Which is what made thirty years of losing so hard to explain.

Then One Night

I have these memories of going to Knicks games in November at MSG in the 90s around my birthday. I didn’t know a pick-and-roll from a fast break, but I knew Patrick Ewing, Charles Oakley and John Starks, who are still the Knicks in my head even now. Those teams were genuinely, heartbreakingly good, and they made it to the Finals in 1994 with everyone in New York certain this was it.

Then Game 7 happened, the Rockets won, and the city was gutted.

Sometimes something is exactly as good as you think it is, and one night rewrites all of it anyway. It’s the kind of thing I think about in PR all the time, how one bad news cycle can temporarily rewrite everything that came before it, how the story of a whole season can collapse into a single number.

I remember that loss through my sixth-grade boyfriend more than through myself. He had committed to this team the way you commit to things when you’re young and haven’t yet learned to protect yourself from heartbreak. He carried that loss around for at least a week. I watched him, not quite understanding how a game could cost that much, but filing it away somewhere, the idea that the people who stay anyway are usually the ones who end up with the best story.

Which Is Also, Somehow, About PR

IFP was built in the liminal, the space between the pitch and the payoff. When we’re building PR strategies for brands like Nanit, Wacoal and Hyatt, what actually moves things is rarely the moment anyone can see. The reason those brands are in the room with you in the first place is the same story. It’s the years of relationships built before they called, the stories guided carefully, the smaller moments stacked up because you knew they were laddering toward something bigger. The editor I’d been staying useful to for two years before she finally had a story that fit. The pitch that went to seventeen outlets, got picked up by one, and that one was the right one.

The Knicks aren't here because they got lucky. They're here because somebody spent years on the unglamorous part of a rebuild, and then their maybe-unlikely star, a second round draft pick named Jalen Brunson, took a smaller contract than he could have gotten elsewhere to open up the salary cap, which got covered for about a news cycle and disappeared, because a guy voluntarily taking less money is never going to compete with a crazy salary for attention, even when it's the move that makes everything else possible. Taking less money then was part of his long game. It opened up the salary cap to build a cohesive team around him, one that could actually get here.

You can’t quantify the editor who responds to your email because you were useful and not annoying for most of a decade, but they exist, and they matter more than almost anything else you built. The pitches that land in year six aren’t landing because you suddenly got good; they’re landing because of everything built in years one through five, and none of it looked like winning while you were doing it. The difference between landing the big moment and missing it is almost never talent; it’s whether you were in position when it arrived.

I’ve always believed in the long game, the bigger picture, the 30,000-foot view, even when it didn’t look like a strategy.

What was supposed to be six months in Anguilla turned into five and a half years of relationships that still travel with me today, people who opened doors, sent clients, and showed up at the exact right moment years after we first crossed paths on an island I wasn’t planning to stay on. I wasn’t calculating any of it. I was just there long enough for it to matter, and then I stayed a little longer. Those connections became clients, collaborators, referrals that are still coming in years later, and none of that would exist if I’d gotten on the plane after six months the way I planned.

And They Made It

I do know this roster; I love Jalen and KAT the way I loved Patrick and John. They lost Game 3, and now they’re up 2-1 with the series alive. I feel it the way you feel something you’ve been waiting for longer than you realized, because some loyalties compound quietly in the background, and New York has been carrying this for thirty years, and nobody’s putting it down yet.

Every time the Knicks make the playoffs, the memory of my sixth-grade boyfriend comes back, this specific image of a twelve-year-old carrying a loss around for a week, and here we are again right before Game 4. I have no idea if he still loves the team the way he did then, but I keep thinking about what that kind of commitment actually costs and what it finally feels like when it comes back to you.

And this is, honestly, after almost 20 years in this business, the story I understand better, where you’re ahead but haven’t won yet and the whole thing can still go either way.

I’ve lived versions of that in this career, the client you stayed with through three slow coverage cycles who calls you first when they raise their Series B, the editor who passed on a dozen pitches and then finally says yes, and it’s the story that changes everything. It never announces itself while it’s happening. It always feels like it arrived out of nowhere, even when you know exactly where it came from.

The Fine Print

The long game is the only game, and I’ve made peace with the fact that it doesn’t look like much from the outside while you’re in it. The people, the relationships, and the credibility you're accumulating in the slow years are the whole thing. They're not the path to the thing. Most of us know this. We just need someone to say it out loud every once in a while.

The slow years are the credential. The winning is the proof.

It isn’t over yet, so here are a few of my favorite Knicks things in honor of my home team:

1. You gotta have the gear- here’s a roundup of my favorite pieces

2. If you’re uptown, please go to Harlem Shake and try their Knicksicle Shake for me

3. When I was a kid, we would always get an egg roll before games at Mr Wong’s Egg Roll cart on 33rd and 8th Ave. It’s long gone now, so to keep up the tradition, we will be ordering from our local Chinese food restaurant, Lichee Nut in Brooklyn Heights

4. Listen, I know he’s the enemy, but this video of Wemby’s warm-up is WILD; dude really is an alien

5. And here is an adorable photo album of the Knicks die hard fans, then and now

Melissa Rosenfield is the founder of IFP Communications, a PR & Marketing agency based in New York. To get in touch about potential projects, email info@ifpcommunications.com. For more, join us on LinkedIn and Instagram.

That’s it from me, as always, thank you for being here, for reading, and for sending me words of encouragement. And don’t forget to tap the lil heart so I can make more internet friends.
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For the last 20 or so years, search has been a question followed by an answer, and that answer consisted of a list of websites and links. But after 20 years of a great thing, Google has decided to flip that model on its head entirely. When the news broke about what Google I/O actually means for everyone working in brand, digital, affiliate, SEO, publishing, brand marketing, and e-comm people were rightly nervous with a lot of “What does this mean for me?”

Google is transforming into an AI-driven answer engine, which means it now summarizes, recommends, and synthesizes directly in search results. For media and brands, this means fewer website clicks, less traffic, lower affiliate revenue, and a fundamentally different model for how people discover brands online.

If you missed the announcement, go back and read it; it sets up everything I’m about to say.

And because of these changes, one channel just became significantly more important, and most people still aren’t thinking about it correctly.

That channel, my friends, is PR, which now plays a crucial role in shaping how the internet perceives your brand’s trustworthiness and in fostering confidence in your strategy.

