Jennifer Tramontana, President and Founder of The Fletcher Group, joins Doug Simon, CEO of D S Simon Media, to discuss how agencies can find a niche and evolve alongside it. Jennifer shares how to build a company culture that authentically reflects and supports your team. Doug and Jennifer also explain why earned media is more important than ever in an AI-driven landscape.
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Podcast Host, Doug Simon is CEO at D S Simon Media. D S Simon Media is a recognized innovator in broadcast public relations and the creator of the industry’s first AI-Powered Broadcast Media Tour™. Clients include top brands in healthcare, technology, travel, financial services, food and beverage, consumer goods, entertainment, retail, and non-profits. Celebrating its 40th anniversary, the firm has won more than 100 industry awards.
Contact Doug at dougs@dssimonmedia.com.
TRANSCRIPT:
DOUG: So many agencies, brands, organizations have a niche that they’re trying to target. And if that’s what you’re trying to build, we’ve got the perfect guest for you. Jennifer, why don’t you start by sharing a little bit about the niche that you’ve really been able to target to help grow your agency?
JENNIFER: Sure, and thanks so much for having me. This is really an honor to be able to talk your audience today. So, I started The Fletcher Group in 2005. We’re actually in our twentieth anniversary now. And at the time, you know, I really had a choice. We would be a generalist PR agency or go deep in one space. And what we chose to go deep into is the payments and fintech industry. And at the time, that was a little bit sort of counterintuitive. It was sort of more of a nascent industry back then. Most people didn’t even know about it. It was alternative payments. The word fintech actually didn’t even really exist back then, but I was lucky in that the industry was starting, and I met sort of a number of builders and innovators who were in the space kind of building up this industry. And so, I got this front row seat to what they were doing. So, I, you know, wasn’t smart enough to have created this industry, but I was smart enough to see that there were some great people building in it and that this was probably gonna be big. So, when I started to see what was actually happening, I was like, I think that this industry is gonna take shape, and we can really be alongside with them to tell these amazing stories to consumers, and small businesses, and corporates, about how changes in payments, particularly on the digital side, can really change their business and move money in ways that were cheaper, better, safer, all the things that, you know, we’re used to today.
DOUG: Yeah. So, my takeaway from that is if you pick a niche, pick one that’s gonna be growing. You don’t wanna be in a niche that’s on a downward swing. Obviously, you know, you can find smarts, good fortune to realize, hey, this is gonna be a big thing sort of like people who jumped into AI a couple of years ago.
JENNIFER: I mean, none of us have a crystal ball, right?
DOUG: You just dispelled my whole myth about PR. Isn’t that our whole thing that we’ve got that? And that’s why people should hire us?
JENNIFER: Well, that is the that’s what we project, but this is amongst, you know, friends, right? So, let’s tell really the truth about that, that we don’t all have a crystal ball. And, of course, if we could all pick, like, the right industry to go into, you know, we would all be geniuses, right? So, I feel like I was lucky. I sort of fell into something, but then hopefully was smart enough to take the opportunity and kind of run with it, but you do, to your point, have to pay close attention to what’s happening, right? Like, are there is your industry starting to fragment? Are there huge competitive pressures that might cause this industry to completely tank? The black swan events like COVID or a war or something, those are not things we can generally be ready for, but we can watch trends and be really smart about making sure that if you are gonna pick an industry niche, that you pick one that is, one, you know, enough on the upswing, also broad enough that you can also broaden what you’re offering and maybe work with tangential companies. So, one of the things that we’ve been, you know, really successful in this niche is that we started out with, like, really pure payments companies, but as those companies grew and changed and started to do more things, we kind of, like, grew along with them and started offering the services to, you know, to be broader. So, that’s really important. You’ve gotta really compound your expertise in a way that generalists can’t, but you also still have to stick to all of the fundamentals of, like, good storytelling. That is never gonna go out of style. The differentiator is that you need to, you know, make sure that you understand an industry well enough that you can tell good stories that also are like really grounded in expertise in reality.
DOUG: So interesting because it seems like a real combination of a hyper focus when you think of a niche, but also the flexibility to do things differently because you may have picked a niche and it sort of picked you together at the same time in this payments type of companies, but then you had to become flexible and versatile to handle the different opportunities as it grew.
JENNIFER: One of the first companies we started working with is a really large company that none of your audience will probably have heard of except for they utilize it on a regular basis. So, it’s a company called Blackhawk Network. And Blackhawk is the company that created the gift card malls that now you go into Home Depot, or your local Safeway, or whatever it is, and all of the gift cards are there. So, whenever you’ve purchased one, you know, off of what we call a j hook in the, you know, in the supermarket, That’s our client, Blackhawk, that created that. And, of course, over the years have has added that to, you know, online and digital offerings and all those kind of things. So, those were the kind of companies we initially started working for, but then over time, you know, and in particular, as payments became more digital, there were companies that were doing processing behind the scenes. So, the kind of companies that make, like, Apple Pay and PayPal work. Or if you ever do a buy now, pay later transaction online, there are companies behind the scenes that are making all of that happen. So, we had to, like, learn that and start working for them. And then, you know, now there’s all these, like, fraud and digital identity companies because, you know, there’s more fraud and it’s changed, and we have to make sure that people are protected when they’re doing purchases online. So, we had to learn all of that and work for those kind of companies. And then on top of that, we were originally just a pure PR agency. All of the people that worked here were just pure PR specialists from, you know, from the beginning of their careers, but then we started adding content marketing, and sales enablement, and other services that the companies in our niche on their marketing teams, they needed they needed help with. So, we stayed in the one niche, but we started to deepen the offerings to get more share of their marketing wallet over time.
