Posts Tagged ‘PRSA Counselors Academy’


HR, Employee Retention, and Growing Your Business: Tracy Bochner, Paradigm PR, Interview With Johna Burke at the PRSA 2010 Counselors Academy

Monday, April 4th, 2011

Transcript -

JOHNA BURKE: Hello, everyone. This is Johna Burke with BurrellesLuce, and I’m here at the PRSA Counselor’s Academy. And we’re here with Tracey.

Tracey, will you introduce yourself?

TRACEY BOCHNER: Sure. Tracey Bochner with Paradigm Public Relations in Toronto.

BURKE: Canada, yay! So, Tracey, for those people that can’t attend this session of leaders in the PR industry, what are some of the takeaways that you’d like to share with them in the sessions that you’ve learned here?

BOCHNER: I’ve been to some really interesting sessions, particularly on HR, on retaining employees, on growing your business. Some of the biggest takeaways I think for us from the session have been around how to structure bonuses, because that’s something we’ve been looking at very closely, and how to grow your agency. We’re an agency of 14 people and we’re only two and a half years old, so we’re busy on this growth path, and there’s been a lot of–what the most interesting pieces for us have been about growing your agencies to be not big, but the best. That was Elise Mitchell’s session yesterday, which was fantastic.

 And out of some of the roundtable sessions this morning, tips and advice on how to structure bonuses for best motivating employees, how to look at retention strategies that, again, motivate employees. Even the softer things like beer on Fridays, what are some of those tactics that have worked really well for other agencies? And that has been very interesting for us.

BURKE: Great feedback. And where can people find you on the web?

BOCHNER: We’re at paradigmpr.ca.

BURKE: Great. Thank you so much.

BOCHNER: Thank you.

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PRSA Counselors Academy 2010: Carol Greenwald, Marketing Partners, Interviewed by Johna Burke, BurrellesLuce

Monday, January 3rd, 2011

Transcript -

JOHNA BURKE: Hello, everyone, this is Johna Burke with BurrellesLuce, and I’m here at the PRSA Counselors Academy. I’m here with Carol.

Carol, will you please introduce yourself?

CAROL GREENWALD: Hi, I’m Carol Greenwald. I’m the owner and president of Marketing Partners. And what we do is three kinds of things. We work with people on targeting and strategies so that they can get richer faster and more effectively. I do research so that we can ground decisions in fact instead of fancy. And I do coaching to help people learn better selling behaviors.

BURKE: Can you talk about, for those people that weren’t privileged enough to be able to be in your session moments ago, what’s the most important thing that marketers can use when they’re talking to prospects and clients about identifying and creating some attachment to their brand and to their product?

GREENWALD: What they need to remember is, is that there is no such thing as a rational decision. Decisions–the best decisions are made in the context of emotional thought that brings together all past memories, past experiences, past activities, past responses, brings them together so that they focus on whatever the decision is. So if you have a brand and you want somebody to do something, what you have to think about is what is the context in which you want them to do it? What’s happening in their world that’s relevant to this?

What kind of goal would they have to do it? What kind of past memories would they need so that they could understand what it is that you want them to do? Everybody understands new knowledge, new thoughts, in the context of old knowledge. That’s why whatever your mother did when you were five is probably still relevant today because memories are built up. Every time you have a problem or you face something, your brain goes back into the unconscious memories, pulls out the ones it thinks are relevant, tries to create a pattern that is similar to the pattern that you’re facing; then the cognitive part, the smallest part and the youngest, the most fragile part of your brain, the cortex, takes those patterns that’re offered to it, takes the best one of them and says, `This is the one we’re going to use because this is the one that answers the question, fits how we feel about the past and moves us forward into the present.’

So as a marketer, as a PR person, as a communicator, you have the ability, by setting the entire emotional stage, to influence not only how people feel about your product, but how they use it, what they do with it and, finally, if they buy it.

BURKE: Carol, thank you so much. Can you tell us your website, or where else people might be able to find you?

GREENWALD: Sure. www.greenwaldconsulting.com.

BURKE: Great. Thank you so much.

GREENWALD: And I’m on Facebook. 

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Posted in Advertising/Marketing, Career Advice, Industry Events, Online Video, Public Relations | 1 Comment »

PRSA Counselors Academy 2010: Alan Cohen, Acts of Balance Coaching, Interviewed By Johna Burke, BurrellesLuce

Tuesday, December 28th, 2010

Join BurrellesLuce and Alan Cohen, president, Acts of Balance, leadership coach and trainer for this informative 60-minute webcast, “The 12 Essential Talents of Marketing Communications Leadership…and other Lessons Learned From Harry Potter.” Alan will discuss the 12 essential talents of marketing communications leadership. He will use examples from the Harry Potter books and his own personal experience managing the project as former director of marketing for Scholastic Publishing where he was on the team that launched the Harry Potter books a decade ago.

Transcript -

JOHNA BURKE: Hello, this is Johna Burke with BurrellesLuce, and I’m here at the PRSA Counselors Academy with Alan.

Alan, will you please introduce yourself?

ALAN COHEN: Sure. I’m Alan Cohen, and I’m an executive coach. My company is called Acts of Balance Coaching, and I work with PR professionals in leadership and motivation.

BURKE: Great. Now, Alan, you’re doing a presentation and some roundtables on attitude adjustment; do you need an attitude adjustment? What are two signs that somebody does, and what can they do about it?

