Jane Owen, CEO of boutique entertainment/celebrity PR firm, Jane Owen PR, gives her unfiltered views of how PR works in that segment, challenges, dealing with egos, AI deep fakes, changing media landscape. Plus, she weighs in on how the Taylor Swift/Travis Kelce wedding was handled.
TTAC Creator Ed Garsten hosts " Tales from the Beat," a podcast about the automotive and media worlds. A veteran reporter and public relations operative, Garsten worked for CNN, The Associated Press, The Detroit News, Chrysler's PR department and Franco Public Relations. He is currently a senior contributor for Forbes.
The TTAC Creators Series tells stories and amplifies creators from all corners of the car world, including culture, dealerships, collections, modified builds and more.
An AI-summarized transcript and edited by a staffer is below.
[Image: YouTube Screenshot]
Become a TTAC insider. Get the latest news, features, TTAC takes, and everything else that gets to the truth about cars first by subscribing to our newsletter.
Summary: Entertainment PR, Celebrity Culture and the Changing Media Landscape
This episode of Tales from the Beat features Jane Owen, CEO of Jane Owen PR, a boutique entertainment public-relations firm. The conversation explores how entertainment PR works, how the business has changed, the importance of relationships and reputation, the growing influence of AI, and the often-hidden costs of fame.
Choosing Clients for More Than Their Budgets
Owen explains that one of the central philosophies behind her firm is not automatically choosing clients based on who can pay the most. Although her company has employees and significant overhead, she believes entertainment PR is different from many other forms of public relations because the publicist needs to genuinely believe in the person, project or talent being promoted.
She says some of the most rewarding and successful campaigns of her career involved smaller independent films and clients with limited budgets. By contrast, she has also represented well-funded projects that lacked the talent or quality necessary to sustain an effective campaign. Her philosophy is that investing in talented people early can produce much greater long-term rewards than taking a large fee from a project that is unlikely to succeed.
That philosophy also protects the publicist's credibility. Owen stresses that journalists are more likely to take a publicist's calls when they know that person isn't going to waste their time with irrelevant or weak pitches. Maintaining trust with journalists is more valuable than forcing coverage for a client simply because the client is paying.
Managing Unrealistic Client Expectations
One of the recurring challenges of PR, according to Owen, is that clients almost always have more ambitious expectations than reality can support. Even when clients repeatedly say they understand realistic expectations, they frequently expect more coverage than a campaign can reasonably generate.
She argues that taking on a client who isn't a good fit makes this problem even worse. The publicist knows the campaign isn't likely to work, but the client still expects results, creating pressure to manufacture pitches or pursue opportunities that aren't realistic.
Her conclusion is blunt: the money isn't worth taking a bad-fit client because the damage to the publicist's time, relationships and reputation ultimately outweighs the short-term revenue.
Celebrity PR Is Much Broader Than Publicity
Representing individuals rather than companies adds another dimension to the job. Owen says that while she's technically a publicist, working with talent often means taking on responsibilities normally associated with assistants, managers or travel agents.
She describes helping a client make his first independent film and even assisting with casting. Celebrity PR therefore can extend well beyond securing media coverage; the publicist can become deeply involved in the client's career and day-to-day professional life.
That work also means dealing with unusually large egos. Owen argues that some degree of ego is almost necessary for people pursuing acting, music or filmmaking because they have to believe strongly enough in themselves to compete in an extraordinarily difficult industry. A publicist, however, is hired specifically to increase a person's visibility and fame, which means dealing directly with that ego becomes part of the job.
How PR Has Changed
Owen describes the transformation of PR as almost unrecognizable compared with when she started her career.
In the old media environment, a major goal was getting a client into an important print publication. A publicist might spend considerable time pitching an editor, wait months for the story to be published and then deliver copies of the magazine to the client.
