S1 E4 Gisele Navarro & Relevancy

Stephen Baker:
Hello and welcome to the Digital PR Podcast. A podcast that will cover the big talking points of the digital PR industry. My name is Steve Baker and this is Louise Parker. Hello. We both work at digital marketing agency Propellernet and we’ve both been working in digital PR for a long time. Nearly a decade for you, Lou, right? Yep, that’s right. and over a decade for me now. In the last few years, we’ve seen the digital PR industry explode and with that has come a lot of interesting conversations about how the discipline works and where it’s going. From creativity to relevance to burnout, this podcast will cover the subjects that everyone is talking about with the help of some very special guests.

Louise Parker:
Today I’m having a bit of a fangirl moment because our guest is one of my absolute digital PR idols, the co-founder of probably one of the most admired content marketing agencies out there. It’s Gisele Navarro from Neomam. Gisele and her team at Neomam produce incredible hero content that gains links from the biggest websites in the world. And so much of their work is like art. So if you haven’t already seen it, then I do really recommend checking it out. Today we are talking to Gisele about a big subject in digital PR right now, relevancy. I think the word relevant, when it comes to our work, can mean different things to different people, so we’re excited to get Gisele’s take on it. Welcome to the podcast, Gisele.

Gisele Navarro:
Thank you so much for having me and for those nice things you said. So nice to hear, so thank you.

Louise Parker:
That is quite alright. Both me and Steve are very happy to chat to you.

Stephen Baker:
Yeah, we’re very excited about it. Thanks so much for joining us and what an intro, Lou, as well.

Louise Parker:
Yeah, I didn’t know if it was a little too much.

Stephen Baker:
She was worried it was a little too much.

Louise Parker:
Maybe.

Gisele Navarro:
But you know, it’s nice to hear nice things about our work and it’s just, I mean, yeah, it’s sweet.

Stephen Baker:
Thank you. Well, genuinely, and we’re not just saying this, but There’s a lot of reasons for doing the podcast, but one of the reasons was to meet people and chat to people about topics that are kind of prevalent at the moment, but meet people whose work we genuinely admire and have admired from afar for a while who we haven’t had the opportunity to meet. That said, let’s start with something that’s completely not related to digital PR and not like fully related to digital PR. Just tell us about yourself, Gisele. Tell us a little about yourself. Like, let’s set the scene. Who are you and what are you doing at the moment? You know, all those kinds of things.

Gisele Navarro:
All right. So my name is Gisele Navarro and as you can probably hear in my accent, I am not a native English speaker. I’m originally from Argentina. I’ve been living in the UK for eight years now. I live in the big district with my husband, my two kids, and I lead the team at Neomam. I joined back in 2014 as the head of outreach, and my role just continued to grow and evolve through the years up to the point of being offered the role as the CEO in 2020. what a year to be offered the role of the CEO. And yeah, I think my background is, is actually Sling Building. So I started working as CEO in 2009. And within, you know, I guess, maybe six to eight months, it became super clear to me that what I really liked was Sling Building over anything else. And I’m living in Argentina at the time I was freelancing for for lots of agencies in different places. And looking out into what people were doing, particularly in the UK, that I think always has been like at the forefront when it comes to that, like the teams here have always produced the best work in terms of content led link building, which is what I like the most. And eventually I moved to Europe and, you know, just bounce around agencies and somehow ended up here. And I never left. So Yeah, that’s me.

Stephen Baker:
Wonderful. Well, that’s great background. And just as a follow up question, because I’m genuinely intrigued before we go into kind of the main questions about relevance, but we’ve often wondered how it compares, how the UK digital PR scene compares to ones around the world. And obviously you have experience with that. So you’re saying that the UK digital PR industry is, I was going to say the best, but that’s not necessarily the right word, but is it more advanced than other in its thinking and in its application, or is it just different in the way it approaches it, in your opinion?

Gisele Navarro:
I guess The way I said at the forefront was just because of what I particularly like, which is, as I was saying earlier, like content led link building, which I guess you call digital PR, but it’s like this very specific thing that I think about when I think of a good link, which is, you know, you created something amazing on your site and it’s so, so good that you can go to the higher tier press and it’s still good enough for them instead of you’re hiding it, you know, and you’re trying, you know, you don’t want anybody to see it because they don’t want them to laugh or because actually it’s so naughty that you don’t want anybody to see what you’re doing. And I think here in the UK, thanks to teams like Epiphany and Distilled, you know, they showed us how it can be done. And obviously in America, you know, you have Fractal, which are fantastic and they’ve been fantastic for like a decade. But I guess here in UK, there’s always more, there has always been more talent developed when it comes to that. And I think it is thanks to the fact that, you know, this deal particularly existed and the people from those teams and went on to other teams and then they went to train people and then suddenly, you know, they created all of us in a way. either because we were looking up to them or because we were actually literally trained by them. So I guess that’s how I see it. Now, these days, I think the industry has changed a lot from that point, which is what I like. But again, this is what I like. It’s not, you know, this is not the industry or what digital peer should be. It’s just what I like.

Louise Parker:
It’s interesting you mentioned places like Distilled and stuff like that because to me personally as someone who’s started in the industry what like seven years ago, those kind of versions for me are like Verve and yourself of course. definite ones that always kind of stuck out as thinking like, Oh gosh, they’re really good. Like, that’s what it could be. And it gives you so much inspiration and so much kind of positive like thought behind it. And yeah, it’s really interesting to hear who your kind of like inspiration was and how those people kind of moved into different places and affected the industry. I think same similar thing happened with like Verve and places like that. And yeah, very nice.

