Episode 21
Class has started! Communications Professor Drops Some Knowledge with Dr. Jacqueline Lambiase
Welcome Dr. Jacqueline Lambiase to Saturday Soundbites! Dr. Lambiase is a Professor and Department Chair of Strategic Communication at Texas Christian University. Her expertise is in public sector communication and planning, representations of gender, race, and sexualities in media and advertising.Tune in as Veronica and Dr. Lambiase discuss how your visibility strategy can shape your digital presences, your branding and your message.
Veronica: [00:00:00] Hello. Hello and welcome to Saturday soundbites. This is Veronica. So for, and I'm your host here, et cetera, soundbites. We get together every week and we talk all things. Visibility, strategy, communications, marketing, advertising, public relations, branding, you name it. So we come together. We bring you awesome experts and we ultimately want to help you in designing messaging.
[00:00:23] That's. Going to promote your brand, promote your business, promote your organization, your nonprofit. We are here to support all so very excited about it. If you are watching on Facebook, make sure you give us comments down at the bottom. My guess, and I like to respond to questions that you might have, and we also want to make sure that we say hello to everyone.
[00:00:43] That's that's tuning in. And if you're listening on the podcast, make sure you hit subscribe so that you get notified when new episodes drop. So we are going to go ahead and get. I started, I have an amazing guest today, miss Dr. Jackie Lamby. Let me go ahead and bring her on. Give me one second. Here she is.
[00:01:01] Hello. Hi, good morning. So excited to have you here. I just I've been waiting for this episode for so long because I know you were going to bring some phenomenal expertise to the show. So welcome. Welcome.
[00:01:15] Jacqueline: [00:01:15] Glad to be here, Veronica. Thanks for asking me.
[00:01:17] Veronica: [00:01:17] Yeah. Yeah. So tell us a little bit about who you are. I know we've got a lot of folks tuning in that are students that are colleagues of yours.
[00:01:26] Let us know who you are.
[00:01:28] Jacqueline: [00:01:28] Well I'm a native Texan. I grew up here in the Dallas Fort worth area and you know, always thought of myself as a writer and even as a kid. And so grew up in a household where. We sat around reading those big newspaper broadsheets back in the day. And my parents talked to me about ideas and opinions and you kind of had to defend your own perspective.
[00:01:52] And so that's kind of a great introduction to advocacy. And so you know, from there, I, you know, I did improv in high school with some friends and unlike to do funny content, I was a theater nerd. In high school and some things like that. And so all of those things, I think, kind of came together when I was in college, working on it on a student campus paper to, to think of myself as a writer first and foremost.
[00:02:16] And so my professional background is first as a journalist. And then I worked in corporate public relations for about three years on the East coast. And then came back to Texas to go to grad school and think about some of the questions I had about the business, the discipline. As a result of my professional experience.
[00:02:36] Veronica: [00:02:36] Fabulous. And so when you came back to Texas, that's how we connected. Many many years ago, but not that many. It wasn't, it wasn't that many. It was some years ago. So at the university of North Texas, and I loved being in your class, I loved the insight you were you're young, you were fresh. You had come in with all these great life experiences, especially around messaging and communication.
[00:02:59] And. Strategy. Talk to us a little bit about why strategy's important, whether you are working for a governmental entity or big oil and gas corporation, or maybe just running an online entrepreneur business. Why is strategy important in your messaging?
[00:03:14] Jacqueline: [00:03:14] Strategy is essential, simply because if you aren't doing strategy, you're just talking.
[00:03:20] Right. And so in the, in the business, you would just say it's all tactics, no strategy. And if you don't have any strategy, you don't really know how to measure how well you're doing. You don't know how to do the best outreach to the audiences that you most want to have contact with or relationships with.
[00:03:37] And so strategy really is everything. It's what ties together, the mission or goals of your organization and the work that you do.
[00:03:47] Veronica: [00:03:47] And is that something that is just limited to big corporations? I know, you know, you you've worked with a lot of different kinds of groups. Do you just see it in the corporate space or should everyone have a mission and vision?
