Maz Coote is founder of Coote Connex, a lifestyle PR agency who’ve worked with the likes of Elizabeth Arden, Revlon, Kitchenaid. We chat about how PRs can be more adaptable, how she pivoted her mainly events based business during Covid lockdowns and real-life strategies that have seen PR agencies through the pandemic and recovery.
Key Takeaways
- PRs have to be thinking about what’s next – not just for commercial trends but how their agencies will be structured, what services will be in demand.
- PR agencies need to think about how they will work with other disciplines to offer a more holistic approach for clients.
- Maz built an influencer agency of expert talent who could comment on media issues, instead of working with social media influencers – a space that was already saturated. She was able to identify a key trend and make it work for her, while also standing out in the market.
- One of the biggest things that keeps Maz up at night is finding ways to innovate and keep PR moving ahead at the pace that digital marketing is.
- During COVID, some brands experienced a disconnect from their customers – customers weren’t able to sit in coffee shops and trade recommendations. PR has had to adapt to this by providing new ways for people to connect.
Podcast Transcript
Claire Deane:
Welcome, Maz Coote, thank you so much for joining me. You are the founder of Coote Connect. Can you tell me a little bit about how you got to that point, how you launched your own business, why you decided to go out on your own, and why PR in the first place?
Maz Coote:
Hi, thanks for having me. Nice welcome break in between the lockdown working to get to chat to you. Look, I opened Coote Connecx going on probably it’s about seven years ago now. I’d really wanted to do something in the beauty space. I’ve been working in an agency for a long time that took a really holistic approach to kind of their client books. So it was fashion, it was lifestyle, it was beauty. And I’d worked predominantly by the end on the beauty app, kind of heading up that beauty piece. And you know, I felt there was a gap in the market for really beauty specialist PR agency. So it was me, my laptop and a hot desk.
Claire Deane:
That’s how we all start out. Isn’t it though. And what are your favorite beauty brands, whether they’re clients or not, what are you always recommending to people from a beauty perspective?
Maz Coote:
Oh, look, I think my recommendation is try, try, try and listen to the experts and use what works for you. I think I’ve got lots of favorites. I couldn’t name them. I’d get myself into real strife with it all day.
Claire Deane:
Fair enough. Fair enough. And so how did you get to that point? Where did your career start? How did you know you wanted to be in PR at all?
Maz Coote:
So my PR career started somewhere in the middle of my university studies, I was studying a comms degree and I fell into, well, actually my first internship was in the comms department of an investment bank. And then I fell into an internship, which is where I stayed for another seven or, or eight years. So I kinda look, I fell into PR.
Claire Deane:
Did you wanna be something else originally, or it was just kind of, you did the comms degree and, you know, thought it’s you, you see where it took you?
Maz Coote:
Look, I thought I was gonna be a journalist, to be honest, I had a little bit of a flare for creative writing and so I thought I’d study comms. I mean, back then, the degree wasn’t obviously what it is now, it was we studied all sorts. It was like film production and radio production. And anyone that did that degree will remember and know, well, a lot of my peers work in the media now that were in that course with me at Sydney uni. So they’ll remember it, but yeah, I thought I’d be a journalist, the broadcast journalist, funny I’m doing a podcast that wasn’t for me on the spot. But yeah, no, I thought I’d probably go down that path, but there look ended up in PR, loved what I could kind of deliver for brands. And the kind of what you got to work on in a day.
Claire Deane:
I remember doing the, like how to write for radio news, how to kind of really just get the absolute sound bites out and all of that kind of thing. And you thinking, yeah, this is not gonna be for me either. So I remember that kind of radio production side of things thinking, no, that’s not gonna be
Maz Coote:
I’m not being great on the spot. So I wasn’t going to be a reporter, I don’t think a reporter.
Claire Deane:
So can you tell me, what are some of the things that you’ve been most proud of in your career and what have been some challenges that you’ve had to overcome?
Maz Coote:
I think one of biggest achievements as an agency is probably a kind of continued diversification. I mean, I think I knew when I started the PR business that PR was changing, it was already from what had been a more traditional model. And it would actually haunt me and follow me around, I think, okay, it’s innovate or die, keep me up at night. What are we gonna do? What are we gonna do next? So over the first three years or so I tried various kind of iterations of the other two agencies. We now have so a very early version of our full-service digital agency. We were looking after kind of social media accounts for clients. We did some kind of influencer talent management and they’re just some examples, but it was all under this banner of Coote Connex.