Gisele Navarro:
Yeah, for sure. Like I absolutely adore Verve. Like they are They are just best in class. That’s it. You see their work, and it’s just from the idea to the research, to the execution, to the results at the end, they’re just something else completely. They are just outstanding. And I think when it comes to digital PR, if you just think about digital PR of this, the digital side of PR, then to me, would be like the Yetis. They were the people doing the things, you know? And I think Robyn and I too. you were the people who brought PR into it in a way that perhaps when we were just focusing on content, we were doing it from a point of, I guess, more SEO and content in the scope of like the website. And then suddenly you put message on top and it’s just, you know, I guess now we’re at this point where both worlds have collided and, you know, created the mess that we are living in.

Louise Parker:
So yeah. That’s why I was conscious in the intro of referencing like digital PR on yourself, because I think I’ve seen you kind of say maybe you don’t really want to call yourself a digital PR or things like that. I don’t know if that has changed. And maybe you use the term like content marketing more, but content marketing to other people is a totally different thing. And same with digital PR. I feel like the terminology that people use, people have certain things in their brain. And so when you’re trying to have a discussion with people about things, everyone’s thinking about a slightly different version. Which I think is quite apt for this conversation because we’re going to talk about relevancy and I don’t know if you agree but I find if I have a conversation with people about relevancy there’s a few different ways you can interpret it so it becomes a bit messy trying to discuss it and trying to get everyone on the same page. But it would be interesting to hear your opinion, I guess, of what relevancy means to you and why you think it is being discussed more at the moment. Or maybe you don’t. Maybe you think it’s been always been discussed in equal amounts.

Gisele Navarro:
Actually, I kind of do. I do think that it’s been like since I started. And again, I’m coming from like the link building world or the link building arm of what the industry is today. So when I started, there was always conversations about relevance. But back then, I think it was mainly around, you know, the relevance of the anchor text of the link, or the relevance of the geographic location, right? So the TLD, if you have a UK client, you want the UK link, you know, there was relevance in those very micro level SEO, technical SEO way, I guess. And people are obsessed over those things. And there’s always, you know, somebody, the new thing that gets added on top, and then it’s more relevant, then it’s more relevant. And so I think nowadays, I do agree that perhaps in this side of the world, with digital PR, thinking of this thing that started back when things like Epiphany and Distilled and Fractals started doing their big content campaigns and suddenly reaching the higher echelons of press that were only reserved for PR. I think since those days, now obviously there’s been more talk of relevancy within this world, this micro world. And perhaps I guess, you know, now we’re going into topic relevance or audience relevance, which again, audience, then suddenly you’re talking more, you know, PR, you know, vertical publisher, blah, blah. It’s like you’re bringing all these new elements because this again, two worlds kind of collided. I guess, to me, what does it mean to me? I see things in a very simple, I see things in a very simple way. right? Maybe I’m too simplistic, but either it makes sense or it doesn’t. It’s not that complex. If a journalist comes and asks you why, if you can’t answer, is not relevant. If you’re scared that they will ask you is not relevant. If you’re bending your mind over to try to bring it closer to it is not relevant. You know, it’s just, that’s this. If you can’t answer to a New York Times journalist, why this client? And if your answer doesn’t position the client as an expert, or doesn’t make them look good, then it’s not it’s not relevant enough. It’s not good enough. I see it’s super simple. I don’t think I don’t need an AI tool to tell me this or some weird keyword analysis or some like link, backlink, profile, you know. But I guess more, there’s a lot more talk now because perhaps the industry has gone too far outside that, you know, relevant spectrum. And now, you know, this wave is just here to balance things, like things tend to balance themselves over time. So perhaps that’s where we’re at. Perhaps now that digital PR has become this bigger thing, there’s more tech SEOs involved, and now they are the ones that are making these recipes of what this perfect thing will be like they used to when I started as a link builder, and they will give me a recipe that I will look at and be like, How am I supposed to do this? Okay. So there’s always been recipes. So perhaps, you know, the cynical in me thinks perhaps it’s easier to sell when you say it’s relevant. You know, if you tell a client I can give you a relevant, that’s easier to sell, right? Yeah. Because that means that there’s something that is not relevant. So, you know, but again, that’s cynical in me. Perhaps it’s just the universe balancing itself. You never know.

Stephen Baker:
I love the simplicity with which you think about it, because I think we work in an industry where things can quite quickly become overcomplicated. And Lou, you alluded to this in the question. I think one of the reasons it’s being discussed quite a lot is because people do interpret it differently, and they may be overcomplicated in their minds. And genuinely, I’m not just saying this, I would share your view that as long as it makes sense to you, the team, the client, you can explain it to a journalist. that is absolutely relevant. That’s fine. I’m really interested in what you’ve just said there as well about it being easier to sell in to clients as well because then we present this binary option like it’s relevant and therefore if it’s not relevant it’s irrelevant. So sometimes it’s open to interpretation. I think one of the things we wanted to ask was do you think people, and let’s be a little bit more specific about that, people in our industry are being kind of too literal when it comes to relevance. And just to sort of clarify that, I guess what we mean by that is, do you think people kind of look at a campaign and put their own bias on it and go, well, that doesn’t make any sense? Like, because I think I must admit, I think I saw a tweet from you, Giselle, where you were like, well, actually, sometimes you need to dig a little bit deeper because you don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes. you just don’t know. So you don’t know if there’s an SEO relevance, a brand relevance, something that the client has specifically asked for. Do you think people are just generally too literal about it? And then they kind of jump on the bandwagon and go, well, that’s an irrelevant campaign. That makes no sense, but it’s just to them.