[00:04:00] Jacqueline: [00:04:00] I feel like, I feel like every person ought to have that, you know, like what are you all about? What is your personal brand? Like who are you? Those are questions that we begin to discover as teenagers or in college or early adulthood. And I think that they apply to young businesses as well. Having a business plan is essential knowing, you know, what kind of money's coming in and going out.
[00:04:22]Where are you? And is it, you know, are the things you're doing are the outcomes you're getting, what you want. And only by planning and strategy, do you have some sort of compass points to help guide you as you go forward? And so I think small businesses can benefit from sort of mission driven or purpose led ideas, because that's what makes us get up in the morning.
[00:04:45] If we don't. One of, if we don't feel like we're doing something that's worthwhile, why get up and do it. And so I think the mission is everything. As long as your eyes are on the mission and everything is aligned toward that mission, then the things that you say in the messaging that you write, or the content that you create.
[00:05:02] Well, I'll help you get to the place you want to go. It lines it up for you, keeps you on the pathway.
[00:05:09] Veronica: [00:05:09] Yeah. And I like to say it's a roadmap. You know, when I'm working with teams, I like to say it's a roadmap and I'm surprised how many times we start working with, especially when we go into volunteer, maybe with our girl local girl Scouts or our church or something like that.
[00:05:22] And you realize these organizations don't have. That that roadmap in place. And so they want help with their visibility and they want help with their messaging. Maybe if there's a campaign going on, but they don't have a plan. And so I always try to make sure people back up just a few steps and let's talk about the plan.
[00:05:41]It exists
[00:05:42] Jacqueline: [00:05:42] exactly. Right. And I think, you know, you can build your strategy a couple of ways. One is from the bottom up. And, and by that, I mean, what kind of messaging and communication are you already doing? And if you are taking sort of the measure or auditing all of those things, you can kind of look at what you're doing and see which of those things is directly tied in with your mission or your goals or your objectives.
[00:06:05] And your objectives of course, are I want to stay in business so you can make a profit, but you probably have other outcomes that you are concerned about in terms of your own quality of life. The wellbeing of yourself and the rest of your coworkers. There's a lot of things that go into what a really good mission is and making sure that you, you know, all the things that you're doing, all the activities earn their keep they're they're worth doing, because you want to work as smart as you can.
[00:06:32] Right now, we are all, you know, exhausted after a year of the pandemic. And competition is tough at any time. And so you don't want to be doing things or building content or messaging that isn't actually adding to your mission. And so by doing this audit on the ground level, you can decide what you want to get rid of it really isn't moving the needle for you or brain wellbeing to your employees.
[00:07:00]You can get rid of that and you can add things that work and you need to also know which things are working for you. And so you want to obviously maintain, nurture those and make them bigger and do more of those things. And so that's a bottom up way. The other way is maybe to build from the top down and to look at your objectives and goals.
[00:07:19] And then line everything up from there to make sure that your tactics, strategies, objectives, and goals are together, are consistent. And so those are some ideas of how to get started on. It could be just a short one or two page plan, but just to get started on locating the pathway. And then finding your comfort in that pathway and then building support and resources around it.
[00:07:45] Veronica: [00:07:45] Yeah. And I love that. And one of the things that I think that people struggle with is they don't know how to get started. They think it needs to be some robust 10, 15 page plan. And I love that you said he can just be a patron
[00:07:58] Jacqueline: [00:07:58] that's right. It it doesn't have to be a big one. I work with my brother and his spouse have a small business in South side of Fort worth.
[00:08:06] And so I sit and talk about things with them. From time to time, they'd been operating this small business for about five years now. And, and we talk about, you know, what's necessary. What isn't, you know, what should you spend your time on? And, and they're, they're so busy and engaged in the day-to-day operations.
[00:08:23] They don't have time to write a big plan. But they do have time to think about their strengths and to build on them and to find that that strong pathway. And so I think they have a really strong brand and that's everything knowing who they are, what their business is about. And delivering that consistently each and every day.
