Children get to see the light through fresh eyes with thanks to a new edumercial series created by British optics expert Dr Shelley James and Luna Go Lightly.

Hi, this is Jim James, and on this episode we're going to talk about the need of children to have light during lockdown. Now, this may seem like an issue that is more about parenting than about actual public relations, but there is somebody called Dr. Shelley James, and I'm going to shout that out. Now, she's my sister, but she's also a professor of light. And she and I have been working together on a program called Luna Go Lightly. Now, Shelley is of course, the genius behind this. I'm just helping with some of the public relations. And so I wanted to share with you today how we've managed together to create a product, a character which has been trademarked and has been sponsored by some very large American and European and Asian companies, all to do with promoting light and the well being of light on children. Now, these videos have been made and the character is called Luna. And Luna explains in less than 90 seconds, mainly 60 seconds, the impact of light and what children can do in order to get the most from light. The reason for these infomercials is because Shelley herself is an expert in light, and she's seen children like my daughters, who are 11 and 13, and her goddaughter, during lockdown, staying indoors a lot. But obviously it's no surprise, especially during winter, that children and adults are not getting outside often enough. Now, we know that there are health effects in terms of, for example, vitamin B is not processed unless you go out and get the sunshine. But actually, the impact of light on the circadian rhythm means that when it comes to things like study and appetite, an absence of direct sunlight makes a big difference. We often think that we can get light through internal daylight on LEDs, for example, but it's not the same. In fact, the sun is a thousand times stronger than even the most powerful indoor light. I didn't know that number, but it's one of the factoids that I've been learning by working with Shelley on this program called Luna. Go Lightning. Now, Shelley's had this idea to create a character called Luna, along with the dad and the brother called Beam and a cat called Spectrum and these fireflies. And we've worked together on really making these characters come alive. Now, initially it was some line drawings, and then we felt that it needed to be animated. And when we went to some animation studios here in London, the figure being quoted for taking these drawings off the paper and making them into animated characters, about 60,000 pounds. Well, needless to say, we didn't have that sort of budget at all. But what Shelley was able to do as a result of the relationships that she has was to get some sponsorship. And we were talking earlier with some people about how to create content that's aimed at disadvantaged groups where advertising on screen itself isn't necessarily appropriate or where it's not going to be selling a product or a service. Now Shelley has managed to gather up a large cast of partners, including Fagerholt, the sole semiconductor group, and Signify, which is the lighting division now of Philips. And those three companies have seen the value of the Luna explainer videos, we call them edumercials, and have put some money behind the creation of these five explainer videos to start with. And we talk about issues, for example, short sightedness, about the way that children do not have to become glass wearers, spectacle wearers later on in life, just because their parents are in fact, they have a lot of control over that. Over 40% in fact is down to how they behave when they're young. We have another about mood and how the lack of exercise and getting out in the sunlight can lead to mood shortness. And we've also got another mood one about how the brain doesn't switch off unless the blue light is switched off. And the brain can't work and process the day's thoughts unless it gets to turn off. So what actually happens is that for children who are living with a light in their bedroom, a blue light late at night, they are depriving their brain of the time to do the processing. And so one of the infomercials is an explainer about the fact that if they turn off the light earlier, two hours before they go to bed, and that is the blue lights, they can have warmer lights, then they can get their homework done just by sleeping. So Shelley's got all these amazing facts and figures that come from studying the science of light. And then what we've been doing is working on creating a series of, we call them edumercals. And these edumercials are really aimed at the TikTok watcher, so including people like my daughters. So what we did was we created these explainer videos using Lumen5 because the production house in London, costing £60,000, really took this out of our, out of our universe. But we still wanted to get some content. And what we felt was that the, the value was not in a high production Dora style video, although that would have been nice. But the real value is in creating the messaging and in getting that out in front of the children and spending the money on the promotion instead. So we worked on a formula so that each video would be 60 seconds, one or two are slightly longer, but by and large 60 seconds. And it would have a number of different elements. Each story would only have one narrative and it would define the problem and it would identify the issue and then it would propose the solution. So, for example, can't sleep at night, it's because your brain's too busy working. Solution. Turn off your lights earlier and that'll help. So very simple. Another one is around food that if you are looking at your food doesn't look good, then it could be because you're looking at it on inside under some artificial light. And the solution is to open the windows or even take those bees outside and have them in the garden. So we then found when we made these videos that we were needing to show them to some young people. So she engaged with the focus group down here in Bristol in the uk and we showed the children these videos and some of them found the text too long, the video frames move too quickly, so we had to adjust and we came up with a formula around no more than eight words per slide and each frame no more than five seconds. And that we would put no more than three key messages in, which is our, our situation, our issue and our solution. So we've come up with a formula so that each video then can play into this. And what we've done with Lumen 5 is found it a very useful platform because with Lumen 5 you can enter your text, for example, a child rubbing their eyes. And Lumen 5, the AI