Mike DeVilling - The Value of Public Relations

Today, our positioning duo is joined by Mike DeVilling, President and CEO of WestShore Public Relations. Mike brings his wealth of knowledge and experience to the podcast to share valuable insights on how brands can leverage public relations. The discussion also uncovers all the new tactics, channels, and platforms available to public relations professionals, and how media relations has changed over the past couple decades. A big thanks to Mike for joining the positioning gurus!

Spend 40ish with the positioning duo as they discuss everything marketing, advertising, PUBLIC RELATIONS, and positioning!

Transcript

Mark Vandegrift
Welcome to the Brand Shorthand Podcast. I'm your host, Mark Vandegrift, and with me today are two special people. You already know our eighth wonder of the world for her positioning acumen, Lorraine Kessler. Welcome, Lorraine.

Lorraine Kessler
Hey, welcome.

Mark Vandegrift
We also have Mike DeVilling, President of West Shore PR in Detroit, Michigan with us. Welcome, Mike.

Mike DeVilling
Thanks, Mark. Good to see you and Lorraine, good to see you as well. Although I'm a little jealous because I hear you're up at the lake right now.

Lorraine Kessler
Yes, I'm, I'm, and this is H2, H2O for any people who are Lakers. John, John will verify it for you.

Mark Vandegrift
We'll check that later, Lorraine. Well, Mike, let me share your bio with our audience so they know who you are. Mike has an extensive background in media relations, social media content development, and overall communication strategy development. From startups to Fortune 500 companies, and from consumer initiatives to highly targeted B2B campaigns, Mike has driven client strategy, media relations, and social media results for clients of all sizes. He's helped build startups into recognized brands. He's helped make some of Detroit's most important events major players on a world stage. One interesting tidbit about Mike is that he has run seven marathons. This is a quote from Mike, “Marathon training takes discipline. It takes energy. It takes focus. It takes determination, resiliency and toughness. Developing and implementing a successful long-term communication plan takes the same focus and determination.” Well, Mike, it's obvious you have a passion for PR. 

Prior to West Shore Public Relations, Mike was a senior partner at global agency, Finn Partners Detroit office. He credits his career success to his mentors and teammates at two of Detroit's most successful agencies, John Bailey and Associates, and Eisbrenner Public Relations. He has also had stops with the DeVilling Group, Cars.com, and Casey Communications. So welcome, Mike.

Mike DeVilling
Well, thank you very much. You know, listening to my own bio, one thing I'm very thankful for is that I'm actually better in the communications business than I am as a runner. The last marathon that I happened to run, I finished in 578th place. And one of my friends happened to ask, well, Mike, how'd you do today? And I said, well, I finished 578th. And he just shook his head and said, “Mike, I really expected more out of you.” And that...

That has actually become a long time running joke between myself and Lorraine and her husband, John. And I am very proud of the running stuff, but I think the most important thing is the lessons that I was able to learn as a runner, as an athlete when I was younger. And that really does translate into this business really well.

Mark Vandegrift
Well, the fact that you used the word finished is amazing.

Lorraine Kessler
Well, how many people were in the race, Mike?

Mike DeVilling
I probably 2000 or 3000 and that actually was my personal best that I ran that day. So I was very happy with the results that day.

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah, so I mean, it's all about the numbers. It's all about the numbers. Yeah. And while you're in Detroit, you're an Ohio State fan, right?

Mike DeVilling
Yep, that's right. I have been trapped behind enemy lines for nearly 50 years.

Lorraine Kessler
Good to know, good to know. So Mark just read a lot about your experience. Can you, Mike, elaborate a little bit on some of the industries you've covered with your PR prowess?

Mike DeVilling
Primarily in the automotive industry, but even with the in the automotive industry, it's so big There are so many different things that you can do. A lot of things are consumer oriented. And that's maybe if you're working for an OEM and you're you're launching a new vehicle Which I've had some experience working for a startup called Elio Motors. It was launching a vehicle I'm now working for a company called Bollinger Motors, which is launching a class 4 electric truck so, you know, those are a little bit more of what people think of when they think of the auto industry, but I've also worked on the business to business side, with a lot of companies that do data. So back in the day, it was our Oren Polk and company. then I worked with Experian, automotive for a long time and both of those organizations take registration data. They carve it up into useful marketing data and sell it to people within the industry. We worked with a lot of that data as a media relations tool and also to make their experts, quotable people in the industry and made some of them rock stars in the industry. 