Gisele Navarro:
Yeah. Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think relevance is not this black and white thing, you know, like input, say, come relevancy. Like that’s not how it works because, you know, If you are using a tool that’s telling you 10 words that these are the 10 words that you’re allowed to ideate with, then you’re missing the point. Because if it were to be that way, then only people who sell Christmas trees should be allowed to make launching campaigns about Christmas stuff. And that’s not how it works. The fact that it’s called digital PR, it has to do with PR, it has to do with message communication. We’re here to engage other people. And that is why creating Christmas content would make sense to a business that sells electrical products, if they’re trading in a country where Christmas is a big deal, because it allows them to be part of a wider conversation that is happening. And if they can find a way to do that, that engages people, and that, you know, presents them in a positive light, and that makes people think, wow, they’re cool, they’re funny, they get it, I want to know more, who are these people, then it’s relevant, right? Even if a keyword doesn’t match, because it’s not Christmas, and you are selling your, I don’t know, lights for a trade. And I don’t know, like to me that I know I’m going to be like, I’m sorry about throughout these questions, probably I’m going to be really simplistic about it. But I honestly think it’s way more simple than than the people are thinking, even though it’s not black and white thing, because I think in a way, If you’re launching a campaign to engage people, then relevancy has to be taken into account. The fact that our minds can connect thousands of things in a second, you know, and sometimes something from a keyword point of view might not make sense, but it’s something that people are definitely talking about right now. And if you can have an opinion on it that will insert you in the right conversation at the right time, the right message, then, you know, you will be missing out on a PR opportunity, you know. But if what you’re doing is building a campaign that is just the one goal is to build links to a sales page, then that’s a different story. And perhaps relevancy would be more of a black and white thing. And you should be thinking, you know, if I am saying like this, I don’t know, electric supplies, whatever. And it’s somebody that is selling a plug for if you can find a way of finding data of Christmas, people dying of like plugging in their Christmas lights because the plug was incorrect. That is your choice of like, well, this is that this is super relevant. Now, do people want to think about dying? Like, do I want to be the one telling them to be scared of lights, like right now? Like, is that, is it true? Is it enough for me to be scaring people? Or am I just going for a headlamp? Because it could be the most relevant thing in the world, you know, but it could be the wrong thing to do. So again, relevancy, it’s, you need to think beyond the, well, the robot says it’s relevant.

Louise Parker:
I love the fact you have a voice there. That’s a good robot voice. Oh God. We won’t cut that out, we’re going to keep that in. No, please cut it out. We were going to ask around, you know, is there a difference with relevance when it comes to SEO versus relevance when it comes to brand? But I think you basically kind of just answered that, you know, there could be, you know, those kind of KPIs and links that are great for SEO. But as you just described, getting there could be completely off brand, bad for the brand, all that kind of stuff. Would you like to elaborate any further on that on the kind of difference between relevant for SEO and relevant for brand?

Gisele Navarro:
Yeah, I mean, I think it’s just that difference between, you know, on the one hand, you have an algorithm and on the other one, you have people. So in that sense, there is a difference. Obviously, if you’re thinking ahead, like what Google wants, if they would like, they would love if their algorithm would be as good as a human mind. That’s what they’re trying to do. That’s why they’re using all of our data. They’re definitely trying. So then it makes sense that you’re just thinking about the people. Because at the end of the day, that’s where we’re going, right? So just trying to do something for the algorithm today, could be like really short term thinking, really. But I guess a good way of I like to think about relevancy sometimes is like, You know, many brands have been built on the shoulders of adverts that were irrelevant, that made people feel, feel something, you know, and that if it were to be a campaign pitch to an SEO team, they will have rejected it. But you look at it in advertising and the industry is like, wow, this is amazing. And everybody loves it. But then if you do a campaign like that, they’ll be like, that’s irrelevant. Like, well, Perhaps that’s the thing. It’s like these two worlds collide and there’s a side of it, which is this technical, you know, algorithm seeking mind that is just trying to get like, no, I want the recipe. It has to be perfect. And it will be a binary answer. because in the, in the machine world, everything is, so there has to be, but then at the same time, you have this other side of the industry, which is actually talking to people, literally like sending emails and recording videos and, you know, engaging with people and people are not binary that way. Like we just, we’re just, no, we’re not that simple. So I guess in that sense is, you know, like I was saying that if you’re doing a campaign, because we just want to build a lot of links to these product, you know, okay, then you can look at it from relevance. But you know what you’re going to do? You’re going to do a fake product. You’re going to be like, ah, this thing that doesn’t exist sold out. And then you’re going to redirect it. So, you know. I’m really cynical when it comes to this stuff, sorry.

Stephen Baker:
No, no, it’s good and refreshing. And I share a lot of your views because as you were talking there, I was thinking of examples from kind of, you know, the advertising world and kind of brand advertising, things like Red Bull, who obviously had a longer term goal in mind of like, okay, we we create energy drinks and they could have just advertised themselves I don’t know on the taste or the you know like oh you get an energy boost and you feel better like kind of Barocca sort of stuff but they were like no we’re going to go after the big play it gives you wings and then we’re going to sponsor all these like extreme sports and like racing teams football teams and now you associate Red Bull with a certain thing it’s a feeling it’s not it wasn’t the most relevant thing you could tie it loosely to energy generally but they could have gone down loads of different routes there so I think you’re right, there’s lots of different ways of overcomplicating it, but there’s always going to be the more technically minded or technical algorithmic way of looking at things where it’s like, we’ve got to keep this super relevant. So if we create electrical products, we need to be creating content about electrical products and be really literal. And then you’re going to have people that are more in the I guess the PR space, the advertising space were like, okay, what does electricity mean? What can it do? What can it unlock for us that’s interesting to say to people? Because the great example you gave, like it might be highly relevant to talk about how you can get electrocuted by Christmas lights, but you’re not going to want to talk about it. You’re going to want to talk about how it can power a child’s Christmas or maybe the most energy efficient Christmas toys or something. I don’t know, like loads of different routes. So really interesting to hear that. I mean, what do you think? people get wrong when trying to make relevant work? Is it just more of the same that we’ve been talking about in that they overcomplicate, they overthink it and they tie themselves up in knots or is it something different? What do you think they get wrong?

