Kelly Owen, Associate Director of Sling and Stone, chats about how to find clients and work that aligns with your personal values, keeping remote teams engaged, and how agencies can leverage the differences between Australian and US consumers.
Key Takeaways
- There are a lot of people who contribute to your journey and your success as a PR.
- If you’re seeking out a mentor, don’t be afraid to compliment someone’s work.
- The pandemic has resulted in a ‘bubbling up’ of sustainability startups.
- US customers expect to be able to get things delivered immediately – whereas Australian customers have accepted slower delivery and less availability on products.
- Careers don’t move in a straight line. Often people won’t have the luxury of holding out and waiting for a brand that perfectly aligns with their values. Don’t be disappointed if that’s not how your career starts.
Podcast Transcript
Claire Deane:
All right. I am here today with Kelly Owens, associate director at sling and stone. Thank you so much for joining us.
Kelly Owens:
Thanks for having me, Claire,
Claire Deane:
Not a problem. So I’d like, like to kick things off and have you tell me a little bit about yourself, what’s been your career journey up to this point? How did you get to where you are?
Kelly Owens:
Yeah, I think, maybe looking back at it it’s I was always meant to be in media in some capacity. My dad grew up in newspaperman. So I grew up in reporting and all that stuff. So it might seem obvious now, but it was definitely a time when I was deciding in my career that it wasn’t very obvious to me. Public, everyone else, it was. But I think my journey, if you wanna call it, that really got started with me wanting to be in magazines. I thought I would be in a wins assistant, to be honest was what I was aiming for, and was ready for. I got my first job in New York was at teen Vogue, so I got quite close.
Claire Deane:
Did you pass her in the hallway at any stage?
Kelly Owens:
Of course. And like, why am I wearing this today? But being in New York city and particularly around the time of the global financial crisis was really educational and that you can see that it probably was gonna be a really hard path. And not that I wasn’t interested in going a hard way, you also need to like eat, pay bills. But that aside, when I was working at team Vogue was really the first time I saw what publicists did and that they really had a big hand in creating the narrative for a lot of companies. And I thought it was really exciting as well. So had a few other roles after that, but I got my first proper PR job from my boss at teen Vogue at a more fashion and lifestyle, very consumer driven agency, and was there for ages was right around the time as well that influencers, especially New York are really becoming a thing.
Kelly Owens:
So that was really exciting to be part of the journey and remembering some very famous bloggers now, they were called bloggers then, now they’re definitely not called that anymore thinking back to their original website. So I was there for six years plus, and then went to a bigger agency OBE and was working on really big campaigns there. And that was what really drew me to that. And then just started questioning my life in New York. And as you probably do, if you’ve been there for you know, 10 years or so, and came to Australia to visit a friend and was like, “Wow, this is really awesome.” You can live near the beach and the city. And it’s got like a combination of all these really great things I was looking for. And to the surprise of just about on who knew me, I was like, “Okay, I’m gonna be moving to Australia.”
Kelly Owens:
And I met Vicky, the founder of Sling and Stone. He just happened to be on a business trip in New York around the time I was, you know, interviewing and we met at a coffee shop and I’ve picked the coffee shop as well, because it had in the Yelp reviews like a picture of David and Goliath, which is kind of an odd to Sling and Stone. In the review pictures, I was like, this must be it. This is great. It’s a sign. And yeah, I’ve been here for four years now and it’s been really exciting. I think at the time Sling and Stone was really at a turning point and becoming big and like winning really sizable work. And that was really attractive to me at the time as being part of a growing agency.
Kelly Owens:
They were just opening an office in LA and New Zealand office was pretty young, so it was really exciting time to join. That’s like how I got to this point, certainly with a lot of help from people along the way, which is why I always personally try to give help when I can, you know, I got my first foot in the door to teen Vogue from a connection my dad had and I got my first job from my boss at teen Vogue. So I think it’s really important to recognize that there’s lots of people in everyone’s journey.
Claire Deane:
You have mentioned to me in the past that you are a mentor and you do a lot of mentoring with other people in the industry. What do you think makes a really good mentor and what should people look for when they’re seeking out a mentor?
