PR industry future with Gideon Fidelzeid | On Top of PR podcast

Learn why the future of public relations continues to shine bright with our guest Gideon Fidelzeid of PRWeek.

Guest:

Our episode guest is Gideon Fidelzeid, managing editor at PRWeek. Gideon’s covered the PR industry for two decades, and his insights into the industry have been informed through his leadership on projects like the annual Agency Business Report.

Also available on

Five things you’ll learn from this episode:

1. What are PR industry trends?

2. What might the future look like for the PR profession?

3. How has COVID-19 changed the PR industry, and how has the industry pivoted its PR campaigns?

4. What are examples of companies that have some of the best PR campaigns? 

5. What is the importance of diversity and inclusion on communications teams?

Quotables

• “Small PR agencies have so many capabilities these days that I hardly even look at them as small anymore.” — @GFidelzeid

• “This is a wonderful time to be a PR agency.” — @GFidelzeid

• “When it comes to the PR industry, I think the glass is more than half full.” — @GFidelzeid

• “One of the things PR has always been able to hang its hat on is its social media process.” — @GFidelzeid

• “Diversity and inclusion have gone beyond being a nice thing to do. It’s a must-do.” — @GFidelzeid

If you enjoyed this episode, would you please share it with others and leave us a review?

About Gideon Fidelzeid:

Gideon Fidelzeid is the managing editor of PRWeek and a senior producer at the Haymarket Studio, PRWeek’s custom content arm. Having covered the PR industry for two decades, Gideon’s insights into the industry have been informed through his leadership on projects like the annual Agency Business Report, Best Places to Work, Salary Survey, Diversity Distinction in PR Awards, and the Comms Report in partnership with Cision.

Guest’s contact info and resources:

• Gideon on Twitter

• Gideon on LinkedIn

• PRWeek website: www.prweek.com/us

Additional Resources:

• PR Week awards

• How to be a trusted advisor with Del Galloway 

Sponsored by:

• On Top of PR is produced by Axia Public Relations, named by Forbes as one of America’s Best PR Agencies. Axia is an expert PR firm for national brands.

• On Top of PR is sponsored by ReviewMaxer, the platform for monitoring, improving, and promoting online customer reviews.

• We are thrilled to have Burrelles sponsor our solocast episodes. Thanks to Burrelles for its support. Burrelles has a special offer exclusively for On Top of PR fans. Check it out at burrelles.com/ontopofpr.

About your host Jason Mudd

On Top of PR host, Jason Mudd, is a trusted adviser and dynamic strategist for some of America’s most admired brands and fastest-growing companies. Since 1994, he’s worked with American Airlines, Budweiser, Dave & Buster’s, H&R Block, Hilton, HP, Miller Lite, New York Life, Pizza Hut, Southern Comfort, and Verizon. He founded Axia Public Relations in July 2002. Forbes named Axia as one of America’s Best PR Agencies.

Find more On Top of PR episodes on: 

Transcript:

- Hello, and welcome to On Top of PR, I'm your host Jason Mudd with Axia public relations. You have made a wise decision by tuning into our podcast today. We are joined by Gideon from PRWeek and we're talking about what he is seeing from his lens over top of the PR industry. And we're talking about trends and what the future might look like for the PR profession. The future looks bright and Gideon's gonna tell us more. Here we go.

- [Woman] Welcome to On Top of PR with Jason Mudd, presented by ReviewMaxer.

- Hello and welcome to On Top of PR. I'm your host, Jason Mudd with Axia public relations. Today, we've got a special guest from PRWeek. I'm joined by Gideon Fidelzeid. Gideon, I'm glad you're here and welcome to the show.

- It is my absolute pleasure to be here, Jason. Thank you for inviting me.

- Well, we are excited to have you. I know we're gonna have a great conversation. First of all I want to make sure we do a good job of introducing you. So I'm gonna take a stab at it. And then I would ask you just to jump in and add anything I might've missed as well as just give us a little bit more information about PRWeek. Does that sound good?

- Absolutely.