DOUG: We hear so much about company culture and I’d say one of the proudest things I feel of my forty years. On July 4th, it’ll be our 40th anniversary. So, I don’t quite wanna jump the gun on that is our average tenure is 12 years. You know, keeping the team together, I almost think that’s like the best statement that can be made about company culture, but you’ve got a number of insights there too about how do you keep the company culture intact.
JENNIFER: Yeah. The thing that I like to talk about the most is our company culture, for sure. So, it’s no secret that PR has a, reputation for turning over, you know, staff. And I think there’s a lot of reasons for that. It’s not necessarily that, you know, PR agencies are bad or, you know, that people don’t know how to manage this industry effectively, but it’s a hard job. I think I’ve read somewhere that, like, it’s one of the top ten most stressful jobs there is out there because, you know, every day we gotta come in and try to make something happen for our clients that is not guaranteed, and we have to be really smart about, you know, speaking to journalists.
DOUG: That might be on the agency side where you have those kinds of stresses. In-house people have a different type of stress but they are more involved in a team, getting the most out of the people who are working and supporting them. They are different in the pieces in the industry where stresses are different.
JENNIFER: When I started Fletcher Group in two thousand and five, the vast majority of people who worked in PR were women. It’s still a women centric industry, but there’s certainly lots more men in it now. And what would happen is I saw it with my own eyes sort of over and over again that women would get into their, you know, kind of early thirties. They’d have a baby, and then they wouldn’t come back because it was just too difficult. It was such an on-demand profession, you know, stressful, having to go into the office, all that kind of stuff. So, the first thing that we put in place is that we would be remote, which sounds totally normal today, but was completely, novel and odd in 2005. And we definitely didn’t advertise to our like, to clients that we were remote because we were worried they would think it you know, that we weren’t a real company if we didn’t have an office. But, you know, again, as we’ve all seen over the years, remote has been just fine. And then we did other things as well. You know, the whole point of our culture is that I believe that people can have a very successful career and something that is, you know, not a sort of mid-tier career, but like a hard charging career, while also wanting to have a family or a personal life or personal commitments outside of the office. I think that when you find people who want all of those things, then you can find a balance for how you can work in that capacity and you have a culture of support and others who believe in that as well, not only does it, you know, keep people here long term, which it does, we have an incredibly strong retention rate of both our team members as well as our clients, which is driven from that as well, but, also, they just you know, well rounded people are better at PR. Like, if you have a good life outside of the office and you’re out there experiencing life in ways that, I think that bringing that back to the office and the storytelling for our clients makes a lot of sense. So, there’s that. So, our culture is just really what it’s built around really, like, you know, support. We actually call ourselves the amoeba culture. And what we what we mean by this is sort of, you know, amoebas are always like you know, they’re, like, stretching and, you know, changing shape. We feel like our organization is like that. We as a group sort of, like, flex and wane based on what our clients need or what the other, you know, people that work here need. And that’s been really, you know, key to our, you know, key to our success. The other thing I think is really, really important about culture, though, is that you have to be very honest about what your culture is, not what sounds good like in a job posting. So, you’re very clear about what we offer, what we don’t offer. We try to attract people that are the genuine right fit. You know, we’re not for everybody, and that’s completely fine. And there are, I’m sure, people that work at, you know, other places that offer things that we don’t, and it’s just much better for them. But as long as you are just completely honest and true to that, then usually people, I think, are pretty happy because they know what they signed up for and, you know, you’re living it in your values every day.
DOUG: I love that because one of the things I say, was once asked on a podcast to talk about something that you believe that almost everyone disagrees with you about. I thought about it and what I came up with, actually pretty knew pretty quickly is that for people who are fortunate like us and the people who work with us who have college degree and if those types of jobs that require that kind of thinking, not everyone has the luxury. I think the idea of a work life balance is a BS concept because it creates the idea of a zero-sum game. You put more in your work, your life’s worse. You put more into your life, your work is worse. And I’m like why can’t they just reinforce each other and make each part of your life more rewarding if you’ve got the luxury to be able to pursue that opportunity? I’m not talking about, know, if you’re scrambling working two jobs and delivering and whatever to get by and meet the next rent payment, that’s a different thing for people.
