GlobalEdgeTalk
GlobalEdgeTalk
Revolutionizing PR: Embracing Innovation and Growth with Bob Geller
Discover the transformative power of modern public relations with industry leader Bob Geller, as he uncovers the secrets to thriving in an ever-evolving landscape. Expect a masterclass in adapting to technological advances and social media's impact on PR strategies. Learn how to break free from traditional media approaches and embrace innovation, leveraging AI and content marketing to captivate audiences. Bob's journey from tech startups to founding Fusion PR offers an inspiring narrative of resilience and adaptability, underscoring the importance of staying ahead in a field marked by rapid change.
Uncover the synergy between passion, talent, and leadership in driving business growth, as Bob shares compelling stories and practical advice for emerging agencies and startups. From the strategic brilliance of a Finnish tractor company's disaster relief PR to nurturing hidden talents within your team, this episode provides invaluable insights for aspiring PR professionals and seasoned veterans alike.
Hi, this is Alex Romanovich and welcome to Global Edge Talk. Today is October 24th, 2024. And with us in our studio we have Bob Geller. Hello Bob.
Bob Geller:Hi Alex, how are you. Great to be with you. Thanks for inviting me on your podcast.
Alex Romanovich:Always great to have you as a guest. You and I go quite a way back, right? How about 15, 20 years? Something like this? That sounds about right. Well, let's talk about you. Our podcasts are about you as a persona, as a person. We'll pick up interesting facts about you and talk about your background, about public relations, the role of public relations today in today's world. But first let me introduce you properly. We typically invite global entrepreneurs. I should say that you are very entrepreneurial. You work with large brands General Electric, ibm, tech startups in sales and marketing, it consulting and then you realized you have a knack for public relations and communications, which is great.
Bob Geller:I'm on a circuitous path to PR, but I made it here and that's where I've really built most of my career.
Alex Romanovich:You also have a rock band. You write and play music, which is amazing. My son composes as well. You helped launch and grow a public relations agency that is iconic for New York City called Fusion PR, especially within the tech world. It is very international because you've done a lot of international projects projects with Europe, israel, asia and a number of them in the tech world, which is incredible. You also do coaching companies. You advise founders and early stage tech startups. You recently came on board Global Edge Markets and helping us, advising us in terms of PR and what we're doing in public relations and what our clients are doing in public relations, which is a large global entrepreneurial community. And finally, you launched a podcast called PR Dunn and Dunner, advising clients on podcasting and public relations. That's a very full bio. When do you have time to do all of this?
Bob Geller:Well, it didn't happen overnight. A lot of this happened over the years. I love it, so time goes quickly.
Alex Romanovich:Absolutely. Let's talk about public relations because it's an interesting field. Like many other marketing segments, it has undergone a major transformation over the past I would say 10, 15 years, especially now with artificial intelligence being almost a daily routine for all of us. I would love to talk about yourself, your background, and also jump into it, since this is your passion to talk about public relations, communications and how that's transformed over the past. I would say you know five, 10 years and what is it now?
Bob Geller:That's a great question. The quick answer is everything has changed and I'll give you a little anecdote. When I used to speak with people about what I do as a career people who are particularly close to marketing or PR they didn't even know what PR was. I had to explain. In more recent years these same people would look at me and say PR. That's kind of different now, isn't it? So I think it really is true, it's changed quite dramatically. Let's look at some of the trends, some of the developments.
Bob Geller:The rise of social media led to the fragmentation and decline of traditional media. We've had a rise in content and influencer marketing, but in general it's tougher to capture and keep your audience's attention. More recently, disinformation, polarization, client trust in media. But on the positive side, there are more ways to communicate than ever. Brands can do so directly. They don't necessarily need an intermediate publications and the media. But let's face it, pr has always been about earning trust, gaining recognition, building validation, credibility, and the way you do those things today may be different. The good news is there's more tools, more ways than ever to communicate, and my advice to PR teams that just can't rely on earned media, the old way, that's kind of you know, if that's your only trick, you're not going to be as effective Makes sense they have to look at some of the giants in the industry that are doing all kinds of interesting things, including NVIDIA, including Apple, Google and the typical suspects.
