Valerie Wilson of VALINC PR is a brand-building pro who has advised countless chefs, companies, corporations, and what she likes to call “culture-shifting brands” on getting their messages to the public. She has also been a champion of the Harlem hospitality scene, working with the likes of Ruby’s Vintage, Melba’s, and Fieldtrip, and on major projects including Harlem Park to Park, Harlem EatUp!, Harlem Restaurant Week, and the brand new Renaissance Pavilion, supported by Uber Eats. Stay tuned to learn about Valerie’s inspiring journey and get some of her PR advice! And don’t miss Callie Flynn, dietetic intern and graduate student at the University of Vermont, share why she thinks Tove Ohlander of Tove by design and AO Glass is the Bombe. Today’s show is supported by A Table: Recipes for Cooking and Eating the French Way, out April 6th from Chronicle Books.
KD: Hi, everyone. Welcome to Radio Cherry Bombe. The show that's all about women and food. I'm your host, Kerry Diamond. Today's guest is a force in the hospitality industry. Valerie Wilson of Valinc PR. Val is a brand-building pro who has advised countless chefs, companies, corporations, and what she likes to call, culture-shifting brands.
Val has also been a champion of the Harlem hospitality scene, working with the likes of Ruby's Vintage, Melba’s, and Field Trip. And talk about culture-shifting, Val has worked on some major projects including Harlem Park to Park, Harlem EatUp, Harlem Restaurant Week, and the brand new Renaissance Pavilion supported by Uber Eats. Stay tuned to hear all about Val's inspiring journey and get some of her priceless advice.
Today's show is presented by À Table: Recipes for Cooking and Eating the French Way by Rebekah Peppler. You are going to want to say bonjour to this cookbook, especially if you love France as much as I do.
Rebekah’s newest book is a stylish guide to French cooking and includes recipes for classics, such as Ratatouille, regional dishes, including Basque chicken, and recipes born from the melding of the cultures and the flavors that have helped define contemporary French eating. There are 125 recipes in Rebekah’s book, and you will want to cook through all of them.
À Table by Rebekah Peppler will be out April 6. Mark your calendars, and it is a tasty tour through France. I know I'm speaking for myself, but À Table is a delicious way to satisfy that wanderlust you might be feeling right now.
If you're the kind of person who sighs as you watch Lupin and Call My Agent and Emily in Paris, you know what I mean. You can pre-order À Table to suit or ask your favorite bookstore to save you a copy.
What is going on at Cherry Bombe HQ this week? Thank you for asking. Team Cherry Bombe and more than a dozen special contributors are working on our spring issue right now. It's a special issue dedicated to all things, Julia Child. We're taking a look at her life and legacy and we have so much incredible content, I cannot wait for you to get the issue. We've got beautiful essays, illustrations, photography, and recipes, of course, we've got lots of recipes. If you are a subscriber, it's coming your way this April. If not, head on over to cherrybombe.com to subscribe or preorder the issue.
Now, for my conversation with Valerie Wilson.
[INTERVIEW]
[00:02:51] KD: So, tell everybody what makes you tick?
[00:02:54] VW: I'm really passionate about culture. It's something that my parents instilled in me at a very early age. I'm an only child. And so, my parents really invested in exposing me early to the things of culture. My dad spent Saturdays, we would hear jazz the entire day in our household. On Sundays, we would hear classical music the entire day in our household. By the time I was 10, I had visited just about every capital city throughout Europe, and they really just made it clear to me that embracing culture, embracing creativity, is a global experience. And one that we have the capacity has the capacity to bring people together. So, that's just always been part of my personal brand, and how I've sort of navigated the spaces that I'm in it, always comes from a place of how is this driving a cultural conversation?
[00:03:52] KD: So, how do you do what you do in the middle of a pandemic?
[00:03:56] VW: The pandemic was really interesting and tense, obviously, for all the reasons that everyone else experienced. And I think for me, that was an interesting time. I had just started working with JJ and Field Trip, maybe a couple of months in when the pandemic hit, and we had to sort of shift focus, but it was a good exercise. Not one that we knew we were about to embark on, or how we were going to embark on it, but it was a very good exercise in helping that brand really come into its own in the understanding what its core mission was, as a brand, and then also being able to speak very fluently in that voice. I saw that happening with just about everything that was going on around me.
So, operating in the pandemic, was really about having to cut out all of the excess noise that we're used to working with and hone in on what's really important.
[00:04:59] KD: I know PR is is not just getting media placements for your clients, sometimes you have to be a therapist too, was that more than ever over the past year?
[00:05:08] VW: Yeah, absolutely. I would say I did some of my most rewarding work as a result of the pandemic, because of that, because you were really having to deal with people's real concerns and fears, fears for their business, how it's going to affect their families, their livelihoods, how it's going to affect the overall communities. I do so much work in Harlem, and the hospitality community here is the backbone of this community. It’s probably, I believe, the SBA did a study and hospitality now is like the number two employer after hospitals in this community. So, it meant something really major for what was going to happen to the community, if we saw all of our restaurants implode, and people really had an intentional purpose of supporting these businesses.
