Explore various social media strategies with Douglas Nelson in this masterclass episode with Tom Plasteras and Jamie Harrison, seasoned media veterans and the founders of Verito Communications & Media Strategies. Tune in as they explore the most common pitfalls organizations face when marketing themselves and discover effective approaches to conveying your message to your target audience. Tom and Jamie also emphasize the importance of storytelling, targeted messaging, and a holistic approach that touches both traditional and digital media. Master these efficient tools to transform your media strategies and amplify your organization’s impact.
—
Listen to the podcast here
Verito Communications & Media Strategies With Tom Plasteras, Partner And Jamie Harrison, Partner
Introduction And Career Journey
Welcome to the Discovery Pod, Conversations with Social Profit Leaders. I’m your host, Douglas Nelson, and on this episode, we have a special two-for-one. We have Tom Plasteras and Jamie Harrison, partners at Verito Communications and Media Strategy. In my work across the country and across our social profit sector, I hear very frequently from leaders who are seeking to tell their story to a broader, bigger audience, sometimes a more targeted, more effective audience, but often there’s a conversation in the background that the organization isn’t doing enough to get its story in front of the donors who are going to support them and the general community who needs to be aware of their work.
When I sat down with Tom and Jamie, I was really excited by the work that they’re doing and wanted to share their story and their approach to helping organizations get their message out, connecting that message not just to vanity metrics and social media, but, much more importantly, to the measures related to fundraising and building for advocacy programs. Please enjoy this episode with Tom and Jamie. It is an excellent look at what is possible when the story connects with the message, the strategy with the tactics. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Discovery Pod.
—
Welcome to the Discovery Pod, Tom and Jamie.
Thank you, Douglas.
Thank you.
It’s a real treat to have both of you on the Discovery Pod. We normally just have a single guest, which is good for my attention span, but it takes two of you to tell this great story. I’m really keen to share the work that you’re doing in the social profit sector and how you’re working with organizations to help them tell their stories more effectively and consistently. Before I get too far into explaining what you do, Tom, maybe you could talk a little bit about Verito and the work you’re doing in the sector.
Thanks, Douglas. Verito, I think, basically, Jamie and I both have decades of experience in primarily traditional media. What we’ve seen, and everyone is aware of over time, is just the seismic shift in the media sector and the fragmentation. We put Verito together because that seismic shift has fragmented audiences, which, on the one hand, makes it difficult to access a large audience, but on the other hand, it makes it incredibly easy to target a specific audience. The opportunity for getting your message out directly is much greater, frankly, than it has been in the past. However, it takes an overall holistic approach, we feel. We have experience, we’re one of few agencies that have experience and expertise in earned media, owned media, and paid media. We strongly believe that it takes all three of those components to have an effective campaign and really get seen and heard in your marketplace.
I think you’ve put your fingers directly on an issue that I know comes across the desk of most CEOs in our sector, and it’s a conversation they’re having with their boards and their leadership teams about telling their story in the loudest possible voice to the individuals that they want to be targeting, and everyone else that would be willing to listen. Jamie, as we were getting started, I was asking you whether it was the case for you as well. In my travels, when I hear from CEOs and hear from heads of marketing, the phrase that comes through time and time again is, we’re the best kept secret in town. I’m curious, is it possible to have so many secrets in one town?
That is fair to say. I think every organization, especially those in the not-for-profit sector and corporate social responsibility and charity organizations, are definitely feeling passionate about what they represent. They often feel that way. I think it is challenging for organizations to find ways to get that message out. As Tom was touching on earlier, we’ve seen quite a shift in the last decade with the way people are consuming media and how media is being delivered. It used to be a lot easier process for these organizations to get their message out. You had a dozen or so, two dozen outlets that you could go to, whether that was paid or through earned media outlets, and now there are literally thousands. It is really challenging for organizations to find the right ways to get their message out. The silver lining of this fragmented landscape is that there are ways for people to hyper-target if they have the right solutions in place.
What’s an example of that hyper-targeting?
That’s a good question. Put me on edge here. Put me on the spot.
