Communications 101: Gareth Pettigrew on why PR has never mattered more for MSPs

Robert Dutt: Gareth, thanks for taking the time. I appreciate you joining us.

Gareth Pettigrew: Glad to be here, Rob.

Robert Dutt: I thought of you to have this conversation because we’ve sat down at many conferences and with many vendor execs when you were running comms around the world, one might say. You know, channel leaders from Cisco and even after you’d moved off the partner beat specifically, I think you always did a really good job of, when talking to us on the channel side, framing up the partner side of the conversation in a way that leads me to believe that you’ve got a pretty good grip on what a lot of these guys are doing, which I think is really important for this conversation.

This is something that I’ve thought about doing for a while, doing an episode like this, but I kept bumping into the same problem. Basically the “so what” problem. Why should I care about communications as a 15-person MSP owner? Then when we did our pre-call to discuss the possibility of doing this and where it could go, you kind of cracked that code in about 30 seconds.

So let me put it right to you. For that 15-person MSP kind of partner who’s listening to this, they’re busy, they’re wearing six hats. They own marketing. They oversee sales. They probably do HR. They have a business to run. Why should communications be on their radar right now, and what’s changed that makes that even more urgent than you would have said a few years ago?

Gareth Pettigrew: Fundamentally, in a word, like almost everything right now, it’s around AI. And perhaps not intuitively, it appears that PR is emerging as one of the big winners of AI. Maybe not for the reasons you think, though.

Number one is that non-paid citations, and specifically earned media, are proving to be incredibly important in terms of the LLMs answering their questions. So as the industry shifts from search to chat, we’re seeing PR be much more important in terms of that overall mix.

The second thing, and this will resonate with a lot of people, is the amount of AI slop that’s out there. And Rob, as a journalist, I see you laughing. What we see is a lot of content being created, but it’s all generic crap. It’s all the same. What happens is that damages trust, damages customers’ belief in executives, in companies. So increasingly we’re seeing companies, and especially it’s happening a lot at the higher end of the market, executives are really investing in human communicators to help them break through the slop and stand out.

So that’s the real reason for why now. I will say though, Rob, I think at the end of the day for PR, you need two ingredients. You need a story and you need a storyteller. And one of the things, why I’ve always been partner-focused, it wasn’t just because I liked the channel. It was self-interested as well, in that I found some of the best storytellers in the industry weren’t the vendor executives, they were the partner executives. So I’ve always been stunned that more partners don’t lean quite heavily into comms as a real big part of their new biz and their marketing mix. A lot of them are really well positioned to raise their awareness through communications.

Robert Dutt: So tell me a bit about that. I’m curious what you’ve seen. What sets apart those partners who you’ve sat there and thought, “You know what, you could be doing my exact role here and telling this story.” What is it, and particularly what separates those who do it really well and those who just kind of either go through the motions or leave it on the table, as it were?

Gareth Pettigrew: And let’s be clear, everyone isn’t a great storyteller. But what I’ve seen is that in the partner communities, we’re rife with the type of personalities that make for great storytellers. A lot of those people with entrepreneurial spirit who are very proactive sellers, they spend their day not talking to engineers and vendors and all of that stuff, but they spend their day talking to customers. So they know what’s top of mind for their customer.

Often with vendor executives, that’s one of the biggest challenges. It’s pivoting from that internal orientation to an external orientation. And a lot of partners are already there. So I’ve really seen some come across consistently. I’ve seen partner executives be on the level with my top executives at the vendor, or even better. So they’re in a great place.

Robert Dutt: So for the partner who’s hearing this and thinking, “Okay, I get it. That’s cool. I can tell my story and I understand the customer’s viewpoint, so I should be able to put it in their words and their thoughts. But I don’t have the budget and I definitely don’t have a comms person, nor is that on my roadmap of my next few hires.” I think a lot of people still picture PR as press releases and pitching journalists, and that feels like a lot of work. How would you position what communications actually looks like today for a company at that kind of 15-person size?

Gareth Pettigrew: I think the biggest blocker to companies getting involved in PR is they’ve got a legacy idea of what PR is. PR equals press release. That’s 15, 20 years ago.

