How to partner with a media publisher to get your brand massive exposure.

Hello and welcome to Speak PR. This is the podcast for business owners who know they've got value locked up in their company, but they just need to find ways to communicate it better. And we're going to do that on this show by talking to people that know how to get clients noticed, but also fellow entrepreneurs. And I've been an entrepreneur myself for over 25 years. I built my own businesses and also built brands for others. Because I also run a PR firm with offices around the world. So on this show, I condense 25 years of experience into 20 minutes, all designed to share tools and tips to help companies and business owners to get noticed for free using the tools and the technologies that big companies use, and some of them that they don't know how to use yet. So welcome to Speak PR. Okay. Welcome to this episode. And today I'm going to share with you some thoughts about working with the media. Now, so often we are asked as a PR agency to get clients into publications, and that's only one way that we can work with the media. Another way really is to find out what the media is organizing, but also to have a conversation with them about what we might want them to organize in order to have a partnership. Now, especially during these COVID times, many publishers are really very keen to find ways to generate revenue. Remember that the traditional ways that journalists and media make money is to write articles and to sell that publication as a subscription or as an advert. Those really are the 2 business models that publishers have got. So the, the ways that publishers are getting creative is by doing things like organizing awards, for example, which are a great way for companies to work with the media, to enter, to compete, and to get the gong so that you can use that in your marketing. But another way is to have a conversation with the media or the publisher about what you're organizing and see how you can work together. Now, I thought I'd bring in an example here because we're working with a potential client from the Middle East, and this client is involved in promoting an awards, and we're working on promoting the awards in Southeast Asia but also into China. So we've had a conversation, my Chinese team, with the publishers in China just to talk about how we can help to leverage an award to make the Chinese media, Chinese audiences, non-government organizations, government organizations, people who are innovating around water technology to know about these awards and take part. We've spoken to 2 large national media, and we've done that because we want to work with media that have got both English language and Chinese language content so that the the people inside of China that are foreigners would also know about this award. So the first lesson of the day with working with the media is media selection, and finding out which audience you're appealing to is of course the, the first part of that. And in this case, we want to talk to people who are innovating, and they may be foreigners in China, but they may of course predominantly be the Chinese themselves. So choosing a media that speaks to both. We've gone for mainstream media instead of just the vertical media that are in that particular sector of water because we want to also talk to the NGOs. So we want to talk to groups that may not enter the awards but are interested in the awards because these kind of people can help to spread the net More broadly, in this particular case, then we've chosen to reach out to Global Times, or the Chinese name is Huanqiu, and the other one is ChinaNet. So first of all, I'd like to just share with you a little bit of background about the two media. Then that'll give you a bit of context. So Global Times was established back in 2007 under the approval of the People's Daily and the State Council Information Office. And it has the investment from People.com and Global Times. And People.com was the really the the the magazine and newspaper media group of the Chinese Communist Party. So the the international reach, though, of Global Times has extended significantly really over the last decade, and it's being sent to over 150 countries and territories. And this is really part of China's push to take, you know, China's side of the story overseas in English language for those people that are interested in China and those people that are looking at working with China, and especially with the Belt and Road Initiative that they have pioneered, using this to communicate what the Chinese government is looking to do. Now, when, when talking to Global Times, they have come up with a, a great really scope of work for us, and that is that they are going to create a really a display pavilion for our client. These— this is the proposal, and they are willing then to present information within a pavilion attached to their large website and under a subsection of the technology department. And they will then list it as an award and include our news updates and relevant information about the participants and the judges and the criteria. And they'll also showcase information about the previous awards that took place. They're also going to help to get registrations by distributing short video clips related to the award to their followers. Now, they've got followers on some of the media platforms, all the media platforms in China, including Douyin, Kuaishou, and Youku, and also they have Weibo and WeChat. So, By partnering with an established media company, what we're doing is we're really going to piggyback off of their distribution infrastructure using our content. So they're also willing then to work with us on the information as we get closer to the awards on who's entered and sharing information of the awards evening itself and the winners and doing interviews with the winners. So working with Global Times in this way is a cost-effective way for the client to access the media that otherwise wouldn't run this as a story other than a press release. But if the client was to try and build a pavilion and attach all the content, and most importantly, try and attract all the audience, then there is no way they could do it with the budget. And we're talking about, you know, tens of thousands of US dollars instead of hundreds of thousands. But also from a time point of view, we're looking at having something up and running within the Global Times network within, within weeks, not within months. So this is one option for for any company. When I produced the British Business Awards in China years ago, I worked with the China Daily. I started the awards back in 2008, and I partnered with the China Daily, which had English language only at the time, and we worked with them to promote the awards. And it's a great way then of establishing credibility, because what we really want to do is to obtain the credibility that comes with media coverage and media exposure, but without actually having enough content to get the media to cover it consistently over time. The announcement of an award and the winners of an award are interesting, of course, to us as our clients, but for the readership of Global Times. It's not significant enough to be given coverage every day, but that's also what we want to have for our client. So this is one option that if you've got anything happening like an awards or a launch or a new initiative, to actually partner with an existing media. Now another option I mentioned that we're proposing to market and promote this awards is with ChinaNet. And ChinaNet is the key news website led by the State