On Episode 6 of Real Talk, Elizabeth Jones explores how lawyers and law firms use communication strategies. We learn from industry professionals about Emily Malley and her career in Public Relations. In our company spotlight, we learn how she implements communication practices at Primmer, Piper, Eggleston and Cramer, PC.

Author: Lauren Braunegg Published: June 6, 2021

Her brand is iconic and spans across multiple decades, yet Dolly still uses simple brand basics

Spending any time in the southeast portion of the United States, there is one name that reigns supreme, Dolly Parton.  Dolly has been in the hearts of southerners for over 50 years.  Not only is she an incredible singer-songwriter but she has stayed true to her brand.  She has been able to build such a strong positive public image that last year the New York Times wrote an article titled Is There Anything We Can Agree On? Yes: Dolly Parton.  So exactly how has this starlet been able to maintain her brand for so long?  By doing several simple things really, really well.    

• CONSISTENCY IS KEY

Ever since Dolly sang on the Porter Wagoner Show in 1967 launching her career and image with the song “Dumb Blonde”, she has been recognizable.  Having a strong brand image can help launch a long successful career.  While rebranding and brand tweaking does happen to stay current with the times, an initial recognizable brand is needed.  Building a strong foundation for a brand requires consistency.   Dolly Parton has always been known for large blonde wigs, an ample figure, bold eye make-up, eccentric outfits and a larger-than-life persona.  She has a sweet southern charm and spicy quick wit that leave people stunned.  The first one to crack jokes about her enhanced features, Dolly is used to being underestimated.  After all, people do tend to judge her appearance first.  A decade into her career, Dolly did an interview with Barbara Walters, where Barbara asks Dolly about her image.  Questioning why she feels the need to wear all the wigs and even asking if she feels like she’s a joke or being made fun of.  Dolly pauses a moment and says, “…I’d be something that would at least get the attention and maybe once they got past the shock of the ridiculous way I looked and all that.  Then they would see there was part of me to be appreciated, I’m very real where it counts, and that’s inside.”  Later stating, “Oh I know they make fun of me, but actually all these years people have, you know, thought the joke was on me, but it’s been on the public.  I know exactly what I’m doing, and I can change it at any time.”  Every aspect of Dolly’s image is in her control, and she is extremely self-aware of the image she is putting out to the public.  With this type of consistent branding, she has been able to build extreme fan loyalty across a wide demographic.  This has helped her have a successful career over the last 50 years.  After all Dolly did let us know that “just because I’m blonde don’t mean I’m dumb, cause this dumb blonde ain’t nobody’s fool”. 

• BE AUTHENTIC, BUT NO NEED TO OVER SHARE

Although it is ironic to suggest authenticity about someone known for saying “it costs a lot of money to look this cheap”, there is something incredibly authentic about the way Dolly presents herself.  As just mentioned, Dolly is fully aware of the image she is presenting to the public.  The Netflix documentary ,“Dolly Parton: Here I Am”, opens up with Dolly saying that she never really tried to hide herself from anyone and she thinks that is one of the reasons she’s still around, people feel like they know her.  Being authentic helps build upon the foundation of consistency and trust within consumers.  While there are aspects of Dolly that are clearly enhanced, she has always been honest when the topic is brought up.  Poking fun of herself and being humble has made her likeable and adding the southern charm has made Dolly unstoppable.  Most of Dolly’s personal life is unknown to the public and it has left a bit of mystery around the superstar.  Oprah Daily posted the timeline of Dolly’s marriage, a fan favorite mystery, as most people have never seen Carl Dean, yet alone know they’ve been married for over 50 years.  Fans have come to understand that Dolly and Carl’s marriage is something between the two of them.  You might think that her personal life has stayed private due to being not part of the social media movement, but her five million twitter followers would disagree.  Dolly has been able to train her fans to not expect any information that regards her personal life, but she has never not answered a direct question on the subject.  She has found the perfect balance of sharing parts of her life to fans but not oversharing so there is no piece left just for her.     

