Q&A: Publicity Wizard Jalila Singerff On The Vital PR Rules For 2025

Forbes

5 hours ago

Jalila Singerff, director at Jive PR, takes us through the current PR rules and how they apply to so ... More many business fields.
One of my absolute favorite stories of all time involves Elvis Presley and Wilt Chamberlain. It was told to me by close Presley friend and associate Jerry Schilling. As Schilling told the amazing yarn he had met Chamberlain and invited the basketball legend to one of Presley's shows in Vegas. He told Presley that Chamberlain would be in the audience and asked him to give proper due to his fellow icon.
Presley however seemed indifferent to Chamberlain being there, making Schilling incredibly nervous. During the show though Presley shouted out the NBA great from the stage and then invited him backstage, where they reportedly had a great encounter.
Afterwards, Schilling asked Presley, who had been joking with the feigned indifference about where he had acquired his knowledge of Chamberlain and this is the quote that has always stuck with me. According to Schilling, Presley looked at him and said, 'Number one always watches out for number one.'
I love both that quote and that life lesson. When you meet someone who is truly great at and loves what they do there are valuable things to be gleaned from them. Look at publicist extraordinaire Jalila Singerff, a Toronto-based maestro at her craft, who currently works as a director at Jive PR.
PR, Social, TikTok, UGC Marketing Agency | Growing Consumer Brands | Jive PR + Digital
The lessons are especially insightful from Singerff, as the traits learned from publicity – telling a story, developing relationships, building trust, the value of authenticity – apply to just about any field.
I was shocked talking to the thoroughly charming, completely engaging and vibrant Singerff (she prides herself on creating a human connection, pointing out that is a big key to success in publicity, a client-based field) how much the rules, for example, of crafting a successful ad campaign mirror breaking a new artist in music.
PR is, like so many fields in 2025, evolving greatly and rapidly. But going back to that human connection, when you meet someone like Singerff, who possesses genuine warmth and sincerity, you just trust them more. It's the same reason music recommendations from friends who know your taste mean the most.
Over the course of an incredibly entertaining hour, Singerff fascinatingly walked me through PR in 2025, as well as some very entertaining stories from her travels and decade plus in the business.
Steve Baltin: Where do you feel like you got your instincts for PR and the relationships you have formed?
Jalila Singerff: I'm always learning and evolving, but I'd like to believe I'm carefully honing in on my superpower of deeply connecting with people across many walks of life. I grew up in a family from Buenos Aires and have had the luxury of working with some of the most innovative and strategic minds in the business. That balance — of human connection and high-level strategy — is what drives everything I do. I spent years living in cities like Montréal, Vancouver, Miami, Spain, and Buenos Aires, and developed what few in the industry truly have: a deep, lived understanding of cultural nuance. Every city taught me how people engage with storytelling differently, how values show up in fashion, music, politics, or even how a crowd reacts to art. It makes you listen more closely. And that intuition shapes how I craft campaigns today. Whether I'm backstage at a party talking with Jack White and Joaquin Phoenix or helping a founder tell their story for the first time, I'm always trying to understand the soul of what they're building or who they are. Becoming friends is the real lottery. And it's not just a soundbite, it's how Jive builds long-term trust with clients, media and audiences.
Baltin: What is your business background and how has your role evolved?
Singerff: My early days are rooted in fashion, having launched global campaigns across 12 countries for an international fashion brand, dressing icons like Jerry Hall, managing countless red carpets and runway shows in Europe, to overseeing shoots at Condé Nast's WIRED studios (yes, for a paleontology-meets-pop-culture piece because I also rep world-class museums). I love the unexpected figures, I'm genuinely attracted to that duality. I like to think of my career as a blend of creative instincts and commercial know-how. I worked with Lululemon founder Chip Wilson, helping build out the PR strategy for his documentary, and had the honor of chatting with fashion institutions like Alexander McQueen's team on immersive brand activations. Not to mention geeking out on branding with the CEO of GAP at Shoptalk or grabbing a coffee with the Everything Is Delicious legend Philip Rosenthal (to wholesomely chat about his dogs, and just life, not his food show), I've been told I bring a sense of ease and authenticity into a room and I take that to heart but it's always driven by a deep belief in people and the stories that connect us. Also, I actually care and happen to believe that connection is the most powerful form of currency. That ethos is also what led Jive to give back, taking on pro bono work with Cancer Cartel, a nonprofit helping people in cancer treatment deal with the financial burdens of life-saving care. Those women are brilliant. We treated their campaign like we would any high-level fashion or lifestyle client, because they deserve that level of storytelling and spotlight. I want to be the person brands call when they need not just visibility, but credibility and a cultural footprint. We're not pitching products. We're positioning purpose.
