Jeff Smith is the Co-founder and CEO of JS2 PR, a Los Angeles–based agency specializing in branding, public relations, and communications for food, beverage, and hospitality brands. With more than 30 years of experience, Jeff has helped launch and grow some of the nation’s most recognized consumer brands, including Starbucks, Jamba Juice, Arclight Cinemas, and Whole Foods Market. Known for his results-driven leadership and “whatever it takes” approach, Jeff has built a team with deep industry expertise, helping clients earn meaningful media coverage and long-term brand visibility.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- [02:23] Jeff Smith breaks down how Starbucks and Jamba Juice expanded using strategic, relationship-driven PR
- [07:14] Why unpaid influencers often outperform paid campaigns in engagement and long-term value
- [12:42] Jeff explains that measuring PR success goes beyond impressions and focuses on quality and impact
- [19:36] The art of consistently generating fresh story angles post-launch
- [23:48] Why brands need clarity on goals, assets, and their core story before hiring a PR firm
- [26:12] How AI is making authentic relationships and real human connections more valuable
- [30:30] Jeff discusses how PR helps brands show up in AI-driven search and discovery
In this episode…
Great PR isn’t about blasting messages into the void; it’s about knowing exactly what story deserves to be told and when. In a world flooded with content, what actually makes people care enough to pay attention?
For Jeff Smith, a seasoned communications strategist, the key lies in relevance, relationships, and timing. He believes that strong PR comes from deeply understanding your brand’s story and aligning it with what’s already happening in culture, media, and consumer behavior. From tapping into seasonal trends to creating moments around launches, anniversaries, or even “National Food Days,” Jeff emphasizes that the best stories aren’t forced — they’re discovered and shaped with intention. Ultimately, great PR isn’t just about getting coverage; it’s about building sustained visibility that compounds over time.
In this episode of The Missing Ingredient, CJ Bruce is joined by Jeff Smith, Co-founder and CEO of JS2 PR, to discuss mastering PR in the food and beverage industry. Jeff breaks down how to generate ongoing story hooks, balance earned media with influencer strategy, and measure PR ROI beyond vanity metrics. He also shares advice on preparing your brand before hiring a PR firm.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Quotable Moments:
- “We really leaned into our food and beverage experience.”
- “We find that their audiences are much more hyper-engaged in what we’re doing.”
- “I think it’s still accepted that if you work with a really good organic, unpaid influencer… you can get a lot out of that relationship.”
- “The #1 question and the most difficult question is how do you measure ROI?”
- “You’ve really got to know who you are. And, you know, why are you doing what you’re doing?”
Action Steps:
- Align your PR strategy with clear business goals: Understanding whether you want awareness, traction, or scale ensures PR efforts drive meaningful outcomes.
- Build relationships with both media and influencers: Strong, ongoing connections increase your chances of consistent coverage and long-term brand visibility.
- Plan story hooks months in advance: Working 3-6 months ahead allows you to tap into trends, seasons, and timely media opportunities.
- Balance earned media with influencer partnerships: Combining both approaches maximizes reach, credibility, and audience engagement across different channels.
- Ensure operational readiness before major press: Being prepared to meet demand prevents missed opportunities when strong media coverage drives sudden growth.
Sponsor for this episode…
This episode is sponsored by The Missing Ingredient, a food and beverage marketing agency that believes a better future starts with food. They partner with purpose-driven brands to drive growth through smart, results-focused marketing — without the “set it and forget it” approach.
From brand awareness and paid media to content, influencer partnerships, and loyalty programs, they act as true strategic partners invested in your long-term success.
To learn more about how they help food and beverage brands grow with impact, visit themissingingredient.com today.
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Full Transcript
Introduction and Show Overview
Intro: 00:01
Welcome to The Missing Ingredient podcast with CJ Bruce, where food and beverage founders, operators and experts share the real strategies behind building successful brands. Let’s jump into today’s show.