The reality is, especially over the past year and now with AI, we’ve seen the media landscape change absolutely dramatically. The media business model has been disaggregated with Google and others blowing up the advertising business model. And we’ve seen a decrease in some ways in terms of the number of journalists that we have out there. But an increase in some other mediums – things such as podcasts, things such as Substack. We see much more new media, much more niche media. And that’s in the traditional, what we call the earned space.

We’ve also seen the social media rise. We’ve seen the advent of owned media, be that executives taking a thought leadership stance on LinkedIn or X as it may be, or in terms of their newsrooms. A lot of vendors do this. They turn their newsrooms into actual content destinations to get their story out there.

And finally, there’s a lot of paid options, right? Whether that’s traditional publications offering paid events, paid content, or paid influencers. If we think about political conventions or Apple events, it used to be media dominating the front row. Those are all influencers now.

So with that in mind, with the landscape changing, that means there’s a flywheel of options to get your message out there. But that also changes your tactics. And I’d strongly recommend for any partner getting involved, don’t try to boil the ocean. Let’s really make sure you pick one thing, pick two things. Let’s do it well. And if it works for you, then you start to lean in and invest more. Then maybe you bring in the consultant. Maybe you think about hiring a multimedia kid right out of PR or journalism school. Maybe you look to get a freelance journalist to help you write some articles for your website.

So there’s definitely a strategy you can follow as a big partner organization. We see Worldwide Technologies and others really investing aggressively in some of these things. But for smaller organizations as well, especially if you’re a strong storyteller. Start small, pick your battles.

Robert Dutt: What do you find are some of the common, especially for that smaller partner, some of the common places to start? If you were sitting down with that 15-person MSP, no budget, no comms person, just saying, “All right, I want to give this a shot.” What are the first and second things to think about?

Gareth Pettigrew: Let me give you a bit of a roadmap in terms of how I do it.

The first thing I’d recommend is let’s think about your story. The single biggest mistake that most technology companies make is that they’re internally wired. “What do we want to talk about?” You’ve got to flip that orientation. So it’s, what are the industry conversations – maximum two conversations – that you can insert yourself into? I would spend your first week listening to the conversations out there. Be honest with yourself. How can we insert ourselves into this conversation? Be very specific in terms of what that conversation is that you want to insert yourself into. Are you a security partner? Is it about securing AI agents? It could be whatever niche you’re in. Be very prescriptive with what that conversation you’re going to insert yourself into.

Second week, build out your story. Most companies don’t spend enough time on their story. One page, three to five messages. Build out your messages, build out your bullet points, your sound bites. That’s going to be your foundation. You don’t have to say the exact same thing every time, but you have to know what your general storyline is. It doesn’t mean you’re repetitive, but you do know where you’re going to play and what you’re going to say in general.

The final part of that, week three, think about the influencers that you’re going to follow. Pick 10 influencers for that conversation. Who are the journalists? Who are the industry analysts? Who are the vendors in the industry that you admire the most, that have the best perspective?

And then finally, let’s activate. We’re going to start on LinkedIn. The first thing you’re going to do is comment. Spend maybe a month not even posting, just commenting. Block 15 minutes, twice a week. Comment on others in a meaningful way. Think about your narrative, focus on your conversation, and then start getting out there with some of your own perspectives, your own posts. You’ll be able to find your niche. Just get started on LinkedIn. That’s the path I would take if I’m a partner and I just want to get my toe in and see how it’s going.

Robert Dutt: That makes sense. And by meaningful, I presume you mean something that is not directly self-promotional when you’re commenting, but adding value into the conversation in a way that maps to those messages that you’ve laid out.

Gareth Pettigrew: It’s externally wired. Don’t talk about your products. Don’t talk about any of those things. Talk about you as an industry expert. What’s your perspective on this protocol? What’s your perspective on a new product that one of your vendors is putting out there? What’s your perspective on a controversial topic that’s come up? Get your perspective in there. You are not selling. You’re thinking of yourself more as a consultant, not a salesperson. That’s an important flip that needs to take place.

The difference between PR and marketing – PR is that thought leadership. It’s very much that top of funnel. You’re about raising awareness. You’re about getting yourself in the door. It’s not the middle or lower part of the funnel in which you’re actually actively selling to that prospect. It’s about raising awareness.

Robert Dutt: On the marketing side, I think a lot of partners are used to the idea of leaning on, borrowing from, adopting from vendor resources, MDF-type stuff. Is there a similar motion that can be applied on the communication side, wherein I can take some stuff that my vendors are producing anyway and repurpose or reuse?

