We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Marvin Stockwell a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Marvin thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

For my publicity practice, I chose the name Champion the Cause to set a direction for the type of organizations I want to publicize. My goal is put my gifts as a communicator as the service of efforts that, in one way or another, map over to my values and make the world a better place. Because of this mission, I naturally serve a lot of nonprofit efforts, although not strictly nonprofits. More and more, people expect all businesses to consider their responsibility to the communities they serve and to the wider world in how they conduct themselves.

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?

Through Champion the Cause, I help earn media coverage for my clients. Earning media coverage is increasingly an overlooked part of the nonprofit communications toolkit.

Owned and social media are very important ways of reaching audiences of supporters, but changes in social media algorithms have “turned the volume knob” unless you pay, so organic reach is not what it once was. Often times, smaller nonprofits lack the budget or knowhow to do paid social media campaigns effectively, and they have, over time, abandoned staff strength in earning media coverage.

That’s where I come in.

Earning media coverage can still connect to a broad audience and help positively shape an organizations brand and reputation. There is a validating effect of receiving media coverage. I help nonprofit leaders write newspaper op-eds, appear on TV talk shows, radio shows and podcasts. In turn, all of the earned coverage provides great material to share on social media channels, where the validation of media coverage reaches core supporters.

I know how to publicize the work of nonprofits because I worked as nonprofit PR pro within two organizations — Church Health and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital — and before that as a journalist. I have also publicized my own grassroots civic work. I have seen the strategies that work, and at St. Jude, I leveled up as a pro and learned the interconnected strategies that earn important national and trade media coverage.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

There are two assumptions that early career PR pros make that can limit their effectiveness.

Assumption #1: Journalists have all the power to grant coverage, and I am the less powerful petitioner. This obsequious, on-bended-knee approach can lead to story pitching that lacks the necessary confidence. The downsizing of media means more is expected of fewer and fewer journalists. Increasingly, journalists rely of PR pros who consistently pitch good and timely story ideas and subject matter experts to be featured in their stories. I am most effective when my heart is truly behind what I’m pitching, and I have set up my business so that the clients I choose to work with have missions and work I can put my heart and enthusiasm behind. When I make a pitch, I believe it has value, and that comes across. I treat journalists as my peers. We both have a responsibility to provide news worth knowing and stories worth taking in. There is an equal exchange and a professional interdependence. My job is to take my role and their role seriously and focus on our shared objective of producing good information and content that informs and inspires.

Assumption #2: Small organizations should stick to local media coverage, because national media is not reasonable to expect. False. I have learned how to “newsjack” smaller organizations into national media outlets by watching national trending stories and connecting my clients’ work to those stories. Sometimes, the path is direct, while other times, it comes about through relationships.

As director of media relations at St. Jude in the spring of 2020, I learned that our psychology department and child life staff had created a coronavirus coloring book to help parents and children talk about the evolving crisis in a constructive way. I pitched the story to our local Gannett newspaper, the Commercial Appeal, in hopes that Gannett would nationalize the story by also publishing the story in USA Today, which is what they did. From there, I pursued coverage nationwide as the mental-health dimension of the pandemic became a national story.

Another example. A nonprofit client who helps cities build out their bike-lane network wanted to build their national reputation even though they were brand new. In publicizing their initial grant process, I noticed that a prized reporter for Forbes also had a hobby-level podcast. I pitched the client for both the podcast and for coverage in Forbes and landed only the podcast. However, in interviewing my client on his podcast, he became deeply interested in their work. The next round of pitching I did for the client earned coverage in Forbes through the same journalist. Publicity is often not linear, but instead the result of a cumulative effort and persistence.

Have you ever had to pivot?

So many professionals had to pivot as a result of a pandemic layoff. My layoff from St. Jude came unexpectedly in May of 2021. The pandemic prevented most in-person fundraising, and as a result, the next budget year, the hospital had to tighten its belt. Two departments were combined and all directors in my department were laid off. A global pandemic is something few could have predicted, so there was no use in getting upset. Still, it was a blow. My career had always gone up and up, but the higher up in seniority you go, the fewer jobs match your career experience. I was sure I would get another “big regular job.” I had always had a “big regular job,” and figured I always would. But when I didn’t land a job right away, I picked up some freelance work to keep my professional skills sharp and pay a few bills. Even though I found myself loving the freedom of client work, I doggedly pursued applying for full-time jobs, assuming I would land something. Things reached a breaking point when I realized it was exhausting sending energy down two roads. My last stand was applying for a VP of communications job with a local college. I knew I could do the job well. I went all out in preparing my cover letter. I felt good about my chances. When they hired someone else, I found I wasn’t so much crestfallen as much as I was relieved. Part of me knew I didn’t want the job, and when I examined feeling relieved, I knew that working for myself and building a client base was the path for me. Now 2+ years in, I prize having a lot of variety in my work, and having a flexible schedule that allows me to more easily fold in personal pursuits and spend more time with my family. It is hard for me to imagine a full-time job that would be worth sacrificing these newfound freedoms.

Contact Info:

• Website: championthecause.org
• Instagram: instagram.com/stockwellmarvin
• Facebook: facebook.com/marvin.stockwell
• Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/marvin-stockwell
• Twitter: twitter.com/marvinstockwell
• Other: championsofthelostcauses.org

Image Credits
Jamie Harmon