PBN 2021 Leaders & Achievers Awards
Betty Galligan | President, Newberry Public Relations & Marketing Inc.
As president of Newberry Public Relations & Marketing Inc. in East Providence, Betty Galligan works to best serve clients amid a shrinking media landscape.
In recent years, she has guided clients toward self-publishing via blogs and social media platforms. Now, artificial intelligence technology is impacting the quality of public relations writing.
“It’s like robotic surface writing for keywords, with no depth,” Galligan said, making it more important that companies with good stories let them shine.
The COVID-19 pandemic presented her company and team of five with a new set of challenges, but it was nothing they couldn’t handle. With health care clients – including physicians’ groups, a nursing home and assisted living facilities – Newberry PR specializes in crisis communications, so the company was ready.
Considered an essential communications business, Galligan’s office stayed open during the pandemic, helping health care facilities with continuous email communications, signage and social media updates on U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines, visitor restrictions and safety protocols.
“It meant staying calm and adhering to guidelines,” Galligan said. “Our goal was to bring the client closer to their own customer – the patient and the families of patients. We had to consider our tone and our voice in writing those communications.”
Galligan is not one to sit idle, as she also serves as president of the Association of Marketing Professionals of Rhode Island and is the lead singer in a rock band.
Her latest project involves putting her 35-plus years in the business to work to help others, with The PR Finishing School. A set of 10 online learning modules, it’s a way for people who are new to public relations to learn the business or for companies to supplement training for new employees. Students are assigned homework, Galligan said, and must pass a module to go on to the next one.
“Each student gets assigned a career mentor,” she said. “We want the completion certificate that they get to have meaning.”
