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WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY CHANGE THE CHANNEL?
derekPR: Not sure where you heard that, but that is my hot button these days. Springsteen said 700 channels and nothing on, and that was 20 years ago. A cover of that would mean 7,000 channels and everything is on. I graduated from WVU based on column inches. We competed for space, airtime and somebody else's audience. Distribution is no longer the scarce resource. Judgment is. Change the Channel means stop treating somebody else's platform as the finish line. Build a voice and a body of work worth seeking out by being your own network.
WHAT IN THE WORLD DO YOU MEAN BY INTANGIBLES?
derekPR: I grew up on Jimmy The Greek on NFL Today, the only football show you could get when I was a kid. Brent and Irv would make their picks based on statistics, trends and things that fit, then give The Greek the microphone last for the final thing on the board: INTANGIBLES.
He’d say the Cowboys are better on offense, defense and special teams. Even the cheerleaders are better, but they wouldn’t dare visit Philly. Santa Claus has his reindeer fly over Philadelphia after he got pelted with snowballs one year. The 700 level at The Vet is akin to Death Row, and there is a jail in the bottom of Veterans Stadium. So, give me the Eagles and the points. They can’t stand the Cowboys and will find a way to win or will tip your bus over on the way to the airport.
I think about that every day in my business: the uncommon sense item that everyone misses is the tipping point, the things that matter enormously and refuse to fit neatly into a spreadsheet. It’s a recipe you can’t write down as it changes with every situation. I’ll take impact over impressions, intangibles over the obvious every minute of the day. Public Relations has spent years measuring what is easy to measure. I am more interested in what changes the outcome, the inches that, as Al Pacino advised, are the difference between winning and losing.
WHERE DO YOUR AWARD-WINNING IDEAS COME FROM?
derekPR: Where you least expect it sounds very cliché, so I shift from where to when. I don’t expect to get the killer idea during church, during a dream or watching Ted Lasso, but that is better than planning to have an idea at a given time during the work week. For me, ideation sessions are forced thinking. They work in a corporate structured environment, which I am not.
Two examples come to mind. At Applebee’s, I attended an all-executive meeting. Two full days of updates, from culinary to operations, and I wondered why I was there. I didn’t say a word for a day and a half. During the last session, someone nonchalantly mentioned a calorie-driven menu option, and I stopped, stood up and said, “What was that again?” It was the only PR-able item from the gathering, and no one else got it. It turned into an earned media clinic, USA Today cover story, millions in advertising value. What they saw as a casual menu update changed the channel on healthful options at a place known for indulgence and no-guilt eating.
The best story was bizarre while brilliant. I was representing TGI Friday’s at the time, and I took my nephew and his friend to Hooters because that’s where you take college kids in for a day visit. There was a story about punters at the new Dallas Cowboys stadium hitting the massive TV/scoreboard with their punts. Nephew goes, “What would you do with that?” Immediately I thought, well, if that happens during a real game, anyone watching at Friday’s would get for free the most bizarre item on the menu: crispy green bean fries. I went home, built a media list from scratch, distributed it to every sports outlet and while watching SportsCenter the next morning, it made the cut with the ESPN anchors cracking up. That all happened in 18 hours, and the idea was deemed the best PR idea of the year, nationally.
You can’t plan that. That type of idea can only come from real-time instinct in an unplanned setting. Awards are nice evidence after the fact. They are never where the idea starts.
DOES EARNED MEDIA MATTER ANYMORE?
derekPR: Yes, but differently. I was raised in an Above-The-Fold mentality: get on the front page or update your resume. I believe it was The New York Times, or maybe Rolling Stone, who coined All the News That's Fit to Print. That morphed into all the news that fits, period. Currently, everything fits. I built a career on earned media and still believe in it. I just stopped confusing the medal with the game. A great story can create enormous value, but the stronger long-term play is building authority you own and using earned media to amplify it. The game is not column inches. The secret is trust.
YOU'VE BEEN DOING THIS FOR MORE THAN 20 YEARS. WHAT CHANGED MOST?
derekPR: The bottleneck became a volcano. I scanned more than 8 million press releases when I was at PR Newswire. When I started derekPR, access and distribution were scarce. Today, almost anyone can publish almost anything almost anywhere, and the mad mom or disgruntled dad can get as much attention with a bad review as the local paper used to provide. That sounds liberating until you realize everybody else can too. The advantage moved from getting something out to having something worth paying attention to.
YOU TALK ABOUT TRUST A LOT. HOW DO YOU MEASURE THAT?
derekPR: Trust shows up in what happens next. Do people return? Do they call? Do they believe you when the stakes are higher? Do reporters, customers, employees and partners seek your judgment instead of merely receiving your message? I like metrics, but I like one question more: Did we become more trusted when this was over, and did we leave the situation better than it was before we created the message and campaign?
WHY 'SHOW ME' INSTEAD OF 'CASE STUDIES' OR 'SELECT STORIES'?
derekPR: I believe that Missouri Senator who said, 'You've got to SHOW ME,' was previewing the future of public relations expectations. He meant: don't tell me you're strategic, creative, trusted or different. Show me the work. Show me what changed. Show me who believed it. Evidence beats adjectives every time.