- Okay. So Gideon is the managing editor PRWeek and a senior producer at Haymarket Studio, PRWeek's custom content arm having covered the PR industry for two decades. Gideon, you're crazy to do that. He brings insights into the industry that have been informed through his leadership on projects including the annual agency business report, best places to work, salary survey, diversity, distinction and PR awards, and the Comms report in partnership with Cision. Gideon. Wow, you are a busy guy. Thank you for making time to share your insights with our audience today.

- Oh, it is my absolute pleasure. I don't always feel that worthy of being a guest on a podcast or a webcast. I mean, I'm usually on your side of things and whenever someone asks and I'm able to find the time, I'm more than happy to do it.

- Thank you. That's great. So tell us a little bit more about PRWeek.

- Well, thank you very much, Jason. PRWeek is a, I don't wanna, you know I've been at PRWeek long enough that when I actually called it a magazine, it was accurate but I can't do that anymore because clearly, you know, it is still a print publication, six times a year, but obviously updated daily website. And I would say one of the biggest things about PRWeek and how it's evolved over the last few years is the kinds of content and the kinds of events that we put on. The PRWeek awards, which we still deemed the Oscars of the industry, and that's not us saying it. It's other people saying it outside of PRWeek's offices.

- [Mudd] Third party endorses endorsements.

- Absolutely, but we really do a lot of events now. And to, for example, our second biggest event of the year is an event that we put on in the fall every year. It's basically annual PR conference and PRWeek conference. And over the last few years we've been doing this since 2011. It was held in New York every year until 2017. I wanna say, and then we went to Chicago and it was very, very warmly welcomed in Chicago. And I've come to appreciate that Chicago is a very welcoming city. It is a warm city. I mean, it's not a warm city, but it is a warm city if you want to It really, but the people are warm, the weather is not, you got it. But anyway, and we change up the focus of the conference every year. Over the last couple of years though, it's been focused around purpose. And I know you and I, Jason, are gonna be talking a little bit more about that later but it's going to be virtual, just like last year's, well, because there's this thing going on called COVID-19 that has changed our lives. We're gonna talk about that too. But, so we've really become an incredible online property, an event production company. And one of the things that's always been constant though is that I believe PRWeek is the is the B2B publication in this industry that really has its pulse on what is going on throughout the entire communications industry. And I'm talking about agencies, I'm talking about in-house departments and anyone else you can think of. We have some really, really good contexts in the academia in the communications academic world as well. So, my enthusiasm. Yes I've been there for nearly two decades but my enthusiasm for working at PRWeek and I should say also working with so many professionals in the industry has never been higher because part of my role in the Haymarket Studio is working on custom sponsored partner content. So I work very closely with a lot of people who some of them were probably listening to this to this podcast right now. And it's really a pleasure. I really sort of enjoy that. I've never, I guess it's sort of makes me a pseudo sales person even though I don't sell, I just work on stuff that's sold but it's really, you know, the way my role has evolved is really in line with how PRWeek is evolved. And it's, it's really been kind of exciting and that's why I'm so enthusiastic.

- Good. Well, you know, someone that I work with is maybe famous or at least I think of him as being famous for saying that everyone works in sales whether they realize it or not. And you know, whether, you know the engineer has to convince people that the bridge that he or she designed is safe to travel on. And, you know, you've got to convince your audience that you're bringing them content that's helpful to them and with the right level of journalistic integrity when you're writing news content. And certainly when you're writing sponsored content it's something that, you know, they're proud and glad that they invested in.

- Absolutely.

- All right. So Gideon, we are about a year into the pandemic and you have a unique perspective on what's going on in the industry through the lens of, you know, PRWeek the leading PR industry magazine. You're talking to brands, you're talking to agencies you're talking to thought leaders and so are the people on your team. So my question would be nearly a year into the pandemic, how has business changed the public in the public relations industry and how has the industry pivoted with their PR campaign?