Kelly Owens:
I don’t have all the answers there and it’s something I often research myself because I think it is a really complicated relation and I think particularly for women, you’re like, how do I ask for what I want? And like, how do I properly use you? And what I would say is you know, I have listed in my LinkedIn profile, reach out to me. I’m happy to answer any questions. I’ve done conversations with people before they interviewed at Alvie, for example, and given them some of my advice on how to approach an interview or, someone who wants to work at Alvie has reached out to me based on my work history, or wants to work at Sling and Stone. And I’ll just take the time for anyone. But I would say my biggest advice is just ask, and if there’s someone you admire in the industry, if you’re nervous, everyone loves a compliment. So it doesn’t hurt to compliment someone’s work and say that you admire them and you’ve been following them. And I think that’s certainly a good sound point for a relationship and ask the questions that you wanna ask.
Claire Deane:
So tell me, you mentioned you moved to Australia to start at Sling and Stone. Sling and Stone seems like a really different agency in the conversations that I’ve had with your team. They really wanna work with organizations who are making a difference or who are trying to do things differently and change the world in their own sort of unique way. Tell me a bit about Sling and Stone, why you love working there, what you think sets you apart from other PR agencies.
Kelly Owens:
Oh, right, right. With the big question, I think the reason I’ve loved working at Sling and Stone has changed. It definitely was different four years ago until it is now which I think is good. I think the reason you love your job and love where you work should change. And I think now we are, it’s weird how large we are. We’re, I think almost 70 people now and I really do like that good ideas come from everywhere. So no matter what role you have on the team, what office you’re in, idea generation is really welcomed and supported. So I really like that environment for myself and for the team around us as well. And I think early days for me there was because we were so much smaller, you had your hands in everything.
Kelly Owens:
And now we have a lot of specialists who know more than I do. But I think that was really exciting as well, being part of a growth journey. And I do think we are different. I’ve been at two other agencies, as I mentioned, and each one has been different, I think every agency has their own personality, their own offering, but the types of clients that we work with is different from my agency background. And I thought it was very unique to have a specialization that isn’t sector-specific. So we don’t just represent people who are in tech or who are in travel or who are in fashion or anything like that. It could be from all three of those sectors because our mission and what we really say true to is challengers and disruptors. So that can really come from anywhere, which keeps it exciting and opens us up to a lot more opportunity, I think
Claire Deane:
And so how does that work in reality? So you wanna do work that shapes the future. How do you determine whether a client is a good fit and do you actively turn away work that doesn’t align with that mission?
Kelly Owens:
Yeah, we definitely do turn away very politely. Some really great brands that are great for another agency doesn’t mean that, you know, they’re not a great company or there’s just probably someone better to service than we are. UAnd it also means that we can service the clients that we know best really well, if we’re focused what that looks like in reality has certainly changes we scaled. But sometimes we do need to debate. Okay, do we think this fits us? Do we think we can service them? It’s obviously a two-way relationship, it’s not just transactional. So we have discussions pretty regularly about, is this right for us? Are we right for them? How does this fit within our portfolios? And that’s kind of exciting as well, working at some of the bigger agencies. In my past, you don’t really have that option of, “oh, this is right”. For us as a company, we kind of just go after like the big names because they’re the big names. So yeah, that’s, I think pretty refreshing to me.
Claire Deane:
Is there a criteria or is it more comes down to you have a group discussion and see whether it feels right?
Kelly Owens:
Yeah, there’s not, I wouldn’t say there’s criteria as such, because that does kind of limit. We may not know what a challenger will be next year because you know, it’s really hard to kind of pinpoint that. And the way that so many different brands are challenging the status quo is different. You know, we’ve got clients on our roster who are challenging fast food like Gomez, you know, they’ve really changed what is considered fast food and what we should come to expect, or retailers like Glam Corner who are really advocating for buying less renting more, and how that impacts the environment. So it really does range what clients are doing. So it would be hard to have very specific criteria.
Claire Deane:
Awesome. So you mentioned then, it doesn’t really matter what sector that client comes from. How do you stay across so many different sectors and, you know, publications and strategies and approaches if you are not specializing in fashion or lifestyle?
Kelly Owens:
Yep. Great question. We definitely have some clients and our roster that are very similar in the same sectors. And so people become kind of specialists or we leverage some experience people have in their past. You know, in the past I worked on tons of retail brands. So I worked on a lot of our retail clients, Sling and Stone, which I, again really liked when I came here that I was able to learn new things about different sectors, but also bring my own expertise that I’ve developed myself and provide value that way. So I think that’s really an exciting opportunity for anyone at any level coming in is we probably have some clients that you have expertise in and we can really use your insight there. And you can also have the opportunity to learn. And the media landscape, it’s a really funny one.