The New Trust Economy

For years, Google evaluated websites. It looked at keyword optimization, backlinks, site structure, and content volume. The whole SEO industry was built around reverse-engineering that algorithm so people could find what they wanted or needed.

Google’s AI doesn’t work that way. It’s not just indexing pages anymore; it’s forming opinions, it’s synthesizing what the internet collectively says about a brand, a product, or a person. It’s pulling from Reddit threads (this one is so important), review sites, creator content, newsletters (Hello Substack and Beehiv), YouTube, and yes, editorial coverage. It’s building a picture of whether the internet trusts you and if your product is “worth it”.

That’s fundamentally different from “did you optimize for SEO?”

Third-party mentions, credible reviews, and coverage in trusted publications now shape the trust signals that influence search rankings, clarifying their role in trust building.

This isn’t a coincidence. It’s an enormous structural shift in what earned media can actually do for a brand.

What PR Coverage Does Now (That It Didn’t Before)

There’s been a running conversation in marketing for years about how to “prove PR’s value.” Awareness is hard to measure. Logos on a homepage don’t close deals. Executives want numbers, and PR people have historically struggled to provide them cleanly.

That conversation is about to get a lot easier, because PR coverage now drives measurable outcomes beyond awareness, giving you clear proof of impact.

When a journalist writes about your brand in a trusted publication, that article becomes source material for AI search answers. When a creator, big or small, reviews your product, that content gets pulled into Google’s synthesized responses. When your brand appears in a Substack newsletter or a podcast transcript, those mentions also contribute to the consensus Google’s AI is building about you. Every piece of earned coverage is now simultaneously PR, SEO, reputation infrastructure, and AI discoverability.

The measurement problem isn’t that PR doesn’t drive results. It’s that we’ve been measuring the wrong results.

The question is no longer just “did we get coverage?” It’s “is the internet developing a coherent, trustworthy picture of this brand, and are we appearing in the places Google’s AI considers authoritative?”

Why Traditional PR Thinking Falls Short Here

Most PR programs are still built around a familiar model: pitch journalists, land placements, track clips, report impressions. That model still matters, and getting into a major publication still moves the needle, but it’s no longer sufficient as a standalone strategy.

If you want to win in this environment, you need to build distributed credibility across channels. Coverage isn’t just about The New York Times or Elle anymore; it means appearing in the newsletters your audience subscribes to, as well as the YouTube channels they trust and the Reddit communities where they ask questions. The sites that vouch for you and compare you are the ones that regular consumers use before they buy.

It also means thinking carefully about who is covering you, aka where you are showing up. Prioritizing quality and relevance over volume will help your brand build genuine authority in this new landscape.

PR teams that understand this shift are already repositioning their programs around earned authority, where and how you show up, not just earned attention.

The Practical Implication for Brands

Stop treating PR, SEO, and creator marketing as separate efforts; instead, align them to support the same search and reputation goals, guiding your strategy.

Your affiliate partners are creating the review content that Google’s AI pulls from. PR coverage is building the third-party consensus that makes you trustworthy in search. Your creator relationships are generating the human opinions that AI systems need to synthesize answers. They’re all reputation infrastructure.

The brands that are going to figure this out fastest are the ones that align these functions, ensuring PR generates coverage that also supports discoverability, treating affiliates as editorial distribution, and building creator relationships around real authority rather than just follower counts.

This new world of discovery requires PR thinking that goes well beyond media relations. It requires understanding how AI search actually evaluates brands, what content formats and publication types Google’s systems weight most heavily, and how to build a coverage strategy that serves both immediate brand goals and long-term search visibility.

That’s the real work PRs now have to do, and it’s more sophisticated than most PR programs in the past.

The Fine Print

The brands I’ve seen successfully navigate big industry shifts all have one thing in common: they stopped waiting to see how things would play out and started building for what was clearly coming. Double down!

What’s clearly coming is a search landscape where your brand’s reputation across the open web determines your discoverability. Where what other people say about you matters more than what you say about yourself. Where PR isn’t a nice-to-have that lives in a silo, it’s the strategy.

And with that, here are a few things I’ve recently searched for because I love that little search bar…

1. Best shows for kids in NYC

2. Small ice cream maker (don’t ask me why I need this, isn’t it obvious we all need it)

3. And new bowls for that ice cream

4. “World Cup Kids Clothes.”

5. Is the Midtown Tunnel closed

What’s been in your Google search bar lately? Are we still going to say “Google it”? So many questions.

And if you still have questions or want to talk about how you’re working through what that means for your brand’s approach to earned media, IFP is always here.

That’s it from me, as always, thank you for being here, for reading, and for sending me words of encouragement. And don’t forget to tap the lil heart so I can make more internet friends.
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The Universe Was Loud This Week

I had dinner with my friend Cameron and her partner Avi last weekend, and he asked me how I liked my Oura Ring. I was honest. I said I don’t really love it. The data feels thin, and as someone who’s pretty in tune with her body, I’m not getting anything I actually need. At this point, I was just wearing it out of habit. Because everyone in my orbit is wearing one. Because it felt like the responsible, optimized thing to do. And Avi just looked at me and said, “Then take it off.”

It sounds simple, but it gave me pause. I had been wearing a piece of technology on my finger every single day for over a year, getting almost nothing out of it, because I had decided at some point that this was a thing I should be doing.

A few nights later, I had dinner with a new client and her partner, Ryan, who’s an incredibly established tattoo artist. He told me the clarity in his career came when he stripped everything away. In tattooing, it’s a faux pas to do the same tattoo twice, but when one of his went viral, instead of trying new designs, he said OK and made that one tattoo his signature. The styles he had been chasing because they were popular, the clients he was taking on because the money was there, the side projects that were technically interesting but pulling his focus. He cut all of it. The work he wanted to make started showing up. The people who wanted that specific work started finding him. His rates went up. The career he had been building through layering finally appeared when he started taking things off.

And a day later, my friend Lindsay called to tell me she wouldn’t be coming to my event. She wasn’t softening it. She said, “If it isn’t work, I’m not doing it right now.” No apology spiral, no over-explaining. Just a clean line drawn around what she had decided mattered to her right now. I was the one being declined, and I respected it immediately. Most of us would have said yes, shown up, and quietly resented the time it took. Lindsay just told the truth about her focus and moved on.

Three completely unrelated conversations in one week, telling me the same thing. When the universe repeats itself like that, you stop arguing with it.

