know, so it’s like figuring out the way that they prefer to communicate and, you know, keeping an open and clear communication in that way.

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Stacy Jones: And so when you’re working with these brands and they’re all mission based.

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Helen Sharp: Yeah.

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Stacy Jones: Do you, is that the story you always dive into? Is that the leading story that you go with? Or do you use that as, you know, the tent pole of who they are and then dive more into the qualities and values?

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Helen Sharp: Yeah, yeah. So I kind of like, the tint pull, I guess, like, I mean, there’s so much more to a brand than just that. So, for example, we have a client called Brew V, which is a single serve coffee machine. And they created an enzyme in the plastic pod. They’re called b pods. And in that pod, the enzyme becomes activated in a landfill environment. So without water and light, it becomes activated and it eats the pod and doesn’t leave any microplastics behind. And they created this because there isn’t a really great solution with composting in a lot of places, there’s not a great solution for recycling. It’s a lot, it’s really hard to recycle the pods that are recyclable. And a lot of people just don’t, they throw them out.

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Helen Sharp: So they’re like, okay, what is something universally we can do to make it so that this will be helpful for the planet? And so that is what they came up with. And I think it’s so interesting because they really did look at everything. And so sharing that story, because it’s an, that’s an interesting tale. And also the story of all the coffee roasters that they’re getting their coffee from. So they’re all sustainably sourced and they have different partners. And then there’s also my favorite part of it, which is the thought leadership piece of the CEO or the founder, because a lot of times these CEO’s and founders are, you know, creating these businesses because they know a lot about this certain subject matter. So the CEO for Brewy, for example, he used to be the CEO of the coffee bean and tea leaf.

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Helen Sharp: And so he knows coffee. He’s an authority. And we can pitch him as an authority. We can write, you know, we work with ghost writers and we write all kinds of things that we pitch to publications to repost. So, yeah, it’s really interesting and fun way to do it. And there’s just so many, every, I mean, every business has so many interesting pieces to it, especially when they’re, you know, and also when they are a startup, it is really fun because you get to, a lot of times people don’t even know that it’s interesting. But from a PR perspective, you hear the story and you’re like, okay, tell me everything. Tell me where you started, tell me where you are, tell me where you want to go. And then they’re telling you the story. You’re like, whoa, that’s really interesting.

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Helen Sharp: And you have to take those pieces out and like, all those different pieces turn into pitches and different pitch angles and, you know, there’s different times of year that you want to pitch those. And, you know, I think also it’s as you’re pitching and as you’re working with them throughout time, you’re creating relationships with these journalists. You’re sending them product, they’re actually spending time with the product and they’re getting to know the brand that way. So, yeah, that’s a really interesting part of it.

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Stacy Jones: Yeah. And I think that’s, you know, key. Getting the brand in hand with journalists and getting them to become an actual fan of the product line. They’re getting pitched so much product all the time. I know journalists who literally get a thousand email pitches, not just a week.

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Helen Sharp: Like a day, into boxes.

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Stacy Jones: It’s almost impossible for them to stay on top of it. Now, what I love you talking about and touched on is thought leadership is using the strength of the founder to actually build the brand. And that’s more of a recent strategy in the last five years or even less than it was previously done. It used to be that it was more, you know, the big corporate umbrella and you’d have a spokesperson for a brand and now you’re having very successful brands that grow and start doing very well.

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Stacy Jones: And they’re so based on the personality and the makeup of that founder, that putting the founder in the spotlight and having them share their experience and that thought leadership, it actually is able to scale the brand and almost attract more people who have the affinity to that founder and liking what they are talking about and how their perspective is versus even the qualities of the brand.

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Helen Sharp: Totally, yeah. Connecting with the founder, I mean, all of the different storylines that someone can connect with the brand is how, you know, how you find, how you generate a loyal following of the brand and get more customers and loyal customers that tell their friends about it and.

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Stacy Jones: You know, and how do you approach when you’re dealing more with a crisis communications, you know, something happened, maybe it’s not as sustainable as they thought it was. It doesn’t break down quite the same way or just the messaging doesn’t align. What is approach there typically?