And I guess I was exploring that idea of what is full service and you know, what actually was full service for PR age, you know, and then what would that look like in five years or whatever else? So, I think when at the end of the day, when you’re building the primary business, that’s not got your full focus either. You know, you’re not prioritizing that, but around that time, my brother joined the agency and we put a bit more strategy around what we were doing. He came from a very corporate background, so just proud moments-wise. I mean, we launched Coote Experts which is a talent agency for experts in their fields. And that was kind of by the influencer work we were doing, you know, we realized there was an appetite from brands and media for these expert voices.
And there was a plethora of influencer management agencies that were doing an amazing job. I could look at their work and say, they’ve got a great roster of talent. We work with you already, you’re doing a great job. So we ought to do something in a bit different there. So we started working with kind of top medical professionals and entrepreneurs and specialists in niche areas for their PR and commercial ops. And now, well, we can answer just about any media brief across any story that might come our way with experts. So, yeah, we kind of built that agency to play a different role.
Claire Deane:
I was just gonna say, how do you think that focus on innovation and adaptation has influenced you in the current environment?
Maz Coote:
I think it’s something we need to consider in our industry now, every six months is changing so rapidly. And I mean, in addition to Coote Experts, we’ve opened a digital agency as well, about eight months ago. And as I said, we’ve started with pieces of that I probably knew how to do under the PR umbrella. Like social media account management, you can kind of move those PR skills into that area, but content creation. But realized we needed to be a full-service digital agency, needed to be able to execute advertising campaigns in the social media space, Google shop, and SEO, and all those kind of things. So yeah, I think, three or four years ago, I hadn’t found the gaps. And now it’s about looking at, okay, well, what did we need in what, what support a traditional PR agency to do its job? Well we didn’t know. We just all needed really strong COVID plans, the 2021 and 22
Claire Deane:
That’s it. And do you think that’s kind of the future of PR agencies is becoming that full service, or do you think that there is still place for those who are really niche in what they do?
Maz Coote:
Yeah, absolutely. I do think there’s room for all of those agencies. I think as long as they can look at dovetailing their work with the other partners, their brands are working with, I do think for us, it works really well to have that at digital and talent voice piece in-house. And to be able to, I guess, have that holistic approach to strategy. Yeah, there is room for all of the various agencies. I think we just have to learn and as PRS we’ve had to learn how to really harness the digital and how to bring that into our strategy. And if anything, it’s really amplified our work, it’s made our work more accountable. It’s made us we’re in a position where we can deliver results in a much more meaningful way. And I think, yeah, all the change is really great for the traditional PR model
Claire Deane:
Looking at how we can all work holistically rather than really sitting in silos because that’s on how business works in general. So you guys need to be doing the same thing.
Maz Coote:
Yeah. And then you’re just taking an all agency approach doesn’t have to be under your roof necessarily.
Claire Deane:
So coming back to what have been some of the big challenges that you’ve had to overcome?
Maz Coote:
I would say that’s probably the biggest challenge PR has faced is adapting and learning how we can, as we said, harness the digital environment, bring that into our strategy. And like I said, it kept me up at night. How can we innovate? What can we do to move the conversation forward for PR?
Claire Deane:
And I guess that’s something that PR has struggled with quite a lot in terms of being able to really measure results or being able to kind of bring in that, you know, pure ROI focus that a lot of the, you know, digital marketing agencies and those kinds of things, it just comes really naturally. It’s really just a, you know, part of their DNA. Is there anything that you do at Coote Connex that really does focus on that apart from having these separate agencies, but just really focuses on that ROI on being able to use data and demonstrate results?
Maz Coote:
Yeah, absolutely. And it’s become more and more important for us to do that. You know, reporting has changed for us. And at the end of the day, the media that influences there are conduits of information for brands in an unbranded authentic way, out to their customer. It’s such a crucial and important piece of actually any digital strategy as well is harnessing what are those media voices, media outlets, and obviously influencer and key opinion leader voices, but PR used to struggle to be able to metrical or values around those results. And I think we’re able to do that a lot more meaningfully now. And it’s to an absolute advantage.
