Episode #622: Navigating PR, Brand Strategy, and AI in the HALO Sector with Katherine Tuominen

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Hey everyone, it's Dave Ganyulan here on Halo

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Talks, filling in for our illustrious Pete Moore. We have

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Catherine coming in from— where are you coming in from, Catherine? New

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York as well. Oh, that's right, that's right. Excellent. So why don't

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you start by introducing yourself? We can nerd out here a little bit on PR

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and marketing. Go ahead and take it away. Yeah,

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so in short, I run Catalyst Brand Strategy, which is a public

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relations and communications firm specializing in

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compliance-heavy industries such as health, wellness, finance,

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you name it. And as you can imagine, it's very much getting a

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lot of publicity these days, especially when it comes to the usage

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of AI and how to really govern an accurate

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message across all these platforms. So I'm sure we'll have plenty to discuss in our

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conversation. Absolutely. And when you reached out to me,

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what was really compelling was the fact that you are specific

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to the, the halo sector. Right. You don't really work

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with anybody else. Is that correct? Exactly. Yes. And we're also

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unique in the way that we only work with one founder per vertical, per region

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that they're targeting, meaning that, you know, if we're working with a

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practitioner that is based in New York and they do

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say like a chiropractor, that will be the only chiropractor we work with throughout

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all of New York to really make sure we can serve them, go deep with

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their message, and avoid any conflict of interest.

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Gotcha, gotcha. Great. Well, you know our audience, a lot of folks are

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private equity, they're founders, they're fitness facility owners,

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VCs, right? That type of thing. Let's—

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can you start out by giving a very specific

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example, obviously no names, about, you know,

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how something in PR may or may not have happened

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to affect someone's valuation

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Positively or negatively? And I know that you're

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governed by confidentiality agreements here, but can you speak

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in general terms without peeling back the curtain?

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Absolutely, yes. There have been several instances

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and incidents. Ones that come to mind include old

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filings that may have been lodged against you. It could be potentially

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an old breach of, you know, a contract you had If you're, for

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example, a therapist and someone filed a report against you,

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or if you're, you know, in fitness and

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someone sued you, that could also be from an employment level. Any of these sort

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of legal filings do stay on your record permanently, and

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it is well within the publicist or journalist's right to

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do some digging when they are reporting or writing about you. And that can

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also resurface. And sometimes we've had clients get denied for

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coverage because of their track record or history, even if it was

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decades ago. And so one of the things that we do is we

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basically— you need to have a clear crisis management plan in these

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cases where you can promote a certain type of messaging and

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lead with that messaging above the kind of prior history.

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And you can also on occasion request a scrub where you're

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basically going through and erasing anything that may support this

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this, I guess, past history that's no longer relevant to the brand.

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And in some cases, get the pieces taken down,

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especially if it's slanderous or it goes against your current messaging.

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Interesting. Do you have an example of something like

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that that you could share without giving away the name?

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Yeah. So one example is one of our

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clients was where they had a practice that they were running and

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one of their employees sued them for—

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the exact reason remains— well, I'll just leave it at that. Sued them

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for something. Yeah. Okay. And, you know, we were, we were in talks to

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get them featured in a really well-known lifestyle

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publication. And halfway through getting that cleared, the

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publication came back to us and said, I'm sorry, we cannot run the story anymore.

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We've just discovered X about this person. And so

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we went, we basically went back to the person and said, you know,

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had we known about this prior, because she'd done her best to

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kind of hide it from us and dig it away. And we'd flagged that this

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could be an issue. But she was like, no, no, it's not an issue. And

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then it indeed was. So long story short, what we then

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did was for all further communication, we had it as a

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contingency plan and backup on ways that we could address and

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counter this if it was brought up in the future. So the biggest thing is

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to be prepared, have a plan for it. Don't try and hide it. Journalists and

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publicists will find it. And by extension, it can create

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a long-term negative impact on how your brand is perceived when

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that exit comes. Yeah. Yeah. Let's,

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let's, let's take a step back a little bit because, you know, there is a

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lot of people in this space that may never have

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contracted with a PR agency before. Right.

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What, what can people expect? Like if it's a

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fitness facility or a founder or What can people expect

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when they contract with a PR agency like yourself

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who specializes in the halo sector? And, you know, maybe

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they're vetting someone else for the sake of argument. Let's just go down this

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road. What are some red flags to go along with

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that as well? Well, for us, transparency is

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key. So there's so much smoke and mirrors in this space.