What we learned that I think is valuable for the hospitality industry as a whole, is this idea of being a community-focused as a brand, as a restaurant, in particular, that the community feels invested in what you're doing because you’ve also shown an investment in them. And that is something that really came through because people know you by name. You go into a restaurant, you know the owner of that restaurant, you may be even know their families, their kids. You've seen it come into the community and you've seen it grow and continue to exist, and that becomes part of your experience of what you look forward to in terms of being part of something. So, you have a vested interest in seeing it be here and we saw that really play out with the pandemic and how people really sought out to support these businesses and keep them here. We don't want to see empty storefronts.
[00:07:02] KD: I mean, you've been a real godmother to the Harlem food scene. So, how is the scene doing right now?
[00:07:08] VW: I think that the scene is doing okay. I mean, obviously, everybody is seeing lower numbers than they've been used to as a business. But they've also learned a lot about pivoting, and they've also, I think, because of the moment have been able to incorporate things into their businesses that they may never have thought about or may have been like something they were thinking would be two or three years out before they could do, they've been able to do that.
So, you see businesses that weren't necessarily focused on delivery, doing really, really well in delivery because they've had to change. You've seen people create products out of their restaurants that they hadn't thought that they would be able to do for a couple of years, and now they're doing it pretty successfully. You've seen operators that were limited to tiny spaces be able to take advantage of the open outdoors and expand their seating areas and make up for lost income from when they were shut down. So, people have been really smart and thoughtful about how they navigated this time and space, and I think it is sort of paying off.
[00:08:15] KD: To that, you've got some really interesting projects in the middle of all this, like the Renaissance Pavilion, can you tell us about that project?
[00:08:22] VW: Yeah, so the Renaissance Pavilion is again, it's sort of a full circle, the opportunity for a lot of things that I've been able to work on being part of Harlem. So, this summer, my long-term client Harlem Park to Park was run by Nicola Evans, who's also a client and a very good friend, she reached out and was like, “The mayor just said that he's going to allow us to do Black Lives Matter murals in every borough in the city. And so, we're going to ask that the Manhattan one is in Harlem.” I'm like, “Of course, it should be in Harlem.” So, they reached out to the mayor's office then. There was a lot of wrangling about where that mural was going to be because they actually had a plan of having one downtown and Foley Square as well. So, long story short, we ended up being able to do both. But ours was not funded at all. This was going to be a complete community done project that –
[00:09:21] KD: Why did the Harlem one have to be the one you have to fund yourself?
[00:09:25] VW: Well, that's the million-dollar question. But that's how it landed. We had a determination, it started as something that when they first started talking about it’s me, well, we'll have the kids paint it, and we'll bring it up. And I thought, “Yeah, that sounds nice.” I didn't know how impactful it will be. And then they came back and they said, “Well, we're told that that street we're looking at doesn't really work. So, now we're going to get to do it in front of the state building between 125th and 127th and both sides of the median.”
So, now it's like a huge visible space and opportunity and then we had the opportunity to work with my husband to curate artists out of his network to come out, and we commissioned eight artists, each one got two letters, and they created the Letters for Black Lives Matter on one side of the median. And then we invited – Harlem is rich with 100-year-old community organizations that have just existed from forever, here. And we invited those community groups to come out and take and adopt different letters and send representatives to paint that.
The timing of it was so incredible because everybody was sort of just coming out of being locked out. For a lot of people that participated in this, it was like the first time really being in a space with other people. We had this big open space. There were always PPEs around, and we were very conscientious of safety and all of that happened. We had no reports of anyone getting ill or anything, but the community involvement aspect of it was just, you know, we could not have predicted how much people would respond to this thing, and then the press was phenomenal. We announced the program, the mayor showed up and all of these things happen.
So, anyway, long story short, the way that the project was received by the media, caught the attention of the group that actually did the Foley Square one. They were an urban planning and design company that got a huge amount of funding to do this. And they were doing this downtown, and here's this community activation that's making all this noise uptown. Our mural, I have to say, was incredible, so much so actually that it's going to end up in a major museum show next year.
They got wind of us and paid attention to us. And so, Uber Eats approached them to do this activation for black-owned restaurants somewhere in New York City, that they would be able to build these winterized dining structures. And they reached out to us, the team that produced the Black Lives Matter mural to work with them to not only bring the art to the project but also to help them identify where they should be and then manage the program with them. So, we brought –
[00:12:18] KD: The big project.
