October 2, 2023 • 38 mins
Public Relations (PR) is all about managing the reputation of a business or a person. For my guest, Amber Daines, a lot of her PR work is about managing the communications around when a crisis hits.
So what does this have to do with creativity?
In this episode, I found out. Amber and I also chat about the impact of A.I. on public relations, and her creative outlet, a podcast called The Politics of Everything.
Happy listening!
xo Abi
Ps. For more Information about this episode and our guest, head to: www.crispcomms.co/podcast-episodes/finding-the-creativity-in-crises
Creativity: Uncovered is lovingly edited by the team at Crisp Communications.
Creativity: Uncovered is a registered Australian Trade Mark.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Hello and welcome to Creativity (00:00):
Uncovered. My name is Abi Gatling and I want a journey
(00:11):
to uncover how everyday people find inspiration, get inventive and open their imagination.
Basically I want to find out how people can find creative solutions and then how do they
use those solutions at home, work, play and everything in between. Basically my goal for
(00:31):
this podcast is that by the end of it you'll be armed with a whole suite of tried and tested
ways to summon creativity the next time that you need it. Today I am speaking with Amber Daines,
who is a podcaster, a crisis communications expert, media trainer and an award-winning journalist.
(00:54):
She's basically a PR extraordinaire. But when I say PR or crisis management,
creativity is not exactly the first word that pops into my brain. So what is the link to
creativity? Well, let's find out. Welcome, Amber. Thanks so much for having me.
My pleasure. I sort of mentioned PR before, but there might be some people out there who actually
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have never even come across the term public relations or PR. What is that? Can you give us
a quick overview? How I define public relations really broadly speaking is it's all forms of
communication which are designed to influence, amplify or change people's opinions. So usually
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people feel public relations in terms of traditional media, so that might be TV, radio, online news,
but also that incorporates social media, video, webinars, podcast, everything that you can think
of. So it's about having your public image, whether you're an organisation or an individual,
curated and amplified in a way in which aligns with your values and your offering.
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Okay. So it's really just kind of working alongside with your brand and managing your
reputation. Absolutely. It's all part of that same family, if you like, or ecosystem.
Yes. And your specialty area is crisis management. I do love a crisis.
I don't know what it says about me, but... Yes, very odd.
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No, but what is crisis management and how did you choose that?
I don't know if it chose it or it chose me. And I say that because my early career, I was a journalist
and then I moved into corporate communications around 18 years ago. And so back then I did kind
of did everything. I found my sweet spot in corporate communications and business to business PR,
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but I really found that ex-journalist in me still loved when a story or an idea broke when there was
a bit of a scandal or an issue or a reputational matter. And so I ended up just becoming part of
a team that was involved in that. And then as I sort of moved into my own business about 13 years
ago, I didn't really start off in that way. I was really a small business PR, B2B person. That's
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kind of how I pitched myself. But then I found myself kind of getting attracted back into crisis
and issues management because as I say to all clients, at some time, any time in your business,
whether you're doing well or you're not doing so well, there will be an issue or a crisis which
you either can control or you've generated and you need to know how to manage that. So I think
of crisis comms as an integral part of any PR strategy and you hope you're not going to have
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to use that action plan, but you do need to think about it as part of your PR because you can't
assume times are always going to be good. For example, you might have a product recall which
is beyond your control or you might have a staffing issue which becomes bigger than Ben
Her and let's play it out in the media or social media. So understanding the triggers of crisis
is something which I educate all my clients on even if they never need to use it.
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Right. Okay. So you mentioned a couple of different types of crisis there. Is that
typically where you come across like a recall or something like that?
Oh, look, it could be anything like some examples I've worked with banks during the
Banking Royal Commission of a few years ago where they had a lot of public high profile
scandals which were really systemic in a system. So that's sort of bigger than just the organisation.
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That's kind of a whole of industry issue, but you might have an individual business who unfortunately
gets caught up by proxy in a scandal. So for example, they might have a brand ambassador that
they've paid and that brand ambassador, something untoward gets involved in some kind of sex scandal
or a drug scandal or something of fraud or anything and just by association, your brand becomes
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involved in the crisis even if you're not the cause of the crisis. So it really could be anything.
And another example could be just, I mean, the real differential crisis is when the
rubber hits the road. So I always say to people, it's like planes blowing up in a terrorist attack.
It's a tragedy such as a ship sinking or something where there's actually that 24 hours of complete
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panic, but usually there's a loss of life or money or both. That's kind of how I define it.
Wow. Okay. And so there are different ways of trying to manage these crises?
Look, there are, there are sort of stages of a crisis. And I always say to people, because a
lot of people come to me and say, well, I'm in this crisis. Can you make it go away? And it's
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like, well, you actually have to go through the crisis and navigate the comms accordingly. So,
you know, particularly that first 12 hours or even two hours, sometimes now with social media,
it's stage one, which is like your fact finding where everyone's trying to find out who, what,
when, why and how this happened and what's, you know, who's, who's kind of involved.
And then, you know, very quickly it moves to stage two, which is like your unfolding drama
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where you get whistleblowers or, you know, people who are witnesses or people commenting that this
has happened before and coming forward. And then you've kind of got stage three, which is blame,
where everyone's kind of like, who was at fault. And that's where the lawyers come in and all
becomes a little bit like, you know, you might see it play out in a court case, for example,
like the defamation case we just saw with Ben Roberts Smith, for example. And then stage four is
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kind of your fallout. And that's where the dust settles. There might be a finding in a
court case, there might be a product recall where you've had to compensate people, there might be
the data breaches we've experienced. And you have to go through the regulatory changes to your data
and privacy of all your customers and communicate that. And then after that, that's when you can do
reputation or rebuild. And a lot of people think they can skip all that and go straight to, it wasn't
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me, it's not my fault, how can you make me look good? And that's really not what Crisis Coms does.
What Crisis Coms does is it kind of supports you as you go through those four stages.
And get back on track at the end of it.
Exactly. If you can. I mean, sometimes businesses don't survive, but individuals can definitely
be on a road to redemption if they do the right things. And, you know, obviously,
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they communicate that well.
Yes. And so why do you need creativity in this line of work? How do you find creativity in this
process? Creativity, I think, comes down to individuals. We're all creative in some way.
Even if you don't think you are, you might work, you know, in a big four bank and think,
"I'm not creative," but creativity is around how you use ideas and communicate those to
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reach your audience. So the creativity comes into probably not just the messaging and delivering
that in an appropriate way, whether that be through a webinar or maybe a video or social
media tweets and so forth, but actually thinking creatively about who matters most and how you
can keep communicating with them because you're trying to, in some ways, rebuild trust at some
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point. So the creativity piece is really the fact that, yes, there's a formula for crisis,
but every business is different. Every CEO is different. Everyone responds differently and has
a different risk appetite as you go through this process as well. So it's really about,
you've got your formula that you regularly follow of stage one, two, three, four, but
applying the lens of the business and the context of the business is where the creativity comes in
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because it's sort of being a bit lateral in your thinking and making it fit the situation.
Absolutely. I love the fact you use "lateral" as kind of the word because
problem solving sits alongside lateral thinking, I think, in crisis management. So, you know,
very much it's about thinking inside the box in the beginning and sticking to some rules so it
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won't get you there, but then as you kind of settle into the pattern of your crisis, what is it that
we can be doing better and getting feedback? So a lot of people forget that communications is not
a one-way story. It's about engagement. So is that message landing? Do those people that maybe feel
wronged and sort of, you know, the victims you'd be like in a story, do they actually feel like
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they've been heard and they're being remediated? So allowing your creativity to come into everything
you do will be really important and that really comes down to just listening as well as telling.