Council Information Office, and it's managed by the China Foreign Languages Bureau, and it's published around the world in 11 versions in 10 languages with more than 200 countries. So the ChinaNet is another one that we are proposing because there are, with this awards, opportunities for people from around the world to enter. So we're using the China platform, which works across multiple language groups, to reach out to people around the world. Now, actually, the China media are probably more international in their language usage than I would say any other country. You know, the British publications all take place in English, the Germans in German and English, the French in French and some English. But the Chinese have really embraced multicultural, multilingual communications on the media. So this is quite an interesting way of getting into markets like Africa, for example, in the Middle East, and even Latin America, and certainly Southeast Asia, because the Chinese government, not individual publishers, have funded the information being shared on these platforms. And I can tell you that it's not all propaganda. You know, having lived and worked in China for 13 years, there is a genuine interest and a genuine passion within the Chinese editorial community to highlight and work with, for example, development causes and commerce. Now obviously there are limitations on the political discourse in the Chinese media, but don't for a minute think that the Chinese media are not active in communicating about every other kind of topic, whether it's automotive, science and technology, education, literature, and so on. So with China.net, they have offered to basically run a live broadcast. Now, China and the Chinese, I'd say probably worldwide in my, my opinion, are leading the way when it comes to understanding and the deployment of streaming technologies. If we work with the guys at China.com.cn they actually will create a separate channel for us with a water theme, and they will then broadcast both the awards information in advance, but they will then also actually display and have a crew and livestream the awards that take place in the Middle East, in Dubai, to their hundreds of thousands of viewers. They'll also then take this livestream from this awards, and they'll, by the way, subtitle it of course into Mandarin and other languages if we want. But they're also going to include it on their, on their video platforms, including, as I've mentioned, Douyin, which we think of as TikTok overseas, Kuaishou, StationB, Weibo, Youku, So they have all these platforms, they aggregate the content onto one of them, and they will help to disseminate. Now, this is a more expensive option. We're talking about over $100,000 to live broadcast. But what the client is getting, of course, really is not only the broadcast distribution but the audience. Now, if you were to go to— well, if you If you go to CNN or CNBC or people like the BBC really wouldn't even engage in this. We would really have a problem, I think, with getting the international TV companies to embrace this. Now, some of them would if the budget is big enough, and I know that, for example, CNBC has partnered over the years, as has CNN, with conferences, and they will be the official host and official broadcaster of conferences, and then they get exclusive rights to the content. But what we're looking at now is really diversity of the content distribution across multiple geographies and multiple languages, because this award is a global award. It's not just for one language, one community. And so, as I say, the Chinese media are representing, perhaps ironically, an interesting gateway into the worldwide audience without having to work, for example, with different media outlets in Africa, the Middle East, and ASEAN or Latin America. So I raise this because credibility comes from media partnerships, and it comes because The media are considered to be gatekeepers of the content and the quality of the content. We'd like to have our companies showcased. We'd like to have our awards. We'd like to have our new products demonstrated on these channels. But of course, they have to be very careful not to be conceived as masquerading advertising in the form of editorial. So how they get around that and how we can get around that is by partnerships, by partnering with a media outlet. In this case, we're suggesting 2 in China, but I've worked with media partnerships in Singapore, and we can do that also in any country, in France or the UK. The key driver now is that in COVID times, publishers need revenue. Traditional advertising revenue was already evaporating because of the decline of print and the old days of $6,000 to $7,000 worth of advertising per page when we would buy space for a trade press are gone. So now the media are selling subscriptions to newsletters, for example, that, you know, maybe even only $50, $60 a month. And the banner ads on their websites no longer command the kind of fees that they did when they were a full-page advert or double-page spread before a trade show, for example. So the media now are having to become much more entrepreneurial. They're using conferences, at least they were, but of course now COVID times means that even that has taken a source of revenue away. So the media bring an amazing amount of authority to any topic, but also, of course, they have this amazing distribution. If you're looking at what you can do with your company and how to promote something that you're launching, it's a venue or a product introducing a new market, perhaps you could think about which media would actually address the audiences that you want to talk to and talk to them about what they could do. I think you'll find, as we are, even the media in China are looking at ways to make money by partnerships. We bring the content and we bring the commerce, and what they bring is the credibility and the distribution. Now, it is possible to find media that will work without without even a budget, and they're willing to do that if you can introduce to them other forms of revenue. So if you can be the, for example, the content partner and introduce your partners and your vendors who would then fund the event or the publication or the trial or the live stream, then that's another way actually to start to work together. So I want to raise today this idea of partnerships with publishers. It's something I'm actively working on right now for a client, and if you need any help, you're always welcome to email me, jim@eastwestpr.com, or find me on LinkedIn as Jim James East West Public Relations. Think about what the media could deliver to you in terms of credibility and reach, and what you can deliver to them in terms of revenue and content and structure a deal just as you would with any partnership, because the media right now need us just as much as we need them. There's never been a better time to get public relations coverage through partnership with publishers. So with that, I'd like to say thank you very much indeed for listening to this episode of Speak PR. This is the podcast for business owners and business leaders who believe they've got value in their business that they can unlock with effective communications. You can find out more about us at eastwestpr.com. Please do subscribe to our newsletter, subscribe to the podcast, and leave us a rating if you can. That would be much appreciated. Until we come together again, my name is Jim James. Thank you once again for listening, and I wish you the best of health, a profitable business, And that you keep on communicating and probably partnering with a publisher.