The 5 Keys to Managing PR at Your Community Bank

INTRO: Helping community bankers grow themselves, their team and their profits. This is the Community Bank Podcast.

CALEB: Well, hey, everybody and welcome back to the Community Bank Podcast. Thanks for joining the conversation. I’m Caleb Stevens with SouthState Bank’s Capital Markets and Correspondent Banking Division. Today we are talking all about PR. Now, if you’re a banker, I would imagine that you probably don’t have a dedicated person at your community bank just solely focused on PR. But like we say in today’s conversation, PR is really everybody’s job, and so we bring on Jackie Smith, who is Director of PR here at SouthState, as well as Vincent Ascolese, who is our Social Media Director. This is great conversation where they talk about the five keys that your bank needs to know and implement effectively to do PR and manage PR well at your community bank. Even if you don’t have a specific person dedicated to the role specifically, these principles apply to your entire sales, marketing team, and even your executive team. So, let’s jump into today’s conversation.

CALEB, continued: Well, Jackie and Vincent, it’s great to have you both in our studio today live and in person. How are you guys doing?

JACKIE: Doing great. Thanks.

VINCENT: Doing great.

CALEB: Tell us about your respective roles at the bank. How long have you been with SouthState and what do you do here at the bank?

JACKIE: Awesome. So, I’m Jackie Smith. I’m the Director of Public Relations and Social Media. I’ve been at the bank almost seven years and as the name implies, I handle all proactive and positive stories about the bank, but also if there’s any sort of, you know, issues, situations—I get involved in those. Thankfully not many of those. And then also oversee the social media portion of our function. And Vincent is on my team, he’s really the social media guru, so I brought him along today.

VINCENT: My name is Vincent Ascolese. I’m our Senior Social Media and PR Manager, and like Jackie said, I have a lot to do with our social strategy, making sure that we’re, you know, getting to all those goals that we’re trying to as a company. Representing all the different things going on at the bank. And I’ve actually been here a couple months less than Jackie, almost seven years and just, you know, love everything social media.

CALEB: Well, 20 years ago, if you had somebody told you you’re going to be the social media manager for a big brand one day, big bank, I mean, what in the world of social media? It’s crazy how there’s so many jobs a day that didn’t exist 10, 15, 20 years ago. I’m just sort of curious: what were some skills that you maybe acquired early on, or things that you were passionate about that maybe led to your interest in in social media?

VINCENT: Sure, yeah. I went to school thinking that I was gonna do broadcast journalism and realized that I could use a lot of the skills that I needed to develop to get into a public relations career. So, I definitely consider myself a PR person first. And as a result, I ended up after graduating in my undergrad, I went and did work for two agencies. One was a brand management agency in Manhattan, used to be called STC Associates. They’ve since rebranded. And then I also worked at a different agency that specialized in telecom and technology public relations. So, when I was in the agency world, you kind of have to be a jack of all trades, but I quickly developed a love for social media content, and then they gave me a lot of responsibilities related to that. And funny enough, I was a SouthState customer, and then I saw the opening for social media manager, and I had such a good experience as a customer, I said, “Hey, let me go apply for that.”

CALEB: There you go. Well, I like to say that marketing and culture are sort of two sides of the same coin. I think marketing is how your customers experience your brand and your culture is how your employees experience your brand. And they’ve got to go together. It’s hard for your customers to enjoy your brand if your team members and employees aren’t engaged and enjoying it. So, I think that’s a great testament to SouthState right there.

VINCENT: Absolutely.

CALEB: Well, today we want to talk about PR, and I know a lot of banks listening are, you know 500 million in assets, maybe 60 team members, maybe 100 team members. But on the smaller side, so they may not have a dedicated PR, you know, function or person per se, but PR is everybody’s job, really, in the business world, I kind of like to say. And so, we want to talk about some keys that you all have learned just from your careers in PR, and also your career in banking and maybe some takeaways and some lessons that whether you’re a $500 million bank, or, you know, a $10 billion bank that you could take away as you try to serve your communities and better serve your clients. And so, I’m gonna put it to you guys and say tell us the first key in your mind to managing PR well at your community bank.