[00:12:19] VW: Big project, 32 businesses ultimately worked on this project, 27 of which were black-owned. So, that was a great feat in itself. We had three Harlem-based architects that build these original bespoke outdoor structures for four of the restaurants that participated. And then we also worked with a company called Urban Umbrella and they have this – you've seen them all over the city now, these sort of more luxury scaffolding systems, and they also were able to erect those as additional outdoor seating for a couple of the spaces. And then each of those structures was paired with original artwork working with the same artists that did our mural.
[00:13:06] KD: What are some of the fun things people can eat up there?
[00:13:09] VW: The spaces that were involved are Ruby’s Vintage and Sexy Taco.
[00:13:14] KD: My favorite name, Sexy Taco.
[00:13:16] VW: Sexy Taco, yeah. Sexy Taco is just that. They are Sexy Tacos, but Brian Washington-Palmer, who is partners actually with them, with Nicola who co-executive produced the whole project with me, they have those two restaurants. Ruby’s Vintage happens to be in the building that the great Ruby Dee lived in and raised her family so they really sort of wanted to pay homage to that era and create this very swanky space where people, you will go in there for brunch and it's five o'clock and I'm still here because it just literally sits and chill.
And then Sexy Taco is a pop-up that they created from the restaurant that they originally had called Sexy Taco that they closed, and were able to repurpose part of the space they have now to create that pop-up. So, you have that space and you have Ma Smith's, bakery Ma Smith's is a division of Make My Cake. Make My Cake is 25-year-old women-run family business out of Harlem bakery. They're amazing. And then you have the Derow Harlem, Derow Allen Hassel is a Harlem native, a kid that grew up. He will say, you know Striver’s Row obviously is a Tony neighborhood with these beautiful historic brownstones and he grew up in this area always aspiring to have one of these brands to have a business in this neighborhood. And so, for this guy to finally have his restaurant, and then have it supported in this way he actually was doing really well because when we started talking to him about how he was doing during a pandemic, he's like, actually, his numbers were kind of amazing, but to have his restaurant support it in this way, as somebody who really wanted to create something for his community to enjoy is a big deal.
And then we have the two girls from Harlem Chocolate Factory, Jessica and Asha, they're cranking Oprah's favorite things. And Beyoncé’s –
[00:15:12] KD: They’re doing great right now, yeah.
[00:15:14] VW: They’re doing really great. And who am I forgetting? Oh, there's Alibi, which is one of New York's few, if not only. I'm not sure if it's one or two, black-owned gay bars, LGBTQ bars. So, that's exciting to have some diversity on top of diversity as part of the whole mix there. And then to anchor the space, there is a condo building that just had a wall of windows, and we were able to curate the windows with art. The whole space is amazing. We have a lighting design down the median and all of that.
So, it's just to create a destination that you kind of feel like you want to hang out in and discover these places, and that particular grouping of restaurants, during this pandemic, we know that Frederick Douglass Boulevard got support when they had the sort of out – they got the open streets, and they got to have some of their spaces built out by Rockwell Group, and then Linux, Linux never shuts down. So, they've always had the traffic, but that area up there was a little bit sleepier than everywhere else. So, it was great to give them a necessary boost. And yeah, so I'm really proud of that project and how it brought some notoriety.
[00:16:25] KD: It's really remarkable. I mean, people can tell just from the explanation, it's a complicated project, and to have pulled that off at a time like this is, is just amazing.
[00:16:25] VW: Yeah, 60 days to rally this –
[00:16:39] KD: It’s a record. Oh, my gosh. So, you also just wrapped Harlem Restaurant Week. How did that go?
[00:16:45] VW: Yeah, well, so Harlem Restaurant Week has a second week. It's over on the 28th and it's going really well. It's interesting because this was – I mean, this is also one of Harlem Park to Park’s first programs. So, it's in its 11th year, and it's also one of its most successful programs. It was created, obviously, because there is a New York City Restaurant Week, I used to work on that program. But it was definitely cost-prohibitive for so many restaurants to participate and then benefit from. So, the idea of creating one for Harlem was a necessity for the restaurants up here to be able to sort of collaboratively market themselves and cross-promote, and it's been a very successful venture. It was important to not let any time elapse with it. So, even when New York City Restaurant Week wasn't able to do theirs in the fall of last year, we still did it here and it was still needed here and it was still pretty successful here.
So, it's going well. We decided to do it to celebrate a 25% indoor dining return with $25 meal deals. And then also to celebrate the fact that these restaurants are prepared for any way that a diner feels comfortable. They now have ample outdoor seating, you can be 25% indoor, and now they're all sort of really up and going on all of the delivery platforms. So, now fully prepared to serve you, however, you need to be serviced.
[00:18:18] KD: Great. So, Val, how did you become the godmother of the scene? I know you don't call yourself that.
[00:18:24] VW: Well, basically, I had taken time off from working in agencies. I come to New York. I’d work with some of them. I would say, Melanie Young is definitely a culture shifter. She was a powerhouse in her moment and where she is now, she's still doing that, because she's just she's just somebody who appreciates culture and that was my attraction to her. And then a few other agencies after that, that I got to work with. I started my family at the same time and it started to become like a challenge at work. So, I thought, well, I'll just be a mom for a minute. And my kids, my two boys had just finished their first year of Little League Baseball, and we hadn’t been in Harlem for maybe two years, but I was still really oriented to everything that happens downtown and we just live here.
