Blurring the Lines with Parry Headrick at Crackle PR

This week I spoke with Parry Headrick , Founder at Crackle PR , a tech public relations agency that works with good companies only. Parry is an influential voice within the communications industry, and a "must follow" for anyone interested in this space.

Tell me about your career journey up until this point. How did you get where you are today?

Academics didn’t come easy to me. I was kicked out of school multiple times, and didn’t make it past the eighth grade for a variety of reasons. I had authority issues, being from a family of divorce. I ended up hitchhiking across the country at 16 to 18, going from Boston to California. Finally, I came back to the East Coast and got my GED, went to a community college, and started winning writing awards. I ended up winning the Los Angeles Times story of the year award for a series of articles I wrote about the English as a second language program at the school I attended. They were putting a bunch of kids who didn’t speak English into tiny classrooms with more than twice the student-to-teacher ratio as other classes, but charging them even more. The series of stories actually changed the entire program, and the award landed me with a partial scholarship to Boston University. The takeaway here is that it really doesn’t matter where you start, it’s where you end.?

At 美国波士顿大学 I worked for The Daily Free Press, the independent student newspaper, where I went on to become a general assignment reporter at The Sun, also known as The Lowell Sun. Then I began contributing to the Boston Globe Media , and writing for several other publications. But then I started to notice parts of the industry I didn’t enjoy. The headline writers would take liberties with my articles, which were above the fold, leading stories. And the experiences made me disillusioned with the way the editorial side was heading.?

I started to think about how I could parlay my skills as a writer and a communicator into something that is a little less up to the whims of someone else, and take control of my own destiny. That's where PR became the natural fit.

I joined a company called Sterling Hager back in 2000 that was headquartered in Boston, and it became a national agency. They had a London office. And then not long after that, I was asked to open a San Francisco office. And around that time, a handful of folks at Sterling Hager bought the company and it became SHIFT Communications. At SHIFT Communications is where I really earned my stripes, working from Account Executive all the way up to Vice President, and eventually becoming the Head of Marketing for the agency. After leaving for another agency, Matter, and being there for several years, the pandemic hit. None of us knew what was happening or when we would be returning to an office, and it gave me a minute to reflect on my nearly two decades at agencies. So I thought, why not start my own?

I approached creating an agency differently from the way it’s always been done. No more toxic employees, regardless of how brilliant they may be. No more clients whose ethics and values didn’t align with mine or my team’s. No more time sheets. And it’s working. Only two employees have left in the last few years, while the industry’s average turnover is 25% per year. We’re all about good people only, good companies only. And so I don't make as much money as some of the larger agencies, but I'm okay with that because I sleep like a baby every night. And it's been really, really great.

Are you seeing a shift in brands looking for smaller shops?

We’re actively going against a lot of the bigger agencies because I believe the traditional conglomerate agency model is fundamentally broken for a lot of reasons.?

One of which is that most of them are focused on material and time, meaning they’re billing by the hour. That made sense years ago, but today it doesn’t. Because now you can have interns, ACs or AAEs, AEs doing the work of 15 people in 2 hours because of AI and the tools that we have now. So how do you justify that? It's really hard to do so.?

Another, more important reason, is that the big agencies bring out senior leaders to the pitch and flash big company logos, but those people retreat into the woodwork once the partnership begins, and junior to mid-level staff take over the account. But the turnover is vicious at that level, so you have to constantly reeducate the team about what the business is all about. And a lot of the times the writing isn’t up-to-par because these team members are brand new to the industry, and they haven’t had a moment to understand the nuances or how to connect the thoughts of all these disparate ideas to tell bigger stories.?

Against that backdrop, the majority of people we talk to come to us precisely for the opposite of all of that. At Crackle, everybody is a manager and above, and we have one account coordinator to support. That's a really big selling point for people who've been burned by those big agencies before. And I see a lot of people coming to us saying that they feel like a small fish in a big pond at larger firms — unless they have the largest retainers at those agencies, they're treated poorly, and they're constantly having to educate new team members all the time who are really, frankly, are not seasoned enough to be able to run strategy for some of these brands.

What do you see the role of a modern communicator being? What skills do these people need, what tasks should they know how to complete effectively??

I write a little bit about what I call a shift away from PR 101 to PR 121. We all know the basic components of PR — press releases, speaking opportunities, awards, etc. — that are all foundational pieces, and still important. They're going to remain important for the foreseeable future. But if you're only doing that stuff, you're missing out on half the modern role. By that I mean that the spheres of influence are everywhere today as the media continues to fragment, and there are smaller pockets that are equally important to smaller little groups of other people. As an example, LinkedIn would be one channel for that podcast. Discord, Reddit, you name it. There are all these little broken pockets of influence, and there are arguably more targets than ever. They're just smaller targets that impact smaller groups of people.?

When people come to me, it's because they've been reading what I write about how the media game has shifted, and they feel that intuitively when they see there's far fewer mainstream media hits that their PR firms are getting. They're seeing the engagement I get from my LinkedIn posts and the top-tier publications I'm featured in because I'm out there talking every day, and that's why they come to me.?

