Taylor VanDyke: Champlain College Alum working in PR

Interviewee: Taylor VanDyke

Junior Publicist at People Making Good PR, Burlington, Vermont

taylor@peoplemakinggood.com

. mobile: 802.578.4035

LinkedIn link: https://www.linkedin.com/in/taylorjvandyke

Part One: Taylor VanDyke is a twenty four year old Junior Publicist who works at People Making Good PR in downtown Burlington, Vermont. While talking to her, we dove right in on her position and the job, and she proclaimed “I act as the main point of contact for my group of clients. Right now I have six, sometimes I have four or eight, it depends what is going on.” Under her client's instruction, she creates a PR plan. What this means is that whatever message they’re trying to get out to their consumers, Taylor pitches an idea to them that she thinks will bring in the most profit or attention. She mentions that although she is “pitching” these ideas, it is really her job to decide what happens, and that the communication with the company she is working with, is really done just to stay on the same page. Taylor explained that each month she has a different set of events or PR tactics that she’ll use. “In September, these are all of the things I will be doing for you,” she tells a client. Initially when she sits down with whoever needs assistance in PR, she will get the information she needs from the representative of that said company, and will devise a plan to get whatever message that needs to be said thoughtfully, out into the public for consumption. “Other clients, I do social media for. So on top of the PR pitching, and media strategy, there is the social media strategy. And then there are other clients I will just do social media for, and others that I work on a marketing piece for,” she told me. For Taylor, every client is different and what the job entails for each project, is really client specific; when she finds out what that company needs, she can go in many different directions to help them. Some businesses that she is working with now and in the past include: Character Skin Care, Espro, The Essex, Let’s Grow Kids, Essex Experience, and Vermont Evaporator Company. These companies rely on her for a variety of skills and focuses. For instance, the Character Skin Care Company, focuses heavily on underserved individuals who have different skin types than most, who need that special treatment but find that there are not many companies who are willing to serve them. Taylor has to be able to reach this specific client base. For The Essex, she works with them primarily on their social media and spreading awareness about their culinary and spa services. She told me that companies like the Vermont Evaporator Company and Espro, are trying to reach an “outdoorsy” client base and really illuminate the portability and ease of their product usage. I asked Taylor about a typical Monday, and she broke it down. First thing when she comes into the office, she reads some sort of news and gets caught up on happenings locally or globally. She then starts scheduling social media. “Analytics are huge for social media, clients want to see the numbers they want to know who is looking at things when, and okay this many people clicked through but does that mean they bought?” she explained. She then touched upon the application Sprout, which auto publishes posts on social media without having to go on each platform and manually send them out. After all of that in the morning, she continues her day by checking in to each profile and seeing if any comments or messages have arrived and then responds if necessary. “In the late morning to afternoon, I focus on two clients and their PR pitches. I do an initial round, a follow up, and then the final - it’s three weeks total for each company.” At this time, Taylor is focusing on finding clients with a good mission behind their company. Overall, People Making Good PR, is a business that works hard to help people working behind good causes.

Part Two: Taylor VanDyke is originally from Dalton, MA, and in her free time she enjoys yoga, cooking, hiking, interior design, and most importantly, writing. “So I got here in a really funny way actually. I interned here in college, my junior year, for about a year, and they wanted to hire me then, but I was still in school and I didn’t have that time commitment. Once I graduated I ended up at a different firm and things kind of fell into place. I was looking for something new, and PMG had an opening, and they already knew me; I kind of just slid in to what I was doing before, just full time, and with more responsibility,” she told me. Taylor actually went to Champlain College, and came in as a Communications major. However, at the time she was too overwhelmed with how broad the field was and switched over to what once was a major, Public Relations. This happened after sitting in on Nancy Kerr’s Public Relations class for two weeks. She also pursued a minor in Marketing, so that really helped her become more quickly acclimated and adjusted to the workload at People Making Good PR, as well as everything else that lead up to it including internships. Taylor had interned at PMG for her first semester as a junior, really enjoyed the work, and asked to stay. She then left the company for the summer after her junior year, due to another job. Her sophomore through her senior year, including the summer between her junior and senior year, Taylor was a Resident Assistant at Champlain College. This helped a lot with accountability and understanding responsibility. Taylor also had mentioned to me that she had interned at the brewing company A&S. There, she was responsible for managing the branding for four craft beer brands. She also dealt with marketing and finding emails, preparing press packages, and other projects that “other people didn’t want to do.” At PMG, she had told me about the hands on real world experience, and how much she learned from that position, compared to A&S where she did the dirt work, and learned things she didn’t need to know.

Part Three: As we approached the end of the interview, I had asked Taylor for some advice, as a person who is interested in pursuing a career in the field. She thought for a moment and explained how important it is to do things you might not like because it could surprise you and you could end up loving it or pursuing something you thought you were interested in, and end up hating it. She really stressed having a variety of focuses to really narrow down your individual specialization. Taylor also talked about how efficient it is to know your strengths and weaknesses, and how helpful that information is in the workplace. “Internships!” Taylor fully supports Champlain’s awareness in career building and said that having internships really helps your future. She also mentioned Human Resources and if you study that at all, you gain a unique perspective of the work environment, because you are knowledgeable about both sides from being an employee, to being an HR rep. Taylor also really stressed the surprising importance of taking a class in data analytics. This shocked me, and I asked her for reasoning. “Numbers are really important in PR, I don’t know why I wasn’t pushed to take those kinds of classes.” She mentions that analytics are really important for social media and understanding the numbers behind how many likes, shares, or mentions happen on their site, or feed. “Those numbers need to be interpreted into something that can change their business to get more customers” she said.

Part Four: The first thing that I really appreciated and took away from my interview with Taylor was that I am not the only one who didn’t really know what to do with my major, or what career to pursue with the knowledge gained from school. Watching her development from the scared and unaware first year into a twenty four year old full time publicist, gave me a lot of hope for the future. This kind of work, honestly now seems a lot less intimidating, and after hearing about Taylor’s experiences and her responsibilities at PMG, I know that I could do those things and make myself a marketable employee. Working for a smaller company like Taylor is, is something that I definitely want to do. In PR, and even in life, I really appreciate one on one interactions and helping people accomplish something motivates me almost every day. From this assignment, I learned a lot about broadening you horizons and your knowledge spectrum. I will definitely look into taking some sort of course dealing with analytics and crunching the numbers. Clients do not want a screenshot of the insights and how many people their site has reached, they want the information behind those numbers, what they mean, and how to use them to their advantage; and I want to learn how to do that. I found Taylor VanDyke by searching for PR firms that are nearby in Burlington. PMG came up to my page and from there I had contacted a woman through email named Nicole Junas Ravlin, a co-founder of PMG. From there, our availability didn’t match up and at that point I was put in contact through email with Taylor, and we set a date and time, in her office downtown at PMG.