Join Andrei and our guest on today’s episode, Jack Murray, as they will be discussing modern PR and the science behind storytelling in marketing. Jack is the CEO of MediaHQ, a SaaS company of media contacts and a press release distribution platform. But not only he has also released his business book, “The Magic Slides: How to master the art of storytelling for business”, a bestseller in 3 categories in its first week from release.

𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐉𝐚𝐜𝐤:  

𝑊𝑒𝑏𝑠𝑖𝑡𝑒: https://www.murraystory.com/

𝐽𝑎𝑐𝑘 𝑜𝑛 𝐿𝑖𝑛𝑘𝑒𝑑𝐼𝑛: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jackmurrays/

𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐀𝐧𝐝𝐫𝐞𝐢:

𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑢: https://marketiu.com  / https://marketiu.ro   

𝐴𝑛𝑑𝑟𝑒𝑖 𝑜𝑛 𝐿𝑖𝑛𝑘𝑒𝑑𝑖𝑛: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreitiu/   

𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑢 𝑜𝑛 𝐿𝑖𝑛𝑘𝑒𝑑𝑖𝑛: https://www.linkedin.com/company/marketiu   

𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑢 𝑜𝑛 𝑇𝑤𝑖𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑟: https://twitter.com/marketiuagency   

𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑢 𝑜𝑛 𝐼𝑛𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑔𝑟𝑎𝑚: https://www.instagram.com/marketiuagency/  

𝐸𝑚𝑎𝑖𝑙 𝑎𝑡 hello@marketiu.ro

𝐋𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐧 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐞𝐩𝐢𝐬𝐨𝐝𝐞 𝐨𝐧 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐟𝐚𝐯𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦:

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Episode transcript: 

Andrei Tiu  

Hi, there! This is Andrei, and you are on The Marketing Innovation Podcast Show. Our special guest today is Jack Murray. Who is the CEO of Media HQ, a SaaS press release distribution platform that provides media contacts to marketers and media professionals. But not only. He has also released his business book, The Magic Slides: How to Master the Art of Storytelling for Business, which has become an Amazon bestseller in 3 categories in its first week from release. And today we will discuss modern PR, as well as the science behind storytelling in marketing. Jack, welcome to the show! Congrats for the book release. How are you? How's the energy on your front?

Jack Murray  

It's really good today, Andrei! The minute of we finished recording where I'm sitting right now is beside the Atlantic Ocean. And it's very cold. But the minute we finished recording, I'm getting into the ocean for a swim. So I'm very looking forward to our discussion. But I'm also very looking forward to that.

Andrei Tiu  

Crazy, like, how cold is it right there? Because I think it's like below zero degrees?

Jack Murray  

Well, yeah, the water is probably about seven degrees. So yeah, I have a lot of hot water in the tank. So I'll be having a bath when I get back up. But it's like, look, you know, it's great to see it live. And when you go into the ocean and the waves are crashing. So the high tide is in about 20 minutes, and the waves will be crashing over me. So I'm really looking forward to that.

Andrei Tiu  

Crazy man. Okay, nice. Thank you for being on the show today. We already found out an interesting fact about you, looking forward to, you know, picking your brains on PR and storytelling and everything that we just mentioned here, briefly, in the intro, because you have a wealth of experience. You know, you've been in the industry for over 15 years, you've been an entrepreneur for forever, really. So from the beginning of your career. And, you know, as we briefly discussed before the call, your family has been having this background as well. So really looking forward to hearing your thoughts, hearing your story, as well as discuss trends, and maybe tips and tricks that our audience can take away after this episode. First of all, I will let you tell us a bit more about you like: who is Jack, what's your story? What's your background? Maybe a bit about the book a bit about the company as well, as much as you'd like to share at this point.

Jack Murray  

So I would describe myself as a marketeer, an entrepreneur, and a storyteller. And as long as I can remember my family has been involved in business. And if I was to share with the audience to spark that got me involved in business and in storytelling. It's a story that my father used to tell us when we were small. And I have an older sister and a younger brother. Ireland was very poor in the 1880s. And my great grandfather was one of nine children. And they had a very small farm in the west of Ireland. And back then, the British ruling class would have had landlords that would have had small peasant farmers. And my family was to have a small farm holding, and somebody had to do something because they were going to get evicted off the land. And the chosen son was my great grandfather. And a 29 years of age, he left Ireland on a boat for New York. And he arrived into Castle Gardens in New York. And anyone who's seen that movie gangs in New York, it was that era. So like if the disease and the collar and all that didn't get you, the gangs might have gotcha. We don't really know what he got up to but he was massively successful. And he got a business idea in America for a general store. And he came back to our hometown and in 1886 he started this business and kind of bought a whole lot of property and started a milling business and started a sharp and a generator merchants and that business is still run to this day by my brother and my mother. And I suppose it was that story that got me engaged in storytelling. I studied product marketing, in university, I went to work first in a shoe company. Then I decided I want to get deeper in storytelling. And I studied journalism. I worked in political communication then as a young man. And a 30 years of age, I went out and I started my first business. I started Media HQ over 10 years ago. And quickly, I bought a business that was publishing a printed media directory for people to keep in contact with journalists. And it's kind of funny how big the SaaS industry is now. I was watching somebody recently talking about the ads on the Super Bowl, and how they were all SaaS dominated for the first time ever. And, like, we created software as a service platform over 10 years ago, before SaaS was even a thing. Because it was the best way to connect our users with up to date intelligence on journalists. And Media HQ has been a platform for well over 10 years, and has steadily grown. Has gone on an international development pathway. And simply as a product, our mission is to connect our users stories with their audiences. And that could be journalists, it could be podcasts, it could be Instagrammers. And we work as a place to find your audience and then to distribute your pitches your press releases, and to look at your results in your Analytics and to achieve your mission that way. And I suppose, you know, it was true that prison, we help loads of organisations and brands share stories on what you would call an industrial level. And it was through that this concept of the magic slice, which is, if you can imagine two circles, where one is what you want to talk about and the other is what people are interested in. Where they intersect is your magic slice. And it's your magic slice of attention. And it's that magic place where the attention of your audience is completely aligned with your intention. Their attention and your intention are matched. And that's what I wrote my book about. In addition to running Media HQ, I have a storytelling agency and I work with brands on how to find that place where the attention span of the people that they're trying to communicate with, is perfectly aligned with what they want for those people. And yeah, I love marketing. And I love the innovation space around SaaS where you can imagine something and you can build it really quickly. And you can engage with your customers and see how they react was

Andrei Tiu  

And how was like launching, you know, basically a business in a category that was just kind of forming right then? You're a bit of an early adopter. If you're one of the last to go there. What was the space 10, 15 years ago? 

Jack Murray  

It's really interesting in that, like,you'll get some technical founders and I'm not a technical founder, I'm a marketeer. I am passionate about our customers. And I am always the first customer for our product. So I'm a native public relations person, I'm a native storyteller. My instinct is to tell stories and to connect them with audiences. So you know, in one regard, I build a product for myself. And the other thing, from an early adopter point of view that I find fascinating is that we've always been a mission driven business. So our mission is to help our users connect our story with our audience. And that's agnostic of a way or a means to do it. So when I boug