CJ Bruce: 00:15
Hey, I’m CJ Bruce and welcome to the show. This is the podcast where founders and leaders of high impact food and beverage brands who are serious about scaling. Each episode, I sit down with people who power the food and beverage industry, brand operators, agencies, vendors, creators, and retailers to uncomplicate the strategies that take brands from early traction to serious scale. This episode is sponsored by The Missing Ingredient, a food and beverage marketing agency. With over a decade in the industry, we take a different approach, starting with your business goals, looking at the full picture, and building a marketing strategy that actually ties back to growth from content and performance marketing to influencer partnerships and AI powered workflows.
We’re an extension of your team, not just another vendor. Learn more at the Missing Ingredient comm. Today I’m talking with Jeff Smith, CEO and Co-founder of JS2 PR. Jeff is a branding and communications executive with more than 30 years of experience leading corporate communications, media relations, crisis management and integrated marketing strategies. Throughout his career, he helped develop, launch, and elevate some of the nation’s best known consumer brands, including Starbucks, Jamba Juice, Arclight Cinemas, and Whole Foods Market.
Jeff is a results driven leader and mentor who lives by the JS2 PR. Maxim with whatever it takes. Welcome to the show, Jeff.
Early Career and Agency Focus Shift
Jeff Smith: 01:32
Thanks, Jeff. Good to see you. That’s very impressive. By the way, I like your intro. Not my intro, but your intro.
CJ Bruce: 01:40
Well thank you. I’ve been working on it, you know, trying to get my podcast intros down. Thanks. So I wanted to start with something we have in common. So we have worked together before.
We worked on Splendor Water. For a few years together, which was a great partnership. And we, you know, we both focus on the food and beverage space. And so I know when you first started your agency, right, you’re really a generalist firm and you decide to focus on food, beverage and hospitality. We also started a little more general than we’ve been focusing on the space.
So I’m just curious, you know, what, what drove the decision for you and how have you really, you know, institutionalized that food and beverage knowledge across your team?
Jeff Smith: 02:23
Sure. Great question. Yeah, I founded this company 25 years ago after selling my first agency, which was an agency based in New York. I ran the West Coast Division. That agency was the agency of record for Starbucks coffee, which you mentioned is part of my intro.
And our responsibility was to take and grow Starbucks across the country. When we started with them, we open their very first location in New York City, and they at the time only had one location in DC and one in Chicago, and with no national presence. They asked us to be their agency of record. We said, yeah, we can do that. And, you know, eight years later, we had we had grown Starbucks across the United States and Canada and, and we sold that business.
And when I started this business in 2001, I had come from more of an entertainment background, mostly television, home entertainment, celebrity, PR. And then in the years that I was working with the agency in New York, I got much more into food and beverage. We launched Starbucks across the country, as I mentioned, but we launched Jamba Juice, which was a direct result of my relationship with Starbucks and Howard Schultz. And so when we started the agency, it seemed at the time to be a good idea to, you know, declare ourselves a generalist agency So back in 2001, we had a handful of clients that were food and beverage focused and also entertainment focused. We had a couple of home entertainment divisions from studios.
Remember those before streaming, and we had some health and wellness clients and even a financial client. And over the years, we sort of grew that. We really leaned into our food and beverage experience. My business partner at the time, Jill Sanden, who’s the other JS and JS2 PR, she’s since retired. She had a deep background in restaurant PR, and over the years, we grew and launched a lot of restaurants and chefs and food products.
And so about ten years ago, we decided to pivot and focus exclusively in food and beverage for a couple of reasons. One being based in LA, there are so, so much creativity happening in Los Angeles and the restaurant scene then and still now, although we’ve had our struggles recently with a lot of outside factors like Covid and the entertainment strikes and fires and things like that. But there’s, there’s a lot of creativity, a lot of resourcing available. And we decided that, you know, LA was just a great place to grow that kind of business. And then of course, with the experience we had, we decided to dive a little deeper into that.
And then along the way, we’d also launched some consumer brands, some consumer packaged goods and the food and beverage space. And that was a space we were really comfortable in. We loved the space and made it a little easier when, with that new business funnel to focus exclusively on food and beverage. Whereas before, as a generalist agency, we’re always trying to fit the proverbial square peg into round holes and figuring out how can we do this account? Who do we have on the team?
