YouSaid · the spoken record

Katie McCarthy

lines on the record: 83
first: 2018-09-27
most recent: 2018-09-27
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I would just say as much take care as you take with your product and the hiring of your first 10 engineers and like whose money you take, right? Take as much care to decide like you're either going to take this function seriously and then actually do it and learn it because the people who are there to help you or actually don't bother because spending $2 with a half-hearted commitment is a complete waste.”
2018-09-27 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: How to Manage a PR Agency · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You can do that, but you will never be as credible as an independent source of information. And you may also not have the eyeballs that you can get when Wyatt writes a story and then it gets shared on social channels. Worse, let's say you're established, you've done fine on your own. Things are great. Well, what if something goes sideways? You have no relationships. You have no trust. You have no benefit of the doubt. All you have is people like, here are all of your claims and adoration and all of a sudden you have to do a product recall. Wouldn't you like to have some relationships in place where at least you can explain yourself? I would think so”
2018-09-27 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: How to Manage a PR Agency · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was going to argue almost a flip of that, which is. Seems like there's a new breed of founders who sort of are in this internet native world of Blogging is everything. Go direct You don't need any middleman illuminated all the middlemen.”
2018-09-27 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: How to Manage a PR Agency · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think founders have an idea that you call a reporter and go, hey, can you write this story? It does not work that way. And I wish people were a little more thoughtful about the function, the comms function, and actually how strategic it needs to be and how well thought out it needs to be before you take a story to an important reporter. It's not easy.”
2018-09-27 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: How to Manage a PR Agency · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, you guys have given us a lot of food for thought in terms of how to concretely manage an agency. Think about it strategically. What are the things that you wish you could tell founders and like hit them over the head with every day that you're like, I want these guys to know this?”
2018-09-27 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: How to Manage a PR Agency · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Then that layer in between whoever it is cannot be upset when the PR person goes direct to the CEO and doesn't necessarily loop into them. So they have to have, everyone's got to be okay with the fact that I may not report to the CEO, but I have direct access and I don't need to bring you in every single time I talk to him or her.”
2018-09-27 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: How to Manage a PR Agency · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I am a proponent of having the PR person report to the CEO. It can report into the CMO, but it just oftentimes, so if the CMO is a quant person, I think definitely PR should not report into the CMO because it's just a different animal. If the CMO is a brand story type of person, it can certainly work. Regardless of who does your review, the PR person needs to have access to the CEO whenever they need to.”
2018-09-27 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: How to Manage a PR Agency · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, a financial comms agency is super, super helpful in the lead up to your first earnings call. So there's the actual IPO piece, which I think a lot of people think is much trickier than it really is. The day of is a very busy, crazy day, but it's not rocket science necessarily. I think getting an agency to help write a script and get the CEO and CFO to really be on the same page about the story and practice it for the road show. For the nerve-wracking day. No. Your first earnings call post IPO. Right. So I think the IPO has this misnomer that it's like super challenging and tricky. And yeah, there's some complexity to it. But what's really hard is your first earnings call as a public company. And so that's where I would optimize for getting an agency into really help figure out are these two on the same page? What is our story? Where are we and where are the gaps?”
2018-09-27 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: How to Manage a PR Agency · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So we talked about some major inflection points in the company. What about Going public. So you talked about Margaret earlier about the importance of having PR milestones in place before you go public. So, Shannon, you've taken a couple of companies public. What's some special advice you have for those? Thinking about that particular piece”
2018-09-27 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: How to Manage a PR Agency · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it's making sure too you can't be assured that a CFO saw the big story in the Chronicle this morning. You actually do need to do some promotion of the work that the agency and the team do together.”
2018-09-27 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: How to Manage a PR Agency · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What you obviously try to explain and educate on what it is and what they're supposed to do. And then at the end of the day, it comes down to, do you have a mandate? I think it's good to include everybody in the process and in the updates, have them see and engage with the agency and do all of those things, right? But at the end of the day, to me, is a little binary. You either have a mandate to figure out how to make your function successful within a certain budget parameter or you don't.”
2018-09-27 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: How to Manage a PR Agency · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So that's about diagnosing the success of it. How do you know it's successful? It's working, that your partnership, this is not the measurement question because I know we've talked about it a lot and there's not a clear-cut answer. How about selling people internally? What have you, the person who's managing the agency, knows it's working But your CFO who holds the purse controller. Don't agree, or how do you make that case internally?”