JACKIE: Sure. So, I think the first key is considering earned media, which is what most people think of traditionally when they think of PR, public relations. The reality is that, you know, in our lifetimes, the media landscape has changed an awful lot. There are fewer and fewer publications, and people get their news a lot differently than they used to. No longer people really reading print publications. A lot of it is digital. And so, we’re going to talk a little bit next about owned media. But you know, I think there’s a lot of opportunity for banks to leverage owned media, and we’ll talk about some ways to do that. But first, talking about earned media. You know, banks don’t generally make news. And if you do, it’s probably not the sort of news that you want to make. And you could think about what those types of stories might be. But you know, I would encourage bankers to think about what are the types of stories that you really want to show up for?

JACKIE, continued: And I think there’s a default setting for a lot of banks that like, “Oh well, we could make news by hiring a great banker,” you know? And so even in that space, even hiring. More and more publications are not sharing that type of news, they are asking you to pay for those types of placements and so it becomes a pay to play. So, the earned media landscape has really changed. It has become harder and harder to have good coverage. And if you do get great coverage, you need to really think about how you maximize it. How do you extend the life of the coverage that you do get from an earned media standpoint? So, the other thing I would say is when you do get an opportunity, make sure you’re prepared. Definitely consider have you had the right media training? If not, definitely find a really great media training partner. Don’t assume that just because you have a relationship with the publication that it’s going to be a great interview.

CALEB: Won’t get “gotcha questions”.

JACKIE: Yeah, yes. Or the story is going to be exactly what you want. And so definitely invest in media training so that you have the opportunity to show up in the way that you want when you do get those earned media opportunities. And when you do get those, consider how you extend the life of them, which I mentioned. So, are you sharing those stories on social media? Could you share those stories on social media with a tiny amount of paid promotion? Which will significantly expand the reach for your potential target audience. So really think differently about maximizing your earned media opportunities.

VINCENT: And I think too, Jackie, thinking differently and kind of challenging some of the listeners, maybe, to really take an objective look at whatever they think is a newsworthy story. And it’s hard, because it may be really important for your company but that doesn’t necessarily translate to media newsworthiness. And a lot of executives that, you know, that I’ve talked to in the past sometimes have a hard time when there is something that they value and think should be covered by the media. Then there’s frustrations when it’s not. So, I think really trying to look through that lens of why would a reporter cover this. And then you, know you, you kind of just put yourself in a better headspace.

CALEB: Yeah, that’s helpful. Talking about interviews not turning out the way you imagine. My dad was interviewed a number of years ago about a situation where people were stealing trash cans out of neighborhoods, and my dad was being interviewed. I guess our neighborhood had been the target of trash can stealing. And he made an offhanded comment to the reporter like, “They’re stealing trash cans out of my upscale neighborhood,” like, totally, you know, off the cuff joke. Like, it’s not an upscale neighborhood. It’s not gated. Like, “why would you be stealing trash cans out of my neighborhood? My neighborhood is nothing special.” Well, when the publication dropped in the article, I think it said, “Neil Stevens says they just take the can in my upscale neighborhood.” So, the context got totally flipped. He’s making a joke like my neighborhood is nothing special to he sounds all hoity-toity. So yeah, just a good example of being aware and being prepared.

JACKIE: Yep, absolutely.

VINCENT: Everyone’s looking for that clickbait headline, you know? So, if you can avoid—we live in that sound-bite sort of society. So that’s one of the reasons why Jackie talked about the plan going in, which a good PR person will tell you: you go into a media opportunity with a list of talking points that can be sort of your fall back in case you get into trouble. And if you don’t do that, it can be very apparent.

CALEB: I would say, as a college football fan, coaches are some of the best trained media folks like in the world. I mean, you can ask them really gotcha question and they just like know exactly how to deflect and go back to, you know—

JACKIE: What they want to say.

CALEB: Exactly, yeah, they don’t give anything away. It’s impressive.

JACKIE: They’re totally controlling the message, is what you want. Yep.

CALEB: Speaking of controlling the message, so earned media is important. Let’s talk about number two.

