Jennifer Burns Podcast Transcript
Jennifer Burns joins host Brian Thomas on The Digital Executive Podcast.
Brian Thomas: Welcome to Coruzant Technologies, home of the Digital Executive Podcast.
Welcome to The Digital Executive. Today’s guest is Jennifer Burns. Jennifer Burns, the Director of Public Relations and Communications at Bright Data is an innovative and strategic communicator with two decades of experience in public relations, media partnerships, and a multitude of media platforms.
Jennifer’s career spans leadership positions in newsrooms as a journalist designing pivotal media strategies and establishing robust communications for global companies in tech. She brings research intensive, and data driven approach with a clear return on investment. Jennifer rebranded products to meet corporate visions, pioneered significant live events, and fostered partnerships to enhance content reach. Jennifer’s commitment extends beyond professional spheres to active community service, aiming to make a meaningful impact in her own community.
Brian Thomas: Well, good afternoon, Jennifer. Welcome to the show.
Jennifer Burns: Thank you for having me excited to talk about data and PR.
Brian Thomas: I love it, Jennifer. I appreciate that. And by the way, I’ve worked with, gosh, probably about 400 agencies around the world. This is just so fun and get to meet so many awesome people from around the world, including yourself. And I love to share their story on this podcast. So, thank you again. And Jennifer, we’re going to jump right into these questions. You’ve got an amazing career in media and broadcasting, you’re a reporter, executive producer, a senior executive, now the director of PR and communications at Bright Data.
Could you share with our audience the secret to your career growth, and what inspired you?
Jennifer Burns: Yeah, so, you know, my career started in journalism. That was really my first love. And when I was working in journalism, I set many, many goals and long-term goals. And so, I always had knew what I wanted to have as my next move.
Once I reached my long-term goal of getting to a top 10 market, I really was a little bit burnt out, needed to take a step back. So when I did that, I started building my PR career. And I did that by reaching out to small businesses, working with them, getting some small projects. And eventually I got a couple of larger projects that really laid the foundation to get where I am today.
So, I had to take a step back from where I was in my career to be able to move forward, which I feel like is very important because it put me in a place that I absolutely love today. And that said, there’s something else about that, you know, now as a hiring manager, when I look at resumes, and I don’t say, see a straight path to the position that I’m hiring for.
I take into account that all of that experience that this person has prior to this. a job that they’re applying for is relevant because it brings something to the table that maybe we don’t have on the team. And so, it’s good to have different experiences and something to keep in mind if somebody’s ever looking to make a sort of change in their career.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. And you’re right about that everything is that life experience, everything that people go through in life contributes to that next position that they’re applying for. And it brings a wealth and diverse skillset there. So, I appreciate your insights on that. And Jennifer is working for the world’s largest data collection platform, which you’re working at right.
Data is both exciting and challenging yet rewarding. Can you walk us through a day in the life of a director of PR and communications?
Jennifer Burns: Sure, so it’s… It’s never the same. We’ll start with that. But there is something that I do start my day off with, no matter what. When I wake up, I immediately start combing through the news.
So, I’m looking at company news. I’m trying to see who’s talking about us, how they’re talking about us, and what they’re saying. And then I repeat the same thing with competitors. So, I learn what’s happening in their world. And then I look at all of our related industry news. So I might run through a bunch of headlines and then pick out the ones that I find highly relevant, such as AI and regulation or anything that’s been written about public web data specifically or related to public web data.
It’s really important that I know exactly what’s happening at all times in relation to our industry so that I can react. And I can alert people on our team if I need to. Aside from that, you know, I’m, I said it was always different. So I’m working across many different departments to accomplish our company goals.
And that can look different from day to day. So I do a lot of support work with the Bright Initiative, which is our pro bono arm. And I help them amplify do good stories. So, Bright Initiative works with 850 different researchers, nonprofits, NGOs and they’re looking for they’re doing different sorts of research for do good data projects.
And I have a really good example here of one that’s highly successful. There’s many of them, but this is the easiest to tell quickly. So, there is a nonprofit in the U. S. that uses data to find human trafficking rings. And through data, they have been able to convict people into trafficking rings in partnership with law enforcement.
And they’ve received different awards for this, but they’ve done it using our pro bono bright initiative. And so, it’s really valuable and it’s very rewarding to be able to work with that sort of thing. We also just announced a partnership with Statista, and we’ve done some really interesting data sets with them that they were able to turn into reports, and I’m just thrilled to see how that partnership is just going to continue to grow.