A group of moms from the baseball team was like, “Let's go celebrate ourselves, our first year and go out to dinner.” And so, they picked the restaurant because I didn't know what the scene was here, and we went to this really charming Francophone bistro called Yatenga. And I just remember being just completely wowed at the moment. And I thought, “Well, I'm in the food industry and I hadn't heard of this place. I wonder how many more of these there are that haven't thought to just come and discover what's going on out here. I should be the one telling people about it.”
So, that's kind of how Valinc PR started and our first big client was Harlem Park to Park and producing their Harvest Festival with them. And what I learned early on, that I knew this is why I was here, was that you do PR for the Beard Awards, and you know that at least every year, once a year, you will have made contact with just about everybody writing or covering food in the country and internationally. So, you have this sort of perspective that we're all talking about the same things, and you know, your role, of you can call up anybody, and they'll be like, “Be on the same page with you and all of that.” And so, then you come up here, and you pick up the phone to call the same people. And they're like, “Oh, it's in Harlem? It's way up there. That's so far.” Wow, I have no idea that that was the sort of perception.
So, it became my mission to change that. I think, to that extent, yeah, that became very important to me, that we would change that narrative, that people would see what's being done here, the ingenuity that's happening out of this community, and that they would get fair coverage, and wide coverage. And so, that's how I kind of attacked it, and why also, I tended to work with organizations that had reach to many multiple businesses, as opposed to individual businesses coming into this market, because we needed to have a bigger voice each time, we did something.
[00:21:27] KD: You mentioned Park to Park, which has really just been remarkable. Can you tell everybody a little bit more about what that is?
[00:21:34] VW: Yeah, so Harlem Park to Park, it's an organization that was founded by a group of entrepreneurs in Harlem, black business owners who saw in the economic downturn, 2008, 2009, that coverage of their businesses were being very much left out of the conversation, and if they hadn't already lost their business, they were in jeopardy of that. And it made sense to collaborate and come together collectively to create this nonprofit that they could could use to create marketing platforms that would benefit multiple businesses together. And so that's sort of the genesis of it and the idea that they came with what to bring, in preservation of the the charm of Harlem, so it's its culture, it’s history, it’s arts, and to make sure that that is always being sort of woven into the story of how people are engaging with and telling stories about about Harlem.
So, that organization has been trailblazing in the ways that it's been able to create these platforms and build it. When I started working with them, I think we were like 60 businesses or so and now they're almost 300 members. And not only that, that collectively working together with that, we've literally built this hospitality scene and made it viable and made the space for people that want to come here and create things. And then we've seen people create brands that have expanded beyond and that they've been able to multiply and that they've been able to stand on this as a foundation for it. So, that's work that I'm personally very proud of, but also credit Park to Park and its vision for really being willing to do the work.
[00:23:25] KD: You mentioned Uber Eats earlier, and that they're supporting the Renaissance Pavilion. Have you seen more companies and corporations wanting to help out given not just the pandemic, but the protests last year, the ongoing Black Lives Matter movement, have these companies stepped up to help out?
[00:23:42] VW: I mean, I think nationwide, companies in general are trying to figure it out. And in a lot of cases, they have stepped up to connect with people like myself who are working in this space. But I also think that they're challenged by finding those partnerships.
[00:24:00] KD: You're a modern PR firm. It's not just getting a placement in a newspaper anymore. It's putting those kinds of deals together.
[00:24:08] VW: Yep, that's a good term. That is what a modern PR firm has to be able to do. I do agree with that. And also, just has to be versatile in your language, you have to be fluent in the culture. We know more than we did before, that the culture is not one note. So, you have to be a little bit more fluid.
[00:24:26] KD: What would you like to see these big companies do or continue to do?
[00:24:31] VW: The whole drive right now is we would like to see more, the playing field more leveled, and that should not read as handouts as that's the bad word, but more access that allows for people to really build on their strengths and talents because I think we have so many that have the capacity to really help us expand the way that we see the world and navigate the world. I think that that's where we need to see growth.
So, the companies can speak for myself would like to see more companies doing projects like Uber Eats chose to do. I think they've really stopped to think about where they may or may not be falling short, and then how to really think through it and put the resources behind it, and then actually create that with action. We've always had companies that will do things in Black History Month, here and there, but it feels a lot, in many ways, intangible. Maybe it's a donation, or we're going to start this fund. And then the communities that are supposed to be effective, I can't really see where the impact is happening. I think that's sort of the magic in the sauce is to take that step further, and to be able to actually see how that made an impact.