I think a lot of people think it's about what you say and what you do, but sometimes it's just about
the audience feeling like they're being heard as well. I think that's a really important part of
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that. It's not going in going, "I know the solution to this. I know how we're going to make this go
away," or, you know, get back on track. It's about having an open mind and listening to the different
players in this situation. I think that's a huge part of creativity is having that open mind and
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not just jumping to the first solution. Or something you've done before. It's very easy to
kind of have like, you know, I've got those stages, but then going, "Well, what did that company do in
this situation? Let's follow that." Like it's some rulebook and I think, "Well, communications
evolves and channels evolve and tech evolves. So why would you not try something that's of its
time as well and actually be open to doing something you've never done before?" And for some organizations,
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it's as simple as actually saying, "Sorry, they may never have done that before." You know,
and there might be a big established company who's always on the front foot. And for them,
even issuing an apology without admission of guilt can be a huge thing. And that takes creativity
and courage together. Oh, yes. I'd say a lot of courage. And that would be very impactful,
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because I feel like we don't see that a lot. There's a lot of downplaying of what these crises are
and who's at fault and all sort of stuff. But sometimes it's like, "Oops, we actually made a
mistake and now we're better off for it because we won't do that again." Exactly. And as long as you
can demonstrate, you've learned from the mistake and that you're remedying the situation in a human
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nistic way, the way in which the people that might be the victims feel is enough, or at least on the
road to recovery, I think that puts you in good stead. Yes. And you mentioned social media before.
I can imagine that back in the day, prior to everyone having a social account,
you would have time to work through this process and have a really nice, clean, clear, curated
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response to an issue. But now you don't have the benefit of time because you guess that on social
media and you'll be everywhere within a couple of minutes. Has that changed your practice at all?
It's changed everything because all of us, every one of us as citizens, if you like, or consumers,
can be agirlist. Like, how many times do you see the news and they've got footage that someone's
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taken on their smartphone of that, you know, the bus blowing up or the fight that broke out at the
soccer game or whatever it might be. And that allows news, I guess, in some ways to use multiple
sources, which is great for them and get that instant access because, you know, you're getting a
crew there in time would probably be impossible. But it means for the organisations, they don't have
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24 hours. Sometimes they have less than an hour, I would say the first hour is really critical.
And waiting till everything or your ducks are in a row before you make a noise doesn't actually
help because sometimes the story is already out there and then you're playing catch up. So,
having some sort of, I guess, prepared and rehearsed spokespeople that you've made your
train that you've got ready for this moment is really important. And also making sure that you
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don't do silence. I say, "Science breeds suspicion." So, you may never do no comment, but also sometimes
you just don't hear from the company. And that could be for good reasons because, you know,
you're locked in a board meeting and everyone's having a power out about what we're going to say
and who's going to say it. But also there's lawyers involved and other people. But you've
just got to put even a holding statement out within that first hour of something happening to
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your organisation. So, you have something that sort of pre-approved, pre-rehearsed that you
can look out quickly. Yep, absolutely. And even if it's just saying, "Look, we're aware there's an
issue or there's something that's happened or, you know, we're looking at this and we'll let you
know as soon as we can," that is better than nothing at all. I mean, the frustration people
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feel. Think about things like power outages and things like that. People want to know when their
power is going to get back. And if they don't have any idea of that, the frustration and the
brand damage amplifies even if it's beyond your control because, you know, it's because there's a,
you know, a massive storm and that sort of caused it. So, it's kind of the no news is good news is
kind of out the window here is kind of the lap. Absolutely. It's the opposite of that. I think
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we owe people some explanation, but we also need to be like mindful that what we say and how we
say it is really important as well. So, not being too robotic to have a human element to it, to have
empathy of their, particularly if it's a tragedy and there's, you know, people being injured or
lives been lost. You really, you know, or people lost their life savings or their data has been
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breached and their privacy is at stake. Like I think we need to actually always remember
people are the victims and they should be front and center in the story no matter what,
not the company, not its brand reputation at that point. Absolutely. I think,
I think people quite often forget about the other person. Absolutely. They think about themselves
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and their egos and, you know, their jobs and I get all that. That's really important. But I guess
as a consultant, I love the fact I can come in and say, I'm not internal, but I can tell you as,
you know, Joe Blow from Consumer World, this is what I'd want to hear from you right now. And
that's the pub test as we call it. The pub test. Oh yeah, I've heard that before.
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Corrie, a mail test. Yeah. Yes. Does it pass the pub test? If I don't know anything about your
organisation and I have had this experience and it's bad, what do I need to hear from you and
how do you want to make me feel? And usually it's about being reshoring in that first phase.
Your client's very receptive to that or do they? It depends on the client. So I always say to people,
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like I'm talking in cliches today, but you know, you can bring the horses to the water,
can you make them drink? I can give them all the advice. I could do a 90 day roadmap of what it
looks like from a tactical point of view, but they could still, you know, choke when it comes to
pressing send or they might feel like, you know, it's too, it's too much. It's too emotive. We don't
want to talk like that. That's not us. But I think they don't realise what they think is an
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overreach or probably land better with the audience than if they become, you know, one line,
kind of we're investigating and we'll get back to you rather than saying we apologise for the
inconvenience. Like even a line like that, some people actually struggle with it because they're
like, well, that makes us seem like we did something wrong and we don't want to, that's not who we are,
we're the best at what we do. And, you know, we know people and organisations aren't perfect.
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So you're better off owning that and then actually being able to communicate with people about the
why later, then keeping people in an information vacuum. There's a legal side of things coming in
that that people don't want to apologise. They don't want to say anything that admits fault.
Does that come in a lot to everything? It's legal. So when I work in a crisis situation,
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everything I ride goes through a legal lens. So I end up having to get that back from the lawyers
and saying, OK, we can tell we've lawyer it up the way this is written. We need to like, you know,
I mean, it's even our first responders talk sometimes. It's the way they're trained. For
example, they'll say, instead of saying someone has passed away, which I know is very morbid,
that they might say, you know, the injuries were not compatible with life. Now, most of us don't
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want to hear it like that. That seems like we're trying to skirt around the issues. So
taking what has to be said and what can't be said and actually turning it into human speak
is part of my job. Oh, yes. That's so true that I think people go default back to jargon and industry
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terms when actually when something bad is happening, you just kind of want to have them
acknowledge that it is bad and there is an impact rather than. Absolutely. Rather than kind of going
to your default, which is like you say, is the jargon and with the lawyers,
you're right. They don't want to think, oh, well, they're thinking three steps ahead. They're going
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to get a sewers. This is going to be compensation. All of those things might be inevitable anyway.
So sometimes just saying we're looking into this and we understand this is a distressing time,
it just takes people down a notch. It actually makes them feel heard, even if really at that
stage you're not really engaging. You're just basically putting a placeholder there for the
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communications. So true. It's wild that people need coaching on that.
How do you want a human being? Well, I think if you're like in a really corporate environment or
a large organization or a big board, it is hard and you see it all the time. Sometimes the smartest
people in the room don't always have the greatest EQ. It's just not them, but they're fabulous CFOs
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or they're great at their craft. But for them, they probably feel like a lot of it comes down to
it's a reflection of their individual abilities. And sometimes that gets in the way of the right
thing to do. Yeah. Yeah. I think that EQ and communications kind of needs to be the foundation
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of sort of every course and every degree. I know that they have added in stuff around that into,
say, medicine, because it was the same thing as you're saying that the smartest, most brilliant
minds in our country quite often don't have the soft skills needed to be able to communicate,
teach people on a journey, deliver news in a way that is not going to completely get people offside.
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Absolutely. They call it the bedside manner, you know that term.
Bedside manner, yeah. Yeah. Not just being sort of robotic about it, but actually thinking,
if I was stepping into the shoes of the person I'm communicating to this, how would I want to
be told this particular piece of information? That's a great personal lens to apply to it,
because you're a human. Yeah. We're all human. We do share that.
