Starting off as a newspaper reporter, Bridgette loved telling real-world stories, worked as a reporter for 5 years, and she then moved to communications. She currently leads PR at Field Museum.

Check out her Story:

Transcript (auto-generated)

0:00 Communications and storytelling are certainly not going anywhere anytime soon.
0:05 And I think we’re just, we’re not going to move away from the fact that people want to know what the company stands for and how that translates to the products and the services that they offer.
0:25 I started off in journalism, I was a newspaper reporter.
0:29 I think I’ve always known that I wanted to be a reporter, loved telling stories, and found out pretty early that I could only retail them if they were true.
0:37 I wasn’t good at fictional stories.
0:38 I can, I can retell a true story.
0:40 so you know, fast forward And I went to school for print journalism.
0:45 I was a reporter for about five years, in newspapers before I realized that maybe that industry was changing by quite a bit.
0:53 and that I might wanted to sort of seek other opportunities.
0:56 So I switched to pr first I started with consulting non Profits on how they could share their stories just using all of the experience I had learned from being a reporter.
1:06 So then I got full time I suppose from consulting into public relations in 2014 and I’ve been fortunate to work in communications pr marketing for some fantastic organizations, mostly non profit.
1:25 One campaign that I was really, really proud of.
1:28 I had some great ones, but one campaign was when I was working for my previous museum, it was an art and history museum.
1:35 and it was around the pandemic really, just sort of hitting home and everyone having to stay home.
1:42 And so we started a museum from home type series that really leaned on digital tools that teachers could tap into, that families could tap into who were at home.
1:55 and that sort of thing.
1:56 And it was called not only was it museum from the museum from home and you could do that in the classroom, but also we made sure to print out physical booklets and distribute the to communities or people who were either tired of just being online or may not have had the online access.
2:14 So in a way to be more equitable, we didn’t solely rely on those digital tools.
2:18 We also partner with the local school district to distribute activity booklets that could be used alongside those tools or stand alone to help help people just feel connected during the pandemic.
2:32 So that was a great campaign.
2:34 We had gotten a lot of press for that and then we were also able to run some social media sponsorships at that time to make sure that we were getting the word out.
2:45 So that was one of the it was a really great campaign and I ended up having to do a lot more video than I thought I was capable of.
2:52 But you know, when you’re, when you’re in a situation where you have to make things work, you find skills that you didn’t really know you had.
2:59 So it was good and I was very proud that we were able to pivot in that way, whether you realize it or not, you are dealing with data from the moment you enter any communications job because the first question you’re usually asking yourself is who your audience is.
3:20 And so that answer is based on data, it’s based on a profile put together together from these different metrics in terms of who’s interacting with you, who’s visiting your website, who’s buying your tickets, you know, if you’re paid admission venue.
3:36 So from that very first moment you’re trying to figure out who are we talking to and who wants to hear us.
3:43 So my first, definitely my first for sure, experience with data would have been as a communications specialist at Goodwill where I used to work.
3:55 And it was huge to understand the client profile from our career center, but also the profile of who was buying from us brian from Goodwill and then who was the donor.
4:07 So you sort of work backwards, you located these audiences, you figured out who they were and then you had to figure out you had to strategize well what content can you put in front of these audiences so that they want to interact with you.
4:21 So that, you know, that was data at that time.
4:24 And then we of course always looked at our social media numbers.
4:28 we looked at when we did do paid advertising, how well it did.
4:31 And so we were able to figure out if what we were doing, well the content that we were delivering was working.
4:38 you know, and we were able to continue it or sort of tweak it as needed.
4:48 Sometimes, you know you work for organizations that have a very direct line from sort of advertising or your marketing or even your pr to an outcome because somebody bought a ticket or somebody, you know, your sales went up, right?
5:02 So you can say oh we we placed this ad in our sales went up or hear the clicks.
5:07 So we know you know how that happened with pr because it’s earned media, it can be a bit more challenging.
5:14 There may not be that direct.
5:17 someone read this story and then went to purchase or went to engage somehow.
5:22 So there are different ways that you have to figure out how what your value is and what those KPI s are.
5:29 So particularly when I used to work at a free admission museum, we had to look at different ways that how is this being successful.
5:38 So we may have done a campaign, done a pr campaign, but we got a lot of news about an exhibit opening.
5:44 Did we see a spike in people in the museum after that happened?
5:48 Or did it take you know, two weeks?
5:51 So gleaning from that, Did people come in right away or did it take them a while to sort of trickle in and how can we adjust.