I can basically respond to that because I’ve seen Jamie do it. Jamie is the expert on our targeted media planning and strategy. What can happen is if you’ve got an organization, and they’ve all got compelling stories, if they produce some content, for example, that is quite compelling. In the hands of somebody like Jamie, he can target specific audiences and get that message right in front of the people that are most likely to support that cause. It’s astounding what can be done when you know how to do it in terms of targeting, whether it be geographically or psychographically. That’s what’s really interesting. Essentially, don’t pay for the extra audience that may not support you anyway, if that makes sense.
You could think of it as a shards-of-glass approach. You might not be reaching as many people, but through strong strategy and looking at really fine tactics, you can find these little nuances and little targets that you normally couldn’t have done before in a broader approach. For charities, for example, when they’re looking at their fundraising efforts, sometimes the data leads to places you didn’t know it would take you to, finding that small demographic that maybe was overlooked, that actually is a really remarkable donor for you. Those types of things can be found through more targeted communication strategies.
Data sometimes leads you to places and demographics you did not know. More targeted communication strategies could lead you to small demographics you have overlooked. Click To TweetI used to always think that, going back a couple of years, the next gold rush in social profit fundraising was going to be when everybody is tired of cycling and putting on LYCRA, they decide that look really doesn’t suit them anymore. What are we going to do after cycling events? Targeting those groups of people that have had a fractured clavicle from a bike-riding accident, that strikes me as one of those targets you’d want to have at the top of your list.
An interesting take.
Maybe not. That’s why you’re the expert and I’m not. I think what a lot of boards and people that come to sit around board tables and sit on the executives of social profit organizations, they’re there because they care a lot. Tom, you mentioned that in your opening remarks. They’re really passionate about the cause, and they want other people to feel that same passion. That leads them to say, “We need to tell more people, we need to do more friend-raising before we can do fundraising. The go-to for that is, let’s get a billboard, let’s get on bus stands, or let’s get on buses themselves.” Is that where organizations should start?
Are you speaking specifically about those examples?
Yeah. I think that’s the default that I hear a lot from volunteer leadership around board tables, “Let’s think of the biggest way, the most prominent way, to get our message out in the broadest fashion.” That’s where we should start.
I would suggest that if you’ve got virtually every charity or non-profit, it does have a compelling story. That’s why they’re working there. It’s a matter of creating that story and articulating it properly. But then, in my opinion, it’s not the broad bus board campaign. There’s definitely a role for that. I think with the resources nowadays, you have to be efficient, and you can target specifically for probably less money.
Further to that, I think sometimes people jump around a little bit too much, and they see a big, splashy tactic, which is what that would be. They have to really think about, does that actually fit with their strategy? It is great to get that really showy piece because it looks good, and it looks good to the public. But if you’re not really using it effectively, then it can be a waste. There is sometimes a place for those types of executions. There’s also a place for small, nuanced, social media-targeted campaigns that are going to reach a certain demographic. You have to look at your overall communication strategy and see what pieces work together and what pieces make sense for that execution.
Tactics And Strategies
I love it. That’s much better than, please don’t do a billboard, which is usually what I say. I really like, Jamie, the distinction made there between tactics and strategy. I would imagine with a lot of the organizations that you’re working with, what you come into is a list of tactics. This is what we’ve been doing. How do you begin to work with an organization to formulate that list of tactics into a strategy or to start with a clean sheet of paper and build that strategy?
The Overarching Strategy
I think there’s a couple of ways to look at it. Sometimes what happens is people get too siloed in their executions, and that informs the tactics. For example, you have a social media tactic, and that’s isolated from whatever your brand tactic might be or whatever your earned media tactic might be, as far as working with the press or trying to get a story out. Maybe it’s for a gala event, whatever it might be. I think you have to break those apart and make sure, first of all, is there an umbrella, overarching strategy that plays into that? If it turns out that that’s not really the case and people have been going down rabbit holes of individual tactics and they’re not working together cohesively, then that’s where we would stop and say, “We need to go back to the starting point here and start with a plan, and then start implementing tactics based on that plan, not working it the other way around.”
Media Strategies: Start with the business plan and implement tactics based on that plan, not the other way around.