Who has the experience? Now, during the past ten years, we’ve got people who are are really wildly into food. They know the food business, they know the community, and we love what we do and we’re good at it. So, you know, that’s why we have focused exclusively in that space.
Building a Niche in Food and Beverage PR
CJ Bruce: 06:05
Awesome. That’s great. Yeah, definitely similarities there. And just the, you know, starting broad and focusing in and love the, you know, the core love of food at the, at the center of all of it. And also, you know, just you get to, you get to eat the products that your clients make, you know, that’s a nice little, little bonus.
Jeff Smith: 06:26
Yeah, we get to enjoy these meals and we get paid to really, you know, drink a lot and a lot, basically.
CJ Bruce: 06:33
Not a bad gig. Awesome. Thanks, Jeff. I think so digging into the work a little bit here. So did you know, looking at your website case studies and there’s a case study around Shake Shack?
And I think one of the things that’s interesting on the PR perspective is around, you know, unpaid influencer activations. How do you get influencers to really post about your brand and your product? I think from drove over a million impressions from that case study. And so I’m curious, you know, are there any learnings from that or any other examples around, you know, earned influencer posting that would apply to, you know, food and beverage brands looking to drive some of that organic advocacy?
Jeff Smith: 07:14
Sure. And, you know, this is evolving every day. A couple of years ago, when we launched Shake Shack’s location in Santa Monica, things were slightly different. You had a little bit more control over organic, unpaid influencers. It’s clear when you’re paying an influencer, you’ve got a lot of control over the content, over the messaging, over the timing.
With an unpaid influencer, you’re attracting them with the offer of a meal or an experience in a restaurant, or an experience with a new product. And you and you hope that it’s exciting enough. And Shake Shack was exciting you know. For them to. We also had a collab with Benny Blanco at the time, so that really helped.
We. We hope that that will be enough to attract them to come in. And then we, you know, lay all the messaging on them and work really closely with them about what we’re looking for. But again, we don’t have full control over it. But what we like about organic influencers is that, and again, unpaid influencers, for the most part, they tend to be unpaid.
We’re, we’re having to find more and more budget as we move along, as we evolve. I mean, that’s just sort of the reality these days. You’ve got to come up with some budget. But we find that their audiences are much more hyper engaged in what we’re doing, and we find that we get a lot more bang for the buck with them to be certain. We do work with paid influencers all the time.
They tend to be much more structured campaigns with bigger budgets, obviously. And there’s certainly a place for them. And we love working with the paid influencers. It’s a little. Bit more complicated, but again, you get more control over that.
But we do. Like those unpaid organic influencers. And we tend to continue to cultivate those relationships in Los Angeles, Southern California, throughout California, really. And the other markets we work in, you know, Las Vegas, New York, Chicago, Miami and other places. So yeah, I think universally, I think it’s still accepted that if you work with a really good organic, unpaid influencer, with the right audience, you can get a lot out of that relationship, not to mention the content.
Media vs Influencer Relationships
CJ Bruce: 09:28
And I guess a follow up question they’re curious about, you know, you’ve been in PR for a long time, you know, working with influencers as well. And do you see any parallels in building relationships with with editors or contributors and working with influencers or curious, your thoughts on, you know, is the approach the same? There are there are there differences that are interesting or things that brands think about as they’re trying to build these relationships?
Jeff Smith: 09:52
Yeah, that’s such a good question. It’s an informed question too, because these days there are so many journalists who are themselves influencers actually. So there’s a lot of graying of the lines and we love working with them. There are a lot of LA times editors and writers we work with, for example, and some of the lifestyle magazines like Los Angeles Magazine, Food and Wine, Bon Appetit. They have their own social media following, so you’re kind of getting two for one.
I think the approach is still a little different. The earned media landscape has really evolved and it’s really disparate now. It’s been fractured a lot because of the, you know, the death of the sort of hard in your hand magazines and newspapers. So a lot of the we’re working with a lot more freelancers these days, and the freelancers tend to cover a lot of beats within the food and beverage industry. They may be super hyper focused on wine, or they may be hyper focused on organic or vegan and, and, and they are contributing to a lot of different media outlets.