So, really, day to day, like I said, just looks different. I, you know, my goal is to support everyone in the business, so if they need me, I’m here to help if it’s possible.
Brian Thomas: That’s awesome. And I love the fact that you with all the things you do, and I know this because I’ve worked with lots of communication directors, CMOs and PR agencies, right?
I told you that from around the world and you’ve got such a busy day, but you’re jumping in and, you know, being a team player and helping others do their jobs better. And I just love that story of collaboration. So, thank you. And Jennifer bright data provides a unique perspective on collected data for your customers, providing data at scale, getting a real and accurate perspective of how their customers are interacting with their brand.
As a comms person like yourself how are you helping to tell your company story?
Jennifer Burns: So there’s two different things that are really important to my role. One is our mission. It’s to keep public web data in the public domain and accessible to everyone. It’s absolutely critical to train AI machines. So, I’m talking about that whenever I can, whenever I have a chance.
It’s very important. The internet. Is something that we have all contributed to, and we feel at our company that it’s very important that all that information that we continually put on the Internet is available for us to continue to consume without any sort of walls to prevent that. Another thing is to talk about our use cases.
So, we have. We have fantastic technology. We have the best technology, but you know, that’s how we get to the answers, the solutions, what public web data can actually do for businesses. We have 21, 000 customers and. Our best use cases are ones that aren’t public and for good reason, because it’s their competitive information that they use that has made them number one, they don’t want their competitors learning how they, you know, figure certain things out or why they’ve made decisions to do something a certain way.
So, unfortunately, we can’t talk about those directly in public, but what we can do is create use cases so I didn’t recently. Use one as a mirror to get to a report that I commissioned. It was on fast fashion brands, but actually the report was on consumer sentiment. So, we took five fast fashion brands, say that five times fast, and scraped Trustpilot for reviews.
So, we looked at many different things. We looked at how they performed by region, the type of clothing that they sold, the satisfaction of the quality, price, consumer, customer service, and on. And We learned that these customers really love these brands. They’re loyalists and they, a lot of them repeatedly said that they were recommended to others.
So, it was kind of really insightful. What was being said about these fast fashion brands off of their website. But that aside, there’s so much more that we could learn. So, we did look at one thing that was sort of non-traditional. We looked into eco friendliness and. Whether fast fashion consumers really cared about this, and the answer is they don’t.
So about 10 percent of the fast fashion consumers were consumed, were concerned with eco friendliness. So that means the other 90 percent are, you know, shopping and that’s not part, that’s not something that they factor in. But we, so we looked at some other reports as well. The U. N. says fast fashion is the second largest consumer of water and contributes to 10 percent of global emissions.
And then there’s another report that just came out from the U. S. that says 55 percent of consumers would spend more on free eco friendly items. So from that, you could say that if fast fashion companies were to implement some eco-friendly initiatives, they may be able to gain more customers in the U.
S. But the point here is, maybe that isn’t for the fast fashion industry to take on now. But the point is that if you know what you’re looking for, or you have a question that you want to ask, you just need to look for the data that can give you the answer. And there’s probably many more.
Questions that we can answer that would help businesses learn where they can grow and how they can become better. And that’s just one really great example of it.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. That’s awesome. Love that. We talk about analytics and how we can improve that customer experience in some cases real time, right?
So, I appreciate you diving in. To make it a better experience and learn more about your consumers. That’s an awesome thing that you did as far as research, Jennifer and Jennifer last question of the day. We are a tech platform publication podcast. We always ask all our guests if they’re leveraging any of that new or emerging technology in your business.
And if you’re not, have you found maybe a cool tool or app that you could share with us today?
Jennifer Burns: Sure. So, I use several different apps in PR, but there’s one that I currently is my favorite, and I’m using it a lot. It’s MuckRack, and if you’re in PR communications, you’re probably familiar with this one. It’s extremely user friendly, and it’s kind of like an all-in-one tool.
So instead of having three different platforms to work on, you can be in one just doing all of, you know, most of your work for the day.
Brian Thomas: I love it. MuckRack is something that I use as well, believe it or not in the business that we do. So, love the share on that. Technology is just an integral part of our lives now, Jennifer, it was yes.
Thank you so much. It was such a pleasure having you on today and I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
Jennifer Burns: Well, thank you so much.
Brian Thomas: Bye for now.
Jennifer Burns Podcast Transcript. Listen to the audio on the guest’s podcast page.