I think what a lot of organizations fall into the trap of is, because they are quite often overworked, understaffed, and they’re getting asked to do more with less, they fall for tactics that are really shiny. They look like they’re bottom-funnel, perhaps, and they can get some reaction out of it, and they can show a report at the end of the day. But that was a red herring for them to go after, when the reality is they need to be looking at a broader approach to those things.
One of the ways, Douglas, that we’ve done this too is, we use a phrase, sometimes you get too busy driving to stop for gas. We’ve convinced a few clients that what we really need to do is get in a room, and based on the focus point, we start with a SWOT analysis. We get everybody’s input, and we just find out what’s working, what’s not working. It’s really interesting how some of the strategic objectives will just evolve through the conversation and rise up to the top. It centers everybody on the basic strategic objectives that they’ve got to address, and then the tactics can flow from that.
I find in the work that my colleagues and I here at the Discovery Group get to do with clients around some of the organizational strategy or the fundraising strategy, when we say, “What’s your strategy?” sometimes it’s not there. It is the sum of the tactics. What advice would you give to a CEO who has a board meeting or a committee meeting, and they’re saying, “We need to do more in our marketing, we need to get our message out. That needs to be a priority.” They’re doing a lot of things, perhaps they’ve got that number of tactics running in the organization. Where should they start? What’s the question they should ask when they get their head of marketing on the phone first thing the next morning?
One question I like to ask is, “Despite our best intentions, what is it that we just have not been able to achieve?” That often opens up an area of focus, and it can be either, “Why can’t we achieve that?” Or it could be, “We probably shouldn’t be focused on that anyway.” It’s really an eye-opener when you ask that question.
I really like that. The other piece of advice we often give is that more is not a strategy. If you’re having a hard time connecting with someone who’s speaking a foreign language to you, speaking louder doesn’t solve the problem. I see a lot of that in social profit marketing, just more. Or instead of a half-page in The Globe and Mail on Saturday, let’s spend the money and get the full page. Which may or may not be the right strategy, but it’s just that turning up the volume seems to be the go-to strategy. How often is that the case? How often is that the right strategy?
I would say rarely. It’s rarely the right strategy. You touch on it, there’s that point of diminishing returns as well. The more money you throw at something, it’s not actually going to get you any better results. If it is delivering better results or more results, it’s not proportionate to the amount of money you’re putting into it.
Throwing more money at something will not get you better results. Click To TweetThe other thing about that, Douglas, is, and I alluded to the side of the business that Jamie works on, the targeting ability there and the tracking ability in some cases. If you spent X dollars on an investment of a video that is a compelling story about your organization, and you put it out on certain channels, you can track the leads you might get from that to see if it paid off. That then leads to the discussion next time about whether or not that was a good thing to do, and if so, great. If not, let’s try something else. It’s really a very trackable time to be getting out there.
I think another thing that I would think of in terms of the doing more and being louder concept is, and you’d know more about this than I would, but from my reading, it sounds like while donations have increased over the past decade to charities, the number of donors or the number of Canadians participating is dropping. You’ve got more competition for a smaller pool. The requirement, therefore, the necessity to be pretty targeted and succinct with what you’re trying to get across and strategic about the different channels you use, I think, is very important.
Online Metrics
Jamie, I want to come to you on this because one of the things that I see organizations doing, and it’s coming from a good place and is to some effect to some benefit, when it comes to social media, when it comes to the use of newsletters and the metrics that management teams are reporting onto boards, are the things they can count, the numbers, the click-throughs, the engagements, the time on page, all of those kinds of things. Having been a board member and someone who gets to go to a lot of board meetings as a professional benefit, I see people’s eyes glaze over. The number of people that clicked through went up by 21%.
Is that good? Is that bad? I think one of the challenges that our sector has is making the measurements of these more targeted social media activities, in particular, relevant to the strategy. What should we be paying attention to? How do you approach that with the organizations that you’re working with?
It’s tough because everybody loves a good data point, especially if they can show a report at the end that shows that there was growth somewhere or there was an increase, that’s all great.
Up into the left, up into the right.
