An insiders perspective of a modern in-house communications department, with Google UK’s comms team

Welcome to the PRmoment Podcast.Today we’re chatting with 3 of Google's communications team to give us an inside view of how a modern PR and communications team works.On the show are Jo Ogunleye, B2B communications lead, UK, Julie Dilger, head of external communications, Google Ireland and Olivia O'Brien, senior associate, product communiou can still purchase your tickets for The PRmoment Awards from the awards site PRmomentAwards.comThanks as ever to the PRmoment Podcast sponsors The PRCA. I’d also encourage you to check out this week’s Good and Bad PR on PRmoment. As ever there’s a range of highlights and lowlights but one of my favourite stories this week was that Pepsi has rolled out a new visual brand identity and also revealed that it would include 57% less sugar.Exclusive analysis from Meltwater shows how the news exploded across social media resulting in 137k mentions and 1.03m engagements.Do check out this week’s Good and Bad PR for more insight on that from Meltwater.Here’s a summary of what Jo, Julie and Olivia and PRmoment founder Ben Smith discussed:2 mins Jo, Julie and Olivia have very different job titles and here they each tell us a bit about their jobs, how their roles are different but also how they work together.4 mins Jo talks about her 20% role (a Google initiative to enable its employees to work on passion products) and how that enables Jo to work on building networks of diverse communities within the communications industry.8 mins There are only 9 people in the UK and Ireland Google comms team.8.30 mins A discussion of how Google uses agency support.“I would be lost without my agency…when you get a good agency you hold onto them with both hands and hope the personnel don’t change too much!”10 mins There are so many specialisms within communications and a brand like Google uses the full breadth of comms capabilities - from crisis communications, to exec comms, to corporate and public affairs, to brand, consumer, product PR and B2B comms.How do in-house communicators coordinate that?13 mins How much of Google's communications are proactive and how much are reactive?“If it’s a big issue it’s all hands on deck”“Some people thrive in a crisis”“We have issues comms at least once a week”“A lot of PR is problem-solving…reactive requires a completely different part of your brain”“Where my agency comes into its own is when they burst by bubble…I spend so much time in Google land.”“My expectation of them (my agency) is 100% all-around creative and strategic ideas”“We might not go 100% of the way but we might go 25% of the way - and that’s us innovating.”“I don’t want to feel like a client all the time…I want to feel like we’re colleagues”25 mins What are the suite of measurement KPIs for Google's comms team?29 mins How does Google get a balance between the standardisation of the message and localised communications?31 mins With Google’s development and rollout of AI tools - is this a priority for Google's comms team at the moment?