• EMBRACE THE COMMUNITY 

Throughout the years, Dolly has been the vision of what giving back to the community looks like.  In 1986 Dolly bought Dollywood, a Smokey Mountain theme park in Pidgeon Forge, TN.  Nestled right at the base of the Smokey Mountains and Gatlinburg, TN the resort is the area’s largest attraction and entertains about two million guests annually.  She been able to help expand the area by opening up a dinner theatre called Dolly Parton’s Stampede which features live entertainment and southern fare.  Recently she opened DreamMore Resort, a southern inspired family resort that is located just several miles from the theme park.  She visits the area multiple time a year to do appearances.  Again, thinking of ways to support community, in 1995 Dolly started the Imagination Library as a way to give kids free books within her home county.  She has stated that “the seeds of these dreams are often found in books and the seeds you help plant in your community can grow across the world.”  

Since the start of the program, it has expended into 5 countries, and currently gives one million free books monthly.  In 2016, there were dangerous wildfires that tore through Gatlinburg, TN.  Thousands of buildings were destroyed and the blaze itself, at one point, threated to hit Dollywood.  14 people were killed by the fire and thousands of acres of the national park forest were damaged.  Dolly used her foundation and raised money for the families that lost everything and donated $1,000.00 monthly for five months after the fires to families affected.  At the end of the five months, she donated an additional $5,000.00 for a total of $10,000.00 to each family.  But that was not enough, she pledged an additional three million to an organization that is continuing to support and recover the area.  Time and time again Dolly shows she cares for the community that raised her and provides opportunities that she didn’t have growing up.  These goodwill actions generate a positive public image and allow people to get a better understanding of Dolly’s values.  Consumers favor brands that align with their own personal values and hold companies to those standards.  Again, due to years of consistent branding, Dolly has a golden reputation for not only saying the right thing but doing the right thing.  Companies are all part of a community and have a civic duty to give back and not only be an active participant but embrace the true potential a partnership could provide.  

These three basic principles are a start to a great foundation on building a strong positive brand.  Dolly has been able to build upon her fans loyalty by being truthful and honest.  Trust takes a long time to build with consumers and is easily broken.  However, once it’s broken there is a slim chance you will be able to regain it.  Over the years through authentic consistency and embracing the community, Dolly has been able to build an empire. 

By Lauren Braunegg May 9, 2021

Taking a look at the power of influencers and how they helped promote #FyreFestival

It was promised to be the “cultural experience of the decade”.  Instead, Fyre Festival became one of the greatest debacles of the decade.  Billy McFarland, Co-Founder and CEO of Fyre Media, Inc and Ja Rule, Musician, Actor, and Co-Founder of Fyre Media, Inc had established the company to meet an industry niche.  Fyre Media, Inc would allow consumers to book musicians and other artists to perform at private events.  To streamline their booking platform, the team had developed a talent booking app.  The co-founders decided to host a luxury music festival to promote the new software and gain additional brand awareness.  With an ambitious timeline, the Fyre team got to work promoting the exclusive event.  Two weekends filled with luxury accommodations, gourmet cuisine from celebrity chefs, experiential excursions, and incredible performances.  If you wanted the ultimate VIP experience, you were going to Fyre Festival.  Determined to rival Coachella, top influencers and models were part of the promotional video and branding materials.  Industry naysayers were quickly hushed when the first-time festival sold out.  However, on April 28, 2017 on the first night of Fyre Festival, it was announced that the event had been indefinitely postponed and would ultimately be cancelled. This announcement happened after hundreds of attendees had already arrived on the island.  Word was that all of the musical guests had backed out the last minute as they were finding out about the true conditions of the festival site.  The festival goers found soaked FEMA tents and mattresses for about a third of the attendees, nobody in charge, no electricity, no way to get home, and most shockingly no festival.  Chaos ensued on the island and the world watched it unfold live on the internet.  At first, it seemed like Billy McFarland had simply run out of time and money.  However, there was more at play than just poor planning.  After having numerous lawsuits brought against him, he was charged with two counts of fraud and is currently serving a six-year sentence.  

So how did they get thousands of millennials to buy into this first-time event?  Grant Margolin, Chief Marketing Officer at Fyre Media, LLC hired Jerry Media to run their event marketing and social media accounts for the festival.  They created the ultimate millennial dream vacation and played into the FOMO, otherwise known as “fear of missing out” phenomenon.  They flew out top influencers and models, like Bella Hadid, Emily Ratajkowski, and Haley Baldwin to film the promotional video.  Due to the notoriety of the models, press started to come out about them being all together in the Bahamas, as the girls were posting photos to their own social media accounts.  The Fyre team decided to do most of their promotion on Instagram and heavily rely on influencer culture.  Influencers are defined by MediaKix as “…influencers are social media personalities with loyal audiences that they earned by sharing content that inspires, entertains, informs and connects them with their followers.  This direct line of communication empowers influencers to generate social conversations, drive engagement and ultimately, set trends amongst a receptive and socially savvy audience.”    