JACKIE: Yeah. So owned media is really your opportunity to shape the narrative and tell the story that you want. When earned media is becoming harder and harder to get your voice heard. So, there’s a tremendous opportunity when it comes to owned media. And so, a couple of tips for leveraging owned media. Know who your audience is and know your numbers. So, how many people are you getting on your website? Are they coming from mobile or are they coming from desktop? Because that experience matters. Are they, you know, what demographics can you get from your social media channels? Are you speaking to mostly men or mostly women? What about your e-mail marketing? Like, what percentage of those messages are opened? What content is resonating the most? And you’ll know that by the engagement numbers that you’re getting, you know, how many seconds are people staying on page? How many e-mail opens do you get? How many likes, shares, et cetera, are you getting on your social posts?

JACKIE, continued: So, once you know who you’re talking to, think about your content strategy. What content would resonate with your target audience and the type of customer that you’re trying to reach? If you have access to an expert in search engine optimization, definitely ask them some questions and you know, pick their brain. Find out, because they’ll be able to tell you what questions are people asking in your region. So, you know, are they asking what banks near me are best for insert whatever here. Or are they asking, you know, what’s the best way to, you know, increase my credit score? Like, what questions are they asking, so that you can design content to reach that desired audience. I’m going to let Vincent talk a little bit more about social media in depth because that’s a huge piece of an owned media strategy.

VINCENT: Thanks, Jackie. I think before I get into the some of the points, you know, it’s important to understand that it’s okay to start from a pretty low point or a beginner’s kind of a point, especially if you don’t have dedicated people to creating and managing social media content. I know when Jackie and I came on board, we were some of the first people in our positions at the bank, and things have evolved quite a lot over seven years. So, it is okay to kind of look at where you’re at and say, you know, this is the starting point. It’s not where we want to be five years from now, but then you have to kind of do things to get to that point and some of what I’m going to talk about addresses that. I mean, a lot of people assume that when they post something on social media that if they have, you know, 20,000 followers, that all 20,000 followers are going to see it. And that’s unfortunately not true, especially in the current environment that the social platforms are in.

VINCENT, continued: Which is, essentially, a pay to play environment because they want ad dollars to extend reach. And some of them, like for example, Meta, this really plays out, especially when you’re doing video content. You might think, “Hey, video is the way to go. We’re going to have so much more eyeballs on that,” but Meta won’t promote your video content unless you pay them at a maximum scale. And so, you know, for example, we kind of say, you know, about 5% of the people that follow you will see your organic posts. And it can change depending on different engagement factors. But that’s sort of a good rule of thumb to go into, you know, your social strategy with. I also, you know, see a lot of people saying, “Oh, you know, Threads is new, and when TikTok first came out that we need to be on all these social platforms.” And I think, especially for those that don’t have a staff, that is a sort of a black hole to fall into.

CALEB: Yeah. Not manageable.

VINCENT: Not manageable. It’s not fair to somebody that you have on your team, if it’s one person. And they’re even if they are dedicated to social media, to say, “We need you to go succeed on six different platforms by yourself.” I would rather see a company say, “You know what? We really need to be on LinkedIn, and we need to do that really well, and we’re going to focus there. And we may add other channels as we go, but we’re going to win the best we can on that one channel.” So, I would advise people to consider that. I also, you know, speaking of the channels, each one of them has different features, and they’re always introducing new ones. And so, you want to know which ones are going to resonate with the audience that you’re trying to reach. And also, sometimes it doesn’t pay to be an early adopter of a new feature. So, sometimes the platforms, especially the last few years, they try to mirror each other. So, most recently, if you think about TikTok came about, and then what did Instagram do? Instagram said we’re all in on Reels, right? So, sometimes what they do is they introduce new features that don’t actually stick long term. So, you want to make sure you’re not putting all your eggs in a basket that’s not going to be here.

CALEB: I remember Snapchat back in the day, and then Instagram came out with stories and it’s basically a carbon copy of Snapchat, yeah.

VINCENT: Yeah. Yeah, and I mean, there’s several things that I can think of over the years that LinkedIn tried to do. They had showcase pages at one point, and when I was working at an agency we were trying to, you know, do showcase page strategy for our clients. And those don’t exist anymore. So, LinkedIn itself, huge opportunity but when they come out with these new features. I think it’s kind of smart to do the stuff that you know is tried and true, and then keep an eye on the new things. So that’s something to consider.

CALEB: We call that avoiding shiny objects. It’s just the latest and greatest thing and thinking we gotta play in everything versus to your point. Yeah, pick one or two things and be good at those.