Gisele Navarro:
I think it’s just this super binary idea of either it’s 100% relevant or it’s 100% irrelevant and you have to choose. Either you pitch a list of engagement ring training hacks for an engagement ring brand, or you make an index showing the best cities for happy hours. You know, it’s like, that’s it. Either you go one way or the other. It’s like a pendulum, right? It’s not, it’s not. And by forcing, if you’re forcing relevant too much, people will go like, People will either stifle themselves into this really small space and run out of ideas fast, or they will just be pushing against it so much that they will go all the other way. And those questions you were asking, that’s the way to go, right? It’s like, well, what is it about this thing? What do people use this for? Trying to actually live with this topic a little bit instead of, you know, looking at a spreadsheet and try to, from there, come up with an idea because those are the only things you’re supposed to talk about. Set some SEO somewhere. So again, perhaps that’s, I guess that’s this idea of it’s either relevant or it’s not. And there is no degrees of that. There is no brand relevancy, SEO relevancy. There is no, no, no, no. It’s either relevant or it’s not. I guess that’s where people go wrong because then they start making lots of assumptions when they shouldn’t and they start putting, you know, it’s easy to say that when you’re not the person coming up with ideas.

Louise Parker:
Yeah, totally. When you’ve basically ruled out a whole load of different stuff and you’re left with a very small pool, you’re like, oh great, well I’m the one who has to think of something.

Gisele Navarro:
Yeah, exactly. And then when you have a conversation with your client and you start, you know, they start digging in and you start finding out more about them and the things that they care about as a business, then you might find out that even though they send, say, for example, this case, they sell electrical appliances. No, what was it? Electrical. I don’t remember what it was. Plugs. I don’t know why I made it plugs. There you go. Okay, let’s say another thing cables, they sell cables, but they are actually, you know, they are very invested in their community. And they, I don’t know, they fund the local football team. And then suddenly, you have something that that is meaningful to them, that is relevant to them, in the sense of who they are as a business as an entity in their community. But that’s not relevant. Even though they could probably do things with that, that would be more human and would humanise their brand a hell of a lot more. But again, I guess it’s this 100% it’s either relevant or not, it’s black and white. To me, that’s what people get wrong.

Louise Parker:
And I guess that you mentioned about, you know, it stifles the creativity or the possibility of particular ideas that you could do. Do you also think it also, from an SEO perspective, I guess, more of a more algorithmic thing, it stifles the opportunity to get more kind of broad range of links, either like a higher number of links? Do you think it has that kind of, you know, you’re kind of doing something because you want to be good in terms of SEO and be really super relevant, but do you think it might actually have a detrimental effect? on another part of, you know, SEO benefits that you could get from maybe a slight wider range of ideas?

Gisele Navarro:
Yeah. I mean, again, all this depends so much on the strategy and, you know, which sector you’re in and how big your competitors are and all these things. But like, if you get to a point where all the, like the list that you get points in the direction of the only people who could link to you talking about these things would be your competitors.

Louise Parker:
Then you are a bit stuck, right?

Gisele Navarro:
Yeah, you’re a bit stuck, because then what do you do, you know? And if that’s not the case, and you say, well, first, let’s go with the, you know, the industry publications, how many are there? One, How many are there that link? No, because they are managed by somebody who doesn’t know what an external link is, you know, and then what? And you keep going, well, let’s go to the bloggers that talk about this. How many are there? Well, there’s two wordpress.com and one blogspot.com. You know, um, I think to me personally, because of the type of work that we do, Our mission is to create content that people want to share. We want actual people, lots of people. The more people, the better. So that’s how we see it. And the clients that come to us, they see it the same way. And in some cases, they are big brands. And in other cases, they want to be a big brand. They want to be somebody online. They want to become an entity that is not just a website. and having lots of people all over the web talking about their stuff in a context that is relevant to them, as relevant as possible, because it makes sense, because nobody’s out there arguing, why are these people? They might be arguing the results of a study, but they’re not arguing, why are these people doing this stuff? That’s good for them because of their strategy. I do think, in my view, you want to reach as far as you can reach. Because if this is digital PR, that would make sense, right? That we want to go as far as possible for people that we didn’t even think that perhaps might tomorrow say, I need a table with those guys that do the funny things, you know? I don’t know. I would always rather that than you only have three sites and there are only three sites that you can get links from and you already got links from those sites every month over the last three years. Yeah, that’s not good enough. And it may be in a really small place in a really small, it’s not very competitive space, or maybe it is, but it’s super local, hyper local, maybe that’s enough. And in many cases, it will be enough. But if you are big, you’re competing with the big boys, and the big boys right now are the publishers, and the publishers are competing in every vertical, like Forbes the other day, they were I was running to this article, which was like best toys for two year olds, Forbes. They’re making toy pages before Christmas. So you’re competing with them. And they have quite a lot of authority. So you need authority. You’re not going to get it with three sides from the same sides over and over again. But that’s just my opinion.

Stephen Baker:
No, I’d agree. Totally, totally agree. And I think good digital PR should do a really, really good job for SEO, but also, as you said, reach as many people as possible, like brand awareness. It should be raising the profile of that brand. Coming back to what you said about, or you mentioned clients there, and I’m always kidding, certainly not asking you to name names at all. But how many clients, if you don’t mind me asking, actually challenge you on relevance? Because we talked about how different people have a slightly different perception of it. And just to be completely transparent, we’ll present back ideas. And sometimes, not often, but sometimes, we get like, oh, that doesn’t fit our brand, or that doesn’t quite work for us. And I always think, like, I really think it does. I really think it does. I’m happy to challenge it. But also, you can’t push it too far with clients because it’s more, I think sometimes what they’re saying is, I don’t like that idea as much as the others, but they use relevance as the kind of the watchword for it. But I’m just eager to hear your experience because you do some incredible, not just saying it, but some incredible creative ideas. And there must have been lots of ideas that didn’t make it. But how often do you get challenged on it? That was a really long-winded question. Sorry.