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Yeah. And like that outsider perspective being like, "I'm a member of the public.
This is what I would expect. This is what I expect to be reasonable."
Yeah. What's reasonable and what's going to make us actually sometimes have to fall
on our sword a little bit to actually do this. It's a bit uncomfortable, but that's important,
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because it is an issue. It is a crisis. And the thing is I said, "Well, you're not in crisis mode
forever. This is just the worst day of your life in your business." And from here, it's just navigating
that path. Only up from here, baby. Hopefully, or you don't exist in that year's time,
because something happens. But generally speaking, there are no shortcuts to this world of crisis
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comms. Yes. And I can say it's probably evolving continually. We spoke briefly about social media
before. And the idea of the citizen journalist. Yes. I actually remember back, I studied public
relations. Obviously, didn't go into it. But I remember one of the topics being public, no,
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citizen journalists. They're going to be the end of journalists and public relations. And obviously,
that has not happened. It's given more perspectives on news and things like that.
I know that people are currently saying that about chat GBT. And we spoke about chat GBT
kind of briefly when we spoke a couple of weeks ago. And we had a pretty interesting conversation
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about chat GBT and its effect on public relations. We did. And look, I have to say,
it may be generational. And look, I am Gen X, and I'm not a digital native. So for me,
I'm always cautious about technology because I don't need to have all the bright shiny tools
straight away. So I've kind of sat on the fence a bit. I have got my team myself to play around
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with it a little bit. And look, what I do like about it for PR is it automates lots of routine tasks.
So things like creating, you know, agendas for filling reports, basic frameworks, if you like,
for how to, you know, write a particular campaign or a strategy. And I think more PR professionals
are using it in that way to generate ideas even for social media. It's really good for things
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like that. You know, just Instagram posts, captions, tweets, things like that. But I would say it's a
good first draft sometimes for big pieces of work, but it's certainly not yet at the place where I
would set and forget. I wouldn't just generate something, scatter and send it off to a client.
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I'd want to make sure that it's something I've built on and I've added my own expertise to
because at the end of the day, it's AI and AI is limited by, I guess, the information that's been
given to that to be curated. And there's biases in it. I mean, they've done studies. There's a real
male bias. There's real like, I had a client and I played with it recently. And all the examples
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they gave were like American male companies. So Amazon and Jeff Bezos, they had, you know,
Elon Musk and Tesla, like, they were all the examples. And it's like, wow, this is interesting.
So obviously, this has been programmed by men. There were no female examples in the companies
we were talking about. Wow. In terms of culture and values. Yeah, absolutely. So that goes to show
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that I think we need to review things and obviously, we need to spend some time. But it's
really good to just, you know, getting you started sometimes and maybe something where you would
have had a more junior public relations executive take a few hours to pull it together from scratch.
You can do that in a matter of minutes and then maybe then finesse it as a team or give it back
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to that person to really build on. Yes. Yeah. Definitely not a set and forget. Like you said,
it's so generic and it is based on the inputs that are put into it, which I think is only
until 2021 or something like that. Yes. It's like that's it. So the world, that's two years ago.
That's a long time and information and I think. Absolutely. I think things are changing so quickly.
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That is practically prehistoric. Aren't we sad? That's what we've got to, I mean,
the other thing that's coming out and people are talking about is Microsoft's Co-Pilot,
which is also for PR people. It actually featured a press release draft that it then
turns into a PowerPoint presentation. So I'm curious to see how that's going to work. Obviously,
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that's Microsoft Office competing and trying to find its own way. So yeah, I think it's interesting,
but I still think it's watched this space. I think people are kind of thinking, oh my goodness,
it's going to be the end of our world, but I just see be careful what you wish for because
what are we going to all do and how are we going to use it so that it actually helps us?
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Because in the day, we want to be able to control it, not have it controlling us, I guess.
So yeah, I love it. And there's a couple of other tools that have come out, which are also AI,
so they're not chat GBT. There's a platform called PR Offit, like PRprofit.ai, and then Propell PRM.
I think it's called Propell My PR. And they're a couple that my team are now just having a look at,
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and it's supposed to help you write with pictures for journalists and media relations stuff. But
once again, I'm curious to see whether it has a real American skew to it because I think a lot
of the AI has come out of Silicon Valley or similar and has been built with that audience
in mind. And of course, a lot of what I do is Australian based. So I don't know if that's
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going to be as relevant to how we pitch and I guess the journalists and the audiences which we
engage with. Yeah, yeah, because the cultural differences are pretty big, even though we're
both, you know, Australia. Absolutely. And even the way the language we use, I'm not even thinking
about the spelling. I'm just thinking about the formality in America is quite different to how
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we might be here. The vernacular and everything. Yeah. It's funny to me to think that people in
PR industry might be feeling scared about chat GBT when all our conversation so far has been about
this human lens and talking to humans and the soft side of things, which is just not something
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that chat GBT or other AI has nailed, well, at least yet anyway. Not yet. And that's what I
said to people. It's like the first version of anything you kind of don't want to hang your
hat on it. You want to see what's going to happen. But I think quality control is really important.
And yeah, I think, yeah, recently, so I mean, it was something like, you know, if we're worried
about chat GPT, we're like, we're replacing us in PR or the client would have to know what they want.
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So we're safe. So it's quite funny. If you know, if you've worked in consulting, you'll understand
a lot of people don't really know what they want from PR. They just know that they want it. So
just that nuance and that, I guess, ability to ask more questions than generic questions will be
where I think we need to step away from just relying on AI. Yeah. Do you have a sense of what
the industry is feeling aside from being scared of other senior opportunities as well?
(26:13):
There are opportunities. It's interesting because I depends on maybe what your background is.
I saw an interesting host on LinkedIn from one of my colleagues who's a journalist saying,
he's more nervous than probably most people in wider media, including PR, because he probably
thinks it's, you know, journalism has already been really upended because of citizen journalism
and social media. And I guess the rationalization of major news outlets, particularly in Australia,
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and less journalists having jobs full time. So he was feeling nervous, but then he sort of
has tried it for a few stories. And it just doesn't have analysis. And you couldn't really like write
political posts based on it or anything really current. So he feels like at the end of the day,
he uses about what's happening right here, right now in the future. And that,
yeah, is not something I am as comfortable with. So I think if PR people think of it from that way
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as well, we need to be as current as possible. And I don't know that we can just rely on these
tools. But it's great to have them. And I certainly don't want to be a naysayer. I just want to say
watch this space. Definitely. It's still so new. And people who say that they're experts in
AI. It's been around November last year. But it's like saying, yeah, I've done a PhD in seven
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months. It's, I mean, unless you've built it yourself and you've kind of been part of the
evolution, that's hard to say that you could become an expert in it so quickly.
Yes. Yeah. I mean, even the developers themselves have no idea which, well, they have some idea,
but they don't know the extent of what it means for the future. So yeah, definitely a word of
caution to anyone who's listening to any AI experts. No one's quite an expert yet. It's
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needed to be 10,000 hours as it is about, as we've said, to become an expert.
Yes. Yeah. And so it's a changing tactic a little bit now. You have a podcast and I've listened to
a couple of episodes called, it's called The Politics of Everything. Can you tell us a little
bit about that? So I started that podcast in 2017 when podcasts were pretty new and the early
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episodes literally sound like I'm in a concrete bunker because we didn't have all the fabulous
tech and platforms we do now and I didn't really know what I was doing. Having been a journalist,
I've always just delivered the information, but I've had teams of people, you know, when I worked
in TV who made me sound good, look good, all those things. So it was a real kind of, okay, I want to
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do this, but I don't know how. And I sort of learned along the way and the politics of everything,
it's not about politics. It's just an ability to talk about anything from money to mindfulness,
motherhood to secularism to anything that really someone feels like they're either passionate about
or an expert in. And a lot of people are not household names. I've had some fairly famous people
on, but really it's about elevating ideas and having a conversation and getting to know people.