- Wow. Well, okay. That's... How much time you have? That's obviously a terrific question. And yet clearly less March changed everything for, well, it changed everything for everybody but there's so many ways I could go with this, but I will tell you that. Let me try to tackle it from a couple of different ways. One thing that I would definitely say talking to people on the in-house side, is that their reliance and appreciation for the communications function has truly truly skyrocketed because I believe that one of the things that communications has always been really respected for is their ability to deal with the crisis. Now, of course, that has been magnified since the COVID-19 started because, basically, every day is a crisis, now. Because this pandemic has changed the way, first of all, it's changed consumers because maybe it's their job situation, the disposable income they have to spend isn't there, obviously you have so many sectors that were decimated by this, and obviously, a lot of clients and brands in those spaces.

- [Jason] Right.

- And of course you, can't also forget that everything that was always worked on in an office, face-to-face, everyone's working remotely now, and that has really created so many different challenges. So I really feel that based on various conversations that I've had, one of the things which is really interesting is how many brand leaders had conversations with their communications in-house and agency partners starting in March and going forward that were very different. They weren't just talking about being creative and having great campaigns like PR teams and PR agencies are always great at doing. They were really talking to them as counselors and communicators were really becoming one of the key voices that the CC was listening to in terms of not just campaigns, but in terms of employee engagement, in terms of so many other key things. I mean, the way companies were running their business communications, I believe based on conversations that I had was having a bigger impact on that. And I mean, I think that's a huge change. And frankly, in as much as we don't know what normal is gonna look like when enough people have been vaccinated for us to go back to, maybe back to our offices, even on a part-time level we don't know what it's gonna look like. Our world, I like to say that there are so many events that happen in the world that people say this is gonna change the way we live forever. And somehow it doesn't quite do that. This is that events probably of all of our life, of all our lifetimes.

- [Jason] Oh, for sure.

- Our lives will never be the same again in any aspect. And I'm not saying that to scare anybody. I mean, I'm not saying anything, anyone doesn't know.

- [Jason] Sure, yeah.

- it could be exciting too, because I really think that we learn, communications also learn, a lot of interesting things over the course of the last 11, 12 months out of necessity that has really helped them. And if, you know, and I will say this and I don't mean to say this in a pluggy way, but what's really, really good is look, last March was scary for everybody.

- [Jason] Yeah.

- It was scary for you, Jason. It was scary for me and PRWeek and I know it was scary for a lot of brands and agencies where they basically had to rethink what their goals were immediately day to day. But what I would really happy about is that, you know, PRWeek does not exist if the industry isn't doing well. I mean, and you know, it's a symbiotic relationship.

- [Jason] Sure.

- And I will tell you the support that the industry has shown us has not only been great for PRWeek, but I also think that it's a symbol of how strong this industry is. I have no doubt that, now, look, we're gonna be coming out with our agency business report in late April and early may. We are gonna be coming out with our salary survey in late March, early April. I am not gonna sit here and tell you that the numbers are not gonna be what you might think they are. Salaries were clearly affected by what happened and what's still happening. Agency revenues are clearly affected. You can go on prweek.com right now and see some reports already about individual agencies and some holding companies talking about what happened last year. It wasn't a great year. I mean, how could it be? Well, unless you worked at, unless you've worked in the healthcare sector.

- [Jason] Right.

- Then you probably had a really good year, but overall, yeah. But you know what, though, this industry it went into survival mode really quickly. And I think now things are really looking up. And I think the communications industry is really poised to really do some amazing things and see some amazing successes in the near and distant future.

- Yeah. You mentioned, you know, that the agencies you cover that many of them are struggling and, you know, there's an agency industry advisor consultant named Drew McLellan, and he's a friend of mine. He's been on the show before. Great guy. And he really senses that right now is the time for small to midsize agencies because as brands are having smaller budgets as brands are looking for, you know, quicker more nimble agencies, more creative hungrier agencies that you know, now is the time where brands are gonna be looking very efficiently with their dollars and looking for something that's scrappy and scalable as opposed to that's, you know, big, bulky and slow to move. What's your take on that? Do you see something somewhere on the horizon?