[00:25:49] KD: For anybody who's a company, who's listening, Valerie does facilitate things like this, if you do want to have real partnerships and work with some really amazing brands. That's a good segue for my next question, Val, because I wanted to talk about what PR is today and the PR that you do and you're really a brand builder. When we had spoken earlier, you look at yourself as a brand builder, more than a PR person. Can you explain that?
[00:26:16] VW: Yeah, I think that PR has to have that brand-building element to it for it to really have the impact. And the way I always try to approach it is to help a client, first of all, find sort of what's the core of your brand message, what is it that you are trying to articulate to your audience? And then secondly, once we sort of figure that out, then it's how are we communicating that and then how to make you fluent in your voice to tell that story.
So, that's how I always am trying to think about brands when I'm when I'm working with them, and I feel like, especially for black companies, for all companies, but for black companies, because we don't always get the opportunity for the spotlight. So, I'm constantly helping people shape that into what becomes the brand story. And by the time that they're realizing what their brand story, they're very fluent and very comfortable in taking on interviews and doing the things that they do. They’re sort of very comfortable in what it is that they're communicating and that's something that I've worked on for a long time, and it's really fun to see how it's starting to pay dividends for the people that I've worked with. But I think that that's an investment of time that you need to – when you feel like you have a brand that has something to say, I think that that's worth it for you to do that.
[00:27:49] KD: So, how did you get into PR in the first place?
[00:27:54] VW: So, I was a sophomore or a junior in college. I went to Northwestern and we had this thing called a council of 100 women. And Ruth Whitney, who was the editor in chief of Glamour magazine that was on that list, and I wrote to her and just express that I didn't know exactly what this career path was called. But I think I was interested in telling or helping creative people tell their stories. And she invited me to the magazine, like a day at the magazine, and I think I got to hang out with like the folks in the promo department. And then she said, “If you're looking to be in New York, contact me and I'll help you get an interview to something.” And so, fast forward down the road of working, I did work in Chicago doing PR for a while and that I got hired. My first job was with this woman, Mary Nissenson, a Peabody Award-winning journalist and I didn't do PR at that job at all. I think I did research. She was with her team that launched what's now called National Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
So, we worked on that and she really would always be like, “You should be doing more writing. You’re a great writer and maybe you should think about that.” So, after leaving there, I got an internship at Bozell doing PR. They were working on the What's Your Milk Mustache, and that sort of started my PR career where I started saying. “Oh, this is how you tell stories.” Then I went on to boutique PR firms in Chicago before coming to New York and Ruth Whitney did set me up with an interview as a fashion PR firm and I really did consider it except I also got the interview with M. Young, my good friend Dawn Padmore, who's now the new VP of awards at the Beer Foundation, but she was working there and I thought, I think I'm going to enjoy it here a little more.
[00:29:57] KD: Wow. Your life could have gone in a completely different direction.
[00:30:00] VW: Completely. But I have gotten a chance to work in food in Chicago because I just start Valerie Communications in Chicago, my first business. And it was started with the guys that ran this club that was my favorite. It was called the Funky Buddha Lounge, actually met my husband there. And one of those guys happened to be Donny Madea, and the other was Joe Russo. And Joe was branching out to have his own restaurant, and he hired me to do PR for his restaurant. And then from that, Mary Wagstaff hired me to open her Chicago office for Wagstaff.
[00:30:39] KD: What made you decide it was time to launch your own agency the second time around?
[00:30:43] VW: Yeah, I mean, I think it was definitely this idea that there was a need for what I could do and how and I felt like I could really help to build something here. And I wanted to be a part of that. So, I think that was really it. I really made the commitment to be here until I saw that it was no longer a big deal for this market to get the same type of coverage that anybody downtown could get. And so, it's exciting to me to see that we've had 60 minutes and CBS Sunday, like all of these places, not just for me personally, but just like the businesses are being able to attract that attention, because 10 years ago, it was so far, from a reality. Yeah, so that was the work I was interested in doing and feel the most proud of.
[00:31:39] KD: Was it hard launching your own agency? It's never easy starting a business. Do you just know you wanted to do it?
[00:31:47] VW: It was really hard. I knew I wanted to do it. I didn't really know anyone here. No one knew me.
[00:31:53] KD: Did you start with no clients?
[00:31:56] VW: Yeah, I started with one client, that was like a children's playing space. But I thought the two women that were running, it was so great. Yeah, actually, they're the ones who said, “Hey, we just joined this organization called Harlem Park to Park, and I think they could use your help.” And that's exactly how I got involved with Harlem Park to Park. And then through Park to Park is how we connect with restaurants that needed help. And then I just sort of kept going to other organizations like that. The design came from the Mount Morris Park Community Improvement Association, they had a house tour every year, and they hired me to work on their house tour, and you know, we were able to grow the numbers of people coming up to do those. And then I thought, “Yeah, I really do like design and interior design.” And then I got to work with this designer who's like an AD100, 13 consecutive years. I'm like, “What? You want to work with me?” But she was amazing. I mean, she's such a forceful talent.
