Growing up Courtney wanted to pursue journalism and had secured an internship in high school with a local NBC station wagon, but later came to realize that she did not have the fire in her belly to tell the stories which were on the darker side. She then learned Public communication and started her Journey. She currently leads Global communication for Vivino, world’s most downloaded wine app.
Check out her story:
Transcript (auto-generated)
0:01I think about this too with Internal communications.
0:04So I think sometimes we forget that measuring internal communication is really important to and a lot of the way that I have spoken with the executives who I’m either training or working with is around this idea of faith based communication.
0:17So can we instill faith and, you know, a positive morale by focusing on what we can achieve what we are achieving.
0:28Looking at the data versus the doom and gloom that I think, is easy to go to, especially for executives who they’re looking at the bottom line all the time.
0:38So I like to look at the research what actually motivates better here.
0:51It’s a story that I like to tell because I actually thought I was going to be a journalist.
0:56So, probably from the time I was about eight, I used to pretend that I was a reporter.
1:03So I have a twin sister and we would do fake news report, we would make my poor parents film us and watch us.
1:10And, I really loved Barbara Walters and Katie Couric.
1:16And so for years, all throughout middle school and high school, I really was into the journalism side of things and I ended up doing an internship when I was still in high school with a local NBC station.
1:30And what I realized was I didn’t quite have the fire in my belly to tell the stories that, I would say are a little bit on the darker side meaning when something happens to someone’s family showing up at their door or the parts of journalism that I think are really hard.
1:50when you’ve got to just get the story.
1:53And so I ended up thinking how could I get into an industry where I tell the stories that I want to tell and I learned about this little industry called Public communication.
2:03So that’s how it started for me.
2:11So I don’t know if this quite counts.
2:13But I was just thinking about the journey and evolution of how we measure data on the comms side of things and how we quantify success and also how we use data for storytelling.
2:25And I remember my very first job, I was a publicist and I actually had to do clippings and, and so we would get out in the old days, we would get out the newspapers and you would cut them up and you would actually save the clippings or you would make photocopies of them.
2:44And so we would then look up the circulation in those big old, were they Barons books or something like that.
2:52I can’t even remember what they were called.
2:53I’d probably have a little bit of, selective memory there.
2:57And so that was how we quantified success was looking at our, which is not all that different from, you know, the evolution, we looked at our press coverage and then we would look at competitor press coverage and just do much more of a manual analysis, which was kind of funny now that you think about it.
3:22I remember for a long time to be really candid, we were taught to use what I would consider vanity metrics.
3:30So number of clips, number of impressions which I still see a lot today, we still use them in a certain capacity.
3:37And so early on in my career working for agencies the the data that we would use to measure success were more those vanity metrics.
3:48And I remember applying for the silver anvils using all of those vanity metrics and not really tying them to business metrics.
3:58So I think it gave us a really good idea of volume of coverage, perhaps some connections to awareness and use seeing the different services where you could track all of your coverage once you started to move online.
4:13So that was how I remember starting and I was on the agency side for many years of my career and it was really about volume at that point.
4:24So for a long time that’s how I was looking at metrics, which now we know a little bit better around.
4:34Well I will say that at one point I worked for a hotel brand, I represented a hotel brand when the Airbnb and booking dot coms of the world were coming out and we really use data in those instances mostly around the positioning and trying to do competitive d positioning.
4:59So that’s when I started to really get into things like keyword analysis and sentiment and understanding how we could influence public perception by looking at what I would call more like faith based communication.
5:13So what do we do?
5:14Well that maybe the competition didn’t?
5:17And so I remember when we really started to hone in on what those messages were that those other sites were saying we were able to say, but here are the benefits of, you know, staying with the hotel in a in a really different way than we had before.
5:35The one right now that I’m really focused on is message pull through.
5:43And what I mean by that is I think as tom’s professionals, we can spin our wheels.
5:50And one of the things that I talk with my agency a lot about is is this really me moving perception is the story that we’re landing, is the influencer that we’re working with is the social media message that we’re putting out there influencing the narrative in a way that’s actually going to position our brand.
6:09Well, I think I don’t really monitor brand mentioned.
6:13So if we have just one mention of our company to me, I look at that and I say there was no message there.
