Author: Kirsty Goodlett

ketner-group-nashville-launch-panel

Launching Our Nashville Office Was Nothing Short of Magic

Posted on | by Kirsty Goodlett

On August 27, after seven months of preparation, we officially launched Ketner Group Nashville. I don’t mean this as hyperbole: our launch week was one of the best weeks of my life. It started with a bang and ended with magic. To really soak up all the goodness, I think it’s only fair to offer you up the day-to-day highlights and takeaways.

Storytelling Truths: Monday, August 26

In celebration of our launch, we hosted an all-female panel about storytelling, which featured some of my favorite women in Nashville (and one from Austin): Nicole Delger, Kelley Griggs, Brittney Oliver and Catherine Seeds. The panel was a fantastic mix of real, actionable insights for generating press, such as signing up for HARO and Qwoted, which send subscribers regular emails requesting sources for stories journalists are working.

But additionally, the discussion dug into more inspirational topics such as the ability storytelling has to generate unique opportunities. Brittney shared an example of a tech startup she covered who procured the funding they needed after earning a great article in an important magazine.

On a personal level, it was emotional to see so many people from Nashville – who have and who will make such an impact on our success – show up to celebrate our launch with us!

A Spectacular Splash: Tuesday August 27

On our official launch day, we were thrilled to see some fantastic local and national pick up regarding our news! Local to Nashville, our launch was featured in The Nashville Business Journal, The Post and by The Nashville Technology Council. Austin media got in on the action as The Austin Business Journal featured our launch news. Nationally, we were excited to earn coverage in O’Dwyer’s and Bulldog Reporter.

With Catherine Seeds in town for the week, we headed off to the 36|86 VIP Launch Party in a fun speakeasy in Printer’s Alley, Dirty Little Secret, to celebrate over a glass of champagne.  

Winning Press and Earning Influence: Wednesday, August 28

Wednesday morning, we kicked off 36|86 with a panel featuring Ben Kurland, Lisa Roberts and me. Seeing a packed room excited to learn how to win press and influence customers thrilled me. The engaged audience asked some great questions, including, what exactly is “the wire?” 

Lisa and Ben dazzled with their insights about the best ways for entrepreneurs to highlight their stories to the media. Lisa recommended data as a great approach, a soundbite highlighted in a Nashville Entrepreneur Center blog: “Looking to win press? ‘There’s nothing that will get reporters’ attention faster than compelling data that tells a story.’ This will build trust and credibility.”

Then we wrapped up the day getting a chance to speak with Clark Buckner for the 36|86 podcast. So, stay tuned for that great content!

Learning and Magic: Thursday, August 29

Finally, on the last day of 36|86, Catherine and I attended separate sessions to learn as much as we possibly could from the experts in attendance. The vulnerability and openness of the speakers blew me away.

A number of female venture capitalists (VCs) spoke about the challenges for women founders and women funders. Kerry Rupp of True Wealth Ventures and Jessica Peltz Zatulove of MDC Ventures, among others, highlighted this theme in their sessions. In fact, did you know that only 15% of venture capital funding is allocated to female founders, despite female founders outperforming their male counterparts (more stats in Forbes)?

But my favorite session was “How I f*cked up and you can too!” The panelists spoke candidly about the challenges and joys of entrepreneurship. Marcus Cobb of Jammber brought me to tears as he emphasized that we are all made of creative magic.

And with that, Catherine and I headed off to experience Nashville’s House of Cards and to celebrate the week with a little bit of magic ourselves.

We’ll Let Photos Give the Last Word

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Storytelling panel as part of Ketner Group Nashville launch week
Amazon Prime Day public relations case study

Capturing Attention Around Prime Day with Our Client Adlucent

Posted on | by Kirsty Goodlett

Update: since publishing this blog post, Adlucent has garnered additional pickup in seven more publications (plus syndicated publications) including AdWeek, for a total of 40 placements. Adlucent was also awarded a MarCom Award for the eBook.

