Key factor in making brand journalism work: A great team

The most important factor in determining whether your brand journalism efforts will fly or flop is the strength of your team. To create great, innovative content that resonates with your brand's audience, you need the best team available. Karen Love, Director of Practice Growth at PKF Texas, talks to Brandonomics about how her team works together toward effective brand journalism.

Robin: Hello and welcome to this edition of Brandonomics, an inside look at top brands and their marketing strategies. I’m Robin Tooms, Vice President of Strategy at Savage, and I’m here with Karen Love, Director of Practice Growth at PKF Texas. Karen, welcome again to the show.

Karen: Thank you. I am happy to be here.

Robin: Well great. Well, I wanted to talk today about a publication that PKF Texas does called Leading Edge. So it’s a quarterly magazine, I noticed, that is a digital publication.

Karen: Yes, it is. Yes.

Robin: What I want to know and kind of what’s interesting is it’s a business publication. Not an accounting publication –

Karen: Correct.

Robin: So why did you choose that topic and that format?

Karen: Well, because we’re an accounting firm that believes we’re professional advisors. We meet our clients where their needs are. Our clients are in business so it behooves us to provide business concepts and thought leadership to the business owners.

Robin: That makes perfect sense for the tie-in with your brand.

Karen: Right.

Robin: Now, you’ve been doing this for a while.

Karen: Yes, we have.

Robin: Brand journalism is a hot topic.

Karen: Yes, it is.

Robin: So for any company that’s entering into this, what kind of lessons would you like to give to them?

Karen: It’s gonna be interesting because getting more people at the table to provide ideas is the best way. It’s like I have one idea and then if I put it out there, then it’s gonna spur on other people to think of other things. So involving people around you that can lend themselves to bringing new ideas is great. Taking polls of the marketplace to see what they’re needing so you can provide that and bridge the gap is incredibly important. Something that’s important to people in the Northeast may not be important to people in Houston and so we have an active role with the editorial board of this magazine to be sure that the topics are definitely on for Houston business owners and the people that we serve.

Robin: Well, great advice. Thank you for being a trendsetter there.

Karen: Thank you. Well, Robin, I’d like to add to that that Gary Voth is one of my partners, and he’s on the editorial board as a CPA giving advice to this publication, as well as Jen Lamensky heads up our internal task force that puts the topics together and runs the whole program for us at PKF Texas. So I wanted to give credit where credit’s due. So I don’t do everything singlehandedly. I surround myself with people that are better at things than I’m at.

Robin: Okay. So lesson learned: have a great team.

Karen: Have a great team and I do have one. Thank you.

Robin: Well thank you for sharing that.

Karen: Thank you.

Robin: Join us next week for another edition of Brandonomics, an inside look at top brands and their marketing strategies.

 

Pannell Kerr Foster of Texas (PKF Texas) is a Houston-based CPA firm offering a full range of business consulting, technology, assurance, entrepreneurial advisory and tax solutions. Dedicated to middle market companies, the company is part of PKF International, which connects them to offices located in more than 480 major cities in 119 countries. https://www.pkftexas.com/