Gisele Navarro:
That’s OK. Give me some background info. I guess these days, like, we don’t really get challenged on that. We used to because we used to go way far outside what we would like today. We look back at things we used to do maybe in 2018, 17 and we were like, oh, shocked. What did we do? I think these days we’re a lot more mature when it comes to that. And if a client doesn’t like an idea, usually what they go for is just saying, oh, I just don’t, I’m not sure it’s actually going to get the results. And in our case, we just say we have a guarantee in place if it doesn’t. We do a new project. And, you know, do you trust us? And it only takes one client once to do that and trust us and then see that we were right. But if we were wrong, I’m the first person to come and say, hey, it didn’t work and this is what’s going to happen. But I am that person for my team. I am the crappy client, say, coming in and saying, I just don’t think this is good for the client. I don’t think this makes sense. I don’t think any client should be talking about this. Don’t you think, you know, perhaps it could open up these kind of worms we don’t want to open or, you know, sometimes there are certain clients that are in the press for some reason, at the time when we had it with, we had a VPN client, and they were there, they, people use them to bypass Netflix. you know, their restrictions in countries. And Netflix got really, really smart. And they started locking people out. But not just that, they would lock them out. And if they would lock them out twice, they would take their accounts. So they would just basically just cancel. And this started happening in different countries. And at the time we were working on this really big, really nice Netflix piece of content. And I came into a team when the piece was done, they was done, like it was just ready to go. And I said, look, I don’t think we should do this. Because if you go on Twitter right now and you see what people are telling this client on Twitter, it’s like every two seconds, there’s a new tweet of people complaining about their Netflix being locked out of Netflix and stuff. Like, this is not the time. It’s going to get lots of links, but this is not the time. And I went to a friend and said, look, I don’t think we should pull this before they tell us. And maybe they wouldn’t have told us. But for us, it would be such a mess. Imagine you are outreaching that and you’re going to have some journalist asking at some point, hey, I know there’s some issues with Netflix. And you’re like, oh, God, this wasn’t the point. Just link to the thing. Shut up. So I guess that’s what happens in our case, because we have a very small number of clients. We don’t have an account manager. I’m the closest thing to an account manager. So I am the person that is like the gatekeeper, making sure that things don’t go through to clients that don’t make sense for them, that, you know, they could potentially, as I was saying, might open some kind of worm we don’t want to open and that I know perhaps personally they wouldn’t like sometimes. So sometimes they would say like, oh, I don’t want anything controversial. And they don’t tell you exactly what controversial is, but you know what controversial will be, you know, you know, some things will have some good. So, or they don’t want things that are political, or they’re like, you know, we’re, we’re totally fine with everything, but we don’t want to talk about politics. So I make sure when I have my onboarding calls with clients, we have a whole section is just about no-nos, and I go as deep as possible to unearth at the very beginning, like, all the things they don’t want us to do, they don’t want to see. So we don’t waste our time as well because sometimes people get really excited as well with concepts and things that you send your client and they reject and then it affects them the next time they do ideation. So I try to get all that at the beginning, put in a brief. So then they know this is the framework, this is where you’re working. And if I had to explain to them, when I start saying something, they are the ones that say, ah, I remember now. Yes, you’re right. Or they start saying it and then they look at my face and say, now that I say it, actually, it doesn’t sound like it could be a good fit. And you’re like, yeah, you’re right. But yeah, I’m the horrible client.

Louise Parker:
It’s a good role play to have because it’s much better to be you than the actual client. And it’s really good to get that fresh set of eyes of someone who who hasn’t been like involved in it from the beginning and kind of maybe has got their blinkers on a little bit because like you said you might love an idea and something like that yeah sometimes just telling it to someone else and they’ll be like hang on have you thought about that exactly as you just described and it’s like oh yeah I remember that.

Stephen Baker:
Yeah that classic third set of eyes.

Louise Parker:
Also, I guess kind of on client stuff or when you’re producing work for your clients, do you do any reporting on relevance? So you report on links and things like that, but is there any factor in around relevance? No, I wouldn’t even know how that works.

Gisele Navarro:
I would be like, oh, well, this is irrelevant. In the ranking of relevant to irrelevant is 0.9 irrelevant. No i mean the way i see it if an idea is not relevant then the client will reject it the moment they see it and it doesn’t become a piece of content so there’s nothing to report that’s really it.

Stephen Baker:
I love the simplicity of that and just generally how you think about it because we have been asked in the past to do like sentiment analysis, you know, and like you get those kind of, I’m trying to think of the right word, those companies that will say I will report back on like whether it’s like a positive, neutral and negative sentiment in your coverage and it’s like, okay, fine, I’m not sure exactly how you’re doing that, but often the report is like just a green thumbs up and it will sort of say out of a hundred pieces, a green thumbs up, 89 neutral. It’s like, I don’t know what to do with it. Like, what are you going to say to sort of, but there’s only one piece that was sort of could be construed as negative by a company whose methodology we don’t understand. So I agree. I think it’s kind of probably best avoided unless you know exactly why you’re doing something or how you’re doing it for sure.

