108: Civic pride and local government, with Shannah Hayley

How can you turn a disparaging comment on “Real Housewives” into a marketing tool for your city? Shannah Hayley explains how “It’s a little Plano in here” became a meme of civic pride for one local government.

Shannah is the director of marketing and community engagement for the city of Plano, Texas. David Pembroke spoke to her at Content Marketing World about content communication.

This is a reprise of an older episode, where Shannah and David discuss:

  • turning a “Real Housewives of Dallas” insult into a positive meme for the city
  • identifying your strategy
  • the differences between business and government
  • selling the benefits of content marketing in your organisation
  • social listening

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Shannah on the “Real Housewives” local government story

“(on) The Real Housewives of Dallas, one of the characters, non scripted, scripted characters, made a disparaging comment about our city and said, “You know it feels a little Plano in here.” The show actually called out the city on twitter and said, “What does the city of Plano think about this?”

It was such an interesting discussion in the aftermath of what happened within our team. Because my response, and I happen to be watching twitter that night, that’s where the kismet comes in, you know? Why was the director watching twitter? Why was I handling it? Long story, but I just responded. I thought, you know, we need to be where people are. That’s a significant part of our strategy. People were watching that show, so that’s where we were. We responded with a, “Hey, no big deal. We’ll just shake it off.” I didn’t even say shake it off. I had a GIF of Taylor Swift performing Shake It Off, and it went crazy. It went crazy.”