And I’m sitting there thinking, we have gotten so far past the point of optimization. Omnichannel this, personalization that, data-driven everything. Funnels and dashboards and metrics on top of metrics. We’re layering and tweaking and adding, and somewhere in all of that, we’ve lost the actual plot. Every conversation I have with a founder these days has at least one moment where they say something like, “We just need to optimize our X. Optimize the funnel. Optimize the team. Optimize the messaging.” And I want to ask them, optimize toward what?

Here’s the thing, though, optimization assumes you already know what you’re optimizing for. But most campaigns, most people, haven’t actually asked that question. You can’t optimize your way to clarity. You have to strip things back first. You have to figure out what the actual point is before you start tuning the machine around it. Otherwise, you’re just making a really efficient version of the wrong thing.

Finding the North Star

We’ve been doing that at IFP. People were telling us to niche down on the types of brands we work with. Pick a category, own it, become the agency for X. But it wasn’t about the types of brands, it was about how we work with brands. So we got real about what we’re genuinely excellent at. Earned media. Telling your story. Producing events and activations that put your brand in front of the right people in real life, not just on a feed. Seeding your product or brand in the right places where you never had access before.

Our north star is to operate past the traditional PR playbook, building campaigns, partnerships, and storytelling that put our clients at the front of what’s next, with nuance, precision, and a real point of view. That means paying attention to how influence actually moves right now, across media, creators, communities, and platforms that haven’t yet found their shape. It means finding the conversations forming at the edges before they reach the center, and shaping the ones worth having. Everything else, influencer programs, paid media, things we can do well, we’re saying no to, or we’re sending you to people who specialize in it.

We pulled back our service offerings. We weren’t bad at the other things, we were just the best at something else. When a brand hires us for what we’re best at, they get all of us, our full focus, our deepest network, and the kind of work that only happens when you’ve chosen what to be great at.

That decision was uncomfortable for a while. There is something counterintuitive about telling a prospective client you don’t do a thing they want, especially when you can. The instinct is to say yes, take the contract, figure it out. But every time I did that, the work suffered, and the relationship eventually suffered too. The clients who hire us for the things we are truly great at become long-term thought partners. The clients who hired us for the bundle tended to leak away within a year. The pattern was loud once I started paying attention to it.

I Finally Listened to the Loudest Voice, Mine

Here’s what happens when you strip everything away. You’re not just getting clarity. You’re getting relief. You’re not carrying around things you don’t believe in. That cognitive load is gone. Your clients feel it too. They know you’re not trying to be everything to everyone. You’re invested in what you do best. They sense it in how you talk about the work. That kind of fluency only shows up when you’ve narrowed your focus enough to have one.

The real cost of optimization without clarity isn’t the money or the time. It’s the weight of maintaining something you’re not convinced about. That weight is invisible from the outside. It looks like a full plate, a busy calendar, a healthy roster. On the inside, it’s draining the energy you’d otherwise spend on the work you actually believe in.

So what are you adding to your work, your life, your strategy that you don’t actually believe in? Maybe it’s a service line you’ve been keeping alive out of habit. Maybe it’s a client you should have walked away from a year ago. Maybe it’s a tool you bought during an optimization phase and never quite turned off. Maybe it’s an Oura Ring. Maybe it’s time to take it off.

The Fine Print

Sometimes the answer to your business problem isn’t solving the question everyone else is asking; it’s solving the question you’re asking. For us, it wasn’t about doing more; we kept adding services because that is what brands wanted, but it diluted everything we were doing. When we started pulling back and getting really clear on what we were the best at, we got that much better at it. Stop trying to solve the problem everyone else thinks you should solve. Get clear on what problem you’re actually solving and get obsessed with that instead.

I can't believe Memorial Day Weekend is here and how fast this year is flying by! We hosted our second media preview this past week at The Thompson Central Park, with over 100 editors and influencers in attendance. Here are the things they were most excited about

1. Can’t wait to use this Minky Couture blanket on the roof this weekend since it won’t be sunny or warm

2. These Ripley Rader pants are as good as the reviews, if not better

3. Vacation, put this sunblock in the gift bags, and if you know me and sunblock, you know I am excited

4. PB5Star just released the cosmic in a floral print, and I know these will be on everyone’s feet all over Europe this summer

5. The Root Project is going to simplify my summer beauty routine while keeping my hair happy and healthy (and very, very soft).

That’s it from me, as always, thank you for being here, for reading, and for sending me words of encouragement. And don’t forget to tap the lil heart so I can make more internet friends.
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My best friend Derek lost his dog, Kenny, this week.

Unexpectedly.

I’m not, and have never really been, a “dog person”. I say that as the mother of two dogs and one before them, so make of that what you will. But Kenny was different. Kenny was Kennedeth to me, more of a person than a dog. He was our office dog, sweet and ridiculous in the way that only the best dogs are, and I loved having him there every day. He would beg me for food, and I would give it to him because who cares? You only live once. My son Sidney loved playing with him at the office, even when Kenny wasn’t in the mood for a precocious six-year-old, which was most of the time.

Derek also works with me. So this week, I watched my best friend, my colleague, show up and do his job while he was mourning the unexpected loss of his baby. And I recognized it immediately, because I have been that person, unfortunately, more than once.

Loss is Unpredictable

And inevitable, and at some point in your career it will arrive while you are in the middle of something you cannot put down. That is not a personal failing, it is just the reality of running a business and being a human at the same time.

Grief Hits Different When It Comes Twice

In February 2025, I was in Grenada. My old boss had taken over as GM of a new hotel property there and wanted my family to come experience the island as part of a potential work collaboration we were exploring together. I was with my family, staying somewhere beautiful, on a trip that was equal parts personal and professional. And that’s when I found out my friend, Michelle, had died.

Michelle and I had been friends for years. We met when I was living in LA during the Gossip Girl era, through our mutual friend Sara. She was one of a kind, the kind of person you just don't come across that often. She had texted me before I left for the trip. I didn't respond because I was going to when I got home, when I had time to actually make a plan to see her. I never got to make that plan.

In June, Anne passed away. A few years back, I was Anne's bridesmaid. We had a really special friendship. Robert and I had been in London for a long weekend celebrating our friends' wedding. We got back on a Monday, and Anne had her first improv show that same night. I had texted her before we boarded our flight to get the details so we could go support her. We missed the show, jet lagged and exhausted from the flight home. I found out Tuesday afternoon that she was gone.

