130: Paid, Earned, (Shrimp), and Owned: How to PR in 2021 with Gini Dietrich

A few weeks ago, I read a blog post by a fellow PR advisor, Ginny Dietrich. It was about crisis communications in the cancel culture era. The hook of the story, however, is what reeled me right in to reach out to have her on the podcast.

It's not your usual breakfast combo feeling.

Like cinnamon toast crunch.

Jensen Karp says he found two crustaceans that would have made his cinnamon toast crunch even crunchier.

But that is obviously shrimp tail. I ate a bowl and then poured it out and saw the shrimp like I had already eaten one full one. Welcome to the Confident Communications podcast, where we help communicators find the right response at the right time and deliver it in the right place. In this episode, we're talking about how to PR nowadays with a side dish of the cinnamon toast shrimp story. Ginny Dietrich is the founder and CEO and author of the Spin Sucks blog, host of the Spin Sucks podcast, and author of Spin Sucks. That's a lot of suck. But Jenny definitely does not, and her work is anything but. She is the creator of the Peso model that is an industry staple for describing the four types of media and how to integrate them into your PR plans and to help establish authority. And in fact, I was just on a Twitter spaces chat today and someone had replied back with the Peso model. So her model has a lot of reach. She even created a certification program for the peso model in partnership with Syracuse University. Now, that's very impressive, but as a Boston University com grad, we're taught to go meh to anything with the Newhouse School. But Ginny has run a PR agency for 15 years. She's also the co author of Marketing in the Round, co host of Inside pr, and co host of the Agency Leadership Podcast. Here's my conversation with Jenny Dietrich. Jenny, I am so excited to finally get a chance to speak with you.

It has been, I think, well, years. First of all, on Twitter and other social networks that we've just connected and had such a good time. And when you reached out to say, hey, do you want to be on the podcast? I was like, oh, yes, I do, please.

Oh, I love that excitement because I had the reaction, you know, I follow you on Twitter, I follow everything that you do. And it's so similar how we move in the same circles, move around the same concepts and ideas, but we're still different. And the. And what I wanted to talk to you about today is, you know, you're a big believer in pr, as am I, but there's just certain areas of it in niches of it and specialties where we're very similar but somewhat adjacent in areas. But what made me finally reach out to you is I came across your blog post. I saw it on Twitter. It was at the end of March, but it was about the Cinnamon Toast Crunch guy and the shrimp. And when that story, when that story came out, I had more people reach out to me on DMs, you know, Instagram, Instagram and Twitter. What are you doing about the Cinnamon Toast Crunch guy? And I did tweet about it, but there's so, it's. There's so much to unpack there. So when I saw your blog post, that's why I had to reach out to you, even though I know it's dated. But there are lessons that are relevant to three. Three weeks later, right?

Yeah, it's. That whole thing was crazy. And I don't know if I'm getting more cynical in my old age, but I was kind of like, there's something. Excuse the pun.

Fishing.

There's something going on here.

Oh, there's something going. Okay, so before we jump in there. So the title of the blog post was Handling Crisis Communication in the Cancel Culture Era, which that's, you know, the podcast I'm. I'm going to actually have you air right in the middle of April because I still wanted to keep it relevant. So I just did a podcast about. About the Cancel Culture era. And that's what your entire blog post is about. But before we jump into it, Jenny, can you just tell the listeners a little bit about your background and why you are in this industry? Oh, well said by me. You're a PR rep.

I'm just going to take you everywhere with me. Sure. Yeah. I, I grew up in the big agency world. I have a big agency PR background and decided very naively and stupidly that I could do it better myself. Lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of money later and lots of really hard lessons later. I don't necessarily do it better, but we definitely have a different way of approaching communications. And certainly in the digital age, I think, you know, lots of agencies are looking at different ways of handling it. But my biggest challenge when I was at the agency was how do we measure results? And, you know, back then, it was media impressions and advertising equivalencies, and clients didn't care. They were like, I just spent $2 million on this campaign. Like, show me the money.

