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Leslie Cafferty, chief communications officer of Booking Holdings Inc., the world's largest global travel company, joins On Top of PR host Jason Mudd to discuss the pivotal role of communications professionals in business success and growth.

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Our Guest:

Our episode guest is Leslie Cafferty, chief communications officer at Booking Holdings Inc., the world's largest global travel company. She’s also the executive sponsor for the company’s employee resource group dedicated to equality and equity for women across the organization. Booking Holdings Inc. brands include Booking.com, Priceline, OpenTable, Kayak, and Agoda.

Five things you’ll learn from this episode:

1. Differentiating marketing and communications in business
2. Strategies to help with the rising cost of labor and doing business
3. Tips for aspiring chief communication officers
4.Evolving trends in communications
5. The importance of diversity in communications and business

Quotables

• “The art of what we do is storytelling. You could be writing a speech for a CEO, messaging points for a lawsuit, or sharing a consumer product story. That’s art. You have to think creatively.” — @Leslie Cafferty

• “Rising tide floats all boats. More data out there about travel, booking travel, and best practices probably inspire someone to want to go on a trip.” — @Jason Mudd

• “It’s all about collaboration with the business. Communications is not seen anymore as just a subset of marketing — we have a seat at the table in leadership meetings.” — @Leslie Cafferty

• “Anything you say can create or destroy value in seconds. Our role and expertise is about doing more creating than destroying.” — @Leslie Cafferty

• “The skills, talents, and responsibilities haven’t changed, just the tools, platform, and speed at which you can communicate with your audience has increased, therefore making every move you make more critical and potentially vulnerable.” — @Jason Mudd

About Leslie Cafferty

A 20-year tech company veteran with a passion for communications, marketing, and promoting more diversity in business, Leslie Cafferty is the senior vice president and chief communications officer for Booking Holdings, Inc., the world’s largest global travel company, known for brands such as Priceline, Booking.com, Kayak, OpenTable, and Agoda. Cafferty oversees all corporate, financial, brand, crisis, CEO, executive, and internal communications initiatives for the company, which operates in more than 200 countries. She’s also the executive sponsor for the company’s employee resource group dedicated to equality and equity for women across the organization.

Previously, Cafferty was the global vice president of marketing and communications at Nielsen, the world’s leading global research company. Before Nielsen, she spent eight years as the director of global communications for IAC, a leading internet company operating more than 25 market-leading digital brands. She attended Harvard Business School and graduated magna cum laude from Lehi

Support the Show.

• On Top of PR is produced by Axia Public Relations, named by Forbes as one of America’s Best PR Agencies. Axia is an expert PR firm for national brands.
• On Top of PR is sponsored by ReviewMaxer, the platform for monitoring, improving, and promoting online customer reviews.

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Crafting winning media pitches, learning the elements needed to stand out and secure coverage.

Five things you’ll learn from this episode:

1. What doesn’t help your pitches
2. Following up — NOGAS
3. Use the phone to tell your story
4. Exclusive/advance/embargo — know the difference
5. Key elements to a good pitch

Quotables

• “Great sales is about helping, not about sales. Great media relations is about helping a reporter uncover a news story that's valuable and interesting that they didn't know about previously.” — @JasonMudd9
• “People really like people who have confidence and who have a unique, contrarian, and provocative point of view.” — @JasonMudd9
• “Improvising is one of the key attributes of being successful in PR.” — @JasonMudd9
• People care about stories about people. They don’t care about stories about corporations.” — @JasonMudd9

If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with others or leave us a quick podcast review.

About Jason Mudd

Jason Mudd, APR, is a trusted adviser and dynamic strategist for some of America’s most admired brands. Since 1994, he’s worked with American Airlines, Budweiser, Dave & Buster’s, H&R Block, Hilton, HP, Miller Lite, New York Life, Pizza Hut, Southern Comfort, and Verizon. He founded Axia in July 2002. Forbes named Axia one of America’s Best PR Agencies.