(28:57):
And they're all the things I loved about being a journalist. So I feel like it's so much fun.
And for a long time, I didn't have a huge audience that's built over time. And now I've got a sponsor
and it's kind of, you know, it's monetized and everything. But even if I wasn't paid a cent,
like I wasn't for many years, I'd still do it because I just actually love it. I really love it.
(29:19):
So I think that for me is sometimes you feel like you have to feed the beast. And, you know,
I do do weekly shows, which we've talked about and I do take a summer break, but
it's really amazing the amount of people that it reaches. And I just love connecting with people
and interviewing people. Like I think anyone who has been a journalist will always say,
"That's the best part of it. It's not writing the stories and seeing your name and a byline
(29:42):
on your face on TV. It's actually getting to the heart of a topic or an issue." And I think
in 30 minutes, I try and do that in a way in which the audience finds interesting.
Yeah. So is it your creative outlet, do you think?
It is my creative outlet. And it's sort of, yeah, it's something where I feel like even
though some of the questions are the same questions every week, I don't know what people
(30:03):
are going to say. We don't do a practice run. We just see where it goes. And half the people,
if not more, I've never met in real life. So you're really creating rapport and tapping
into their human side within a couple of seconds and then having to really, I guess, extract from
them stuff that's not just boring key messages and flogging their products and services, but it's
(30:24):
really about something a little bit deeper than that. And I find it creative, but it also gives
me so much energy. So it's probably, I get as much from it as I guess I give to my audience.
That's fantastic. I think it's great to have those little things inside or outside of work that you
know you can do that will give you all that energy back and just make you even bigger and
(30:47):
better to keep continuing on with your life. But yeah, you said you do one weekly. That's a huge
amount of work. How do you come up with having a unique topic for every single episode on a weekly
basis? It can be difficult because you can find people pitched you ideas and like, "Oh, no, we
(31:11):
did that one in 2018. Sorry." But how about this? So I get a lot of pictures now. And so
it's about me and my team going, "What are the things that people are really interested in now?"
And we've actually revisited a couple of topics because things move on. Like if I did something
about cryptocurrency now versus when it, you know, in 2017, I think we did an episode when it was all
(31:31):
kind of a bit new and shiny for people, it will be a very different conversation. So I'm not adverse
to going back to individuals or to topics, but I do think it's got to have enough breathing space,
which we call it in journalism. It's why we don't run at the same story so close together.
But also there is so much in the world. Like, you know, there's just topics which are coming up all
(31:52):
the time, even things like purpose at work. We didn't even talk about that six years ago. Now
that's, for example, one of the topics we might be doing. Yes, I guess you've got some unlimited scope
of things to talk about. Absolutely. And I'm so glad I never did a PR podcast because I think I'd
do 12 episodes and I'd be bored and the audience would be bored. So I also made it as creative as
possible when I came up with the idea. Yeah, imagine that. Well, it's 12th episode. I've run
(32:18):
out of things to talk about. Let's start back at episode one again. Yeah. And so how do we stay
motivated with it? I know you said it gives you energy, but it is hard to do that as well as,
you know, managing your regular business and your coaching and all the other things that you do.
How do you find time to actually get your podcast done? I do what I think you've tapped into,
(32:42):
which is called batching. So I'll have podcast days where I'll just do five back to back and
there'll be five weeks of shows and that tends to be blocked out in my diary. And I'm in the zone
and we just do it. And that allows me, I'm always someone who likes, I hate being last minute. So
for me, I always do that ahead. And I learn really early on not to rely on, you know, guests booking
(33:02):
in and then sticking to it because things happen in their life and mine. And then I've had bits
where, oh my goodness, I do not have a guest for this week calling in a favor the day before and
asking my poor producer to stay up to midnight, pulling it together is not ideal. So I think,
I think about it. I have thinking time blocked out for the show as well, but really I only spend
about on average about two or three hours a week on it. I have a podcast editor, I have social media
(33:26):
people. I've built a bit of a lean team that really, I just do what I love and then they make it all
sound and look amazing. That's a good way of doing it. And so tell me, what would your advice be
for someone who is looking to have something like what your podcast is to you, a little bit of a
(33:49):
creative outlet that can give them a little bit of energy on the side of their regular work?
I would think about what you like doing as a kid. And I, and another hobby I have is horse riding,
which is not necessarily creative per se, but it's really mindful and I just love it.
And I only got back into that a few years ago and I was like, I can't just do things that are
making money and just furthering my education and all those pieces, which you feel like you're
(34:12):
always upskilling. I would say think about what you love doing as a kid, what brought you joy
is, it might not be the exact same thing, but it could be painting or writing or drawing or
doing something that actually scares you a bit too, that you're really, really bad at. I think
that's really humbling, but it actually allows you to be more creative because you start from
scratch and you have no expectations of yourself. You're not doing it because you have to or because
(34:35):
it makes you an income. You're actually doing it because it means something to you.
That's a really hard thing to shake off, I think, is we're so trained to just keep doing the things
that are purposeful, strategic, making us money. Sometimes you're just going to do things just
because they make you happy. Absolutely. I've got friends who, yeah, maybe it's a midlife thing.
(34:58):
We've all just got these new hobbies, but if you talk about them, we go, oh, yeah, as a kid,
I quite like drawing or I was really good at art, but then of course I did the sensible thing and
became an accountant. It doesn't leave you that stuff. It's just sometimes dormant and I think
we need to be able to be like a little kid again and just be free and not worry about the rules.
(35:18):
Yeah. I think it's so great that there are so many classes out there now aimed at adults.
There's painting, sip, there's pottery, there's all sorts of things, even sports for people who
have never done it. Never done sport. Yeah, absolutely. I just think it's great. The world's
(35:39):
your oyster. You've got so many things to choose from. It's about just getting out there and trying
them. Absolutely. What takes you an hour or two away from what you do actually makes you more
creative. It just reminds me of that whole, I love walking meetings, not sitting at my desk.
If I have a grab a coffee with a client or a staff member and go for a walk, often the ideas are
just so much better. I get my best ideas not when I'm sitting there with a blank screen going,
(36:02):
"Okay, let's do a brainstorm." It doesn't work like that. I think hobbies tap into a different
side of your brain. Yes, definitely. I found that the other day when we were kayaking and
in the middle of the lake, I was like, "I have the best idea. I didn't bring a notepad with me."
No, you're going to have to commit that to memory when you get out of that kayak.
But this true is you move your body around, you let your mind wander a little bit, and
(36:28):
all these different things come out. Even though the actual activity is probably not
furthering your business, it's helping your mind do it and that will help further your
business or whatever else you want to achieve. I agree, absolutely.
Well, thank you so much, Amber, for talking to me today. I think we went around the world a
(36:51):
little bit. We did. We weren't sure we'd get to it all, but we did. It is very interesting to hear
your takes on chat GBT and PR and crisis communications. Thank you for sharing that with us.
My pleasure. Also, thank you to everyone who has tuned in to Creativity (37:07):
Uncovered today.
I really hope that this episode has helped you think a little laterally and go out there and
find a hobby. I also hope that it helps you summon creativity the next time that you need it.
[Music]
(37:53):
If you've made it this far, a huge thank you for your support and tuning into today's episode.
Creativity (37:59):
Uncovered has been lovingly recorded on the land of the Kabi Kabi people,
and we pay our respects to elders past, present and emerging. This podcast has been produced by my
amazing team here at Crisp Communications and the music you just heard was composed by James Gatling.
(38:20):
If you liked this episode, please do share it around and help us on our mission to unlock
more creativity in this world. You can also hit subscribe so you don't miss out on any new episode releases.