So, a lot of the auto stuff is business to business. My current agency, we're going a little bit more in the consumer packaged goods direction. We're working with Downy's Potato Chips, which is a local brand here in Detroit. Papa's Kitchen, which does marinades and salad dressings, which is also a local startup here in Detroit.

And then we are also working with a lot of Catholic high schools, which I had never worked for an educational organization in my life. And I'm not Catholic, but that gives us an outside view of, kind of an objective viewpoint of how to counsel those schools. So, it's been a really nice piece of growth for us as an agency.

Lorraine Kessler
That's really interesting. So have you worked with aftermarket automotive as well?

Mike DeVilling
I actually have not. And that's again, that's another that's another area that's very specialized. And it's you know, you can work with OEMs, you can work with supplier companies, you can work with the retail side, you can work with aftermarket. I've done a lot with supplier companies and a lot with on the retail side, particularly technology companies that are selling into automotive retailers.

Lorraine Kessler
Gotcha, gotcha, very good.So you’ve mentioned a lot of brands that have stood out or that you've worked on. Is there any particular client or brand that to you really stands out in your experience?

Mike DeVilling
Well, I think the biggest thing that I ever worked on was North American International Auto Show, or as most people probably refer to it as the Detroit Auto Show. Every major auto manufacturer was there. We had, I believe, 6,000 media credentials, that, credentialed media, that was covering the show. And if you think about it, that's like twice as many reporters as cover the Super Bowl. So it was an incredibly important event to the city of Detroit in that it had about $580 million of economic activity. It was incredibly important to everybody within the auto industry because it brought so many international and national reporters there. And to my career personally, I made many of the best contacts that I've made with different reporters in the industry from being on that show.

Lorraine Kessler
That's super. That's good to hear because shows have gone through their waning times and there's always, as long as I worked and I started in automotive aftermarket, working, or representing Champion Spark Plug and Monroe brakes and mufflers and things like that, belt and wires and cables. And we would go to these auto shows and every year it was like the question, do we need to be there? Do we need to be at these shows? And then of course, fast forward, we had COVID and we had all that. But I still think that shows provide still the best high touch, immediate reaction, plus an opportunity to be theatrical, to do something that captures the imagination in a big way. I mean, how do you feel about that?

Mike DeVilling
I think more than theatrical, it's experiential and, you know, little history of the Detroit PR market. When you were working for supplier companies, the Super Bowl for you was the SAE show. And, you know, probably I was at an agency back when I was at Eisbrenner, we had 20 clients that would exhibit at the SAE show and it was huge. It got a lot of media. But once the internet came along, companies started to put their product information on a website, you didn't really need to be in the same room with your customers at the time. And over time, that trade show lost a lot of its importance. But what I'm finding out now based on just a show we just went to with a client, which was the ACTExpo, which is Advanced Clean Transportation Expo, we feel like getting people behind the wheel of the Bollinger B4, which is a product that they're going to launch later this year, is incredibly important with journalists. So, it's one thing to read a press release. It's one thing to go on a website, but to be there in person, you know, feel the g-force and the acceleration to feel the ride and handling characteristics. You can't beat that for a live experience and shows will still play that type of a role. So, I think shows still have a huge part in any marketing communications program. It's just the way that you use those shows has evolved quite a bit and will probably continue to.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah, it's interesting. You know, the augmented reality that you see at these shows now, you're talking about experiential. It's really neat how they're bringing together reality and the digital in this augmented reality. Are you seeing a lot of that at these shows that you're attending?

Mike DeVilling
Well, to come clean, I've never been to CES and I'm going out to CES this year. So, I expect to see a lot of it out there. The ACTExpo was a little bit more old school and didn't have quite that advanced trade show booths. But man, you could do an entire show on augmented reality and those types of experiences with the folks that build the trade show booths. And there's some incredible stuff that's out there.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah, that's good. Well, before we get too pigeonholed into an area, let's back up because we're talking public relations with an expert. And one of the recommendations we make all the time, and even though we're full service here, so we're not PR focused, but our statement is this, “public relations is the best way to build a brand.” Give us your perspective on that statement and why you believe it to be true or maybe not true.

Mike DeVilling
I think it's one of the most important tools in the toolbox. To get that third party credibility from an editor or reporter that shows, it kind of underscores all of the product claims that you're making and you have that independent verification from them, it means a lot. And people who are information seekers, if they're going out and they're looking, they're Googling for stories, it's one thing to land on a company's website, but it's another to find a story in the Wall Street Journal or key trade publication like Automotive News. 