[00:08:42] Veronica: [00:08:42] Yeah. So how does, how does a business develop a strong brand? You, you use that phrase a couple of times. How do, how do you even start with branding?
[00:08:52] Jacqueline: [00:08:52] In a part of it is just a discernment of what, what you're doing, what you want to do, who you are, what do other people think about you? So really the brand, you can do all this work with logos and things like that, but that's really a very small part of what a brand is.
[00:09:10] The brand actually lives in the heads of the people on the outside of your business or your organization. That's where the brand resides. And so a lot of branding is discerning what people are thinking about you and figuring out how to adjust their perception or how to build on your own strengths, that they can see them better to make them more visible.
[00:09:33] Those types of things are important. And so I think, you know, I see organizations like cities or counties, they spend so much time with, you know, thinking about logo and a lot of other things that I'm kind of like dudes. Think about like, well, what do people think about you? Well, how what's the delivery system like in your organization?
[00:09:53] So the brand is a lived experience by your customer or by your stakeholder each and every day. And if that lived experience the customer experience or consumer experience, isn't good. You don't really have a good brand and that your logo is not going to rescue you from that. Yes, you need one. It's good to have a logo.
[00:10:14] There are essential things that people can. See it and know who you are. We know, and we know that that's like a purely human thing, like little kids who are you know, in their infancy can look at the golden arches of McDonald's and they know what that is. Even before they have speech or anything of their own, that like those, those symbols are very powerful.
[00:10:33] But I think the most powerful thing is what is your day to day outreach? Like. Every point of contact that your customer has, that is really what your brand is. And who you are. And so as a college professor representing TCU we have a strong brand we're very proudly purple. When parents and students come to campus and they meet with me to have a tour of our department or those types of things, I'm always thinking about this.
[00:11:02] I I, and I'm thinking about it, not sort of in a cynical marketing way of just like, Hey, I've got to do this like a robot, but what would I want my own children to have as their college tour? What do I want to, what did I want to hear when my daughters were on these tours from, you know, professors like myself.
[00:11:20] And so I try to say those things and be present to them and, and to show them that we really do care. And people at TCU care a lot about their students. And so I'm an extension of that brand. I'm a brand ambassador. And I think if you can get each coworker to see themselves as a brand ambassador, that is just such a valuable asset to your organization, everybody is all in.
[00:11:44] Everyone is doing the work of the brand.
[00:11:48] Veronica: [00:11:48] I think that's fabulous. And a couple of companies come to mind as you were talking about it. One of my favorites is Bucky's. I think their employees are probably some of the best brand ambassadors out there. And for those of you watching and listening, not in Texas, just Google it.
[00:12:04] Becky's I'll put it in the show notes. It's worth it. And I there's actually been some great case studies. I don't know if you've seen them Dr. Lee MBAs, but there's been some great studies about Buc-ee's in their branding and for those communication folks out there, it's definitely it's definitely worth looking up.
[00:12:20] Cause there's someone to model
[00:12:20] Jacqueline: [00:12:20] after. That's right. That's right. I think Buc-ee's is fun. I, my son-in-law who lives in Maryland with my daughter he's from New Jersey and one of the first places we took him when he came to Texas was Bucky's.
[00:12:33] Veronica: [00:12:33] So,
[00:12:33]Jacqueline: [00:12:33] At Christmas he's always getting Bucky's gear. And it's so much fun because every once in a while, he'll see stickers and things on the East coast where he, where they live.
[00:12:41] And it is a strong brand, you know, Southwest airlines is another one. And I think, you know, one of the pieces of this then is. Also nurturing your workforce, of course, but also thinking about how do you do your hiring, even if you're a small business with a few people working, I think it's essential for you to be able to distill the essence of your brand, to them, for you to have that understanding of yourself and your organization.
[00:13:06] And then in the interviewing process, making sure that you can discern that they have pieces that will fit that or that they have an understanding of it so that they can join you in that ambassadorship. And so I think it goes right down to inboarding new employees and everything else that you're doing.