When I look for people that are coming out of college I want them to have a diverse array of interests and they need to be at least conversant in social channels. They have to understand how to add value across a whole broad spectrum of different places, versus just hoping a press release solves all the problems, because that's not the way it works. They have to be super resourceful. And I think necessity is the mother of invention. You need to, by necessity, get out there and break through all these new places where I think a lot of the traditional firms aren't going yet. They hope that no one's noticing that everything is just radically changed.?

Many reports show younger consumers want brands to take political stances. What advice do you share with clients who are not sure how or when to respond to cultural, political or social issues??

It’s tricky. Let’s first talk about my personal ethics. I'm unafraid to go out there and talk about things that matter to me. I've written about the abortion rights, the political landscape, and the topics I’d be remiss if I didn’t comment on, revenue be damned. I unabashedly and unashamedly go out there and write about what’s important to me. And I haven’t lost any business from that.?

Now, I'm a boutique agency owner with 15 people, so I could potentially say the wrong thing at the wrong time and lose a piece of business, and deal with the repercussions. When you’re a big brand with engaged, loud champions of your brand and stakeholders everywhere, you need to be really careful. Martin Luther King, Jr. said that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice” — and that’s really become the North Star for brands. You have the Patagonias of the world, you have Match Group brands fighting for what they think is right, and I am in awe of that and I encourage more of that.?

But each company is a snowflake. You have to take it case by case. Look at what their mission statement is and who they are as a brand, what their true north is. And if making a stand furthers their true north, then you artfully and diplomatically go forth with that. And I think even if that potentially could have a blowback in the short term, it's worth it in the long term to be true to who you are.?

More and more people, over time, are beginning to have the courage to follow the convictions of the brand, and I want that to continue.

Many social media platforms can help executives increase their visibility and establish themselves as industry experts. Why have you chosen to invest your energy and time into LinkedIn? And how has it benefited Crackle PR?

When I was Vice President of Marketing at SHIFT Communications in San Francisco LinkedIn had just started around that time, and I actually pitched LinkedIn twice. And I specifically sat across from Reid Hoffman two different times with my team trying to win that business, and we came in second place each time. But I remember thinking they are onto something here. This is really interesting from a business standpoint, and I just paid attention. I was one of the earliest members of LinkedIn, and I didn't really do much with it until I started Crackle during the pandemic. And around that time people were looking for new ways to connect and new ways to experience each other. So I thought I'm just gonna start writing about the fact that I'm starting this agency on LinkedIn. I know a lot of people weren't doing that. And LinkedIn became this platform where I could finally be my authentic self for the first time in my entire communications career. Meaning, I know how the sausage is made. I helped make the sausage. I know the good, the bad, the ugly of this industry. And people were interested to hear a little bit of that. So I started sharing some of these tidbits, and people at the highest levels of many of the top mid-size and large firms would message me thank me for sharing my thoughts. There was an appetite for the truth.?

That works both in terms of people in the industry, but also in terms of the people who hire the people in that industry, people who've been burned by the large agencies. This all resonates with them, too. So I was speaking to both of my key audiences, which are people I want to hire and people I want to hire me. I found myself right in the epicenter, the zeitgeist of what I was trying to accomplish.?

And it's worked out really well to the extent that I do no outbound for hiring. I shared a job post on LinkedIn the other day and I had over 500 applicants. I do no outbound for business. It's 100% inbound. People reading my stuff, pinging me, saying “I feel like I already know you because I've been reading you for two years. Let's talk.” So, for me, that particular platform has been a life changer for me. When people ask, “how do you put all this time on LinkedIn?” I always say it’s not a “nice to have” for me, this is mission critical for what I'm doing and what I'm building in the cold, hard light of day.

What advice would you give to someone about to graduate college that wants to work in communications or marketing, or someone who wants to expand their role or pivot into this space??

First, I would read as much as you can as quickly as you can, and learn the new AI tools of our trade as quickly as you can. I don't think AI is going to replace PR people. I think it's going to replace PR people who don't use AI. And so I think understanding the tools and how to be more productive and efficient is going to be a huge advantage, particularly when a lot of the people who are doing the hiring aren't as savvy about AI. They're looking for people who understand how to use these new tools to unlock efficiencies they don't enjoy now.

Second, I would start getting active in and finding a voice on the platforms that matter most for you. That could be LinkedIn , Reddit, Inc. , X, or Bluesky, Threads. Get used to the sound of your own voice, having opinions and sharing your wisdom on those platforms, because two things will happen. One, you'll get better at that, and you'll be a big help to a brand or an agency over time. But also, you will separate yourself from the throngs of students coming out of college that haven't done any of that, who are almost invisible on these platforms, and you instead will have a track record of sharing thought leadership.?

Trust me when I say that hiring managers absolutely look at your footprint on social media to see who you are, and how you will fit in. And more and more, I think brands are understanding the power of influence and influence marketing. So if you can come out of the gate with some of those chops, that's only going to separate you from the rest.?

Rapid Fire Questions:?

What’s your favorite song right now? Barbaras Rhabarberbar by Bodo Wartke and Marti Fischer

What’s the last book you read? I Know This Much Is True by Wally Lamb

Who’s one person in this industry that inspires you, that everyone should go follow? Meredith Klein (she/her)

What industry jargon do you hate? “Circle back” and “let’s take this offline,” and the idea of who you know gets you press coverage

What is one word you would use to describe 2024? Tumultuous?