engine will go off and find relevant pictures. It's very clever. And those pictures can be still, they can be GS animated or they can be short video clips. And what one can do then is to basically drag and drop these photographs and make them into the storyboard. And then you can also choose from a number of different audio tracks to lay across it. Now we've gone for the professional version and it cost me about $200 and I can make over 100 videos of no fixed length. You can use it for free if you don't mind the watermark. But it's a remarkably low cost way of versioning content. And with that we've been able to show these children and prototype that and then with their feedback to then show the clients Fagahol, Sevill Semiconductor and Signify and Shelley just launched those on Tuesday of this week in an open forum on a webinar and she had over 125 people logging in to watch talk about that. And Sole Semiconductor have Now taken that and are issuing that globally as a press release. Apparently the CEO in, in South Korea has taken an interest personally in this project because we're reaching out to children to help them help themselves. So the passion behind the project is to educate young people, especially those between the ages of about 9 and 14, where they can make decisions for themselves and where for parents and for anybody out there that's got an 11 or 12 year old, you know that taking an iPad away right now is about to cause another war. So what we have to do is to help the children to understand why they need to put down the iPad and go outside themselves. And that's going to need to happen by giving them content within the device and within the channels that they currently watch. Asking them to read a book or watch the big TV with me or watch the BBC basically just doesn't cut it. We need to go into their space and give them a medium they're comfortable with, but with the messaging we would like to give. Now, the Speak PR methodology that I've developed and really worked with Shelley on, which is Storify, Personalize, Engage, Amplify and Know, really has been used to develop Luna and the Go Lightly production because we've storified, we. We've thought about what happens in someone's day. For example, we've talked about for the children, they're getting up, they have to have their breakfast, they're having to sit down and log onto teams so they can homeschooling or have their mum or dad help them with homeschooling personalization. We've actually engaged young people of the group that are in our avatar and then we have created engaging content. So it has light music, it has images, it has pictures of animals doing cute things with glasses on, for example. And then we're amplifying it using the channels of YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram. And we're using that of course with the partners, the sponsors, but also Shelly has got a large number of other partners involved. And then under knowing, of course we'll be tracking that next. So we're just launching this now. Shelley's got support from people like Sue Atkins, who's a parenting Expert from the NSync Child, Sleepless, Enola Bree, Good Light, Women in Lighting, the University of Strasbourg and the University of Surrey, the University of Bristol and the Helen Hamlin center for Design, the Society of Light and Lighting and the Light Tribe, for example, and the Light Review. So she's really gathering up apace now and on Sunday she has an Interview with the BBC here in Bristol with a journalist that interviewed me when I came back from China to talk about life in China and being an entrepreneur overseas. So we've really been able to work together, which is frankly an amazing joy as a brother to work with a sister, but also to create some amazing content which can really help solve a problem for young people around the world. Because Luna has been developed as a character who is sort of semi Eurasian. She's not a blonde, blue eyed girl, she's a slightly gangly brown hair, brown eyed young person. And the dad, it could be a transnational family and that's really the idea. And the cat is, is a mog, so the cat probably looks a bit British. But apart from that, the rest of the, of the family and the dynamic is to make this into a global, a global family. Because light affects everybody equally and children around the world are being impacted equally by the absence of light and the absence of education. So I'm sharing this because working on this project with Shelley Luna go lightly. I wanted to share what can be done. We've managed to create characters from nothing and we're now getting another studio in India to do some illustrations for us for about £100 per illustration. And we've been able to create a property which we've then trademarked and taking that out into the marketplace. And I was interviewing Tim o' Lare this week from, from California who has a show called Mr. Meaningful Work and was just reminded of the great work that is being done in the world by people like Shelley. For example, to use some of the tools and technologies that I talk about on the Speak PR program to create content that can be shared with people during lockdown and most importantly to create content that can be seen by the people who want to see it within the context that they want to see it. Because there's no good creating content for people and hoping that they will watch it. We must create content for people and that is within their own language set in this case for children. It's a short form video clip with music and distribute it across a platform which is where they already inhabit, rather than asking them to change behavior. So Luna, go lightly. If you're interested, you can find out about it ageoflightinnovations.com and I will also put that in the show notes. But it's been a pleasure to be able to get that press release written, see that going out and over the last six months really being involved in creating Persona Luna and her family that we can use to communicate a whole concept around light and helping children to understand how light can impact them, but also the steps that they can take, which are free and very simple, to improve their mood and quite possibly to improve their grades without doing anything else. Just turning off the lights earlier and getting a good night's sleep. That's got to be good for everybody. So with that, I say thank you for listening to this episode of Speak pr. My name is Jim James, and if you're interested in finding out more tools and tips, do come to EastWestPR.com for the newsletter. If you want to talk to me about some consulting, you can also reach out to me on LinkedIn. Jim James and that's East West Public Relations. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Speak PR.