Season 2, Episode 4: Story-Driven PR

Storytelling isn’t just for fiction. Discover how Kurt Praschak, Vice President of Public Relations uses narrative to shape perception, influence media, and build brands that stick.

Transcript

Tom Marguccio 0:00

Welcome to Coffee or Tea with SCG, a podcast from the industry experts at SCG Advertising and PR. We are a full-service women-owned agency that offers advertising, public relations, recruitment marketing, and association and events management. In this season, we'll be chatting with some members of our team about innovation in their respective industries. So grab your coffee and your tea, and let's brew up a good conversation.

Lupe Dragon 0:27

Hello everyone, and welcome back to the Coffee and Tea with SCG Podcast. I'm your host, Lupe Dragon, and today we have Kurt Praschak, Vice President of Public Relations. Welcome, Kurt.

Kurt Praschak 0:40

Welcome. Thanks for having me.

Lupe Dragon 0:42

Glad that you're here. So uh first question as we ask everybody on the podcast is do you like coffee or tea and how do you take it?

Kurt Praschak 0:50

Uh definitely co- I don't know, I don't dislike tea, but definitely coffee and black.

Lupe Dragon 0:56

I don't understand black coffee, but that's okay. A little judgmental towards that, but you know, like I like the coffee with my cream and sugar, but you know, that's fair. So let's just jump right into it. So uh to get started, the point of the episode is to talk about storytelling and PR for this episode. So let's talk about why are we talking about storytelling in conjunction with PR? Because uh to lots of people, storytelling can sound something like a second grade type of thing. So why don't you explain a little bit of that?

Kurt Praschak 1:26

Yeah, I mean I think so with storytelling, it is a second grade type of thing. I mean, in the sense that everybody knows that little kids, whether they're second graders or toddlers or, you know, whatever, love stories. And uh that's the point that everybody loves stories. Human beings love stories, and it's it's really the most effective way to share information. So you know, you you can go back 10,000 years and you can think of what we call cavemen, right? I mean, that's you know, in caves, in huts, and picture them sitting around a campfire, no, obviously no electricity or anything, just a fire and just sitting around. What did they do at night? They told stories. They talked about you know what they did during the day. One group of people might talk about the hunt they had that day, you know, oh, we were we were hiding behind the bushes and the saber-tooth tiger came out and we waited until it was gone, and then we did this and we did that. Another group might talk about, like, oh, we got these great, great strawberries, and we found them up on top of this hill, and we just got went there by accident, and then we did this. And those are just stories. I mean, they're very they're mundane or whatever, but people naturally enjoy talking about things in that way, that sequential way. You know, what did we do? And really, it the the it this is something that, you know, science is kind of working through, but it's very likely that storytelling actually predates us, predates biologically modern humans, so that our prehistoric ancestors, you know, people at Neanderthals and those were probably telling stories before we even evolved and came on the scene. So storytelling's our old storytelling is older than humans. That's how ingrained it is into us. So again, if if you have all that power behind something, why not use it in public relations to convey your information?

Lupe Dragon 3:29

Absolutely. I totally agree with that. I think the way that we as PR pros use storytelling is a really great way, as you said, to effectively communicate uh these problems that we have in society and whatnot. So with that being said, how do we use that to build trust with our key audiences? And can storytelling work in terms of maybe building positive brand awareness?

Kurt Praschak 3:52

I mean, uh of course. And and the thing is that the one the one key thing is that in terms of the awareness and the trust and all that, as long as you've got something, if you're promoting something, selling something, making people aware of something that is worthy of trust and worthy of people's awareness, then it's as simple as talking about it and telling the story, right? You know, so you're gonna say, okay, we have this thing, and here's an example of why it's beneficial, why it's good, why it's useful. And when you do that, when you relate something in the form of a story, it sticks in people's minds more than if you simply said, Oh, here's the three best things, excuse me, about this, or here's the four best things about that. If you relate a story, it resonates with people and they say, Oh, I get it. Now I understand. Oh, yeah, I want that. I want that, I want to do that, I want to buy that, I want to see that. And that's that's kind of how that works. So again, as long as it's it's real and something you have something that's worthwhile, a story is the perfect way to build to build uh awareness, build credibility. And in public relations, we we use that all the time. And it's it's effective, it works.