If you look at that funnel approach, it’s all bottom funnel attribution, which is great, but if you’re not doing the right things at the top of the funnel as far as awareness, brand, intent, moving people through that, those data points don’t necessarily reflect the reality of the situation. In addition to that, it is difficult to necessarily marry up multiple data points from multiple platforms because they don’t all talk that well to each other. The data you’re getting, it’s still not at a point where we can really track people across the whole ecosystem of media. They have to be taken with a grain of salt.
I think there’s definitely some value there when you start to see a bit of an evolving trend and dig into that trend, not just accept it for a data point, but ask, what created that trend? Why are we seeing that increase there? Was there something else that happened further up in the funnel, in our campaigning, or in our broad-based messaging that actually drove that result rather than that particular tactic down there? Because if you just take that singular data point as gospel, then you might be diverting funds into the wrong place. To your earlier comment of just doubling down and putting more money into that execution, I think it’s really important to understand where that came from.
I think that’s really helpful. If organizations are doing that, counting click-throughs or counting how Instagram followers have gone up by 41%, I saw in a presentation last week that Instagram followers have gone up by 314%. It was presented by the marketing lead as “Look it’s working.” The board was clueless. They wanted to be supportive, they weren’t hostile in any way, but they had no idea what that meant. If leaders are in that situation where they’re reporting on these metrics, just the things that they can count, that bottom-of-the-funnel activity, as you call it, how do they start to change that? How do they start to change the story they’re telling, both within their team that’s leading the work and in the conversation they’re having with their board?
I guess it depends on how built-out the team is and what resources they have to actually dig into it further. I think some things that can be done are awareness studies. In retail, we call them brand lift studies, to see, is your messaging in the market actually lifting your awareness? Is there a greater understanding of what you’re asking of the public or your donors? Compare that to what economies you’re dealing with. Your brand awareness for a retailer might go up, or for an organization might go up because you’ve been doing a great job of marketing, but your donation levels are down. Is that a factor of how they’re moving through the cycle and how they’re transitioning down to that attribution level? Or are there outside factors at play that you don’t know about or aren’t aware of?
I think it would be incumbent on organizations, if they were having a hard time really discerning that information at the board level of what other information can be provided so they can see a more holistic picture of what’s happening? Because at the end of the day, it is difficult to know for sure what that data point means. A 300% growth in Instagram followers seems remarkable, but if you just started up your Instagram account eighteen months ago, maybe it’s not that remarkable.
Maybe it’s not what you need to be measuring. I don’t know.
At the end of the day, I think what they want to measure is how donations are going.
Exactly right.
That’s the end of the day. It’s like the store, how many sales are they getting? What’s the foot traffic in the store? For charities, how many people are attending the event? What are the donation levels? Those are really, at the end of the day, the most important attributes. If you can take that data point and then tie that into fundraising, then you’re starting to connect. That’s a connective tissue there. You’re starting to see a clearer picture. I think boards would understand that more. But if they’re just looking at a marketing report that says, “Look at these data points, we had a 20% increase here or a 15% increase there,” and then they say donations are down, then somewhere in that reporting or that analysis, there’s something missing. That’s often, sometimes, outside the scope of the marketing team or the communications team.
We helped a client with a fundraising event and the same sort of thing. At the end of the day, we were trying to get the word out. On the one hand, you could count X number of impressions their message got, which is what makes your eyes glaze over. The real thing that mattered was the money, donations went up 40% year over year. That’s the figure that matters.
Impact Of Good Storytelling
It’s the issue that I think everybody wants to be paying attention to. They’re looking for what drives those donations, and they may not understand that. With organizations that get it, that understand that connection, what are the hallmarks of the success that they’re having?
I would say, number one is good storytelling because good storytelling connects people with an organization. It trickles down into your communications. It’s the foot of foundation. Good storytelling, to me, is the foundation of communications. Tom, your thoughts?
I agree. Storytelling is number one. I just find that the reaction that the public has to various stories, the more cut-and-dry real that story is, the more it connects. The more authentic, the better. I think I would add consistency, which is also part of our whole reason for being here, which is to have consistency between each of your various channels, whether it be earned media, owned media, or paid media. Often those things, especially because, a lot of the time, traditionally, things have been farmed out to different groups for help, and they go in different directions. The power of having all that consistent is exponential.
