Welcome to Inside the Industry, a new member feature series from the PRSA Entertainment & Sports Section highlighting the professionals, perspectives and personalities that make up our community. Whether you work directly in sports and entertainment communications or simply share an interest in the community, this series aims to strengthen relationships, expand professional networks and celebrate the people behind the stories, events, brands and experiences that bring audiences together.
This week, we're highlighting Nicole Davis, Chair Elect on the PRSA Entertainment & Sports Section Executive Committee.
What’s one sports or entertainment PR moment, campaign, or crisis you still think about today, and why?
September 11, 2001 stopped tourism cold overnight. I was working in marketing at the Georgia Department of Economic Development, and suddenly the question became how to get people moving again, not just logistically, but emotionally.
Our team helped create a campaign built around family travel and giving something directly back to Georgians, a Georgia State Parks program and a “you get a check” model that reframed tourism spending as reinvesting in your own state. It worked. It won awards. But what stays with me most is what came after.
The Georgia Peach branding work our team helped build consensus around eventually became part of the cultural and legislative groundwork that helped transform Georgia into what people would later call the Hollywood of the East. Getting stakeholders from the mountains to the coast to agree on a single identity felt nearly impossible at the time. For a while, though, we built something real.
And somehow, it all started with a rainbow, "techno," peach.
If you could work any major event, tour, championship, premiere, or media moment in history, what would it be?
Lollapalooza. Specifically the early 90s run. The Liz Phair era. The moment alternative became a verb and Gen X women finally had something that felt like ours.
I was there in spirit and nowhere in body. I was too sensible, too responsible, too convinced practicality was a personality trait instead of a survival mechanism. I watched that entire cultural shift from a very safe distance and have never fully forgiven myself for it.
The music, the chaos, the collision of everything that defined my generation creatively, and I opted out. If I could go back and work that tour, even handing out water bottles or running cables, I would do it without a moment's hesitation.
What’s something people outside the industry would be surprised to learn about your role?
Cultural journalism and memoir writing are PR. Full stop.
Nobody frames it that way, but the mechanism is identical. You tell a story so compelling that someone rearranges their life to experience the thing you described.
There is not a blues guitarist alive who doesn’t want to make a pilgrimage to the Crossroads in Clarksdale, Mississippi. Graceland still draws millions every year. Without the story of Elvis, it is just a house with jungle plants climbing the basement walls and a billiards room covered floor to ceiling in pleated red paisley fabric, including gathered fabric wrapped around whatever lighting fixture was hanging over the pool table.
At ten years old, staring into that room, I learned the phrase: “This is what happens when rednecks get money.”
I have used that line ever since.
The story creates the destination. It always has.
What’s one fun fact most people in the section probably don’t know about you?
I have a photograph of myself as a baby being held by Coach Paul “Bear” Bryant.
Growing up in Centre, Alabama, that lands differently depending on the room.
The photo was taken at an alumni event at Cherokee County Bank, long before Tide Pride existed. I slept through the entire thing. My mother, meanwhile, looks impossibly proud.
What makes the photograph perfect, though, are the details surrounding it. My mother’s checkbook is sitting on top of the book Bear Bryant had already signed to me, while a bottled Coca-Cola and a bag of Golden Flake potato chips are strategically placed in front of him like part of the official set dressing. Anyone who grew up around Alabama football knows exactly what that meant in those days.
Inside the book, he wrote:
“Nicole,
Always try to be a winner.
Roll Tide,
Coach Paul ‘Bear’ Bryant.”
I’ve been trying to live up to that inscription ever since.
Oh, and I was the Goal Post Goddes on Roll Bama Roll, the SBNation Alabama "blog" turned major sports news source run by fans. I was the only female SEC (possibly all of NCAA) online beat reporter at the time. It was an absolute blast.
What are you currently watching, listening to, or following obsessively outside of work?
Old Gods of Appalachia, and if you are not already listening, please correct that immediately.
I found it completely by accident while boarding a flight to Austin for CrimeCon a few years ago. I had exhausted my true crime backlog and figured I would try something different. Instead, I fell hopelessly in love with creators Steve Shell and Cam Collins, their voices, their world-building, and the way they handle Appalachian folklore with both reverence and dread.
There is a character described as “He who has a name that sounds something like Hornet Head,” and I have spent an unreasonable amount of time searching for an artist capable of turning Steve’s description into a tattoo I will absolutely regret financially and emotionally if I do not get.
This is the final season. I am a paid subscriber because I cannot quite let go yet. When the show ends, it is going to feel like losing a family member.
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Interested in getting more involved with the PRSA Entertainment & Sports Section or connecting with fellow industry professionals?
Reach out to Membership Chair Kelly Ross at Kelly.Ross@Pirates.com to learn more.
Already a PRSA member and interested in joining the Entertainment & Sports Section?
Contact PRSA Member Services at membership@prsa.org or (212) 460-1400.