So it is, it's very important for clients to be out there, to have good relationships with the media and to really have a compelling story that they can tell and get some positive coverage from.

Mark Vandegrift
Well, it's interesting because we have to convince clients of that statement sometimes. And then we ask them, tell us what Starbucks advertised and they can't name it. And we'll say, the Starbucks slogan. And they can't name it. And then we let them know that I think it was 2015 was the first ad that Starbucks actually ran nationally, and they built their whole position just on public relations. So once they hear a big brand name like that, then they go, okay, I guess it can be done.

Mike DeVilling
Yeah, it doesn't surprise me. One of the things in my business and the different agencies I've been with is, a lot of executives at companies don't really understand what you mean when you say that until they see their competitor in automotive news and they think, well, gee, it would be great if we had a story like this. I say, yes, that's what we've been trying to tell you. You need to be out there and be more proactive. But yeah, the competitor getting coverage probably does more for my business than any marketing tactic I could ever do.

Mark Vandegrift
It's interesting because some of the times when we make that comment, they look at you like, well, PR, that's what we're doing. They don't even understand the concept of a public relations execution versus marketing versus advertising. Like, all the terms anymore just get glommed together. And I think that's what creates the challenge. They don't realize the discipline that is public relations.

Mike DeVilling
Well, I think the other part of it too is agencies are starting to diversify their services. And there are a lot of things that didn't, I tell this to people all the time, there are things in my business that didn't even exist five to ten years ago. My daughter's 27 years old, she works for an agency in Manhattan. She does influencer marketing. And if you'd have told me ten years ago that your daughter's going to have a career in influencer marketing, I would have said, what's that?

And so you're starting to see more PR firms do those types of things. You're starting to see more ad agencies doing those types of things. And there's kind of a jump ball right now between all these different marketing companies who have their traditional skill sets. But now they're trying to say, alright, we can do social media. We can do influencer marketing. And so, I think one of the things that we talked about in the last couple of days preparing for the show is what are the billings of, different PR firms. If you look at the billings from the top 10 PR firms over the last 10 years, they've doubled. They've gone to 3 million, or 3 billion rather, from about 1 .5 billion. And a lot of that has to do with putting new skill sets together and new service offerings together. 

I was at Finn Partners and media relations was probably less than half of what we were doing. They were doing a lot of social media and a lot of digital. And they're very good at it. So, I think you'll see more firms that are really good at more things, especially if you're going to be a big firm and grow.

Lorraine Kessler
And I think it's important to in PR to, and maybe you don't agree with this, but I think it's important to focus to whether that focuses on industries like that you really understand where you've cultivated a media base rather than jumping into every single market, marketplace or industry, because you just get watered down, but you can now capitalize on those relationships if you focus on one or two strong industries. And that doesn't mean you can't help a small business or another customer who comes along, but it's kind of where you position your strength. Because we've found that, for example, there's a lot of PR firms that really specialize in investor relations, and that is its own animal. It is a segment of PR, but it's very different. It's not promotional.

Mike DeVilling
It's an important segment and it's a very lucrative segment. And that's one that, if a young person told me they were coming into this business now, I would say, alright, maybe get a major in journalism and communications, but maybe minor in accounting or finance. You know, something on the financial side, because anyone who can communicate the financial side of a business is going to have a lot of opportunities in their career.

Lorraine Kessler
Right, right. So I think that's important. And what I found is that agencies who focus on investor relations from a client standpoint as well, are dealing with a different client buyer. They're dealing often with corporate communications, who's ever in charge of that, who's very close to the CEO and the investors and the board, where those who are promoting products and services are working more with the sales or the marketing agencies and CMO and people closer to the cash register, I guess, is an old saying.

Mike DeVilling
Yeah. And I think I brought up Elio Motors, which is a startup that I did some work for. At one time, they were traded over the counter on the penny stocks. And we had an investor relations person that handled 90% of that communication. We still did a few things on the PR side, but he was very specialized. He'd taken several companies public, and I learned a lot from him. And I would never have tried to even replicate what he could do because he had that expertise. 

So, you're absolutely right about that. Developing an expertise in a particular niche can be very lucrative for you. I'll throw out some shout out to one of my favorite agencies here in Detroit. It's called Bianchi Public Relations. Jim Bianchi was one of my mentors at Eisbrenner Public Relations, but probably 95 % of his business is in automotive suppliers.