The more cut, dry, and real a story is, the more it connects with the people. Click To TweetEarned Media
I want to touch a little bit on earned media. I hear that you’re saying the two of you are connecting. You need to pay attention to owned, which is your own social media, your own website, your own newsletter, those elements. The paid media is the advertising that you buy, the partnerships that you get into with media organizations. The earned media used to be, when I started back in the day, it wasn’t mimeographs, but it was still press release driven. I still occasionally hear organizations saying, “We have a small budget for paid media. We have a small team on the owned media side. We’re really going to put a lot of effort into earned media this year.”
I can think of the three examples where I’ve heard that over the last three years, and not one of them has experienced much success. I think that earned media comes from true believers in the message. “If everybody only knew our story, they’d put us on the front page.” Of course, that’s not usually how it works. What advice would you give to organizations that, out of scarcity of resources or just lack of experience, or a combination of the two, are saying, “We want to lead with earned media”? How would you start that conversation?
Talk Them Out Of It
If they said they wanted to lead with earned media, I would try and talk them out of it. I would tell them it’s an important component, but we’ve got to start with the storytelling. We’ve got to start with the owned content, in whatever form that may be. The earned media, and I think a lot of people, just as you said, think about it in terms of getting a story on the radio or on the TV news or whatever it might be, earned can be a number of things. It can be a significant partnership where they’re helping tell your story. It can be reviews. It can be endorsements from significant people. Traditional media stories, etc., as well. I would say that it starts with your story and then fanning out to the people that you can access that truly believe in what you’re up to.
Media Strategies: Every marketing strategy must start with storytelling. Learn how to start creating your own content in whatever form.
What First Calls Sound Like
When you start working with an organization, I would imagine that they realize they’ve got a problem, or they have something that they want to solve. They have an issue they want to address. What do those first calls sound like when clients are reaching out to you?
I would say that it really varies quite a bit. Because we take that approach of the holistic earned, owned, and paid expertise, some calls come from a strictly, “We need your assistance in guiding our campaign to, like Tom was saying, get some more earned media. What are some recommendations, and how do we do that?” Sometimes it’s doing a SWOT analysis. A lot of the time, too, it’s looking for expertise on how to take their existing campaign and elevate it. We hear this a lot, especially in the not-for-profit sector, that they’ve been leaning heavily into their owned and earned media because they don’t have a lot of budget.
We’ll have to consult with them and say, “Listen, you might need to look at spending a little bit of money to help boost what you’re already doing.” This really, we see this a lot in people that have relied heavily on social media to get their messaging out there. Because for the better part of the last decade, PR firms all turned into social media firms, and they charged a fair amount of money and helped people get this organic reach with their social media. They would guide them through posting and things like that, and then they would get this great reach. Everything’s changed significantly in the last few years, especially, I would say, in the last 2 to 3 years. The algorithms have changed.
Social media organizations are pushing more friends and family content over organizations. There’s content saturation, especially coming out of COVID. Everybody and their mom are posting on social media more than ever, and they’re posting repeatedly, and they’re posting video content. It’s filling the platforms with consumable content, and it’s pushing out what normally would be an organic reach for an organization or a business. The platforms want to monetize. They say, “Listen, you can put an organic post up, but if you want it to go anywhere, you’re going to have to pay to boost it.” Organic reach for an organization is low single digits, and that’s reaching their followers, let alone beyond that.
I’m not saying that they’re all that way. There’s a number of them that see great results because they have great content, great storytelling, and they can get some organic reach with that, but a lot of the ones are just putting up a tile all the time, trying to promote their organization. It’s a real tough hill to climb.
Advice For Marketing Experts
What advice would you have for that VP of Marketing and Communications, or Director of Marketing and Communications, who’s already had the boss come in and say, “We need to do more”? Where do they start?
I think that’s hard to answer because they could be anywhere, truthfully. They could have over-pivoted in one direction. They might have some weaknesses in certain areas that they’re not even aware of. Tom talked about earlier how a lot of the time we’ll go in with organizations and spend four hours with them or a full day and do a SWOT analysis. The idea of that is not always so much for us to get work out of that. It’s when we can direct that conversation and we start finding holes in what they’re doing and opportunities for improvement or areas that they’ve not been focused on or they’ve been over-focused on. I think that tends to show areas where the organizations can look for improvements.