Both of these friends were public figures, which meant their deaths were public too. They were news cycles. My phone didn’t stop, and not with condolences. Media contacts I had spent years cultivating were calling for intel, for angles, for quotes. And I had to figure out in real time, with no roadmap and no one to ask, how to protect myself, protect the people I had just lost, and avoid detonating the relationships I had spent my career building. You cannot prepare for that. Nobody tells you that part of the job description includes being a source on the death of someone you loved.

And yet. I was on conference calls. I was answering emails. I was sitting across from clients, some of whom knew exactly who Michelle and Anne were to me, navigating those conversations in real time, figuring out how much to say and how to say it without making my grief their problem while also not pretending it wasn’t happening. I was showing up for everyone. I was doing a convincing impression of showing up for myself. Those are not the same thing, and it took me longer than it should have to understand that.

Here is What I Learned, Mostly the Hard Way

Decide what your clients need to know, and stop there.

A brief, professional acknowledgment is enough. “I’m dealing with a personal loss this week; everything on our end is moving.” You do not owe anyone the details. I have seen grief used as a reason to reassess a contract. I have watched a personal loss become leverage. Share enough to explain your humanity, not enough to give anyone an opening.

Work is not a coping mechanism.

I kept moving after I lost Michelle and Anne. Kept booking the calls, writing the pitches, checking the boxes. I told myself I was being professional. What I was actually doing was running, and you can run like that for a long time. Long enough to lose the clients anyway. Long enough not to recognize yourself before you understand what happened. Staying busy is not the same as being okay, and eventually your body and your business will both present the bill.

When the loss is public, build a firewall fast.

If your friend is in the news, people who have your number will use it. Get clear on what you will and won’t speak to before calls start coming in. “I’m not the right person to speak to this” is a complete sentence. You will find out very quickly who respects it and who doesn’t, and that information is useful.

Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride

Last summer, my therapist told me to take a vacation to reset. I had every reason not to go; some things at work were not working, and I was just pushing ahead. I went anyway. It was the first time since their passings that I felt like I could actually breathe. I was not fixed, not caught up, not back to normal. Just breathing.

Truthfully, I had waited too long.

I didn’t keep the clients I was trying to protect, and I didn’t take care of myself either.

Everything that fell away fell away because I was moving too fast in too many directions to hold any of it. That trip didn’t save my business. But it probably saved me, and it turned out that was the more urgent problem.

Take the day. Don't rush the email. Let yourself be unreachable for an afternoon. Your clients are people too, and most of them will respect you more for being honest about your limits than for pretending you don't have any. Some of them will go through this themselves one day, and how you handle it now will be part of what they remember. You cannot pour from an empty cup. Figure out what you need and do that. The rest of it will still be there.

The Fine Print

Grief doesn’t follow a professional timeline, and it doesn’t care about your calendar. You will be on a call when it finds you, or on a trip, or in the middle of something you worked hard to build. The only real mistake is treating yourself like the last thing on your to-do list, and you need to remember you are always the first thing.

Our sweet Kennedeth was a rescue dog, and I am a firm believer in Adopt Don’t Shop.

In the spirit of this VERY GOOD BOY, here are three rescues our team fostered and adopted from, and one very fab shelter here in NYC.

If you think it’s time to open your home and your heart, you can start here to find fosters and dogs looking for permanent homes. If you’re not there yet, they are always looking for volunteers, and donations always help.

1. True North Rescue Mission

2. Waggytail Rescue

3. Pupstarz Rescue

4. Animal Haven

And one last resource, Petfinder for rescues nationwide, shelters, and animals in your area.

Melissa Rosenfield is the founder of IFP Communications, a PR & Marketing agency based in New York. To get in touch about potential projects, email infor@ifpcommunications.com. For more, join us on LinkedIn and Instagram.

That’s it from me, as always, thank you for being here, for reading, and for sending me words of encouragement. And don’t forget to tap the lil heart so I can make more internet friends.
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I’ve been to a lot of industry events, and I have to say, this one is different. The women who show up aren’t there to collect business cards and post a photo of all the transactional networking. They’re operators, executives, and founders, and they actually came to connect. You feel the difference immediately.

This was my first year, and I was there in two capacities: attending as an industry person, and the IFP team was on the floor running a fit activation for our client, Wacoal, across three days. It was an interesting position to be in. I had an open door with anyone I wanted to meet: “Come get fit with Wacoal,” “Have you met the Wacoal team?”, and at the same time, I was absorbing sessions and keynotes while also watching what happens when you bring a genuinely great experience to women who are already in that headspace.

On the plane down, the woman who sat next to me and I bonded immediately over the lack of overhead bin space, which is honestly the great equalizer. Turns out she works at Etsy, right around the corner from me in Dumbo. By the time we landed, she had given me some of the most thoughtful feedback about what this conference had meant to her, how it helped her reconnect with her north star as a leader, how it gave her clarity she hadn’t found anywhere else. That set the tone for everything that followed.

Women Actually Showing Up for Each Other

The women at this summit were not there to network in the transactional sense. They were genuinely there to help each other, and as simple as it sounds, it’s actually rare these days at similar events.

Something that made it even more special was how many of these women I already knew, just not in person. People I’d emailed, people I’d heard about through mutual connections, people whose names had come up in conversations for years. Getting to finally put a face to all of that and just be in the same place together was its own kind of thing. It felt like a community that already existed, finally getting to meet itself.

One afternoon, I found myself sitting poolside with Rebecca Minkoff in the Florida sun, just catching up. I’ve known Rebecca for a while. We were neighbors at one point, pregnant around the same time, and I have been a fan and member of the Female Founder Collective since she started it. This catch-up was different because there were no kids, no chaos, no agenda, just two people in an industry being real with each other. Rebecca, if you don’t know her, is IMPRESSIVE in all caps. She shared what she’s building in this current phase. I told her what we’re doing at IFP, who we know, and how we can be useful to each other. Another thing about Rebecca is that she is one of the most genuine champions of women I have come across, and that’s not something she performs; it’s just how she operates. That conversation reminded me why I joined the Female Founder Collective in the first place and why communities built on that kind of generosity actually work.

