Jeremy Weisz 7:34
Well, you mentioned there were 30 criteria. What are a few of those criteria that you have seen people just fall short of they’re not using in their pitches?
Yanik Deschenes 7:46
Yeah, there’s three big families at the end of the day. And I think for those of us, or those of your listeners or viewers that are interested in doing media relations or pitching stories to media, there’s three big criteria or three big family that they need to take into consideration. The first one is the context. Your story has to be contextual. You got to make sure what is happening in society, in the economy, what is happening at the moment, if your story is good but is not linked with the context of the moment, then the reporter may say, Jeremy, great story, but I’ll call you later. Okay, so that’s the first family. The second family, you got to bring tension in a story. Okay?
If it’s only I’m the best in the world, you should write an article about me, because look how great I am. It may not work, because reporters, as you probably know, they like not black and white story, but the stories that are great, the stories that there’s maybe a person that is in favor, another person that is not in favor, a story at the end of the day that will spark a conversation. So bringing tension in a story, for us, it’s super important, and that’s a tricky part, because a lot of client, they don’t want, normally, to be vulnerable in front of their audience, or in front of their customers or clients or shareholders or whatever.
So that’s a tricky thing, but we can help with them, and the tool will help them to bring attention to the story. And finally, the third pillar is making the story brings value to the audience. At the end of the day, you get probably thousands of emails every day you have notification you’re swamped by content. And if you don’t bring value to the human who’s reading the story or watching the story, then people will swipe as simple as that. So obviously, this is a very high-level summary of the Press Test.
Jeremy Weisz 10:05
Oh, I love that. You know, the context, attention, the value of the audience, and it makes me think of kind of the hero’s journey, like, which is really every great story, when you look at TV and movies in the hero’s journey, there’s always like this tension, these low points and these friction, and that’s what makes a great story. So no, I never thought of it as like thinking of it as a tension.
Yanik Deschenes 10:31
Vulnerability is key. If you and I want, if you want to make a connection with the person, if you show you’re vulnerable, automatically, the level of engagement will be present. They will trust you more. They will show that you really care. And this is all the pain of the process in what I do and what we do in order to generate this kind of organic word of mouth.
Jeremy Weisz 10:58
How do you, I don’t know if there’s a good example of a client where, like you said, they may be resistant to being vulnerable, they’ve never really flexed that muscle, and now you’re telling them to do it on a big stage, like on the Wall Street Journal or some of these other publications. I think I was like, you’ve gotten people all over the place, the New York Times, The Economist, The Guardian, all over there. So how do you talk to your clients or the team to get them to be okay with it and then also share with it the vulnerability? I don’t know if there’s a good example with one of your clients and what they actually ended up sharing maybe they were resistant to.
Yanik Deschenes 11:38
Yeah, and the notion of vulnerable is always very good, but also generosity is also very good as well. Okay, and I’m going to give you an example that with share through. Share Through is one of the leading programmatic advertising company in North America. And you know, they’re based in Montreal. They have offices in San Francisco, in New York, and in order to win in that kind of business, in that kind of industry, you need to scale. If you don’t scale, you’re not going to succeed. You’re not going to be able to provide the best technology, provide the best prices, provide, attract the best talent. The list goes on. So the owner of the company came to me, said, Yanik, help me scale the business. All right, I got to attract other investors.
I’m grateful. I got investors from Quebec who are believing in me and my vision, and they gave me money. But the reality is, I need big investors, especially in the US, to believe in my model, believe in my vision, believe in my mission, and invest in my business. So while I was talking to him, I realized one important thing, this company has made everything that is possible to make digital ad campaigns carbon-neutral or net zero? He says it’s a no-brainer. Any kind of digital campaign, it is possible that they have no impact on the planet. So I said, this is great. This is what makes you unique. I said, here’s what we should do. Let’s build an event, a platform where we will invite the entire community in the world of advertisers, media, all the players to bring together with the goal to become an industry that is carbon neutral or net zero. It’s not going to be an ad about how great your products are. It’s going to be an opportunity for people to talk about that and get consensus.