So, I just sort of think the opportunity is sort of like you put it out there in the universe, and then they start to manifest themselves. But yeah, I did, I started it just like, “Okay, I’m going to do this now.”
[00:33:11] KD: I want to talk about PR today, and how it's evolved, and we only have a few more minutes with you. So, I do want to talk about your advice for companies either looking to hire a PR firm or who needs to do their own PR. But tell us, I would love to know how social media has changed what you do, because it's changed everybody's work. But in PR, in particular.
[00:33:33] VW: It's made the world smaller, your capacity to sort of be speaking to a lot of people that you don't see. So, it definitely has done that. I think, even for mine, I don't have like a huge social media following per se, but I do know that my social media has helped my business a lot, and also, obviously, my client’s businesses. I think it's such a necessary part of the marketing mix at this point is sort of anything – when we started in PR, you used to have to go through this thing called the bacons.
[00:34:11] KD: Oh my god, I remember those
[00:34:11] VW: Do you remember this?
[00:34:14] KD: Young people starting in PR today wouldn't even believe that.
[00:34:17] VW: They have no idea. You have to go through that, and then you have to like type out your list, and then you have to pick up the phone and actually call and pitch these people. And you're like, 20 something and the reporters like really cranky and get to it.
[00:34:32] KD: There was a lot of cranky.
[00:34:34] VW: And now you can just sort of tell people your story online. It's like secondhand. So, I think it's hugely important and impactful, and especially when it's used correctly to the business, so that's something that everybody should definitely be fully tuned into.
[00:34:53] KD: If you have an idea for a brand, or you are about to get your brand off the ground, how do you even start to think about PR, and potentially hiring a PR person?
[00:35:04] VW: Yeah. So, that's an interesting question because I come up against this a lot where people are like, I have this idea, I'm about to launch this project, I have this program, and I want lots of PR for it. I find that a lot of times, you're not as ready for PR as you may think you are. I think that anything that's starting brand new, work with it a little bit, let it sink in, make some mistakes with it, kind of get it to where you feel comfortable about being able to tell its story, and then maybe you're ready to do the PRPs. Because you can get a lot of coverage for something, but if you're not really ready for the moment, it's not really going to have the impact that you're hoping it would have. It's really important that those two things are in alignment, to get the results.
So, that's probably the downside about social media is that it creates this atmosphere where we think we can be sort of instantly famous, we're not really thinking about how we get there just as long as I can show on my page that I got this coverage, and it may be an impressive outlet that you got covered in, but is it speaking to the audience? Is it going to move the needle in any way for your business? Is it telling the brand story that you're trying to tell? That's what's more important, and those are the conversations that you should be having when you're thinking about working with PR, or any type of branding professional, is, first of all, how much do you know and not know about your brand, and that's important because you have to be able to tell me, or you have to say, “I want us to work together until I get it.” But that doesn't necessarily mean that we're jumping in front of the media right away. That means that we're going to just do some work first, and then where you need to be, like, I think it's really important to call your shots.
One of my favorite personal PR stories is the first time I worked at a boutique PR agency. I was coming out of Bozell, and they have this big, huge machine and you kind of do this and I got this job at a boutique agency, and I walked in maybe my second or third day, my boss is like, “Well, we just landed this client.” And the only thing that's success for them is a national place, knowing in Chicago, it's a national placement –
[00:37:26] KD: Said every client.
[00:37:29] VW: Yeah, it has to be a national placement. And you know, like the New York Times or The Wall Street Journal at one of the morning shows, and the product was a casket, you can write on.
[00:37:39] KD: Stop. Cover of Time Magazine, just a casket you can write on. That's actually kind of fascinating.
[00:37:48] VW: And it was fascinating. At first, I was like, “Are you kidding me?” And then they started, that they had done all of this research about the psychology of children and how they grieve, and that they are better at writing it than communicating it with words. And so, this was a product that was specifically for the loss of children or to help children of loss. So, really heavy, but it also was super quirky in terms of just a culture thing.
So, anyway, I say that to say that this was a client that came in and call their shot and told the agency, “This is what success looks like for me.” And the agency took it and my learning out of that was okay, actually, that's not a bad thing if you can call your shot because the agency either has to say I can't do that, or I can't. They have to do it. And luckily for that agency, they had a tenacious 20 something-year-old who was going to figure out how to get that national placement anyway. So, I called up – do you remember Craig Wilson at USA today?
[00:38:55] KD: Sure, sure.
[00:38:57] VW: Yeah, that column on the front of the life section, and I had never in my life pitched that guy, but for some reason, I felt like he would be into this. So, this was before we had cell phones and all of that. So, I called them and I left him this pitch on his voicemail and I went to lunch for half an hour or whatever I came back and they're like, pacing the floor, “Valerie!” I’m like, “What?” He’s like, “He called back, wooh.”
