We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Julie Whitney. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Julie below.
Julie , thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you share a customer success story with us?
One of my proudest moments for me was a story that I placed on ABC World News Tonight with Diane Sawyer quite a few years ago. My client and dear friend Donna Speigel, who owns the highly successful Snooty Fox Consignment Store chain here in Cincinnati, also founded a special school – The Conductive Learning Center of Greater Cincinnati to help special needs children, including her grandson Dayton, all of whom have Cerebral Palsy, and various neurological motor disorders. Speigel dove in headfirst, put on her entrepreneurial hat, and through her many connections, found a building that would be donated for the first two years of operation. She then found another contact willing to undertake all of the remodeling at no charge. A parent of a student volunteered to build the specialized furniture. Donna then hired a Hungarian-trained “conductor” to work with her kids. With additional donations from business partners, grants, customers, and her own personal money.
Donna wanted to share her story nationally with families facing the challenges of raising children with neurological motor disorders. I pitched the story to a reporter I had worked with on numerous occasions over the years at ABC News, and she flew in for two days and produced a beautiful package which ended up on ABC World News Tonight. This was one of my proudest moments, and a true customer success story!
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I am a self-employed PR professional with a 40 year history in all facets of public relations, marketing and advertising, having worked on both the agency and client side, and also in the television industry prior to starting my company, Phillippi-Whitney Communications LLC in 2000. www.pwcommunications.net. I specialize in media relations and in storytelling, and in writing and spinning the story in order to get reporters on hook. I have worked with clients in a wide array of industries throughout my career, including health care, fitness, legal, pet care, financial, law enforcement, real estate, automotive, retail, and just about anything else you can think of. I have also promoted dozens of authors and their books over the years. I believe the work that I am most proud of is a pro-bono cause that I latched onto in 2015. I saw a story on the national news about foster children having to transport their belongings in black garbage bags, as they moved from home to home, often under tragic circumstances. I was literally moved to tears, and decided to take action in my own community. I contacted Hamilton County Job and Family Services to see if they had a need for suitcases for the area foster children. And yes they did, to the tune of over 1,000 suitcases. I then partnered with my dear friends at Sibcy Cline Real Estate to see if they would help out by serving as the drop off and collection site at their very many offices throughout Greater Cincinnati. They were delighted to become involved, and they also helped find a moving van company who was willing to transport all of the suitcases downtown to HCJ&FS. We were worried we would not meet our goal of 1,000. We collected over 10,000 suitcases, thanks to the help of the local media, who provided non-stop coverage of our cause. The national media also picked up the story, and it even ended up on CNN New Day! In subsequent years, we have continued the momentum and enthusiasm by collecting coats, hats, gloves, and shoes. The past few years, I have continued to help the foster children on my own by collecting Christmas gifts based upon their wish lists. My basement is usually overflowing with gifts, which warms my heart!
Most recently I turned tragedy into triumph when my husband lost his job in 2020 as a Chief Corporate Pilot, due to the onset of the COVID pandemic. I was so sad about his situation, and the beautiful Gulfstream Jet that he had flown for 13 years, that I decided to write a children’s book! Astra The Lonely Airplane (Brandylane Publishers) was released in March of 2022, and the second book in the series, Astra In Hollywood, will be released in early 2024. So now I proudly wear two hats – PR Pro and Children’s Author. I have partnered with Junior Achievement, and travel to area schools to deliver Astra’s message of friendship and hope, and teach children about careers in aviation. www.astrathelonelyairplane.com
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
As a self-employed PR professional and now children’s author, I can say with 100% certainty that it takes a good deal of resilience, flexibility, and ability to evolve with the times. When I first my PR company in 2000, I was still picking up the phone and pitching stories to reporters, producers and editors that I had developed a friendship and rapport with, and they would still pick up the phone. The media worked in their offices or newsrooms. News releases were faxed. Cell phones were not a necessity, but voicemail was. Print and mainstream broadcast media were the most widely read and viewed. Fast forward to 2023, and many newsrooms often have a skeleton crews, photographers are being replaced with multimedia journalists, print publications have folded due to dwindling circulation, and digital media platforms including social media now reign. Emails are the preferred methods of pitching stories, and digital exposure is what most clients seek. Gone are the days of personal relationship building with reporters. They are assigned too many stories due to downsizing, and have too many deadlines to meet. Staff often turns over very quickly. I have had to adapt, adjust and stay focused and determined in order to stay successful in terms of media placement, over the course of 23 years. I have also had to become proficient in using social media as a tool to gain exposure for my clients. When the pandemic hit in 2020, many of my clients were forced to close during Ohio’s shutdown. Three of my clients were hit particularly hard. One is a thriving plastic surgeon, the other is a premier health and fitness facility and the third provides in-home euthanasia for pets. I used the shutdown to my advantage as the media was looking for stories on how businesses were adapting to the “new normal.” My plastic surgeon client was having clients drive by in their cars to pick up products, conducting daily educational podcasts on various cosmetic concerns and doing zoom consultations to keep his patients engaged. The health club was conducting online fitness classes and doing a deep interior clean and installing a new and improved filtration system. The media latched onto these stories of how businesses were staying afloat during a very traumatic and uncertain time. The home euthanasia pet service was going safely into folks garages or outside spaces while wearing a mask, so that the pets could still cross over the rainbow bridge with dignity. My angle was “just because there is a pandemic, doesn’t mean that pets aren’t still dying.”
This leads me to how I further adapted during the pandemic to my husband’s job loss as a Chief Corporate Pilot by turning it into a children’s book series. which was an entirely new experience which required a good deal of determination. There was a huge learning curve involved, and I had no idea how much work was involved. (The “new” career as a children’s author was explained in the prior question where I explained my transition to this second job.)
What’s been the best source of new clients for you?
The news media has honestly been the best source of new clients. By building a rapport with both the national and local media, I have been referred to dozens of new clients. Reporters actually send them to me, as they know I am fair and honest, and persistent and really know how to spin and sell a good story. They know that I never ” cry wolf,” and only pitch stories that are newsworthy and on target. I never intended for this to happen, but reporters continue to send me new clients.
The other source is obviously my existing clients, who continually refer others to me. Some of my clients go back 23 years, and neither of us can remember who referred them!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.pwcommunications.net and www.astrathelonelyairplane.com
- Instagram: @juliewhitneyauthor and @whitneyjulie
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/julie.phillippi.whitney and https://www.facebook.com/Bestcincyprpro/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/phillippiwhitneycommunications/
- Twitter: @bestcincyprpro
- Other: Please list both the business website and author website and both Instagrams and both Facebooks. I have separate accts. Thank you.
Image Credits
These are my own photos.