And it’s the same thing with influencers. The particularly going back to the unpaid organic influencers, they tend to be hyper focused on real niche areas within food and beverage. And so there’s a similarity in that regard too, obviously, with, you know, earned media. And when you’re working with an editor or a producer or a writer or freelancer, you’re what you’re getting in return is, you know, the earned media aspect, the sort of third party endorsement that you get out of that kind of relationship with an influencer. It’s obviously their point of view, and it’s so that’s different.
That’s very different in a lot of ways. I think in terms of the outcome and the ROI that our clients are getting. But I think most of our clients are understanding. And have understood for a few years now that it’s got to be a healthy mix of the two. You’ve got to have a lot of good influencer input and contribution.
And of course you need that earned media still. But then the fringe benefit is, as I said, a lot of those media now are themselves influencers and we love that.
Measuring PR ROI and Defining Success
CJ Bruce: 12:09
That’s super interesting. You mentioned ROI, and I think the next topic I wanted to dig into is measuring results with PR. You know. You know, can take some time and all of that. And, you know, I’m sure you get the question right.
How do you drive results? How do we know that it’s working? So I’m curious, you know, today, how do you think about PR driving measurable, measurable results? And what are the if there are specific metrics or just the framework and, you know, how do you go beyond. We got some press and it worked.
You know, how do you think about that?
Jeff Smith: 12:42
The number one question and the most difficult question, 35 years of answering that question and tacking from one one answer to another, depending on where we were in the trajectory of the history of earned media. Right? And it’s interesting that you asked that question, because we’re in the middle of updating our website right now and adding some more FAQs. And one of the questions is, how do you how do you measure ROI on, on traditional earned media? And, you know, there are a lot of factors involved in that.
You know, it’s about the quality of the publication and their audience. It’s about the message that’s being delivered in the piece. It’s about the eyeballs on it. We can quantify it and we can quantify it. The the quantifying part of it is easy.
We can measure the eyeballs and we can measure the clicks and all of that. The qualifying is a little different, believe it or not. We still have clients who want to know the add value of the earned media. And for your audience who may not know what that is. It’s a, it’s a, it’s a calculation that tells you what that article would have cost you as an advertisement, which is completely archaic and has no relevance whatsoever today to today’s, you know, PR and marketing reality.
But some of those bean counters and some of those big companies, they want it, so we give it to them anyway. It’s not really relevant to the question because it’s not how we measure ROI on our media at all. But we want to look at, you know, the quality of the content that’s been delivered in the piece. I just had a conversation with a client the other day who received a lovely feature article on Etre la. It’s a new restaurant that’s opened and, you know, etre la, like a lot of media outlets, has been evolving as they go.
They’ve become really scrappy. I really like their style. They’ve got some editors who go out and get their own content, you know. And we actually have some beautiful professional food and beverage shots, content that we we created ourselves. For this client, but eater published their own photos, which, you know, were beautiful.
I thought, but the client questioned why they didn’t use, you know, the shots that we had. So in fact, you know, we, we were, you know, sort of talking about the ROI on that, on that, on that piece. And for him, I think he would have preferred to have more control over the content. But I said in this case, we just didn’t have that in hand. And as a matter of fact, I thought it was better that the eater ran with their own photos.
It just seemed a little bit more organic and heartfelt and, I don’t know, sincere in its tone. And so we had that conversation. So that’s another another component of how we measure ROI.
CJ Bruce: 15:43
Interesting. And with thinking about results, like if somebody, you know, new clients coming on board, you’re having conversation, how do you kind of manage expectations on how long things take, you know, on the on the earned side and, you know, reaching out and pitching or story timing or any of that? Like, how do you think about when would people expect to see results from PR if they’re, you know, starting up?
Jeff Smith: 16:07
Yeah. Another FAQ question that we’ve been working on lately. So really timely. Good question. It really kind of depends on what we’re doing.