[00:39:23] KD: Just getting the call back was a miracle back then.
[00:39:27] VW: Yeah and I’m like, “Who called back?” They’re like, “The USA Today reporter called.” I’m like, “What?” And then he gave me the cover story of the life section with my pic, the picture of the kid in front of the cat. And not only that, it ended up in the monologues of both Jay Leno and David Letterman.
[00:39:48] KD: Oh my gosh.
[00:39:48] VW: So, this client ended up with a clip look like this from calling their shot.
[00:39:55] KD: And it's been upward and onward ever since for you. Alright, let's talk about brands and restaurants. Some food concepts, et cetera, that just don't have the money to hire PR and they have to do with themselves. Any advice for those folks?
[00:40:08] VW: Well, I think do your research. I mean, that's important. Look at a concept that you feel is comparable to yours. Or, you know, if you're a restaurant tour, if you're a chef who has a career trajectory that you aspire to, or you feel is comparable to yours, and see where they're being, who's writing about them, and how are they being covered. And then do your research and figure out how you can become visible to those writers and those reporters. By sort of helping them draw the comparison where you covered this thing, and I'm doing something similar, maybe you'd be interested in looking at my thing, because a lot of times writers do cover things that based on what the publication needs, but they also are looking for things that interest them. You can usually find a pattern of reporter in terms of them writing about the things that interest them, in addition to the things that they just have to write as part of the job.
So, obviously, number one, is definitely do your research and find out where do you fit into the lexicon of things, so that you can try to make those connections for yourself. And then yeah, use your social media as a tool to sort of let people know what you're doing. So, be very intentional about how you're using it, and what you're talking about, and how you're presenting yourself. And try as often as you can to put forward your most polished presentation. I mean, I just turned 50 –
[00:41:50] KD: Welcome to the club.
[00:41:51] VW: Thank you. For whatever reason, it's very liberating for me. I'm a Libra, I always am worried about that everybody feels equally attended to. But when I turned 50, I'm like, “Oh, I get to say no to a lot of things and I get to push back if I don't want to.” So, I found that what I've become most cranky about is images, like you have to have good pictures but you have to have good pictures.
[00:42:18] KD: You have to. You have to, today.
[00:42:19] VW: Yeah, it’s just not.
[00:42:21] KD: I know that sounds unfair, but maybe you built the most beautiful restaurant or you have the best menu or you came up with the coolest condiment idea ever. But if you don't have good pictures, you're out of luck.
[00:42:33] VW: You're out of luck, and it's going to immediately sink you.
[00:42:38] KD: Absolutely. So, invest in good photography.
[00:42:41] VW: Invest in good photography, make that a must and make that a regular thing like have it, and built into your budget that when you're updating your menu, you're also updating your photos. When you're changing locations, you're updating your photos. So, I think those are like two things I would say if you're trying to do it alone and then also to know when it's time to to get help, because you can't really keep up with it, because what you don't want is the impossible of people trying to reach out to you that you're not getting back to you and then suddenly you're the problem child that everybody is saying, “Okay, I've tried I don't want to deal with them because they don't respond. They don't get me what I need.” That can work against you.
[00:43:19] KD: That is great advice. All right, Valerie, we've taken up a lot of your time we're going to do a little speed round and then set you free. Oldest thing in your fridge.
[00:43:27] VW: Scallions.
[00:43:29] KD: Scallions. They go bad, just FYI.
[00:43:33] VW: Yeah. Quickly.
[00:43:36] KD: What is your most-used kitchen implement?
[00:43:40] VW: I just got set of great Jones pots and I adore them. So, yeah, I start cooking based on what's going to look good in my pants.
[00:43:52] KD: Nice. Nice. Your new career as a food stylist, right?
[00:43:55] VW: Yes. There you go.
[00:43:57] KD: What is the food that you would never eat or you can't eat?
[00:44:00] VW: Unfortunately, eggplant.
[00:44:01] KD: Oh, okay.
[00:44:04] VW: I've discovered as a teenager that I get an allergic reaction to it. That hasn't always been there, and now I'm convinced it may be the way that it's cooked. Because as a kid, my mom would make like an eggplant stew but the egg pie would be fully like cut. But if you having like eggplant parmesan, it's more authentic, and I think that stage of eggplant, I can't eat.
[00:44:27] KD: All right, so don't make eggplant if Val is coming over for dinner. What is a song that makes you smile?
[00:44:33] VW: Nature Boy by Nat King Cole.
[00:44:37] KD: What is one of your most treasured cookbooks?
[00:44:39] VW: Honestly, it's the recipes that I've been able to capture from my grandmother.
[00:44:44] KD: That's amazing. Tell us one that you love that you make over and over.