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And, you know, these days with AI, now more than ever, it's

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getting harder to differentiate between a good quality publication and just

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random junk. I think all business owners can relate to their inbox being

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flooded by get featured on the COVID of X magazine and you're like, what is

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this magazine? I've never heard of it. What is this? And so, you know, we

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get a lot of messages on a day-to-day basis from our clients saying, is

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this a legitimate opportunity? Can you do a background check? Can you

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verify whether we should pursue this or not? And so we almost

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act as the second layer brand buffer for them to really

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ensure that they're able to make valuable decisions about which opportunities

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to take and why. And going back to your question around red

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flags, you should really, you should know your numbers in terms of the

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journalists that you, or publicists that you work with. So for example, they should be

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able to tell you what metrics can verify the quality of that

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publication and how it does link back to whether it's your

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website traffic, backlinks, searchability, you name it, and

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really verify the quality that it brings in terms of

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business returns, not just the glossy logos.

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Halo Talks is brought to you by Ice Miller, our proud legal

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partner. Everybody wants to build the next great Halo business.

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Apparently, some people think downloading a contract counts as a

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legal strategy. Good luck with that. Your legal team is

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Ice Miller, icemiller.com, and thank you from your friends

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at Halo Talks and Integrity Square.

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There's that old conversation of, well, should we advertise or should we do

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PR or both? Right. Mm-hmm. What

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I know the answer to this, but I'd like to hear how you explain it.

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Right. When someone says, when a fitness facility owner, sake of

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argument, whoever, someone says, hey, Catherine, you know,

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we're going to allocate X amount of dollars to an ad

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spend versus, you know, a PR agency. What would you say to

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that? I would say that

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if you look at the number one marketing channel year on year, the

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answer is word-of-mouth marketing. And what is word-of-mouth

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marketing? It's human to human saying, I recommend this. And it

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goes to show that it doesn't matter what new platforms pop up, this will continue

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to be something that humans crave and trust in and of each other. And

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so we take that a step further and we say that What is public

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relations? It's in the name itself, relationships. So it's all

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about the one-to-one and then one-to-many human relations that you're

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able to connect and the relationships that you build. So

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I preface this by saying that you can run a pay-to-play

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ad and just kind of spray it out, or you can build in

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earned trust, credibility, and an

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audience that wants to know more. Through PR. And so

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that's the difference. I would say it's not necessarily and— it's not

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necessarily or, it would be and. And this is the way that we're able

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to complement your existing marketing ecosystem. Right.

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That's a great answer. So when

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someone signs on with you, for example, or any other PR agency,

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take them through it step by step. What

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literally is the first thing that happens? How does it work

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month over month? What are— what's the client responsible

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for? What are you responsible for, etc.?

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Well, I'll skim through this, but in short, we start off with— That

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looks a lot, right? Yeah, but we'll— I'll keep it, you know, maybe

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high level. But we start off with a diagnostic, and that's where we'll do a

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thorough audit of both your professional and personal brand and any

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relevant stakeholders you'd like us to include. Include with that audit. I mentioned this

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because, yes, again, you might have posted something on Facebook in your

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college days, which could come back to bite you. And we want to be on

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the right side of the story. So we basically do that audit

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for you to support you. And then that will help us

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determine where we can best go in terms of category ranking,

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what you want to be known for, your thought leadership, key angles to lean on,

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and etc. We then build out what's known as your editorial calendar.

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We don't invent this. This exists in the world. It's things like Valentine's Day.

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All the fitness people here would know that you think that January is going to

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be your peak season, and it is, but then there's the dropout rate. And then

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there's also people who resubscribe or realize they need help in March

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because they tried to DIY it with their New Year's resolution and it lasted 2

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weeks. And now they're like, okay, I need to go all in. So anyway, an

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editorial calendar is mindful of these kind of key dates for your

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industry specifically, and it allows us to forecast

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Hey, we need to get you on this magazine for this month because it happens

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to be mental health awareness month or fitness building month or

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whatever it may be. So this allows us to stay ahead and

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plan your full year. And this should really be part of your social media

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strategy and the rest of your marketing too. So we would become an

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extension of your wider team rather than working in a silo in an ideal

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situation. And then from there, once we have the foundations in place,

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we then go ahead and start the thought leadership and pitching

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process. And the original thought leadership concepts are

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always pre-approved by you, meaning you'll at least know what angles or what

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ideas we're pitching in general. But typically founders and

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business owners don't get bogged into the day-to-day. So they allow us to do

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what we do best, which is then go out and pitch to what we call

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their Dream 100. So this Dream 100 is their list of like, I

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would love to be on Oprah, I would love to be on X. And so

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we end up getting them, we reverse engineer it to work our way

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up to the biggest and brightest, depending on what level

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of experience they have previously. Some can just

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jump straight up, others need to kind of build up their portfolio.