Alex Romanovich:But also the other angle is the role of technology, innovations and even artificial intelligence in PR itself. Right, so an angle on both of these directions.
Bob Geller:Well in tech. I mean tech is an industry, let's face it. It's always been somewhat noisy and, unfortunately, prone to hype. You're making some bigger brands. They have challenges different than the startup. The startup has to often educate and let people know they're out there and what they're doing. It's a different challenge when it gets to technology in public relations, using it to help with our work. It's incredibly important.
Bob Geller:There are a number of PR tech solutions out there. They're always getting better and you mentioned AI. That's especially important. It can pose risks and challenges. What are some of the challenges or risks? For example, I'm sure you've heard of Ezra Klein. He has a great podcast he was speaking with I think it was Gary Mark, one of the geniuses of AI. They concluded that chat GPT. One of the challenges is it can drive the cost of bullshit to zero, meaning it can help people generate inaccurate information at scale. That type of thing could add to the challenge of getting heard. Maybe there's a lot of AI general noise and there's going to be more disinformation, but in general, I'm a big believer in using tech for strategic advantage. It's incumbent on both the solution providers, the marketing tech vendors, to upgrade their wares and stacks to include the latest AI, and for PR pros to get smart about how the technology can help in light of the challenges.
Alex Romanovich:Interesting that you mentioned that the chat GPT obviously revolutionized a lot of different aspects of the marketing communication industry. Major platforms now promote this as a content generation type of tool and they integrate into it and even promote their platforms that way. It says, hey, you can now generate so much content, you can become a true publisher. But let's go back to some of the things that I picked up back in Adweek conference recently in New York City, and that's the famous word attribution, right.
Bob Geller:So can PR be more predictable now, right going in the direction of more? It's still a challenge. I think it gets back to how you define PR. If you're talking about media coverage or media, that has always been a challenge. Most of the media monitoring and coverage reporting tools let you connect to Google Analytics, for example, and track the impact of a article or series of articles on web traffic that you can track. That's not necessarily one real attribution.
Bob Geller:I think you mean talking about an uptick in sales. There are ways to get that information. Unfortunately, it may take more work and cost more than generating those PR results because you have to use fairly heavy lifting. Getting out there doing surveys, market mix modeling and fancy techniques can be a real challenge to connect those dots. After you're extending the conversation to include other services that have come rolled into PR social media many PR teams are either working side by side with digital teams and they can task with social media themselves. There are more ways to connect the dots and do closed-loop marketing. But again, I think it's still a challenge with earned media. Think about it you get an article or you're on a broadcast or cable spot and a gentleman talks to Steve, who tells their kids and they go to the website and buy something. How do you track that? It's word of mouth. Some of that is word of mouth and it's beyond Absolutely.
Alex Romanovich:I mean 10 years ago. Five years ago we thought that PR was part of social media. We thought social media was part of PR communications. The company still separated chief marketing officers from chief PR and communications officers. What's going on with startups? It's extremely important to get that initial drive, initial coverage, connections to media, connections to editors in the major publications. But things are changing rapidly. Even some major digital and tech publications such as Mashable or some of the other ones TechCrunch and so forth these publications seem to be less important. The editors in those publications seem to be less important only because there are new players in the market, new channels in the market and so forth. What's going on with the media relations side of it?
Bob Geller:Well, those major brands still play a role and they're still incredibly important. There's the tech crunch effect. We get our clients in tech crunch and you can see a notable impact on a number of areas. As I said earlier, there's so much more noise Unless you're part of a well-known media brand or unless you get covered by a well-known media brand, and even then how people get information is different Likely not from going to that website or picking up a newspaper. It could very well be from your social media feed, a Google search or, increasingly now, from an AI search. The brand kind of gets lost in that mix so it's hard to really know where that coverage came from. It's an interesting exercise. I often sit down with clients and folks I know in the tech world to get a source of what they read or what publication they go to to get trusted information. Often they're not quite sure. They go to a blog, maybe, or they go to a sub-stack. It's changed really. It's gone from traditional media to more non-traditional forms. The big brands, I think, are still incredibly important.