Right, Right. So is that why you created and. And we will get into it. But this peso model. Well, you know, What. Let's just jump into the peso model right now because it's just such a natural through line here. Your. Your Pacer model, which I heard about the model before I even heard about you. So it really shows the, you know, the power of that, because someone had mentioned. Someone who I know in my work in public affairs actually had. Had mentioned it to me. So explain the peso model and how it came. You were talking about how you came. You arrived at that decision like you. You recognized a gap or a problem with showing results to your clients. So how did you come up with this model?

Well, I'd love to say that it was this big strategic revelation that I had while I was riding my bike. And I was like, whoa, let's do this, and we'll have it copyrighted and we'll trademark it. And the industry. That is not what happened at all. The truth of the matter is that it was the model that we were using internally. And the reason that we were doing it is because, as you know, when you. And back then, we were focused on meeting mostly media relations crisis and reputation, but when you're. When you're doing earned media alone, you have highs and lows. It's very cyclical. Right. And you can't control it. So I had situations where clients would say to me, you know, this is great. Thank you. Thanks for getting us below the fold in the Wall Street Journal, but what's next? And it got incredibly frustrating because you couldn't there. You couldn't keep it on a cadence that it happened every day like they want. And also the whole, well, why weren't we included in that roundup story? And you're just like, oh, I don't know.

Okay, so you're extrapolating. And we should say what pesos stands for. So could you.

Yeah, so I'll. I will go to that in just a sec. So we really looked at, how do we sort of fill those gaps in terms of, okay, we have these media relations highs. What else can we do? And at the time, blogging was becoming sort of a corporate thing, you know, Twitter and Facebook certainly had entered the corporate world. We were looking at things beyond pay per click in terms of search engine marketing, you know, being able to use social for advertising and things like that. And so we looked at it and we said, okay, well, this is interesting. We can start to. Should we do some content for clients? Should we do social media for clients? Should we do this? And at the time, we had really great clients who let us take some risk and Let us test some things out.

Ginny. Was this 2007, 2008?

It was. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then, of course, the bottom dropped out. Right. And clients went away. And we had some time to really think about what it looked like and how to build it and how to build a process. And it became the peso model, which was not what it was named at that point, but it was. We were doing paid media, we were doing earned media, we were doing shared media, and we were doing owned media. So we were doing content and social and media relations and social media advertising. We were doing all those things. And when I wrote Spin Sucks, the book, I talked about the process, and my publisher sent it back, and she said, this is great. Do you have a name for this? And I was like, no.

Oh, so, like, someone got into the marketing element of it. Good.

Yeah, yeah. She's like, you can't talk about this process and not have a name for it. And so we went back and forth because in most cases, we would start with owned, and then we would go to earned or shared, and then we would add paid. We would never, ever start with paid. So we went oesp, O, S ep. We were trying to figure out. And finally she says, well, peso is easy to remember. And I'm like, stop talking to me, you dumb publisher. But she was right. And so that's why we named it. That's. And then she said, okay, do you have a graphic that you can. That you can use? And it's funny to look at the very first iteration of that, because it was so tactical. I mean, it was literally paid media is Google Ads, Facebook ads, Twitter ads, LinkedIn ads. Earned media is media relations, influencer relations. Like, it was a tactical list. And so as it's evolved over the years, we've really looked at it from a very strategic perspective, and we've looked at it from. How do we include research? And it's not just about demonstrating results, but in the last. Everything that we've gone through in the last 13 months as a world, we've really started to look at how do we include the peso model in both internal communications and crisis communications.

Brilliant. Brilliant, by the way. But now looking at the model, now in its first iteration, when it was coming out, 2007, 2008, and I don't know if you were like, me. I mean, I was on the federal agency side in Washington D. But that was at the time of. Of explaining to people what social media was.