Uncovered. My name is Abi Gatling and I want a journey
(00:11):
to uncover how everyday people find inspiration, get inventive and open their imagination.
Basically I want to find out how people can find creative solutions and then how do they
use those solutions at home, work, play and everything in between. Basically my goal for
(00:31):
this podcast is that by the end of it you'll be armed with a whole suite of tried and tested
ways to summon creativity the next time that you need it. Today I am speaking with Amber Daines,
who is a podcaster, a crisis communications expert, media trainer and an award-winning journalist.
(00:54):
She's basically a PR extraordinaire. But when I say PR or crisis management,
creativity is not exactly the first word that pops into my brain. So what is the link to
creativity? Well, let's find out. Welcome, Amber. Thanks so much for having me.
My pleasure. I sort of mentioned PR before, but there might be some people out there who actually
(01:23):
have never even come across the term public relations or PR. What is that? Can you give us
a quick overview? How I define public relations really broadly speaking is it's all forms of
communication which are designed to influence, amplify or change people's opinions. So usually
(01:43):
people feel public relations in terms of traditional media, so that might be TV, radio, online news,
but also that incorporates social media, video, webinars, podcast, everything that you can think
of. So it's about having your public image, whether you're an organisation or an individual,
curated and amplified in a way in which aligns with your values and your offering.
(02:06):
Okay. So it's really just kind of working alongside with your brand and managing your
reputation. Absolutely. It's all part of that same family, if you like, or ecosystem.
Yes. And your specialty area is crisis management. I do love a crisis.
I don't know what it says about me, but... Yes, very odd.
(02:30):
No, but what is crisis management and how did you choose that?
I don't know if it chose it or it chose me. And I say that because my early career, I was a journalist
and then I moved into corporate communications around 18 years ago. And so back then I did kind
of did everything. I found my sweet spot in corporate communications and business to business PR,
(02:54):
but I really found that ex-journalist in me still loved when a story or an idea broke when there was
a bit of a scandal or an issue or a reputational matter. And so I ended up just becoming part of
a team that was involved in that. And then as I sort of moved into my own business about 13 years
ago, I didn't really start off in that way. I was really a small business PR, B2B person. That's
(03:19):
kind of how I pitched myself. But then I found myself kind of getting attracted back into crisis
and issues management because as I say to all clients, at some time, any time in your business,
whether you're doing well or you're not doing so well, there will be an issue or a crisis which
you either can control or you've generated and you need to know how to manage that. So I think
of crisis comms as an integral part of any PR strategy and you hope you're not going to have
(03:43):
to use that action plan, but you do need to think about it as part of your PR because you can't
assume times are always going to be good. For example, you might have a product recall which
is beyond your control or you might have a staffing issue which becomes bigger than Ben
Her and let's play it out in the media or social media. So understanding the triggers of crisis
is something which I educate all my clients on even if they never need to use it.
(04:06):
Right. Okay. So you mentioned a couple of different types of crisis there. Is that
typically where you come across like a recall or something like that?
Oh, look, it could be anything like some examples I've worked with banks during the
Banking Royal Commission of a few years ago where they had a lot of public high profile
scandals which were really systemic in a system. So that's sort of bigger than just the organisation.
(04:30):
That's kind of a whole of industry issue, but you might have an individual business who unfortunately
gets caught up by proxy in a scandal. So for example, they might have a brand ambassador that
they've paid and that brand ambassador, something untoward gets involved in some kind of sex scandal
or a drug scandal or something of fraud or anything and just by association, your brand becomes
(04:54):
involved in the crisis even if you're not the cause of the crisis. So it really could be anything.
And another example could be just, I mean, the real differential crisis is when the
rubber hits the road. So I always say to people, it's like planes blowing up in a terrorist attack.
It's a tragedy such as a ship sinking or something where there's actually that 24 hours of complete
(05:14):
panic, but usually there's a loss of life or money or both. That's kind of how I define it.
Wow. Okay. And so there are different ways of trying to manage these crises?
Look, there are, there are sort of stages of a crisis. And I always say to people, because a
lot of people come to me and say, well, I'm in this crisis. Can you make it go away? And it's
(05:35):
like, well, you actually have to go through the crisis and navigate the comms accordingly. So,
you know, particularly that first 12 hours or even two hours, sometimes now with social media,
it's stage one, which is like your fact finding where everyone's trying to find out who, what,
when, why and how this happened and what's, you know, who's, who's kind of involved.
And then, you know, very quickly it moves to stage two, which is like your unfolding drama
(05:59):
where you get whistleblowers or, you know, people who are witnesses or people commenting that this
has happened before and coming forward. And then you've kind of got stage three, which is blame,
where everyone's kind of like, who was at fault. And that's where the lawyers come in and all
becomes a little bit like, you know, you might see it play out in a court case, for example,
like the defamation case we just saw with Ben Roberts Smith, for example. And then stage four is
(06:21):
kind of your fallout. And that's where the dust settles. There might be a finding in a
court case, there might be a product recall where you've had to compensate people, there might be
the data breaches we've experienced. And you have to go through the regulatory changes to your data
and privacy of all your customers and communicate that. And then after that, that's when you can do
reputation or rebuild. And a lot of people think they can skip all that and go straight to, it wasn't
(06:44):
me, it's not my fault, how can you make me look good? And that's really not what Crisis Coms does.
What Crisis Coms does is it kind of supports you as you go through those four stages.
And get back on track at the end of it.
Exactly. If you can. I mean, sometimes businesses don't survive, but individuals can definitely
be on a road to redemption if they do the right things. And, you know, obviously,
(07:06):
they communicate that well.
Yes. And so why do you need creativity in this line of work? How do you find creativity in this
process? Creativity, I think, comes down to individuals. We're all creative in some way.
Even if you don't think you are, you might work, you know, in a big four bank and think,
"I'm not creative," but creativity is around how you use ideas and communicate those to
(07:30):
reach your audience. So the creativity comes into probably not just the messaging and delivering
that in an appropriate way, whether that be through a webinar or maybe a video or social
media tweets and so forth, but actually thinking creatively about who matters most and how you
can keep communicating with them because you're trying to, in some ways, rebuild trust at some
(07:52):
point. So the creativity piece is really the fact that, yes, there's a formula for crisis,
but every business is different. Every CEO is different. Everyone responds differently and has
a different risk appetite as you go through this process as well. So it's really about,
you've got your formula that you regularly follow of stage one, two, three, four, but
applying the lens of the business and the context of the business is where the creativity comes in
(08:16):
because it's sort of being a bit lateral in your thinking and making it fit the situation.
Absolutely. I love the fact you use "lateral" as kind of the word because
problem solving sits alongside lateral thinking, I think, in crisis management. So, you know,
very much it's about thinking inside the box in the beginning and sticking to some rules so it
(08:38):
won't get you there, but then as you kind of settle into the pattern of your crisis, what is it that
we can be doing better and getting feedback? So a lot of people forget that communications is not
a one-way story. It's about engagement. So is that message landing? Do those people that maybe feel
wronged and sort of, you know, the victims you'd be like in a story, do they actually feel like
(08:59):
they've been heard and they're being remediated? So allowing your creativity to come into everything
you do will be really important and that really comes down to just listening as well as telling.