Alex Romanovich:That's because people typically trust them, they know of them, it we trust them, they know of them, it means something to get in a New York Times, a journal, TechCrunch, Absolutely, If there's a brand out there, an early-stage company that wants to enter the United States market, as an example, or wants to expand globally. What are the top three or five things that they should be aware of vis-a-vis public relations, communications, positioning and so forth in this very noisy content-driven, AI-driven world? What should be those three, five steps that they should undertake and think really hard about?
Bob Geller:Well, that's a great question. First of all, you have to have a great story. You have to have messages and brand positioning locked down and interesting, not just in your home market. If you're going to a new market, you have to survey the competitive landscape. If you haven't done so already but hopefully you've done your homework already Understand where you're strong, understand what might be interesting to the media and to the public. You need to do that kind of homework and sharpen the message, sharpen the tool. You also have to line up PR assets.
Bob Geller:Typically that means the kind of thing that can support a program Third-party validation, data research. You know the kind of things that add to your credibility. Maybe it's a great mention in a Gartner or Forrester report. Those kind of things can support a program. Maybe it's a customer who can speak to the media. And finally, you need a good battle plan. You have to prepare. You can't just say I have a piece of news and I want to see what we can do with it in the US two weeks from now. No, you need to have a week-by-week program planned out, driven by strategy, with a very solid execution sketched out. Typically you would anchor that by some kind of launch. It helps if some kind of hard news or something to latch onto going into a new market Other than we're here.
Alex Romanovich:Sure, absolutely. It's still opportunistic, right? You still have to look for those types of opportunities. I mean, we're surrounded by disruptions on a daily basis. We have disasters, natural disasters're surrounded by disruptions on a daily basis. We have disasters, natural disasters, wars, disruptions. Are those still good opportunities to latch on to? I mean, it depends on the solution, of course, but anything that's involved with tech, for example, military tech is extremely important right now because of the two wars, two major wars going on right now. Cybersecurity extremely important right now because we have a number of rogue players who are trying to weigh in on elections, who are trying to break through into major organizations, get lists and so forth. So are those still great opportunities for companies to sort of latch onto and promote themselves?
Bob Geller:They can be, I think if you do that with care. I'm sure you're familiar with the term newsjacking. One of the proactive tactics we use at Physio PR is to watch the headline. We don't have a hard piece of news ourselves to promote today, but maybe there's some kind of news out there that relates to what we're doing. We want to speak out as a leader.
Bob Geller:The challenge is you have to do it the right way. You don't want to be seen as too opportunistic. You don't want to be an ambulance chaser. I'll give you an example. We have a client in Shuriken and they've developed a better way to work homeowners insurance which, as you may know, could be really tough in some areas that are affected by climate change, natural disasters. We have these two recent hurricanes, this terrible storm that affected particularly Florida, north Carolina, and you know so the. You know you could say why don't you take a story to reporters covering these disasters, these hurricanes, these storms, and talk about how you'll help homeowners more affordably afford insurance? But you know we didn't do that. We waited a week or two until things you know things calmed down a bit. But in general you have to be careful and make sure it's done in the right way. You don't want to do a hard sell of your solution. You want to come out with information when you're newsjacking, that can help a reporter advance a story.