JENNIFER: Yeah. It’s totally it is. And I like the way that you frame it. And, you know, also, again, to be, like, just totally honest with the audience, you know, here, we can’t work for every client. You know? Like, there are lots of clients that could be very lucrative but require such an on demand, you know, kind of relationship that it just wouldn’t work for our organization. You know, we’re not a huge company. We could we could certainly be better. Again, the niche that we are in is huge and is, like, we’re you know, we have the luxury of, like, you know, having a lot of new business that comes to us. But, again, we have to choose the right clients, the right people, the right services to make it work. And it works for us, but, you know, under someone else’s leadership, we might look totally different.
DOUG: I’d like to get to one of my favorite topics that we’ve been talking about a lot these days, The whole idea of AI and generative engine optimization and the incredibly rapid switch. I mean we literally changed our product at the end of last October from satellite media tours to AI-Powered tours to make sure that we were improving clients’ GEO when we were doing the earned media projects and the transformation has been so rapid. What are you advising clients about that?
JENNIFER: So, the first thing that we’re telling clients, and it’s kind of self-serving, but it’s the truth, that earned media has never mattered any time more than it does right now. So, you know, I’m sure everybody saw Muck Rack’s research from last year that something like 89% of the links that are cited by the AI LLMs, they come from earned media and other sources of authoritative content. So, you have to invest in PR and authoritative thought leadership. And if you don’t, you’re basically invisible to the tools that your buyers are using to research you. So, that’s, you know, very important. You know, GEO isn’t really a replacement for SEO. It’s kind of it’s an evolution, and it really rewards what good communications has always rewarded. Credibility, consistency, data, sources, strong points of view from people that the algorithms trust, right? So that’s kind just of, like, leaning into that. We do an annual, research study at The Fletcher Group. It’s a women CMOs in fintech report. We’ve been doing it for several years. And one of our, you know, one of our respondents last year said that, you know, their search volume grew more than three hundred percent in six months in LLM driven models by focusing only on earned media visibility and trusted channel presence. So, like, this is happening. It’s very meaningful, and it’s a nice validation and continuation of, I think, what we’ve always known. This is the right kind of content. But the other thing we’re telling clients, very honestly, is that measurement of this is really still very experimental, which is fine. We just all have to go in with our eyes sort of wide open and share with each other. Like, there’s no silver bullet right now to really understanding exactly, like, do x and y will happen or how to measure it effectively. So, we’re telling them to run experiments, track what you can. Don’t let, the absence of a perfect measurement framework be an excuse for inaction, but that is something that like, the measurement is just not there yet. The very precise measurement of how this is all working. So, we just need to keep experimenting.
DOUG: Yeah. And what we’re seeing in that is that it can’t be a just a one slice of our print we’re gonna do. You gotta be across everything that’s actually we’ve seen a significant growth and that showed up in our AI in the Newsroom survey stations are really adapting. 37% percent are finding about stories through AI related search. And if stations are given two stories to consider, I’m sorry that was just like a six seven moment. I don’t know if I should have gone there with that, but if they’re given two stories to consider, 68% percent of them will prefer the one that they feel is optimized for AI search which is a difference. One other key finding that we’ve seen come out because earned media used to be the province for consumer B2C. Increasingly B2B and significantly higher percentage of B2B customers are using AI search. And it’s a huge number in general because anyone who goes to Google is doing AI search now, but even more of them, I believe it’s more than 90% percent would be using AI search to find partners. So, that’s huge. Any final thoughts you’d like to leave our audience with?
JENNIFER: So, let me just say one more thing about AI that I think is really important and, you know, to any of those software vendors for our industry out there. We really need them to move fast right now because if they don’t, we’re gonna end up doing it ourselves, you know? We have a number of tools and software, you know, services that we pay for as an agency that have been terrific, but we need them to move fast into implementing AI. Because I got people on my team, particularly young people, who are figuring out how to replicate, you know, what some of our software providers are providing to us in a much more customized way. So, I don’t want to go out and build all of my own software. That is not something I really wanna do, but my dream or what I say to what I’m telling our folks about AI, at least for our internal organization, is, like, great if it’s gonna help us, you know, be better writers or, you know, gain some efficiencies, but I really want us to use imagination for, like, what can AI help us do that we never even thought about before. And to me, that sort of, like, panacea is every time we’re going out to a journalist, it’s like, I want us to be able to find the right journalist at exactly the right moment, give them a custom, you know, pitch that makes sense for them, you know, based on, you know, a custom media list with just everything, like, customized to, like, that moment in time for them. And that and I feel like our software providers should be helping us move towards that. And if not, we’re just gonna start experimenting and filling the gap on ourselves. I’d really much rather pay for a purpose built, solution than build it ourselves, but I think that’s really important, that they know that, like, you know, if you have anybody on your team, you know, who cares about technology or is young, they’re just starting to go out and try these things on their own and having a lot of success.
DOUG: Thanks so much for being a guest on the podcast. Loved having you. Continued awesome success.
JENNIFER: Thank you so much, I appreciate it.