I think a lot of people think it's about what you say and what you do, but sometimes it's just about
the audience feeling like they're being heard as well. I think that's a really important part of
(09:20):
that. It's not going in going, "I know the solution to this. I know how we're going to make this go
away," or, you know, get back on track. It's about having an open mind and listening to the different
players in this situation. I think that's a huge part of creativity is having that open mind and
(09:43):
not just jumping to the first solution. Or something you've done before. It's very easy to
kind of have like, you know, I've got those stages, but then going, "Well, what did that company do in
this situation? Let's follow that." Like it's some rulebook and I think, "Well, communications
evolves and channels evolve and tech evolves. So why would you not try something that's of its
time as well and actually be open to doing something you've never done before?" And for some organizations,
(10:08):
it's as simple as actually saying, "Sorry, they may never have done that before." You know,
and there might be a big established company who's always on the front foot. And for them,
even issuing an apology without admission of guilt can be a huge thing. And that takes creativity
and courage together. Oh, yes. I'd say a lot of courage. And that would be very impactful,
(10:30):
because I feel like we don't see that a lot. There's a lot of downplaying of what these crises are
and who's at fault and all sort of stuff. But sometimes it's like, "Oops, we actually made a
mistake and now we're better off for it because we won't do that again." Exactly. And as long as you
can demonstrate, you've learned from the mistake and that you're remedying the situation in a human
(10:51):
nistic way, the way in which the people that might be the victims feel is enough, or at least on the
road to recovery, I think that puts you in good stead. Yes. And you mentioned social media before.
I can imagine that back in the day, prior to everyone having a social account,
you would have time to work through this process and have a really nice, clean, clear, curated
(11:17):
response to an issue. But now you don't have the benefit of time because you guess that on social
media and you'll be everywhere within a couple of minutes. Has that changed your practice at all?
It's changed everything because all of us, every one of us as citizens, if you like, or consumers,
can be agirlist. Like, how many times do you see the news and they've got footage that someone's
(11:39):
taken on their smartphone of that, you know, the bus blowing up or the fight that broke out at the
soccer game or whatever it might be. And that allows news, I guess, in some ways to use multiple
sources, which is great for them and get that instant access because, you know, you're getting a
crew there in time would probably be impossible. But it means for the organisations, they don't have
(11:59):
24 hours. Sometimes they have less than an hour, I would say the first hour is really critical.
And waiting till everything or your ducks are in a row before you make a noise doesn't actually
help because sometimes the story is already out there and then you're playing catch up. So,
having some sort of, I guess, prepared and rehearsed spokespeople that you've made your
train that you've got ready for this moment is really important. And also making sure that you
(12:22):
don't do silence. I say, "Science breeds suspicion." So, you may never do no comment, but also sometimes
you just don't hear from the company. And that could be for good reasons because, you know,
you're locked in a board meeting and everyone's having a power out about what we're going to say
and who's going to say it. But also there's lawyers involved and other people. But you've
just got to put even a holding statement out within that first hour of something happening to
(12:42):
your organisation. So, you have something that sort of pre-approved, pre-rehearsed that you
can look out quickly. Yep, absolutely. And even if it's just saying, "Look, we're aware there's an
issue or there's something that's happened or, you know, we're looking at this and we'll let you
know as soon as we can," that is better than nothing at all. I mean, the frustration people
(13:02):
feel. Think about things like power outages and things like that. People want to know when their
power is going to get back. And if they don't have any idea of that, the frustration and the
brand damage amplifies even if it's beyond your control because, you know, it's because there's a,
you know, a massive storm and that sort of caused it. So, it's kind of the no news is good news is
kind of out the window here is kind of the lap. Absolutely. It's the opposite of that. I think
(13:27):
we owe people some explanation, but we also need to be like mindful that what we say and how we
say it is really important as well. So, not being too robotic to have a human element to it, to have
empathy of their, particularly if it's a tragedy and there's, you know, people being injured or
lives been lost. You really, you know, or people lost their life savings or their data has been
(13:48):
breached and their privacy is at stake. Like I think we need to actually always remember
people are the victims and they should be front and center in the story no matter what,
not the company, not its brand reputation at that point. Absolutely. I think,
I think people quite often forget about the other person. Absolutely. They think about themselves
(14:11):
and their egos and, you know, their jobs and I get all that. That's really important. But I guess
as a consultant, I love the fact I can come in and say, I'm not internal, but I can tell you as,
you know, Joe Blow from Consumer World, this is what I'd want to hear from you right now. And
that's the pub test as we call it. The pub test. Oh yeah, I've heard that before.
(14:32):
Corrie, a mail test. Yeah. Yes. Does it pass the pub test? If I don't know anything about your
organisation and I have had this experience and it's bad, what do I need to hear from you and
how do you want to make me feel? And usually it's about being reshoring in that first phase.
Your client's very receptive to that or do they? It depends on the client. So I always say to people,
(14:55):
like I'm talking in cliches today, but you know, you can bring the horses to the water,
can you make them drink? I can give them all the advice. I could do a 90 day roadmap of what it
looks like from a tactical point of view, but they could still, you know, choke when it comes to
pressing send or they might feel like, you know, it's too, it's too much. It's too emotive. We don't
want to talk like that. That's not us. But I think they don't realise what they think is an
(15:19):
overreach or probably land better with the audience than if they become, you know, one line,
kind of we're investigating and we'll get back to you rather than saying we apologise for the
inconvenience. Like even a line like that, some people actually struggle with it because they're
like, well, that makes us seem like we did something wrong and we don't want to, that's not who we are,
we're the best at what we do. And, you know, we know people and organisations aren't perfect.
(15:42):
So you're better off owning that and then actually being able to communicate with people about the
why later, then keeping people in an information vacuum. There's a legal side of things coming in
that that people don't want to apologise. They don't want to say anything that admits fault.
Does that come in a lot to everything? It's legal. So when I work in a crisis situation,
(16:05):
everything I ride goes through a legal lens. So I end up having to get that back from the lawyers
and saying, OK, we can tell we've lawyer it up the way this is written. We need to like, you know,
I mean, it's even our first responders talk sometimes. It's the way they're trained. For
example, they'll say, instead of saying someone has passed away, which I know is very morbid,
that they might say, you know, the injuries were not compatible with life. Now, most of us don't
(16:29):
want to hear it like that. That seems like we're trying to skirt around the issues. So
taking what has to be said and what can't be said and actually turning it into human speak
is part of my job. Oh, yes. That's so true that I think people go default back to jargon and industry
(16:49):
terms when actually when something bad is happening, you just kind of want to have them
acknowledge that it is bad and there is an impact rather than. Absolutely. Rather than kind of going
to your default, which is like you say, is the jargon and with the lawyers,
you're right. They don't want to think, oh, well, they're thinking three steps ahead. They're going
(17:10):
to get a sewers. This is going to be compensation. All of those things might be inevitable anyway.
So sometimes just saying we're looking into this and we understand this is a distressing time,
it just takes people down a notch. It actually makes them feel heard, even if really at that
stage you're not really engaging. You're just basically putting a placeholder there for the
(17:31):
communications. So true. It's wild that people need coaching on that.
How do you want a human being? Well, I think if you're like in a really corporate environment or
a large organization or a big board, it is hard and you see it all the time. Sometimes the smartest
people in the room don't always have the greatest EQ. It's just not them, but they're fabulous CFOs
(17:55):
or they're great at their craft. But for them, they probably feel like a lot of it comes down to
it's a reflection of their individual abilities. And sometimes that gets in the way of the right
thing to do. Yeah. Yeah. I think that EQ and communications kind of needs to be the foundation
(18:19):
of sort of every course and every degree. I know that they have added in stuff around that into,
say, medicine, because it was the same thing as you're saying that the smartest, most brilliant
minds in our country quite often don't have the soft skills needed to be able to communicate,
teach people on a journey, deliver news in a way that is not going to completely get people offside.
(18:45):
Absolutely. They call it the bedside manner, you know that term.
Bedside manner, yeah. Yeah. Not just being sort of robotic about it, but actually thinking,
if I was stepping into the shoes of the person I'm communicating to this, how would I want to
be told this particular piece of information? That's a great personal lens to apply to it,
because you're a human. Yeah. We're all human. We do share that.
(19:09):
Yeah. And like that outsider perspective being like, "I'm a member of the public.
This is what I would expect. This is what I expect to be reasonable."