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Helen Sharp: I think the most important thing with this type of communications is to be honest. Like, to be as open and honest as possible and to lead with, you know, a heartfelt apology. And, you know, were trying to do this and then we saw something else happen. You know, like our intention was this and we’re going to work to fix it. So it’s just being, you know, trying to get people on your level. Apologizing profusely and trying to, you know, and fixing it as fast as you can and doing everything you can to be the brand that you’re striving to be and that you are.

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Stacy Jones: And so when you go down through this and you’re working with brands, what are the mistakes you see people make along the way? Like, are there different assumptions that when a brand comes to you that they think, you know, PR is, you’re going to turn it on and overnight it’s just going to deliver or that, you know, all of their sales are going to be successful because of PR only? Or what type of things do you run into?

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Helen Sharp: Yeah, well, those are all really good points because, and that’s something that when we start with someone and before we start with someone, we have to educate people on PR because a lot of times people do think that, they think, okay, we’re going to get something right away. All of our sales are going to be from PR. But PR is a long game and I’m very, you have to be super clear about that. And you have to know that before you start PR, it’s relationship building. This is going to take time.

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Helen Sharp: All of our contracts started at least six months for this reason because it takes that much time to get the product in hands of potential, you know, editors and writers, and it also takes that amount of time for them to maybe even have something to write about, you know, once they get it doesn’t mean that right away they’re going to write something. So I think it’s also super important to kind of educate people on the fact that PR is, it’s another touch point in the marketing funnel. Like, it doesn’t mean that, you know, just because someone’s reading an article that they’re going to buy it. But it is another touch point, and it’s a trusted touch point because people aren’t paying for ads with PR.

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Helen Sharp: They’re actually, you know, this is a relationship and someone’s writing about it because they like it and they want their audience to see it. It’s an extension of that journalist or editor’s brand, you know, so if you’re, or, you know, the publication, if you’re a big reader of like Birdie and you have a product that’s in it, you know, you see some type of makeup product or something like that in it and you like it, that’s you’re going to be more likely to want to buy it. So that’s something that is super important to educate people on and that is a mistake that a lot of people make. Like, okay, they think that’s going to happen right away, but no. Or, you know, they’re like, okay, my website’s going to be up in a month. I want to start now.

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Helen Sharp: It’s like, no, like, there’s. There’s always going to be time constraints or things are going to take longer than you think. So I always like to wait and make sure that they’re not going to be wasting their money because we’re reaching out way too far in advance and I’m pretty conscious of that and helping make sure that doesn’t happen.

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Stacy Jones: You. No, it’s hard. And I think a lot of brands aren’t always fully prepared. You know, when we’re taking on a new client, we’re doing product placement and movies and tv shows and we’re doing our spin and selling into producers and directors and prop masters. We need the. Or even more. So we’re doing a celebrity endorsement deal with some. And the celebrity, the talent agent, before the celebrity is going to see it, they’re going to get eyes on the website. That’s the first thing anyone goes to. Like, if you hitch something, someone’s going to be like, let me check out the website. That’s the go to. And if you don’t have that actually dialed in or it’s full of spelling errors or it’s just jinky and how it’s actually laid out.

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Helen Sharp: Yeah.

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Stacy Jones: It reflects on the brand and it can kill a story or a partnership. Really? Really.

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Helen Sharp: Totally, totally. Yeah, I agree with that.

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Stacy Jones: And is there anything else that you tend to kind of see people drift into in like a wrongly held belief, maybe, about PR?

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Helen Sharp: I think sometimes people think that PR can be like the fix all, but it’s not. It’s something that goes along well with something, a well thought out brand and product. I’ve had people come to me asking me for help, but it’s. But I can’t help them, you know, if their product isn’t doing well or if their brand isn’t well thought out or if they don’t have good photography. You know, there’s a lot of things that are important for a PR campaign, and if companies don’t or, you know, brands don’t have that, then we can’t help them. We aren’t the fix all, you know, we are. We’re going to help spread the word of something that’s already made. Well, you know, that makes sense.

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Stacy Jones: Yeah, that totally makes sense. And then there’s the whole world of like, everything that we’re talking right now is about earned PR. So going out for earned media, looking for where we have relationships or where there are opportunities to open doors and get by virtue of the brand alone, it fits a story that you found or you have created a story. Do you also look at paid? Do you do a lot of work with advertorial work? What is your belief system on paid PR versus earned?

