8 Questions for Sheri Singer: Mavericks of MarComm Series

The Mavericks of MarComm

A Quashspeak Series

8 Questions for

Sheri Singer

President and CEO, Singer Communications

Sheri Singer has more than 25 years of award-winning public relations, marketing and communications experience. Before starting her firm, Sheri was a vice president for top 10 public relations agencies (Ketchum PR) managing accounts for worldwide clients and bringing them strategic communications, public affairs, branding, materials development, social marketing, marketing communications, media relations, research, and special events expertise. She is the author of numerous articles and has served as editor of more than 10 publications. She has been honored with PR Week’s most successful corporate public relations campaign, an ASAE Gold Circle Award and an Art Directors Guild Award.

WHAT DROVE YOU TO THIS INDUSTRY?

I first started in broadcast journalism as an on-air producer in Baltimore and with WFMD in Frederick, Maryland. One day I found myself covering the crowning of the Maryland Dairy Queen and sticking a mic in the face of a 16-year-old and I realized I’m not doing this anymore. A friend of mine connected me to ASAE and I ended up with my first association job, as the assistant editor for three newsletters and our 72-page color magazine. One day, I suggested we might want to do some public relations around our annual meeting and I was told to pursue it. It turned out that I was able to get the press—including CNN and the Atlanta Constitution—to come to our event.

WHAT EXCITES YOU ABOUT MARKETING / COMMUNICATIONS [MARCOMM] TODAY?

No two days are alike. You have to juggle many balls and you remain busy all day. I am very passionate about what I do and the best client is not one that tells you what to do and where to go, but one that is eager and ready to take that journey with you.

WHAT TRENDS DO YOU SEE?

I see two parallel tracks – the “old” and the “new” kind of interaction. The “old” is a return to the basics. We’re tweeting now, but what are we really saying? It all goes back to writing, messaging and building your brand. Briefly, we had forgotten that, but ironically we’re now remembering to turn back to these basics. Today, we are also becoming more visual. With video and infographics, for example, a picture is worth a thousand words.

WHAT BRANDS ARE DOING IT RIGHT?

In the association community, I’d say ALS, with the Ice Bucket Challenge. I wish I would’ve thought of that. Though they didn’t really start it, through a series of events, they became the beneficiary of the campaign. On the corporate side, I like Amazon and Google. They do some things right and others are complete misses. That’s what makes great companies – you own and learn from your mistakes. You’re not fully living if you don’t take risks.


ONE THING THAT PEOPLE DON’T KNOW ABOUT YOU?

I’ve been in about 50 plays. I’m trained as an actress and as a singer and I use those skills when I present.

WHAT ELECTRONIC DEVICES DO YOU PREFER?

I like my iPhone, my computer and my Kindle, but I love Google Search. I look up everything that I don’t know with hope that one day I will know everything. I’m still a work in progress.

WHAT MIGHT BE THE PR STORY OF THE YEAR?

It’s a toss up. The mid-term elections shockingly captured the mood of the country. I think there are two messages here. One, is the ‘we’re not going to take it anymore’ thought. [The governor's race in Maryland] so significantly shows how the country feels about Obama and race in general. The issue in Ferguson is unbelievably sad. It demonstrates how far we only think we’ve become when we look at race in this country. But from my own perspective, the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge is the PR story of the year. It showed how people leveraged social media in a tremendous way, with huge impact, unlike anything we had really seen before.

YOUR AUTOBIOGRAPHY, TO DATE, IN 140 CHARACTERS OR LESS:

Leader, entrepreneur, creative, deep thinker, dynamic, engaging, fun, beach lover, Pilates enthusiast, good friend, giver, compassionate.

 

© 2014. Tom Quash
 

 

8 Questions for ASAE's Robb Lee: Mavericks of MarComm Series

The Mavericks of MarComm

A Quashspeak Series

 8 Questions for

Robb Lee

Chief Marketing and Communications Officer, ASAE

As the Chief Marketing and Communications Officer for ASAE, Robb’s responsibilities include management of marketing, branding, Web site, public relations, social media and Associations Now, ASAE’s flagship publication. He has more than 20 years of experience managing national and international multi-media branding, advertising and public relations campaigns for products represented by organizations such as Mitsubishi, GEICO, Post Cereals, Kraft/General Foods Coffees and government clients such as The EPA.  He has worked at several top 10 advertising and public relations agencies.

WHAT DROVE YOU TO THIS INDUSTRY?

The creativity. While I was in journalism school at the University of Kansas, this created a good pipeline to Madison Avenue. I discovered an attraction to the business of advertising because of the creativity. Though I didn’t want to do sales, I loved the idea of sales.

WHAT EXCITES YOU ABOUT MARKETING / COMMUNICATIONS [MARCOMM] TODAY?