Yeah, yeah, it was a. It was a fad. Remember that everybody was like, oh, is that. It's a fad?

And it's still. It's only the people that. Oh, you spend all your time on the computer, on your phone anyway, it's perfect for it. Like, we still haven't. We haven't shaken that yet. So. So paid was intentional first, and it wasn't the SIPO model or anything, because you wanted paid first, and then eventually you got to the shared and the owned to talk about that online as well.

We really want. I mean, honestly and truly, we were just trying to think of something that was an acronym that was easy for people to remember.

Okay.

Because the other. So from our perspective, I mean, if a client came to us and said, our goal is to generate as many leads for this widget as possible, we would send them to a digital agency that focuses on PPC and search engine marketing. We would not. We probably wouldn't do it. If a client comes to us and says, listen, we need to be able to tell our story and we need to amplify it and get credibility, ability, gain credibility for it.

We would do that for them. Have you noticed a change now? So if you. The clients that you're working with right now, what do they want from you? Like, what are they specifically asking for? And do you have to dig to find out what they're really asking for? When it comes to public relations, I.

Think we always have to dig.

Yeah.

Right. I'm convinced there's some school out there that they send entrepreneurs to that teaches them that if you just get a story in TechCrunch, all of your troubles will be solved. And you're like, no. And they honestly and truly think that all you have to do is pick up the phone and say, hey, Molly, it's Ginny. I was thinking, we have this new client. Can you run a story? Like, they think that that's what you.

Do, and you're like, that's not how you. All you do is pitch, and then you have success and you get it out. And if you don't land it, then you're the worst publicist out there.

Right.

But, yeah, that's just publicity. Right. That's just being a publicist. And there's so much more to it. So you say that the peso model, however, takes time. So how much time are you telling clients that it does take?

I will tell them that they need to invest a year, at least a year for it to start to demonstrate real results. There are certainly milestones along the way. It's sort of. I explain It, I'm a cyclist and I didn't race last year, but I usually race and I explain it like that. Or if you're going to run a marathon, you don't just go out and run 26.2 miles. Right. You have to train for it. And you start out and maybe you go from the couch to a mile and then to a 5k and then to a 10k and so on. So I explain it that way. You have to invest the time to be able to set it up properly, make sure that the data is coming in properly, that you're measuring it properly and that you're executing it properly. And then there will be, you know, there are milestones along the way depending on the company. But we usually see results, start to see results about 90 days in.

Yeah, it must be a Midwest girl thing. So I always use running a marathon because, you know, from running marathons. But it's the same way. You need endurance.

Yes.

For these types of campaigns. Correct. And, and, and having the understanding of what the market is like. So Jenny, tell me from the, from where we were in 2008, 2009, and we're going to lead up now, have you noticed a change just in the public's out there in terms of how they take in the information from any type of campaigns and how they give it back?

Yes, I would say the biggest change has come in the last year and you're starting. So everybody before that I think was talking about it's important for companies to give back. It's important for corporate social responsibility. It's incorporate for charity work. Like all of those things are important. But it became pertinent, necessary last year. And now the conversations that I'm having with CEOs is not, you know, help us sell our widgets now, it's how do we. And this might sound terrible, but these are literally the conversations I'm having. How do we maintain the engagement that we had last summer when George Floyd was murdered and we stood up for social justice and we said this is wrong and these are the things that we're going to do. And every executive that I have talked to has said we had such high engagement from employees at that point and we don't know what to do now. And so they're really thinking about how do we not just talk about our values, but market them in a way that will attract the customers that we want to work with.

Oh, Ginny. Okay, so necessary things to unpack there. First of all, what kind of clients are you talking to? Give me the profile mostly.

So we do. I'm talking to two industries. Very, very, very, very specific B2B manufacturing.

Okay.

And usually startups that have been through at least series A are going through.