I think that’s really helpful. As you talked about, and I certainly see in my work when it comes to working with organizations around fundraising, that sometimes it is that sum of tactics. They’re doing a lot of things. Some of them they’re doing very well, some of them not as well. Some things they’re not doing that they could be doing that it’s going to augment or it’s adjacent to things that are already doing well, but they’re not thinking of it because they’re not taking half a day to step back and look at the full picture.
It’s hard. People are really working a lot. It’s hard to be able to take that time to reflect when they have a lot of other things that they’re working on. I think that’s just a reality of marketing directors and everybody. We’re all under that pressure. That is where we can give a lending hand, is to come in and say, “Let us have a review. Let us look under the hood, work with us. We’ll take you through the process. Hopefully we can find some ways for you to be a bit more efficient.”
Years ago, when I was learning or being introduced to a lot of the concepts that you’re talking about when it comes to marketing and communications for social profit organizations, I worked with a great vice president, Patsy Worrell at the BC Cancer Foundation. She was a great mentor to me in learning all of that, as I was a CEO who was a fundraiser learning all of the other elements of the business. She was really consistent in thanking me for all of the bad ideas that I had. If I would go into her office and I’d say, “I just had this great idea. Why don’t we,” and whatever it would be, and she would nod. I could still see her smile. She would say, “That’s really interesting. Let me think about that, and I’ll get back to you.”
It took me about a year and a half before I realized she never got back to me on any of those ideas. That was just how she waited for my energy to fail on that. She could move on with her good work. I raise that because I don’t miss an opportunity to talk about Patsy. Also, I think that shiny object, that thing of someone coming into your office and saying, “What about this? Why don’t we just get everybody in the office to do a TikTok dance, and we’ll raise millions of dollars?” What advice do you have for those Marcom leaders who are facing the shiny object syndrome within their own organizations?
I think that it’s not so bad to sometimes have a look at those things.
That’s not what Patsy said.
I’m not saying you have to do them, but I think it’s good to look at. If you have a diverse team, different ages, different perspectives, there can be opportunities that get presented to you where, from your expert opinion, and your position, and your experience, you think that that’s a bad idea. There are trends that evolve. There’s a lot of things that come up, and I think it’s worth looking at those things. Ultimately, if you’re the one in charge and you have the green light button, it’s up to you to decide what you want to do with it. I love the idea that there’s no bad ideas. Great things come from lots of conversations. It’s up to you, through experience, to filter those and decide.
As crazy as this sounds, does this align with our strategy for what we’re doing, or is this going to be something that might seem great, but it distracts from what we’re supposed to be doing? That’s another thing, too. We see this happen all the time. All organizations have this. Where sometimes they go off path because they’ve got a great idea. It’s a great creative execution. It’s a great something or other. It actually doesn’t align with what they should be doing, and it distracts from their messaging. I think you have to take all that in and analyze it. Great teams have the ability to do that.
What a great answer. Thanks for that, Jaime. I really appreciate that. As we’re coming to the end of our conversation, one of the things that really struck me when I had the chance to meet the two of you that I wanted to share a little bit of you’re both expert media veterans, many years in the industry. You’ve had exposure to working with social profit organizations throughout your career. How did you come to putting Verito together as a way to help support social profit organizations in the ways you’ve described today?
I think from my perspective, while we were in media and other roles for a long time, the one thread that was consistent for both of us was a strong tie to community and to doing work in this area. When I started at CKW, everything we did was somehow connected to that kids fund and making it better. Everybody worked for the fund and volunteered. The receptionist would be doing stuff while looking after the door, etc. It was just so ingrained in what we did. I think that that’s where you get the greatest reward, personally, to be completely selfish about it. You feel great helping your community.
Media Strategies: You earn the greatest reward by feeling great in helping your community.
I think that’s something that we both share deeply, and we get excited when we look at some of the work that’s going on out there. Combine that with some of the frustration that exists in getting the story out and knowing that we feel we’ve got the answer. It’s exciting to us to be able to go out there and help people.