Gisele Navarro:
Yeah, again, and I think sometimes reporting particularly is one of those things I get over engineered. Because, and we say the way we see it is we don’t hide behind vanity metrics. So we don’t do, we don’t do, we don’t do reach, we don’t do social media shares, or the only thing we do is links like number of links, and then we choose DR as a general metric to show the strength of these links, or like the quality of these links. Because we agree when we look at a link with a high DR, we are like, yeah, that’s a good site, that was hard. And then we look at that one, we’re like, yeah, that was not that hard. So that’s how we do it. Because if not, when you start adding all this stuff, then what happens is you start training the wrong things in people. So it’s like, well, if you want the thumbs up, we got the thumbs up. Yeah, but there’s only two things. Ah, but 100% thumbs up, you know, or look at all these social shares for this one article, which was the only one that we got live because everything else was rejected. Or, you know, it’s just sometimes when you start, when that starts happening and you start adding things, it’s either because your number one thing is not clear, and that means that everybody on the team thinks that they’re working on different things and some of them will come up with an idea that would do really well on social and another would come up with an idea that would be really relevant and another one would come up with an idea that gets lots of links and how do we explain to all of them that you’re supposed to do everything you know they need a Frankenstein of an idea that does everything because the idea is for the reporting to be positive everywhere but if I worked at agencies and I remember what it was when we had a month that we had to report servicing multiple services to a client and be like, oh, this month, you know, nothing. There’s no links. This didn’t work. So they pushed the PPC report because look at all these conversions that we had, and look at all the traffic we sent through this thing. And then next month, there’s more links and conversions. So we put the links at the top of it, like, look at all the links we got. Because all you’re trying to do is be like, love us, stay with us, look at us, we love you too. Whereas it’s hard when you strip everything away and say, well, either this happens or it doesn’t. And there is no relevance, green thumbs up, positive sentiment that saves you, you know.

Louise Parker:
It’s very, very refreshing to hear that. I know you probably, like I said, you probably wouldn’t call yourself Digital PR, but like, you know, we’re in the same sort of industry. And I think there’s so much talk about Digital PR doesn’t just build links. Like, you know, there’s all these other great things. And yes, that is great. But ultimately, at least for us at Propellernet, all of our clients are with us because they want a positive SEO outcome. And the part that our PR team plays is to build the links that should facilitate that. And I think it’s nice to hear someone be like, yeah, we just report on the links because that’s what they want. And it works.

Stephen Baker:
To be honest with you Gisele, we’re really interested in your methods. We’re not here to steal them, we’re just interested in your methods. So in your opinion, we have our own sort of ways of coming up with ideas and we’re not asking you to sort of tell us exactly how you come up with ideas, but the question really was like around how can people in the digital PR industry ensure they deliver relevant work at all times? So You hinted at this with your kind of, like, where you, you know, you have the onboarding session with a client, you dig really deep into no-nos and things like that. And we have, you know, like, our director of strategy who kind of gives us a bit of a framework, so does tell us things that we shouldn’t touch and things that we should. But for you, yeah, like, what advice would you give someone looking to deliver relevant work, I suppose?

Gisele Navarro:
I think the key is the brief. That is the key, like, and that’s probably sits in the hands of your strategists. If there’s no strategist, then it would be, you know, the lead or the account manager or somebody has to sit down and say, okay, so what does this team need to be able to ideate for this client and this client’s, you know, needs and service and everything and I spend a lot of time… I make all the briefs for our clients. And first, I have a long call with them and trying to understand who they are as a client. Who are they? What do they do exactly? What is the most valuable part of their website? Where do they make their money? And then what is their strategy? I asked them. And some clients, they have it… Most of our clients, they’re also simple minded, like me, I guess. And they’ll be like, right, so this is how we do it. And in two sentences, I tell you exactly their SEO strategy, their brand strategy, everything. Other clients perhaps are more corporate, and they’re like, they bounce me around five people on a call to kind of piece it together. But try to understand, you know, what is the strategy? Why are we here? Why is Neomam here? What is it that you’re expecting us to do? And then what is that you definitely don’t want to see? What is your big no-no? And what else? And what else? And what else? And what else, you know? And what does your boss not want to see? And then, you know, talking about verticals. And I think something that I always talk to my team about is like, there’s places that make sense for a client to be in. And it’s not just the one little industry where they are in. So not every client makes sense everywhere, which is that’s where the irrelevant thing starts. So when you are, you know, you have a, I don’t know, a client that is B2B and suddenly they are doing something about I don’t know, some celebrity Instagram something, something. And you’re like, right, well, it’s about the businesses of these Instagram people. Or is it about them on Instagram? Because one thing is could be relevant and could make sense. And you could end up talking to people that are writing on business sites about celebrity businesses. And the other one loves you on People Magazine. And that’s fine. But it’s outside the scope of where it makes sense for this client to be online. So they’re finding those verticals where it makes sense. It all starts as well with the client. I always ask them like, well, where do you want to see links? What are their sites? If I show you a link, you’d be like, I don’t believe you can do that. And then from there, and the conversations I have with them, And the fact that I’ve been doing this for a really long time and I can look at a site and be like, right, so these verticals make total sense for them. And this is too far, but we could connect if we do like this, a celebrity. We could connect if we’re looking at investments, if we’re looking at, because it makes sense in that suddenly we are talking about some business element and this is a B2B client that talks about, you know, I don’t know, starting a business or something. And then on top of that, I just pile up a lot of content that would have made for a really nice campaign for them based on all this information. So I spend a lot of time online being like, right, this will have been great. And this is not just campaigns from other agencies. This is content, like great stuff, like, oh, the Bloomberg team did this. And this will have been great for this client. They will have had the expertise to talk about this. They could have used their data. I don’t know. And with that, I leave them. And if there’s any message that the client gave us, like, we have this data available, or, you know what, we’re based in the UK, but our previous agency was just getting us in JPL all the time. And we hate those links. We don’t want any UK links. And you’re like, okay, I made a big box that says client doesn’t want to focus on UK. So where they have everything. And with that, they can sit down, and they can just be peaceful, that they don’t have to be constantly asking me, what about this? What about this? Because I really spend a lot of time on this thing. And if they do come and ask me, like, oh, what about this? And I realize, oh, there’s a hole in the brief. I tell them, and then I go to the brief, and I update it. And then I go to anybody else I need to say, hey, I updated the brief. So that, you know, all that information that perhaps happens when they start ideating doesn’t get lost. Because if I just make the brief, and I make it this static thing, six months down the line, it needs a refresh, you know, I constantly refresh the briefs every time before they start ideating on a client, I go into the brief and I refresh it. And I add results that we get, like some of these are the best campaigns we’ve done so far, things that have worked well. So I start those briefs become this living, breathing thing that directs them every time. And it also falls because they know they find something there, they go back. So they keep reading the, you know, that’s why I said at the beginning, perhaps I am the person saying, this is a single fit with a client. And then at the end, the other one saying, actually, now that I look at it, and eventually they don’t even put those ideas forward, because they’ve gone through the brief so many times that they got it. The client doesn’t care about regional UK links. There’s a big box, I remember. I close my eyes and I see it. So I think the brief is everything. And I think that’s why it’s really, really important that the managers do this. Whoever has a position of leadership should be doing this. Just telling people it needs to be more relevant than that without giving them a framework that tells them What is this business? Don’t tell me what is relevant. Just tell me what is this business. Just tell me what makes sense to them in terms of what makes them money. Just put them in the context of the internet. Where do they fit in? That’s how you help. You focus people on where to look at instead of telling them, you know, this is the 10 things and that’s it, and not letting their mind, because the mind is the one that does connections. So if you give them enough information and give them a nice framework, they will go to the right places. Particularly the juniors, you know, the juniors don’t have the experience. And if the only thing you do is just say it has to be relevant, that it says 10 words, they know they’re going to do is just keep sending the same you know reactive stuff and never thinking bigger than that because they know that celebrity engagement bring this celebrity there’s going to be always some engagement and they can always try to guess how much is the rating and that’s it. Eventually, they’re not going to be that motivated or interested. You’re missing out on the bigger ideas, I guess.