Kelly Owens:
I think journalists have come to expect that we are representing a certain type of client, that it is a challenger. We are talking about people changing the future, the way we live, work in place. So I think that does impact how reporters will respond to us and come to know us, which is important too. And we do work really really collaboratively, I will say for having several offices in several countries, I’ve never worked with an agency that’s more collaborative across the Tazman and across the Pacific. And we like to say we have three offices, one door. So if I’m trying to work on a story for an outlet that I don’t have a great relationship with someone will, and I can just ask, you know, any of my colleagues, do you have any insights here? Can I leverage your expertise that you have from this client to come up with a strategy for this other client? So that does take off some pressure and allows for just better ideas and better working environment.
Claire Deane:
Do you think that COVID the pandemic, everything that’s been happening has that increased the rate of people who are doing disruptive things, are you finding more people are launching and, and pivoting and all of those, you know, buzzword because the world is changing so much?
Kelly Owens:
Yeah. So funny you say that, because I think every person has had moments where they’re like, “Ugh, this is not the career for me.”, “I wanna do something else” or people are just changing right now. And I think businesses are no different whether they’ve had to change off the back of the pandemic, and you know, switch from in-person products to more virtual or whatever it may be to just new innovation coming out of this. I think specifically something that’s really interesting, we’ve brought a lot of clients in the sustainability space, but certainly the pandemic has had a kind of an impact on the strides that we have made against, you know, single use plastics or other things like that. So seeing some of those brands really bubble up now is I think also really exciting and probably a reaction to people thinking, “oh, I’ve changed my habits back to the way they used to be. Now I need to be more mindful as well.”
Claire Deane:
So switching angles a little bit here, you’re originally from the US obviously you’ve got that lovely accent. How do you find consumers and media are really different between the two countries or are they?
Kelly Owens:
First of all you’re the first person to ever say that someone who’s from Philadelphia, a good accent.
Claire Deane:
Um, compared to my Bogan Aussie accent, it sounds lovely.
Kelly Owens:
You’ve obviously never seen Mera east town, but, I think American consumers are so prolifically different from consumers in any other market, probably. I’m pretty sure buzzin Australia has a series they have of Americans confused in Australia and things like that. And everybody loves to make fun of American consumers, which is well deserved. But just for me as a consumer, what I noticed coming from the states and probably specifically coming from a big city in the states coming from New York to here, I was a little surprised by a few things. One, I really rely on customer reviews to buy things. So, I remember coming and looking for a hair dryer and I was like, you know, where can I find one that I know is good? And that the other and Adore was one of our clients. Client plug, but, Adore was genuinely the only beauty retailer I could find that had a lot of customer reviews. And I wasn’t used to that not being the norm, particularly in something like beauty. I don’t know how anyone makes decisions without looking at customer reviews.
Claire Deane:
I’m the same. I always look at so many customer reviews. So yeah, that’s interesting.
Kelly Owens:
Yeah, that was one of the first things I noticed. I’d say as well, like for me and probably anyone else from the US, you’re used to things very quickly. You’re not used to waiting, convenience is available to you at any time. So even for me, when I first arrived going to Cole’s and turning up, and this is closed at 10, o’clock why can’t I get milk at one in the morning? So things like that, you know, online shopping, obviously with the same day shipping, that type of behavior, I think is quite commonplace in the US, which at least four years ago when I came to Australia, that was just kind of starting to come. You see more of that now. And particularly I think things like being hold up in your house in a pandemic has escalated people using online shopping in different ways that maybe they didn’t before. So I think those are maybe the two biggest things for me was online reviews and just the shopping hours, like late night Thursdays, I don’t know if those are a thing outside of Sydney, but I was just so confused. Why are we shopping on Thursday, late night? Why isn’t this every night?
Claire Deane:
Yeah, yeah. Especially coming from New York, the, where you can get, you know, cookies delivered at 1:00 AM.
Kelly Owens:
What other time would you get cookies delivered right?