VINCENT: And another thing that I think is interesting and that some companies may face is you’ll ask them, “Hey, who are you trying to reach,” right? And their answer, inevitably, is: everyone.

CALEB: Everybody.

VINCENT: And if you try to reach everyone, guess what happens? You don’t reach anybody. So, understanding the different audiences that you have, and then the tools that you have on those platforms to reach them and what kind of messaging matters to them and making content that is actually for them. So, that that’s another thing that I think people struggle with. You have your agenda as a company. These are the things that are important for us to communicate. And then there’s what the customer actually wants, and if you focus on creating content that’s only about your company’s, you know, goals, you’re going to miss the mark on getting the engagement from the intended audience. And sometimes you know, if you’re trying to nurture customers over a long period of time, you’re going to have to be in sort of a long game scenario. So, you have to, you know, over and over again provide value to them in order for them to actually take action eventually.

VINCENT: That’s very important. I see a lot of companies, not just banks, being overly promotional with their social media, talking about their products and how you can buy whatever, which is fine, but there’s not much effort made to actually add value to the clients beyond just: here’s what we’re selling. We’re trying to make an emotional connection with their with their customers.

VINCENT: And you know, one of the ways that you can really do that in a way that’s not so self-promotional is you focus on storytelling. Because human beings have connected with storytelling since the beginning of our existence, and it’s really no different now, we just have a lot of different mechanisms to tell stories. And that can be a bunch of different things. It doesn’t have—a lot of people think video first, which, you know, there’s a lot that goes into producing good video. You can do some really good storytelling in written form too, and that may be a good place to start. You can do storytelling that relies on some really attractive imagery that you may have taken. And so, there’s just all these different levels that will allow someone who may be your customer, you know, in sort of a storytelling format, to tell other people or other businesses like theirs why they may want to work with you. And that can be much more powerful than you saying yourself, “These are what these are the reasons why you should work with us.” So, obviously all of this, all the social media, things that we’re discussing, take a lot of time, talent, resources. So, I did just want to cover a couple of things for the listeners to consider if they’re hoping to bolster their social strategy. You know the first place you can also look is talent, and a lot of people you know, still jokingly will say an intern runs their social media, right?

CALEB: Right.

VINCENT: But you know, social media has been around for such a long time now. Just, you know, we’re talking about approaching several decades, and it’s matured a lot. And so have the professionals that have been working on it. And those professionals are making a lot of data-driven decisions in social media. One of the beautiful things about it is you have a lot of analytics to draw from. Even if you don’t pay for, you know, third party tools, you have native analytics that you get from the platforms that you can make decisions on. So, I would say you want to really think about who you’re putting in place to run your social. You want to understand their strengths because there are some social pros that are LinkedIn experts, then there’s some people who are phenomenal at YouTube. And so, you want to align that with where you are or where you think you’ll be and make sure that you’re putting the best possible people in place. I think it’s also important that a social pro is growth-minded. You know you do not want somebody running your social channels that says, “We’re going to do it this way because it’s the way I’ve always done it.” Because social media changes—

CALEB: All the time.

VINCENT: Yeah, I mean something that worked this month doesn’t work, you know, next month. And you want somebody that is not going to be set in their ways, is going to keep their eye on the trends, and is going to make decisions based on what they know they can do to win in that moment. And so, that’s huge for me. And I would view it as a red flag if they had someone who said, “No, this is the way I’ve always done it. That’s the way I’m going to continue.” As far as skills go, I think, again, there’s a wide variety of different kinds of social pros out there, you know. And some of the skills you might look for, you know, there’s copywriting aspects to the job, sometimes graphic design, sometimes you’re going to have some videography or photography elements to those jobs. Crisis management can be huge, and sometimes, you know, that one is really interesting because social media is so public and it’s, you know, when someone writes a comment on your post, it’s there, and you need to know how to deal with it the right way, which is not deleting it. Not deleting the comment. So, you want to make sure that you have people that have the skills that align with what you think your strategy is going to be. And you can use things like LinkedIn to find those people. So you can, you know, mine social media to find your social media people.

CALEB: That’s right.