6:22So I think what’s gotten a little bit complicated is the convergence of affiliate linking with editorial coverage and really working hard to make sure that that perception and message pull through comes through.
6:40It might be a good opportunity to talk a little bit about internal data that we use, not just for measurement because a big part of what we do at Vivino, which for those of you who don’t know Vivino is the world’s most downloaded wine app.
6:54And we have a community of 60 million wine lovers who are using Vivino.
6:59And so data, you know our ceo I’m sorry our founder, he talks about how data is our value proposition all the time because we have this user base of people who are contributing information about all of the wines of the world to help each other differentiate what they will like and what they won’t like.
7:19So it’s a really cool model in terms of how data helps the business and how we use that in storytelling is we’re able to be the voice of our community by analyzing data.
7:31And so I partner really closely with R.
7:33B.
7:34I.
7:34Team who uses tools like Looker for instance, to analyze things like what are the 10 most beloved wines in the US right now or you name the country or across the globe and it helps us to do that data storytelling with journalists, which is really cool.
7:51One thing that we try and keep an eye on is when is it opinion based versus fact based and even though our community is of course opinions, it’s based on their specific taste when you have that number of people you can, we believe you can really trust that data and so for a long time people were looking at like critic reviews or Somalia only reviews and we’re trying to build tools and data that helps personalize this wine drinking journey so that it’s really customized to them.
8:21So it’s pretty neat.
8:27When I was on the agency side before I came to Vivino, I worked for a program called one billion Acts of Peace and this was an initiative that was spearheaded by a nonprofit organization called Peace Jam.
8:40Peace Jam is the board is 12 Nobel peace prize Laureates including the Dalai Lama, Desmond tutu was on the was involved for a long time.
8:52It was so cool.
8:53And the initiative, the reason why I’m bringing it up is because it involved data.
8:57So the goal was to encourage all citizens to commit acts of peace and then google was building the technology where folks could record there as peace.
9:09And so it became like this countdown of how close are we to getting to that one billion.
9:15And so I think it was a way that we use data because data, you know, numbers information to drive a campaign and it was just a beautiful initiative.
9:26So that’s one on the Vivino side of things.
9:31We have hosted something called the Vivino Community Awards on an annual basis and with that is is we look at and we publish the best wines of the world in different markets and this is all based again on our community a pin.
9:48And so we’re able to look across countries regions, we can slice and dice the data any way possible.
9:55And what’s really cool about that is we’re able to feature wines and regions that maybe don’t have huge marketing budgets because it’s based on what the consumer really loves.
10:04So that’s a really fun program that we work on at the vino.
10:12The big thing that I see missing from comms metrics is how is it impacting the business?
10:20And I think there are certain tools that that do help to showcase things like website traffic.
10:29What does that user do after they hit the website or the app?
10:33Do they purchase, do they spend time?
10:36But I still think the tools available are are evolving in terms of connecting the dots so that comms professionals can show that it’s not just art, there’s a little bit of science involved as well.
10:50So that is what comes to mind for me and something that I think would make all of our lives a bit easier in terms of just up leveling the R.
11:02O.
11:02I.
11:02For comms.
11:08I think it’s become difficult to measure awareness.
11:15I oftentimes wonder if how we measure awareness is a little flawed.
11:23And so I think if there was an easier way to get awareness metrics on an ongoing basis where you didn’t have to have a big huge consumer research and brand perception study.
11:35maybe there are those ways I just haven’t done them would be would be really great, and then connecting that of course to segmentation.
11:45and so I think kind of similar to my last answer, it’s weaving all of these pieces together and not just throwing darts against the board with our eyes closed.
11:56yeah, so that that would probably be it, like, how is the awareness shifting?
12:01And I know it takes time, which is why we only do these things every six months, every year, every three years, but that makes it a bit more difficult to really know is what I’m doing, working my two cents for the budding comms professionals.
12:20I think remember that it’s ultimately about the story and not necessarily about selling, and so I think this has been a lesson that I’ve learned is you really have to make sure that the story you’re telling is authentic because I think we’re in a world now where there’s a lot of clickbaiting this happening, and to me it’s just really staying in integrity around, is this is this story something that the targeted audience really will benefit from a needs to hear.
12:59yeah, and making sure that we’re staying in a really ethical profession I think is important.
13:04but that’s, me personally