Claire Deane:
Exactly. And those are a couple of retail examples too, with your background in retail, it makes sense that those would be some of the things that you’d notice. How do you think Australian eCommerce brands are starting to catch up to what is happening in the US, which is obviously so far, but we’ve just had, you know, a couple of months where Australia Post said we’ve had the biggest shopping months that we’ve ever had bigger than Christmas, you know, our Australian brands catching up when it comes to e-commerce.
Kelly Owens:
Yeah. It’s funny you say that because we were just debating this in the office. If the Black Friday, Cyber Monday sales are as big here as they are in the US, and for obvious reasons, they’re probably not as big, but I think things like that are becoming more commonplace. There’s certainly retailers on the cutting edge of that. I would say kogan.com and other client, and Adore have been kind of the leaders in that space. And you definitely notice, I think just again, we’ve just debated this. So things like cyber Monday and those big sales, I think people really identify those and come to expect a little that’s, to me, are very American attributes and I think people are coming to must expect that. And there’s been a lot of retailers that have rise to the occasion, certainly the AustraliaPost and the shipping logistics stuff is not a new challenge. Well, for the Australian market even rural and regional Australia, that’d be a consideration for any retailer in Australia anyway, and probably does add some challenges to things like a same day shipping, to have that sitewide. But I think it’s definitely changed a lot in the pandemic as well,
Claire Deane:
Adore do a brilliant job and obviously are well known for their TimTams that they send out in their packages. Would something like that be something that would appeal to an American customer, or do you think it’s because it’s an Australian audience that the little things that they’ve done have worked so well,
Kelly Owens:
You know, that’s a really great question because I’ve never thought about it, but imagining an Oreo in the box of a lip gloss that’s sent to you in the states, I just don’t know that it has that same, you know, I think it is very quintessentially Australian. And actually I think they did an April Fool’s joke cause if not this past April, April prior, that they were counseling that and people went banana. So don’t mess with the Australian beauty fans.
Claire Deane:
Exactly. But I guess it is combined with the fact that, you know, they’re shipping is so fast, and the customer service is so good, you know, you can’t just B and TimTam in and think that’s going to be the thing that builds your brand if you didn’t have all the other components as well.
Kelly Owens:
Yeah.
Claire Deane:
So what advice do you have for PR juniors who are coming out of uni or looking to get into PR, but wanna work with the meaningful brands and agencies like Sling and Stone and like your customers, do you think you kind of have to slog through the less meaningful brands first, or do you think being able to stick to your values from the very beginning can work and in an industry as competitive as PR?
Kelly Owens:
Yeah. I probably have a more controversial opinion on this one but I don’t think every career is a straight line. And I think if you have the luxury of holding out and working for your dream brand or your dream agency or all of that, you know, that’s great. Not everybody has that ability to hold out, they need to start earning money and that sort of thing. And I think what I would say to someone is don’t be disappointed if your first opportunities are not exactly what you thought they’d be, because you can make opportunities that work for you. Like I said, I wanted to be Anna Wintour’s assistant and I found myself working at the Philadelphia parks department, I didn’t think that would be a pathway to getting where I wanted, but I had really valuable experience there and I wouldn’t really change any of the jobs that don’t fit neatly into my end goal. And I think that people coming of age now are probably more tuned into that than I am actually. And very used to getting what they need to get done in different ways. It’d be nice for someone to be able to wait and get their dream gig, but that’s probably not a reality for a lot of people. So I’d definitely stress. Don’t be disappointed if that’s not how your career starts.
Claire Deane:
Everything’s a learning
Kelly Owens:
Experience a hundred percent.
Claire Deane:
So what do you think some of the ways that PR agencies are contributing to a less sustainable world, be it, you know, environmental sustainability or other components of sustainability, what should we be doing about that?
Kelly Owens:
Yeah, it’s a good question. And luckily, or not, the only industry facing that is hopefully answering some of those questions themselves. We’re really lucky. Speaking on the behalf of Sling and Stone, that we have a lot of clients that are tackling this issue head on. So, you know, it feels really good to support that type of work and to work with clients who are serving that mission. So that’s definitely a way that agencies or PR people can help, I think is, you know, we have a skillset let’s lend that skillset to the people that we wanna see succeed, and the causes we wanna see succeed. And then as far as agencies, I mean, there are so many elements of sustainable. I do think it needs to be, you know, just because I opt out of my Optus bill coming to my foot, my house in paper and getting it on email doesn’t mean that I’m being sustainable. So I think going beyond some of that superficial is in your signature and think before you print this email, I think we have to go beyond that now. So, you know, if that’s encouraging when we do go back to the office, encouraging public transport or cycling or keep cups, things like that, I think that’s probably at the new bare minimum for any company outside of agencies as well.
