A happy accident to move into communications, as Mike recalls. From moving to New York to work at Kaplan, starting his journey in its marketing department, to getting exposure to social media and communications. From there to moving onto the technology world, Mike currently leads PR at LivePerson

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Transcript (auto-generated)

0:00 I think the trend that I’m seeing, and I think a lot of people are pr and marketing getting closer and closer together over time, a lot more content, marketing style, thought leadership pieces coming out of the pr department itself, rather than relying on journalists and media to write about you or, you know, interview you just because there’s fewer of them as well.
0:30 I kind of fell into it, which was a happy accident.
0:33 I went to school for English political science and when I got out of school I was looking for a job I wanted to be, I knew I wanted to be in a big city in new york D.
0:41 C.
0:41 Something like that.
0:42 So I moved to new york and became an administrative assistant at Kaplan, which is the global education company.
0:49 I started off there in the marketing department and it was great because I got a lot of exposure to all kinds of things, you know, a lot of times they start you off in like social media and things like that.
0:58 So I suppose to social media budgeting all of the back end stuff and then was able to move into more of a communications role which had a combination of internal and external coms.
1:09 So I was helping with you know, big internal meetings to educate everyone about what was going on at the company and what to be excited about awards programs and also public relations.
1:20 So we that kind of became more of a focus over time.
1:25 And I was really lucky there because I was able to spend a lot of my time working on Kaplan’s, it’s called Kaplan Educational Foundation, which supports community college students who transfer to some of the best colleges in the world.
1:39 So they started community college and then they end up like Stanford and Harvard and all these places.
1:43 So you get to meet these amazing kids and the nice thing about that when we talk about data is that the data like supporting the, how well these, these students can perform if you give them the right resources, it’s just incredible.
1:58 So I used that a lot in my work and I was promoting the foundation and from there.
2:04 I also started to work more and Kaplan was doing more in the tech space.
2:08 So they had startup accelerators.
2:11 I was working with a company called Medicis, which was owned by Kaplan and the data science bootcamp.
2:16 So I started to learn more about the technology world.
2:19 And that’s how I ended up being contacted by LivePerson
2:22 So I came on to a live person as director of public relations.
2:25 That’s what I do now.
2:27 Live Persons is an amazing company.
2:28 We just got named the number one most innovative company in the world by fast company and I think we can talk a little bit more about that actually because it’s related to data talk communicators use data.
2:38 So that’s what I do now leave for public relations at a live person.
2:48 You know, we want to be known as an innovator and conversational ai right?
2:52 So just to level set conversation i is what you would use to talk to a company, basically a chat bot.
2:59 Although we don’t love that word, it’s a little outdated, but when you’re talking to a big brand like, who can I name?
3:06 , well Delta is one of our customers publicly named one of our customers, Hsbc global Bank.
3:12 If you’re talking to one of their chatbots and even some of their live agents are talking through our platform and our technology.
3:20 So we want to be known as an innovator in tech in customer engagement in e commerce.
3:26 all of those fears and one of the most successful routes that we’ve taken recently is applying for and winning a bunch of industry awards.
3:35 And what’s nice is once you get like a really big one, the other one’s kind of follow because they can see that you’ve been recognized publicly.
3:41 So one of our big commerce games was for the year was to be named to these big awards lists and you really have to leverage data to do that.
3:51 we took in data from our investor relations team are, we have a data science team called data models and decisions, which is an incredible team that just works with data all day every day.
4:02 And, customer data where it was appropriate to do.
4:05 So just to show the impact of what we’re doing, right?
4:08 So there’s, you know, you gotta dumb it down a little bit because not everyone understands.
4:12 Not every journalist, not every person on the street is gonna understand conversational ai I mean, I don’t even understand it all the time.
4:19 It’s very complicated.
4:20 But it’s good because I can break it.
4:22 I need to break it down for people into a format that makes sense for award.
4:26 So we’ve taken a lot of data around how many conversations are re powering every year.
4:32 What does it look like in the world before you implement conversational and after you implement it, how a customer’s lives gotten better, Your employees lives gotten better.
4:43 and being able to source all of that data and package it up for one really, really stellar awards submission.
4:51 You can then really, you can kind of repeat that process, right?
4:54 So all of these things are overlap.
4:56 Like customer engagement overlaps with the technology used to power, it overlaps with the customers that you’re serving.
5:02 So you can use all of those things that you’ve kind of sourced one or two or three times for multiple award submissions and they get really repeatable practice.
