In this Speak PR episode, Jim James shares a practical framework for using case studies to position customers as the heroes of a brand’s story. He outlines the Speak PR methodology—storification, personalization (avatar creation), engagement, amplification, and contextual relevance—explaining how each step shifts focus from the company to the people it serves. Jim illustrates the approach with a detailed case study of Liquinex, a Singapore‑based company that won the Dubai Global Water Awards for its suitcase‑sized, solar‑powered water purification system. He describes how the award provided third‑party endorsement, opened doors to investors, the World Bank, and joint‑venture opportunities, and how tying this story to global water scarcity statistics (e.g., 834 million people lacking daily access) creates a compelling, context‑sensitive narrative. Throughout, Jim emphasizes the importance of crafting simple, new, and relevant content that showcases customer success, thereby increasing engagement, reducing bounce rates, and driving new business. The episode concludes with calls to subscribe to his newsletter and enroll in a 6‑week mastermind course for implementing these strategies.
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Hi, welcome to this episode of Speak PR. My name is Jim James, and I have some tools and some tips that can help any business owner to get noticed that are cost-effective and time-efficient. Today I'd like to just share some thoughts about the use of case studies, because most people are so busy writing about themselves that they forget to write about the people that they do good service for. I'm reminded of this because I've been working on a client project today and also a new business prospect today, and both of them were talking about them, not about the real heroes of the story who are their customers. And that is what I'd like to share with you today— how to make your customers into your heroes using case studies. Now, in our Speak PR methodology, we talk about the need to storify, to personalize, to engage, to amplify, and to know. And the storification is about showing how your business is creating an opportunity for your hero to accomplish what they would like to accomplish in their life. So stories are about the people, they your team or your partners or your customers who are engaging with your business in order to move somewhere. They're all buying some product or service from you to get something else. And so often companies are busy writing about their own story, about what's in it for them and why they do this, that they forget that actually people don't care. What they care about is what they're going to get as a result. Storification then is the first part of that. Now, personalization is about defining the avatars. Which people do you need to write about? Which people are those people that are experiencing the value that you're creating, and that you could then use them as a showcase, an example, so other people like this avatar can engage with you to get the same result? And you're going to show them that by creating engaging content. This is what we talk about in the Speak PR program. So just let's look at what would go into a case study. Now, a case study is an example of somebody working with you or buying from you and doing what they need to do with it. Now, I've been working with a Global Water Awards recently out of Dubai, and one of the winners of their awards is a company called Liquinex out of Singapore. And what we want to do is to get more people to enter the awards. And in order to do this, we've issued a press release. But what we've also started to do is to work on a case study. So we have found this company Liquinex who won this award, $100,000 Prize for their compact water purification system. It's actually the size of a suitcase and is portable and can be powered by solar or by pedal power, for example, or just 12-volt out of a car battery. So the awards program out of Dubai, these are our clients. But actually, the way to get the client more entries is to profile the winners. So we've been in touch with the very nice people in Singapore that run Liquinex that had won this award, and we're just editing today the story of what has happened for them since they entered the awards and since they won this prize. And it's fantastic. They have managed to become part of a global water-related incubator where they were chosen out of a global group of entries to qualify for, uh, some funds and also to be part of community that all have an investment from this fund, uh, and that then can have mentors. They, through having been involved with this, uh, water investment group got access to the World Bank, and the World Bank actually is the largest donor of water-related investments. They've also had a company from Sweden write to them and ask if they can do a joint venture to license their technology that's within this suitcase-sized water purification system and to take it into other applications. So by winning this award, this company Liquinex has moved from being a Singapore company with an exceptional product which is being used in the field to purify water into being a leader worldwide in water purification technology. Now they were already on their way, but the awards give them the endorsement, in this case of the Dubai Water Authority arranged event. So they now have got the credibility of this award, this third-party endorsement, and that has introduced them to all of these other community and participants