Looking Forward
It is really important work that you’re doing and really helping to organize and strategize with organizations to tell the story more effectively and connect that to the raising of money, which is so essential in our sector. I get to ask my final question, which is my favorite question. I ask everybody that comes on the podcast. Jamie, I’ll go to you first, and then Tom. What are you looking forward to?
It’s hard to say. There’s no specific thing that I’m looking forward to as such. I think what’s exciting and on the horizon is the evolution of technology, especially media technology. It’s a really wild time, especially for me, coming from the media planning and buying side, to see how traditional media has changed so much, and everything is swinging towards digital media. Seeing how people consume their information, seeing how we can reach people in these unique ways that we haven’t been able to do before, whether it’s through smart television sets or the streaming platforms and things like that, it’s really exciting. As it grows more and more, we’re going to have more data points that are going to allow us to really customize how we target people.
For me, that’s quite exciting. It’s happening fast. I think I read somewhere not too long ago, this is from Global News, that 48% of Canadian households no longer subscribe to a traditional cable TV bundle. These people are still consuming massive amounts of media, more than ever before, which is remarkable. What I’m excited by and what I’m looking forward to is how does that evolve and our place in that? Because both Tom and I did come from more of a traditional background, but our business has definitely swung into that digital, highly targeted vein, and it’s really exciting to see what’s happening there.
Tom?
The work that we do, we’re nerds at this. We love it. We get all worked up in our meetings in terms of getting excited and coming up with ideas, and that’s great. Earlier, I alluded to an evening where a fundraiser went very well for this particular client. The night that we were at that event, this person works so hard for this place, and he’s such a genuine person doing great things. He was so pleased and supported that evening. What I’m looking forward to is a bunch more of those kinds of nights.
There you go, Tom, bringing it back to the people.
Great answer.
Tom and Jamie, thank you so much for making time to be on the Discovery Pod. I think the work that you’re doing is really valuable in our sector, and I look forward to hearing about even more success stories in the weeks and months to come.
Thanks, Douglas. Appreciate you having us on.
Thank you.
Important Links
About Tom Plasteras
Tom Plasteras is a communications and broadcast executive with over 25 years’ senior leadership experience at high profile, public facing organizations.
As a well-connected member of the senior leadership team at Vancouver Whitecaps FC, he developed internal and external communications strategies and plans, oversaw crisis communications and reputation management and provided regular counsel and support to the CEO and club ownership.
Developed a team of highly engaged communications, public relations, marketing and design professionals that developed original, data driven fan engagement content.
Set the club’s community relations strategy and objectives, building meaningful partnerships and ensuring lasting positive impact in our communities.
At Corus Entertainment, Plasteras was an Influential member of the senior management team in Vancouver and was successful in achieving market leading ratings, social media engagement and revenue generation; his team consistently achieved the #1 ratings position and outpaced the market in revenue growth.
– From 1993-2013, Plasteras built and lead one of the most iconic brands in Canadian broadcasting in a volatile competitive landscape and demanding economic environment. Radio station CKNW was the top-rated station in Metro Vancouver in each year of his tenure and received multiple awards for its programming. He articulated a clear mission and ensured all aspects of business operations reinforced the brand promise. Marketing strategies included traditional media as well as on site activations and a robust social media presence.
– A social media authority, he created and managed the social media strategies for CKNW including design, content creation and guidelines for the use of social media by employees.
– He formed strong relationships with corporate, public sector and community organizations. Part of a team that created several corporate partnerships which generated unprecedented non-traditional revenues and was the lead negotiator of all talent agreements as well as NHL, CFL and NBA rights agreements.
– An engaged member of the community, Plasteras was Vice Chair of the CKNW Kids’ Fund for over 20 years and served as a Board of Director for Kitsilano Neighbourhood House, including 3 years as Vice Chair.
A proud husband and father of three daughters, Plasteras has volunteered with and coached several community sports teams including North Shore Girls soccer, Field Hockey British Columbia, Field Hockey Canada.
About Jaime Harrison
At Verito Communications & Media Strategies, our team thrives on aiding small and medium-sized businesses to navigate the complexities of today’s fragmented media landscape. With over two decades immersed in multi-media advertising, my expertise lies in crafting impactful communications strategies that ensure our clients messages stand out in today’s dynamic market.