[00:44:49] VW: It's going to have to be her cake pudding. It's like you have to make this batter and you're pouring the batter into a tin, and you put the tin into a half pot of boiling water and you have to put a weight on it. And it boils that cake into like this dense texture, and then the icing or glaze is a confection sugar and brandy and some orange zest. It's incredible. It's a very traditional Liberian that well, her generation would make all the time. And sometimes they put fruit in it and all. I like it just with nothing.
[00:45:27] KD: Have you published it anywhere?
[00:45:29] VW: I haven't yet. No.
[00:45:31] KD: We'd be happy to publish it, if you would ever let us.
[00:45:33] VW: Okay, that's fun. I'm going to have to go back to the source.
[00:45:40] KD: All right, last question, Val. If you could collaborate with anybody, who would it be and what would the collaboration be?
[00:45:47] VW: Well, he's going to get mad at me, because I've just thought about this. But he's a childhood friend, and a super successful entrepreneur and pioneer in his space. And his brands are culture-shifting brands, but he as a brand, his personal brand, he hasn't necessarily delved into. And I would love to help them build that personal brand, because I think that is a voice that we need, and I'm not saying that he doesn't use it, but in the ways that makes him feel more accessible, and gives people sort of insights and aspirations to a mind like his. I've been looking at house or say, there's the whole cult following of say, Elon Musk for various reasons and folks like that. And I just feel like, well, this guy, he's really in that realm for a lot of people, and I think that I would love to be able to help him create that voice in the marketplace.
[00:46:49] KD: So, you’d help out a friend, that says a lot about you, Valerie.
[00:46:54] VW: Yeah.
[00:46:53] KD: All right. Well, it sounds to me like you feel optimistic about 2021. Is that a fair assessment?
[00:47:00] VW: I do. Well, for my company, we are sort of looking at what our next move is or how we grow from here. I feel in many ways that the things that I hope to accomplish in this market I've done, and I'm excited to see bigger brands, the opportunity to work with bigger brands starting to manifest themselves. So, I definitely want to keep pushing in that direction. But also, I've always been interested in building this company into a platform where I could help to foster other talents that look like me and really build on a lifestyle, branding, and PR agency, because we really just don't exist in that space.
I mean, you see a lot of definitely black folks in PR and marketing do well, entertainment, and sports marketing, that's where the majority of black talents with sort of bigger disposable incomes tend to exist. And you see far fewer, too few of us in spaces like hospitality, and design and arts, and that's where I want to see us multiply. So, that's why we sort of stay in this space, and my goal is to be able to expand what I'm doing so that others can join me in it and we can build that type of platform, and be able to tell more of these incredible stories because they really are just waiting to be told.
[00:48:29] KD: That's amazing. Well, folks are lucky to have you behind them, Valerie. I know that much.
[00:48:35] VW: Thank you so much.
[00:48:36] KD: Well, thank you for your time.
[00:48:37] VW: Thanks so much for having me.
[00:48:38] KD: Oh, my god, we talked for so long. I could talk to you for like another hour, but I know you actually have a job to do. So, thank you for your time. I hope this is just the first of many visits you make on Radio Cherry Bombe.
[00:48:49] VW: Me too. Thanks so much for having me. Thank you for all that you do to help amplify voices of women in this field. It’s so important and you guys do great work and I enjoy your platform very much. I’m looking forward to all the Julia Child stuff coming up.
[00:49:04] KD: Thanks, Valerie. All right. You're the bomb, talk to you soon.
[00:49:08] VW: Thank you.
[OUTRO]
[00:49:11] KD: That's it for today's show. Thank you so much to Valerie Wilson of Valinc PR for joining us. Val is a force. Any thoughts on today's show? Any future guests you'd like to hear from? Email us at radio@cherrybombe.com and let us know.
Radio Cherry Bombe is produced by Cherry Bombe Media. This episode of Radio Cherry Bombe was edited by We Edit Podcasts. Our radio intern is the one and only, Jenna Sadhu. Thank you to Chronicle Books, publisher of the cookbook À Table by Rebekah Peppler, out April 6.
If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to sign up for our newsletter over at cherrybombe.com. Find out our latest podcast guests and stay on top of events like our upcoming Julia Jubilee Conference. Thank you for listening and don't forget, you're the bomb.
[When Harry Met Sally Clip: I'll have what she's having.]
[00:50:03] KF: Hi, my name is Callie Flynn. I'm a dietetic intern and graduate student at the University of Vermont. Do you want to know who I think is the bomb? Tove Ohlander, creator of the Maker Skirt, Trade Apron, and Farm Dress, and the co-owner of Tove by design and AO Glass in Burlington, Vermont. Tove change the game of workwear with her aprons and skirts that are made to last a lifetime. I use mine when I'm cooking in the kitchen, working in the garden and out and about town, when I was out and about town.
Tove by design addresses 10 of the sustainable development goals set by the United Nations in 2015, including clean water and gender equality. Check out the skirts in person at The Canvas by Querencia, and at tovedesign.com. Tove is the bomb.