Daily Ad Brief – Interview with Susan Harrow

Daily Ad Brief – Interview with Susan Harrow

Christina: Welcome to Daily Ad Brief. I’m Christina Daves, your host of PR Champions and I’m super excited about this next interview. We are headed to San Rafael, California, to chat with Susan Harrow of Harrow Communications Inc. Welcome Susan!

Susan: Oh so happy to be here and to see you again, I love your show!

Christina: Oh thank you! And I want everyone to know that I started about 10 years ago, one of the first people I followed and really paid attention to in the PR space was Susan. I learned so much from you early on, before I even got into this, when I was marketing my product. So I’m excited to have you on and share everything.

Let’s start with Sell Yourself Without Selling Your Soul® because that’s when I started following you and it just made so much sense. So that I mean, that’s really your platform. Let’s talk about that.

Susan: Yeah, HarperCollins had asked me to write something for their catalog and I wrote, “Susan Harrow Is A Leader In The Socially Conscious Movement,” and there wasn’t one but I really wrote that book because all of my clients and my course participants were asking me for it because they felt like they were prostituting themselves to get good PR. And I said it doesn’t need to be so, you don’t need to sell your soul. You can do PR with integrity and spirit and still get what you want. And that’s how it started.

Christina: Then you kind of dove-tailed that into the Oprah Effect. Everybody understands that but you really marketed it and you really help your clients get that Oprah Effect. So what is that for the people who work with you?

Getting Your Product, Business, Book, or Cause Into Oprah Magazine

Susan: When Oprah’s Show was on I was known as the go-to girl for getting on Oprah because pretty much everybody wanted to be on that show who was an author, an entrepreneur, a business person. They felt like if they got an Oprah that there would be a pile of gold delivered to their doorstep because she has such great influence. And she still does. Now I have a course on O, how to get into O magazine because that is really kind of a hidden gem that most people don’t know. If you have a product, a service, business, book, product, service, or cause that has a huge effect.

Oprah was one of the first influencers because whatever Oprah said that she loved, people would absolutely take action and buy it or engage with it. Right now Oprah still has that kind of influence. I would say she’s the top influencer and I sure wish she would run for president because we would be moving things in our country in a big way.

Oprah Was The Original Influencer

What people most hope for in business is when they do PR, when they land on the Oprah Show or in Fortune, Inc., whether it’s print, or whether it’s a panel, a podcast whatever that is, TV show, they hope that that’s going to have a ginormous effect on their business—and oftentimes it doesn’t.

Because their presence, their brand, and what they’re saying, isn’t resonating with people. So it’s not just the placement, it really is who you are what you stand for, and making sure that those messages are in complete alignment with your offer and what it is you believe in.

Christina: I love that you brought that up because with my clients before we even talk PR, we get the messaging down. What is their brand? What is their feel? What do they want people, when they do get the PR when they come to their website or try to find out about them, do they really know what they stand for? Now you brought up a lot of great things, you brought up Oprah and a lot of other platforms.

You really have to craft the right story for each publication so if you were going to give our viewers one piece of advice on how to figure out how to be relevant to their ideal media outlet where their clients are what would you recommend?

What is Your Signature Story?

Susan: That’s a great question because I think yes, you need to get your messaging down. The first question anyone is going to ask you is: Why do you do what you do? Why did you write your book? Why did you start your business? So you need to have your signature story down and that needs to relate to whatever your offer is. So I think that’s number one. And of course, it needs to be in sync. Everything you do, say, are, and think, from your words to your website needs to be in complete alignment. For when the media arrives on your website or when a person arrives on your website.

Then they know what it is you offer and they have a way to navigate through to your offer. So I think that is super important. I’m sure you talk about this a lot Christina, and I know you do. You’re really tailoring your messaging to the audience and also to the venue that you are on. So hosts have different styles, rhythms, and pacing.

Same with publications, they have certain styles and they have a certain way of writing a piece. A podcaster has a certain way that they conduct their interview. You want to be in sync with that when you’re delivering your message so you connect with their audience, you connect with the host, and you connect with the people that you most want to connect with. And that whatever you’re saying is really connecting directly to what they need and want.

Christina: That is fantastic. Do your homework! If you want to land in the media do your homework.

Susan: There’s no such thing as the blast emails anymore like we used to do in the old days. You just can’t do that anymore. It really needs to be personalized in order for you to really connect.

Christina: That’s awesome! I wish we had an hour to chat but our five ways so fast yes you two but we can do another one. To learn more about Susan and Harrow Communications Inc., head over to Daily Ad Brief. I’m Christina Daves, your host of PR Champions and I’ll see you next time.

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