Check Out Raymond Diaz’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Raymond Diaz.

Hi Raymond, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I began my career in public relations in 2004. Actually let’s take it all the way back to my start in mass communications in the summer of 92 with a gig as an on air personality for a country western station at Lake Isabella in the Kern River Valley. At the time I was going to community college for a two year degree in Radio and TV production. My education included an internship at UPN 13 Special Events under the guidance of Emmy winning producer Dave Goetz, and what I consider a prestigious internship at KTLA 5 News with Ray Gonzalez for his Community Affairs program. I felt it important to start my story with history in TV and radio production because it helps a public relations / media relations professional to know what the media wants when it’s time to pitch a story idea.

I continued my education, transferring to Cal State University Fullerton, and earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in the field of Mass Communications with an emphasis in Public Relations. Possibly the most important class of that program was my internship with Euro RSCG Magnet where I met some of my first mentors, in particular Greg Young, and Marcie Perez who I would work alongside again in my second PR job. As good mentors they have advised me on both my career and life, sometimes just being there to uplift me with a kind word. Thinking about the HPRA-LA PRemio awards ceremony where my work was recognized for an award, but somehow I was still feeling down. Marcy noticed from across the room and sent a perfect text. Thanks Marcie!

After graduation I was recruited by Current PR in Costa Mesa. They dealt mainly with entertainment related clients like United Media Licensing, think Peanuts, Charlie Brown, Snoopy on high end vintage tees, and Tommy Lynch, a pioneering producer of tween age TV programming. With those two clients I was able to make great connections in entertainment news, especially one Noela Hueso at the Hollywood Reporter who, after a brief stint at Business-To-Business PR firm, would direct me to Gabriel Reyes of the PR company Reyes Entertainment. I state that my time in B2B PR was brief and challenging, I do prefer more entertainment themed clients; however, I did experience some success in that field, with one of my media placements being honored with a PRSA-OC Protos award. Allow me to brag because I got my client in the Financial Times, front page above the fold.

Working with Gabriel at Reyes Entertainment was great. In the beginning he gave me clients like the WWE, PBS and Fiesta Broadway. Having such recognizable clients with fascinating stories to tell made my job easy. I was able to land them big time media hits over and over again. Highlights of my time at Reyes included a feature article on WWE superstar Rey Mysterio in People en Español magazine, landing show reviews for PBS in practically every major Spanish language newspaper across the country and again placing my client Fiesta Broadway on the front page of my favorite salmon colored news paper, the Financial.

Alas the good times would not last, companies created internal PR teams, non profit organizations experienced budget cuts, and all of America suffered a recession. Fortunately while at Reyes, I met and became friends with Mariluz Gonzalez, owner of Vesper PR. On the day Gabriel had to let me go, I posted my bad news on social media, and within minutes Mariluz responded saying she was swamped with clients, asked if I’d like to join her and I’ve been her right hand man ever since. That was in 2012 and I’ve spent the past decade working with Mariluz and the team at Vesper PR simply loving all of our clients, and the work we do for them.

At Vesper we really excel at getting news media coverage for multi cultural family friendly events. Our long term clients include the Hola Mexico Film Festival, La Feria de los Moles, Festival Chapin, the East LA Mexican Independence Day Parade, and Levitt Pavilion, with some of our newer clients like the CA Watermelon Festival looking to be with us for years to come as well. Our team at Vesper is small and we all share responsibilities with none of us really having a professional title except for our “jefa” Mariluz. However, if I were to give myself a title it would be Media Relations Director as Mariluz kind of depends on me to emphasize the story angles of our clients, and match them with the news reporter who would be most interested in said angle. She also likes my writing.

That’s basically my story. My close friends will be pleased to note that I didn’t even mention my life changing physical injury. Oh wait, oops.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
My road has been smooth enough although it has been unnecessarily long. That’s my fault for not knowing my path early on and never checking in with my school guidance councilor, at least never checking in until finally deciding that I wanted to transfer to a CSU. It’s true that part of those so-called wasted years were spent rehabbing from a work related injury, an injury that left me with permanent partial paralysis of my left foot and an incredibly wobbly knee. In fact my knee just buckled a few minutes ago and I’ll feel that for the rest of the day. However, the good thing about those leg injuries is that I get to walk with a cool cane making me easy to spot in a crowd, and I do like to stand out. The other cool thing about that long road is that the extra time spent on my path gave me extra classes to learn from, gave me extra internship experiences and placed me in the elder position during both school group projects and work place team building assignments.