Today's environment is dramatically different. Clients want:
- Immediate online coverage
- Social-media exposure
- Celebrity endorsements
- Podcasts
- Television
- Digital publications
- Large volumes of coverage
Instead of one major article several months later, clients increasingly expect hundreds or even thousands of pieces of exposure almost immediately. Owen says her firm may generate hundreds of millions of impressions for clients in a month and still face pressure to produce more because of the enormous amount of competing information.
The traditional idea that a brand needed to be mentioned roughly seven times to become familiar has also changed. Owen says she now sees something closer to 15 or 16 exposures being necessary because audiences face so much more noise and have shorter attention spans and memories.
Consequently, publicists have to run multiple campaigns simultaneously, tailoring different stories and pitches to print, television, podcasts and online publications.
More Work, Less Money and No Off Switch
Despite the increased workload, Owen says PR budgets have declined. At the same time, clients expect publicists to be available around the clock.
She describes receiving messages from clients at 4 a.m. on Sundays and during weekends, illustrating how the traditional separation between work and personal time has largely disappeared. The media environment has effectively become a continuous news cycle.
AI and Deepfakes
AI represents another major challenge for entertainment PR. Owen says the industry is still figuring out how to deal with deepfakes and AI-generated content, while also confronting fears that AI actors and writers could eventually replace human talent.
She notes that publications are becoming better at identifying AI-generated pitches, press releases and stories, but expects the distinction between human and AI-generated material to become increasingly difficult to detect.
Her larger concern is preserving humanity and human relationships. Publicists may increasingly have to defend clients against false AI-generated content and convince journalists and audiences not to amplify deepfakes simply because they are entertaining or provocative.
Owen also emphasizes that celebrities are real people with families and feelings. She gives the example of clients with children who worry about how publicity surrounding their parents affects those children at school and in their personal lives. Her point is that children didn't choose to become public figures simply because their parents did.
The Dark Side of Fame
The conversation also explores how fame isn't necessarily the positive outcome people imagine. Owen describes people who are "fame rich and money poor" — highly recognizable individuals who aren't necessarily financially successful.
Famous people also lose much of the ability to make mistakes privately. Their appearance, behavior and personal lives can be constantly photographed, criticized and dissected online. Owen points out that fame can attract both extreme admiration and extreme hatred, sometimes from people who don't actually know the celebrity.
She cautions clients considering reality television to understand that appearing on such programs can make virtually every aspect of their lives fair game for public scrutiny long after the show ends.
Don't Believe Everything You Read
Owen's central message about celebrity media is perhaps the simplest: don't automatically believe what you read.
She argues that stories often contain agendas created by publicists, celebrities, studios, publications or other interested parties. What appears to be an objective version of reality may actually be a carefully constructed narrative.
Her advice is to read multiple accounts and use your own judgment rather than assuming the first version of a story is the complete truth.
The Taylor Swift Wedding Example
Near the end of the interview, Owen is asked about the media handling of Taylor Swift's wedding. She says she became indirectly involved because one of her clients' sons is Swift's godson and was the subject of speculation about whether he attended.
Owen considers much of that speculation overblown, but she also criticizes the overall image strategy surrounding the wedding. In her view, Swift and her husband had cultivated a relatively down-to-earth public image, while the highly elaborate wedding appeared inconsistent with that positioning.
She believes the event generated an avoidable image problem because of its extravagance, street closures and the contrast between the enormous amount of money spent on the celebration and visible poverty nearby. From a PR perspective, she says she would have advised against handling the wedding in that manner.
Overall Takeaway
The interview presents entertainment PR as a high-pressure business built around relationships, credibility, psychology and constant adaptation. Owen's central argument is that effective PR isn't simply about generating as much publicity as possible. It's about believing in the client, understanding the audience, protecting relationships with journalists and creating a believable narrative.
The media environment has made that considerably harder. Publicists now have to fight through an enormous volume of information, satisfy clients who expect instant results, remain available around the clock and contend with AI-generated misinformation. At the same time, the interview argues that the fundamentals haven't changed: credibility, good judgment, genuine relationships and an understanding of what makes a story worth telling remain the foundation of successful PR.
via Autobuzz Today
Comments
Post a Comment