And we launched that, it’s called the Green Media Summit. It was launched last year in 2023, the second edition in New York City was last month, April 2024 and then it generated a lot of attention. It brought the 400 top marketers, media executives from North America at the event to discuss about that. Here’s the thing, why it’s good for share through, they are in the middle of conversation about the possibility that the digital ad campaigns can be neutral, carbon neutral or net zero, they don’t have to do anything. In the mind of people, carbon neutral equals share through so this is a way for them, and it cost them a lot of money, but it was a generous act in a way, to engage the entire industry in that common goal. So that’s an example, Jeremy, that I feel it’s interesting to generate the kind of coverage or the kind of attention and spark the right conversation in the right community.
Jeremy Weisz 15:13
Yeah, I like that. I mean the framework that you laid out, the context tension, vulnerability, and under that, like with the tension there’s, you basically talk about what’s unique about that company. So it could be what they’re doing differently, what’s vulnerable there, and that could be used, like you said, to create a campaign with the client, which ended up being a vent. It could create, it could be used, I think, when I think of people posting on social media, right, or any piece of content, for that matter, if we follow the context, the tension in the vulnerability or certain the value to the audience, piece that is can be followed for all of these channels.
Yanik Deschenes 15:55
And you know what, Jeremy, I think the way society evolves, sorry if I take a minute, because as you see, English is not my first language, it’s French, my first language. So sometimes I have to think it a little bit harder for me, but the way society evolves, you got to be more and more and more and more perfect. Okay, you cannot say that word because then you’re going to offend a certain community. You cannot use that example because then you’re going to offend another community. So in today’s in corporate world, you got to be perfect, because the moment you do something wrong, you’re in deep shit. Okay, so it’s tough for companies to be vulnerable. My job and my team’s job is to find a territory, a territory where they can meet vulnerable, because at the end of the day, people strives for authenticity.
They strive for authentic people that are not afraid to share what they truly believe. So we got to bring that kind of environment in place where corporations don’t need to stand politically on one side or have an impact on the other side. There’s things in the industry where you can express a point of view, just the notion of work from home versus work from the office. Sometimes I’ve seen some clients being very out loud, saying two bad guys in order to generate innovation creativity, we got to work at the office. I understand you’re comfortable at home. I understand we were in the pandemic. I understand you had the habit to work from home. But we have to change this habit in order to provide value to our clients, we got to be at the office, and that can regenerate a lot of tension, because a lot of people are not ready to make that move, especially in Canada.
Jeremy Weisz 18:09
I want to get inside your head, in your team’s head, with the Green Media Summit. So you take a client through your process, and you really do your deep research, and you find out what’s unique, and you come to this piece right, that it’s context, there’s tension, there’s value the audience. You have this carbon neutral which is unique to them. I’m wondering how you decided to do an event, because there’s probably a lot of different things or ways you could have taken that what’s unique about the company. So why did you decide to actually move through with the Green Media Summit?
Yanik Deschenes 18:55
Yeah, it’s more a platform than an event. It’s a platform where people can share best practice throughout the year about their intention to become carbon neutral. Because a lot of people, they all, no one will say, I’m against sustainability. I want the planet to die. You know, no one will say that, okay, but at the same time they have to run a business, they say, listen, I get the point, but I may have other priorities, and we get that. And through that platform, some experts have come around the table, or have come during the event in order to share some examples to get to that objective and make the demonstration that it’s not because your campaigns are suddenly net zero or carbon neutral that you’re gonna cost you more money.
So we made the examples we brought so people can relate to that. And we’re starting piece by piece, example by example, to build that kind of movement, because at the end of the day, what generates good word of mouth? It’s creating an organic movement toward a common goal that is greater than the company, that is greater than the client, and our job is to do that. What’s the common goal? And with every client we do, we’re trying to find this common goal that is aligned with their vision, their mission, their values, and then we work together, because, remember, you got to be authentic. You cannot just be like opportunistic, because it’s going to backlash if you say, oh, there’s an opportunity there. Let’s say we’re that, and then two weeks or two months later, we shift strategy. People are more and more — they want to trust the organization, and it’s important to walk the talk.