I’ll sum up my long road in this way. I’m a big fan of professional wrestling, or as I like to call it “pro-rasslin” and a common phrase referenced in behind the scenes interviews is that “there are only two things real in that business, the money and the miles.” I think that’s a good way to look at life in general. There may be many things in life as real as the money and the miles, but in my case, the money and the extra perhaps unnecessary miles are the most real to me.

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I’ve been searching for the most concise way to describe my career in PR since I began taking classes for that degree. The first challenge is that there are so many avenues to take in Public Relations; however the destination is the same. A PR professional seeks to build, manage, and maintain a positive public view of their client. Now, I realize that’s a very abstract description of Public Relations and it still doesn’t explain what I do. Stated much more simply, I’m a promo man. Like the Rolling Stones sang, I’m the Under Assistant West Coast Promo Man, sitting here thinking just how sharp I am. Sorry, had to do it. That’s me though, I am the promo man, I promote my clients and I do that by inspiring mass media outlets that being your favorite morning news show, favorite talk radio program, favorite online magazine, favorite podcaster, favorite youtube or tik tok personality to to feature my clients on their shows their programs their columns.

Usually when explaining my job this is the point when the person I’m explaining to will ask if I am the one writing the story, the one reporting, the one filming, recording or the one producing. No, I’m the one who inspires those persons to write, report, film, produce, etc. My tools used to accomplish this feat are the press release, the email pitch, followed by the phone call all of which I write myself, although the press release is sometimes already available from the client. The key to my success is knowing how busy my media contacts are, as they are known to read at least 300 emails per day. I need to know what interest them and more importantly what interests their audience. I don’t want to waste my media contacts time with a story out of their “beat,” nor do I want to waste my time pitching the wrong reporter. Speaking of wasting time, and with reference to reporters reading over 300 emails per day, I am always working with the three second rule in mind. That means whether listening to my pitch on the phone, or reading my pitch via email the reporter is making a decision every three seconds to hang up, click out, or preferably to keep on reading/listening to what I have to say. Then when the reporter, producer, or editor say yes to my story idea well that’s just the halfway point of y job being done. Now I must continue being an inspirational muse by making their job easier. That means providing the most useful information, images and sometimes even pre-producing the interview segment by providing a sample of questions, answers, b-roll (footage) of past events and details on what items will be brought into studio.

I also have to prepare the client for their interview. So many times the client has a tremendous story tell, yet they forget key parts, or they get sidetracked during the interview, or they can be too comfortable, and become too informative (think TMI), or sometimes the person can be full of energy then freeze up on camera, or simply forget they are on radio and that no one can see their head nod yes. So I do my best to prepare my client for their interview then during the interview if needed I am nearby off camera directing my client with hand signals like the guy on an aircraft carrier signaling the fighter pilot ready for takeoff.

To be clear, I can not do my job without the wonderful people who provide our great nation, and sometimes even providing the world with the news and information needed to live. That’s no overstatement I truly believe the news media, be they of the legacy media, or new media, be they reporting on politics or entertainment, reporting the weather or whether or not, these people are doing their best to give us the facts and the fact is I am proud to call them colleagues and even prouder to call them friend.

Can you share something surprising about yourself?
I think what most surprises both friends, family and colleagues is that I have never learned to speak Spanish. Notice I said that I don’t speak Spanish, not that I don’t understand the language. Often the surprise comes after several moments of cross dialogue with someone speaking to me in Spanish and my reply coming in English. Then at some point I have to stop the conversation and inform the person I’m communicating with that I don’t speak Spanish, and that I’ve been using my limiting knowledge of specific words to piece together the what was being said and how to respond. With my limited knowledge I might even provide my response in “broken Spanish,” but there always comes a point where I’ve reached my limits. The surprise is also based upon the fact that my PR work is done with clients who’s audience is Spanish speaking and that I’m often working with Spanish language media. Also my friends and family are all bilingual and it is they who most often engage me in the Spanish/English conversations. Again these conversations always reach a roadblock where either the dialogue was too fast, or incorporated a word I had no experience with yet. Believe me though I have tried to learn the language, taking multiple courses both in a school setting and at home via the latest self help teachings. The closest I’ve come to really learning the language was during vacations in Costa Rica. I’ve twice vacationed in the country, both times spending two weeks in local non touristy towns. Both times I was engulfed in the language and I either I learned to say what I wanted or I went without. Unfortunately, or fortunately, here in Los Angeles most of the Spanish speaking media members that I deal with speak English and they are kind enough to accommodate me. Either that or they don’t have the time to deal with my broken Spanish.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.vesperpublicrelations.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thebigcoolo/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/raymond.diaz.90
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/raymond-diaz-9302b87
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@raymonddiaz3783

Image Credits
Credit all images courtesy Vesper Public Relations