The PRovoke Media Podcast

Healthy Bites: The Corporate Communications Challenge

The global pandemic — that we’re very much still immersed in — has put healthcare at center stage. At this moment, we’re seeing the complex interplay between health tech, providers, pharma, policy makers and other stakeholders at a global scale. It's both breathtaking and often bewildering. And even before 2020, healthcare was quickly becoming one of the most compelling areas for public relations.

With that in mind, we partnered with Real Chemistry—- formerly W2O — on a new series Healthy Bites. In each episode, we will have a quick chat with a healthcare expert to provide a digestible "what you should know" to help the industry stay ahead of the rapidly changing healthcare public relations and communications landscape. And because healthcare touches every aspect of our lives these days, we hope these 10-minute conversations will be useful no matter what your day-to-day role is.

In this episode, PRovoke Media senior reporter Diana Marszalek talks to John Capodanno, Real Chemistry’s president of financial, corporate & capital markets communications.

Topics covered:

01:40 Changes in corporate comms

03:44 Preparing for future challenges

04:31 The corporate comms skillset

06:22 Exemplary organizations

07:48 Reaching the c-suite

Roundtable: Unlocking B2B results with intelligent PR

PRovoke Media partnered with the Hoffman Agency to explore how public relations ideas and strategies can be deployed to address B2B challenges and drive tangible, sustainable business outcomes.

The discussion featured the following panellists:

• Justin Lam, Business Executive Officer, Nespresso HK & Macau
• Marty Filipowski, Director of Public Relations, APJ, Nutanix
• David Hardoon, Managing Director, Aboitiz Data Innovation
• Caroline Hsu, Managing Director AP, The Hoffman Agency
• Sheel Kohli, Chief Marketing Officer, Eqonex
• Arun Sudhaman, Editor-in-Chief, PRovoke Media (moderator)

0:00 Introductions & relevant experience
6:05 Changing role of PR in B2B marketing strategy 
23:27 Long term objectives vs short term focus
29:34 Understanding what PR can accomplish
35:40 Changes in PR investment, from media relations towards social media, owned/paid content and influencer marketing
50:05 Using data and commstech to measure and prove return on PR investment
1:07:17 Quality of B2B content

Building an agency under the shadow of cancer

Nik Govier founded Blurred three years ago and the agency has quickly become a hugely successful business that was ahead of its time on ESG and purpose. But the journey hasn’t all been smooth. In this frank and moving conversation with Maja Pawinska Sims, Govier talks about her personal story and how she and her team have dealt with multiple cancer diagnoses and bereavement along the way.

White Parents’ Role In Stopping Racism

IPG Dxtra’s chief inclusion & diversity officer Margenett Moore-Roberts joins the Provoke Media podcast to discuss an initiative calling on white parents to discuss race and racism with their kids.

Clean Creatives on its campaign against fossil fuel PR firms

Clean Creatives campaign director Duncan Meisel joins the PRovoke Media podcast to discuss his group's efforts to stop PR firms — most notably Edelman — from working with the fossil fuel industry. In a spirited debate with Paul Holmes, Meisel asserts that such work obstructs urgently needed government action on climate change, and impedes climate justice solutions.

Rebooting The Automotive Launch Playbook With Infiniti

This conversation explores two launches: both in the same sector, during a global pandemic but targeting two very different groups. The Infiniti Motor Company recently  launched its QX55 and QX60 models and the pandemic opened opportunities to experiment with new launch strategies — and ultimately reboot its playbook. The discussion that features Wendy Orthman, Infiniti’s newly-promoted GM of global integrated brand, marketing and communications, in addition to Stephanie Friess, SVP at imre.

Topics Covered: 
02:02 Orthman on moving to Japan to join Infiniti just as Covid-19 enveloped the world 

04:33 Friess draws parallels between automotive and beauty, retail & lifestyle 

06:04 The QX 55 launch — and the unexpected pandemic pivot 

08:12 How lockdown allowed the team to take unprecedented risks 

11:20 How to replicate the sensory experience of buying a car during the pandemic

12:49 Rethinking exec comms around the ‘no suits rule’ 

15:03 ‘It takes a village’ - a new way to approach the marketing mix 

18:43 Getting real about the role of celebs vs more accessible influencers 

21:00 How the ‘Claire’ persona for QX60 still included multicultural nuance

25:11 Lessons learned on integration 

China Inc‘s global PR challenges

Ogilvy PR China president Joe Yu and SVP Simon Webb join the PRovoke Media podcast to discuss how Chinese companies' international communications needs are changing amid heightened geopolitical tensions. The duo also explore the impact on China's goal of building stronger soft power, and the role that American agencies can play in the current environment. 

Podcast: ‘AI Will Have A Huge Influence On How We Engage With Journalists‘

In this conversation, Aarti Shah talks to Aaron Kwittken, who recently launched PRophet, an AI-driven, SaaS platform designed for and by PR professionals to test and re-test pitches before sending to the media. They talk about how AI will help PR professionals craft targeted pitches, whether AI will transform the PR agency business model, the future of the office, and the changed employee-employer dynamic. Kwittken — who is founder/CEO of PRophet and chairman, KWT Global — was also featured on PRovoke Media's Innovator 25 this year.

Topics: 

01:15: How AI can be used to pitch media 
04:20 How PRophet emerged from an internal competition 
07:08 AI will allow the PR workforce to spend more time on higher-quality work
11:39  Reducing 'grunt work' can help improve the industry's mental health crisis 
13:59 Aaron's take on the future of the office
16:58 DE&I priorities in the post-pandemic era 
21:40 Shifting employee-employer dynamics 
24:02 Thoughts on innovation 

PRovokeGlobal: Moving the needle on health equity

In a keynote conversation that featured GSK Consumer Health global corporate affairs SVP Dana Bolden and Walgreen Boots Alliance (WBA) chief communications officer Aaron Radelet, H+K New York EVP Avra Lorrimer examined the role that communicators are playing in closing health equity gaps, finding that their role has — in this respect at least — never been more important. 

PRovokeGlobal: Clorox‘s Jackson Jeyanayagam

The leap from communications to business leadership remains rare within major multinational corporations, but it is one that Jackson Jeyanayagam undertook when he became VP and general manager of Clorox's consumer business in 2019.

In conversation with PRovoke Media editor-in-chief Arun Sudhaman at the PRovokeGlobal Summit last week, Jeyanayagam talked about the lessons he has learned along the way, including the qualities communicators can bring to broader management roles within businesses, and the challenges they need to overcome if they are to make a similar shift.