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Helen Sharp: Yeah, so we are fully earned. We don’t do paid. If we do paid, it’s with influencers. So as far as, yeah, editorial, all of the work that we get, all the publications that we’re in, it’s all earned. I don’t think paid is bad. I think sometimes if people want to be in something quickly, there are, you know, opportunities to pay and get put into a publication. But being said, I think it’s a lot. I think it can be really sorry.

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Stacy Jones: I think especially, like, the gift guides and things like that nowadays.

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Helen Sharp: Yeah.

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Stacy Jones: Like fast turning type thing.

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Helen Sharp: Okay. So, yeah, I mean, we do affiliates now with that type of thing, and that is sort of paid. I mean, you’re not like saying, I’m paying this much to be in your gift guide, but you are using an affiliate link that is unique to that publication, and they’re using it in their gift guide. So if anybody ends up buying anything, that publication is getting paid. And a lot of publications are using this now. It’s, you know, I call it affiliate PR, and they’re needing to do it because they’re not getting the ad dollars that they were before. So it’s kind of the way that a lot of publications are staying alive is through this affiliate type of PR. And I love it. I think it’s really great from a PR perspective for our clients because they can measure it better.

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Helen Sharp: A lot of the measurements in PR is a little bit vague because you’re saying, okay, this publication is this many unique monthly views. And that’s how you say, this is how many eyeballs might have seen your, you know, might have seen your brand. So this is great because it shows, you see direct sales, you can see direct sales, and you can see the unique monthly views.

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Stacy Jones: Yeah. And you’re actually putting in the funnel. You’re putting in the funnel and you’re able to have someone in operations or the CFO of a company where very oftentimes PR is on the chopping block as a nice to have versus a need to have. And so I think that’s what with the affiliate, you’re getting.

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Helen Sharp: Yeah, the affiliate makes it more of a need to have. And it’s also pretty cool because you can do, you can work on with different, if there’s a publication that you really want to be in, a really big one and you’re working with their editor and talking to them about affiliate commissions, you can raise the commission and sweeten the deal for them to get into a more prominent publication.

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Stacy Jones: And so are you finding that is more on your day to day pitch that you’re doing now where you’re looking at affiliates?

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Helen Sharp: Yes, yes. We use especially for gift guides, if it’s a listicle type thing, that’s what we do. All of our listicles have a link. They also, you know, there’s all different types of affiliate softwares and every, all of our, we make sure all of our clients are set up on those. There’s also Amazon associates as well, which is really great because publications, if you were, if you click on a link for Amazon Associates and you don’t buy that product, but you buy a bunch of stuff, they still get commission from it.

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Stacy Jones: That’s amazing, that publication.

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Helen Sharp: So people love Amazon affiliates.

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Stacy Jones: Well, Amazon affiliates, I think, is, it’s fascinating because you’ll see these like detailed, very feeling, advertorial written articles and you’re like, wow. And a lot of times they’re plugging this celebrity or famous person uses this product and you should, too. And it’s not a celebrity endorsement, it’s implied, but it’s Amazon. And it’s Amazon going out there and writing so many articles or negotiating them to be written with their backlinks or working with people to do that so that they’re making money and having everything driven back to them.

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Helen Sharp: Yeah, I know. It’s the new world. I mean, PR has always been something that’s been, that’s always changing. I guess everything with marketing is that way. But, yeah, I mean, it’s changed a lot in that regard.

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Stacy Jones: Yeah. Like a decade ago, affiliates through PR didn’t happen. I think it was kind of almost born through influence, where brands were getting so used to working with influencers and giving them a code and then they could get percentage of what they sold and then bloggers were doing it and then the media outlets were saying, hey, what about us? We can do this, too.

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Helen Sharp: Totally. Because all the ad spend was going to those people and to social media, you know, ads as well. So, yeah, that’s exactly it.

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Stacy Jones: What do you think is changing in the future? Do you think, you know, PR is going to continue to evolve. And what ways do you think it might change?