Gareth Pettigrew: Absolutely. That’s where a lot of the partners may also find where those narratives are that may well fit. Some vendors do it better than others, let’s be honest. Some are very self-promotional. I think you want to stay away from those. But yes, follow those executives. Follow the social handles of your vendors.

When you’re at the events, introduce yourself to the PR people. I’ve got to tell you, when I was at Cisco, when I was at Okta, I always had my handful of partners who I knew I could always go to if I needed them to talk to a journalist. One of them, and we’re talking Canadian here, Kent McDonald over at Longview Systems was always one of my go-tos. When I was at Cisco, I knew I could send Kent a text and Kent would always give a great quote. He’d always be responsive. He’d always be friendly. He’d always be positive.

That’s one of the other things. Once you build up that thought leadership muscle, don’t be shy about introducing yourself to the PR person. Give them your card. When they call, just be responsive.

Robert Dutt: And similarly, I guess there’s an opportunity to not necessarily cold-call a tech journalist such as myself, but think about the niches that your customers are in and reaching out to the journalists who are covering that, establishing yourself as someone that they can go to. Let me tell you, I’m always looking for that Kent McDonald or those other partners who are available, have a take, and can riff with you. It’s something that my peers are certainly looking for.

Gareth Pettigrew: I completely agree. But the way to make sure that you’re not cold-calling that journalist is you’re very targeted. Remember when we said identify your conversation and then identify who’s really influential in that conversation? Figure out who those journalists are and comment regularly. And then once they start responding to you a little bit, after a while, maybe you DM them and say, “Hey, by the way, if you’re ever writing a story, I’m happy to chat with you.” I think that’s, as a DIY PR practitioner, how I would approach that.

Robert Dutt: So as you start doing this, how do you know it’s working? What does success look like when you’re starting from zero and you don’t have the luxury of an agency sending you a monthly report on what you did, how it hit, where it appeared, those kinds of things? How do I measure what I’m doing? Because obviously that’s something that’s important to partners on anything they’re doing.

Gareth Pettigrew: Well, Rob, let’s assume if we’re talking to that 15-person MSP who’s just getting started, primarily your impact is going to be on LinkedIn. And really, LinkedIn is an engagement platform. You want to go in and measure your engagement and see how that’s increasing on a monthly or quarterly basis.

The one thing I will say, and I’ll pass on this fabulous little piece of advice – or this story – it starts to become self-evident as well, in that you can have those quantitative measures, but also qualitative. When I started working with Okta, the country manager was a guy who became a good friend of mine, Dan Kagan. I remember our first meeting, we sat down and said, “Okay Dan, one of the things we regularly need you to do is we need you to be engaged on LinkedIn. We’re going to need you to post once a week or once every couple of weeks, and we’re going to have to have you go in and comment.” He said, “Guys, listen, I love this idea, but I’m not going to have time to do it. I’m working 50 hours a week. I’ve got a young family. I can’t make this happen.”

After two months, he’s pinging us once a week if we haven’t got anything out. And the reason for that is he’s getting inbound recognition. He’s getting people pinging him saying, “Hey, could you speak at this conference?” “Hey, I saw what you said.” When you talk to CTV News, when you post it on LinkedIn, it becomes somewhat self-fulfilling in that it really is a strong funnel to help build your awareness. So that’s one of the things I’ve seen. There’s the quantitative and the qualitative, but it is important to measure your rhythm.

Robert Dutt: We’ve talked about what to do as easy first steps. I’m curious, as you’ve been through this exercise or seen others go through this exercise, what’s a common mistake that organizations, particularly smaller organizations, make when they start to pay attention to comms? Maybe a well-intentioned first step that backfires or ends up being a waste of time?

Gareth Pettigrew: Rob, I think the couple of mistakes that I see companies make in this – and by the way, this isn’t just on the partner side, this is all across.

Number one is they view PR as a marketing tactic. And ultimately, PR and marketing – there’s a big gray area in between, increasingly right now – but they do have different centers of gravity. Marketing, for the most part, is about demand generation. And PR, its center of gravity is about awareness, building awareness and managing reputation. So while there is an overlap, they’re not the same things. And when you look to apply a marketing lens to a PR strategy, that results in you being typically very internally oriented. “We have a new product, we’ve got to launch a product.” Well, the media landscape has changed. There aren’t many, if any, journalists, certainly not in Canada, that really write on product anymore. So that’s part of the challenge, when you view through a marketing lens.