VINCENT: Another thing, just to quickly discuss, is the equipment. There’s just so much that’s out there. I mean, it starts with a smartphone. You could have DSLR, mirrorless cameras, video equipment, lighting, teleprompters. There’s just a lot of considerations and, you know, I would say start small, right? You don’t need to go and put $3,000 down or $10,000 down to start out. Just, you know, get some equipment that can make you versatile enough to put the content out that you want. And then the last thing that I’ll touch on in this area is just the software. Because if you are somebody who has multiple platforms, you might want to see everything in a single dashboard to manage community management, things like that. And there are some really good tools out there that you can subscribe to and get those benefits.

CALEB: Yeah, that’s a great flyover of all things social media. And I would think the takeaway for a listener who’s saying, “That’s overwhelming, Vincent. Where do I start?” is what you said. Pick one or two areas and focus on those and be really good at those. That’s really helpful. Okay, so, just to recap, we have earned media. So, that’s I get invited to participate on somebody’s podcast, or I’m interviewed for the local paper, or I’m interviewed for a news clip or whatever. But somebody’s invite, I’ve earned it. I haven’t paid for it. Somebody’s invited me organically to be on it. There’s owned media. That’s my social media, my e-mail, my website, things that I own, things that my bank owns. Jackie, what is the third key to what we’re talking about?

JACKIE: Yeah. So, it’s paid media and really understanding your paid media strategy. So, talking to your marketing folks and thinking about, as the name implies, paid media is literally anything you’re paying for. So, any advertisements you’re placing, any TV spots you’re running, any billboards you’re doing, any paid social media advertising. But, you have to think about all of this holistically and how it works together to tell your story and manage your reputation and ultimately move your brand and your bank forward. Like I mentioned, you know, fewer and fewer earned media opportunities, owned media is you know, a great opportunity when you don’t have other spaces to tell your story, but you’ve got to think about paid media too. So, is there appetite and is their budget for advertorials, for example. So, that’s literally like you get to write the story, but you’ve paid to submit it publication.

JACKIE, continued: So, yeah, you can control the narrative a bit more, or we talked a little bit in the earned media section about can you put some paid, and when I say some paid, you know, even as much as like $100 can get you thousands upon thousands of impressions on social media for a piece of content. So, whether that’s earned media that you’re putting paid promotion behind or whether it’s owned media that you’re putting paid promotion behind, this is like Vincent said, it’s definitely more and more of a pay to play space that we’re operating in. Just to have your content and your brand seen. So, you don’t have to spend a lot of money if you’re, you know, if you’re smart about it, you don’t have to spend a ton. But definitely think about your paid media and what you’re putting money behind. So, for example, depending on what city you’re in, billboards can be super expensive. I know those are leveraged a lot, you know, by banks traditionally. Same thing with like the signage at the top of a tower in a big city, you know, super expensive. And maybe you have the capability to do that. But if you don’t, you know, what other ways could you leverage effectively to get your brand and your message out there and tell a little bit more about your company?

VINCENT: And Jackie, if anybody was discouraged earlier when I said only 5% of your audience sees your organic posts, this is the other side of the coin. This is how you battle that.

CALEB: Yeah. It’s how you amplify, yeah.

VINCENT: So, I mean, you know, anecdotally we could tell you, you know, we’ve put $100 to boost a post on Facebook, and we’ve gotten 20,000 impressions out of that. So that would be 20,000 people that could have seen the post. When you know, if you have only a few thousand followers, you can essentially tap into a lot more people that aren’t currently following you in a way that you just simply can’t with organic. Unless something drastic happens, like you get a huge amount of people sharing your posts and, you know, that’s hard to do.

CALEB: And what’s really neat about LinkedIn in particular, if you’re a bank, is you could upload a list of companies and say, “I only want to show this advertisement to this set of companies,” and so now you have a pretty good feel for who’s going to see it and you can be targeted with it. And then it all comes back to, is the content going to be relevant? Is it interesting? Does it add value to get their attention and cut through the noise? But unless you really pay for those tools, it’s going to be hard to just organically know that you’re getting in front of the right people that you want to get in front of, so that’s great. Good advice.

JACKIE: Totally. If you want to, you know, target small businesses, for example, you have the capability to do that with social media advertising. Unlike some of the more traditional tools, like running ads and publications or billboards or ads on, yeah, radio. Exactly.

CALEB: That’s great. Okay, key number four. What’s key number four?