Lupe Dragon 5:16

Is there any chance that you can give an example of that, like a real-world example to the people who are listening now?

Kurt Praschak 5:23

Right now, with one of our clients, we're talking about healthcare uh studies and research related to health technology. And so we're we're issuing a series of news releases to make people aware. And all of them basically take the form of stories. We relate what the problem that needed to be solved was, why the research is being done, you know, how it's being done, and that sort of thing. It's much more easily mentally digestible for people, I think, than if you simply did like a list or maybe even an infographic or something. People can hear something, you hear a story once and you tend to be able to remember it. So that's off the top of my head, that's that's one example. But there are many, many examples. We're always telling stories for all our clients. Absolutely. We tend to think of stories first when we decide how we're gonna convey information. And, you know, if there's a story to be told, then we can see it in that format. We tend to go ahead and do that because again, it's it's tried and true.

Lupe Dragon 6:30

Absolutely. And you know, I'm definitely a social media savvy girl, as uh Maddie and Sam are with me in this room as well. Um, we all work on the social media for SCG. Having that in mind, how can we use storytelling in social media with this uh 24-7 news cycle that we have on a daily basis?

Kurt Praschak 6:50

I think we are seeing stories be used, you know, in social media, in everywhere uh in 2025. People love stories, and we talked about that already. Let's look for things that are popular, right? Netflix, for example, right? Everybody likes streaming television. I mean, how who doesn't go home sometimes at least and watch television?

Lupe Dragon 7:13

And you binge watch all day, yep.

Kurt Praschak 7:14

Yeah, I mean, a lot of people do. What are they binge watching? They're binge watching stories. I mean, most of the content on Netflix, with maybe a few exceptions, we're talking about stories. That's what they are. And if you're binge watching a particular programmer show, you're watching story after story after story. Think about podcasts, right? People love podcasts. What podcasts are really, really, really popular? True crime right now, right? People love true crime. They're stories. I mean, that it should, you know, it's like uh this happened, then that happened, then this happened, and it's about it's about, you know, this crime, this whatever. How did the bad guy do this? How did the police catch the bad guy? It that's what we're doing. People love that. People love it. It's so hot right now. True crime's big in in book form, too, and everything. The 24-7 news cycle, right? We always talk about 24-7 news cycle, 24-7 news cycle.

Lupe Dragon 8:04

Everywhere.

Kurt Praschak 8:05

What's the 24-7 news cycle? It's stories. Every news items are stories, though, right? That's what they are. So if you turn your TV on and look at CNN, if you look, if you're using your phone to get information on the news, you know, what's happening, if you're listening on a radio, however you get your news, it's always in the form of a story. That's the nature of news. If you go back 40 years to Walter Karonkite, you know, on television, he would sit there and tell you or share a sequence of stories. This is what's happening today. This happened, then that happened, and this happened. So the stories. So really the fact that it's 2025, we have a lot of new technology, whatever, it doesn't matter. People love stories, they naturally gravitate towards them, and there's and you can see it's not just public relations, it's all media that's using stories to convey information.

Lupe Dragon 8:59

That is absolutely true. And I think nowadays, I mean, when I'm sending you a news story, I'm sending it from a journalist that's posting an Instagram Reel. That's how we're getting our stories now, is now we have short form versions of stories, and it's like in microseconds you could get the news out. So that's kind of how it's been changing lately.

Kurt Praschak 9:20

People love stories. Um they're the format that they take and some of the nuances of how they're structured are going to change over time. So people now have a very, very, a very short attention span, right? Our society has developed that way. So you do have items that are very, very, very short. But they're still stories, right? They're just that they're you they're adapted for what people prefer now, not just in terms of the themes and the content, but even the length. And I can I'm older. I mean, I remember years ago, newspaper articles used to be much longer than they are now. And it's been kind of a subtle thing over the years, but that's also a reaction to decreasing attention spans and that sort of thing. But still stories, but again, the length can vary, and and you know, there may be a time, I don't know, when longer stories are suddenly going to be in vogue again in some way, and you're gonna see that. But right now, people have short attention spans, so most of the time we're digesting things that are as brief as possible.