Claire Deane:
Are there any tools that you use to pull that data at the moment, or are you still doing it fairly manually? What’s kind of the process for you?
Maz Coote :
No, the digital team have kind of a full suite of tools that they use to pull that data for us, for the PR team. We also have our own media monitoring tools that are kind of best in show for what’s available. And yeah, we kind of dovetail our artwork in that way.
Claire Deane:
Awesome. So we’ve mentioned the pandemic a couple of times you’ve worked with some it’s hard to get away from it at the moment. But you’ve worked with some really top-tier brands like Elizabeth Arden, Revlon, Kitchen Aide, how has the pandemic affected big brands like those and the way that they’re using PR?
Maz Coote:
I think, the pandemic has affected brands really differently across the spectrum and has done so now kind of year on year, what was last year looks really different again but one thing I think we saw is that it became really clear that PR was a really powerful tool for keeping brands connected to their audiences in a world where they’re kind of lost touch with them in other environments. We don’t have a store environment anymore. We don’t have people at their coffee shops talking about what they heard on X, and sharing tips and tricks for brands. We’d lost kind of connection in a way our brands had a piece of their connection with their customer missing. So I think what we saw as brands really embracing that PR was a really important and crucial way to stay connected to a customer in terms of, okay, well, what’s the strategy to now do that.
And I think last year, obviously, initially it was for lack of a better word, it was a shock. Brands went, okay, well, what’s happening? What are we gonna do? What does this look like? Particularly brands that had global head offices, what was happening in the US was steps ahead of what was happening here and it was looking forward. So I think it took everyone a few months to kind of regroup. But once they did, yeah, I think we had, or we saw real appetite for PR particularly in the back half of the year, again, strong first core with brands really wanting to embrace strategy there again. And we’ve seen that throughout the last couple of months as well, there’s been less of that stock panic regroup, what are we gonna do next and more? Okay, great business as usual, we know how to handle this, let’s go. And that’s been incredible for us cause it’s really an uplifting environment to work with brands that are so resilient and don’t bat an eyelid in this environment, they go, okay, well, what’s next, let’s keep it moving. And yeah, I’ve been so impressed by our industry or the brands that we are working with and how they’ve behaved.
Claire Deane:
And beauty has probably been insulated to some extent, because we’re all still buying beauty. We’re all still buying face masks. We’re all still buying mascara at least that you can wear above your masks and that sort of thing. So I guess beauty is so responsive to trends and those kinds of things too. So do you think that sort of buffered them a bit from what’s been happening in the environment?
Maz Coote:
I think beauty was resilient. I mean, we’ve seen growth in a number of categories across beauty, the same from a lifestyle perspective. If you’re looking at homewares or brands in the kitchen space, they were also resilient. And again, it’s not just resilience, some of them have tracked better than how they would or ordinarily. So, yeah, there are definitely categories that were more protected, I guess
Claire Deane:
You did write in a recent umbrella article that you have had to pivot a little bit yourself as an agency to out running some more online events for the industry for your team has that been successful and why was that necessary?
Maz Coote:
I think it’s been successful. It really just came down to maintaining meaningful contact and I guess creating occasion and event in an environment where largely we are kind of sitting between four walls or at least I know I am and the day marked out by meal times and maybe an exercise class in the afternoon or walk. And I think particularly during winter as well, obviously the days were shorter if you’re working that eight until six, then you’ve got darkness at either end. And I think it was all about maintaining this meaningful contact and Coote Experts build and run these workshops anyway for corporate. So we might go in with nutritionist, Peter carriage, into a corporate environment.
She might run elevating your performance in the workplace with nutrition, she’ll be doing that face to face, or, Jess Ridley who we work with, who’s an ex news reporter or TV journalist. She would run in-person master classes for media training. She’s moved those into the digital space. So yeah, it was just about being able to really maintain that face-to-face contact in a really meaningful way using those curriculums that kind of already existed. Essentially, so there was that. So we run those outbound with other businesses, but internally we were running them for team building, team morale. I mean, there’s the upskilling piece of it in the day. And there is more time in the day because you’re finding that you’re not standing at the coffee machine having a chat or you haven’t walked across the road for half an hour to get lunch.