A couple of weeks ago, Amazon announced that its annual Prime Day would occur July 15 and 16 this year. Also occurring a couple of weeks ago, on the very same day as that announcement, we were psyched to have planned the release for our client Adlucent’s consumer survey and corresponding whitepaper, “Getting the Most out of Amazon Prime Day 2019.” 

The coordination of the survey and the resulting pick up is a super example of a well-positioned release and great team work. Since the release, the survey data has been incorporated into 10 articles (two of those top tiers and those not including syndicated publications), has lead to a handful of specific media inquiries and resulted in two industry analyst appointments. Not only has Adlucent given itself a name in Amazon Prime Day marketing. Even better, it has positioned Adlucent as an expert in the space of digital marketing.

What This Pickup Says About Our Client Relationship

As excited I am as a media person to have garnered this attention for our client, I’m even more excited about the way we worked with Adlucent to make this happen. From the very beginning, this report was a great collaboration. We helped develop the survey questions with Adlucent, wrote an outline from the results, passed the content over to Adlucent for final development and then planned together the most interesting story lines to pitch. 

In preparation for our go-live date, we prepared and distributed a media advisory, while Adlucent prepared for advertising and internal promo on their side. Since then, Adlucent has featured the report in their newsletter, followed up with leads who downloaded the survey, and promoted the content further via social media, while we’ve been active coordinating interviews and responding to follow up requests. 

This week, we’ll be keeping our eyes on developing Amazon news to see how we can continue to pitch Adlucent as an expert source in this category.

How This Prime Day Survey Promoted Adlucent As A Thought Leader

Outside of our collaboration, I want to also highlight the uniqueness of this report. The Adlucent consumer survey not only dug into what’s happening with Prime Day on Amazon. It also dug into what consumers are doing when it comes to shopping off Amazon around Prime Day. 

Adlucent found that 72% of consumers will look beyond Amazon to comparison shop on Prime Day in its survey of 1,000 consumers ages 18-64. This stat reflects the fact that Prime Day has become a sort of holiday of the back-to-school shopping season. Further, of the survey respondents who planned to go back-to-school shopping, 55% plan to do so on Amazon.

Adlucent used these results to inspire a list of recommendations for how brands can take advantage of the shopping phenomenon. Recommendations included creating lightning deals, promoting shopping on social and preparing your product listings for the extra visitors. But I’ll let you read on in the report itself to get that full list of advice. 

Where We’ve Received Prime Day Pickup

Last but not least, this wouldn’t be a celebration if we didn’t actively highlight the pickup we have received. In addition to our direct requests and interviews with analysts and journalists, we’ve seen pickup in:

Want To Talk About How To Get You Attention?

Interested in talking with us about how we can do some work like this with you? We’d love to! Just reach out. We’ll schedule a time to discuss how we can use media relations to position you as an expert.

mother career inspiration

How Our Mothers Inspired Our Communications Careers

Posted on | by Kirsty Goodlett

This Mother’s Day, as usual, we at Ketner Group are feeling thankful for the inspiration our mothers have had on our careers. Whether by being our biggest champion, encouraging us to do the right thing or shaping the way we craft stories, they have influenced who we are as people, and as communications professionals.

She Taught Me to Always Do the Right Thing

Catherine Seeds and her mom Susan
Catherine Seeds with her mother Susan

For Catherine Seeds, our SVP and Partner, her mother’s biggest influence was teaching her to always do the right thing. “This is such a simple guide, but it has really stuck with me my whole adult life, particularly as a working mom,” Catherine remarked.

Catherine has had to make some tough decisions in her life, when it comes to her role as a mother and an agency VP. But through it all, that mantra has guided her to make the best decisions.

My Mother Was Always My Biggest Champion

“My mom was always my biggest supporter in anything I pursued growing up,” shared Account Coordinator Mikaela Cannizzo. “If I was excited about something, she was too. If I was passionate about achieving a certain goal, she encouraged me until I accomplished it. And when I wanted to pursue a career in writing and journalism, she was all for it. I think she still has all my clips saved from my early days at The Daily Texan.”

For Mikaela, her mother has always been someone she could confide in and rely on. “She is exactly the type of woman and mother I strive to be one day,” Mikaela expressed.