If we’re launching our restaurant or our product, we can anticipate a certain rash of early press. You know, once we’ve launched, we can we normally expect that there are the, you know, the, the usual suspects who will come through for us and, and give us some earned media placement around that. And I’d say call it 12 to 15 different media outlets depending on the market. Same thing with consumer packaged goods, food and beverage products. We can expect a certain amount of that.
But then, you know, then the real work begins and you’ve got to build on that. And managing expectations for the timing of earned media really breaks down to the kind of publication you’re talking about. Broadcast on local broadcasts can happen in a couple of weeks, depending on how you’re working with national publications. The rule still holds that a lot of those lead times are 3 to 6 months. To see something come out in print and or online in a, you know, in a Forbes or a well, Forbes is a little different.
They work a little quicker, but in a Bon Appétit or Entrepreneur magazine or something like that. So it really depends on that. And then you’ve got the sort of the middle players and depending on what’s happening, what’s trending. How soon we can get a reporter a, you know, an author, excuse me, a journalist into the restaurant or to try the product.
It’s all contingent upon their timing and what they’re working on with their editors or producers at the time. So, but it’s sort of like a, a early lead, mid lead and long lead approach. And, you know, our job is to keep on feeding that and continuing to generate the heats that we’re continuing to get press. But for an opening or launch, you could expect, we we normally I should back up. We normally start working with a client 6 to 8 weeks out from their launch of whatever it is.
And so, you know, they’re we tend to hold back on a big push in PR except maybe an announcement, which will be usually pitched as an exclusive to like an eater or an LA times, Depending on what it is. And then once we fulfilled our obligation to that, that exclusive, then we can then no holds barred. We can go out and get as much press as we want or can we want a lot of press. It’s whether or not we can get it. Yeah.
I mean, we all we all want to get a lot of press. We have. We only have so much control over that.
Creating Ongoing Story Hooks for PR
CJ Bruce: 18:58
Yeah. That’s helpful. Context and framing and thinking about the, you know, the different tiers and yeah, different pricing and different times or taking different times to do that. I think there’s a good transition to my next question that’s around. So you mentioned, you know, the initial press with a product launch or a new opening. So curious, you know, once you get past the, the initial launch and also someone’s launching something new, how do you consistently manufacture story hooks?
Like things that would be interesting to, you know, to press? How do you approach that? Are there categories you think about to do that? And curious your process there.
Jeff Smith: 19:36
You know, we always work 3 to 6 months out. We’re all we’re already working, for instance, on Mother’s Day and we’ll be working on graduation and we’ll be working on Father’s Day. And we’re already ramping up for spring and summer pitches. We look at several things. One is food trends.
What’s trending in, you know, this is where we become the eyes and ears for our clients. And we’re we consider ourselves experts in the in the food and beverage industry. So we keep our ear to the ground and we know what’s trending from, you know, flavor profile point of view or ingredients or whatever it is. And we work closely with our clients to make sure that they are, you know, that their, their team, their chef is leaning into those trends so that we’ve got something timely to pitch from a trend point of view. And that’s becoming more and more relevant and important for social media as well as earned media.
And then we looked at, we look at seasonality. As I mentioned, we look at all the major holidays. Every single food group has its own National Food Day. There’s national restaurants. National food days.
Jeff Smith: 20:42
Oh. Margarita Day. And you know, our clients roll their eyes. We you know, we roll our eyes a little bit. But in fact, that’s an opportunity we want to because God forbid, a roundup article should come out in a local publication that mentions six restaurants that are serving.
Let’s call it chocolate, right? National Chocolate Day, some fabulous chocolate decadent dessert. And our client’s not represented right. So we got to make sure that we’re on top of that kind of thing. And then we look at, you know, other traditional things that you would look at any, any news that’s coming out of the restaurant, new menu changes, new chefs, new team members, anything new, new is what sells.
It has always sold. It hasn’t changed. Anything new is what we look for. Milestones, anniversaries, that kind of thing. And then we capitalize on that press and try to grow it.