5:59 So in that way we really had to, in that specific example where there was, it was free admission.
6:05 So we didn’t have ticket sales to rely on, we had to use anecdotal evidence or we had to use if someone was registering for a workshop, for example, we had to try to find ways to figure out how we could measure, and actually track how people were engaging with us and that that’s gonna look different depending on what organization you’re with and what tools you have at your disposal.
6:32 Then we do have media monitoring software right now and ideal specifically in my current role, I deal specifically with public relations.
6:40 So a lot of that is going to be on the earned media side.
6:43 So I’m always looking at reach.
6:44 You know, that’s your, that’s your audience, that’s the potential audience of a news article.
6:50 it’ll track how many potential eyes you could have on it.
6:53 That’s always good.
6:54 And I’m also always looking at if one outlet, for example, is if if their story got picked up by multiple outlets.
7:03 So it’s kind of like maybe you play, you got a story placed with one outlet, but, they’ve got such a network where it was sort of reproduce that same story multiple times.
7:12 It used to be the wire, right?
7:14 Like Associated Press had the wire.
7:15 So it’s similar to that, but it’s these different partnerships that media outlets have where they’ll reproduce the story.
7:22 So, I love looking at seeing if one media hit may have trans related to, you know, seven or several, I should say, different areas where the story has been placed.
7:33 But can I tell you another thing that really excited to me though?
7:36 I really like looking at it sort of backwards.
7:40 So I like identifying the audience, identifying the action that we want people to take.
7:46 So our outreach may fall into a couple of different categories.
7:51 It may be, what do we want people to do?
7:53 We want people to buy a ticket.
7:54 So that outreach might be more about exhibitions, we want people to know about our research.
7:59 So that outreach might be more about a scientist.
8:02 And so the exhibitions outreach will be more local because people who live here will are more likely to come to the exhibition versus talking about the research, for example, maybe more on an international scale because that’s just that’s great news for everybody.
8:18 I work at a scientific institution, so that’s great news for everybody to hear whether they’re local or not.
8:26 So, really, a lot of the strategy that we use the way that we use data is we’re trying to figure out who we’re talking to and where we can reach them.
8:35 So if we want people to come physically, you know, come to our building, then that outreach needs to be more local, and we need to figure out what is it about this exhibition, what is it about?
8:46 this news that will appeal to that particular audience.
8:50 So, really looking at your data and deciding, okay, here’s who we want to talk to, and here’s what they read, here’s what they watch, here’s what they listen to, and try to to figure out who are the people that they trust specifically in pr who are the people who are the outlets that they trust.
9:07 And can we reach out to that outlet for a story?
9:10 Because if they’ll cover us, then we know we’re in front of this audience were in front of this this segment that we know is already interested in our content.
9:20 So, yeah, I I really like to look at data and audiences from the front end, as we sort of try to figure out how to strategize as well, as well as looking at the results of how our outreach.
9:35 I guess I should say, as well as looking at the results of our outreach this moment was really pivotal for me as far as being a pr professional.
9:50 so, again, my background is in journalism, and so I took a certification course to sort of make that switch to advertising and pr and just try to to figure out what my strategy would be, and I had a professor who gave an example that really changed the way I approached pr he said he was working for a client and all they wanted was to be in this national outlet.
10:11 Let’s just say it’s USa today, I don’t remember that this work was but they wanted to be in this national outlet.
10:16 All they wanted it was a small robotics company and all they wanted to do was be in USa today.
10:20 They just knew if they got that coverage they would blow up.
10:24 So he got the placement, he got it done and they only got like three calls and like two were a wrong number, right?
10:30 And they’re just like oh my gosh what happen?
10:32 Well remember there this robotics company and he said well let me try something else.
10:36 And so instead they ended up getting a placement in a magazine, small magazine that wasn’t super mainstream but ended up going to like a small midwestern town that had a robotics company located there.
10:49 So they get this placement and it blows up phone ringing off the hook and they’re just like wow.
10:56 And that really just goes to show that it isn’t always about the amount of eyes you have on you if it’s not lined up with what your audience wants or needs.
11:07 And that really changed the way that I do pr because it became more strategic, it wasn’t just about how many eyes can I get on this.
11:14 Like of course you want eyes on it, you want people to see it.
11:17 But it really became came about, well, what are we offering to people and how are we positioning it?
11:23 Are we getting this in front of the best audience?
11:25 So from that, if I’ve got, for example, a quilt exhibition, I might take a placement in a quilting magazine that I know is going to 25,000 quilters rather than maybe a huge placement that gets in front of millions, but it’s on page 11 and maybe people see it and maybe they’re excited or not.