and investors. So our job is to interview them and to write the article. Now, the article came back as a narrative to me about the company, and that is in itself part of the story. But what I also needed to do in editing the piece that came from the journalist who has interviewed the CEO of Liquinex, I needed to add some context. So when we talk about amplification within the Speak PR program, we talk about content needing to be new, to be simple, but also to be context-sensitive or context-relevant. Writing about Liquinex on its own, winning the awards, and without the context of water scarcity and without the context of Southeast Asia doesn't create A way for the readers to connect with the Liquinex story. So a case study has to include how that— in this case, the heroes Liquinex— how they have participated and won the award, what it's meant to them. But the next part of the journey, the next part of the story, is how that has impacted other players within the story. In this case, children. In Nepal, for example, what we need to do then as PR people is to draw in the statistics that give the credibility to the water story. The number of people that have to live without water, for example, the challenges that are faced across the world where literally billions of people. Uh, without water. It's about actually 834 million people don't have access to water every day, but that number is growing and forecast to be billions in the next 5 years due to global warming. So we need to connect the Liquinex story to the global problem and show them as being one of the participants in this awards program that's addressing this global problem. So the case study is our way of making a chapter for the Dubai Water Awards within the overall novel, which is the awards program. It's in its 3rd iteration. It comes out every 2 years, so it's in the 3rd cycle. And our job is to engage people that are innovators in water tech and get them to enter. And we can do that by helping to understand what a company like them has already accomplished and what that would mean for them, so they can start to visualize themselves as entering and winning and helping to play their part on a global scale and meeting other water tech companies, meeting other investors, and also to meet companies and organizations like the World Bank as a result of being participants in this awards. I was sent today a brochure by a friend who's got a travel business, and it's a beautiful brochure. And he asked me to have a look and say, what do you think? We're going to send this out to people around the world for our specialist travel business. And my response was, where are the people? Where are the customers and his travel service partners in the field who are going to make these extraordinary stories? In other words, where are the case studies? So often we are writing about ourselves, sending wonderful images of ourselves, and actually that's not what sells. What sells is the news, the testimonial that other people, like the customers that we're seeking, have already been successful by working with us. So I share this because as you look at your own marketing materials, maybe you're creating a case study, maybe you're creating a brochure or a website, how can you make that about them, not about you? As we know, if we go to a social situation and we meet people who just stand there and talk about them, themselves, then of course we all will eventually walk away. It's just the same in marketing, except for they don't walk away in front of us. They just drop away from our website or don't ring our phone number or reply to our email. So there is this invisible decision to ignore us, and that's reflected in our bounce rates on our websites, our low open rates on our newsletters. Or the lack of response to our advertising campaigns. In the Speak PR program, we talk about creating engaging content which is simple, new, and context-sensitive. It has to be relevant, and to be relevant, it needs to be about other people like the avatar, like the customer that you're seeking now. So just a thought as you look at all the things that you've done, all the successes you've had How can you engage the people that were successful? Because actually, they are the heroes of your business. As much as you might want to be the hero, I might want to be the hero of my own business. Actually, much like a parent, we're all very proud of our children, and we don't go around telling people we're great parents. We go around being proud of our children, and we obviously do that in a discreet way. But the same principle applies. We need to talk about our awards, our charges, those people that we enable, those people we facilitate to be successful. And by doing that, others who are out there looking for the same result will read and relate and come to you. Thank you so much for listening to this short and hopefully useful episode of Speak PR. My name is Jim James. If you like this, do please subscribe to our newsletter at eastwestpr.com. You get a compendium of articles every Friday. If you're interested in a mastermind, a 6-week course helping you to use technology to create great content and to amplify and to know the results, check out our website at speedpr.co. So in the meantime, I wish you the best of health, a sustainable business, and if you're going to be creating content, make the center of the story the hero. And that hero is someone that's benefited from being involved with you and your business. Thank you so much for listening.