So I don’t know if it helps you to understand the process of the Green Media Summit, and the goal at the end of the day is to make sure the entire industry gets to carbon neutral or net zero. It’s not necessarily about share through selling more Green Media products, but at the same time, it goes together. People will understand, will probably intrigue to understand, the point of view of share through, so it’s a strategic move that is aligned with the vision of share through, but serve, more importantly, a common greater goal.
Jeremy Weisz 18:55
Yeah, and when a company maps that outright, their mission, their values and the common goal, then correct me if I’m wrong, but it’s almost easier when you’re attracting other companies for something like this, because they also have that goal, and it’s common among their mission as well. So when you’re thinking of the companies, because my next question is like, well, okay, now how do you kind of mobilize the different companies for this platform, right? So I guess the answer would be, you look at the common goals of other companies.
Yanik Deschenes 22:32
Yeah, and that’s key, obviously, if you cannot, like, convince other companies to join in that movement or be part of the event, then it’s not going to work, and that’s very difficult. And the most important thing in these cases is making sure that this platform is not there to serve the company, the client, it serves the industry. So you give them a voice to share their point of view. If you look at the program of the Green Media Summit, it was not about Share Through sharing their story. It was more about other great companies, about sharing their vision. And some say something, others say other things, and it’s giving them the voice at the end of the day. So, that’s the way it goes.
And also attracting credible third parties that will endorse there’s nonprofit organizations that are there, and they don’t necessarily have the resources to build that platform. When they see a company that is ready to invest, they will endorse the movement. So that will add a layer to the credibility. And you also have, like some media partners that can join and then say, listen, I like that. It’s part of our mission as well. We’ll support you. So you got to find these kind of third parties, and then success breeds success. You get a few more and more and more and more, and then obviously you get the movement you want.
Jeremy Weisz 24:14
Yeah, I love that because maybe the nonprofits don’t have the funds to build this type of platform, but they can borrow, they can be a part of the platform, and it benefits both parties, because then the party holding it gets that kind of endorsement and authority from that nonprofit, and nonprofit gets the platform.
Yanik Deschenes 24:32
And ultimately, and I gave you the example of this Share Through example. I, as you mentioned in the introduction, I’m part of the founding team of C2 Montreal. C2 Montreal is a global conference on commerce and creativity happening every year in Montreal. So it brings companies from all around the world that believe that creativity can move the economy or society forward. But at the beginning, this conference was built in order to help a creative agency to show how different they do their work, how atypic their approach is. So for them, by launching this conference very generously, it was a way for them to make sure that people understood how different this creative agency was in approaching a business problem.
And the beauty of C2 Montreal, it’s been the 11th year actually happening this year, in May, it became a nonprofit organization. It’s owned by the City of Montreal, because at the end of the day, one of the DNA of the City of Montreal is the creativity. So the City of Montreal, they realized that this conference serves the purpose of the city, will attract talent, will attract investment, will attract students. So it’s good for the city, but it was also, at the beginning, very good for the agency. So basically that was another example that we created that platform that has become, now no longer part of Sid Lee. Sid Lee is the creative agency that launched this platform. I was part of Sid Lee back then, and that’s it, and it’s another big success story.
Jeremy Weisz 24:37
And if people want to check it out, you can see it on the screen here. It’s C2montreal.com so if you’re interested in it, you can check it out and see when the next dates are. Do you remember, Yanik, any of your favorite speakers over the years? Here I’m looking at the current ones, but I’m sure they’re always changing. Who are some of the favorite speakers?
Yanik Deschenes 26:58
We’ve been spoiled because we had the opportunity to add Richard Ford Coppola, Philip Stark. We had Richard Branson. We had Andre Agassi. We had Billie Jean King. We had so many Snoop Dogg came one year. Listen, we were blessed to have such a great list of speakers in all individuals that really believe in creativity as a tool to propel the economy or the society forward. And then obviously they came to Montreal. They deliver speaking and we like it’s a conference that is attended by over five, 6000 people from all around the world and it’s a great conference. And today, like obviously, it runs by itself, so but at the beginning, it was the creative agency Sid Lee who thought about that, and they built that conference because Sid Lee, they wanted to show to the world that they see advertising in a very different lens, and C2 was an example to show that kind of a similar mission that the agency has.