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Helen Sharp: I think that as we touched on thought leadership is going to continue to be more and more important, telling that story and really driving home kind of like the brand mission and identity and making the brands that you’re working with more, not just the CEO’s, but also making the brand thought leaders themselves so that they’re the top the market, if they have any competition. I think affiliates is going to continue to grow and evolve. Hopefully it’ll be, they’ll have better platforms. And I do think influencer marketing is going to continue to be really big. We’re doing a lot of influencer marketing as well right now. And, yeah, I think that those, I mean, traditional media relations as it’s been in the past, I think will continue to be important too, as a piece of it.

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Helen Sharp: But the way that we work with our, with brands is kind of, we like touch on those four things. So there’s traditional media relations, there’s affiliate pr, there’s thought leadership, and then there’s influencer marketing. And I feel like those four pillars will continue to be strong in pr. And I think that you kind of will have touch on all four of them to have a really, strong pr campaign and strategy.

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Stacy Jones: And is most of your focus with digital versus print now, or do you also try to most secure that coveted print?

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Helen Sharp: Yeah, so print is always great, but most of our clients want it to be digital because of the affiliate thing. And then also, it’s just, I think more people are on digital right now, so they just, they care more about that than they do about print now.

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Stacy Jones: And that’s such a role reversal because it really is like no one, when you did pr, like, people would be like, oh, you got me a digital plug. I need print, please.

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Helen Sharp: Totally.

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Stacy Jones: Everyone would look down and just be like, digital. Really? The industry’s changed?

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Helen Sharp: Yeah, a lot.

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Stacy Jones: Well, Helen, how can our listeners find you?

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Helen Sharp: They can find me by going to my website, influentialpr.com, and that’s also my Instagram, influentialpr. So find me and would love to chat.

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Stacy Jones: And so as we continue on, just looking at mission driven brands and pr, do you think that their story is just more resonating to people? Are there more opportunities for mission driven brands to get their story out there? Is it that people like the feel goodness of it?

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Helen Sharp: Yeah, I think that people definitely like the feel goodness of it. I think that when you’re talking about a problem and offering up a solution, people like that, too. I think there’s, you know, the way we’re living and consuming and the products that we use now, a lot of it is broken. A lot of them are just not good products. Like, they’re not reusable or they don’t last a long time. And it’s almost like we need to go back to basics and start making things good again so, you know, making them strong so that they last. And I think that people want to, you know, people are seeing the trash problem. People are seeing the pollution, the plastic in the oceans and all these things. And you want to work towards not causing the world to be worse.

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Helen Sharp: You want to make it a better place. So I think there is a feel goodness to these brands that I work with. And I think that it’s also really great because, you know, getting to know the CEO’s, they’re all good people. They want to. They’re fun to work with.

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Stacy Jones: The world.

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Helen Sharp: Yeah. They’re fun to work with and they’re good. So, you know, I mean, I. Luckily, I’ve been really, you know, I’ve had great clients that have been fun to work with and not horrible, because that can be horrible.

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Stacy Jones: It can. I think it’s almost like when you’re working with nonprofits, it’s the same thing. You end up working with people who are very kind hearted, good people who are there to make a difference. And it’s just a switch a little bit. Maybe you aren’t on the nonprofit side, going to be as driven to get things done as fast as you might at, in a more corporate level, but there’s just more of a serenity to the people that you’re working with. And I’m assuming you have experienced a lot with mission driven brand founders, too.

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Helen Sharp: Yeah, definitely.

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Stacy Jones: Any last words of parting advice to our listeners today?

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Helen Sharp: I think PR is an amazing way to elevate your brand. If you have. If you’re looking to get placements, if you’re looking to get, more visibility and you have a strong brand, I think that you should go for it. It’s. It’s. It’s fun. The storytelling is good, and I think it can also help you understand any strengths and weaknesses in your brand that you want to. You want to work on.

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Stacy Jones: Well, Helen, thank you so much for joining us today. The conversation on pr with mission to run brands. I enjoyed talking with you.

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Helen Sharp: Great. Thank you so much, Stacey. Great talking to you, too, and to.

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Stacy Jones: All of our listeners, thank you for tuning in to another episode of marketing mistakes and how to avoid them. I look forward to chatting with you this next week and if any questions came up along this way about. Stacy mentioned product placement in movies and tv shows and celebrity endorsements. Reach out. I’ll connect you with my team at Hollywood branded, and we will continue the conversation. Have a great one.