It also reaffirmed a lot of what I already believe in operating. With kindness, with generosity, with showing up. The more present you are for your clients, the better your work gets, the more they trust you, and the bigger the opportunities they put in front of you. Hearing room after room of accomplished women say versions of the same thing was its own kind of validation.

Empowering Your Team is the Actual Job

Kelly Cook from David’s Bridal talked about rebuilding the brand, and one story stopped me. Her store teams didn’t feel empowered enough to approve printing costs for a deal that stood to generate significant revenue. They waited. They asked up. The moment almost passed.

She talked about teaching organizations to trust their people, and it immediately took me back to something I learned years ago from the Ritz Carlton school of thought. The $2,000 rule. Do whatever it takes, up to $2,000, to save the guest experience, no approval needed, no explanation required. Trust your people to make the call. I have believed in that principle ever since I understood it, and it was powerful to see how directly it translates to retail. When your teams feel empowered, they move. When they don’t, they wait. And waiting is expensive.

Kelly also shared the three Fs that guide her leadership: Faith, Family, and Forward. Simple, but the kind of framework that only lands when the person saying it actually lives by it, and she most definitely does. Those three might not resonate for everyone, but they reminded me that we should all have words that guide how we lead. Mine are Courage, Curiosity, and Community.

Investing in Your People Means Investing in Their Space

Kate Ridley, Chief Brand Officer of Stanley 1913, was recognized in this year’s Top Women in Retail report, and something she said has stayed with me. In a year when most companies were cutting costs, Stanley decided to invest heavily in their Seattle headquarters, upgrading communal workspaces and bringing their brand values to life physically, not to mandate people back, but to make coming in worth it. She also challenged us to get clear on what is nonnegotiable from your legacy and what needs to evolve to stay relevant. That tension between protecting what made you and being willing to change it is something every brand and every leader is navigating right now.

I have been a believer in return to office since before it was a debate. We were among the first to bring our team back, and I’ll tell you why. Humans need humans to be successful. That’s not a hot take, that’s just true. If you are going to invest in people, and I mean really invest, that investment has to include the ability to engage with each other in real time. The energy that builds in a room, the quick conversation that turns into a great idea, the mentorship that happens in the in-between moments of a workday, none of that happens on a Zoom call.

Look, human connection is only becoming more valuable. What Stanley did wasn’t about control. It was about creating an environment where people actually want to show up. There’s a difference, and most companies get it wrong by skipping straight to the mandate without doing the work to make the space worth coming back to

The Keeper Test

Mimi Swain, Chief Marketing Officer for Amazon Devices and Services, said something that caught my attention because it connected to a framework I’d heard about from Netflix called the Keeper Test.

If someone on your team told you they were leaving tomorrow, would you fight to keep them? Not would you be bummed, not would it be inconvenient. Would you genuinely fight for them?

The Keeper Test is about identifying who is exceptional, and being honest about the difference between someone truly great and someone just fine. Comfortable. Competent. Fine. And fine is the enemy of any great team.

Leaders avoid this because it is easier to keep someone who is good enough than to have the hard conversation. But small businesses, especially, cannot afford it. Keeping people out of obligation or guilt is how small businesses go under. And letting someone go is rarely a reflection on your leadership. Sometimes it is just honesty about fit.

If someone passes your Keeper Test, tell them. Exceptional people should know they are valued. The most powerful leadership move is sometimes just saying it out loud.

On AI, Taste, and the Thing the Robots Don’t Have

A lot of the summit touched on AI, as every industry conversation does right now. My position hasn’t changed, and many of the leaders at the conference said the same thing, so I’ll keep saying it. AI doesn’t have taste or discernment. You can automate a lot, but you cannot automate those two things, nor can you automate the nuance that comes with them. As long as we, as humans, stay sharp, stay opinionated, and stay specific, there will always be a need for people who can tell the difference between what is good and what just looks good. That’s not going away.

More from The Ballroom

There was so much more that resonated for the team and me across the three days, and I want to make sure these women get their flowers.

• Jen Hatmaker reminded us of the power of vulnerability, of accepting generosity, and of learning to mother yourself. That last one hit differently in a room full of women who spend most of their time caring for everyone else.

• Shakaila Forbes-Bell explored the connection between our emotions and what we buy and wear, reframing consumer behavior as rooted in identity rather than impulse. As someone who works in brand every day, I felt that was an important thing to sit with.

• Reba Hatcher of ButcherBox shared something simple and true: what you want to be true externally starts with what’s true internally. You cannot build a brand that stands for something if the people inside the organization don’t feel it first.

• Daria Burke left us with this: the most powerful thing you can do as a leader is to keep becoming more of yourself. Not a polished version, not a safer version. More of yourself.

• Corie Barry, CEO of Best Buy, spoke about the importance of who you surround yourself with, because the strongest leaders know they are not supposed to do it alone.

If You Build It They Really Will Come

Last year, the IFP x Wacoal team showed up with two fitters and a two-day activation, fitting 102 women. This year, we added a third fitter, brought product to sell, and ran it for almost three full days. We were fully booked from day one and stayed that way, with word spreading through the summit fast enough that walk-ins filled every gap.

What kept coming up from the women we fitted: most hadn’t been professionally fit in years. Many were in the wrong size and didn’t know it. The fitting experience kept getting named the highlight of the summit. The reactions in that room were something I genuinely wish we had recorded.

This activation got bigger and better because we had a client willing to push with us. And what it proved is simple. When you bring the right experience directly to the right people, in a context where they are already open and already investing in themselves, meeting the customer where she is stops being a strategy and takes on a whole new meaning.

Business Lessons from my Mom

This weekend, we celebrate mothers, and I couldn’t close this out without saying that the summit was full of women at every stage of leadership, in their careers, and in their personal lives. Mothers, daughters, mentors, mentees, women figuring it out, and women who figured it out and came back to show someone else the way. That energy was everywhere.

My mother was an entrepreneur her whole life. She even sold her own company a few years back. I guess it’s genetic. Over the years, she’s given me some excellent advice, even when I’ve resisted.

The best piece of business advice I have ever received came from her.

Don’t show up if you’re not willing to play. I’ve heard Serena Williams say a version of this, too, but I’m attributing it to my mom because, hi, she said it first. Show up ready, show up fully, or make room for someone who will.

I watched that principle in action all week, on stage, poolside, on the floor of a fit activation, and on a plane before any of it even started.

Happy Mother’s Day to all the women who taught us how to play.