11:44 So, I mean, ideally you want all of that, right?
11:47 You want, but it’s really just about making sure that your pr is targeted as as well.
11:55 It’s not just we just we get what we can get, we just want eyes on this.
11:59 you need to think about what you want your pr to do and then strategize around that.
12:10 Yeah.
12:11 So right now, I mean, we use meltwater is our primary monitoring tool.
12:16 They have a lot of great great tools and dashboards and reports that you can generate and things that you can look at quarter over quarter, they have a really interesting tool called sentiment.
12:29 that’s interesting that tries to sort of tell if the article or the news about you is negative or positive.
12:35 So that’s interesting.
12:36 Certainly from an issues management standpoint, of just knowing, you know, whether how your news is being received.
12:44 but I think, I think pR folks are always looking for that bottom line measurement, we are always trying to figure out the R. O. I.
12:53 So there is the earned value that for For a lot of people, you say this story would have been $11 million dollars if we bought it.
13:03 That’s a really big number.
13:05 That’s kind of hard for people to understand.
13:09 So I would just love a tool or a way to try to be able to explain that in a way that is more of a direct line from, you know, we had this news story run and right now we can map it as you mentioned before, but we had this set of stories run and we saw this bump, you know, that that you can kind of correlate it.
13:33 but you know, of course there are always, there are other marketing efforts going on.
13:37 There’s not just one line, you can draw it too, but anything that can help me tell that story better.
13:43 here is how our work contributed to the, to the bottom line, here’s how we made new ambassadors for our organization.
13:52 And I think that’s hard.
13:53 I don’t know that people have really figured out what that direct line is.
14:00 So I would love to see more of that.
14:07 I do think that the role of PR continues to evolve and is still very important because ultimately Pr is about storytelling, it’s about shaping these stories in a way that people can connect with and hopefully connect with your organization and with your brand.
14:23 So, what I’m seeing in is in this period of it’s a it’s a tough time and people really want transparency.
14:33 They don’t necessarily want a gimmick, they don’t want a slogan, they want a conversation, they want to feel like they know your values and they know what you stand for.
14:45 So, I think PR is going to have to be ready to tell these stories, not just in, you know, in a reactive way, like, you have to have a PR campaign after something goes wrong, but in a way where you’re constantly telling your stakeholders who you are inauthentic and an engaging way.
15:02 So, you know, you’re just always sharing stories that demonstrates what you do and and hopefully the value you bring and and what they can get from you.
15:12 So, I think that communications and storytelling is certain not going anywhere anytime soon, and I think we’re just we’re not going to move away from the fact that people want to know what the company stands for and how that translates to the products and the services that they offer.
15:32 So NPR is at the heart of that because we’re storytellers.
15:36 So we are we are sharing that message all the time.
15:45 Data is is continually evolving, which is why at every conference you have a session just on like data.
15:54 what do you do with it?
15:55 How do you measure it and not get lost because there’s so many numbers, there are so many ways that you can use it.
16:02 So I think that it is going to continue to be important.
16:08 there’s more data that can be gathered all the time that contribute to the art segments that we talked about before.
16:14 So I think data is gonna give us a clearer picture of who we’re talking to as as companies and organizations and who wants to talk to us so which messages are getting across and which messages are our you know our landing and where can we improve.
16:31 And then I think to the data will help us know if if we’ve told the story in a way that’s being receive, I think we’re so close to our work and our organizations that it’s super easy for us to understand what we’re trying to say but are people receiving it in the way that we that we think so.
16:50 Hopefully, you know the data will tell you if you’ve created more fans for your organization and more people who want to engage with you.
16:59 The way that you measure that though is gonna be different depending on the organization that you’re in.
17:09 My advice this day and age is to under try to understand it all even if it’s not your job, you know try to understand what it is and how it relates to what you’re doing.
17:22 So when I don’t know something I’m like I need to go get a certificate, I need to go you know learn more about this, I need to to you know schedule something classes on this and that’s part of the reason why I pursued my M.B.A.
17:38 I was very much the creative side and I was like I need to understand the business side of it, even if I never do it, even if I’m never solely responsible for sales, I need to understand what that is and how my team can contribute to it.
17:53 So I would say just talk to people, talk to you don’t have to go get an M if you don’t want to but talk to other departments, talk to colleagues and ask them you know what they do or take classes that may be a little bit out of your norm or what you’re actually getting your degree in to understand these other areas because then you’ll do better in strategizing how you can help