Yeah. What's reasonable and what's going to make us actually sometimes have to fall
on our sword a little bit to actually do this. It's a bit uncomfortable, but that's important,
(19:31):
because it is an issue. It is a crisis. And the thing is I said, "Well, you're not in crisis mode
forever. This is just the worst day of your life in your business." And from here, it's just navigating
that path. Only up from here, baby. Hopefully, or you don't exist in that year's time,
because something happens. But generally speaking, there are no shortcuts to this world of crisis
(19:52):
comms. Yes. And I can say it's probably evolving continually. We spoke briefly about social media
before. And the idea of the citizen journalist. Yes. I actually remember back, I studied public
relations. Obviously, didn't go into it. But I remember one of the topics being public, no,
(20:18):
citizen journalists. They're going to be the end of journalists and public relations. And obviously,
that has not happened. It's given more perspectives on news and things like that.
I know that people are currently saying that about chat GBT. And we spoke about chat GBT
kind of briefly when we spoke a couple of weeks ago. And we had a pretty interesting conversation
(20:43):
about chat GBT and its effect on public relations. We did. And look, I have to say,
it may be generational. And look, I am Gen X, and I'm not a digital native. So for me,
I'm always cautious about technology because I don't need to have all the bright shiny tools
straight away. So I've kind of sat on the fence a bit. I have got my team myself to play around
(21:05):
with it a little bit. And look, what I do like about it for PR is it automates lots of routine tasks.
So things like creating, you know, agendas for filling reports, basic frameworks, if you like,
for how to, you know, write a particular campaign or a strategy. And I think more PR professionals
are using it in that way to generate ideas even for social media. It's really good for things
(21:26):
like that. You know, just Instagram posts, captions, tweets, things like that. But I would say it's a
good first draft sometimes for big pieces of work, but it's certainly not yet at the place where I
would set and forget. I wouldn't just generate something, scatter and send it off to a client.
(21:46):
I'd want to make sure that it's something I've built on and I've added my own expertise to
because at the end of the day, it's AI and AI is limited by, I guess, the information that's been
given to that to be curated. And there's biases in it. I mean, they've done studies. There's a real
male bias. There's real like, I had a client and I played with it recently. And all the examples
(22:08):
they gave were like American male companies. So Amazon and Jeff Bezos, they had, you know,
Elon Musk and Tesla, like, they were all the examples. And it's like, wow, this is interesting.
So obviously, this has been programmed by men. There were no female examples in the companies
we were talking about. Wow. In terms of culture and values. Yeah, absolutely. So that goes to show
(22:30):
that I think we need to review things and obviously, we need to spend some time. But it's
really good to just, you know, getting you started sometimes and maybe something where you would
have had a more junior public relations executive take a few hours to pull it together from scratch.
You can do that in a matter of minutes and then maybe then finesse it as a team or give it back
(22:52):
to that person to really build on. Yes. Yeah. Definitely not a set and forget. Like you said,
it's so generic and it is based on the inputs that are put into it, which I think is only
until 2021 or something like that. Yes. It's like that's it. So the world, that's two years ago.
That's a long time and information and I think. Absolutely. I think things are changing so quickly.
(23:17):
That is practically prehistoric. Aren't we sad? That's what we've got to, I mean,
the other thing that's coming out and people are talking about is Microsoft's Co-Pilot,
which is also for PR people. It actually featured a press release draft that it then
turns into a PowerPoint presentation. So I'm curious to see how that's going to work. Obviously,
(23:37):
that's Microsoft Office competing and trying to find its own way. So yeah, I think it's interesting,
but I still think it's watched this space. I think people are kind of thinking, oh my goodness,
it's going to be the end of our world, but I just see be careful what you wish for because
what are we going to all do and how are we going to use it so that it actually helps us?
(23:58):
Because in the day, we want to be able to control it, not have it controlling us, I guess.
So yeah, I love it. And there's a couple of other tools that have come out, which are also AI,
so they're not chat GBT. There's a platform called PR Offit, like PRprofit.ai, and then Propell PRM.
I think it's called Propell My PR. And they're a couple that my team are now just having a look at,
(24:20):
and it's supposed to help you write with pictures for journalists and media relations stuff. But
once again, I'm curious to see whether it has a real American skew to it because I think a lot
of the AI has come out of Silicon Valley or similar and has been built with that audience
in mind. And of course, a lot of what I do is Australian based. So I don't know if that's
(24:40):
going to be as relevant to how we pitch and I guess the journalists and the audiences which we
engage with. Yeah, yeah, because the cultural differences are pretty big, even though we're
both, you know, Australia. Absolutely. And even the way the language we use, I'm not even thinking
about the spelling. I'm just thinking about the formality in America is quite different to how
(25:01):
we might be here. The vernacular and everything. Yeah. It's funny to me to think that people in
PR industry might be feeling scared about chat GBT when all our conversation so far has been about
this human lens and talking to humans and the soft side of things, which is just not something
(25:25):
that chat GBT or other AI has nailed, well, at least yet anyway. Not yet. And that's what I
said to people. It's like the first version of anything you kind of don't want to hang your
hat on it. You want to see what's going to happen. But I think quality control is really important.
And yeah, I think, yeah, recently, so I mean, it was something like, you know, if we're worried
about chat GPT, we're like, we're replacing us in PR or the client would have to know what they want.
(25:48):
So we're safe. So it's quite funny. If you know, if you've worked in consulting, you'll understand
a lot of people don't really know what they want from PR. They just know that they want it. So
just that nuance and that, I guess, ability to ask more questions than generic questions will be
where I think we need to step away from just relying on AI. Yeah. Do you have a sense of what
the industry is feeling aside from being scared of other senior opportunities as well?
(26:13):
There are opportunities. It's interesting because I depends on maybe what your background is.
I saw an interesting host on LinkedIn from one of my colleagues who's a journalist saying,
he's more nervous than probably most people in wider media, including PR, because he probably
thinks it's, you know, journalism has already been really upended because of citizen journalism
and social media. And I guess the rationalization of major news outlets, particularly in Australia,
(26:38):
and less journalists having jobs full time. So he was feeling nervous, but then he sort of
has tried it for a few stories. And it just doesn't have analysis. And you couldn't really like write
political posts based on it or anything really current. So he feels like at the end of the day,
he uses about what's happening right here, right now in the future. And that,
yeah, is not something I am as comfortable with. So I think if PR people think of it from that way
(27:02):
as well, we need to be as current as possible. And I don't know that we can just rely on these
tools. But it's great to have them. And I certainly don't want to be a naysayer. I just want to say
watch this space. Definitely. It's still so new. And people who say that they're experts in
AI. It's been around November last year. But it's like saying, yeah, I've done a PhD in seven
(27:24):
months. It's, I mean, unless you've built it yourself and you've kind of been part of the
evolution, that's hard to say that you could become an expert in it so quickly.
Yes. Yeah. I mean, even the developers themselves have no idea which, well, they have some idea,
but they don't know the extent of what it means for the future. So yeah, definitely a word of
caution to anyone who's listening to any AI experts. No one's quite an expert yet. It's
(27:48):
needed to be 10,000 hours as it is about, as we've said, to become an expert.
Yes. Yeah. And so it's a changing tactic a little bit now. You have a podcast and I've listened to
a couple of episodes called, it's called The Politics of Everything. Can you tell us a little
bit about that? So I started that podcast in 2017 when podcasts were pretty new and the early
(28:13):
episodes literally sound like I'm in a concrete bunker because we didn't have all the fabulous
tech and platforms we do now and I didn't really know what I was doing. Having been a journalist,
I've always just delivered the information, but I've had teams of people, you know, when I worked
in TV who made me sound good, look good, all those things. So it was a real kind of, okay, I want to
(28:33):
do this, but I don't know how. And I sort of learned along the way and the politics of everything,
it's not about politics. It's just an ability to talk about anything from money to mindfulness,
motherhood to secularism to anything that really someone feels like they're either passionate about
or an expert in. And a lot of people are not household names. I've had some fairly famous people
on, but really it's about elevating ideas and having a conversation and getting to know people.