[00:13:25] It's a, it's an essential to like have the whole team on board. Or to do training and team building around the brand that you'd like to have. Southwest airlines is a great example of that. As they interview and train and get people on board there. There's a lot of brand consistency just like at Bucky's.
[00:13:44] Yeah,
[00:13:44] Veronica: [00:13:44] yeah, no, that's another great example. Again, lots of great case studies out there, so check them out. So I'm Dr. Lee MBAs. What are some of the issues that you see? Small organization struggling with maybe I'm solo preneurs or people that work remotely with really small teams. I know you're throughout your academic career, you've looked at different structures and models and in your classes, what are some of the, the, I don't want to say mishaps, but opportunities to learn from and that people get, or they find themselves in,
[00:14:17] Jacqueline: [00:14:17] you know, I think one of the biggest struggles of a small business and entrepreneurship is just.
[00:14:23] Just the operations are everything. And you don't have a lot of time to do some of these sort of tangential activities like marketing or communications very well, or spend a lot of time on them because you're just trying to deliver a product or you know, a service to your customers. And so you get kind of caught up in the day-to-day work and you don't have a lot of time to tend to relationship building.
[00:14:48] And so I think, you know, if you can think about. Every customer touch point as being an opportunity to build a relationship, but also to really listen, I think, you know, listening is something that we don't spend enough time doing as communicators. We think about output a lot and external messaging and we kind of gear ourselves around content creation, but I think, you know, a lot of our time should be spent listening.
[00:15:16] And so I think as a small business owner, the way that you grow a small business is by listening to the people who are already in the house, you've already appreciate you and are giving you business and you're using their insights to push your business forward. And you may not want to grow a whole lot more, but they can help you figure out what your strengths are and where you can maybe drop things off.
[00:15:40] You know, when you watch the shows on television, where. The guys go in or the women go into a small restaurant to try to help them fix themselves. And inevitably their advice is you're making too many dishes. Like you have too many, your menu's too big. And I think those are some insights around small business.
[00:16:01] That can help everyone. Yeah, you're doing, and you may be doing too much when you really need to focus on just a handful of things that you can do really well. And so I think those are some of the things I see when I've been working with some smaller organizations is you already are having to wear a lot of hats because there may be only three or four of you working make sure that you're doing.
[00:16:25] The right work in the right way and that you're not doing extra things that really aren't essential to your business and then find time for that relationship building. And the other thing I would say is also find time to recharge and rest for yourself.
[00:16:40] Veronica: [00:16:40] Yeah, no, that's great advice. Especially during the pandemic.
[00:16:43] And we were talking a little bit about this before the show, the pandemic has really shifted how communicators have had to work, you know, in the newsroom, you know, you sign up for early morning shift, you go on at five, you're ready with your stories. You know, you're gonna have a night shift. You gotta do a live remoter.
[00:17:01]At 10 o'clock. And the same thing started happening in PR all of a sudden PR folks started working like journalists with journalists hours. And I think that you bring up a really good point about recharging and taking time. Are you seeing that that's happening in the profession? I know you work with a lot of professionals in some of the other programs that TCU has, or do you feel like it's still something we need to work on?
[00:17:22]Jacqueline: [00:17:22] You know, the BA the work-life balance is really out of whack. I think, across advertising, marketing, and public relations. And a lot of it is driven by social media, social media never sleeps. And so I I've been asked over the past year, or probably I want to say eight or 10 times to talk to organizations about resting.
[00:17:43] I mean, not really like explicitly about resting, but people say, you know, Jackie, Hey, could you, could you talk to our group about, you know, managing this load and this, with this high stress environment right now? And, and so I go into those spaces of course, to talk about some of the main line issues with public relations and advertising.
[00:18:04] But I'm really mindful of talking about people working smarter instead of harder, especially right now, and finding themselves a backup, somebody who can take over for you for a few days so that you can completely turn everything off. And I think as humans we need that, obviously we're built to spend a third of our life sleeping.
