What do Ebay fraud, Sherlock Holmes and Rupert's Fancy Fowls have in common? It's elementary my d...

Hi, my name is Jim James and welcome to today's episode of The Speak PR. This is a podcast to share ideas and thoughts on how entrepreneurs and business owners can get their companies noticed for what they do. I've been an entrepreneur myself for over 25 years and, and run an agency with offices in Singapore and China and the UK. And it's a weekend, so I thought I could maybe sort of relax a little bit and and talk about some of the insights that I have when I'm not working. But of course, as a self-employed person, I'm always thinking, as as you will be, I'm sure. So this morning I was working on eBay because I've been working to sell a Sony camera that I purchased and and then learned that really. The the iPhone camera and the screen makes it more than enough for my needs and those of the family. So having listed this camera on eBay within minutes, I had a request to purchase, and then immediately following that, questions asking whether I could send this this camera to a different address because the camera was bought. For my daughter, and it was the it was the grammar that first alluded first you know alerted me to this, and then that I kept on getting exactly the same message repeatedly over the next three hours asking me to change the the address. So it alerted me, and then sure enough this morning we had an email from eBay saying that that account had been hacked and the purchase was not valid anymore. So my first foray into eBay was when I had sold something that, um, was, was going to go to, um, to some vagabond somewhere. Um, and of course then when it came to having to relist the product, the customer that I'd also had for the product said that he couldn't see it online anymore because it had been sold. And so I was then in danger of losing this customer, so I was desperately trying to relist the, the product. But it's not quite as easy as it might seem. You can't just decline the original offer and then relist it because it was a, a false purchase. I had to delete the— in fact, eBay had deleted the, the, the purchase product specification, and I would have to do it all over again. And this really led me to being extremely frustrated because I'd already gone through the process once. And the user interface for eBay, for anyone that hasn't used it, it looks like a teenager had, had invented this 20 years ago, which of course they did, and it hasn't been changed. Now eBay is a multi-billion dollar business, you know, it has 33 countries with operations and some 14,000 employees, and, uh, The market cap is $31 billion, and yet it's the most—for me anyway—the most miserable and now not trustworthy experience. And I couldn't, for example, upload my own profile photographs. The photographs and the email accounts of many, many buyers seemed to be suspect. My wife has felt the same thing. Why is it that they take the money and hold it? You have to go through eBay, and the whole experience. Really is is not pleasant, and yet this is a big company. Of course, the yield on their shares is only 1.45%, which means that they're they're pretty much just surviving on scale rather than on on any kind of service. So it may be just think about from an observational perspective. Here's a company that really doesn't look as though it's being led by anyone that really cares about the consumer experience. And the observations that we make form a great deal of the profile that we have about a company. And of course, this is really public relations. So how a company treats its consumers at every touchpoint really is public relations. And the, the psychologist Albert Bandura is the researcher most commonly identified with learning through observation. And of course, the other is You know, learning through doing. But according to Bandura's research, there are a number of factors that will increase the likelihood that a behavior will be imitated. He famously did a survey where he had some children in a room and they watched adults beating a large inflatable Bobo toy, and then the parents left and there was no repercussions from that violence. And then the children were allowed to play with the Bobo and they then beat the bobo as well. So we're likely to imitate behavior as it's been seen, and we're also likely— more likely to imitate good behavior. We like to imitate people that we perceive as warm and maturing and, and nurturing. We like to follow people that we see are receiving rewards for their behavior. So as leaders of organizations undertaking PR, what sort of questions and what sort of behaviors are you and me creating for people to watch and to imitate? Now obviously, if I have a bad experience with eBay and I say to my wife, this isn't going so well, she says, yes, it's bad for me too. What's happening is it's becoming reinforcing and we're imitating our complaints. We start to get into a spiral of complaints and then we'd share with other people that this is really not a good platform. So we have to start thinking about, if we're going to create a company and the brand and all the perception around it, the importance of the observation by the consumer towards every aspect of our company. People often think PR is simply about media relations, but in my view, it's much more than that. Because if there's been a great article, for example, in a magazine, or someone's been interviewed Or there's a fabulous video. But if the user experience, when I actually get the product, either the car or the clothes or the food or the industrial equipment, and it's not the same, it creates this dissonance. Now, the first person who started to really make this into, into the common mainstream was, of course, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Now, when I was at Manchester University, I went along to the Granada Studios tour, which unfortunately now has closed. But in Castlefield, they had a complex because they used to film the Sherlock Holmes series back there in the 1990s. And I was struck, and I always remember finding out that Conan Doyle had been a medical student at the University of Edinburgh. And while he'd been there, he had a lecturer called Joseph Bell. And Joseph Bell was a Scottish surgeon and a lecturer, and he, you know, from 1837 through to 1911. So it's really a long time ago. But one day when Doyle was in the classroom, a young man knocked on the door and nothing happened, and Dr. Joseph Bell said, you know, enter. And this young man walked in and came to the front of the, of the class and waited. And then Bell said, yes, what can I do for you? And the young man said, I have a letter for you. And Bell said, okay, present it for me. The man gave the letter, and then Bell said, thank you, that'll be all. And the man turned and he left, and he shut the door on his way out. And The class thought nothing of it until Bell said, "Okay, what can we learn about this man? What do we know about this man?" And they said, "Well, nothing. He's just the