Claire Deane:
Commuting and that kind of thing too.
Maz Coote:
So I think we were using it as initiatives to really make space in the day. And in the same way, we’ve got our team starting late on a Wednesday and on a Friday they have the afternoon off.
Claire Deane:
Nice. And do you think that’s all really contributed to maintaining mental health or positive workplace?
Maz Coote:
We’ve seen our team really just excel during this time. I don’t have another word for it. And I think I work with team that I’d choose to be my friends outside of the office as well. So we have a really nice work environment and culture and I really think this has given us an opportunity to just keep building on it, to give it the attention it deserves. And I don’t know that you always do that during the normal work year when you’ve got so much going on, you know, we should. But it’s really given us a chance to build on that and build on our relationships and in meaningful ways. But I do think the human factor has been incredibly important during this round or what should we call it 2.0 hot lockdown.
Claire Deane:
And so you mentioned before we jumped on this call, you literally had a whole morning full of zoom meetings. How do you think people can run virtual events and make them not feel like just another zoom meeting? Do you know what I mean?
Maz Coote:
I think you have to put thought and strategy into it. And I think in the beginning there was definitely that, okay, quick, let’s run these virtual events. Let’s just do what we would just do in a normal event format and just do it digitally. And I think there’s a lot of learnings around, okay, well, no, it has to have, you know, X factor and sparkle in a different way to keep people engaged. And is this tutorial that we might have run in per going to translate in this environment. And also how are people feeling, what are they sitting there wearing? What are they doing? Do they wanna switch their cameras on?
They probably don’t and I think it was about navigating what worked in that setting. You’ve gotta put strategy behind it. You can’t do just what you would have done at an event. And I think we’re also seeing some really great providers in the market that are skinning backgrounds and creating really interesting looks and feels. And we were running a session with just the other day and we had poles and things happening. And so that the audience could be more interactive, even though they had their cameras off, they could participate in polls and then questioning could be directed around their interest areas from the polls. And so I think all of those kind of things. I also think they’re here to stay, I think we will see, but style events continue.
And I think what it’s done is it’s given us a really great way to interact with international talent as well. You know, in the past, if you were a brand wanting to introduce one of your celebrity ambassadors to the Australian market, you might not have been able to fly them over. It could have looked like first class, it gets hotels, stay here, transfers, et cetera, et cetera. And the budget just not feasible. And now there is room to bring those people to market in a more virtual way. Of course, we’d always love to when we can bring them back over. I think that format will be here to stay.
Claire Deane:
Has there been anything else that you’ve had to do to pivot, to keep the business running successfully during COVID?
Maz Coote:
I think it’s the human factor that has been incredibly key as we kind of said. So I think, you can make every smart play when it comes to building resilient client portfolio. And again we had a crystal ball we’ve done last year we looked at what the fallout was what happened as I think an industry. So you can make all of these smart moves. You can have the best in play category at tools to make virtual and, and remote work, seeing and all of that’s great, but I think, if you’re not looking after your people thinking about how you can support your clients beyond their PR strategy on a more personal level, then all that hard work to be resilient in a business sense.
It’s going to fall over. So like I said, I think our team have been amazing, and I think a lot of the team, particularly this time around has been around, okay, well, how do we make this a better environment for our team and for our clients and keep people motivated and excited. Because I know even I, you can sit here some days and think like, I don’t feel like I do my job anymore in the same way, but we do, but it’s just that we are doing it in the kind of confines of our homes. So make that more interesting or bring a normality to it.
Claire Deane:
And do you think there’s any strategies that are becoming really successful for PRS in the current economic and global climate?
Maz Coote:
I think, and, we’ve kind of touched on it, I think PR has changed. I think the most powerful strategies are those that are fusing that digital understanding with the more traditional methods and having the two really cohesively in speaking together. I don’t think you should have one without the other. I think the PR brings a personal touch and it brings relationships. And I think the digital gives the reach and the accountability to the PR activity. So if we look at the industry 8, 10 years ago, it was over obviously all very personal and it was all very one to one. And I think it was a romantic time for PR and a wonderful chapter, but it obviously doesn’t look like that now, but I think how can we still bring that, those sensibilities, those traditions to this digital environment, because it is still what works, you need to have, and that’s not just the personal touch with the media and influences, et cetera, et cetera.