The Fine Print

Find your north star and keep it simple. Know who you are at the root, let that define how you lead, and build your principles around it. Courage, Curiosity, Community. Three words. That’s all it takes.

Generosity is something you do for yourself, not for others. In a world that tells you to hold everything tight, giving freely and doing it without keeping score is one of the most important things you can do. Keep doing it selflessly.*

And on the other side of that, be mindful and make your ask meaningful. There is a difference between accepting generosity graciously and taking advantage of it. Know the difference and don’t be greedy with people’s time, energy, or goodwill.

So I’m honestly exhausted this week, which is why this newsletter is late.

As I said in my note earlier this week, life has been life-ing, and since I got back from the conference, I’ve been to a funeral AND a celebration of life. Attended the Pokémon x Target Launch with a Jonas Brother. Had friends in town all weekend. Went to an all-day client sales meeting, followed by watching the Met Ball with a bestie who was visiting. Attended a PR Net event. And saw The Rocky Horror Show on Broadway!

For this week’s listicle

1. I’ve made it easy and dropped my Mother’s Day guide, along with some goodies from the women and the brands I mentioned above, in my ShopMY shop. Hope you find something special for the “mother” in your life.

2. Also, if you want to go for a fitting with Wacoal (and you should), you can find more information about their fittings HERE and do a little good too.

3. My mom also says “Your handbag should never be more than your fee. People pay you a lot of money, don’t let them think you’re being paid too much because your stuff is fancier than theirs.” Well, here is a list of some of my favorite, less-fancy handbags, plus a few extra ones just for fun.

That’s it from me, as always, thank you for being here, for reading, and for sending me words of encouragement. And don’t forget to tap the lil heart so I can make more internet friends.
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Last week I was in Florida for the Women in Retail conference with our Wacoal clients, and it was one of those events that remind you why you do what you do. Great people, real conversations, and I walked away with pages of notes and a few things I’m still thinking about.

It was also a bit of a heavy week personally, which I shared in my Note today. Life was life-ing. I’m OK, and I’m back, and I’m excited about what’s coming.

First up this week: my leadership takeaways from Women in Retail. I think some of what I heard will land for you, too.

See you Thursday.

When I wrote about rainmakers, it couldn’t have been more perfectly timed.

We at IFP Communications have been in a lot of conversations lately about new brands and product launches, and I keep coming back to the same question: where do these brands and products actually show up right now to make an impact in real time?

And then I kept seeing Lena Dunham everywhere, but not in the way we’re used to with traditional press tours for book launches.

Her new book, Famesick, and Lena herself kept showing up across the places I actually spend time, a Substack I read, a hot take in New York Magazine, a podcast clip that kept getting sent around, and the more I saw it, the more it stood out that this wasn’t one big moment, the kind we’re used to seeing with a launch, it was a pattern.

Part of what makes this work is that Lena already had an audience, one built over years with Girls, and it’s not just the women who watched it in real time. A whole new wave is discovering the show now through streaming, which means she is simultaneously speaking to people who grew up with her and people who are just now finding her. That dual pull is rare, and her team clearly understood how to activate both without making either feel like an afterthought.

The Script Has Flipped

There was a time when a launch followed a very specific script, you would do a morning show, then a few long-lead interviews, and if everything lined up, something glossy, something that felt like the moment everything came together.

But that model didn’t explode. It didn’t disappear overnight. It just quietly stopped being the thing that actually moves culture.

What we are seeing replace it, across both books and products, is less obvious, which is probably why most brands haven’t fully caught up yet, but once you see it, it’s hard to unsee.

Watching the rollout around Famesick, what stood out wasn’t just the coverage, it was how intentionally it was built for the way people actually consume media now, not as a single moment, but as a system.

The New Center of Gravity

The center of gravity has shifted, and we’ve moved away from legacy anchors into podcasts, Substacks, niche platforms, and personalities with very specific audiences, which doesn’t make it smaller for the sake of it, it actually makes it smarter.

These platforms offer more, more context, more credibility, and more time to actually say something to the right audience, which is something traditional formats don’t always allow for anymore.

The conversations themselves aren’t overproduced, they’re longer, a little unpolished, sometimes meandering, and that’s exactly the point, because that’s what feels real right now, and real is what actually travels.

What We’re Doing at IFP

We saw this play out in two very different ways on our own side this week, and they point to the same thing from different angles.

We hosted an event alongside Wacoal and Weight Watchers at their Flatiron office, a panel on women’s bodies changing through every stage of life, with bra fittings and a shopping moment built into the experience for the hundred people in the room, and another nine hundred watching online. It was in support of Dr. Rachel Goldman’s new book, When Life Happens, and the appetite in that room, physical and virtual, was real. People don’t just want to consume a launch, they want to be in the room for it, even when the room is a screen.

Emma Grede is doing something else entirely with her tour, and it’s worth paying attention to. She is tapping into every type of media simultaneously, traditional outlets, podcasts, social, and the cut-downs of her most talked-about moments are doing a lot of the work. Some of what she says sounds wild. Some of it sounds out of touch. And a lot of it is getting passed around by people who aren’t her typical business-media audience, people who have never been in a conversation about her before.

That’s the point. Her team knows exactly what they’re doing. Some of those sound bites are designed to travel precisely because they’ll generate friction, and friction creates reach. Mixed sentiment is still sentiment, and more people are talking about Emma Grede right now, across more contexts, than ever before. That’s not a side effect of the tour. That’s the tour.

What This Looks Like Now

This is what rainmaking looks like now, and it doesn’t look like one big hit. It looks like the ability to show up in the right conversations, in the right rooms, in a way that actually moves people.

A podcast isn’t a press hit in the traditional sense, it’s an hour of narrative control. Showing up on the right Substack isn’t a mention, it’s direct access to an audience that chose to be there. When a creator talks about your product, it isn’t just reach, it’s the built-in trust they bring with them. And when a hundred people show up in a room and nine hundred more tune in because they want to be part of something, that’s not just an event, it’s a signal.

The Moment is Momentum

What’s most interesting about the launches we’re watching right now is the level of coordination behind them, which is easy to miss if you’re only looking at individual placements. The strategy was never about one big moment.

It was about stacking the right conversations, in the right places, in a tight enough window that it starts to feel inescapable, not everywhere in the broad sense, but everywhere that actually matters.