Lupe Dragon 10:24

Yeah, and I mean, as long as the story, again, you know, tells a full story with a beginning, middle, and end, that's all that matters. Doesn't really I I feel like the length, it all depends on the story that you're telling. You know, the world is crazy, things happen all the time. How do you think storytelling could be used effectively to drive social change?

Kurt Praschak 10:42

I think you do you're using it in a lot the same ways that you're using it in branding, perhaps, or in almost anything you're doing. You're identifying what you want to change. What do you want to change? Where's the problem? That sort of thing. And you can use the story to paint a picture for people of how things can be different. You can illustrate what the problems are with the story, uh, but you can also illustrate then what would better, what would an improvement look like. And, you know, again, instead of just sharing with people relatively dry factual information, like, you know, this is true and that's true and this is true, that they're not gonna be able to remember in that form. A story, again, as we said before, sticks in people's minds the first time. It just they their brain remembers it and they're going to have an increased understanding and increased awareness of all that. So yeah, so uh it's whatever you're trying to do, and social change, uh making the world a better place, stories have a you know a real place, you know, in that whole sphere, without a doubt.

Lupe Dragon 11:49

Without a doubt. Great answer. Uh next, the biggest hot topic of last year and this year, AI. How do you think that's gonna impact the future of PR and storytelling?

Kurt Praschak 12:01

The obvious answer is who knows. I mean, it's it's uh it's amazing. It's amazing, you know. The technology is amazing. It's maybe more amazing to me because of my age, so I've seen the evolution of technology more than maybe some people have, you know. The thing about AI that I really love, I love the its ability to serve as a research tool. So I find myself when I'm putting together, let's just say I'm putting together like a news release or something like that, that's going to be a story that I'm gonna share. And the same, it could be a piece of social media, whatever. The ability to craft it with perfectly accurate information quickly, that's what AI can do. I can ask uh ChatGPT or I can ask Gemini or something, I can ask exactly what I want to know, and I can get an answer in seconds, and I can just take that information and incorporate it into what I'm trying to put together. And if I don't get exactly the answer I want, I can ask again, and then I can change my prompt somewhat or build on my prompt. And that I find to be amazing. That has increased the the quickness with which we can put together information and then of course obviously share it out. So, but I mean, really AI, I mean, who knows? I mean, we we could be having a conversation six months from now, and everything could be different. You know, it's it's so incredible and so powerful. But for right now, though, I guess I guess in a way I'm using it like a search engine on steroids, right? But I mean, it's it's there's a lot more it can do. But for me, that's something I really enjoy. It's just fantastic.

Lupe Dragon 13:43

Yeah, a lot of the sources that you know we use here are implementing ways to use AI in a way that just makes us faster and smarter and better at what we do. So I think we don't know what's gonna happen next, but we do know that it is going to help in some way, shape, or form. And it is now a part of you know what we do every day. It's not something that we can avoid, but it's not necessarily you know something that's gonna hurt us. I think it's only gonna help us at the end of the day. That's what we always hope for. Um so influencer marketing, another hot topic. Um, we've seen, you know, all the influencers from all across the platforms on social media. How do you think that we can effectively as PR pros use influencer marketing and social media to amplify storytellings, whether that's for more brand awareness, whether that's for social change or any of the things that we discussed before?

Kurt Praschak 14:34

That's a good question. I mean, I think that, you know, so influencers they lend their faces uh to uh you know to campaigns and and and to add uh credibility, to add interest, etc. But if we can take an influencer and build in storytelling so that the influencer is sharing their perspectives, their information, even something so simple as sharing about their daily existence in the context of whatever whatever's being marketed, that's really powerful. It's one thing to see, you know, influencer A smiling at the camera, and and that's that's something that resonates with people. But if you can have that same person talking about, you know, oh this I like to do this, or I like to use this, or I incorporate this into my daily routine, that's a story. And that's incredibly powerful. That's that's many times more effective than the use of just an image or just video.

