Carol was fun and she's fun to read on Facebook. She's a professional that understands the trends of our industry and works hard to lead her clients toward those trends. Too many are afraid of the changes or they think it's a fad but Carol has a good grip on the fact we've entered a totally new world when it comes to PR.

Meet Carol Ruiz

Carol, how did you get started in the industry?

I fell into it. My degree is in film and TV production. I was teaching editing and documentary film making at Loyola Marymount University and working in the industry on one the first reality shows on the air. I grew frustrated that our PR firm couldn’t manage to get us the exposure we needed. My first major in school was journalism, so I had a good understanding of what attracts the press’s attention. I began writing and distributing press releases about the show and we soon began to get a lot of press coverage. I had grown tired of working in reality television and decided to pursue a job in PR. I got an interview with a PR firm that focused on the real estate industry and got the job. I stayed with this company for two years and then worked for a couple other PR firms as the VP of public relations. During this time, my very wise daughter kept asking me why I didn’t go out on my own and I finally listened to her and took the plunge. I’ve never been happier.

My business is Public Relations and Marketing. I am the principal for public relations and work with Jackie Moss and Scott Posner, who are the principals on the marketing and advertising side of the company (red rocket LA). We do marketing, advertising and PR campaigns for a range of industries, real estate being one of our largest focuses.

There are many companies like yours Carol. Why are you different?

I have thought a lot about this question. For me, PR is all relationship based. I think that’s where we make a difference because we really believe that and live it. Our clients stay with us for a long time because of this. I think one of the biggest compliments I’ve ever received is when a client said that we make him feel like he is our only client. We believe in what our clients do, we come to know them inside and out, and become a part of their team. I think one of the keys to this is that we are really good listeners. Throughout my career, no matter what business I’ve been in, I’ve found that many people often don’t really listen well to their clients and therefore don’t truly comprehend the company’s needs. You need to thoroughly understand the heart and core of any business to make PR work for it. We also take special care to understand the press and to build relationships with them that we can share with our clients. I have always tried to hire former journalists because they really get what makes the press tick and what makes them pay attention to a story.

Although we serve several industries, I have spent much of my 18 years in PR building relationships with real estate and business reporters and editors and in turn making sure my clients benefit from those relationships. I have also spent a lot of time developing connections within our industry. I’m on the conference committee for BIS (the BIA of Southern California’s annual building industry show); for the NAHB I serve on two committees, the Sales & Marketing Ideas Magazine Editorial Advisory Group and the National Sales & Marketing Council’s Marketing Committee. I also belong to the Residential Neighborhood Development Council for the Urban Land Institute. Serving on these committees helps me understand our industry on a deeper level and puts me in contact with incredibly smart people doing forward thinking work in all aspects of our business from land planning to architecture to building and development. I believe in giving back to our industry and serving on committees also allows me to do that.

How would you describe your personal field of expertise?

All aspects of PR, including media relations, forming strategic partnerships, social media, event planning and new business development both for my firm and for my clients.

One of the things that is discussed between myself and all of my interviewees is the changes in the industry. There are so many thoughts and opinions on what is changing and where we're headed. What are your thoughts here?

This downturn is the worst I’ve ever seen. I know there will be fewer home building companies and more consolidation within the industry as we work our way through the recession. I also see home building companies partnering with financial institutions with deep pockets to help them make it through the storm. As far as marketing, we’ve seen drastically reduced budgets, which has led us to rethink marketing strategies for our clients. The $25k+ newspaper ads are becoming a thing of the past and companies are turning to more reasonably priced alternatives, including online marketing. I don’t see those big budgets coming back even when the economy and our industry turn around. We have evolved to include a healthy Social Media practice within our firm and we believe that our industry needs to embrace social media to compete in the future. At a time when social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter are growing exponentially as communications and marketing tools (Facebook saw growth of 200% and Twitter an astounding 1382% in the last year), our industry cannot afford to ignore that their homebuyers, including Baby Boomers and Gen Y’ers, are looking at social media more than at email and traditional ads in larger and larger numbers.


What have you had to overcome to adapt to the market changes?

As I mentioned previously, one of the biggest ways we’ve adapted is to evolve with the Social Media phenomena, including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and Flickr, and use them to great effect for our clients. For instance, we have a client here in LA with a very cool, urban loft project on the Westside. We had been reading about a taco truck that is all the rage in LA and has been all over the news, including online, print and broadcast outlets. The only way to find out where the truck will be at a given time is to check the company’s website or to follow the company’s Twitter stream. Our client’s sales center is located in an area that is surrounded by nearly 2 million s.f. of office space on a street that sees more than 100,000 cars drive by each day. We pitched the location to the owners of the truck and they agreed to give our site a try as a lunch stop. We immediately started to Twitter on our company’s and our client’s twitter accounts that the truck would be making a rare lunch time appearance at the sales center (the taco truck company, which has a huge online following, also twittered the news and posted it on their website). The news went viral very quickly and soon the name of the project was showing up all over the web, including articles on popular food sites that share a similar demographic to our client’s target audience. On the day of the truck’s first visit to the sales center, about 50 people had formed a line onsite before the truck even arrived. The line grew to more than 100 people and never stopped till the truck pulled away in the afternoon. The people in line were getting on their Blackberries and iPhones and sending out the news that the truck was at our location. Besides getting traffic onsite at the project’s sales center, we had people calling in saying they couldn’t make it for the tacos, but they wanted information on the lofts. This is just one example of how powerful social media can be and how we can tap into existing online communities to spread the word about a project.

To follow Carol more closely:
Her LinkedIn Profile
Carol on Twitter
Her Facebook Profile

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