That’s how momentum is created now, not with a spike, but with sustained proximity and a lot of intentionality behind where and how you show up.

The Challenge

The challenge for brands, and the part that most people are going to resist, is that this approach requires an actual point of view, and that’s not something you can manufacture overnight.

You can’t hide behind a press release anymore. You have to show up, talk, react, expand, repeat. You have to be willing to let something be a little controversial, a little unpolished, a little unresolved. That’s what gets shared. That’s what builds something.

And right now, there is more opportunity to do that than most brands know how to handle.

The Fine Print

This isn’t about books, or movies, or products, or clothing lines, it’s about launches, and more specifically, the strategy behind what actually makes them land now.

Traditional media didn’t go away, but it’s no longer the center of the strategy in the way it once was. The brands that are pulling ahead understand that new media isn’t experimental anymore, it’s infrastructure.

They’re building narratives that can move across platforms instead of land once and disappear. They’re showing up where people are actually paying attention. They’re creating moments that people want to be part of, not just observe. And they’re doing it with enough consistency and intentionality that it compounds over time.

That’s it, that’s the tea and the ones who see it clearly are already doubling down.

Now for some links and other things on my brain this week

1. I’m headed to Florida for Women in Retail this week. If you’re going to be there, please say Hi!

2. That means I’m going to be stopping by Possible in Miami, also say Hi!

3. All of these books can be found in my ShopMy shop, yes, I do get a small commission, but it’s no cost to YOU and basically covers the cost of a Blank Street Coffee for me

4. Whilst in Miami, one must also go to this restaurant, and I cannot wait!

5. Finally, the IFP team is hard at work on our Summer Essentials Preview Event. If you’re a brand looking to get in front of top media before the summer, we would love to have you! Reach out to Derek@ifpcommunications.com for more details

That’s it from me, as always, thank you for being here, for reading, and for sending me words of encouragement. And don’t forget to tap the lil heart so I can make more internet friends.

Melissa Rosenfield is the founder of IFP Communications, a PR & Marketing agency based in New York. To get in touch about potential projects or working together on your own launch, email infor@ifpcommunications.com. For more, join us on LinkedIn and Instagram.
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For the first time in a while, instead of everyone saying “media is dead,” there’s more coverage, more channels, more noise, and at the same time, more opportunity than most brands know what to do with.

The mistake is thinking all coverage is equal.

Anyone can get a hit, but the kind of coverage that actually moves a business, that shifts perception, that opens doors you couldn’t get into before, that’s a different thing entirely, and it’s where PR gets undervalued.

At IFP, we call ourselves rainmakers. IFP stands for il fait pluie, French for “it is raining,” and that’s the point, we make it rain, but not in the way people have come to use that phrase.

Somewhere along the way, “making it rain” got reduced to volume, more hits, more mentions, more slides, as if more automatically meant better, when in reality, most of it doesn’t do much at all.

At the same time, brands kept shifting budget into paid, and for a minute that worked, until it didn’t.

Because people got smarter, and once that happens, you can’t unsee it. You stop responding to being followed around the internet by the same ad, and you start paying attention to where things show up, how they’re framed, and whether it feels like it belongs.

People don’t want to be sold to over and over again, they want a point of view, they want context, they want to feel like what they’re discovering says something about them.

Where you show up matters just as much as what you’re selling.

Someone reading Town & Country isn’t looking for the same thing as someone reading Complex, and they shouldn’t be treated as if they are. For the record, I read both.

That’s where PR, when it’s done well, becomes one of the most valuable levers a brand has, because it’s not just about being seen, it’s about being seen in the right place, in the right way, at the right moment, by the right person. There is more opportunity to do that right now than most brands are set up to take advantage of.

And that’s the part most people still don’t know how to measure.

So What Actually Makes PR Work

The term “rainmaker” is used across many industries to describe whoever brings in the most business, and in PR, that’s close enough, but it misses what’s actually happening.

The people who are good at this aren’t chasing coverage, they’re paying attention to timing, context, and where a brand fits into a conversation that’s already moving.

They’re looking at an editorial calendar and a business goal at the same time, they know when to push something forward and when to kill it entirely, and they understand that one well-placed story that lands the right way can do more than twenty that don’t.

Because a big hit only matters if it connects to something real, opening a door, shifting perception, reaching someone new, giving a founder credibility in a place they didn’t have before.

If those things aren’t connected, it doesn’t matter how many pieces you stack up.

Why the ROI Conversation Feels So Off

The industry created its own problem here.

For years, everything defaulted to EMV, earned media value, a number meant to approximate what coverage would have cost if you paid for it, and it worked as shorthand until it became the only thing people looked at.

So brands ended up with reports full of big numbers tied to coverage that didn’t show up anywhere meaningful, and eventually someone asked the obvious question: if this is working, where is it actually showing up?

Instead of answering that directly, the response became more reporting, more slides, more ways to justify something that wasn’t being measured in the right way to begin with.

The reality is, the press doesn’t behave like paid media, it’s not supposed to.

It doesn’t give you a clean line from impression to purchase because its role comes earlier, shaping how someone sees a brand before they’re even thinking about buying.

It builds familiarity, credibility, and trust over time, and those are the things that make everything else you’re doing work better.

That’s where the value is.

What You Should Actually Be Looking At

Before anything launches, the question should be simple: What does success actually look like for your business in the next 90 days, and how does PR support that?

If you’re trying to get into retail, then the right coverage is the kind that gets in front of buyers or drives people to that partner.

If you’re fundraising, it’s what shows up when someone searches your name and what gives you credibility before you walk into that meeting.

If you’re trying to reach a new customer, it’s about being in the places they already trust, not just the ones that look impressive on a recap.

When you start there, what you pay attention to shifts.

You start looking at whether you’re gaining share of voice over time instead of celebrating one good month, whether the story being told actually matches what you want to be known for, whether a piece is getting picked up and extending its reach, and whether you’re seeing a lift in search or traffic after something meaningful lands.

And then there’s the part that doesn’t fit neatly into a report but matters just as much, the profile that gets passed around, the feature that reaches exactly the right person, the moment where someone starts taking you seriously when they didn’t before.

Those are the things that move a business forward, even if they don’t show up cleanly.

Why This Matters More Than Ever

The brands that win right now aren’t the ones spending the most, they’re the ones showing up in a way that actually resonates.