Louise Parker:
I mean, that is a great answer. Depending on where we are on our podcast series, it’s either something we’ve already talked about or it’s coming up. We’ve definitely covered that topic with other guests as well in terms of briefs and how important they are. Like you said, not telling people, this is relevant, do this. It’s giving them all the information that, as a human being, will then lead them to relevant ideas. Makes a lot of sense. So do you have any examples of great work that you would consider relevant?

Gisele Navarro:
I do. I have three. I have more actually, but these are like the three that I find easier to explain. So I think the first one is TomTom’s Traffic Index, which I think everybody probably has seen, but for anybody who doesn’t know. So TomTom, they sell navigation products like GPS style stuff. And a few years back, they started using their data to put out a yearly report where they show the congestion levels in different countries. And the report has evolved from like, these are the most congested places to right now they just have like an open call for city planners and policymakers to just improve the way that traffic flows. And I think, first of all, You know, there’s purpose there, which is always a great thing in a campaign. I think that content, it wouldn’t exist without that data, which means that anybody who’s ever want to do something with that, it’s all their data. If a journalist has more questions or whatever, they have an entire page for press to ask for more things. And even though traffic congestion is not a thing for them, that’s not their core product, they don’t solve that, they don’t fix issues around it, it actually is like a real-life connection to the actual people who use TomTom GPS and sit in traffic, either because they’re part of a fleet or they’re a trucker or whatever. you know, great content. It aligns to the people. So it’s a good way to build a bridge between TomTom and real people with the real issues. And it couldn’t exist without their data. So that’s great. Then I really like Hopper’s Instagram rich list, the OG of rich lists. So Hopper. Yeah, it’s great. Hopper is an Instagram scheduling tool. So they started years ago doing this annual ranking of like how much Instagram influencers make and who’s the most, I guess, influential. And I think it makes total sense because first of all, obviously, you know, they they are solidifying themselves, as we know about Instagram. But also I think many of Hopper’s users, they probably the reason that they have a tool like Hopper they put time into creating and planning and scheduling Instagram posts because they want to be one of these people one day. So it’s like aspirational to these people and it’s informational to the readers and it puts them in an expert position when it comes to that. They’ve been doing it every year so if a journalist is writing something about that it would make sense to go to Hopper. They would definitely find them ranking first. And it’s simple, you know, and it’s relevant. And most people would be interested in just having a nosy at it. And then the people who actually use the tool, probably will find it as a, you know, nice thought that one day, maybe they’ll make the list. So, so I really like that one. And then I was thinking about our work. And I think one of the pieces that I like from us, that is relatively recent, that I think is relevant It’s something that was called Wordle Wizards, where we just showed the countries and the cities that were the best at solving Wordle, based on how many attempts the Twitter users of those places, you know, how Wordle, when you would solve it and you would put how many four or five or whatever. So we scrapped a gazillion of tweets and then we found out, and we did this for a client that they are a word game solver site. So they have all these different tools to help people, I guess, cheat would be a word, get better would be another way to put it, at different word games, like Scrabble or Words with Friends or whatever. And they had actually launched a WordFinder tool when we came up with this idea. And we produced this content really, really fast to help them position that tool. And it came out at the time when everybody was talking about it, and everybody was playing it. And it really helped them position themselves as like the world tool, to the point where even today, like if there is some article somewhere about Wordle and giving advice. Either they use the data or they mention them as they have, you know, they have this tool. So it was relevant to them. It was interesting to people. And I love it because of that. And so it looks nice as well, which is good.

Louise Parker:
So yeah, those three would be mine. Excellent choices. I remember the Wordle one particularly because, as you just said, it came out just at the time when everyone was going absolutely crazy for Wordle, sharing all those things on Twitter. And it just, yeah, it was a really great use of data that was just literally in front of everyone’s eyes. Everyone was seeing all the little green boxes on Twitter and it was amazing to make that connection of like, oh, we can actually get some information from that and make this really great story. That was, yeah, fantastic.

Stephen Baker:
We have one final question for you Gisele, which is not on the topic of relevance. It’s just a question we ask all of our guests and it’s, what do you want to see more of in the digital PR industry and what do you want to see less of? It’s a big question, right?