Jeremy Weisz 28:15
Yanik, you mentioned when, before we hit record of some of your favorite you have some favorite books. I love to hear some of your favorite resources. It could be colleagues or books, and I know one you mentioned, that was Black Swan. Maybe talk about what takeaway from that book, and maybe some other ones that you have really enjoyed throughout the years.
Yanik Deschenes 28:39
Part of my values, and I recommend everybody listening to this. It’s not because you’re successful. It’s not because you’re good, you’ve been good in the past, that you can rest on your laurels and believe that the future is going to be as good as in the past. So you got to reinvent yourself every day in order to be relevant for the industry, for the market, especially in the context where the society is evolving very rapidly. So for me, I have homework to do on a monthly basis, I pushed myself to read at least two books per month, and something this is a discipline that I’ve developed many years ago in the pandemic. I was very blessed, because I had so much more time to read books.
But yes, to answer your question, I have a lot of examples, but The Black Swan was by Nicholas Taleb was a very good books, because we tend to predict, want to predict what will happen in the future, and do these kind of forecasts. And basically comes down. It makes a demonstration that randomness drives the world, extremes drives the world. Actually, and then it has an impact on everything. So you can predict as much as you can, but it can be useless. At the end of the day you got to make sure to kind of identify what are the possible Black Swans, in order that when the Black Swans appear, it’s not a black swan, it’s a gray swan. So obviously, no one predicted that we had this kind of pandemic. No one predicted that. And then, obviously we cannot predict everything. So Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan, for me, is a absolutely must-book that is absolutely good.
But I’m all not only reading about business books. I like to read about successful people that have mastered things that is very, very hard to understand or to experience. One of the books that I really liked, it’s the books that were The Great Mental Models. This book is a really, really solid book that is done by the Farnam Street. And Shane Parish is the founder of Farnam street. They made three volumes of the mental models and basically it gives you shortcuts at the end of the day, because he makes the demonstration that if you use these mental models, you’re going to save a lot of times. So Shane Parrish, he also recently published a book called Clear Thinking is a must-read book. There’s another author that I really like is Dan Sullivan. Dan Sullivan is the owner and business founder of Strategic Coach. He was my business coach for many years.
I have an immense respect to Dan Sullivan, but he wrote several books. He’s like a machine, that guy, all right.
Jeremy Weisz 31:48
I think I’ve listened to all of them at this point, but yeah, I love his books too.
Yanik Deschenes 31:52
Yeah. Like, Who, Not How is a great book. But the one that I really liked the most was The Gap Versus The Gain. And you know what, I was in the gap all last year, okay? And I didn’t realize that until the end of the year, I was in the gap. I was not happy. I was always chasing for revenues, always chasing revenues, always being disappointed. And I realized, why are you in the gap Yanik? Put yourself in the position being in the game, and that’s what I did. It’s a shift of mindset. And Dan Sullivan, from Strategic Coach, is a genius. I really admire that guy. And also, I’m a tennis player. Tennis is my life. I play tennis every day. For me, it’s not about winning or losing, about tennis. It’s more about the journey to become the best. It has an impact on my relationships. I think I’m a better dad because I play tennis. I think I’m a better employer because I play tennis.
I think I’m smarter because I play tennis. I think I have more mental strength and capacity to face problems because of tennis. And one of my role model is Rafael Nadal. Nadal is an amazing guy, and he wrote a autobiography a long time ago that is called Rafa. It’s a beautiful book about how he developed his mental strength and his values and stuff like that. So for those people who really like tennis and especially great athletes, the book about Rafa is absolutely a must read. It’s beautiful. The ghostwriter did a wonderful job sharing the story. It’s really well written, and it captured your imagination. It makes you realize the importance of being humble and work hard and have a great work ethic. And I admire Rafael Nadal a lot. And these are the kind of examples of books and but the list goes on and on and on. As I said, I read books all the time. I love it. If your audience had some books to share, recommend, I’m open. I buy books almost every week. I love it.
Jeremy Weisz 34:14
No thanks for sharing those. And I will have to check out Clear Thinking. I love the concept of mental models, one of my friends, Michael Simmons, talks about this. He’s got a newsletter on it, and I’m sure he shared some of the stuff that Shane talks about, but I will have to check that Clear Thinking and The Great Mental Models. When you’re talking about Black Swan, it reminds me of one of my favorites, my Chris Voss on the podcast before, and he wrote, Never Split the Difference. And his company is called The Black Swan Group. So there’s a little bit confusion there. Have you checked out the Never Split the Difference?