- I truly feel this is just a great time for all agencies. First of all, I, you know what, I don't... Small agencies have so many capabilities these days that I hardly even look at them as small anymore. I mean, they could do so much with technology. Technology has been an incredible equalizer in a lot of ways.

- [Jason] for sure.

- That give small agencies the opportunity to do some really big things. And I also feel that, you know, what? One of the great things about big agencies is that you know what? they've really become quite adept at operating in a very small agency way in terms of the attention that they give to clients. So, you know, I don't listen. I think this is a great time to be an agent. Listen, I clearly already stated it as it gets a great time to be in communications. And I will also say one other thing. So, and I'm sorry, let me go back to what you were saying. As far as agencies are concerned this is a wonderful time to be an agency. And I think if you're a client looking for an agency to either do some one-off assignment or maybe looking for an AOR or something like that, look, I think you have, you know what? Right now I do think that you have the opportunity to go after big agencies and small agencies and look at them and they really compare pretty well. And, you know, you have wonderful opportunities no matter what agency that you work with. So I think that's really exciting, but one of the other things that I wanna say also is that I've also... Another group of people that, you know, I speak to quite regularly are people in the executive recruitment side of this industry who focus on communications. And I will tell you, one of them was telling me that his business has maybe saying it's never been better is a little bit hyperbolic, but it's close because people are starting to hire again, now. I mean, I am not saying that it's across the board, but I mean, hiring, obviously, hiring was not a big thing when this first started, last March, but things are getting better from that front too. So again, I mean, I really... I'm not necessarily a glass half full guy overall. I mean, I'm a Met fan. So, you know, glass half full, not really. But when it comes to this industry, I think the glass is more than half full. I really think there's some really great things. And, you know the business world is really understanding that. And I think it's an exciting time to be in PR. It really is.

- Yeah, absolutely. Well, on the national league side, I am a huge Mets fan and

- oh, cool.

- Yeah, I don't know why, but I was attracted to the Mets when Greg Jeffreys was coming up.

- Wow.

- Yeah. That's a throwback. Right? And, yeah. But I even liked them before that, you know in 86 I was cheering for them, for sure. So...

- Yeah, I go further than that. I mean, I go back to the Craig Swan, Steve Henderson, Félix Millán.

- Oh, wow. Okay.

- Yeah, it's bad and I will tell you, I know, I'm sure some people are, this might be a good time to go to the bathroom, but I would not be married today if it weren't for the Mets. No, I didn't get introduced to my wife because of the Mets but she's actually,

- Sure.

- part of family are big Met fans and they always joke with me, you know, if you were a Yankee fan, this wouldn't have happened. I don't know if they're serious or not but I mean, I'm glad I didn't have to find out. So yeah, the Mets are very important to the Fidelzeid family. Yes.

- Good. Excellent. All right. Well, we're gonna take a quick break here and then come back on the other side with more questions with Gideon from PRWeek.

- [Woman] You're listening to On Top of PR with your host, Jason Mudd. Jason is a trusted advisor to some of America's most admired and fastest growing brands. He is the managing partner at Axia public relations a PR agency that guides news, social and web strategies for national companies. And now back to the show.

- Hello and come back to On Top of PR, I'm your host Jason Mudd. I'm joined with by Gideon from PRWeek. And before we jump right back in I wanna say thank you to our sponsor ReviewMaxer. ReviewMaxer is software you can use to monitor, manage and promote your online reviews. They are friends of our show and they have a special offer for our fans. If you go to ReviewMaxer.com/on-top-of-pr, they're gonna have a special offer there that is for listeners and fans and viewers of On Top of PR , exclusively. So I hope you'll take advantage of that opportunity. Please tell them we sent you. And now back to the show. Alright, Gideon, we were just talking about the pandemic, how it's changed the PR industry. You shared some interesting insights that you were seeing. Can you tell me, are you seeing any campaigns in the PR space that you think are creative, timely and relevant to what's going on in the world today? Is anybody just crushing it from a PR campaign standpoint that we should be taking a close look at and seeing what they're doing and learning from them?