So, you know, we don’t want Sunset Magazine to cover our clients. Just once, we’d love for them to cover them multiple times, and we’d love to get a feature story and we’d love to be in a roundup. And we’d like to be in a, in a, you know, an ingredient mention or something like that. The, the, the whole challenge there is to make sure that we’re getting our clients in front of those journalists all the time. So they’re using that the information we’re giving them on in their coverage on a consistent basis.
And those are all the things we look at in order to make that happen. And that fills our our calendar. And then we’ve got all the opportunistic things that come our way. We got, you know, we frequently have calls from editors saying, hey, I’m working on a story about, you know, summer fruit, you know, pit fruit. Why do you have that has, you know, give me three of your clients that, that that are serving that kind of thing on the menu.
And, you know, which is a great thing for us. It’s just a big benefit of having those kinds of deep relationships with media that they’re coming to us for those kinds of stories. We call them opportunistic stories because they’re coming to us and we’re always, always feeding those machines to, you know.
CJ Bruce: 22:55
Yeah. Interesting. And just a quick timing note for anybody listening that we’re recording this in late March. So Jeff was talking about the kind of lead time toward, you know, the upcoming holidays with Mother’s Day and Father’s Day and all of that. Just to get a sense of the timing there. I think the another question I had related to this, you know, in the pitching, when you’re, you know, you mentioned the approach there and your relationships, I’m curious, you know, what inputs do you require from a brand? Like if a brand, you know, consumer packaged goods, food and beverage brand, they’re looking to, you know, initiate an engagement like this.
You know, what would they be? What kind of homework would they do that would make it, you know, more effective for you and help you kind of do, you know, do your work better. So that could be around product details and news or things that are coming up. Customer insights, like what else comes up in that?
Jeff Smith: 23:48
Yeah. The most important thing in our first conversation and our kickoff meeting is we want to understand what their goals are for the brand or for the restaurant, and they all have different goals. I mean, it could be a standalone restaurant that looking that’s looking just to open that restaurant and be successful in that community. But we’ve just recently opened a restaurant and their, their first restaurant and they’re looking to scale that restaurant. So that’s, that’s going to require a different kind of approach.
So the very first thing and the most important thing is to understand what their goals are as a brand. And then, yeah, we need them to share all of their assets with us, all of their, you know, content. We really do a deep dive into the genesis of the brand, the backstory of the brand or the restaurant. Figure out what we’re coming from and begin to craft a strategy around that, and then to put a timeline against that strategy. So we’re looking for all kinds of things.
We we actually get, you know, quite deep with our clients about their backgrounds and their desires. We, we prompt them to give us, you know, their ten top media placements. What’s your dream media placement for this? If you have an influencer that you would love to cover your product or restaurant, who are they? How can we get to them?
And then we, you know, it’s really the getting to know, right? And so what the homework that they, they need to do before they engage us has already been done because they’ve launched their, they’re about to launch and they’ve built their brand. So their homework is their life experience and what they bring to that brand and sharing that.
AI’s Impact on PR and Media
CJ Bruce: 25:23
That’s great. Yeah. That’s great. Okay, so the next question. is, you know, I’m obsessed with AI and it’s something that we’re pushing heavily into at the missing ingredient. And it’s, you know, affecting all aspects of business in many, many ways. So I’m curious to hear from you from the PR perspective, you know, and feel free to take this question in different directions, but general framing, like, what do you think in an AI age as there’s more and more content being pushed out and produced in so many different ways? What do you think becomes more valuable, more valuable about PR and what becomes less valuable?
And how do you kind of see that evolving as the, you know, the speed of AI and where we currently are?
Jeff Smith: 26:10
Yeah. Great question. We, we have been talking about this, obviously, like everyone has for, for, you know, a couple of years now, we haven’t really yet seen a direct impact of AI on our relationships with the media or influencers. Fortunately, if you want to be an influencer these days, you’ve got to be a real person. For the most part, the influencers that we’re dealing with who are physically showing up in this space and enjoying the experience, right? From a work point of view, we encourage our team to use.
Use. I use AI effectively and smartly. Certainly we we don’t allow any kind of AI writing. I mean, that’s it’s just it’s too dangerous. First of all, I think it’s really important that younger people learn how to read, how to write, but it’s too easily spotted.