JACKIE: So, it’s understanding and managing public sentiment. So, everybody has heard of brand survey. And that’s a great way to understand what people think about your brand, your company. Those can be expensive and cumbersome to run. So, another way to do that these days are reviews. So, online reviews and understanding what the public is saying about you in all of the spaces that they could leave a review. So, whether that’s Google or if you have a mobile app. You know, what are they saying in the mobile app stores? Really understanding what the public is saying about you. Glassdoor. You know what? To your point about, you know, culture is the way your team members experience your brand. What are your team members saying on Glassdoor? Or even those that have interviewed at your company?

JACKIE, continued: And how do you take that data and help your brand either improve or maximize that? So, for example. If you had a really great review from a customer, could you turn that into a piece of content that you could leverage on your social media channels or even on your website? So, really thinking about and understanding that data. And then having tools like media monitoring in place, as well as social media monitoring. So, Vincent mentioned this a little bit. But there are tools that will help you understand the sentiment of what people are saying about you on social media. Tools that will help you understand if you do get a lot of earned media coverage, you know what is that coverage? Is it positive? Is it negative? Is it neutral? And that will help inform how you can influence that going forward.

JACKIE, continued: But if you’re not analyzing it today, then you don’t know how to influence it. So, really thinking about how do you harness that data and leverage it for best possible benefit for your brand and your bank?

VINCENT: And Jackie, for those who are starting out or on a budget and maybe can’t afford media monitoring, there are free things you can do like setting up Google Alerts, which will definitely give you a good sense, a starting point sense of where things are at in terms of how your company is being spoken about. You can even do alerts for your executive team. It doesn’t have to just be, and that’s free and you can essentially do as many as you’d like. And then you kind of get an e-mail dashboard or an e-mail report out when there are things that are relevant that have those keywords in them.

CALEB: Yeah. What’s your take on net promoter score? Some people I talked to just swear by it and love it. Some people I talk to say that’s overblown and I don’t know. It’s overhyped and overused, and it’s not implemented correctly to really give you anything helpful. What do you have any take on that?

JACKIE: Net promoter score. You really probably don’t get a great sense of that unless you’ve done something like a brand survey, for example. And so, you know, brand surveys will tell you like if you are able to get net promoter score, it can be a really valuable tool. But not everybody has the capacity to do brand surveys on the regular or the budget.

CALEB: Yeah. People are probably familiar with it from, like car dealerships and things. I think that’s kind of where it was pioneered, I think, but it seems like it’s been used in other places.

JACKIE: Yes. For sure. Yeah, I think you get more valuable insights on a day-to-day basis, honestly, from the tools that we talked about. Like from understanding, aggregating like, what is your Google review, you know, score? What are people saying about your mobile app? As opposed to net promoter score because that’s more vague.

CALEB: Yeah. That’s helpful. Okay, so we’ve talked about earned media, owned media, paid media, understanding and managing public sentiment. So, to land the plane, Jackie, what is the 5th key to managing PR well at your bank?

JACKIE: Yeah, so a crisis comms and media preparation. So, we talked a little bit earlier about media training and being prepared for those media opportunities, but I can’t underscore that enough. Especially when it comes to crisis communication scenarios. So, one of the most common PR misconceptions is that in the event of a crisis, your PR person or firm is going to be the person that the media will talk to. I’ve, you know, worked with plenty of executives that have thought, “Oh well, like just, you know, the PR team will handle it.” The reality is, in the event of a true crisis, the media doesn’t want to talk to the PR person. They want to talk to the person most responsible at the company, and it’s not going to be great for you if you choose not to speak to them. So, the best situation is to be prepared for that and consider who’s the best person to speak in a variety of different scenarios. Think about what the scenarios are that you might experience at your bank and who would be the right person to talk. You know, if it’s, you know, an overall sort of reputation event or something that damages customers holistically, then probably it is the CEO or the COO. If it is something very technical, maybe in the cybersecurity area, you probably would want to have your head of IT trained and at the ready to help field some of those questions. But the time to prepare for the crisis is certainly before you’re in it.

CALEB: Yeah, don’t wait till there’s a war to build an army, as they say.

JACKIE: Yes, yeah, for sure.