I Learned How to Craft a Story to Stay out of Trouble

As for our very own Greg Earl, his mother taught him how to perfect his stories. “I always had to fine tune my stories so I wouldn’t get into as much trouble. I learned to frame stories in a better light but also not to lie too much—in the event she got intel from around town.”

Without her, would Greg be so capable at crafting a great story? Maybe not. “But fortunately, she was there.”

My Mother Taught Me Empathy

Ann, Katie and Ashley Stone
Ann, Katie and Ashley Stone

“My mom taught me a lot about empathy and kindness.” Our intern, Katie Stone learned a lot about compassion from her mother, who is a stay-at-home mom.

“She taught me those soft skills that you aren’t going to learn in a classroom,” Katie said.

She Inspired Me to Ensure Everyone Has a Voice

Jenna Jordan’s mother is a teacher who emphasized the importance of recognizing and ensuring that everyone has a voice.

“We as a collective population are always learning and on the course of gathering knowledge,” shared Jenna. “My mother works with kiddos, so understanding empathy and different perspectives has always been a constant in my life!”

Mom Taught Me I Could Make My Own Career Choices

Kirsty Goodlett and Karen Corcoran Hughan
My mother and me in her element at Nashville’s botanical gardens

As for me, growing up, my sister and I referred to our mother simply as “the boss.” We didn’t know exactly what she did, we just knew that she was powerful and that she made her own path.

My mother taught me that when it comes to your career, you always have a choice. Whether you wish to work in a highly corporate career wearing power suits, like she did in Atlanta in the ‘90s, or you want to start your own landscape design career, like she did in Connecticut in the ‘00s, the choice is yours to make.

This has inspired me deeply. Now, I know that whether I want to work for someone else, myself or something in between, that choice is mine.

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How We Can Use Language to Promote Equality

Posted on | by Kirsty Goodlett

A few years ago, I made a conscious decision to stop saying, “you guys.” For someone who spent an equal amount of their childhood in both the north and the south, this decision carried some weight. Moving to Connecticut in middle school is an easy way to remove “y’all” from your vocabulary. In an effort to conform, “you guys” became my norm.

Lucky for all of us, with age comes confidence. As I found my place as a woman in the workplace, I became dedicated to gender equality, working to promote inclusion. “You guys” didn’t stand a chance.

The reason is simple: the phase is exclusionary.

In our society, we use language to emphasize pre-established situations. And we can use language to change them. Ultimately, this is the power in marketing and PR, which allows us to use language to impact people’s perception of the world. It’s no surprise that, as a marketer, I became hung up on just a couple of words.

Changing my vocabulary wasn’t easy. But after a few years, the phrase is (mostly) gone. The next step is to help others change their language too. Why? Because the state of women in the workforce is not changing, and we can use language to change that.

The State of Women in the Workforce Is Unchanging

The Women in the Workplace 2018 report by LeanIn.org and McKinsey found that “Companies report that they are highly committed to gender diversity. But that commitment has not translated into meaningful progress…Progress isn’t just slow. It’s stalled.” This is despite the fact that women are doing their part, obtaining bachelor’s degrees at a rate higher than men and asking for promotions and negotiating salaries at the same rate as men.

(If you need to be convinced that diversity in the workplace is important, there are plenty of reports that can help prove “gender-diverse business units have better financial outcomes than those dominated by one gender.”)

To Improve Diversity, Change Your Language

LeanIn.org and McKinsey seek to make improving diversity easy by providing six actions companies can take to find success. One of these is particularly relevant for our industry: foster an inclusive and respectful culture.

Language is a simple way to promote an inclusive culture. If you’re looking to change your own actions at work, be considerate about the language you use. Select words and phrases that are more inclusive. Because language is so ingrained in us, making an effort to be more inclusive will take some work, but if you take a collaborative attitude and give yourself the grace to make a slip up, your language will begin to improve.

How to Ask Others to Change Their Language

Once you’ve begun the process of changing your own language (it will be a process), you can begin to help others change theirs. Through trial and error, I have developed some personal best practices when it comes to asking others to change their language. (Interestingly, the strategy I use is similar to one I use at work to advocate for a project or cause I believe in.)