COHEN: OK, great. So what I’m talking about mainly is what your default tendencies are when you’re dealing in situations that are challenging: if you respond like a victim, if you respond with a lot of conflict, if you tend to be more cool-headed and logical. And really, the first step is to just become conscious of where you default. And you can see that in terms of the language that you use, in terms of the kinds of situations that you seem to be attracting. What you can do about it is, well, certainly you can work with a coach. But the first–the first step is to have an awareness that there are actually lots of different ways to perceive situations, and you perceive situations based on past experience. So this is very, very important for anyone who’s in a leadership role because it impacts the way that you can inspire and motivate others by really managing your own emotions and becoming conscious of where your energetic default tendencies are.

BURKE: Great. Alan, thanks so much. And where can people find you on the web or social media?

COHEN: Sure. www.actsofbalance.com, or you can follow me at Acts of Balance or my fan page is Acts of Balance. Acts of Balance.

BURKE: Great. Thanks so much.

COHEN: Thank you. 

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PRSA Counselors Academy 2010: Abbie Fink, HMA PR, Interviewed by Johna Burke, BurrellesLuce

Monday, September 27th, 2010

Transcript -

JOHNA BURKE: Hello, this is Johna Burke with BurrellesLuce, and I’m here at the PRSA Counselors Academy with Abbie.

Abbie, will you please introduce yourself?

ABBIE FINK: Sure. My name is Abbie Fink. I’m vice president and general manager of HMA Public Relations in Phoenix, Arizona.

BURKE: And, Abbie, you’re also the co-chair of Counselors Academy. Can you please talk a little bit about the programming and how you as an agent see–drive some of that content to make this a valuable attendee event for some of the participants?

FINK: Sure. Counselors Academy is a special interest group of the Public Relations Society of America, and it’s attended by owners and managers of public relations firms. And so we are all here–it’s our professional development opportunity for agency owners and managers to really learn about our businesses. We are talking about growth strategies, what are the trends that we’re seeing in the marketplace as it relates to social media, green initiatives, Hispanic communications; really, the types of things that we can look at as new revenue-generating sources, new business opportunities that we can then take back into our own markets and implement new programs and things that we’ve learned as a result of the conversations that we’ve had here.

BURKE: Great. Thanks, Abbie. And where can people find you on the web and in social media?

FINK: Well, thanks for that opportunity as well. We are on the web at hmapr.com. We also host a blog at hmatime.com. And then you can find me on Twitter @abbief, that’s A-B-B-I-E-F, and of course on HMA Public Relations page on Facebook. And I look very much forward to connecting with you there.

BURKE: Thanks, Abbie.

FINK: Thank you.

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Posted in Advertising/Marketing, Career Advice, Industry Events, Online Video, Public Relations | 1 Comment »

PRSA Counselors Academy: Mark McClennan, Schwartz Communications, Interviewed By Johna Burke, BurrellesLuce

Thursday, September 23rd, 2010

Transcript -

JOHNA BURKE: Hello, everyone, this is Johna Burke with BurrellesLuce, and I’m at the PRSA Counselors Academy. And we’re here with Mark.

Mark, will you introduce yourself?

MARK McCLENNAN: Sure thing, Johna. It’s Mark McClennan. I’m a senior vice president at Schwartz Communications.

BURKE: Mark, now, you just gave a session on growing your talent from within. Can you give a couple of the takeaways, for those people that couldn’t be here, of how they can do that at home?

McCLENNAN: I’d be happy to. When you’re talking about growing the talent from within, there’s really three fundamental things you need to make sure you do. From point one, you need to make sure you establish buy-in to the company vision and the power of folklore from day one. Make sure people understand where your company is, where they fit within the company and how they can grow within the company.

Point two is you need to make sure you’re constantly giving them opportunities to fail. I mean, fundamentally, the only way to grow your supervisors, your vice presidents, is you encourage people to make mistakes and learn from them. You know, give them the maximum responsibility at the earliest possible moment. Eighty percent of the time it’s going to work well for you, 20 percent of the time it’s not necessarily going to work as well, and those are the learning experiences. And you need to make that commitment because short term there may be an impact, long term you’re going to get a significant ROI. And that’s how you’re going to grow the people that know your company, know what you need to succeed, and they can help drive things forward.

And finally, you need to make sure, when it comes to training, that you don’t do the work for your employees. You need to give them the opportunities to begin the discussion. You need to–when you get a horrible press release, you can’t rewrite it. What you need to fundamentally do is figure out ways to help them through an…(unintelligible)…process to fix it. Ask them during every team meeting, `What do you see as the trends? What do you think we should do?’ When they come to you with questions, don’t answer the question. The first thing you should say is, `What do you think? How do you think we shoot–we should do that?’ And by doing that, you’re going to have people aligned with the company vision, you’re going to give them the confidence they need to succeed, and you’re going to really help develop the future leaders that will help your agency grow.

BURKE: Mark, that’s great. Thank you so much.

McCLENNAN: Thanks so much.

BURKE: And where can people find you on the web and in social media?

McCLENNAN: Sure. Well, there’s a lot of places there, but basically schwartz-pr.com, and our blog is Crossroads, so schwartz-pr.com/crossroads. And you can find me at @mcclennan at Twitter.

BURKE: Great. Thank you so much, Mark.

McCLENNAN: Thanks. 

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