[00:18:31] And so it's an instructive thing for us to think about the fact that we need downtime. And when we look about, we look at the history of work, you know, people always worked at home when they were living on a farm. So, you know, like working from home thing is not new, but we do know that you know, it's, we're having to get used to what that feels like and how we manage it.
[00:18:55] And you know, this sort of on-demand expectation of bosses and supervisors. I think is out of line and I think, you know, discerning your own role and knowing when you need to turn things off is a really a good conversation for you to have with, with the people around you that you're working with, that you can find time for yourself.
[00:19:17] Veronica: [00:19:17] No, I agree. That's that's fantastic. And in my organization that's been something we've really tried to. Promote his self self-care and you know, disconnecting. And I will say when I got into public relations you know, 20 years ago, social media was completely different. You know, there was a, there was a MySpace page maybe that you logged on once a week and put a song on it or something.
[00:19:42] And businesses were trying to figure out how to do it fast forward 20 years. And now I have staff that are specifically designed to manage. Social media. I mean, that is their title, social media coordinator, or you know, working with entrepreneurs, supporting them with their social media branding and they've got teams of people that do it.
[00:20:02] And so I think social media has also. Shifted the way PR supports a brand. And so I know we're getting close to running out of time, but you've got so much expertise. I wanted to get your take on how social media has shifted over the, or has shifted the way messaging has to be crafted because I used to work isn't really working anymore.
[00:20:26] Jacqueline: [00:20:26] Right. I think. We're in the middle of a sea change of figuring all of these things out in terms of the way that, that grew very quickly. And every organization felt like it had to have something on every platform. And now we've built up these large teams of people that you're talking about. Veronica to kind of run these, you know, like these machines of information.
[00:20:51] And I think what what's happened is we become confused about what true engagement is. And I, I always call social media sort of engagement light, and it cannot substitute for face-to-face or deep engagement that you can have during meetings or phone calls or events. Or one-on-one coffee, you know, meetings that, you know, social media is merrily, just a little bit of a blip that people can go find out what they need to know.
[00:21:22] And you've got to be in those channels to give out pertinent information. And there they are a way to ensure some metrical information or you know, good knowledge sharing practices. You know, you don't, you want, you want to be transparent. Social media helps us do that, or it can help us do those things.
[00:21:39] But it can't replace other things that are essential to relationship building, which is at the heart of public relations. And it's really how public relations is quite different from either advertising or marketing. And so while social media can serve the aims of public relations, it can't replace other essential pieces.
[00:22:00] And I think that there's been some confusion about. The amount of time and energy we spend on these channels and really what they're doing for us. I was talking to somebody last week about, they were telling me about this Twitter thing. And I stopped him in the middle of this kind of long discussion about Twitter.
[00:22:17] And I said, well, what does your Twitter site really do for you? Like what does that activity bring to your organization? And there was this pause in our conversation and. And this person said to me, I don't really know. And then a tactic then that maybe should be under investigation. It's it needs to earn its keep or you need to spend that energy on something.
[00:22:42] Yeah. And so I think, you know, at some point in the next a few years, organizations are going to get smarter. I've heard some conversations, for instance, among the sort of city managers and public sector government around some of these really toxic places. In social media, whether that's on Twitter or Facebook or Instagram.
[00:23:03] And they're beginning to question, why are we wanting to have conversations about our public public sector entity in a really toxic space? Do we really want to be part of that? And so I do feel like there's going to be some discernment around this area and hopefully some redistribution of people's work so that they're not tethered to those sites.
[00:23:25] And they're free to build relationships in other ways.
[00:23:29] Veronica: [00:23:29] I love it. And I loved that you clarified that at the heart of public relations is relationship building. And I, I talk about that all the time. I talked to people, whether in the public sector, corporate sector, nonprofit sector, or even just on the online space advertising is designed to see there's a call to action to convert into dollars.
[00:23:50] Come by this. Why do we stay up you know, during the super bowl, watching all the commercials and analyzing all of them, because we there's a PR there's an objective for advertising and it's not the same as public relations. And so as a PR person, I, I have a difficult time helping people to to even be open to the fact that advertising is different than marketing and marketing is different than PR.