Fyre Festival was launched to the world on December 12, 2016 with, as Billy said in the Netflix documentary “the best coordinated social influencer campaign ever”.  The Fyre Team and Jerry Media had 400 influencers across the globe simultaneously post a solid burnt orange tile on Instagram with the caption “join me @fyrefestival http://www.fyrefestival.com”.   User’s feeds were sprinkled with solid orange squares, which created a distraction from the typical styled photos found in one’s social media feeds.  Within 48 hours Fyre Festival reached 300 million people with this campaign.  Kendall Jenner posted about Fyre Festival a few weeks later, promoting G.O.O.D. Music and offered followers a promotional code that could be used for an afterparty.  That single post received over five million views and over 30,000 comments.  An issue that occurred was that the ad and/or sponsored hashtags were barley used on any of the influencer content.  It appeared that these influencers were promoting this festival and were giving the illusion they would be there.    Ironically on April 19, 2017, less then 10 days from the event, the Federal Trade Commission sent more than 90 letters to influencers and marketers, reminding them of the rules regarding sponsored posts “…influencers should clearly and conspicuously disclose their relationships to brands when promoting or endorsing products through social media.”   The Fyre Team and Jerry Media were able to effectively target their core demographic with the influencer strategy.  They understood the direct communication channel influencers had with their followers.  Followers are receiving what appears to be authentic messaging, as they have come to trust influencers, even more than one might trust a friend.  There has been some debate how much Jerry Media knew about the unfulfilled promises and overall lies being told to the public and investors.  Hulu and Netflix both created documentaries detailing the rise and fall of Fyre Festival.  Eyebrows were raised when Jerry Media seemed to have a heavy hand in the editing of the Netflix version, as it had a different narrative.  Unfortunately, in the end they had some questionable judgement calls that ultimately overshadowed any success they had on the communication strategy front for Fyre Festival. 

In order to fully understand the power that social media influencers have on their respective audiences through passive marketing and nonchalant posting, we need to look more closely at one of today’s most well-known and infamous influencers, Kylie Jenner.  The youngest of the Kardashian-Jenner clan, Kylie is arguably one of the most influential people alive.  In 2014 at the age of 17, Kylie got Juvéderm injectable dermal fillers in her lips, which threw her pout into the spotlight.  Denying that she had any work done, she focused on her love of makeup and founded Kylie Cosmetics at the end of that year.  A year later the company launched its first product, Kylie’s Lip Kit.  Within minutes all units were sold out.  Promoted heavily on her personal social media accounts, the star would livestream make-up looks, color swatches and glimpses into her fabulous lifestyle.  Her strategy was for fans to not only buy into the new Kylie Cosmetics line, but Kylie, herself as a brand.  Forbes did an interview with Kylie three years after the launch of Kylie Cosmetics, as she was valued at $900 million, all at the age of 20.  With millions of followers watching her every move and attempting to imitate her lifestyle, Kylie started to receive backlash.  Celia San Miguel told Vanity Fair that “…the makeup line glorifies her full lips, putting them front and center.  The product themselves aren’t really marketed just Kylie as a beauty and style icon.”  Many parents were concerned that their young daughters were being shown unrealistic beauty standards.  When the #KylieJennerChallenge trend started circling, again the concern was what type of message influencers were sending young girls.  Kylie, who originally got lip injections due to an insecurity was now exploiting that same insecurity in her followers in order to make millions.  While she did eventually own the fact that she had her lips done, the impact was already made. 

This isn’t the first time, nor will it be the last time the power of influence is used.  For Kylie Cosmetics, Kylie was able to build a beauty empire out of an enhanced beauty feature and being reality royalty.  Fyre Festival was able to reach an unfathomable number of people, building up hype for an event no one had heard of.  Both of these examples were able to generate tremendous success due to social media influence.  Each campaign relied heavily on the influencers already established brand and piggybacking off of it to promote their new venture.  While there may be some questionable morals in the case of Fyre Festival and Kylie Cosmetics, both found success in their goal to penetrate the market.  As new platforms get developed and new generations start interacting with social media it will be interesting to see how influencer culture will evolve and change.  Until then let us continue to enjoy this Twitter treasure from Fyre Festival.   