It’s also the personal touch with your customer and I think we talked about that, how do you keep that approach with a customer in this environment. So, yeah, I think the strategies that’ll work best will fuse two together seamlessly.
Claire Deane:
And from an influence perspective, you’ve got the experts that you work with who aren’t, I guess, your traditional influences, but you do a lot of beauty stuff, which I’m guessing relies super heavily on your traditional influences. Are traditional influences still really important to your core business? How much are you using them? What are you finding has been most successful from an influencer perspective?
Maz Coote:
Yeah, absolutely incredibly important, I think the key in what we’ve kind of already touched on is that you’ve gotta have a really multifaceted approach in this market. It’s not leaning on one pillar or the other it’s okay, we’ll have an expert voice. So we might have a skincare brand where we’ve got a fantastic dermatologist, that’s their voice, we still want them to play in the influencer space and have fantastic influencer voices that general public are looking to for kind of honest commentary around tips and tricks and how-to, and whatever else. So you might have a dermatologist that can speak to formulations and the science and the ingredients and what X ingredient can do. And then yeah. Beauty influencer that can speak to, okay, well, you know what, this is a bit thick when you put it under your makeup or, this wears better X way. And I think you need both. So yeah, there’s no question influences are and remain a really important part of our strategy across brands.
Claire Deane:
And do you think that the average consumer is starting to look a lot more to those experts, like the dermatologist and that kind of thing, because obviously there’s tons of influencer beauty brands out there that have hundreds of reviews and they’re just kind of really pushing the influencer side of things. They have a certain look and feel, but do you think consumers are kind of wanting more now with that expert side of things?
Maz Coote:
Yeah I think they want both. I think what experts really came into it, well, our business experts, but experts in general, I think did also really come into their own last year, I think with people really engaged with their brands and content, they were looking to be more educated and that comes with and requiring more information across different areas. So taking that from an expert voice, like a gut health specialist, but also someone that’s using the product from an influencer sense, but we definitely saw that appetite for that expert and Terry really come into its own last year. And I think the media landscape now lends itself to it as well. You know, the digital format calls for content and storytelling. And I think experts are just another way of giving products, a voice, essentially, you might have a celebrity ambassador, you might have a founder story and how they’ve formulated it. Well, they, but then can come in and validate that, you know, This supplement, our gut health specialist could speak to this supplement can do X and X and in terms of these are the ingredients and Y.
Claire Deane:
And are you doing much with, from a beauty perspective, the big communities online? So I’m thinking of the Youbies community that Leah Campbell founded. Like, it just seems to be that from a beauty perspective, there’s all of this user-generated content, and it seems like people are really buying into that community perspective when it comes to beauty. Is that usually part of your strategies or is that something that the brands tend to manage themselves?
Maz Coote:
Oh, it’s so incredibly powerful. Game changer stuff. We look at how we can work with them within our strategy. And there’s obviously various ways to do that and yeah, absolutely powerful.
Claire Deane:
Definitely. So can you tell me, what is the last thing that you Googled for work?
Maz Coote:
Actually, I wish it was more interesting if I look on my Google, what date is international coffee day?
Claire Deane:
Was that because you need an excuse to drink more coffee?
Maz Coote:
Right. As I wandered down to the coffee machine. No, I was actually looking for one of our brands. That’s kind of a handbag, coffee shop essential. We’re working with a brand called carrier tiller and it’s a gadget really clever design that you can use on the table to hang your bag on. So comes from Europe and people weren’t wanting to put their bags on the floor anymore or on the counter at the nail bar, whatever else, but obvious reasons. So I was looking at that because we wanted to plan to send out around, I was trying to see whether we could get into coffee shops on international coffee. Ah, nice. October the first. So there we go. There you go pivot again because we won’t be sitting down just yet for coffees.
Claire Deane:
Amazing. Well, thank you so much for joining us. Can you share where people all can find you?
Maz Coote:
Absolutely. Probably I would say best places are Instagram accounts. Each of the agencies have their own, we’re also on LinkedIn and have websites.
Claire Deane:
Amazing. Thank you so much.