And I tell people all the time, nobody does automotive suppliers as well as Jim Bianchi. And it's exactly what you said. He's got that niche expertise and he's just really, really good at.

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah, that's so cool. Well, I'm going to go something that I think you put in your little bio to us, is you take a strategic approach to your clients. So talk a little bit about what that means. I mean, a lot of people throw around the word strategy and strategic approach, right? And we hear all these buzzwords, but what does that really mean in terms of your practice, Mike?

Mike DeVilling
Well, I think the most important thing that we work with at the early stages with any client is who is your target audience? You know, who's the person that's really making that purchasing decision? Who are the people within that organization that you'll be working with every day? And once we segment that audience out, how do they get their information? You know, are they on LinkedIn? Are they Facebook users? Do they read automotive news? Do they read Wall Street Journal?

So, once we have that target audience, then we figure out what the best channel to reach those people are. But then beyond that, it's really truly, what is your story? Because there's a lot of companies that think just because they exist, somebody should be writing a story about them. But you really have to have something compelling.

So, we'll go into a particular organization and based on whatever trends are happening in the marketplace at any time and what their particular strengths are, we'll build their communications plan around those elements so that we're very laser focused on going after their customers. We're very laser focused on the channel that they need to go through and we're very laser focused on the message that they want to get out.

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah, and that's, it's interesting because Mark knows this, I think. When I was first introduced to positioning in the very beginning of my career in 1981, and I was handed the book, I read the book and I got, it really lit me up. I was so excited, but where I saw it really being practiced first was in RPR practice at the firm, because you had to have an angle. You had to have a reason why editors, right, they're just like any audience and they're thinking two things. They're thinking, what's new and different that excites me, but moreover, what's new and different that will excite my audience, because they're the gatekeeper, if you will, for the audience, and the audience is what pays their subscriptions and monetizes their business. And so I found that our PR staff, really more than our ad staff, were really thinking about that more strategically.

Mike DeVilling
In media relations, you're serving two customers. One is the client that pays your bills. The other is the reporters that are going to write the stories. And you really do have to treat them like a customer. What's in it for them? What is the value that they get out of this transaction? If there's not something there that's compelling to their readers or viewers that's going to build their audience, it's no use to them whatsoever. And they will pass you by.

Some of the other things though that are happening in media relations right now, and I don't think we talk about this at all. It has become harder and harder to actually get media coverage today. You're seeing a lot more reporters leave that profession and become PR people. One of the stats that I've seen recently is that there are seven PR people for every one reporter today. 

And another stat that I saw recently, and I should have sourced this before I came on, but that the typical reporter only answers 3.4 % of the pitches that they get through email. So that's just a staggering number. 

Now there's people out there that are doing some things that from a practice, a best practices standpoint, aren't good. They're doing what we call spray and pray, which is we're just going to shoot this message out there and see if it lands on somebody. That's absolutely not the best way to do media relations. You know, the best way to do it is to really truly understand what the beat is that that reporter covers and what makes this story compelling for their beat and their readers. And you have to do some research about their publications, stories that they've written in the past and what might interest them. The challenge today, a lot of times, is clients don't want to invest in the relationship with the agency to build those relationships.

They think you have some sort of magic PR fairy dust that you can just go in and sprinkle and get a story, but you really have to do a lot of work. And I was watching one of your past podcasts recently and you were talking about the Nike swoosh and everybody comes to you and says, “well, we want to have a logo that's as compelling as Nike.” Well, Nike spends what a billion dollars or I don't even know how much they spend, but it's an enormous amount of money on building that brand. And you can't do those kinds of things overnight. 

Media relations is very similar. I was working on a client several years ago. I'd been working on it for two weeks. I was going through my normal process of putting that plan together and getting that strategic plan ready to go. And we were on a call with a board member and the board member said, why haven't we been on the Today Show yet? And two weeks, you know.

And so that's kind of a running joke with a lot of PR people is that the client will call you up and say, “well, I want to be on the Today Show.” Well, you and every other company that's out there and the Today Show has about six minutes of content that's not paid for. And it's just, it's a very difficult nut to crack. If I have people that, that are saying things like that, I probably will pass on, on taking their business.