We, I think people are really savvy these days about seeing through it. We believe in A11 person approach. So each individual pitch goes out to individual journalists and individual influencers. We don’t you know, we don’t do email blasts. And we were.
We sparingly use press releases, but only for big news. And so we haven’t yet encountered a situation where we were working with a journalist who turned out to be, you know, AI, I don’t know how much, you know, its impact on journalism, I’m sure will come around and affect us at some point. We just haven’t seen that yet. We work with traditional media outlets for the most part, and there are so many of them, and we just haven’t yet seen the effect. But what I’m anticipating in the next five years is that we will begin to encounter those, and we’ll have to tack internally.
And I think the industry is going to have to tack and figure out a way to lean even more into the authenticity that you get with working with a real person, a real producer, a real influencer, a real brand collaborator, a real, you know, editor who’s actually doing the work and creating that authentic experience. Because I don’t think at this point, AI has gotten anywhere near the point where it can live up to the high expectations that my clients have from a messaging point of view and from a replicating the experience point of view. I just don’t think it’s there yet. I think it’s an industry that I think it’s it’s still early, early stages, but I, I don’t, I’m not naive enough to think that it won’t evolve to a place that it will begin to actually have some benefit to the industry. And so we’ve got to keep our eyes out and keep on, you know, experimenting and working and studying and observing.
CJ Bruce: 29:08
Yeah. Interesting. Yeah, I think, yeah, a couple of things that just to pick up on things you said there, I think two things that come to my mind that we’ve been seeing, curious to get your thoughts on one is, as you know, more and more AI and there’s more, you know, artificial experiences. You could say that there’s this like return to IRL, right? To in real life, like people want to have, they want to see people, they want to be around people, they want to do things also. So, you know, obviously a lot of this coming out post Covid, it’s like, okay, we want to have in-person experiences. And so we’ve been and I think there’s a connection there with PR and events and, you know, launches or releases or that kind of thing.
And then the other piece it’s a little more tactical is with, you know, people are using AI to get information about products, right? Or restaurants and how do you show up in there? And I’ve seen some, some early indications. And if you, you know, if you haven’t seen this or not, that’s okay. I’m just kind of curious from the PR perspective, we’re getting some press mentions and being in PR actually helps you show up in those.
PR has been the, you know, an SEO driver helper, but read some things and seen some things around it being even more of a, you know, an AI search engine or a generative engine answer engine, all the different terms people are using to help you, you know, get recommended by AI. Have you seen anything around that at all yet?
Jeff Smith: 30:30
We, you know, we have actually we’ve been, we, we’ve been, we’ve been sort of upping our digital marketing relationships with agencies like yours. So we can actually offer more advice because I think people. Okay, let me back up a half step. When, when I interview people for a position at my firm, one of the first questions I asked them is where they get their restaurant news. If if they’re going, if they want to go out to a restaurant, they’ve got mom and dad coming in from out of town and they’re coming into LA.
How do you find a restaurant? And, you know, back in the old days, they were actually looking at articles in newspapers and magazines and things like that. And then more recently, they were going to, you know, eater and, and, and other sites like that. Thrillist and, And, and more sort of trending, easily digested content like that. And they’re still doing that.
But obviously everyone’s using ChatGPT, for instance, for everything right now. So that SEO part and that sort of the content part of that from an AI perspective is really important and how our clients are taking what we do and repurposing it on their websites and in their social media and how they’re working with their digital teams to make sure that it’s optimizing their, their, their whole world, you know, online world so that people so that those searches are populating with their products and restaurants. And that’s where the digital piece comes in. But there’s, you know, I love the point that you made about in-person experience. I, I think, yeah, I mean, I think we’ve seen from just a societal point of view that there are a lot of reasons for that from a friend point of view.
I mean, the 90s seems to be trending right now, the sort of last, you know, analog experience that a lot of people had before. You know, everyone had something in their hand that was connecting them to their worlds. I think there’s a nostalgia part of that. But I think for for younger generations, I think there’s something I think from a mental health perspective, I think they’re really leaning into that and embracing that. I don’t know how long that will last.