Baltin: What does branding mean to you in publicity now? And how does it fall into your job description, which I imagine has changed so much over the years?
Singerff: You're right. It used to be all about pitching and letting clients know, 'Okay, we have your messaging, we're creating the story, we're going to pitch it, now we're going to place it.' There's a simplicity in there that still exists, that still resonates, but it's all about creating a cultural moment now. Cultural moments and cultural resonance, those are the key words that every agency should be moving forward with, and they should be spearheading every campaign with that in mind, because it's not just about coverage anymore. You need to create a narrative that's cutting through noise and directly plugging into what audiences truly care about. If your campaign is rooted in just relevance, that's great. Then you're already off to a good start.
Baltin: It is very similar to the problem with breaking a new artist in music. How do you do that with so much out there at this point?
Singerff: I think you need a really clear narrative. And I know that it's easy to say, but it has to be something emotionally resonant, media-worthy, and true to the brand's DNA. So, when we build around that and you align it with a smart channel mix -- earned press, story, social first storytelling, influencer amplification, which is really big now, and sometimes even collaborating with brands or doing some sort of immersive experience activation -- those all ladder out to the same mission, which is driving impact and doing it with intention.
Baltin: The most important thing for artists is authenticity. When you're working with brands how do you keep the authenticity?
Singerff: Influencer marketing in 2025 is a must. And I know that comes with possibly some angry connotations, but it's becoming a precision tool. So, if you can match the right creator with the right message and back it up with smart whitelisting, you're not just hoping for the ROI (Return on Investment), you're actually completely engineering it. That's where performance PR comes in. That's somewhat of a new term and it's something that is a newer element that all campaigns and all agencies and all brands should be incorporating into every single campaign that they're heading. And that's really where we live at Jive. I want to talk about a brand that we did this with, which was Daiya Foods, the vegan cheese brand. We did an influencer campaign, and we did it with precision in ROI. And we ended up targeting micro macro influencers to authentically share the Daiya plant-based story. We did it by unlocking this organic buzz and we addressed real consumer concerns. One of their real consumer concerns was that their vegan cheese didn't taste that great. So, we completely tapped into it. We asked influencers just to talk about their experience and say like, 'Yeah, it didn't taste that great. This is why they've redone their recipe and redid their formula for it to taste better.' That's authentic. That's also just exposing the reality of concerns and shifting perceptions. And then we ignited this whole social conversation that went viral, and we delivered millions of engagements and impressions with a really low CPC (Cost Per Click). It was very successful and going back into your question on authenticity, there is, I feel a really great formula that works once you find it. It's really just understanding the brand and matching it with the right creators.
Baltin: What are some of the brands that you've worked with? How do you balance it all and make sure that every campaign is different and not just following a formula because vegan cheese is not going to be the same as the dinosaur museum or an escape game.
Singerff: Yeah, I've done PR for a lot. You're absolutely correct. There's an element of leaning into nostalgia. That's incredible and it's having its own moment right now. We're seeing Nike, Airbnb, Duolingo, Patagonia, they're all tapping into the same patterns. Nostalgia in a campaign. Not just throwbacks just for the sake of the throwback, but the throwback taps into an emotional equity. Using the past to say something really bold about the future. If that's a really retro, cool campaigns that hits Gen Z, or the reboot of a legacy brand, or Nike bringing back all those football players for a commercial they're doing right now, Ronaldinho and a few other ones are in there, it resonates and it hits deep. That creates the layers of storytelling and that is what makes a brand campaign successful. That's the blend of the cultural fluency, creator strategy, earned instincts. It's all about data analysts, storytelling, even kind of just being like a trend hunter or trend jacking, you have to move fast. A new cycle doesn't wait for anybody. Neither does the algorithm. So, the campaign has to have a little bit of depth, speed, a little bit of soul, a little bit of story, and it's going to land.
Baltin: What have been your favorite campaigns that you worked on? And why did you go from fashion to an agency?
Singerff: When you're at the agency side of things, you are at the center point of PR evolving. You are seeing it from every direction. You're working with so many different voices of brands and tones. That puts you in a position to automatically have to understand so many types of ways of building a brand's DNA and executing it and it should be done with awareness into building ROI and a smart campaign. So, you need to, and this exists for all industries, whether it be fashion immersive experiences or music, there's a blueprint that works and you pivot and change to fit the specific industries. But all smart campaigns need to align with a launch timeline, conversion goals, final stages. They all need to use analytics to inform media pitching and message performance. The essence of creating a strong story will live on in whatever brand you're working with. It's just understanding how to turn on that cultural listening. What we do really well at Jive is that we're constantly plugged in. We are looking at any trending moments and that's from TikTok to CNN, to very different channels saying very different things in very different ways, but they are tapping into their own audiences that are going to resonate with some of our brands. Again, the beauty of an agency, you're working with a huge wide range of people. Understanding the media shifts is a really big thing that we talk about. There are new platforms coming up every day. There's huge turnover in newsrooms. There's a lot of AI assisted platforms and tools which you lean into, and audience sentiment is also huge. Social listening, creator communities, creator economy, the comment sections. There are a lot of cultural conversations happening. Campaigns often have to lead to emotion and some sort of narrative, but they have to just build earned media moments into everything they do. And I think that exists, whether it be an artist or a brand or a museum opening. They all share the same approach to building a smart campaign.