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So then we go out and do the outreach. And we typically do 2 touches

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for outreach, because journalists don't like to be pestered or bothered. If they've said no,

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it's not polite to keep persisting. But we can

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reapproach them later with a fresh angle. So this means that we're able to

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basically start getting those yeses in. And in

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our case, we do guarantee at least 16

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pieces covered throughout the 6-month engagement. And

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this allows us to really kind of go in and make sure you're getting value

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from what we're pitching. And it makes sure that you get the backlinks and it

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can all be tracked and reported. So at the end of each month, we do

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our monthly reporting and we'll say, hey, you've been featured on the following 4

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media outlets. We are media agnostic as well. So we do podcasts,

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broadcast television, radio, and the rest to really make sure that you're

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getting a holistic footprint across these different avenues

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based on where your audience will actually be listening, reading, etc.

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And then the report is basically a way for us to show

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this is how much website traffic you gained. This is how you're now ranking in

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the AI search tool at the top of the search bar, or

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this is how many times your brand has been mentioned or how your category has

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jumped. So it all can be quantifiable towards the wider business

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strategy. Yeah, it's a lot. It's definitely

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a lot. And I don't think people realize how much is

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involved in actual PR, the grunt

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work behind it, the relationships and contact

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information that you have to maintain with the journalists.

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It's a tremendous amount. Exactly. And maybe on that

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as well, one thing that we can take off the founder's plate is

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their ability to show up once and that's it. A good content

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team, what this means is they would show up for that one broadcast, say on

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CNTV or whatever it may be, Fox News, and then that

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piece should be cut into at least 30 pieces of content. So it could be

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you get the transcript and that becomes a newsletter, you get the transcript and it

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becomes 4 different blog posts. And then that can also be

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sliced up into little clips, as I'm sure people have seen on LinkedIn and the

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rest of the socials. So this is a benefit for founders

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because it means that they're not wasting their time and they can use that one

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40-minute cycle to really get their message out for that full month?

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I mean, repurposing is everything, isn't it? You

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know, we're, we're doing that, like, in point of fact,

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we're— to your point, we're doing that with, with Pete. Every Thursday

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we do a 2-minute financial drill, and we had, you know,

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last year we had 52 different pieces of content filmed. We

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just did a presentation— he did a presentation

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at the Athletech Summit, and with Brian Sandler from

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Piper— Brian Smith from Piper Sandler. And that

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30-minute snippet is now becoming 2-minute

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financial drills every Thursday, right? Until that

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runs out with takeaways. So

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100%, I cannot

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agree with you more that repurposing is incredibly important and

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valuable. Absolutely. And it supports that cohesive

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messaging. It does. Exactly. And, you know,

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you talk about the founder and them getting in front of the camera

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or on the mic. You mentioned before in your

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press material and when we spoke prior to this about integrity,

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and obviously that's a word for us. It's literally in our name.

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It's priceless. And it's—

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I'm being a little pessimistic here. It's increasingly rare

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in this space. There is so much Crap out there, right?

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Where do you see brands like

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commonly cross the line into

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overclaiming or overhyping? And how do you keep your

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clients like on the right side of that?

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Yes. So we are— we have to be so careful about this. We do

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use AI for keeping up to date with the latest research

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or policy updates. For example, if there has been a

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recent governance change, if there's been a new law

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update, if there is something that might be pending. Obviously, as humans,

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there's only so much we can absorb and consume in our daily news cycle. And

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so using these tools as research can be extremely useful for us to stay

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ahead and make sure that we're warning clients, hey, this is coming

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up, you know, what side of the conversation do you want to be on? And

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so this allows them to feel prepared and it creates

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guardrails in terms of what they, they are comfortable sharing versus

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what could be potentially a risk. And so all of this is laid out

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again as part of that contingency plan that we set out in the

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first week, and it allows us to keep up to date with the changes.