Lupe Dragon 15:35

So another thing about PR, and I mean like this goes across all the departments at SCG, is um measuring ROI. How do you think is the best way to measure ROI when it comes to campaign efforts and how we are able to measure that for our clients?

Kurt Praschak 15:53

There's lots of ways to measure ROI, right? I mean, it's really a wide open type of thing. And it also depends on what disciplines you're talking about, what you're doing. There's so many factors. So if it's advertising, if it's marketing, if it's social media, if it's public relations, um, and it's gonna vary. And my specialty is public relations, that's what I do. Public relations is not quite as easily measured in some ways as some other uh disciplines uh in the communication sphere. So, you know, when you're when you're working on things like building credibility or building awareness, that's somewhat more vague than trying to attract like X number of eyeballs. That's something you can specifically count, because sometimes you can't. The the best thing is to, in advance of whatever campaign you're doing or whatever project you're working on, to get an agreement how you're gonna measure it. So going back after the fact to measure challenging, deciding in advance what will we consider success? What do we want to achieve? And then you can go and say, okay, did we achieve that goal? Didn't we this happen? So that's how like I like to measure success when it comes to a public relations effort. You know, attaching numbers to it sometimes is very, very difficult. But if you know in advance what you want to achieve, then then it's sometimes as simple as saying, did we achieve our goal, yes or no?

Lupe Dragon 17:32

Clients are always unique in the way that each one is different. Whatever they're looking for is going to be different, whether they want more eyeballs or something, whether they want more clips, whether they want more people to just be aware that they're out there in the world. So I agree with you on that. Measuring ROI, if you can agree with that when you're first onboarding, it kind of makes everything easier so you can manage expectations and all that going around. Okay. So following up on that, how do you think PR pros can adapt their skills to effectively communicate the value of innovation within their organizations?

Kurt Praschak 18:10

So you're talking about like internal communication. How can you how can PR pros communicate internally within their organization?

Lupe Dragon 18:16

Yeah.

Kurt Praschak 18:16

Yeah. Um, you know, I think it it's funny, right? So we come back to storytelling. When you need to communicate with your colleagues and peers about what what's gonna be effective, what needs to be done, et cetera, being able to paint a picture is the most effective thing. We want to accomplish this. This is what success will look like. This is what it can do for us, this is why we're gonna do this. And you can picture that like in say, picture a hospital setting where the hospital's making some changes to procedures, protocols, et cetera. Being able to paint that picture and say, if we do this, this is what we're going to get, and then this is gonna happen, and it's gonna go like this, and who's gonna benefit? And everybody's gonna benefit. That's a story. And you're I think that's a great way to do it. I mean, it's just again, we were the topic here is storytelling, and it's it's really something that cuts across all disciplines, and it's just because it works. And I think once again, that's something in terms of internal communication, storytelling is very powerful. Also, examples of success. So you want to share here's some ways this has actually worked, real world, already, and you know, that's a story too.

Lupe Dragon 19:28

All right. We're on our last question. To end this, as PR pros, we are regularly trying to find the best ways to share our information with different generations from Gen Z to now. Are you confident that storytelling will be as effective within these groups as it's been in the past?

Kurt Praschak 19:47

Yeah, I mean, I I think I think storytelling is innate to human beings. And I think, you know, it it it chances are it dates back hundreds and hundreds of thousands of years whenever we first started to speak and have language. And I, you know, there's there's no reason to think that one particular generation all of a sudden is gonna like, whoa, it doesn't work for us. We're gonna it's always going to work for human beings. So I think, yeah, the tastes change, and obviously the technology we use changes. We sat around a fire for a long time. Now we get stories from, you know, podcasts on our phones, and you know, 50 years from now I can only imagine what we'll be. But the taste for hearing a story, a narrative about something, that's not gonna change. And so Gen Alpha is gonna embrace that, and whatever the whatever we call the generation after that is gonna embrace it, and that's that's kind of the way it works. It's not gonna go away ever. So I and I'm confident of that.

Lupe Dragon 20:51

All right. Well, thank you for being on the podcast, Kurt, and um throwing your wealth of knowledge to the table. Thank you.

Kurt Praschak 20:58

Thank you very much.

Tom Marguccio 21:03

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