They understand that being everywhere doesn’t mean anything if you’re not in the right places, and that trust isn’t built through repetition, it’s built through context.

PR, when it’s done well, gives you that context.

It puts your brand inside conversations people already care about, in environments they already trust, in a way that feels additive instead of interruptive, and that’s something paid alone can’t do.

And right now, there is more opportunity to do that than most brands are capitalizing on.

The Fine Print

What you’re actually investing in when you invest in PR isn’t coverage.

Its credibility, its positioning, its momentum.

It’s the difference between being a brand people recognize and one they believe in.

Those things build on each other over time, and they make everything else you’re doing work harder, from paid to partnerships to sales. The brands that get it are already doubling down.

A few things getting me through Tax Week…

1. I am moderating this conversation ^^ for Dr. Rachel’s new book, When Life Happens. You can RSVP here

2. Derek told me to watch Imperfect Women on Apple TV. I think these crazy twisty turny shows are my new favorite genre

3. Speaking of perfect, I also just watched the last season of Shrinking, and it really is. It’s so fun seeing Jason Segel in this role, we used to run into him all the time at The Den on Sunset, anyone else?

4. I’m keep[ing up with my reading goals The Wedding People by Alison Espach is on my nightstand

5. I mention things, you ask about them, chances are you can find them HERE in my ShopMy store. This is also a great article about the platform and how they are using HUMANS instead of AI. Look at that!

   If this sparked something for you or your brand, and you'd like to talk about working together, we'd love to hear from you! Find us at ifpcommunications.com or drop us a line at info@ifpcommunications.com.

That’s it from me, as always, thank you for being here, for reading, and for sending me words of encouragement. And don’t forget to tap the lil heart so I can make more friends.

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I started it because after years of building brands, launching products, shaping narratives, and having a pretty clear read on what works and what doesn’t, I needed somewhere to put the things that don’t belong in a client deck.

But it didn’t actually start as a Substack.

We had lost a few clients. Some of it was tied to tariffs, some of it was just the natural churn of this business. At the same time, I was dealing with the loss of two close friends, both very public in a way that made it harder to process quietly.

It was one of those stretches where everything feels unsettled at the same time.

Instead of sitting in it, I did what I always do.

I kept moving.

I’ve always had a bit of a shark mentality when it comes to work. Keep going, keep building, keep pushing forward, because the stillness is where things can start to catch up with you.

So instead of filling the time with busy work, I decided to build something for my team.

A PR bootca…

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But what if someone does the opposite?

What if they step out of the spotlight, take accountability, do the work, and come back with a real understanding of what they did?

Where does that leave them?

In the case of John Galliano, it’s been murky ever since his antisemitic outburst in Le Marais in 2011.

I’ve been thinking about him again. I read Dana Thomas’ Gods and Kings: The Rise and Fall of Alexander McQueen and John Galliano over Thanksgiving, so he was already top of mind when the Zara collaboration was announced.

The response was immediate and not exactly quiet. Some people are excited, some are skeptical, and some are asking a very direct question: Should he still be held accountable for what happened in Paris in 2011?

It’s also not happening in a vacuum. Zara has had its own moments over the years, campaigns and …

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An apology should not be hard, be it from a brand or an individual. Saying sorry is something we learn from a young age, and yet the people in charge still somehow manage to get it wrong.

What happens when the response matters more than the mistake? Recently, we’ve seen from both brands and celebrities how you handle a misstep, or even worse, step right into it, defines everything that follows.

It’s not about when something goes wrong, because that happens all the time. Products fail, people say or do the wrong thing, and things get posted that shouldn’t have been. What comes next is the most important…

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SXSW used to feel like a collision point. You’d walk down the street and run into three different worlds at once: tech founders, bands loading in, TV and film, and media people half-working, half-socializing, all of it overlapping in a way that felt unstructured but somehow very intentional. There was no real separation between those groups, which was the point. It felt messy in a way that created energy.

This year, it felt quieter. Not in attendance, but in intention.

Without a central location and with the convention center under construction, events were spread throughout Austin, not just downtown. Fewer brands showed up, but the ones that did had bigger builds, higher production, and more visible spend. And still, very little actually stayed with you. Not because it was poorly done, but because so much of it felt interchangeable. Like it could have existed anywhere else, and nothing about it would have changed.

Most brands show up to cultural events …

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Starting in seventh grade, I worked for Anna Sui, which felt like the most exciting job a New York kid could possibly imagine. My first show was Fall ’95 in Bryant Park during New York Fashion Week. If you know fashion history even a little, you know what that means. Her front row was the peak of downtown New York. Her clothing came from a moment when the industry still had a soul, before everything became corporatized and optimized for reach.

The strange thing about grow…

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I grew up in New York City in the nineties. My best friends lived in Tribeca, which meant that John and Carolyn were just — around. John John on his bicycle. The two of them walking together outside of Bubby’s with the dog. It wasn’t a sighting, exactly. It was just the neighborhood. They were part of the texture of a specific New York and Tribeca that doesn’t exist anymore: Yaffa’s, El Teddy’s, Harvey Keitel at the bodega on Hudson lending us his cell phone when we didn’t have one, and Robert De Niro on Greenwich Street. Back then, the city felt like it belonged to itself, before everything got louder, more expensive, and more observed.

Watching Love Story has been as much a walk down memory lane as a PR case study. That downtown world, the Tribeca cobblestones, the way people moved through the city like they owned it without needing to perform that they did — it’s gone now. And there’s something about this show, right now, that feels like a co…

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Not because I am or was surprised by their success, but because it brought back something I hadn’t planned on revisiting anytime soon.

We spent so many years being each other’s cheerleaders. Or so I thought.

I wasn’t competing with them, I didn’t even know there was a race. But for a long time, they competed with me. And they made sure I stayed just dependent enough to need them.

Let me be clear: this was a one-sided competition.

We all have this person in our lives and sometimes you don’t see it until they are out of it.

If you’ve ever gone above and beyond for a friend in business and it didn’t feel like a two-way street, this one is for you.

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Walking away isn’t dramatic. It’s quiet. It happens before the contract is signed, before the scope creep, before the resentment sets in.

*Plus a Vermont mini guide at the bottom in case you’re heading out to chase some turns this weekend.

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The real mistake wasn’t the money but the clients I chose. These three questions changed everything.

If you’ve ever said yes to the wrong client just to make rent, this one’s for you.

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