5:17 So early on, I was promoting that Kaplan Educational Foundation and we had a really good mix of personal stories and data.
5:26 So I think combining the emotional appeal of a story like a student who came from, they don’t always come from, you know, harsh backgrounds, but a lot of times they’re coming from a situation that’s not ideal.
5:40 they didn’t get the resources that most people who apply to Pen or Harvard or Columbia have, but through the Foundation they were able to get like one on one coaching, they were able to get, you know, stipends for travel and textbooks and all the things that they need and get their fees.
5:57 It actually cost a lot of money to apply to college, which is crazy get those fees waived.
6:02 So when you look at, you know, the population that doesn’t get access to that and the population that does their success rates that transferring to top schools is its, you know, crazy difference.
6:14 So if you take a look at those statistics and you pair them with a really inspirational story of a student who has really, you know, defied the odds and maybe again, maybe they came from a tough background and they have a really interesting background and they want to give back that emotional appeal.
6:31 And those statistics together were really incredible.
6:34 So, for example, we had the first trans woman to one of the first trans women to be out at Wellesley College, which was a is a traditionally female college.
6:46 her story was incredible, and the Associated Press picked it up because they were like, wow, this is such a great, it’s a it’s a huge moment for women’s colleges and it’s also showing the impact of this kind of educational, you know, not interventions probably like the technical work, but educational support, I think it’s, it can be tough to get data.
7:15 That makes sense to people outside of your company is you have your own way of talking about things.
7:20 We talk about conversation value, we talk about intent break.
7:24 So that’s like try is figuring out how many, conversations are resolved by your chat bots in the way that the customer wants them resolved.
7:34 It gets pretty like esoteric and technical, very quickly.
7:38 It gets much deeper than that.
7:40 and you have to explain what that means to an outside source, a reporter or a journalist or producer who they don’t have time to learn your industry a lot of the time, right?
7:51 They’re writing about 10 different industries, you know, they could talk to any number of companies, they don’t really care at the end of the day to get that deep.
8:01 So they need you to translate it.
8:04 it can be a challenge translating data.
8:07 You really have to, I think have both, like an analytical and creative mind to do that.
8:12 Maybe you have to draw an analogy to something that they do already understand.
8:17 so, I think that that’s one of the main challenges, especially when you work in tech is the the terms that you’re using are not accessible to many people and you just have to find a way to analogize it to something else or make it come to life with a really full story.
8:31 one of our customers is a jewelry company, one of the biggest jewelry companies in the world and they have this amazing experience where you can pick out, you know, exact ring that you want to get for your wife online or for another relative or whoever you’re shopping for.
8:50 and it’s very easy and you just show up at the store when it’s done and they give it to you and you’re like, oh, that’s exactly what I wanted.
8:55 So you can kind of pair, like you can write all kinds of love stories around that, right?
9:00 Like it’s very emotional moments in people’s lives when they’re hey paying for this really expensive rock and be giving it to someone they love and it means something.
9:10 and if you can again, like kind of combine that story with the data that you have on hand, I think that makes it much more powerful.
9:18 so yeah, it can be challenging to kind of bridge that gap, but if you can make it come to life for someone and say, you know, these are the most moments in people’s lives, they’re spending a lot of money.
9:30 So it’s interesting from a business perspective.
9:32 and here’s the data to back it up.
9:34 I think that that helps explain, I think one of the ones that’s most important to us to share a voice, so especially because we have recently repositioned into it.
9:48 So we talk about conversational ai a lot, but now we’re shifting focus to talk more about customer engagement.
9:55 That’s the market that we play in conversation.
9:57 Ii is a tool for customer engagement.
10:00 So are what we’re looking at in terms of your voice has changed.
10:04 We’re looking at different keywords now, really focused on this one thing.
10:07 It’s important for us to be able to benchmark where we are against our competitors in that space and then see how we’ve improved.
10:13 So I think that’s probably the one that’s most important to me right now right now we’re using decision you know, kind of one of the standards, but I wouldn’t necessarily say that were tied to them.
10:31 It’s a good solution.
10:33 But yeah, you know, the tools that we use include that you also have to supplement it with your own tools, right?
10:40 So you know, at the end of the day like google can be a really good, really good resource, of course more manual, but you’re gonna I personally go in every week just to back up what I’m seeing come through and also what our agency is working on because it’s important to me that there’s nothing that falls between the cracks.
