“Tech, startups & corporate comms. Investing in PEOPLE”

Marta Llibre is a great inspiration to anyone who may be hesitant or scared to follow their passions in life. At twenty six years old Marta has gone to school for PR and advertising while working at the same time, quit her job and traveled/worked around the states, started her own business, and has become a successful PR and communications consultant. She is the definition of a hard worker and being able to hear her speak about PR and the key concepts behind it was something I’m very grateful for.

As someone who is a kinesiology major and hasn’t taken very many classes on the topic of communications and PR, Marta’s lecture was very insightful. To begin she brought us back to the origins of public relations and led us through different examples of PR in our society to show us to where the industry is nowadays. While doing this I learned the distinction between advertising and public relations. I always thought these two concepts were congruent, but in reality advertising is paid/purchased media whereas public relations is earned media and naturally becomes worthy of notice. By showing the class different examples of PR campaigns it made me realize how having a good campaign not only can create credibility and awareness, but can humanize your company and make your audience feel more relatable to your brand.

This lead to me having a sort of “light bulb” moment when thinking about campaigns I’ve seen in the past that I have had a strong connection to since I have never thought  about the commercials as a PR campaign. For example, almost five years ago Always, a feminine product company, published their #LikeAGirl Ad. In the beginning of the video a woman behind the camera asks multiple people that range from their teens to late teens and who are either a boy or a girl to run “like a girl” or fight “like a girl.” In this case everyone’s actions portrays something with a kind of negative connotation of girls. The woman behind the camera then asks the same questions to young girls who haven’t gone through puberty and the results are very different. The ad touches on how a girl’s self esteem drops twice as much boy’s during puberty, but is never regained. At the end of the video it says “let’s make #likeagirl mean amazing things.” This was the start of something big for Always as today they are still doing different #likeagirl campaigns. This hashtag became very popular and not only created this credibility and awareness, but also humanized their company and made it something girls everywhere could relate to. These are all aspects of PR that Marta discussed with our class and really opened my eyes to the world of public relations and the work that goes into it.

 

Marta’s drive to help startups create this brand for themselves and help them get their ideas out in the world was something truly special to listen to. At the end of the day Marta is investing her time and energy in these people and it was really neat to hear how she does this in her day to day life. Keep up with Marta and her next big thing by following her twitter and LinkedIn profiles.