2018-09-27 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: How to Manage a PR Agency · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Also, my favorite is like new CMO comes in. First thing they do is do an agency review. Happens all the time. But like, I think it's just so much smarter to take some time and go like, okay, what's actually going on here?”
2018-09-27 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: How to Manage a PR Agency · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's why I like that report card thing because you can easily say look, you're not executing on this, and they can say to you, well, you didn't give me access, or you did return my call. Exactly. You use that review to basically talk about what you as a company could be doing better. And you're absolutely right. It's usually two-sided. It's very infrequently just the agency. It's just much easier to blame the agency”
2018-09-27 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: How to Manage a PR Agency · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's excellent because many companies don't even ask themselves that question. So they'll call and they'll go like we're unhappy with our PR firm. And then you start digging. It's like, why? What's going on? Well, they're just not executing. And you just try to diagnose like, okay, so do they know what to do? Are you giving them information? Are they part of, you know, and sometimes I always say almost like, you know, if you're a good client, they have a chance. If you're not a good client, then they don't even have a chance. That's what's going”
2018-09-27 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: How to Manage a PR Agency · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What if the problem is on your side as a company? Like, what if the turnover is on your side and you're the reason the agency is not doing well? Like, how do you sort of tease apart the truth and the reality of that? Does it even matter?”
2018-09-27 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: How to Manage a PR Agency · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They were a customer. So referencing them for sure, and then other clients. Either clients that have churned out, you get a lot of feedback that way, or current clients too, who are probably relatively happy.”
2018-09-27 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: How to Manage a PR Agency · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the best agency referrals come from reporters. So they'll come in and they'll pitch and you'll say, wow, that team was amazing. Great ideas. But to get to the real heart of who they are as media relations experts, as you call reporters, you have relationships with and say, what do you think of so-and-so at such and such agency?”
2018-09-27 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: How to Manage a PR Agency · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, more on the mechanics side, tell me we were talking about the RFPs or the proposals and getting all these in, whether you do it or not, you clearly may have multiple people you're considering as. Potential agencies How do you vet them and know that they're the right one for you”
2018-09-27 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: How to Manage a PR Agency · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I do too. And I think a lot of CEOs don't have the patience because they again have this mindset. I just want to outsource it. There isn't the whole point of me paying for all this. I don't have to deal with it. You're taking care of it, et cetera, but you're saying that they are, it's like sales. You have to put the CEO in front of”
2018-09-27 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: How to Manage a PR Agency · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The thing with, you know, if you're the founder of a company, you're trusting those people to represent your soul to the outside world, which then gets written up in some way by a neutral third party, hopefully neutral. I think that those are people you want to know.”
2018-09-27 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: How to Manage a PR Agency · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What am I paying for? What is this? And also, there's a reason that person is the CEO and the founder of the company. They are the originator of the idea. They are hopefully the most compelling person to talk about what it is and where it is going. And again, if you want to enable a bunch of”
2018-09-27 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: How to Manage a PR Agency · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I will add one more thing. I actually think that it is important for the CEO to know, at least some people at the agency, and for them occasionally to staff a meeting. And a lot of people probably disagree with me on that.”
2018-09-27 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: How to Manage a PR Agency · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One thing we did at LinkedIn, too, is quarterly. We would sit down with the agency and we basically had a red, yellow, green on the things that we'd agreed they would do and talk about what was working, what wasn't. And that was an opportunity not for us to just say, hey, this isn't working. They were able to tell us we could make this work if we had more of X, Y, and Z. So you set smart for success. Exactly. And it felt like you could have a transparent conversation without hurting the other person's feelings.”
2018-09-27 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: How to Manage a PR Agency · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's nothing that sort of is like picking up the phone and going, like, hey, it doesn't have to be, I'm reporting back to you on what I promised. I just had coffee with a reporter and they're really interested in X or, you know, your competition seems to be all over. Like, you know, so just sharing Intel back and forth because you need what you need to communicate enough so that you're in a groove. It's a little bit like talking to your kids. You need to be talking basically, you need to be in some communication all the time so that there's a groove because you want to be top of mind for the agency so that pay attention to you and for the agency you want to be top of mind so they include you and stuff”
2018-09-27 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: How to Manage a PR Agency · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So Weekly usually has worked for me in the past. I think embedding them, those are the people who have done the best with the company. They can walk around. They've got great relationships. They get a vibe for the culture. They can go to an all-hands meeting and hear the story from the CEO. There was a model, again, with Caplo where they had somebody that went on leave for six weeks and I went to New York and worked out of their office for six weeks. And that was amazing for me too. But you were inverted it. And I got a better view of how the agency ran and what they needed more from my team and how challenging the time zone thing was. And it was really valuable.”