Series B. Oh, okay. Those are two very particular. Okay. Two very disparate industries. But they both have the same. They have the same concerns.

Yes.

So I'm curious, when there was a lot of employee engagement, are you saying there's employee engagement? Because everyone was online, everyone was talking about injustice, everyone was talking about values. Is that what you're saying?

I think. Because I think what they are feeling is that assuming that they stood up the way that we want them to, they were feeling that employees were really engaged in the culture and the organization. Even though they were most, from the most part, were remote, they still felt a really high level of engagement because they kind of felt like everybody was in it together, fighting for something. They gave time off to go protest. And now there's this whole, like, how do we keep that level of employee engagement up in a way that we're a year out? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So what. What do you advise them?

I mean, this is a terrible answer, but it depends. It depends on the organization, right? It depends on their culture. In some cases, you have CEOs, who, I mean, and I was quote, unquote raised this way too, where you don't talk about your values, you don't talk about your political views, you don't talk about religion, you don't talk about those things in mixed company because you're going to make somebody mad. And so taking that foundation of an executive and having them change their mindset around. Okay, it's okay if we make some people mad, because the people we're going to make mad, we don't want them to be customers anyway. But that's a really hard shift to make with somebody. It is.

I've said those words. I've said those exact same words. I might even send out or I felt like I gave it in a talk because someone asked me that question. And sometimes you have to say, who is your stakeholder? Like, who are you really speaking to? Who are you willing to let go of? Yes.

Yes.

Oh, my gosh. Yeah. So like minded. So how are your clients reacting to this advice and counsel?

Again, it depends. You know, you have some people. I just talked about this in another interview last week. You have some. We have some clients who are like all gung ho. They're like, yes, let's do it. Let's go forth. Let's. I don't care who we make mad. These are our values. This is what we stand for, blah, blah, blah. And then you have some that are a little like, they've made the first step because they've hired us. Right. But they're not as assertive or aggressive at making change. And so sometimes we've had to. I hate to say this out loud, but make them think it's their own idea, which takes a long time, right? I mean, it takes a while for them to go, oh, you know, we should do this. And then you look at the chief marketing officer and you both roll your eyes because you thought of that a year ago. But.

And then you tell them it's brilliant.

Brilliant.

You're brilliant. Oh, my gosh. Look, go for it. Oh my gosh. You're a genius. So tell me, Jenny, when you are going even through these types of conversations and getting into this whole value centric types of pr, I absolutely found myself in the same direction. And I don't know if it was inertia or just seeing it, you know, that's. But that's where we are. I speak to it all the time. Are you pulling in the same metrics and meaningful metrics from your peso model? Like, do you still show that even from value issues, you know?

Yeah, we do, for sure. Yeah.

Fabulous. Oh, that's. Oh, that's. That's interesting. So what is the natural progression that you think if we are heading into. And it's just, oh, my goodness, like, how ironic that the case of Derek Chauvin, you know, north of you, you know, that is happening right now and that there's all that unrest and during George Floyd's trial. During the trial, during the trial. And just as an aside, I mean, I'm from the Twin Cities and last night I was speaking to friends there. I know people who know the woman, the police officer who, who was involved in the shooting. I know people who are in the streets, you know, who are, you know, who are upset in the street. I mean, it's just when it's so tight, it's so personal. But when you're in pr, you're probably like me. Do you look at everything through the lens of PR and framing? For sure. Oh, and crisis all the time. Me too. Okay, so speaking of that, so heading into now, summer, are you preparing or looking at things differently? Are you assuming we're here for good in this value type of pr, or do you think there's just going to be another cycle of another thing after we hit June 2021?