10:59 and occasionally something will so you know, I will do that manual work every week and just being like, okay, did we miss anything important good or bad?
11:12 I know that this kind of exists, but just better attribution.
11:18 I think it’s one of the internal issues with people.
11:21 It’s hard to tell your impact sometimes.
11:24 And what is, you know, are people visiting the website because of an article?
11:28 Are they visiting because they saw, you know, paid media thing or they visit because they saw a sponsored story somewhere.
11:35 So that’s and then pulling all of that together into one reporting framework is tough.
11:40 And I think it’s always been that way.
11:42 I know that there’s some improvements there from a lot of companies.
11:45 It seems to be expensive to you to sign up for those things and use them, but that’s where I’m kind of hoping to see more progress.
11:58 I mean, I don’t know if I would find it as a campaign, but this, I’m very happy about this fast company award.
12:05 I think it’s really energizing internally to our folks to know that we’ve been named the number one most innovative company in the world by a prestigious publication.
12:14 I think it’s also a great tool for our sales people.
12:19 you know through it all over our website, all over our, our sales decks.
12:22 It’s on all of our materials now because we’re very proud of it.
12:25 So, that, you know, didn’t come out of nowhere right, kind of, it was a few years built.
12:30 So the previous year were on the list kind of, you know, we weren’t number one.
12:37 and we weren’t even on the main 100 most innovative companies list for every company.
12:42 So they do like their vertical lists and then they do their big list and this year we really blew it out of the water.
12:47 So it took time, you know, they have to educate the fast company editors about who we are, what we do, why it matters through data.
12:55 And it’s, you know, I think that that’s kind of one of the most exciting things recently and it’s been just really exciting for everyone on the team.
13:03 So I was proud to make that happen to be part of the team that made that happen.
13:12 That is a really good question.
13:13 And that’s why I wish there was more pr attribution accessible metrics.
13:19 Yeah, I mean a lot of it that I’ve heard is anecdotal, you know, I will hear from like our Chief Revenue Officer that someone he he heard that one of our like new customers read the release about a partnership that we announced and they were excited by that partnership.
13:35 But I do feel like yeah, it’s more anecdotal at this point and I would love to get more yeah, more data around it.
13:48 I think the trend that I’m seeing and I think a lot of people are pr and marketing getting closer and closer together over time.
13:55 A lot more content, marketing style.
13:58 Thought leadership pieces coming out of the pr department itself, rather than relying on journalists and media to write about you or, you know, interview you just because there’s fewer of them as well.
14:10 So I do see it becoming more of a content machine for better or for worse, and not relying on traditional media to get your word out.
14:22 So we live person, we call it digital publicity.
14:25 So, you know, podcasts fit in that sphere, live streams in that sphere, doing more with those, making sure that you are talking to the right podcasters who actually have influence.
14:36 But even if you don’t, if you can take a 32nd 62nd clip from that podcast, put on your on your social media and you know, say what you want about that piece.
14:46 I think that that’s also really helpful because it puts a human face on your message because you have like your Ceo or your Chief Marketing officer with their nice little interview snippet.
14:56 So just more of that, but just making sure you’re making the best use of their time for that too because there’s a million, I think we all know there’s a million billion podcasts out there right now, so you gotta be careful about who you’re talking to and whether whether it matters, but that digital publicity area is just that there’s no putting that back in the box and it’s just gonna get bigger and bigger.
15:23 I think it goes back to keep it simple.
15:26 There’s this old expression kiss, keep it simple stupid which is so important.
15:32 you get so tied up in your own world and what your company understands to be true and you just end up talking to yourself.
15:41 So I know I’m guilty of this most people and communication is probably guilty of it to some degree but dumbing things down for people because I know that I have to have this stuff dumbed down for me and I work here.
15:53 So I talked to these data scientists is ai designer you know, they work with machine learning models and neural networks and all of these like incredible technological things that I don’t know anything about, right?
16:05 I’ve learned a lot since being here, but I came in really blind to it and just you know you have to learn very quickly about it, but not everyone has time to learn about it.
16:14 at this life first we had a whole course for non technical people to learn about machine learning.
16:21 so you know, I took that to try to understand it better.
16:23 And also so I could then break it down for other people.
16:27 So I think that that’s really, really key, it’s just simplicity, you know, not wasting all the time.
16:33 I get to the point and then make sure that you can understand what you’re saying in normal layman’s terms because otherwise they’re gonna tune out immediately