The opportunity to be wrong about something which means there’s a better opportunity to be right. There is always the element of risk, which eliminates boredom and I don’t want to be bored.

WHAT TRENDS DO YOU SEE?

I can name a bunch of trends, but what I see is that distraction breeds mediocrity. Our industry seems compelled to ask ‘what’s the next thing we should try and include to achieve results?’ But we need to remember outcome-based decision making. If we get too caught up in trends, we will get distracted from the outcomes we need to achieve.

WHAT BRANDS ARE DOING IT RIGHT?

IBM. GE. Both have held on to their legacies by remaking themselves through content marketing to different generations and on to different issues, that have proven useful for their brands to advance.

WHAT MISTAKES DO YOU STILL SEE?

Not taking ownership and responsibility for the business results. In order for marketing and communications professionals to contribute to sustainability, we need to focus on business results. We need to remind ourselves that great creative will back up the data you have.  Using strategic sound judgment – that doesn’t go away.

ONE THING THAT PEOPLE DON’T KNOW ABOUT YOU?

I have a calm demeanor but I’m very unsettled and can be impatient, but I don’t show that often.

WHAT APP DO YOU RECOMMEND?

Zite. It’s a great aggregator of content.

HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOUR APPROACH TO MARCOMM?

I always want to ask the question, ‘why are we doing something?’ rather than ‘how?’ I’d like to focus on  what are we trying to achieve, not what path we’d take to get there.

 

 

 

© 2014. Tom Quash

The Mavericks of MarComm

A Quashspeak Series

 

8 Questions for
Adele Gambardella-Cehrs
President and Founder, Epic PR Group

 

As President of Epic, Adele oversees the development of numerous award-winning local and national PR campaigns. Epic’s clients include Fortune 500 companies, regional businesses, non-profits, associations and high-profile individuals. She is the author of the upcoming book SPIKE Your Brand ROI: How To Maximize Reputation and Get Results (Wiley).

WHAT DROVE YOU TO THIS BUSINESS?

I started as a journalist working at George magazine and Gannett. I was interviewing a person over the phone and they happened to be in public relations, an industry I knew little about. But they said that they were impressed with my interviewing skills. It was a Madison Avenue-based firm and soon after, they then recruited me, with an offer that was triple my current salary. Now, this was during the time of the dot-com boom. My first project involved landing the 1.800.Flowers account.

WHAT EXCITES YOU ABOUT THE P.R. BUSINESS?

I like the messaging. I like being involved in helping to shape the way someone talks about their organization. I also like dealing with crisis communication. The world is rapidly changing and it’s exciting to develop communications that reflect that.

WHAT TRENDS DO YOU SEE?

Real-time response in marketing and public relations. Organizations will have to be more nimble as predictive scanning becomes the norm. There is now a resurgence of learning how to understand when your brand is most relevant.

WHO’S DOING IT RIGHT?

It changes. It’s interesting that one day, Apple, for example, is this creative, innovative player and the next day their phones are bending and their reaction to this causes their brand to take a hit. I was struck by the reaction of the National Nurses United to the recent Ebola crisis. They jumped right in at the core of the issue – offered conference calls for nurses and resources on their website. More organizations need to be focused and optimistic. During the Ray Rice scandal, one of the pizza chains capitalized on this, using the hashtag #whyIstayed. They were opportunistic and this makes the whole profession look bad.

WHAT P.R. MISTAKES DO YOU STILL SEE?

We are talking, yelling entirely too much. The CEO may have what he or she believes is a hunch that he or she believes is a great idea. But communications professionals need to push back more. We need to change the culture of the people who are in charge of communications. We need to treat the CMO like the CFO. Money, like attention, is a finite resource and we have bad ways of measuring ROI. Rather than assuring that we did these one thousand things, let’s do 4-6 key things that we can do more effectively and then demonstrate the ROI, such as increased attendance at an event, so that we achieve better spikes in attention.

WHO DO YOU ADMIRE?

Women who have launched their own businesses and became game changers in their industry, such as Sara Blakely, founder of Spanx, and Kat Cole, the CEO of Cinnabon. I motivate myself. I am constantly striving. I want to be the best author – I admire someone like David Meerman Scott who wrote Real Time Marketing & PR.

FAVORITE GADGET, WEBSITE OR APP?

I love my iPhone and the Harvard Business Review is my go-to site and app, for staying ahead of trends. The Flipboard app gives me a whole week’s worth of news in an accessible format, but I have ink in my blood, I guess, and still love to read the paper edition of the New York Times every day.

YOUR AUTOBIOGRAPHY, IN 140 CHARACTERS OR LESS

Mother, business owner and author continues to seek success and knowledge.

 

 

© 2014. Tom Quash