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But going back to your question around integrity, we really value the

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client's unique framework or IP. And by this, we mean

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that there is usually something that the client has, whether it's a story,

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an aha moment that they, they realized throughout their journey, or

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whether it's a specific kind of framework that they've built that is truly going to

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support the industry. And of course, the people who are

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benefiting from it. And we want to highlight that throughout your thought

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leadership and messaging. And that is really what cuts through from the AI slop

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and gets someone to recognize, wow, there's real passion

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behind this. There's something unique here. And so we want to unearth that

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as part of our work as well.

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This is Pete Moore, and I've got another secret for you.

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What if your gym's biggest growth opportunity isn't another marketing

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campaign, but the relationships you already have happening on

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your gym or club floor? That's the new idea

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behind Promotion Vault. Their platform, which is called

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Playbook, helps fitness operators turn everyday staff and

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member interactions into more memberships, referrals, purchases,

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and repeat visits. How does this work, you may ask? Your staff

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invites someone to take an action. Playbook makes it engaging

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with games, challenges, and meaningful rewards. When that

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action is verified, whether it's a visit, a referral, a

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purchase, a PT session, the reward is earned and the

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next opportunity begins. Think of it as Candyland,

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or think of it as a scavenger hunt. Members can track their

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rewards, milestones, and goals in their own branded

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rewards vault. And for operators, no setup fees, no

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monthly platform subscriptions. And with eligible gift card rewards,

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you only pay the rewards face value when someone claims it and a

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small service fee to P-Vault. Turn your gym floor into the

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CRM that you know it deserves, and let's turn

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in real life human connections into how you

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profit and how you create real communities. Go

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P-Vault, go Playbook, go Halo.

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A big part of your model involves partnerships. Is that

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correct? Yes. Okay. How do you vet those and

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how do you know what's worth it versus like, oh,

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this person has a really good name and we're gonna, you know, we're gonna make

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that happen? Like it could backfire, right?

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As I'm sure you're aware. So how do you make sure that that's

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the right fit out of the gate? Yes.

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So again, research. I sound like a broken record at this point, but

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there is so much information you can pull if you're willing to kind of dig

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deep enough. And so we want to go in and look at their previous track

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record of partnerships, you know, what has and hasn't worked well for

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them. How did that perform? All that information can be

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mostly gathered online if you're willing to look for it. And then also

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things like their ICP, do the audiences really match up?

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Because you're essentially borrowing their audience, which is how you're able to obviously grow faster.

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It's leverage and that can lead to so many more opportunities. And of course the

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borrowed trust and credibility. Likewise, we also wanna know that

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they have skin in the game too. And a big part of that comes down

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to what you negotiate in the contract. And so we do wanna make sure that

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we are involved throughout the full conversation process and not just sort of say, we

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booked you the call, off you go, you can figure out the rest because that's

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when in the contract, it might be shortchanged where

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they'll say, oh, we won't share this with our email list, or actually only a

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portion of the budget will be distributed towards this. And that's not what was

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verbally discussed. So you do want to make sure that you have the right

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representative who is vouching for your brand end to

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end. Yeah, yeah, for sure. And when might—

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this is not an easy question to answer necessarily, but,

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you know, PR could be a big expense, but it's a worthwhile

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expense. But I'm cheating because I'm in marketing for a living, right? But

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like, way back in the day, I kind of learned PR

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from the ground up. I had mentors, I did it myself. We never

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really got any kind of real investment. So I was sort of forced

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to do it from the beginning on my own and had some

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pretty good success with it. But that being said, how—

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what would you advise You know, a founder or

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fitness chain or a franchise or whatever, when might be a good

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time for them to consider bringing on a PR agency?

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Like, how would they know, you know, when the time is right?

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I get this question all the time. And I would say, I mean, like any

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marketer, we kind of say the sooner the better.

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But, you know, without any bias, I'll also say that there are different kinds of

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PR agencies. We're a boutique firm. I've been

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in it for a decade, but our actual company's only 4 years in.

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And so we kind of price accordingly. And so I'll say that

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people often think, oh, it's smoke and mirrors. You have to be a celebrity to

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get to that point. And that's not true at all. There are plenty of us

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who love working on the ground with startups and scale-ups who have a big

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message to share and they know they need to get the message out. And so

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I would say, yeah,

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give it a go. At least have that first consultation, have that first call and

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see, will this make sense? And then

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maybe on going back to your question around when is a good place to start,

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the thing we often see is people, especially now, they're reacting to the news

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cycles or they're reacting to what they're seeing on socials and they're trying to jump

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on different trends and different tactics. PR is so old school in

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what it kind of represents in the sense that it's storytelling. It's been

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around for ages. And so I mentioned this to say that

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getting a consultation can help you figure out what message to

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start sharing even from the get-go so that can be cohesive throughout the

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lifecycle of your brand. Yeah. And that's,

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and to your point, the sooner the better, right? Making sure the narrative

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is nailed down from the get-go is so

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critical. A very good friend of Integrity Square,

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Roger Harvey, mentions it all the time. It's storytelling.

