Tales From the Beat: Episode 144 — Jane Owen on Entertainment and Celebrity PR

The Story

Jane Owen, CEO of boutique entertainment/celebrity PR firm, Jane Owen PR, gives her unfiltered views of how PR works in that segment, challenges, dealing with egos, AI deep fakes, changing media landscape.Plus, she weighs in on how the Taylor Swift/Travis Kelce wedding was handled.

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TTAC Creator Ed Garsten hosts “ Tales from the Beat,” a podcast about the automotive and media worlds. A veteran reporter and public relations operative, Garsten worked for CNN, The Associated Press, The Detroit News, Chrysler’s PR department and Franco Public Relations. He is currently a senior contributor for Forbes.

The TTAC Creators Series tells stories and amplifies creators from all corners of the car world, including culture, dealerships, collections, modified builds and more.

Owen explains that one of the central philosophies behind her firm is not automatically choosing clients based on who can pay the most. Although her company has employees and significant overhead, she believes entertainment PR is different from many other forms of public relations because the publicist needs to genuinely believe in the person, project or talent being promoted.

She says some of the most rewarding and successful campaigns of her career involved smaller independent films and clients with limited budgets. By contrast, she has also represented well-funded projects that lacked the talent or quality necessary to sustain an effective campaign. Her philosophy is that investing in talented people early can produce much greater long-term rewards than taking a large fee from a project that is unlikely to succeed.

That philosophy also protects the publicist’s credibility. Owen stresses that journalists are more likely to take a publicist’s calls when they know that person isn’t going to waste their time with irrelevant or weak pitches. Maintaining trust with journalists is more valuable than forcing coverage for a client simply because the client is paying.

One of the recurring challenges of PR, according to Owen, is that clients almost always have more ambitious expectations than reality can support. Even when clients repeatedly say they understand realistic expectations, they frequently expect more coverage than a campaign can reasonably generate.

Her conclusion is blunt: the money isn’t worth taking a bad-fit client because the damage to the publicist’s time, relationships and reputation ultimately outweighs the short-term revenue.

Representing individuals rather than companies adds another dimension to the job. Owen says that while she’s technically a publicist, working with talent often means taking on responsibilities normally associated with assistants, managers or travel agents.

She describes helping a client make his first independent film and even assisting with casting. Celebrity PR therefore can extend well beyond securing media coverage; the publicist can become deeply involved in the client’s career and day-to-day professional life.

Why It Matters

Although her company has employees and significant overhead, she believes entertainment PR is different from many other forms of public relations because the publicist needs to genuinely believe in the person, project or talent being promoted.

CarMotion Daily’s Take

Owen says the industry is still figuring out how to deal with deepfakes and AI-generated content, while also confronting fears that AI actors and writers could eventually replace human talent. Watch this space over the coming weeks.