This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.

You’re going to publish a post today. Don’t worry about how your blog looks. Don’t worry if you haven’t given it a name yet, or you’re feeling overwhelmed. Just click the “New Post” button, and tell us why you’re here.

Why do this?

• Because it gives new readers context. What are you about? Why should they read your blog?
• Because it will help you focus your own ideas about your blog and what you’d like to do with it.

The post can be short or long, a personal intro to your life or a bloggy mission statement, a manifesto for the future or a simple outline of your the types of things you hope to publish.

To help you get started, here are a few questions:

• Why are you blogging publicly, rather than keeping a personal journal?
• What topics do you think you’ll write about?
• Who would you love to connect with via your blog?
• If you blog successfully throughout the next year, what would you hope to have accomplished?

You’re not locked into any of this; one of the wonderful things about blogs is how they constantly evolve as we learn, grow, and interact with one another — but it’s good to know where and why you started, and articulating your goals may just give you a few other post ideas.

Can’t think how to get started? Just write the first thing that pops into your head. Anne Lamott, author of a book on writing we love, says that you need to give yourself permission to write a “crappy first draft”. Anne makes a great point — just start writing, and worry about editing it later.

When you’re ready to publish, give your post three to five tags that describe your blog’s focus — writing, photography, fiction, parenting, food, cars, movies, sports, whatever. These tags will help others who care about your topics find you in the Reader. Make sure one of the tags is “zerotohero,” so other new bloggers can find you, too.

This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.

You’re going to publish a post today. Don’t worry about how your blog looks. Don’t worry if you haven’t given it a name yet, or you’re feeling overwhelmed. Just click the “New Post” button, and tell us why you’re here.

Why do this?

• Because it gives new readers context. What are you about? Why should they read your blog?
• Because it will help you focus your own ideas about your blog and what you’d like to do with it.

The post can be short or long, a personal intro to your life or a bloggy mission statement, a manifesto for the future or a simple outline of your the types of things you hope to publish.

To help you get started, here are a few questions:

• Why are you blogging publicly, rather than keeping a personal journal?
• What topics do you think you’ll write about?
• Who would you love to connect with via your blog?
• If you blog successfully throughout the next year, what would you hope to have accomplished?

You’re not locked into any of this; one of the wonderful things about blogs is how they constantly evolve as we learn, grow, and interact with one another — but it’s good to know where and why you started, and articulating your goals may just give you a few other post ideas.

Can’t think how to get started? Just write the first thing that pops into your head. Anne Lamott, author of a book on writing we love, says that you need to give yourself permission to write a “crappy first draft”. Anne makes a great point — just start writing, and worry about editing it later.

When you’re ready to publish, give your post three to five tags that describe your blog’s focus — writing, photography, fiction, parenting, food, cars, movies, sports, whatever. These tags will help others who care about your topics find you in the Reader. Make sure one of the tags is “zerotohero,” so other new bloggers can find you, too.

This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.

You’re going to publish a post today. Don’t worry about how your blog looks. Don’t worry if you haven’t given it a name yet, or you’re feeling overwhelmed. Just click the “New Post” button, and tell us why you’re here.

Why do this?

• Because it gives new readers context. What are you about? Why should they read your blog?
• Because it will help you focus your own ideas about your blog and what you’d like to do with it.

The post can be short or long, a personal intro to your life or a bloggy mission statement, a manifesto for the future or a simple outline of your the types of things you hope to publish.

To help you get started, here are a few questions:

• Why are you blogging publicly, rather than keeping a personal journal?
• What topics do you think you’ll write about?
• Who would you love to connect with via your blog?
• If you blog successfully throughout the next year, what would you hope to have accomplished?

You’re not locked into any of this; one of the wonderful things about blogs is how they constantly evolve as we learn, grow, and interact with one another — but it’s good to know where and why you started, and articulating your goals may just give you a few other post ideas.

Can’t think how to get started? Just write the first thing that pops into your head. Anne Lamott, author of a book on writing we love, says that you need to give yourself permission to write a “crappy first draft”. Anne makes a great point — just start writing, and worry about editing it later.

When you’re ready to publish, give your post three to five tags that describe your blog’s focus — writing, photography, fiction, parenting, food, cars, movies, sports, whatever. These tags will help others who care about your topics find you in the Reader. Make sure one of the tags is “zerotohero,” so other new bloggers can find you, too.