Claire Deane:
Is there some ways that Sling and Stone are putting those to stay animal values into practice? So we spoke with Alex Gorman who writes for the guardian and she was telling us about how she is just constantly bombarded with gifts that, you know, unsolicited gifts and the amount of wastage, but also the kind of eroding of trust that comes with that because people don’t know who they can trust if it’s just, you know, has it been gifted? Is it something that, that the journalist actually cares about? So are there things that you are trying to do differently to that approach and what are they
Kelly Owens:
Yeah it’s actually surprising to me that that’s still a strategy.
Claire Deane:
Yeah. Yeah.
Kelly Owens:
Just cause it really does give me like 2008 flashbacks and you just send something and hope for the best. I would hope that again, this is maybe a positive from the pandemic is there’s maybe not as people are a bit more choosy with how they’re spending their money. So maybe they’re not just sending gifts out into the void. And besides that, you would need someone’s personal address too.
Claire Deane:
Yeah. You don’t have their office address. That’s true.
Kelly Owens:
You can’t just sense into this court building and cross your fingers. I don’t like speaking in absolutes, but I’m pretty confident to say we would never do that. And have never, again, pretty confident, but it’s an absolute, so I get nervous. What we’ve done is reach out to these reporters or influencers and talk to them about, you know, what the brand is, and really have them understand what they are giving, getting if we’re giving them something. And if they don’t want something, it’s not in our client’s best interest to have to send it to them. There’s someone else who probably would be interested in that or learning about that. And then we try to use, you know, sustainable, whether it’s recycled materials or biodegradeable materials, packaging, things like that. We use Sendal, which is hundred percent carbon neutral.
Kelly Owens:
So to get packages to people when we can. Things like that I think are really important, but as well, I think it is really important to why I’m so surprised that that’s still a strategy some are taking is I think in 2021, personalization has been a really big trend across the board. So whether that’s like really making a gift personalized to that individual journalist and, you know, looking through Alex’s Instagram, her Twitter, and knowing how much she cares about the environment, I would be surprised that somebody’s doing that. Because it doesn’t really speak to her personally, or you know, we did a gift for a client where we had a journalist’s dog put on face, put on their socks and no one’s gonna throw that away, come on, the more personalized and the actual gift and also the product and the brand means to the journalists or the influencer, I think is a better strategy.
Claire Deane:
So you have over 70 people in the team, which is a big team. You mentioned the three offices, one door, working remotely based in Sydney. What do you do as an agency during this time of remote work to really keep that team engaged? How do you promote that three offices one door approach?
Kelly Owens:
Our people and culture team, who are always smiling cause they’re just so fun. And pandemic aside, they always are thinking of ways to keep us together and motivated and doing different and interesting things. We’ve had an indigenous artist come in and do an art night with us when we were in the office. We’ve done something with drag Queens teaching us art or like doing trivia. So we’ve done some really fun things even before going remote and still they had a challenge on their hands, that culture team to keep that in a remote world, but every Friday around four o’clock, there’s some sort of trivia or pictionary, which is a hoot basically you write a phrase and then the next person draws that phrase and the next, and it’s just like a real game.
Kelly Owens:
You really see your colleagues in a new light when you see how they draw things. And then what they’re guessing a drawing is. So games have also been really part of a big part of our culture from the beginning. Years ago, there’d be, UNO nights on a Friday and like Jenga and all these things. So that kind of stuff, that was part of our culture early days, we really try to keep that forward. Another thing is that’s really unique to us. We have a lot of unique quirks that have them behind the scenes at Sling and Stone. We give each other kudos in the form of crabs, I’ll use air quotes, which is our mascot, is a little crab. And we’ll give each other kudos for living out our values and, you know, doing really good work, and that the whole company can see that. So I can shout out a teammate for doing something awesome and that everybody can see and congratulate them and really build that camaraderie element as well.
Claire Deane:
So it’s sort of like a shared language so most, you know, no other agency would have. Would give people crabs, you know, like it’s that shared language that you all kind of have between you?
