One hundred words, one hundred seconds and countless stories told quickly. Those are the concepts behind a new project at Ghidotti Communications, the Little Rock PR firm, which has introduced The Arkansas 100, an email newsletter with an initial audience of 21,000.
“The idea is 100-word stories or 100-second videos. Short content,” said Natalie Ghidotti, who credited colleagues in Atlanta, North Carolina and Oklahoma with getting the notion started in their home states.
She and her associate Kathryn Heller are curating the newsletter, featuring 15 stories per email, twice a month. Two other teammates are Maeghen Carter, a recent Harding University graduate described by Ghidotti as “an assistant editor, the day-to-day person,” and Jeff Dailey, son of former Little Rock Mayor Jim Dailey, who heads his own production firm and is doing the video work.
“We come across interesting stories all the time, and we pitch some of those to the media,” said Ghidotti. “But I wanted an outlet for things of interest. So we have a website where all these stories will be archived,” TheArkansas100.com.
Not all will feature clients, Ghidotti said. “Now if a client has interesting news, of course we’ll put it in there. But the stories have to pass a test of relevance and interest.” The first installment featured topics ranging from cellphone rudeness to Warwick Sabin’s take on the merger of the Arkansas Regional Innovation Hub and Winrock International.
Ghidotti said busy professionals will appreciate the brief format. The project, she said, also reflects the changing PR world. “Twenty years ago, a PR shop was literally me just pitching you a story. Now it’s creating content and getting it directly to your audiences. Media relations will always be a big part of PR, but through Facebook and Snapchat and Twitter and Pinterest and whatever you can name, you can go directly to people now.”
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