Gisele Navarro:
Okay, it’s a big question. I think what I want to see more of or what I would like to see more of is actual content published on the client website, that’d be nice. I feel like there’s more and more and more of like these content led campaigns that get pushed to press without an actual landing page on the client side. So that means that there’s no method, you know, there’s no sources that are clear. There might be some findings in a press release, but I don’t think that’s a good thing. I think that it could become It’s like the beginning of, it could be the beginning of the end. Being really gloomy, like the weather outside, it just got really dark. I think perhaps, you know, it’s like, it’s so easy to go black hat that way. It’s so easy to push something that is not true. It’s so easy, like, between the moment that you decide not to publish the survey findings in a page, and the moment that you say, do we even have to do a survey? There’s like three steps and suddenly, why do you even bother? Why do you spend the money? If in the end, it doesn’t really matter, does it? You just put it in the press release and send it out. So on the one hand, there’s that. That’s one of the reasons why I think it’s not good practice to keep the content-less campaigns are based on some study or some actual content that should be somewhere. But on the other hand, it’s like, it’s not fair to juniors. Like, what are we teaching them? You know, they need time to craft. They need time. They need to be able to see their work. Like, if all they’re doing is behind, you know, just fast, and it doesn’t really matter, and the method doesn’t matter, and the source is like, what are we teaching them? Like, that’s not cool. So I would like to see more content been published on clients websites. And I wrote this because you sent me this question to prepare, which I appreciate. And what I would like to see less of. And I mean, I toy with so many, it started with less campaigns without content. And I was like, that’s the same as the previous one. But I think I think like perhaps I would like to see less praise in public and slagging people off in the DMs. That’d be nice. I think that over the last couple of years, we built this weird bubble when the only thing that we can talk about in public is positive and we can never disagree and disagree and it’s like hating. But then at the same time, in the DMs, people are ruthless. And sometimes I basically unfollowed everybody on Twitter and started all over again and made lists and all these things to try to kind of, I don’t know, be happier. And every now and again, I would see these tweets of calling people to stop doing something, stop being mean and why people are so horrible. And I’m like, why are people being horrible? I don’t see that at all. And then somebody would say to me, oh, it’s just in the DMs. You’re like, right. So we’re not being horrible in person, which generally being horrible is just disagreeing. So we’re not disagreeing in public. We’re not talking to each other, but we are in the DMs just saying horrible things, you know, or hunting for irrelevant campaigns or whatever bullshit we’re doing. And sorry, I bullshit.

Stephen Baker:
That’s okay, we can swear on this. We can swear.

Gisele Navarro:
Okay. Oh man, if I were to have known.

Stephen Baker:
We could do a full re-record. It’s okay.

Gisele Navarro:
Let’s do it again. No, no. But I think that, you know, I think that there’s growth in disagreement. There really is. And just pretending that everything is peachy all the time and that we love everything and everything is great. And it’s only celebrates like that’s not true. It’s not real. It’s not normal. And it just creates this weird, weird place where people go from being really happy and excited to being really gloomy and hateful. And it’s like, yeah, obviously, there’s no outlet for things. And I don’t think it’s healthy. I don’t think it’s healthy. So I would like to see less of that. I would like us to be comfortable enough to disagree in public and be professional enough to be able to have conversations with other people. without having to just slack people off or block them or whatever that we’re doing just because, you know, we just want this perfect world where everything looks good. Yeah, but maybe, you know, it’s not true. So yeah, I guess that but I guess that’s not that connected to work. It’s just

Louise Parker:
Well, you say that, but I do think our particular industry is… You have a lot of that and I often speculate and I ask my friends who don’t work in either the digital industry in general, I’m like, do you have anything in the world that you are in, the working world that you’re in? And they’re like, no, this sounds absolutely crazy. What on earth? So I do think it’s very relevant to our industry and our work because it does seem to be something that is really quite prevalent, sadly.

Stephen Baker:
We are determined to get this right, Gisele, because we’ve said it a couple of times now in the recordings we’ve done, but we are dreadful at concluding the podcasts. I don’t know why, we just haven’t got it. So, Lou, I think this one’s over to you. Lou’s going to conclude.

Louise Parker:
Thank you, Gisele, for joining us. It’s been an absolute pleasure. And I’m sure all our listeners, we’re very interested to hear all your thoughts. So thank you for taking the time. Really appreciate it. Is there anything that you would like to promote, you know, as we’re at the end of the podcast? Are you hiring, for example? I know you don’t hire often, but if you are, then please do say. Otherwise, I know you probably have your jealousy list coming out at the end of the year. That’s always one to watch, a blog post on your site. That’s always fun.

Gisele Navarro:
Yes. Yes. Thank you so much for having me first. It was really enjoyable. I am looking forward to seeing what people think of this conversation and the conversations that it starts, this whole thing. I’d say if anybody heard anything that I said and disagrees, come at me. Yeah, let’s just talk. It’s totally fine. And the worst thing that could happen is I block you. And yeah, we have talked about the jealousy list, whether we would do it or not. because we’ve seen less and less and less teams actually doing, creating content. So the whole point of us starting it wasn’t just to share any content, we just wanted to share content by teams like ours. So we are still talking about are we going to publish it? Is there value in us doing this anymore? 

Louise Parker:
What do you think? I always very much enjoy it just because I find it a very interesting roundup of the year of, you know, interesting work that people have done. Some things I’ve seen, some things I hadn’t seen before for whatever reason. So I always like it. If you do it just for me, that’d be great.

Stephen Baker:
Just send Lou a list of things you like.

Gisele Navarro:
There you go. Let’s just do that. Way easier. No publishing anything. But yeah, thank you so much for having me. It’s been really, really a big pleasure.

Louise Parker:
No worries at all. Thank you, Gisele. And thank you everyone for listening. As always, mine and Steve’s Twitters are open for any public discussion about the podcast or any other digital PR subject. Thank you for listening.

Stephen Baker:
Thanks again, Gisele. Lovely to speak to you.