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah, that's pretty smart. And a lot of times too, if your idea, if your client's idea isn't that novel and important, it has to be both, probably importance first, there's no hope of getting on the Today Show. You can sell a lot of a certain product. I mean, there's a big difference. I can sell a lot of it to a target constituency who needs what I have. But from a media standpoint. It's got to be news. And that's, that's a whole different bar, I think. Yep.

Mike DeVilling
It is, and it's a very difficult bar to get to for anybody. And again, if today's show is your only goal, call a PR firm in New York who might have a relationship with them. It gives you a better chance. 

But there are, for most businesses, much better, much more cost-effective, and much more impactful media relations strategies that you can use. You know, the clients that I'm working with now, being in Automotive News for them is probably a bigger win than being in USA Today. You know, that's where their customer is getting his news in the morning, and that's where they need to be. And so, working with a firm that knows that audience and knows those reporters, if that's the business that you're in, that's who you should be working with. And don't worry about the other fluffy stuff.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah, and if you, so take the converse of that. You're still talking about what most people would call traditional PR where there's a gatekeeper. Talk about the other side of this where we have so many media now where you can do an end run around the gatekeeper. How are you utilizing those tools in a way that perhaps you didn't have available to you 15 years ago?

Mike DeVilling
I think that's a really good point that while media is still really important, you have lots of other ways to get the message out. And so, a lot of times when a client comes to us and says, well, we have this thing that we're doing and we want to get something out there, we'll look at it from the standpoint of, does this make a good media story or is this something that they should write about on their LinkedIn page? Is it something that we could do an op-ed in a trade publication? Or is it something we should do a video for and put it on YouTube? 

So, there are a lot of other ways to get the word out there and we'll sort of rank things by whatever it is that they want to use and come up with the tactical things based on that. And if something's not super compelling news, there's still really good stories out there that aren't headline news. And I think that social media has been a great way to get some of those stories out.

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah, super. And you know, I think too, you mentioned video, the beauty of video, whether you house it on your website or you distribute it separately, is any product that can be demonstrated. Now, I can't feel the engine, as you talked about, experientially, but I can get close to it or closer to it in video than I can. So an Ogilvy was a big believer in demo, if you have something, a product benefit you can demonstrate, demonstrate it. That was the starting place. So I'm sure you found that to be really helpful for you.

Mike DeVilling
I agree with that and the video in general you're going to see more and more video for a couple reasons. One broadband allows people to watch more video on their own devices so it's much more accessible than it used to be. But the other is creating video has become much more democratized for a better word. Everybody's got an iPhone everybody can create their own video. You know we are doing… This business is kind of come and gone, and will come again, but we're doing a lot more video on social media. 

We had a client that one of the Catholic schools we work with wanted to do an alumni program. And so we interviewed 10 alums. We did short videos for each one of those. We put it up on their YouTube page. We put it up on their website. We put it up on their social channels. And it was a great way to honor some of their top alums. But those weren't the type of stories that you're going to get in the local newspaper or on the local radio about your alumni. It's just not something that works that way. So, it was very cost effective for them and it was very powerful for them to share these stories. So, you'll see much more video moving forward in the PR business for sure.

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah. Like one of the things I've witnessed, I'm a big YouTube podcaster of like discussion of true crime, like trials that are going on now. He's finding ways to get away with murder. So far, I haven't found one. But anyway, one of the, no, he already knows my daughter, we've already informed him that we haven't found the perfect way yet. And it's really hard with devices ‘cause they can track everything, right?

But one of the things I've noticed that they're doing with video, which I think is really ingenious, they're using video to promote the podcast. In other words, they're doing like these little snippets, these little shorts. They're not necessarily a commercial promoting the podcast, but it's like a snippet of information from the person you watch, which then makes you engage even more with the full content. And I just think, wow, that's, we're just continue to keep learning and have so many different ways to be creative, to get the attention and keep the attention of the audiences that we're after.

Mike DeVilling
No question about that. And I think two of you just from a business to business standpoint are smart to do your own podcast. I think more and more people will self-publish, self -broadcast. And if you can find some compelling content, then it's a great method to get things out there. And I think this is just a very smart thing for your firm to do.

Lorraine Kessler
Right. Well, that's why we have you because we want smart thinkers because we're a thinking agency. We believe in strategy first and then doing/making next. So you have to first be thinking about what's de quoi se gille, what is the essence of the problem that the client has, strategically solving that and then tactically applying what works. And so that's why we have you because you're a thinking agency like us. I think we have a lot in common.