Yanik Deschenes 34:49
I know him. I’m a big fan of Chris Voss as well. He’s the former, like, hostage negotiator for the FBI, this crazy thing, the way he approached thing, of course, he’s a great guy. I love him.
Jeremy Weisz 35:01
Yeah, that’s one of my favorites. So yeah, thanks for sharing all those. You brought something up earlier about um, kind of going back to work in this post-Covid world and we are chatting about the values of people working is evolving. Um, and can you speak to that?
Yanik Deschenes 35:25
I’m questioning myself, if the new generation, strive for excellence, all right? And that’s a big concern that I have. Striving for excellence has always been part of my work ethic. And I look sometimes at the new generations and I question myself if they are ready to do the extra mile. One of the biggest concern I have as a team leader is, how can I deal with this new generation to make them so motivated to go to work do the extra mile without having me to push them or to threaten. I’m never going to threaten. But the point is, I want it comes from them, and I think this is something that I’m working every day, because the new generation is different from my generation and I don’t want to compare or back in the old days, it was good. Old days is over. Now it’s today. All right. How do you deal with these new generation of people, especially going post-pandemic, and how can you understand their mindset and try to push them to work as art, as I did when I was young. So that’s a kind of a gray zone for me, sometimes that I question myself every day.
Jeremy Weisz 36:49
So have you found anything? What have you explored or found up to this point?
Yanik Deschenes 36:55
Well, Dan Sullivan really helped me with that. He developed the concept of unique ability, and I found that it’s very interesting what he has developed. For him, very work you do, it’s either A work, B work or C work. Okay, so I ask my people, what is your A work? What is your B work, and what is your C work? The A work is the work you hate to do. Okay, you hate doing this. But you’re a professional. You got to pay your dues. I’m gonna do it. The B work is the work where, been there, done that. It’s easy. I’ll do it, but I have no emotion doing it. And then the C work is where time flies. I love it. I could work seven days a week, so I asked my team to identify the A, B and C work.
And my challenge is to make sure that 80% of the work they do, it’s the C work, all right, a little bit of B, but never A work, because the beauty of life, my A work can be your C work, Jeremy and your C work can be my A work. That’s the beauty of life, that’s the beauty of humans. So I try to identify the work that is done and put everyone on the team, on the C work. And I think with the new generation, this is working. This is a model that I’m pushing, and this is not my model. I got to attribute that to Dan Sullivan from the strategic coach. He’s the genius behind that model, and I really follow that.
Jeremy Weisz 38:37
No, I love that, because it’s kind of what someone loves doing. Time flies. It’s their zone of genius. And if they’re staying in that space, they’re going to be motivated, self-motivating, right? Because they just love doing it, right? Something that, when I think of, what would I do for free, just because I love doing it and getting paid for it, obviously. So, one of the things I was looking at in your site, one of my favorite parts of your website, and people go check it out at YPR Canada, is the talent.com. Talk a little bit of and I’m going to share my screen, and I’m going to play this video on silent, just so it doesn’t interrupt your speech. But I love the video on that page. What did you do with talent.com?
Yanik Deschenes 39:26
So probably a lot of people that your listeners never heard of talent.com but they all know Indeed, obviously, Indeed is like number one in the US, in order to help employers and employees to connect, Indeed is number one. LinkedIn is very, obviously, extremely top of mind. But talent.com is getting, trying to build their presence in the US and all around the world. But they don’t have the budget of Indeed, and they don’t have the budget of LinkedIn, but they want to be top of mind with employers and employees. And they really believed in the power of media, and they came to us and they said, We want to be in the press. We want to be like in every conversations that is related to recruitment. We said, sure, we’ll do that.
