Interview with Terri R. Jones
Access Inc.
by: Danielle A. Pendleton

The Blacksburg Planet sat down with vice president and the head of public relations for the Roanoke based advertising agency, Access Inc. Terri R. Jones joined Access Inc. in 2003, bringing with her 20 years of experience in crisis communication, public affairs, national media relations, marketing communication and corporate branding. Jones heads the public relations side of the young but every accomplished Access Inc. The interview that follows is a selection of the 20 minute interview with Terri R. Jones.

Q: What is your role here at Access Inc.?

Jones: “My side of the business is just the public relations aspect, a very narrow role. I do some account services for accounts that I brought in and because they know me; they continue to work with me. Because my background is in Healthcare and pharmaceutical public relations mostly, I do end up kind of either managing those accounts or acting as a consultant for those accounts. Primarily I am purely public relations, meaning media relations, special events, and legislation consulting. We do a lot of research in preparation for a campaign including legislation relations which we do so that we can measure pre and post results. I probably spend, however, about 80 percent of my time in media relations.”

Q: What type of experience is in your background?

Jones: “I started working when I was 23-years-old. My first job was as the director of internal communication for the Rockwell International facility.”

Q: What makes Access different from other advertising agencies?

Jones: “The real big difference in an agency is that you do the same things for a lot of clients rather than being in a corporate position where you do a number of different things for one client. I think what makes Access different is, well, three things I guess. I think that Access has, I guess maybe I can say this because I am not part of it, but they have unusually exceptional creative people. That is where all the awards come from, some of the most unbelievably talented designers. They only actually choose people that have that level of exceptional talent to work here and that is how it has always been. They would rather be short staffed than have someone that wasn’t performing at that top level. That is one difference, the other difference I think is our commitment to the community, working for a non-profit and giving them really huge discounts. This business philosophy of helping out the non-profits is not adopted elsewhere. The third thing is Access got its name because our clients call anybody in the agency they need. In most agencies you have one account manager and all of your communication goes to that person. That is good most of the time and we do have people that are designated to do that some but if I have a problem with my website,  I do not go to my account manager at Access, I call the website guy.”

Q: When you first came to Access, did you come directly into the head of public relations?

Jones: “Yes.”

Q: And were you in public relations at the agency that you came from to join Access?

Jones: “ Yes, but in the other agency I worked at there was a larger public relations group and a smaller advertising group but here we have a smaller public relations group and then a larger advertising group. Whenever you have a client, like an ad client. I will give you an example, like our client Brandon Oaks, not only do we do television, brochures, for them but we also do print ads for them. When they had to announce a new edition, they did not have anyone there to help them do that and work the media, I do special events for Brandon Oaks, and not every event that they do but I do something they call the Spotlight Series. We work hand-in-hand to get those kinds of things done.”

Q: How do you, the public relations side of the business work with the design side?

Jones: “Sometimes I will or one of the designers will be doing an ad for one of my events then other times I will be working media for a gala they designed the invitations for. I mean it’s an important component to having an agency and the way I generally work. I am the only full-time person here but when I am really busy I have about three freelancers that have about a minimum of three years experience. They are folks that are either retired or have young children at home and don’t really want to work a 8 a,m. to 5 p.m. job, and I know that when I call them for a particular industry they will be able to step into that role and work for me and then step back out again, so its kind of a win-win for them.”

Q: What is your typical day here at Access?

Jones: “Tell you what I will do; I will look at yesterday’s planner. Let’s see I started out by writing a news release for a client for an event. The event is going to happen in November. Then I wrote a newsletter for a client. I had actually already wrote it but yesterday I helped the designer lay some things out, edit and make changes and then got it to the client. I worked with the speaker for an upcoming event. I am doing the PR for the Smith family that were just recently in the news and the reason I am doing that is because I am on retainer for Gentry Locke Rakes & Moore, the law firm personally connected to the Smith family. And some of my work as a retainer is I am handling all the media for that family. So I had to call the father (yesterday) to get an update on the children and then get that medical update distributed to all the media. Then it was back to the Brandon Oaks newsletter. Then I wrote a release for a client in Lynchburg who received an award from an event in San Francisco but the headquarters of the company was in Saint Louis. So I had to interview that vice president of sales to get information and pictures. Then we answered to media requests for a company we are working for in Blacksburg. The company is making finger-printing equipment that gives a FBI-certified fingerprint slot. I did his releases then pitched the trade for him, because it’s a new product, he wanted to go into the security and law-enforcement trades, so I pitched that story over the last couple of days and now the requests are coming in for high-resolution digital photography for that client, so we worked some national trade pitches (yesterday). I had an open house to go to, that was an open house I promoted for a different client, Roanoke Higher Education Center. Then I started work on some brochure copy for another client that is like a subsidiary of the law firm that I am a retainer to, they are primarily focused in business so this is a financial products brochure and my minor is in finance. So it was something that I could write rather than the normal copywriter.

I guess those are probably pretty typical days… you know on any given day I will generally have a certain amount of news releases that either need to be written or pitched. But then something like the Smith family came up on Tuesday and I dropped everything that I was doing and I worked media all day that day primarily because the article in the paper was very small and had a lot of errors in it, it wasn’t their fault, it was that they get most of their information from police reports which can be erroneous at times and these kids are going through this horrible thing and they are setting up a trust fun for them, unless we could keep a certain level of media activity going through the week, the interest in that trust fund would have died pretty quickly. So I was jumping in the car, picking up school pictures of the children, bringing them back and getting them scanned and to the printer and to the television stations. I mean those, because my favorite thing to do is crisis communication, those days are a lot of fun for me. Just sitting in front of the computer writing newsletters and stuff is less fun but that is also part of the job.”

Q: You really love your job?

Jones: “ I do, there are days that I don’t, I can’t say oh this is the dream job because sometimes a brochure will have a misprint, you’ll get a call and there is that kind of struggle, or even worse lets say I have been working on a story for a client, I’ll give you a really good example, I had a great story about a client with the business journal and they were so pleased, but the cut line underneath one of the pictures which was like the most obvious thing on the page was not only erroneous but it was a real insulting thing to say and it was totally wrong. Then basically all the shit comes tumbling downhill because you can’t really argue with an editor and that time was probably the one time that I pointed out to the editor that this really was wrong and that is the only time in the last five years that I have done that because you don’t want to argue with people that buy ink by the case. So those are kind of the down days but the good days are when you get that call from the dad in tears up in Charlottesville saying ‘I have had so much support here and people are giving money and the giving of their time, and they are bringing food’ and he is crying on the phone because he can’t believe that people who he doesn’t even know are being so nice. Well there were people, and I don’t want to give the impression that I was the only cause of that, I was one piece of that and being a piece of doing something that really changes somebody’s’ life, that is where public relations gets to be a lot of fun.”

            Terri R. Jones gave the Planet insight into the world of public relations and into a young company in Roanoke called Access Inc. Taking us through her daily schedule and examples of what makes her job so interesting; Terri Jones also introduced us to the challenges of her job. While faced with challenges and awards alike, Jones has not faded in her love for her career. With almost 30 years experience in public relations, Jones is an experienced professional who now has joined a young team of advertisers and designers. Access Inc. is building a reputation with its name and with its head of public relations, Terri R. Jones. Jones along with Access will continue to build on their award-winning structure of only the best people and the all-access idea that makes them unique.