I think we're in this for the long haul. I think many, not all, but many executives have finally looked at this and said, you know what? We need to do something about this. And I think what. What our country went through under a different president is that it made us realize that. And we can't rely on government to fix things for us. We have to do it ourselves. And we have to, as leaders of organizations, we have to stand up for what we believe in and do that in a way that demonstrates value and helps customers and makes the world a better place and all of those things. So I think we're in. I think this is where we're going. I've seen a really big shift. I read pretty much every research that's done out there, and I've seen. Watched a really big shift. Shift from, you know, where we were 18 months ago to, oh, my gosh, the chief communications officer has to be in the room all the time.

And it's.

It's been. Obviously, it started with, out of an abundance of caution, we're closing our office. Right. That. Everybody said.

Everyone. Yes, everyone.

We can't all say the same things, and we have to be prepared. And the amount of. Of prospects that we're that are saying to us we have to have a plan is astonishing. So I think we're in it for the long haul.

Yeah, I do, too. I think what. What happened in the year 2020, it. We are all so raw now, and we need to have strong communications. That's one of the best things I'm always looking for silver linings. One of the best things that came out of there is just the value. For sure.

Yes.

Of communications.

Yes. And the work that we do. Yes, yes, yes.

I want to come up with the clever mashup because I have to speak about the shrimp tail guy. But what we could say is we're leading off of you talking about the importance and stressing the importance of people speaking out and speaking up. But in the case of General Mills and the shrimp, Cinnamon Toast Crunch shrimp story, here we have a case of all of a sudden they clammed up and we're good. Just came up with that one. We're good, but they clammed up and they didn't really want to talk about it. So I have to end it here. So first of all, do you want to. Since you wrote the blog post about it, do you want to give us just the overview of what happened with Cinnamon Toast Crunch and why there's a guy attached to it?

Yeah. So this guy, he. He Tweets that he found shrimp tails, cinnamon sugar shrimp tails, at the bottom of his Cinnamon Toast Crunch box or the bag in the box. And he goes on to, like, tell this story of. I contacted General Mills. They said it's just an accumulation of cinnamon sugar. I say, it's not. It's actually shrimp tails, but I don't want to touch them. And then he goes on to say, my wife, who has a more iron stomach than I do, went into the bag and found cereal with mouse droppings in it. I mean, he just goes through the whole thing and he. He tells the story and he shows, you know, what GM is, General Mills is saying. And they've said, like, listen, we've looked at it. We think it's cinnamon and sugar accumulation, which we've all seen that it's okay, that makes sense. And then he keeps going. So then they say, well, why don't you send it to us so we can have it tested? And he's like, I'm not sending it to you. I don't trust you. I'm going to take it to my own lab. And then they say, you know, obviously, if it's. If something's been tainted or the bags have been damaged or somebody's gotten into it, we need to know. And he just keeps going down this path. Well, then it comes out later that he's a terrible human being.

But.

My thinking on it is that he is, as a professional, he is a comedian and actor. And my guess is that he was doing this to build up his following and his awareness, which he did do, to launch something. And that has sort of fizzled out. And I don't know if I am super cynical in my old age, but.

Have you read that anywhere that he was getting ready to pitch something?

Well, he said. He said, just so you know, I'm not getting ready to pitch something. And it's just like everything kept. You know, it just seemed weird to me. It just seemed off.

Did it seem off to you right away? Like, as soon as you saw that it did the first time? It did. Yeah, I. Yeah, I did. I did, too. And I couldn't. I couldn't put my finger on it right away, but there was something. I don't know if you're like me, you must be if you've worked in it this long, but whenever there is a story or something is happening, there's always a tell based on behavior, right? Like, you think, what is the intention here? And right away, and this is intentional. It was fishy, like, right out Front, right from the gate.

Right.

And I, And I had like one of those moments. I thought, I'm going to take time and do the little dive on this guy. Saw that he was a comedian, writer and all, and already I'm like, okay, this. This is him.

Yes.