The second one that’s related is executive skin in the game. If you’re going to do this, the executives need to get involved. It’s not something you punt over to your marketing team. Marketing should be an incredibly close partner of comms, but the executives need to have skin in the game as well. Executives are going to be the ones that are out there, the thought leaders. If you get to the point of having spokespeople, they’re going to be the spokespeople. So marketing is a partner, but they can’t be the single driver.

And we talked about internal versus external orientation. Being externally wired is absolutely essential, both in terms of your story but also your strategy. Those, Rob, would be the biggest hurdles that I see.

Robert Dutt: This is a topic that we could probably go off in many different directions for hours, but I’m respectful of people’s time who listen to this podcast. So let me end it with this. We’ve covered the basics of it, the “what to do” as those first steps, and given some good actionable advice, I think. If we were to keep going and do this on a regular drumbeat and discuss aspects of communications, what are the threads that you think matter most for this audience? Where would you go next in terms of topics? There are so many different things I think we could pull on, but I’m curious what you see as the next steps, or maybe step two for a partner organization.

Gareth Pettigrew: In all honesty, if we were to think about future podcasts here, Rob, I think about, let’s dig a little deeper in terms of how you actually architect that externally wired narrative. How do you identify that conversation? Be a little bit more prescriptive. What does a messaging house look like from a PR standpoint? How do media messages differ from marketing messages? That would certainly be one. For me, I’m a storyteller at heart. It should start with the story.

But then I think digging a little bit deeper into, “What are some best practices in terms of building up your thought leadership on LinkedIn? How can you, as an executive, up your game? What are the pragmatic steps? What are five things you can do to become a better LinkedIn thought leader?” I think, Rob, those are a couple that I’d start with, but then I’d love to hear from the audience, from some partners out there. What are those challenges that they would love some help solving?

Robert Dutt: Brilliant. And that’s not even getting into potentially crisis communications, internal communications, any number of different aspects of this dialogue. I think we’ve set the stage nicely and I thank you very much for taking the time, Gareth. I know you’re setting up your own shop and just getting started with Pettigrew Communications. Do you want to share a little bit about what you’re doing and what the goal is there?

Gareth Pettigrew: Absolutely. So Rob, I’m a Canadian boy. Raised in Toronto and I live on Vancouver Island. I’ve spent the last 20 years inside big tech, working with Cisco, working with Okta, and really I’m looking to bring some of that expertise to smaller companies or to tech communications firms. So it’s time for a new chapter, Rob. I’m very lucky. I found a profession I absolutely love, but I needed a little bit of a different rhythm.

We’ve heard from Gartner that with the focus on AI putting a bit of a tailwind towards PR, the anticipation is that over the next year, PR budgets are going to double. So hopefully it’s a good time to get into this. And I’m really excited to work with a lot of different companies and help them fix some of the things that we talked about here. I’m very passionate about it, excited to get started, and it should be fun.

Robert Dutt: Brilliant. And anytime you’re entering into a market that’s doubling in the course of a year, that’s probably a good sign. Gareth, I appreciate you taking the time. Let’s chat again soon.

Gareth Pettigrew: Thanks, Rob. Take care.

Robert Dutt: There you have it, Gareth Pettigrew from Pettigrew Communications.

I’d like to thank Gareth for his time, and honestly, for making the case I’ve been trying to make to this audience for years, better than I ever could. The idea that earned media is now one of the primary ways that AI and large language models surface information about your company – and that if you’re not showing up in that landscape, you’re increasingly invisible – I think that reframes this whole topic from “nice to have” to “you’re leaving real business on the table.” And Gareth’s three-week roadmap for getting started – listen, build your story, find your influencers, then show up on LinkedIn – is about as actionable as it gets. No budget required, no agency required, just intentionality.

We’re going to keep going with this. Gareth and I are planning deeper dives on specific topics – messaging, LinkedIn best practices, crisis comms, and more – and we’d love to hear from you on what communications challenges you’re facing in your business. Drop me a line, I’m easy to find.

Thanks as always for listening. If you’re enjoying In The Channel, you can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and most podcast directories. A rating or a review goes a long way if you have a minute.

Until next time, I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz.ca, and I’ll see you in the channel.