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You know, he or she who tells the best story wins. Right.

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He says it all the time and it's completely true.

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I firmly believe that. And as a founder,

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it's very difficult to tell your own

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story without having a non-biased pair of

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eyes. Right. It's really hard. So

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true. Yes. But essential nonetheless.

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Yeah, 100% agreed. We're at about

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21 minutes here, so I'm going to wrap up. But before we

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do, do you have any advice or any

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suggestions for folks in the halo sector? Any like

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blinking red, you know, red lights that people need to be aware of or any

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tips or techniques? That's part of the question.

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The other part of the question is, you know, how can people get a hold

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of you and what would the potential next steps be if they wanted to work

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with you? Yeah, absolutely. So right now we're seeing that

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listicles, which is basically when an article says top 5 X or,

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you know, number the top 7 Y

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places to visit or whatever it may be, these listicles are

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getting picked up and ranked higher in these AI

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learning models. So you'll see that in the past, it used to be really, really

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challenging to get onto Google number 1 page. It still is. But now

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you can jump the Google number 1 ranking. And basically, if you're featured in one

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of these media articles, you'll get pushed to the top, very,

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very top of the search bar through these AI channels. And so in a weird

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way, PR is having a revival where we can directly show

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a huge spike in traffic, in interest and overall

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brand awareness through this kind of, I guess, new

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tools and AI models that are getting rolled out.

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So that's my way of saying that it is a unique window. We don't know

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how long this window is going to last. We don't know exactly how it's going

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to evolve. But we do know that these tools compound in the sense that they

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are constantly scraping and learning. So for those who get in early, you

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are at an unfair advantage in comparison to those who might kind of switch on

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and try and get these, I guess, listicles in their

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name later on when it's already been learned and it's already at a different

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stage of the development. So yeah, if you, if you're open to it, if

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you have the budget, now is such a prime opportunity. And we haven't seen an

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opportunity like this in, I want to say, like years. So

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definitely consider it. And then in terms of getting in touch with us, we do

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offer a free consultation where we'll map out your PR strategy and

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identify ways that we can directly support your business outcomes.

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So feel free to get in touch with us at www.catalystbrandstrategy.com.

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Love it. All right. Well, that's great. It's great that you offer a free consultation.

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I think that that's a no-brainer. So thanks for that. Thank you

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again for coming on Halo Talks. It's, it's been great nerding

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out with you a little bit, and maybe we'll touch base in a year or

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two and see where you're at and see how things have changed. Absolutely.

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Thanks so much for the conversation, David. It's always a pleasure. Absolutely. Same, same. Thank

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you.

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This is Pete Moore on Halo Talks, your captain speaking. I am the

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founder and managing partner at Integrity Square. We've been around now

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00:26:06,320 --> 00:26:09,801
for 15 and one-half years. We have been helping

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00:26:09,915 --> 00:26:13,161
people like yourselves get capital, do mergers and

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00:26:13,161 --> 00:26:16,918
acquisitions, consulting, strategic advice in the health,

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00:26:16,998 --> 00:26:20,723
active lifestyle, and outdoor halo sector, trying to help

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as many entrepreneurs as possible get to the next level,

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take that inflection point and be the force behind your growth.

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We are helping companies that have at least $3 million of

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EBITDA, around $10 million of revenue, and

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00:26:35,864 --> 00:26:39,043
we are positioned to help you get institutional growth capital.

425
00:26:39,955 --> 00:26:43,221
or to negotiate deals with strategic partners. If you go to

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00:26:43,334 --> 00:26:44,205
integritysq.com/ISQ,

427
00:26:47,617 --> 00:26:51,302
you can see our capabilities deck. Happy to set up a consultation at any time

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00:26:51,674 --> 00:26:54,955
that is free of charge, and we look forward to helping

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00:26:55,230 --> 00:26:58,945
solve obesity, loneliness, and diabetes. Go Halo!