Clients love Jason’s passion, innovation, candor, commitment, and award-winning team. In an increasingly tech-forward world, Jason’s grasp of technological demands on companies provides his clients in multiple sectors a unique advantage in reaching their top audiences. After teaching himself HTML in 1994, Jason helped pioneer internet marketing strategies as an early adopter of e-commerce, search engine optimization, and social media, inspiring tech giants like Yahoo.

At Axia, Jason attracts, develops, retains, innovates, and leads top PR talent and clients. He oversees strategic communications for the firm’s national clients and provides high-level consultations to client leadership teams at billion-dollar global brands, both business-to-business and business-to-consumer, including spokesperson training, crisis communications management, analytics, social media, online reputation management, and more. He also speaks frequently to corporations and industry groups and writes about public relations trends and best practices for American City Business Journals and other national companies.

Jason’s contact info:

• Jason Mudd on X
• Jason Mudd on LinkedIn
• Axia Public Relations

Resources:

• Link to Bloomberg journalist’s LinkedIn post

Support the Show.

• On Top of PR is produced by Axia Public Relations, named by Forbes as one of America’s Best PR Agencies. Axia is an expert PR firm for national brands.
• On Top of PR is sponsored by ReviewMaxer, the platform for monitoring, improving, and promoting online customer reviews.

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AI strategist Kathleen Perley shares top recommended AI tools and how to optimize them for business communications strategies.

Our guest

Our episode guest is Kathleen Perley, professor of AI at Rice University’s Jones School of Business. Kathleen is an innovative healthcare tech leader and trusted adviser in the emerging world of optimizing AI for business marketing and advertising.

Five things you’ll learn from this episode:

1. The race for AI: staying authentic while building public trust
2. Unique ways to use AI for business and personal development
3. Top recommended AI tools
4. How to utilize AI safely: best practices
5. AI and deep fakes: What is coming next?

Quotables

• “Do we let this ego race to be first end up hindering our ability to have a public that trusts and aligns with AI and doesn’t build this resistance?” - @Kathleen Perley
• “This [AI] is our generation’s moon landing.” - @Kathleen Perley
• “How do we take the mundane, the rote out of our lives so we can spend more time doing what we do best, which is developing these relationships and human connections?” - @Kathleen Perley
• “It's one of those things I keep hearing over and over again — that if you use AI to help generate content, you’ll get devalued in the algorithms from a search engine ranking perspective — but I’m not seeing that come true. I think the focus is more on quality and less on who is the creator or origin. If we use both humans and AI, it usually produces something even better than just a human or just AI alone.” - @Kathleen Perley
• “If you haven’t started integrating AI into your crisis communication plan, now would be a great time to start thinking about that.” - @Jason Mudd
• “My biggest fear right now is that [AI] produces so much content so quickly that it almost takes just as much work to go through and improve it and fix it. But that first draft is awfully nice to have most of the time.” - @Jason Mudd

If you enjoyed this episode, please take a moment to share it with a colleague or friend. You may also share your experience with others by leaving us a quick podcast review.

About Kathleen Perley

Recognized as one of MM+M’s Women to Watch 2024 and with her agency on the Inc 5000 list for three years, Kathleen is a celebrated leader in merging AI with business strategy, especially in marketing and advertising.

She also serves on MD Anderson's advisory committee and supports Ncourage, an investment fund aiding women-owned businesses.

Guest’s contact info and resources:

• Kathleen Perley on X
• Kathleen Perley on LinkedIn
• Rice University’s Jones School of Business
• Coursera class: "AI for everyone"
• Marketing Institute Podcast

Support the Show.

• On Top of PR is produced by Axia Public Relations, named by Forbes as one of America’s Best PR Agencies. Axia is an expert PR firm for national brands.
• On Top of PR is sponsored by ReviewMaxer, the platform for monitoring, improving, and promoting online customer reviews.