- Well, you know, that's, I really think that I really think there's so much exciting stuff going on at that front. So, pardon me, you know, one of the things that I, one of the things I'm gonna point to right now and this is actually very timely to what we're doing today is, I mean, you can see this on prweek.com is Wendy's. Wendy's has always been a very creative company. And I do apologize to any of Wendy's competitors out there. This is not necessarily endorsement of their food or anything, even though it's fine. But, you know they were talking about national roast day and they brought it to TikTok for the first time. And I realized that, you know, towards the end of the recent administration there was some talk about TikTok you know, maybe, 'cause it's a Chinese based company there's some issues with that.

- Right.

- I think what's really interesting is a company like Wendy's they've always been very, very clever when it comes to adopting the newest social media platforms and really

- They have.

- And they're doing it again with TikTok. And I think that's a wonderful example. And, you know, again, it really shows that, you know, one of the things that, you know, whenever you have conversations about PR versus marketing and I hate saying that because I really supposed to work together and they often do.

- Sure.

- But one of the things PR has always been able to hang its hat on is it's social media prowess.

- I agree.

- And I think the ability to adapt to new platforms is just a perfect example of that. So, Wendy's has done some really great work. And, you know, I actually would say that because the pandemic has made our worlds even more virtual and remote than they were before.

- Right.

- Communication's ability to really take advantage of that and really come up with some clever ways to, you know, bring people together even though they physically can't be together right now. It's really exciting. And, you know, I would, what I'm really excited about, and yes, this might be a slightly shameless plug, is about a month from now a little bit more we're gonna be giving out our PRWeek awards virtually on March 18th. You can go to prweek.com and check that out if you want to.

- All right.

- You know, sorry. I'm a PR guy. Right. So, but anyway, with some amazing campaigns, the best works in the last year. And I think if you're asking me about some of the best campaigns were? You're gonna check that out and you could see all of the shortlisted finalists really did some amazing work. So again, while we were talking about everything else before creatively, I think PR is on top of its game right now.

- Well, I've heard you say that throughout the interview that seems to be a theme. And, you know, I'm really obviously pleased to hear that but I've always been a big believer that, you know, PR is the most efficient way to get your message out there. It's certainly the most efficient way in my experience and opinion to spend your marketing dollars which is why when I first moved out from journalism into PR and then into marketing, I really just saw, man, PR is so much more effective, you know, in so many ways. And the other thing I tell people a lot, you know, Steve Jobs is famous for saying great PR educates and I've always thought, you know, great PR solves problems and helps communicate and, you know, or educate depending on how you wanna view view that. But yeah, I mean, I think it is an exciting time to be in PR. You mentioned earlier how busy PR people got to be during the pandemic. And I can tell you, yes, absolutely. You know, March, April, May were just crazy busy and for the first time ever, you know, it seemed like the high demand was not for external communications but also a ton of demand for internal communications as you alluded to earlier. So...

- [Gideon] Absolutely.

- Yeah. So as business begins to return to normal, certainly, depending on the speed of vaccinations being administered and other factors, what are kind of the things you're watching in the PR industry, as well as in PR campaigns that you anticipate will be. How do you expect campaigns will be different and PR practitioners roles will be?

- Well. Okay. I'm really glad you asked that because I think that another thing that the pandemic has done it has brought attention to certain aspects of business world, the business world that communications has a huge role in. And I think you will see this reflected in campaigns and you know, I'm even gonna give a tip of the cap to the advertising world, because I think one of the things that I've definitely noticed a lot more in the last year or two is you see a lot of interracial couples being, you know, being highlighted in a lot of ad campaigns. And I think that's great. And I think it's, you know what? I think everyone knows that this country is definitely, I believe a very recent projection by the U.s census of the United States Census Bureau is that this country is going to be minority white in by 2045. And diversity and inclusion is a topic that is so crucial to the business world, to the world, not just the business world, to the world, but obviously when it comes to communications, I think it's such an important topic. And I think what I'm seeing now is obviously, because of the other major story that happened last, well, I guess it was one of three of the presidential election too but obviously the George Floyd murder. And that was just one example. And I really think that really made a lot more people pay attention to how important it is that this country become more diverse, more inclusive, more equitable, and more just to everybody. And that is important to the communications industry as well. The communications industry, like a lot of other sectors, you know, it's trying to do better on the diversity inclusion front but there's still a long way to go. But what I am noticing though, is that a lot more companies and I include agencies in those as well, are really focusing on this a lot more in a very serious way. And I'm just gonna give you one example. One thing that I noticed, and by the way, if I'm gonna give any piece of advice out there this might be the one thing.