Baltin: What successful campaigns have you enjoyed? What kind of brands or companies do you like working with?
Singerff: I really enjoyed working with the museum. There's actually quite a few that I've enjoyed. I've worked now with so many diverse sets of sectors and spaces and that comes with its own set of thought leaders and its own substance and just different ways of building in longevity with different clients. But the museum, which is the Edelman Fossil Park and Museum, what was really unique about that experience is that we started working with them a full year ahead of its grand opening. That's a pretty long runway, which is a huge luxury to have, and it's a massive strategic advantage. So, it allowed us to fully immerse ourselves in the brand, understand its voice, understand its cultural significance, but also they have a scientific significance. We could build a deeply layered narrative that we could flex across a lot of different media verticals. The process of that was so enjoyable. I personally loved working with them. We executed something that not all campaigns get, but we've had three really deliberate phases, which was the tease, launch, and sustained phase. They each have their own goals or messaging, their own press opportunities, but it allowed us to do a lot of real-time media hooks. And we got to tap into a lot of different types of media platforms and caliber of media throughout each phase. So, for example, the launch phase saw all of the top tier national editors because they got to come in and do exclusive walks of the museum -- New York Times, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, NBC, the front page of USA Today. And now that we're in the sustained phase we've started working with a lot of consumer lifestyle and entertainment media. That's because we're focusing on converting ticket sales so that takes us into Buzzfeed and The Today Show we secured a segment with Late Night with Seth Meyers. We got a mention on the Joe Rogan podcast. So, the narrative shifts. It's a different group of outlets. When you're working with a product, like a museum, the story is then driven through the actual product itself. So, you're getting the product in people's hands. It's a tangible approach. You're sending it to key journalists. You're sending it to key influencers. Or you can send the journalist to the museum. The goal is the same, you want them to experience it. You want them to have some sort of one-on-one touch point with it so that they can create their own opinion about it, they can approach it in a way that's authentic to them and that's what makes the best story.
Baltin: Going back to the opening question, why publicity, how'd you get into this?
Singerff: I started off in business marketing. I actually was going to start off in fashion design and then I had a change of heart, and I went into business marketing. I started interning at magazines and I interned at a travel magazine. I was heading up the food section and I did an internship with a fashion blog website. This was in 2008, so it was the time that they were all really surfacing and becoming big; I coordinated all the photoshoots and production side of things. I minored in journalism. So, that's the area I thought I was going to go into. I got an internship with a Canadian woman's wear brand called Joseph Ribkoff in Montreal on their PR team. After just a couple of weeks, they offered me the job and I was off. My career in PR started then.
Baltin: What did you like about it?
Singerff: What I love about PR is that I'm still working with magazines and publishers and journalists, and I'm still getting to create stories and create the narratives, but I'm on another side of it, which back then, I don't think I knew existed. I didn't know what that would mean, that it would put all of my interests in this perfectly aligned way that actually was a career for me. It was just a happy accident that I ended up in PR and then I realized, 'Oh, I still get to work with all the people I've been working with up until this point, but from a different perspective. I loved it. I fell in love with PR from day one. I started off in fashion PR. I was traveling to Europe multiple times a year. I was doing the shows in Europe. I was working with stylists and photographers and lots of editors and fashion magazines and creating stories out of clothing. I just fell in love with the process of branding and getting to tell a brand's story. I also fell in love with traveling and getting to connect with so many different kinds of people. That is a huge plus of PR, of marketing in general, being in the industry and having the opportunity to meet as many people as you do and it's a big passion of mine. Any publicist would probably say the same thing. We're social butterflies.
Baltin: What do you want to achieve as a publicist?
Singerff: You ultimately want to feel really content and proud of your own work and you want to make sure you're doing everything ethically and you're doing it in a way that is delivering a lot of pride for the person that you're representing. So being successful is accomplishing that and having the ability to do your job and do it great, and instill confidence in others that are watching you do it because I think leading by example and having some sort of positive impact on others is one of the highest forms of feeling proud of your work and just telling great f**king stories with great people. That's successful to me.