I don’t know how long it can last. But it’s something we we’ve got to pay particular attention to with our clients as it relates to searches and AI.
Where to Find and Connect with JS2 PR
CJ Bruce: 33:08
Interesting. Definitely fast evolving space. I’m sure we could have a follow up in six months and things will be totally different. Some will say the same. Yeah. All right, I got one one last question.
But before before I ask it, I want to make sure, you know, point people to your website. So js2pr.com. And Jeff, is there anywhere else you recommend people learn more about you and the work you’re doing on Instagram?
Jeff Smith: 33:34
You know, our Instagram @js2pr yeah, we would love for the people to visit our, our website, look at our content, look at our experience and check us out. And then if you’re interested, just set up a meeting with me and I’d love to talk to you. I love working with people who are launching food and beverage brands and restaurants. I it’s a special, as you know, CJ it’s a special kind of person who does that.
And I just really, I, yeah, I love hanging with them. So, and I’ve had some great experiences over, over my life and over the years. And yeah, so really appreciate this opportunity and pointing more eyes and searches in our direction.
What Brands Need Before Hiring a PR Firm
CJ Bruce: 34:18
Awesome. Great. Appreciate that. Jeff. So last question, and then we’ll close out. So just before brand hires a PR firm, curious if they’re, you know, a few things you kind of touched on this before, but what are the things that they should have in place?
You know, and kind of ready before hiring a PR firm like they would recommend to kind of maximize the value of that relationship.
Jeff Smith: 34:41
Yeah. Number one, you’ve really got to know who you are. And you know, why are you doing what you’re doing? I think for a restaurant, you should have a space. You should have a good idea of a timeline of construction.
And you should have a menu and a chef. And, you know, I think having those exploratory conversations with people like me, with people like you before they get into all of that is really important, I think. They shouldn’t want or need to pull the trigger on activating a relationship with an agency until they’ve got all of those things in place, they’ve got an opening date. They’re pretty secure about that. And they’ve got some sort of, you know, the why behind what they’re doing.
And before they come to me with a product, they should, you know, have begun manufacturing the product and really understand how much of the product they can, they can produce at any given time, because it could be really tricky with consumer packaged goods. You know, if it’s a scrappy startup and they’ve got, they’re actually manufacturing still in their house, you don’t want a big article to land in the New York Times. It’s going to suddenly cause so much awareness that they’ll they won’t be able to fulfill the orders. And we’ve seen that before. Yeah.
Reminds me of we launched Jamba Juice and Kurt Perrin, who was the founder, told me when we started the relationship, he said, I don’t want. He had like 15 stores at the time. They were called Juice Club, and then he transitioned the name to Jamba Juice. And then Jamba Juice was born and he said, look, I don’t really want any national press until we’ve we’ve scaled this brand into a couple of different states. But pretty early on we had an opportunity with The New York Times and.
And that begat a full page article on the front page of the Saturday Food and Beverage. It was the maybe the lifestyle section with a great big color photo of the Jamba Juice Cup. They just started producing color copy, the New York Times and, and that kind of blew things open for him. And in that case, it was a good thing because that created anticipation, awareness, and then anticipation of Jamba Juice in markets that he would eventually grow into. And same thing we did with Starbucks.
You know, at a certain point, we we always knew there would be a turning point in that relationship. When people would ask themselves, is there a Starbucks in my neighborhood? To where in my neighborhood is the Starbucks? And that happened. And now, of course, how many?
Everywhere in neighborhood. So, you know, I’m sorry to segue on that, but that that timing piece is really, really important from a like, from a awareness and demand point of view.
Closing Thoughts and Episode Wrap-Up
CJ Bruce: 37:39
Yeah. No. That’s great. Awesome. Well, we yeah, that’s great. Jeff. So we’ve been talking to Jeff Smith, CEO and Co-founder of JS2 PR.
Definitely check out their website, check out their Instagram. And Jeff, thanks so much for being on the show.
Jeff Smith: 37:53
Thanks, CJ. It was fun. I really enjoyed it. Thank you. Good to see you.
Outro: 37:58
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