(28:57):
And they're all the things I loved about being a journalist. So I feel like it's so much fun.
And for a long time, I didn't have a huge audience that's built over time. And now I've got a sponsor
and it's kind of, you know, it's monetized and everything. But even if I wasn't paid a cent,
like I wasn't for many years, I'd still do it because I just actually love it. I really love it.
(29:19):
So I think that for me is sometimes you feel like you have to feed the beast. And, you know,
I do do weekly shows, which we've talked about and I do take a summer break, but
it's really amazing the amount of people that it reaches. And I just love connecting with people
and interviewing people. Like I think anyone who has been a journalist will always say,
"That's the best part of it. It's not writing the stories and seeing your name and a byline
(29:42):
on your face on TV. It's actually getting to the heart of a topic or an issue." And I think
in 30 minutes, I try and do that in a way in which the audience finds interesting.
Yeah. So is it your creative outlet, do you think?
It is my creative outlet. And it's sort of, yeah, it's something where I feel like even
though some of the questions are the same questions every week, I don't know what people
(30:03):
are going to say. We don't do a practice run. We just see where it goes. And half the people,
if not more, I've never met in real life. So you're really creating rapport and tapping
into their human side within a couple of seconds and then having to really, I guess, extract from
them stuff that's not just boring key messages and flogging their products and services, but it's
(30:24):
really about something a little bit deeper than that. And I find it creative, but it also gives
me so much energy. So it's probably, I get as much from it as I guess I give to my audience.
That's fantastic. I think it's great to have those little things inside or outside of work that you
know you can do that will give you all that energy back and just make you even bigger and
(30:47):
better to keep continuing on with your life. But yeah, you said you do one weekly. That's a huge
amount of work. How do you come up with having a unique topic for every single episode on a weekly
basis? It can be difficult because you can find people pitched you ideas and like, "Oh, no, we
(31:11):
did that one in 2018. Sorry." But how about this? So I get a lot of pictures now. And so
it's about me and my team going, "What are the things that people are really interested in now?"
And we've actually revisited a couple of topics because things move on. Like if I did something
about cryptocurrency now versus when it, you know, in 2017, I think we did an episode when it was all
(31:31):
kind of a bit new and shiny for people, it will be a very different conversation. So I'm not adverse
to going back to individuals or to topics, but I do think it's got to have enough breathing space,
which we call it in journalism. It's why we don't run at the same story so close together.
But also there is so much in the world. Like, you know, there's just topics which are coming up all
(31:52):
the time, even things like purpose at work. We didn't even talk about that six years ago. Now
that's, for example, one of the topics we might be doing. Yes, I guess you've got some unlimited scope
of things to talk about. Absolutely. And I'm so glad I never did a PR podcast because I think I'd
do 12 episodes and I'd be bored and the audience would be bored. So I also made it as creative as
possible when I came up with the idea. Yeah, imagine that. Well, it's 12th episode. I've run
(32:18):
out of things to talk about. Let's start back at episode one again. Yeah. And so how do we stay
motivated with it? I know you said it gives you energy, but it is hard to do that as well as,
you know, managing your regular business and your coaching and all the other things that you do.
How do you find time to actually get your podcast done? I do what I think you've tapped into,
(32:42):
which is called batching. So I'll have podcast days where I'll just do five back to back and
there'll be five weeks of shows and that tends to be blocked out in my diary. And I'm in the zone
and we just do it. And that allows me, I'm always someone who likes, I hate being last minute. So
for me, I always do that ahead. And I learn really early on not to rely on, you know, guests booking
(33:02):
in and then sticking to it because things happen in their life and mine. And then I've had bits
where, oh my goodness, I do not have a guest for this week calling in a favor the day before and
asking my poor producer to stay up to midnight, pulling it together is not ideal. So I think,
I think about it. I have thinking time blocked out for the show as well, but really I only spend
about on average about two or three hours a week on it. I have a podcast editor, I have social media
(33:26):
people. I've built a bit of a lean team that really, I just do what I love and then they make it all
sound and look amazing. That's a good way of doing it. And so tell me, what would your advice be
for someone who is looking to have something like what your podcast is to you, a little bit of a
(33:49):
creative outlet that can give them a little bit of energy on the side of their regular work?
I would think about what you like doing as a kid. And I, and another hobby I have is horse riding,
which is not necessarily creative per se, but it's really mindful and I just love it.
And I only got back into that a few years ago and I was like, I can't just do things that are
making money and just furthering my education and all those pieces, which you feel like you're
(34:12):
always upskilling. I would say think about what you love doing as a kid, what brought you joy
is, it might not be the exact same thing, but it could be painting or writing or drawing or
doing something that actually scares you a bit too, that you're really, really bad at. I think
that's really humbling, but it actually allows you to be more creative because you start from
scratch and you have no expectations of yourself. You're not doing it because you have to or because
(34:35):
it makes you an income. You're actually doing it because it means something to you.
That's a really hard thing to shake off, I think, is we're so trained to just keep doing the things
that are purposeful, strategic, making us money. Sometimes you're just going to do things just
because they make you happy. Absolutely. I've got friends who, yeah, maybe it's a midlife thing.
(34:58):
We've all just got these new hobbies, but if you talk about them, we go, oh, yeah, as a kid,
I quite like drawing or I was really good at art, but then of course I did the sensible thing and
became an accountant. It doesn't leave you that stuff. It's just sometimes dormant and I think
we need to be able to be like a little kid again and just be free and not worry about the rules.
(35:18):
Yeah. I think it's so great that there are so many classes out there now aimed at adults.
There's painting, sip, there's pottery, there's all sorts of things, even sports for people who
have never done it. Never done sport. Yeah, absolutely. I just think it's great. The world's
(35:39):
your oyster. You've got so many things to choose from. It's about just getting out there and trying
them. Absolutely. What takes you an hour or two away from what you do actually makes you more
creative. It just reminds me of that whole, I love walking meetings, not sitting at my desk.
If I have a grab a coffee with a client or a staff member and go for a walk, often the ideas are
just so much better. I get my best ideas not when I'm sitting there with a blank screen going,
(36:02):
"Okay, let's do a brainstorm." It doesn't work like that. I think hobbies tap into a different
side of your brain. Yes, definitely. I found that the other day when we were kayaking and
in the middle of the lake, I was like, "I have the best idea. I didn't bring a notepad with me."
No, you're going to have to commit that to memory when you get out of that kayak.
But this true is you move your body around, you let your mind wander a little bit, and
(36:28):
all these different things come out. Even though the actual activity is probably not
furthering your business, it's helping your mind do it and that will help further your
business or whatever else you want to achieve. I agree, absolutely.
Well, thank you so much, Amber, for talking to me today. I think we went around the world a
(36:51):
little bit. We did. We weren't sure we'd get to it all, but we did. It is very interesting to hear
your takes on chat GBT and PR and crisis communications. Thank you for sharing that with us.
My pleasure. Also, thank you to everyone who has tuned in to Creativity (37:07):
Uncovered today.
I really hope that this episode has helped you think a little laterally and go out there and
find a hobby. I also hope that it helps you summon creativity the next time that you need it.
[Music]
(37:53):
If you've made it this far, a huge thank you for your support and tuning into today's episode.
Creativity (37:59):
Uncovered has been lovingly recorded on the land of the Kabi Kabi people,
and we pay our respects to elders past, present and emerging. This podcast has been produced by my
amazing team here at Crisp Communications and the music you just heard was composed by James Gatling.
(38:20):
If you liked this episode, please do share it around and help us on our mission to unlock
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