Trying to leverage something here, but then to have it turn out that his. That his name is Karp, his wife is Danielle Fishel from. From A Boy Meets the World, Topanga, which is so crazy. Right. And I give him credit for not introducing that, that people had to find that out on their own like that. I thought that was somewhat genius. But what's fascinating to me coming from someone who works in crisis communication, and I'm always looking for the blow up down the line, is that it took that all too familiar trajectory where he put himself out there, which is where a lot of leaders, you know, I know you work with, they're so nervous about putting themselves out there. But he put himself out there, but he didn't think about his past. Right. Did not think about how the fishtail was going to come around and hit him in the face.

Right, Right.

Fascinating that all these women. It's very similar to the Ellen DeGeneres story that all these women came out and called him, my favorite line, a manipulative, gaslighting, narcissistic ex boyfriend. I mean, and it got even more brutal than that. So this guy is a real piece of work.

Yeah.

And so now what is he? I mean, he destroyed his own reputation.

Yep, he did.

Okay, so, Jenny, what lesson is to be learned from. From Jensen Karp in the shrimp story? What's the lesson? What's the General Mills lesson? And what' Jensen Karp lesson?

You know, I said this in the, in the blog post. Like, I think General Mills did everything they should have done. I. If I had been advising them, I would have been like, let's let this one sit for a few days. The Internet did its thing. Yes. You know, the Internet does. And let's just see where this nets out. And the poor CEO of General Mills went. They had him on, you know, several morning shows to say, listen, we're trying to work with this guy. But. So I don't, I don't think they should have done anything differently personally. And I don't think that they should have come out guns a blazing at all.

Right.

And it did die down because he ruined his own reputation.

Yeah, it did die down, except I wanted to bring it back because it deserved at least one more conversation on, you know, on the podcast, you know, I will add, and it ties into something that you said. I think the only misstep that General Mills had, and it did eventually leak out, was that internal communications piece. It sounded as if the communicators, maybe the mid level ones, the social media team, that they didn't have information, like they did not know what was happening, but they were the ones who were responding online. Yeah, yeah. So there's that, I think a very common miscommunication happening in companies right now. Well, Jenny, you are someone who I could speak with for hours. I'm sure we have the same similar war stories, but I'm so happy to finally get you on the podcast and speak with you just about your business. And you have that great book, Spin Sucks, which is a great name, by the way. I love Spin Socks. Communication and Reputation Management in the Digital Age. How can people find you, Ginny, to find out more about your work?

Well, as it turns out, spinsucks.com is owned by us.

There you go. There you go. Is that where you want people to go? Like that is everything website? All right. Well. Well, Jenny, it's so great to talk to you and I look forward to seeing.

Good to talk to you.

Yeah. And seeing all the things that you eventually have rolling out. People in our biz work always moving and changing and fitting with the time. So I. I'm excited to keep watching and having. And see all the things that you have coming out next.

Well, and you have a book out, so do that.

We need to be on a panel somewhere because really I just put this on Instagram. I read on Instagram, I read Communication, Reputation Management in the Digital Age. Like, who else does that? I mean, my goodness. I mean, we both do the same thing, but we should do that.

Let's.

We should, but in very complimentary ways. So, Ginny, thank you so much. It was great speaking with you. All right, my thanks to Jenny Dietrich for joining me on the podcast to discuss pr, particularly from that agency point of view and for doing that deep dive into the shrimp story. Yuck. Yuck. Remember, you can follow me on Twitter @Molly McPherson. I always love to hear from people who listen to the podcast on Twitter. Twitter. And I never thought I'd say this, but you can follow me on Facebook, find me at Molly McPherson, PR. I created a page to support the soon to be launched Indestructible PR Hub. It's the next gen of the COVID 19 Response Kit that I launched last year. I compiled a number of resources to help communicators, to help all of us in the weeks that the pandemic really decimated our businesses. So I want to help Communicators now in 2021 and beyond, find resources to help them find the right response at the right time and deliver it in the right place to help their communications, whether they work for themselves or work for another organization. Thanks so much for listening. See you next week, same time, same place. Bye for now.