So what we did, basically is then identifying questions that could spark a conversation. And when we did like, we identified two things. The first one was pay transparency. It’s a concept that has been started in the US. Now, it’s mandatory. It’s law in New York City or New York State, I mean, but more and more employees want to know what’s the pay? Companies should put the salary on the website to show what is the pay. So we said, is it good? Is it bad? Let’s run a survey, and let’s see what people believe in that. And we found it was not black and white. A lot of people say it’s a good thing. A lot of people say it may not be a good thing. And then we share the results. And then talent.com was in the middle of the conversation around pay transparency.
Every time that an employee, an employer, wanted to talk about pay transparency, well, they always all media came to the survey that was conducted by talent.com and wanted to have an expert from talent.com to share about his perspective. What are the best practice related to that, and what’s the opinion? And the other topic that we found that there was kind of a conversation to have in the market was the four-day work week, the four-day work week is something that was very present, and it’s still very present. Is it still good or bad? We put that conversation. We ran a survey in different states and provinces in Canada and the US, and then we realized that, again, it was not black and white, so we put the survey out there, and the media were interested, because it was not about talent.
Our talent is great about our talent is the best platform. It was more about talent, understanding the hot burning questions, or the hot topics that most employers, employees are having at the moment, and helping them to learn more and get a fresh opinion about what we should do based on these topics. So these are examples that I recommend for companies that may not have a lot of brand awareness or nothing to announce, to identify odd conversation out there, putting fresh data and then being in the middle and being generous and sharing their point of view. If you do that again, you’re going to pay the dividend and talent.com got millions of millions of impressions, the market share grow, obviously, Indeed, is still by far number one.
But in any case, they were in the media. And the good thing about being in the media is the media have a high domain authority on Google. What does that mean? It means that if you do queries on Google automatically on important questions for you, talent.com is going to be the organic results because of the press they got related to specific keywords. So we got a big dance why, that’s why Media Relations is so important. Again, because media, most of media have high domain authority. And having high domain authority makes you in the top organic results by Google. And you always want to be in the top, for example, your podcast, Jeremy, if want to be like, top podcast, obviously, that’s very generic, but you want to make sure that Google ranks you top of mind. So this is a way to get attention and to get, like, this kind of word of mouth, again, what we’re doing.
Jeremy Weisz 44:15
Yeah, no thanks for sharing that. I love the creative around it, with the video and the infographics. And actually several people on the podcast, I had Travis McAshan of Glide Design, and he talked about implementing the four-day work week, and also Andrew Barnes talked about it as well. So I love the concept and how they laid out what they did. So I’ll have to check out talent.com and see what the research that you all did there. I have one last question, Yanik, and before I do, I just want to point people to check out your website and your company, the company’s YPR, the website, you can check out yprcanada.com to learn more, and you’ve seen it as we’ve been doing the interview and poking around there. My last question is just some colleagues or mentors in the industry that you’ve learned from and some great advice and lessons they gave you.
Yanik Deschenes 45:18
Well, Jean Francois Bouchard, who’s the founder of Sid Lee is one of my favorite mentors that I ever had. I’m always grateful to have the chance to meet with him, earn his trust and work with him for several years. Jean Francois Bouchard, he built global creative agencies. Sid Lee is renowned now all around the world. And the magic of JF was the capacity to surround yourself with people that are exceptional. So I think JF spend his life try to identify top talents and making sure to surround himself with people that are truly exceptional and I think that’s, it’s something that I always remember, and also in the world of an agency, at the end of the day, there’s three things that matters that I learned.
You got to have the relationships, the right relationships, you got to be singular in the market. And you have to deliver. Okay, because you can be the smart, the nicest, the coolest guy in the world. Everybody likes you, but if you’re not singular, then the problem is that people will probably challenge you with the price. You don’t want to have to become a commodity. And the third thing is, even if you’re super nice guy, even if you’re a very singular but if you don’t deliver results at the end of the day, people won’t call you back. So you got to be obsessed with the results, and that’s what I learned from JF and all the mentors that I had. So that’s why today I’m very obsessed with these three elements when I built YPR.
Jeremy Weisz 46:58
I love it. Yanik, I want to be the first wanted to thank you. This has been amazing. Thanks for sharing your knowledge, your lessons, your journey. Everyone check out more episodes of the podcast. Check out
YPRcanada.com, and we’ll see everyone next time. Thanks so much.
Yanik Deschenes 47:12
Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Thank you for the opportunity.