- [Jason] All right.

- The one thing that I am noticing a lot at on the agency side, especially but also on the in-house side, is that now you're seeing a lot more companies with chief diversity officers or chief diversity and inclusion officers, or some title such as that it's so crucial because you know what? This not something that HR can handle alone. It is something that deserves the attention of a leader with that kind of title. And it is something that the communications team at every company, has a really important role to play. And it doesn't just, this isn't just a staffing matter either. Obviously it's important. You have to hire younger PR pros of color because guess what? You are communicating to a consumer base that is diverse as it's ever been before. How are you gonna communicate to them effectively if your team doesn't reflect that, right? I mean, it's logical, so that's important but it's also important to make sure that the leader, that those PR practitioners of color and of different backgrounds, also have the ability to rise up in your companies too, because, whereas, I think the diversity and inclusion issue is a problem across the across levels of seniority, clearly at the very, very senior levels. You're seeing more of it but you just don't see as many people of color there. And I think it's important that they do because if there's a lot of wonderful practitioners, if you have people of color with those levels, the younger professionals of color will see that, you know, something, "Hey I can aspire to that." It's really important. So diversity inclusion is just such... It has gone beyond a nice thing to do we're way past that. And by the way, even smaller agencies and smaller in-house departments, they really can't say, well, you know we don't have the budget we don't have the resources, you have to make some moves. You have to make some movement on this fund. You have to.

- I absolutely agree with you in fact, for our audience if they haven't yet caught where we had Del Galloway on he talked a lot about that topic in detail with us, it's a very good episode. And he also shares how to become a strategist and a trusted advisor within the organization. So I think that's a really good episode. People should tune into. Thank you for bringing that up.

- Of course.

- In fact, you're reminding me on Monday I was a meeting with a company and they were showing me this video that they had produced. And the video was fantastic. I mean, it was a fantastic video. When it got over, I said, I have one question. I said, was it intentional that all the video included you know, white people and all the still photos were all of minorities. And they said, we didn't even notice that. And I said, I noticed that instantly, like instantly. So to me that shows an example of an outside perspective coming in and seeing something with fresh set of eyes a fresh set of perspective, you know, and raising a flag that they didn't even see. They saw that nowhere, you know, and they probably saw the video a hundred times because they were entrenched in it. You know, there's a great illustration that, you know the goldfish bowl looks a lot different from the gold fish's perspective, right. Than it does from our perspective, on the outside looking in.

- That's good.

- And yeah. And anyway, they just said, you know we didn't even notice this video has been out there. You know, we were airing it on TV. We're doing all these other things in these activities. And I said, well, you might wanna, you know edit it up a little bit 'cause I noticed that right away. And again, to your point, you know, diversity of opinion and insights are very valuable and can come from many people. So I'm trying, as an agency leader and advisor to clients, be mindful of that all the time and looking at it through those lens. My lens are not perfect at all, but certainly, if I noticed, then there's gonna be an audience that they're alienating Simon simultaneously as well.