Kelly Owens:
I think new people often have that moment of like, what have I signed up for? And I think we are also very welcoming to newcomers and I think it’s been really hard. I really do feel for anyone who’s joined a new company in remote. We’ve done a really good job of, you know, people introducing themselves and giving three facts on our weekly calls and trying to do one on ones and things like that with new people and instilling that weird, quirky culture that we’re really proud of to people who are coming new.
Claire Deane:
And so you’ve grown quite a lot, considering there’s a pandemic and you know, certain industries have been hard hit. Why do you think that is? Do you think it’s because you are trying to speak to the disruptors who are coming out of the woodwork now that the world has changed or what do you think it is that helps you continue to grow despite the environment?
Kelly Owens:
It’s a little bit of luck, I would say, you know, I’m personally very grateful for coming out, we’re almost out, I think yep. Just would, as we have, and I don’t wanna take any of that lightly because there’s so many people who haven’t fared so well. But I do think that working across different sectors has also helped us because if you’re working just in the travel industry right now, I really feel for you, it’d be really tough to do PR on that right now. So I think that’s helped. And yeah, as you say, working on challengers disruptors, our clients are also very used to shaking things up and giving all of that. So even the clients on our roster from the beginning have seen a lot of change in their industries and are adaptable. So I think that helps them as well to survive in like a really test is a tough time. And you have to have that resilience to get through it, I think definitely.
Claire Deane:
So can you gimme an example of a campaign for either one of your clients or another brand that you think has been super successful and what do you think made it so successful?
Kelly Owens:
This is like the worst question to ask me because I could go on for hours. I would say, and again, this is a client, so I’m a little bit biased, but I think this is one I would say regardless. Hinge has rebranded a few years ago, we were helping them get their message out in Australia, from the friends of friends app to the design to be deleted. And I just think that what they’ve done is so brilliant and so true to their values if sent to interviews with their founder, Justin, you know, he talks openly about his journey and his goal is to get people off apps and on great dates. And I think to make your mission be, want you to delete our app is so powerful and bold. And you’d rarely see somebody saying that, you know, hardly see any app founder, like asking users to delete the app, and that you can see that in the campaigns that they do that they’re really trying to get people out on great dates. And it’s not really about, you know, getting a ton of matches and playing that game. It is about first dates, second dates, and going on those really good date moments. So to me, that’s been really exciting to watch and I’m the reason I know it’s successful. And the reason I think to my clients, how I know when a client has had success is when my parents start telling me about the product.
Claire Deane (36:06):
And especially a tech product too. If your parents are talking about a tech product.
Kelly Owens:
Hundred percent! I’m on the phone a few weeks ago telling me, “oh, there’s a dating app that they’re so confident that they’re gonna find someone for you. You don’t even need them for long.” Yeah, yeah.
Claire Deane:
That’s me. I did that.
Kelly Owens:
It’s just, and so it obviously is resonating with people who are seeing it. Someone who’s definitely not on the dating market, never on a dating app is remembering that, so I think that’s a really good example of somebody who done it well,
Claire Deane:
An organization that really sticks to its values. It’s not just a campaign message. It, it really is part of their DNA, I guess.
Kelly Owens:
Yeah. Yeah. And you can tell that their whole team, you know, lives that out and that they’re really passionate about it. So it’s really exciting to work with them. And yeah, that really staying true to those, to those values. Awesome.
Claire Deane:
So tell me, what was the last thing that you Googled for work?
Kelly Owens:
Well, you would know this, but I obviously was having some issues before we started with my headphones. I do have a, you know, had a pair, my headphones had a sign of the times. And yes, also that when you think you know what you’re doing in the tech space, everything’s there to keep you humble.
Claire Deane:
That’s very true. So tell our listeners where they can find you, how they can get in contact.
Kelly Owens:
If they wanna get in contact with me, I am obsessed with Twitter. So you can usually find me tweeting at Slings by kill. And I’m pretty active on LinkedIn as well. So feel free to drop into my DMS. And if you are looking for a role in comms, we’re always hiring at Sling and Stone. It’s wild. So feel free to get into my DMS and I can set you up.
Claire Deane:
Amazing. Thanks so much for joining us.
Kelly Owens:
Thanks Claire.