Alex Romanovich:Absolutely. Sometimes you have to jump into the thick of things. I know an interesting story of a Finnish small tractor company that came to the US market and was trying to market itself through a number of distributors when the disaster struck in Florida. What they did was they literally volunteered, you know. They connected a couple of distributors, retail outlets where those small tractors were sold. They said let's go and help the community by cleaning out the debris, by putting our brand out there, putting our tractors out there, and help clean up the streets. That worked. They got free coverage because the cameras were there, obviously in front of those disaster areas, and they had the little tractors, you know, cleaning out the debris, cleaning out the fallen trees and so forth and so on. And all of a sudden they received more, you know, more inquiries, more attention, more communications and so forth and so on. So I guess you know PR has to continue to be opportunistic, but, as you said, you have to be careful about this.
Bob Geller:Yeah and I love your example. It's not just about knee jacking, it's the kind of things you mentioned. We work with those kinds of campaigns with our clients as well Disaster relief and philanthropic efforts.
Alex Romanovich:Yeah, in the case of the Israeli war that's taking place right now, there are so many companies Israeli companies and companies with Israeli citizens even here in the New York area. So do something good when you do something to help, when you do something to assist, that helps quite a bit. I can relate to that.
Bob Geller:We have a lot of Israeli clients.
Alex Romanovich:Yeah, let's talk about you, bob. I'm going to put you on the spot. What do you want to know? I'm going to spot you Right Again. Well, we haven't. You know, our podcast is about you, right? Not PR, necessarily, but let's talk about you. I'm going to ask you a question that I always ask what would happen if you met Bob on the streets of New York 15, 20 years ago? You sit down for a cup of coffee, maybe Danish. What would you say to him? What would be the advice to the younger Bob?
Bob Geller:That's a great question. I've taken circuitous path to PR and it's been a great charity. I don't know how much I'd change. I guess one thing I would say is I'm a big fan of the Pivot podcast, as you may know. Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway Great podcast. Check it out if you haven't seen it or heard it. Scott Galloway he was a brilliant guy. He's a serial entrepreneur, he's a professor, he's an author. He made the point about following your passion versus following your talent. Clearly, pr is a talent. If I had found my talent 30 years ago, if I had found my talent earlier, I probably would have gotten to where I want to be quicker. That doesn't mean forgetting your passion, because your talent hopefully has something to say about what you're passionate about. And if, for example, your passion is something that you can't make a lot of money at, that's a tough road. Maybe it's art, maybe it's music. You can come back to that later, once you've built a successful career, and I'd say that to young people as well.
Alex Romanovich:I think it's great advice. So, to conclude this podcast, you're saying go with the passion. I'd say go with the talent. Oh, go with the talent, I see, but what about the passion? This is some of the conflicting things that we hear out there. Talent, obviously, is important. Sometimes you're born with talent, Sometimes you gain it, sometimes you can teach yourself skills, don't you agree that?
Bob Geller:without passion, none of that would be possible. That's true If you're very talented in something but you hate it. You'd focus more on areas that you prefer.
Alex Romanovich:But yeah, I you know I'm going to be contrary and I want to be on the side of passion. I'll be honest with you because I agree. First of all, you can surround yourself with talent, right? Isn't that the mantra for the American business? Surround yourself with smart people, even if you don't have those types of talents or skills. But you know, you look at some of the CEOs of these incredible companies and incredible startups and incredible organizations out there, incredible startups and incredible organizations out there. And if it wasn't for the passion of the leaders, if it wasn't for the energy of the leaders, none of this would be possible.
Alex Romanovich:Sometimes you have talents but you're very introverted, very shy about those things. And that's what you teach people. You teach them to develop those types of communication skills, to bring those talents out into the open and to show the world that, hey, we have an amazing product or I'm an amazing person, or something like that. Yeah, you make an excellent point, bob. It's been an incredible discussion. I really appreciate your time today with us. In conclusion, what would be the advice to the younger generations of agencies, startups, tech startups, companies?
Bob Geller:that want to grow globally, companies that want to expand here into the United States. What would be that golden piece of advice? No-transcript and adapting as times change.
Alex Romanovich:Excellent conclusion. Thank you for being with us, bob, and we'll be in touch. We'll talk to you again very soon. Look forward to it, alex. Thanks so much for having me on.