- Well, you know, just, I will say one thing again, and again if it's another piece of advice, by the way, this is not necessarily advice coming from Gideon Fidelzeid. It's advice coming from people who really know that's Gideon Fidelzeid that I've spoken to. And I always talk to them. And I really talked to myself, about myself in the third person. So, sorry about that. But the truth is just, I'll tell you what, one of the things that you could do right away is actually take stock right now of what your staff looks like. Okay. Because sometimes it is as simple as putting it on paper well, paper, sorry, I'm dating myself putting on a computer or an Excel sheet or a Google doc or whatever. I just look at how big is your staff and how many diverse people do you have on it. And I'm telling you, when you look at that, so many people would just say, "Oh my God, I never really thought about it."

- [Jason] Yeah.

- You know what? A simple step like that could make all the difference in the world because you know what? You're never going to solve a problem if you don't even know what the problem is.

- Yeah, you're right, Gideon. You know, we actually have a worksheet, for lack of a better word, that was provided to us by a trusted advisor in the industry. I'll ask if someone's interested, they could reach me. I'd be happy to share it with you as soon as I can get permission to share, but it was very well done where you kind of just take that stock. You take that inventory of what your team looks like today, where you'd like it to be, and then it kind of calculates, you know, it's like, again, it's a spreadsheet. Kind of calculates, you know? Okay, well, here's how you can get there kind of thing. Right? And so you start kind of looking at it and it asks you, or there's an option within it to kind of set a date saying, you know, we wanna look more like this by this date. And, you know, that's hard to do it. You know, like at an agency like mine, we were, you know, we were fortunate enough to go 63 months with zero turnover but not everybody has that situation and so you can be, obviously, strategic when you have those opportunities to look for, opportunities to find an insert, you know, the people that you're looking for to bring that diverse opinion, insights and experiences to the table just like we talked about here. Gideon, unfortunately, we're running out of time. This has been a great conversation. I think we could have a productive conversation all day long. Unfortunately, I know we both have to get on to other things today but I wanted to just give you a moment to say, before we wrap up, was there anything you wanted to close with and leave with our audience?

- Absolutely. First of all, Jason, thank you so much for the honor of your time and inviting me to be a guest on this podcast. I really enjoyed it very much. I've a lot of enthusiasm for PR. We can have a lot of enthusiasm for the industry that we cover. And I think, I hope that came across. So...

- [Jason] Absolutely.

- It's really a wonderful industry that touches every aspect of the business world. And, you know, for one of those... If I'm gonna leave a closing thought, it's this. You know what? Communications over the two decades that I've been working at PRWeek, its status in the C-suite has risen exponentially. There's still a lot of room to grow, but you know what, everyone out there listening to this could be, really, proud of that. And I will tell you just stay, you know, stay creative and, you know, just, you know, take advantage of all the wonderful opportunities that technology affords the communications industry. You never have to be worried about communications replacing, I'm sorry, technology replacing you guys. 'Cause it's not, technology doesn't work in communications without the communicators to make it work. But honestly, it's never been a more exciting time to be in the communications industry. And there's never been a more exciting time to cover the communications industry. And if anyone wants to reach me, it's at @GFidelzeid on Twitter. You can check me out on LinkedIn and you can go on prweek.com and you can find my email address. It's the one with the funniest, last name of anyone on there. So, it shouldn't be too hard to find , it's gideon.fidelzeid@prweek.com I welcome any and all emails. And I, you know, part of my job is connecting with people in the industry. And I know a lot of people, but I know there's a lot that I don't. I welcome any people that I've never spoken to before to reach out to me. And I'd be more than happy to start conversations with everybody

- Gideon, that's great. Thank you for sharing all that. I'll tell you that the honor has been mine and the audience honor has been our audience here today. And you know, other than that, I'll end the show just by saying go Mets. Hopefully, this will be a great season for the Mets.

- Go Mets.

- And I can't wait to see baseball come back

- Me too. and the likes. So, to our audience, thank you for watching or listening on whatever device you might be on. Thank you to our sponsors ReviewMaxer. We appreciate them and their sponsorship. If there's anything we can do for you please feel free to reach out to myself or Gideon. We'd be honored to help and we wish you well and much success as we move forward outside of this pandemic.

- [Woman] This has been On Top of PR with Jason Mudd, presented by ReviewMaxer.