Kerry O'Grady spent years in corporate communications at media companies including Meredith and Rodale before moving into the classroom, where she ran NYU's public relations program for eight years. When we recorded this conversation she was about a year into her role as faculty director of Georgetown University's master's program in Public Relations and Corporate Communications, where students call her Professor O.
Kerry and I have crossed paths for years, and she once invited me into her class to talk to her students about thought leadership. In this episode of The PR Bunker Podcast, recorded during the COVID era, we get into how PR is being taught, why students need to stop jumping straight to tactics, and how our loud white German Shepherd, Daisy, ended up as a case study in pay-for-play.
A few takeaways from the conversation:
Kerry said thought leadership changed after COVID, the push for social justice and the election. It used to mean getting the CEO a speech or a conference slot. Now it's about being the brand or person people seek out because you're trustworthy and credible, and since most people get their information from their peers, the goal is for a brand or a CEO to show up like a peer.
Kerry is taking students back to the basic definition of PR, which is building mutually beneficial relationships between an organization and its publics. Every piece of a campaign has to answer what the value is and why the stakeholder should care, and if it can't, it doesn't go in. Students want to jump to tactics, so she makes them know the audience's demographics, psychographics and insights first. On measurement, she told me likes don't matter much and even shares matter less than people think. She has students sort the conversation into positive, negative and neutral, then focus on the neutrals, because those are the people who can still be moved.
Rather than adding a class every time something trends, Kerry's team built courses around root causes. They launched a PR history class so students understand the history behind events like George Floyd's murder, and instead of a COVID class they created an emergency and disaster management course cross-listed with that program, so PR students and emergency managers learn to talk to each other before they're in the field together. She also set me straight on Daisy. A brand asking us to buy its product so the dog could become an ambassador isn't influencer relations. It's pay-for-play, and you don't ask a real influencer to pay.
At the time of recording, Kerry pointed listeners to the PRCC program page on the Georgetown School of Continuing Studies website and said Twitter was the best way to reach her.
Listen to the full episode above.
Reading is the hello. SBGA is where we get to yes.
What did Kerry O'Grady teach at Georgetown University?
At the time of this episode she was faculty director of Georgetown's master's program in Public Relations and Corporate Communications, after eight years running NYU's PR program.
How should PR teams measure a thought leadership campaign?
Kerry recommends tracking sentiment and the actual conversation instead of likes and impressions. Sort mentions into positive, negative and neutral, focus on the neutral audience, and count engagement like clicks, replies and requests for more information.
Is it influencer relations if a brand asks you to buy its product?
No. Kerry calls that pay-for-play. Real influencer relations means finding someone trusted who can move opinion on a topic, and you don't ask that person to pay for the engagement.
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