Mike DeVilling
You know, that's probably the one thing that I left out of the developing strategy is you really are truly trying to solve a problem. And I'm glad you brought that up because that is an important part of it.

Mark Vandegrift
Well, we're talking a lot of new things in the last few minutes here. And one of the questions that I always love, because I'm kind of a tech geek, is what tools in the PR area specifically, in the discipline of public relations, that you've been using recently that either have changed the way you do your job, made it more efficient, and or what gets you excited? Like, “I've never seen this. I never thought we'd have anything like this.” And it's really doing, it's a game changer in public relations.

Mike DeVilling
Well, let me tell you a little bit about history in this business, according to me. Starting out in 1990, that's pre-internet, right? So that makes me an absolute dinosaur. But if a client was doing a speech, you would get all these photos of their visuals that they would be using in the speech, and you would take them to the photo shop and get them developed. You would bring them back, and you would take the little carousel and you would load them one by one into the carousel. And then if you had to make a change, it was like, well, we got to throw that one away and go back to the photo…

The invention of, I think the first program that we used at that agency was Persuasion, I think it was called, but then PowerPoint came on pretty soon after that. And even though people get tired of PowerPoint, PowerPoint presentations get mocked. It really did change the way you went about doing presentations because all of a sudden you've cut all these man hours out of the process because you can make edits on the fly if you need to. And that just made everybody more efficient. And most of the technology that's out there right now makes you more efficient. We can do so much more now because of collaborative tools like Google Docs or Slack, and even simple things like email.

But I mean, just to be able to do this, to have a Zoom call on a podcast is an amazing thing that no one would have ever thought of five or ten years ago. So the productivity has been incredible. And everybody right now is a little bit scared of artificial intelligence and what is this going to do to, is it ever going to replace a PR person? I don't think it is. I think it's going to make PR people better.

You know, one of the things that we've done in some of our writing projects is used AI as almost like a research tool. You know, back in the day, I actually used to get, when I was an intern at a firm, they would send me to the public library to do research and find things. Well, then Google came along, and no one ever went to the library again, and you could find things on Google. 

I think artificial intelligence is really, in a way, an extension of Google in that you can put some factors into whatever it is that you're trying to do and it spits out some information for you very quickly. And it's just the next evolution of being able to use information for a particular purpose. 

Now you've still got to go through it and edit it very carefully and you've got to fact check it a little bit still, but it's speeding things up so that you can be more productive. What it'll probably see is corporate PR staffs might be smaller or maintain the same size that they are now, but still be more productive. You'll see agencies be able to do more work and actually probably charge more on an hourly basis because they're so much more productive with what they can do. And so I think it's just going to make everybody better.

Lorraine Kessler
And we've seen that. We've seen that already. Right, Mark? I mean, I can tell you that the agency, Innis Maggiore as an agency of 33 people around there. We do the work that our agency did when we had 100 people in Toledo.

Mark Vandegrift
And we have a platform called Critical Mention. I'm sure you've heard of that. And its ability to go out there and you put a query in and figure out not only your own clients, but their competition. What the mentions are out there, what the share market, share of voices, what the value is of those mentions, the number of reads, all that stuff. And it's like that.

Well, we could have never done that before, that fast. If we had the capability, it was going back, and you were looking at old data by that point in time. Now it's real time. So, it just is really kind of, I think it's a game changer in the PR area because our PR team uses critical mention for pretty much the initial step for almost every engagement we have on the PR side.

Mike DeVilling
I think that's really smart. And that's also the type of, those types of analytical tools are really helpful because it shows what kind of progress you're making. It shows what kind of challenges you still have to overcome. And it allows you to make adjustments on your program on the fly that you just, like you said, you couldn't do that 15 years ago. There's no way. And so yeah, those kinds of things do get me very excited as well.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah, it was interesting. We did it for a, for an ice cream stand of all places out in California. And it found a Reddit thread that we wouldn't have found even doing Google search. And the whole thread was about the closing of the old shop and the opening of the new and what the city did to them. And like this whole political conversation that allowed our team to take a different angle than where we were going at the moment. And it was highly successful. We got placement in the LA Times. So it was a good thing. Yeah. No, I don't know why the Today Show didn't care about an ice cream stand out in Costa Mesa, but it was good.

Mike DeVilling
That's awesome. I like.

Lorraine Kessler
You didn't get on a Today Show with that.

Mike DeVilling
Right. You get it.