VINCENT: And also don’t be afraid to do a refresher. You know, you don’t just get media trained one time, and you’re good to go for the rest of your career. It’s really important to— especially if you are somebody that gets called upon infrequently, your success is going to be that you’re prepared. So, if you had media training last year, and you know, you haven’t done anything with it, it’s not a bad idea to get another one on the books, and just get yourself a little bit more comfortable with what you would do in a scenario.

CALEB: I’ll never forget, like in business school, the Tylenol crisis from the 80s always seems like the golden example of wonderful crisis management, where I guess there was poison or something in some of the Tylenols and the way they handled that—and man, that could have killed their brand completely. And yet today you take a Tylenol and don’t even think twice about it. I don’t know if y’all have ever heard of that case study, but I always think of that one as like the prime crisis management case study.

JACKIE: For sure. And so, that’s a great lead-in to maybe one of the tips I would offer if you do find yourself in a crisis situation. So, in addition to having thought about the various scenarios that you might find yourself in, if you do find yourself in an issue or crisis scenario, be honest about what you know at whatever point in time it is. And give frequent updates. As frequently as possible. The public will be a lot more forgiving if they feel like you are being forthcoming, and you are being honest, and you are providing regular updates than radio silence. We talked a little bit about, you know, media preparation, I would say also, beyond media preparation, make sure that your organization is regularly drilling on all of the various scenarios that you could experience.

JACKIE, continued: So, outline what those are, have tabletop exercises. Run it with all of the people. Run it with half the people that you think might be involved and see how you do, because you know never you never know. Something could happen in the middle of the night. You could have staff away at a meeting or something. Think about all of the possibilities and practice for them. Prior to coming to banking, I worked in the nuclear industry, commercial nuclear for almost 18 years, so definitely have lots of—

CALEB: Lots of crisis scenarios there.

JACKIE: I do. Lots of issues in crisis experience and could tell you lots of stories. But one of the best things that I learned there was the practice of when you’re running those scenarios, dedicating somebody as a scribe, and that is their sole job from start to finish. They are documenting, like timestamped, what was done at every point in time, so that if, you know, this inevitably happens. Like somebody arrives 30 minutes into the situation and it’s like, “What’s going on? You know, what are we doing? What’s been done to date?” They can quickly come up to speed and it doesn’t disrupt the flow of whatever you’re dealing with. I don’t see that practice done a lot today, but I can tell you from lots of issues scenarios. It can be a real time saver in when in a situation where minutes really matter.

CALEB: Yeah, no doubt. Well, I would guess if our listeners did not have a crisis management plan or hadn’t thought about it prior to 2020, going through COVID was probably a wakeup call to think anything out of the blue could happen at any time. And so, it’s important to be prepared, no doubt.

JACKIE: Yes. Absolutely, absolutely. And that’s another like, that’s another great reason why you should run scenarios with half the staff that you think you might have. You know, because you never know. Hopefully we won’t experience another pandemic, but we all know what it’s like to be, you know, operating at maybe not full capacity at any given point in time.

VINCENT: And you know, nobody likes to think about the crisis situations, right? Like, it’s not a pleasant thought for anybody. But if you have the dangerous thought that, “We don’t need to do that because nothing like that is going to happen to us.” You’re a baseball fan, what happens if you’re in the field and you’re not prepared? The ball finds you. And it’s the same thing in this scenario. So, if you’re not prepared for a crisis, you’re treading on dangerous waters. And so, it really is something that in society as it is today, public relations is so important. And dealing with crises in a professional, prepared manner is just something that is part of doing business now.

CALEB: Yeah, no doubt. Well, Jackie and Vincent, this has been very encouraging, enlightening, helpful. Any final words of encouragement for our community bankers out there who are listening?

JACKIE: Well, thanks for having us, Caleb. It’s been great to talk a little bit about PR and social media and something we could go on about for quite a while.

CALEB: Yeah, I could keep going for a few more hours.

JACKIE: Yeah, but we’ve really enjoyed it and, you know, we’re always happy to connect with folks, if you have listeners that want to find us on LinkedIn, we would love to connect and learn a little bit more about their business and answer any questions, et cetera.

VINCENT: It’s been a pleasure, really appreciate it. I think, you know, my main point that I hope everyone takes away is no matter where you are now, there’s always something that you can do, no matter how small it is, to improve. And so, I hope that there are some things that we talked about today that can be implemented for the listeners.

CALEB: Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you guys again for your time.