2018-09-27 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: How to Manage a PR Agency · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Spend a few minutes now just talking about some mechanics of engaging with an agency. We've already talked about the process of why it matters, the terms, how to, you know, the configurations. Give me some more of the nitty gritty of bringing them into your machinery. So you guys mentioned like you want to have regular check-ins. Should they be weekly? Should they be daily? Should there be someone in your office embedded? Should there be someone just on a phone call? How do you manage all that?”
2018-09-27 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: How to Manage a PR Agency · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I do think a lot of agencies promise that they're amazing at that. Oh, don't worry, my grease counterpart will easily talk to the Brazil counterpart. It doesn't happen as seamlessly as it looks. So you really have to dig before you hire them on for a global job to make sure that these processes are really down”
2018-09-27 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: How to Manage a PR Agency · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Airport sort of very broadly, right? If the company is doing well basically across the board and it's global, it's kind of nice to have an AOR that is global because you can just turn knobs and you can turn things on and off and then you can add and layer in a step that you can global.”
2018-09-27 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: How to Manage a PR Agency · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Besides the domains you guys have described, like consumer enterprise, some of these pieces of the pie or specialties like crisis, local, what are your thoughts on the other competencies within a shop? Like should you go for a one size fits all agency that offers interactive and writing and other things? Should you go for a boutique firm that only focuses on X? Like, do you have thoughts on the size and the types of the agencies themselves?”
2018-09-27 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: How to Manage a PR Agency · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And on my end I would say at eBay, the best relationship I ever had with an agency was with Caplo Communications, who was based in New York. And the reason that we were able to avoid complacency with them is we were basically categorized into different product categories. Basically, they had clothing choose and accessories, but it was like, if you nail this, you can get another category. So we kept upping the pie, and they weren't a fit for every single category, right? But it was always a possibility. And so that kept them from being complacent.”
2018-09-27 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: How to Manage a PR Agency · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You can't, look, you're not really good at crisis. You're not really good at building out messaging. But that's the thing. It's like you get so mired into like, this is what's on the to-do list. And mind you, if you're working with a company, your client may be sophisticated and they may not be. So you need to do that. Like you need to have your own motor and machine to go like, okay, what should it look like? And then go do that.”
2018-09-27 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: How to Manage a PR Agency · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I think Outcast was really good at this because we had clients like Salesforce.com, for example. We had, I think, about a dozen years from 1998 onwards, right? Through, I think five VPs of marketing before the company filed for IPO. And that was like Karen Marooney. She did an amazing, amazing job managing that account through changes and flexion points, growth. And what we would do is we would ask ourselves and we'd ask the teams like, okay, so what's on the to-do list and what's not on the to-do list? And like, forget what the client is telling you during the weekly calls, like, what do you think will blow them away? And then go do that. And like do not ignore media because if there's a good story, you have permission to do everything else. You can have every conversation. You can screw up occasionally. But if there's no media, then like, what are you doing? And as a result, we always were called a media shop. And I was like, you know what? I'll wear that badge with pro.”
2018-09-27 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: How to Manage a PR Agency · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm going to say something harsh. If the agency actually wants to repitch the business, you should fire them again. He's just a stupid ass decision. Replace the revenue, learn from wise the account gone, and then move the hell on.”
2018-09-27 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: How to Manage a PR Agency · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Literally onboarded them actually. They're in it. Yes. So I'd love to get your perspective on this. If you put your account up for review because you're not happy with your agency, the incumbent agency should not be allowed to pitch. I think it's terrible for the agency and I think it's terrible for the company.”
2018-09-27 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: How to Manage a PR Agency · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The big thing I would add on RFP too is do not bring in the shiny object from DC or the shiny object from New York if that is not your account team. Bring the people who are going to work on the account. That is one thing an agency will”
2018-09-27 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: How to Manage a PR Agency · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a dog and pony show. You come up with really good ideas based on nothing and then you get to, you have to sell. I'm not sure I would recommend them. I don't think they're the most effective thing because it comes down to oftentimes where like that agency has really good ideas.”
