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February 24, 2017

Unfinished Ceilings

Taylor Ketchum – Vice President

I am writing this in the Las Vegas airport as I am heading back to Oklahoma City. I was wiped out from the last few days and crashed pretty early last night, after of course, my In-N-Out.

However, the last day at Facebook HQ was a great one. Another beautiful day filled with great panels and discussions.

Two of my favorites:

1. Hearing from Blake Jackson, for us in OKC, he is a big deal and is a pioneer in the world of OKC social media. What is even more awesome is that he is a fellow Oklahoma Christian Alum and overall awesome and nice guy. He spoke about him making the Walmart CEO a social CEO. I will be putting together a recap on his talk and will dive into some of the activities that I feel CEOs could learn from.

2. Hearing from one of the biggest pros in the industry, Richard Edelman, yes he is the son of the original Edelman. I could listen to this guy all day. He made an excellent point, most average people in the United States cannot name more than one CEO off the top of their heads, he asked us to name ten as a group...and it took about a minute. Can you name five? Harder, then you think, right?

My five:

Mark Zuckerberg
Richard Branson
Doug McMillon
Marcelo Claure
Rachel Zoe

Richard made the point that people do not see CEOS as people, but an unattainable class of their own.

The whole purpose of this was to push the importance of CEOs and leaders breaking down the barriers and connecting with their employees and customers. The easiest way to do this - social media. I have so many ideas on how I can help CEOs remove that barrier, which allows their people to gain trust and loyalty and in the end, those are two objectives of almost every leader.

Two of my favorite "little" takeaways" were:

This sign is in a few places at Facebook, and it put into words a work ethic I would like to go by. So often in the PR world, we are held back by budgets and legal, but at times, fear. This fear comes from not wanting to fail to always wanting to deliver the best for our companies or our clients, but some of the best work comes when you just go for it.


2. During one of the sessions, it was pointed out to us by a Facebook employee that the ceilings are unfinished for a reason (See cover photo). Those that work for Facebook believe they are only 1% complete; they have the philosophy that they are not done yet, in fact, they are just getting started. What a way to run a company, a company that has already transformed the internet and changed the way people communicate. As a social media pro, it is exciting, and I will forever be loyal to Facebook, but even as a human being, I cannot want to see what they will do in the next five years.

P.S. A fun thing to note, our ceilings at Jones PR are not finished either. It goes with our design, but I think it goes with the way our offices is growing and expanding. We too are nowhere near done, and we are just getting stronger, smarter and bigger. I also cannot wait to see what comes in the next five years.

The conference ended on a pretty cool note. During the conference they asked us to use the hashtag #FacebookRagan and being a good social media pro, I listened, and you know what, it paid off.

I was named one of the two top correspondents at the conference, which means I get free registration at another conference, which is pretty awesome because these things can be a little pricey. Even better it was told to me by this awesome guy, Mark Ragan of Ragan Communications.

So I want to say thanks, of course, to the woman who made it possible. Brenda who trusted me to go to California and represent her agency and thanks to those who have followed along these last few days.

Be sure to stay tuned; I will be posting some entries here and on the Jones PR blog over the next few weeks.

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