WHAT'S THE ONE QUESTION YOU ASK BEFORE YOU START?
derekPR: My business mentor, Jerry Mitchell, was a reporter for UPI. He gave me more in an unplanned lesson than I received in some semesters at WVU, and that is saying a lot. One day, the office was debating priority one when deciding whether to cover a story. He interjected years of experience and said, 'If you can't answer the question, Why would my audience care?, you don't have a story.' That has always stuck with me. Everyone thinks their story is the best news on the planet. Good for them, I get it. Yet if the filter is the person who gets 400 pitches a day and chooses ten, you need to know the odds. If you can't answer that question, pick another casino.
YOUR SITE KEEPS SAYING YOU'RE DIFFERENT. COULDN'T ANYONE SAY THAT?
derekPR: Absolutely, which is why saying it proves nothing. Different only matters if it changes the path to the objective. I'm rarely hired because somebody needs more ideas in the room. I'm hired because they want another way of seeing the problem. If that perspective doesn't create movement, 'different' is just an adjective.
YOU'VE EMBRACED AI. THAT SURPRISE YOU?
derekPR: Completely. I was a skeptic, which is probably why the relationship works. AI is spectacular at speed, pattern recognition, synthesis and finding connections I might take hours to see. But spectacular is not perfect. If you think it is, update your resume. I use AI aggressively and question it aggressively. Intelligence is not authority.
HOW DO YOU ACTUALLY WORK WITH AI?
derekPR: Like a very fast partner I refuse to flatter and refuse to obey. I push it; it pushes back; I correct it; it finds patterns; I kill what doesn't belong; and we keep what survives. The value is not capitulation on either side. It's productive friction. I call it my Mirror because the best use isn't asking it to replace my thinking. It's asking it to help me see my thinking more clearly.
WHAT'S THE ADVANTAGE OF HIRING AN 'IDEA GUY' WHEN AI HAS A MILLION IDEAS?
derekPR: Ideas were never the scarce part. Useful judgment is. AI can hand you an arsenal of possibilities and decades of best practices in seconds. Great. Somebody still has to know which weapon stays in the case. My role is Independent Catalyst: bring a different perspective to the path toward the objective, then turn that perspective into better ideas and progress.
DO YOU THINK COMMUNICATIONS HAS BECOME TOO OBSESSED WITH METRICS?
derekPR: Metrics are useful until they become the mission. Every era mistakes its scoreboard for the game. We did it with column inches, impressions, engagement and virality. Those numbers can tell you something. They cannot tell you everything. A million views can disappear by lunch. Trust has a longer half-life. Resumes are always more verbose than a tombstone. What did you really do? 'I made a difference' would fit on both and matter equally.
WHY ARE YOU SO INTERESTED IN OWNED MEDIA NOW?
derekPR: This goes back to being your own network by changing the channel. I like assets that are still there tomorrow. Earned media can create a spectacular moment. Owned authority compounds. A useful point of view, a credible body of work and a place people intentionally return to can survive the news cycle. Don't build your relevance on someone else's platform. Become the source, the network and the channel.
NEWS VS. GNATS. WHAT IN THE WORLD DOES THAT MEAN?
derekPR: News earns attention. GNATS are things buzzing around pretending they deserve it. Social media is very good at manufacturing activity - posts, impressions, content, engagement - and forgetting whether anybody should care. My mentor, Jerry Mitchell, gave me a graduate course in journalism when he said his filter was brutally simple: Why would my readers care? If I can't answer that, more distribution won't save it. And hasn't.
HOW DO YOU BALANCE THE BOTTOM LINE WITH THE GREATER GOOD?
derekPR: They are never enemies, and sometimes each allows the other to function better. Applebee's cringed at what it would cost them to give veterans a free meal on Veterans Day, and it turned out to be one of their biggest days of the year for traffic and profit. Veterans brought friends, friends brought veterans, and the next visits were the bonus. Because of Applebee's heart, people chose to spend their money there.
The best work often finds the place where business value and human value reinforce each other. Purpose without performance becomes decoration; performance without principle eventually sends a bill. I want both. Dignity-first, integrity-always is not a charitable side note. It's a way to make better decisions.
WHAT DOES AI DO BETTER THAN YOU?
derekPR: Volume, speed, recall, pattern recognition and the ability to stare at 40 versions of something without needing an energy drink. It can show me possibilities faster than I could generate them alone. What it cannot do is be me. It doesn't have my 20-plus years of scar tissue, relationships, instincts, taste or accountability. It can give me a thousand reasons. I still have to choose this one.
OKAY, THEN WHAT DO YOU DO BETTER THAN AI?
derekPR: Instinct. Judgment. Context. Taste. Knowing when the technically correct answer is strategically suboptimal. Knowing when a sentence sounds like me and when it sounds like a machine wearing my clothes. AI can reflect, challenge and accelerate. I remain the editor. That's not ego; that's the job.
ISN'T 'NEWSWORTHY' SUBJECTIVE?
derekPR: Hmm, a good friend of mine said it took him 90 minutes to watch 60 Minutes. It was funny then, mystifying now. They pick three stories and build 20 minutes around each. I was watching that show when others were watching cartoons. Who's to say which story is better? That's one reason I don't build an entire communications strategy around somebody else's definition of relevance. Respect the newsroom, understand the audience, make the strongest case you can - and build enough authority that one person's no doesn't erase the value of the idea.
IS THERE STILL ROOM FOR GOOD NEWS?
derekPR: There is room for relevant news. Good is not a news value by itself, but neither is bad. The mistake is assuming outrage automatically matters and optimism automatically doesn't. A strong positive story still works when it has stakes, surprise, humanity or consequence. Good news doesn't need a sympathy vote. It needs a reason to matter.