  1. Share a personal story. Sharing personal stories at work requires a balance—we don’t want to get too personal—but by sharing how we view the world, we can help others see situations through our eyes.
  2. Share the research. Do your research to understand why what your advocating for is important.
  3. Suggest a next step. Once your audience is bought in to your idea, they’re ready to take the next step. Share a suggestion for how to move forward.
  4. Be supportive. Changing ingrained habits is hard! Give people the benefit of the doubt and be there to help them with a supportive, cheerful attitude when (not if) they slip up.

I found success with this approach at a previous job. One of my colleagues came to work anxious after reading an article arguing against the use of “you guys” and feeling concerned about how his use of that phrase may have impacted those around them. I was glad he felt comfortable talking about this with me, and I used the opportunity to share my story of changing my language, provided research into why it was important to do so, suggested some alternative phrases he could use and cheered him on as he practiced shifting his language.

Steps You Can Take to Promote an Inclusive Workplace

If you’re ready to take it even further, some great resources exist!

She+ Geeks Out’s blog post on covering and passing in the workplace provides some great tips for supporting our colleagues so they feel comfortable being themselves at work.

A couple of my favorites (that helped inspire this blog post)…

  • “Be explicit in your language. If someone says something discriminatory, say something to make it clear that that language isn’t tolerated.
  • Share your own story of difference.”

In addition to making our workplaces more inclusive, it is also important to set up practices that promote inclusive hiring. Another post by She+ Geeks Out has some great tips for mitigating bias in hiring. Writers like me will be interested in this tip, “If you’re struggling to get candidates to respond to your job posting, you may want to start with your job description.” Inclusive descriptions that remove adjectives typically associated with one gender (example: ‘driven’ = masculine, ‘dependable’ = feminine), go a long way to encourage a variety of candidates.

Take Your Changes in Stride as You Promote Language Equality

As you make an effort to change your actions and support women’s equality this month, give yourself grace. Changing habits is hard. But remember, I’m here to cheer you on as you make strides. Just get in touch.

kirsty-goodlett-account-supervisor

Get to Know Our New Account Supervisor: Kirsty Goodlett

Posted on | by Kirsty Goodlett

Please allow me to re-introduce myself. My name is Kirsty. That’s like thirsty, but with a K.

I’m thrilled to be back at Ketner Group. KG has always been full of the kindest, cleverest, most fun people I know. How could I not want to be part of a team like that?

Over the years, I’ve worked with Ketner in a variety of ways. I began as a client, finding KG to be an extension of our team at Digby. When I moved to Nashville, I joined Ketner Group as an Account Manager, while simultaneously providing marketing services to small businesses through my company Seamless Marketing. Now, after a detour working with Rustici Software to help rebrand their company and re-launch their websites, I’m back at Ketner Group!

But okay, okay, enough about business.

Making Things, Writing Things and Cooking Things!

If there’s one thing to know about me, it’s this: I love to make things.

I studied film and electronic arts at Bard College, the culmination of many years practicing visual arts, theatre and music throughout my childhood years. At Bard, I learned how to create installation art pieces and began the process of learning how to write and think, two things I plan to learn more about as I age.

I love to cook. I’ve had the fortune to learn how to cook from two fabulous self-taught cooks: my mother and my dear friend and cookbook author, Pam Anderson. These women have taught me that food is a way to show your love, express your creativity and create the fuel of a very good party.

Outside of that, I’m an avid reader and will consume pretty much anything you put in my hand. I can’t not finish a book. And I love yoga. I’ve been practicing for more than fifteen years. I use yoga as a tool to learn more about myself and give myself an excuse to dance.

In Nashville, I’ve found that there are two types of people: those who are born here and those who arrive here by accident, but then never leave. My husband is the former, I am the latter. I don’t plan on leaving anytime soon, particularly since we’ve set ourselves up in a pretty cozy fashion. We bought our first house two years ago and are about to celebrate the third birthday of our very nice dog Charlie (or Chuck, Cha-Cha, Chewie or Chicken for short).

All of this is to say that I’m very happy. And I am very excited for this next big adventure.