courier." And Bell said, "Well, we can tell first of all that he knocked and he waited before coming into the room. And when he did come into the room, he came to the front, but he didn't hand me the letter until I asked for it, till I gave the authority. His." Shoes were polished but were not expensive. He didn't have a wedding ring. The collar on his shirt had a ring of dirt around it, but his suit was, was tidy but not especially clean, and he had some cuff fraying, and he didn't wear a watch. So we can see that he was probably in the armed forces at some stage. But not in an officer rank, that he's not well educated, that he's used to taking instructions, that he probably lives at home alone or in a boarding house, because if he lived with a wife or his parents, they would ensure that his clothes were fully clean. And he hasn't had work or good fortune recently because his clothes are not new. So Bell went on to create the persona for this messenger. And this, this analysis was the inspiration for Conan Doyle later on in life to write the Sherlock Holmes stories. Because as we all know, when we watch the Sherlock Holmes stories and movies, that they're all about the power of intuition by observation, that there's no such thing as black magic. There is observation. So we are able as consumers, as customers, and also as leaders and entrepreneurs to create all of the wherewithal that if somebody is observant about us and our company, we will be able to send them messages that they may not even know that they're watching, but they are integral to their understanding of what we're doing. When I was a student in Manchester reading American Studies back in '86 through 1990 with a year in America, I had to watch pennies pretty seriously, as I guess every student did in those days. There were no student debt really. You couldn't get a loan. You had a grant of £3,400, if I remember rightly, to live on, and, and money was tight. Um, and so we would always buy the cheapest of everything. We'd buy a packet of 6 eggs between, uh, all of us that were living in the dorm and have one each. So this morning when I went with my daughter to go shopping, we went to the farm shop, and I was struck that Rupert's Fancy Fowls sells eggs, and they are 37% more expensive than the standard egg. So for 6 eggs I was going to be paying instead of £2.46, £1— sorry, instead of £1.79, I was going to pay £2.46 for 6 eggs. And why would I do that? Well, next to the eggs there is a just a typewritten sign where Rupert talks about how after 72 weeks all hens are sent to the basically to the chopping yard and are made into KFC, but his fowls, his girls as he calls them, are all found homes. He said, we've spoken to the Wildlife Association and in partnership with local charities and schools, we find homes for all my girls. And he calls them girls. And he says, so when you're buying the eggs from my girls, Actually, what you're doing is you're helping to provide a pension for them for when they're old and out on the grassy fields providing joy and comfort to a family somewhere. Now, what a wonderful narrative. As a— I took a picture. My one— my daughter's wondering why, but I was like, this is a fantastic example of how a local entrepreneur Has created a narrative around his his eggs. Something as simple a commodity like six eggs at less than well more than two pounds now, two pounds fifty for six eggs. And of course I'm thinking well I've got my daughter that I want I want for my daughters to have a pension. I want them to think about the animals living well happily ever after. And so I bought in immediately. To the narrative. And on the packaging it's called, um, you know, Rupert's Fancy Fowls, and there's got hand-picked, uh, written on the label. And so in a— in an era when people are thinking of battery hens and large volume and cruelty to animals, here is an entrepreneur who's realized that the story and the observation that the that the consumers have in that kind of a store are going to make them not price sensitive. So it's interesting for me in this COVID time where we talk about COVID on our methodology, we talk about COVID being compassionate, optimistic, values-based, informative, and digital. We have consumers now hyper-aware, as I am now when I go online, of how I'm being treated and being cheated. quite possibly. And when I'm feeling vulnerable and insecure, then someone reaching out like Rupert's done, espousing homegrown values and caring for his girls— these hens— really resonates, and I become less price sensitive and more loyal. Interestingly enough, his pile of eggs was much smaller than the next ones next to it, which also created the impression of scarcity, that It was believable. He was saying there were not so many hens and they're hand-picked. My assumption is there would not be as many eggs if there'd been twice as big a pile as the battery hen eggs. I'd have gone, well, that doesn't, doesn't tally. My observational skills, the, the Sherlock Holmes part of me, would have said, hmm, that doesn't quite resonate. So if you think about your own business What cues are you giving your staff by the clothes you're wearing, the car you're driving, the phone you're using, the way that you're treating each other? Are you modeling and creating behavior for your staff that when your consumers or your customers, your business partners do business with you, they, they will see whether they like it or not? As the lecturer Joseph Bell did, all of the nuances around you and your company. And I raise this because it's not necessarily PR in the context of media relations, but when we do press conferences or we do Skype calls or we do any kind of presentation, all of these clues that we're, that we're giving and that we're living are picked up by people subconsciously. Because over 80% of all communication is non-verbal. So observation is a human intuition, and Joseph Bell spelled out for Conan Doyle and the class at the time how that can be translated. In the case of Conan Doyle, of course, he went on to make it a fabulous franchise which has been an amazingly successful throughout the decades because it's predicated on a very basic common human instinct, which is to want to find answers and to want to trust. Now, I want to find an answer. I'd like to find an answer, which is how can I sell my camera properly at the best price to someone that I trust is actually not a Russian mafia? eBay has blown that for me, but I still have the same goals. So as you move forward over the coming weeks and we go back to work around the world, what can we learn from that classroom back at the turn of last century from a Scottish surgeon and lecturer about observation? And how can we make sure that our customers are observing the very best about us and we're being the very, very best that we can be to be observed by all that see us? So on that note, I wish you great health, I wish you a profitable business, and I pray that you keep communicating. Thank you once again for listening. Thank you.