2018-09-27 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: How to Manage a PR Agency · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh my God. So that's sort of oftentimes companies use this process where they put out an RFP to multiple agencies so that have some sort of standard set of questions and answers, right? And oftentimes it's sort of the bigger the company gets, the more involved they can get. And they're often driven by procurement and not the actual PR team, although they're obviously orchestrated by that. And it's sort of like who are you as a business, right? Like what are your revenues, team size, locations, all that kind of stuff, right? And then how would you handle X or give us your ideas for Y and then the agency comes in and oftentimes you send in the questionnaire and then there's sort of this bake off where you do the proposal and you bring the team. It's a document.”
2018-09-27 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: How to Manage a PR Agency · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's the biggest, it's probably the biggest piece of your budget. It's the deepest relationship. And say it's an agency who covers everything except crisis, and then you have a crisis. You would go outside of your AOR to supplement their skill set with another agency. With a different agency.”
2018-09-27 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: How to Manage a PR Agency · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It means that you have a master agreement with an agency who's going to service your business for a certain amount of money every single month. So it's like a retainer. It's a retainer. It's a contract.”
2018-09-27 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: How to Manage a PR Agency · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was on the flip side of receiving PR pitches, and when I first came here, someone mentioned GA. And I was like, what the fuck is GA? And it's generally available for the product being available. Let's do a little buzzword bingo. So AOR.”
2018-09-27 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: How to Manage a PR Agency · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And people mostly don't like to admit that they don't know a lot of these PR terms. They think PR is fluffy, and oh, I should know it. Actually, when you dig into it, you realize most people don't know most phrases. On the flip side,”
2018-09-27 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: How to Manage a PR Agency · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For sure. We're kind of getting local people, players on the ground. So let's shift gear here and just go deep for a couple of minutes on some terminology. I love doing this on the podcast. We do taxonomies and terminology.”
2018-09-27 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: How to Manage a PR Agency · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's an excellent place for an agency because if you are launching, you know, if you're one of those companies in the transportation bucket, right? Like you're not going to put people everywhere, but you are going to launch in different markets, right?”
2018-09-27 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: How to Manage a PR Agency · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sometimes you want to put a tweet out, sometimes you actually want to just give it to a reporter exclusively, sometimes you want to write a press release. Do people still do those? It kind of depends on what you're trying to achieve.”
2018-09-27 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: How to Manage a PR Agency · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm so glad you brought this up. I think a lot of people, particularly when it's their first time out, they're lucky that just this PR thing happens. They have a nice product and it's viral and this and the other. And they don't understand how lucky they are and they can't separate the two. And then they just think it just rinse and repeat without doing anything. And those are flukes, right? Most of the rest of us, you need to be very deliberate and thoughtful and smart about what moments you aggregate together or can go stand alone. Who cares about the different things? What's the vehicle?”
2018-09-27 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: How to Manage a PR Agency · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, we exist, right? And let me just say a lot of them you bundle together, right? Like, we exist. And that's interesting depending on who the people are and what they're working on, all of that. Then you've raised money. And of course, whether that's an inflection point, the bar for press coverage keeps raising because, you know, people raise rather large rants these days, right? Then you get rock start independent board member. All of those are ingredients, right? Okay, product, right? Like, and what are the product milestones? And then you have product market fit where all of a sudden 50% of Wall Street uses your product. Like there's lots of milestones. And I'm not saying every one of them is a big to do, but they're markers.”
2018-09-27 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: How to Manage a PR Agency · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“How would you possibly know? Right, exactly. Are there other milestones like that? So as we're on this topic of managing an agency, clearly part of this process, you guys began with the need to discover the stories internally. You've talked about proactive and reactive moments, incidental and building ones. Now, what are the other kind of broad milestones to think about in a company's life cycle that could be musing moments?”
2018-09-27 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: How to Manage a PR Agency · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I worked at eBay for seven years, and so every July we literally had like a Santa in a hundred degree weather passing out eBay related gifts on literally at Times Square. That's hilarious. That's when you had.”
2018-09-27 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: How to Manage a PR Agency · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And the thing is, like, you do the holiday gift guide press tour in July and you do the little stand and it's a giveaways and it's beautiful photo photography and it's all that stuff. It's like it has nothing to do with like how you would communicate, how you blog for a developer.”
2018-09-27 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: How to Manage a PR Agency · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source