Lorraine Kessler
So, Mike, I have a question. It's a little off the skew, but because, you know, I started in 81, you started in the 90s, not to reiterate our ancient age, but yeah. But one of the things I think we did lose that's affected the business in not as positive a way is, there was mentoring. You mentioned some of your mentors. I had great mentors who basically taught me how to think. Not what to think, but how to think. What do you think about that? I mean, is that something that...

Mike DeVilling
..about mentoring in general. [Yeah, yeah.] I think that it is a lost art. I feel like companies have become so focused on getting things from A to B that they're forgetting the human element, the human relationships, and they're forgetting about the educational needs that employees have. I walked out of the college campus, I didn't know anything. You know, fortunately in my first job, I worked for a guy named Bob Scugin who had been an editor at, I want to say the Houghton mining exec and was governor Milliken's point person in the UP, up North. And he knew everybody and he knew how to write in AP style and he knew what journalists wanted and what they didn't want. And I was so fortunate to be able to work for him and call him my friend that I don't see relationships like that forming today. 

And, you know, one of the sad parts about it is, is, you know, you'll hear the phrase, okay, boomer, you know, from younger, younger employees, I don't think younger employees realize how important it is for them to learn from people who have been through the fires already. And, and I think there's a lack of patience on a lot of people to, you know, they want to be the CEO when they're 25. And it's like, you really need to have a little bit of perspective. You need to be coached well by really good people. And so to look for a mentor and find a mentor, it's an absolute blessing for someone. And I hope that older employees are still actively looking to mentor people. I think one of the hardest parts about that today is companies being out of the office.

And if you're not there in the office, you're not having those quick conversations and, you know, it's, well, let's set up a Zoom call so I can mentor you. It's kind of forced. So, I think that, all of those factors are contributing to mentoring not being as done well today as it was back then. And I think that's going to cost the business world dearly five or 10 years from now.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah, well, it's interesting too. We were just talking about this today and what they're teaching at schools regarding marketing. And I think they're between and betwixt, right? Or betwixt and between. They're trying to teach the latest and the greatest. And they're also stuck, I don't know if the word stuck, but they're trying to teach the foundational principles of marketing. But what's happened is they're caught in between and they're teaching this stuff that's outdated a lot of times. 

And so instead of teaching, like we were talking about digital marketing, what's paid search, what's search engine optimization, what's programmatic, what's connected TV, what's native, you know… tactics, right? They don't even know about those. They're still teaching what are the basics of social media, which has evolved considerably in the last 15 years, and they forget the basics. 

So, you said your daughter's in influencer marketing. Well, we're old enough, the old farts on this call are old enough to remember the idea of celebrity endorsement. And it's like, well, that's what influencer marketing is today. It's executed differently. Different people do it because they happen to catch lightning in a bottle. But the principle there is celebrity endorsement. And it comes with all the same risks. It comes with all the same kind of execution that you need to do with it, it just is in a different format. And when you look at a younger person and go, yeah, we had influencer marketing, it's just called something different today. It's like calling it content marketing. Content marketing is PR, right?

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah, it's storytelling. It's putting out stories and telling stories in different ways. But even I think the difference with influencer marketing today is a lot of people, I mean, we're in the business, but I think a lot of consumers don't realize these people are paid. Like we knew in our day that Tiger Woods was paid, right?


We knew that. He's on the commercial for Buick, which made no sense. But I don't think a lot of these people who have these influencers realize they're being paid.

Mike DeVilling 
I agree with that. And although you will see a lot of areas where it says, you know, paid endorsement, but maybe it's in a tiny type, but I agree that that's a big problem as well, because there's not as much credibility in those as there is if you're talking to an editor. And so you're thinking you need to be a little bit more upfront about whether or not something is a paid contract.

Mark Vandegrift
Well, Mike, that was great, but I expected more out of you. A huge thanks to Mike DeVilling, president of WestShore PR for his willingness to take time out of his busy schedule to come onto the Brand Shorthand Podcast. Mike, thank you. We appreciate it.

Mike DeVilling
Thank you, Mark and Lorraine. It was really good to be here. I had a lot of fun and hopefully we'll do it again someday.

Mark Vandegrift
Sure, sure. Well, thank you for all those who joined us today, especially all the new followers who track Mike and whatever he's doing, whether it's running a marathon or anything else. And if you haven't liked, shared, subscribed, or told your friends about the Brand Shorthand podcast, please do. And until next time, have an amazing day.