[00:24:12] So I love that you bring this academic. Approach to it, because I think whether you're a small business owner or an entrepreneur, or you're running a large organization with 10,000 people, you need to understand that those messages are crafted for those spaces with very different intent. And I think circling back to what you said, that blueprint and having that strategic plan is, is key to making sure all that works together.
[00:24:37] Jacqueline: [00:24:37] Exactly. And that's, you know, the branding piece helps you line all of those. Things up what you're doing on the advertising front, what you're doing on the marketing front and what you're doing, public relations front. There's a lot of interconnectedness that those are interrelated tasks. The messaging needs to be consistent, but you need to be quite clear that having one or two of those really isn't enough, you need all three of those disciplines to help you do the outreach to, to make sure that your organization.
[00:25:08] It is connected to the community it serves and that you are. Really valuing all kinds of channels that can help you reach your stakeholders. Yeah. Agreed.
[00:25:18] Veronica: [00:25:18] Agreed. Well, this has been an incredibly rich conversation. I've enjoyed it so much. I love learning and I took lots of different notes, so I'll be okay.
[00:25:27] Yeah, writing them out in the show notes. So people can go back. Tell us a little bit about what you're doing at TCU. What's TCU doing, I know you've guys have really been present in the public sector space. So kind of let, let our viewers and listeners know what you guys got going on at TCU. And while I drink out of my TCU mug,
[00:25:43] Jacqueline: [00:25:43] thank you for representing the, for horn frogs.
[00:25:46] I well I've been a department chair there off and on for about the past seven years and I'm ready to step out of that role. And just step back up to the faculty and be a professor and I'm looking forward to being in the classroom more. And I also am director of a program called the certified public communicator program, which meets in the summers.
[00:26:04] And that's a real joy for me to be able to work with people like you, Veronica people who work with you and all, all of your cohort of. Great people through Teespring and other organizations and, and those partnerships have been invaluable to us. I mean, I didn't really talk about partnerships, but boy that there, everything there, that's part of that relationship building piece.
[00:26:24] And so I'll be diving into that this summer and completing some other public sector research that I do. I did one for your school district on your school district, Veronica that was published a few years ago about this, some of the great work that your team and your superintendent did together.
[00:26:39] During a hurricane and I'm continuing to work on some of those types of studies. Right now, I'm working on a listening piece and community listening piece around the murder of a Tatiana Jefferson here in Fort worth, Texas. And so I'm going to continue working on, on that research as well.
[00:26:55] Veronica: [00:26:55] Love it love it.
[00:26:56] While you have been a fantastic gas. I learned so much, and I know our viewers that we've got some good comments are, have enjoyed it too. So we will be sure to have the people who are watching on the replay. We're going to have them put hashtag replay and we will tag you. So if we have any questions and people want to learn more about what you're doing or look at some of your research, they can connect.
[00:27:15] So, Dr. thank you so much for being here. It's been an honor. Hi,
[00:27:19] Jacqueline: [00:27:19] thanks. Thanks for having me. Have a great weekend. Everybody take care.
[00:27:24] Veronica: [00:27:24] Awesome. Well, I hope you learned as much as I did. I know it was super short. I couldn't believe it went so fast, but learning and growing is a huge part of making sure that your visibility strategy is successful.
[00:27:35] So I highly encourage you to check out some of the great things that are happening over at TCU and reach out to folks. If you want to connect, this is a great way to learn about growing your partnerships and connecting the organization. With another organization that can help you. So with that, we're going to wrap up another episode of Saturday sound soundbites.
[00:27:53] If you're listening on the podcast, don't forget to hit subscribe. We want to make sure that you get notified when we have our next episode drop. And if you're watching on Facebook and your kitchen is on the replay, hashtag replay so that Dr. Jeff Jackie MBAs, and I can go back and connect with you. So have a great one.
[00:28:09] I'm sending you lots of positive energy and light, and we will talk to you next Saturday.