Why Brazilian waxes about #reachfortherazor, how you can use print, and rise of Good News Shows.

Hi, my name is Jim James, and I'm your host on the Speak PR podcast. Thank you for joining me today. I want to share with you tools and tips and some thoughts on how you can get yourself and your company noticed. Spy spending less than 20 minutes a day. Now, I've been running a PR firm and many other businesses for over 25 years, and I built them all with free publicity and communications. Now, this morning, I was on a webinar with Action Coach, which is being run by Peter Rolleston and Andy Walter down here in the Southwest. And they hosted Helio Vogas, who is a Brazilian motivational speaker. And much of the talk this morning came down to how to get staff back to work from furlough, because not everybody, it seems, wants to go back to work. And the idea of, you know, being paid and staying at home may be appealing for some people who, who are not motivated by their. By their work or, you know, have other challenges be by leaving the home, maybe they've got children and so on. So we talked about having motivation, and then one of the things that we talked about was how the NHS and in the Office of for Wales, Dr. Atherton, had realized that one of the challenges they were facing with their PPE was that the beards were, were. Were blocking the PPE from working. And the chief medical officer, Dr. Atherton, said, well, you know, the best solution is we shave our beards. And instead of giving instructions to others and waiting for them to do it, he went online, went on social media, and spawned the Reach for the Razor movement. Now, I think there have been one or two of these in previous years as well. But by leading this charge, Dr. Atherton has led through Twitter and through Facebook and YouTube, a movement in a small way just to show that each individual person can make a difference. Now, as a result of his leadership, there was a young Muslim colleague called Shumel from the Northeast Ambulance Service, and he's obviously wears a beard as part of his faith, but he decided that he would also take the blade to his face and do that. And, you know, as a result, by announcing the news on Facebook, he has had over a thousand likes and people, including the. The official Northeast Area Ambulance Service account, raising him up and holding him out as being a beacon for other members of staff, but also for their patients to see that the ambulance drivers even are taking responsible steps to make sure that everybody is going to be safe. So I think that's a fantastic example, really, of people making small personal movements, but that can create a seismic shift. Now, there was a chap called Krasinski in America who started the Good News show only two months ago. And he's married to Emily Blunt, though maybe that doesn't matter. But anyway, he started a show all about good news from his home on YouTube and he managed to gain some two and a half million YouTube followers within just a couple of months. And he's in the news because he's managed to sell it so quickly to Viacom. And what's interesting about that is that there is obviously a sense within the major networks that good news is going to have a place in the mainstream media. I used to. I had a conversation with a member of the ITN news crew in Beijing one time and I said, I can't understand why our story of selling Morgan cars in China is not more featured in the uk, because in the China I got a lot of press and was in the newspaper and on television a good deal. And he said, you know, the only good news is bad news when it comes to print. But I think maybe that's changing and that's a good, positive thing. What this also shows us is that the cascade theory and the article that I wrote about this on the 6th of May, entitled the Five Reasons why Captain Tom Didn't Walk Alone, show that actually what we need to do is not aim to influence just one or two key influences, but rather to seek to influence a large number of people who are easily influenced. Because it's actually the large number of people who are easily influenced reaching a threshold where they're willing to engage and change their behavior and do something new that creates this viral effect. And this is something that I think we've now started to work on in the pr. We've just completed a project for a client of ours called Rosti, which is a company involved in plastics and contract manufacture in Malaysia and China. It's a Scandinavian company originally, and we just recently issued a press release and we had over 90 pieces of coverage for this company. And the reason I think that we were so effective is because the storyline was written in the context of COVID This company, Rusty, is able to produce design intent plastic mouldings within 72 hours for a client. And it means that it can turn around spare parts and replacement parts extremely quickly. The initial release was just that this is the technology that we've got and we rephrase that in our Covid mindset, which is we define as compassionate, optimistic, values based, informative and digital. And by redrafting that as being able to get products to the medical emergencies that require it more quickly. We were able then to gain a lot of awareness in the media because they saw the immediate value. It wasn't so much about 3D printing, although that's the technology behind it, but it was the immediacy of the solution. And as you're doing your pr, how can you think of a razor or the COVID mentality in order to make your story resonate now? Today Helio from Brazil was talking about the need to take his driving test wearing a camera due to the prejudice of in the small German town he lives in. Obviously it's a shame in this day and age that should happen. But then at lunchtime we received a newsletter purporting to be supported by independent journalists. And it's an A4, 16 page full color, looks like a supplement and the editor is all focused on blaming the Chinese for Covid and all the other ills besides. Now I shared the COVID and the editorial listing with a group I'm a member of, which is a UK China WeChat group, and I was asked not to discuss it further, which I have to say I felt was a shame because I shared it because I believe that it's the kind of information that we should be sharing because we need to let people know this is around. Now the interesting thing here then is that we're starting to receive information in a fully formatted manner which wouldn't be accessible and wouldn't be accepted by the mainstream media. Now you can take whatever you like from the political implications, but from a practical point of view, print and publishing your own print publication can be a very effective way of communicating. This is something that I did back for a company called AMS Neve back in the mid-90s as I was building the brand for a British audio technology company and I produced a large A4 full scale color magazine that went inside other magazines. Now if you've got a product or a service that isn't necessarily going to get the sort of coverage that you'd like in the mainstream print, or, or if the audience that you've got is one that is maybe not online, then print is still a really good medium, especially if you want to have long form reading, lots of photographs and contact details. But also of course it's not traceable in that if people read this, no one is going to know because unlike digital, it doesn't leave a footprint, so there are no statistics. But of course you can leave call to actions and you can leave coupons in it and so on. So whilst I don't applaud the political intent of this particular group because my wife is a Chinese and I hope we haven't got it just because of that. But their means and the methods reminded me of the value of the power of print in this era when it's actually going kind of out of fashion, out of style quickly. So as we've seen, the share the razor creates some good news and enables people to cut through on a common message. No one's selling anything, although some Razer brands apparently have got involved in this afterwards. But is there anything that you can do today or tomorrow for your staff, for your customers or your partners that demonstrates that you are addressing the issues that they're facing? I started this talk with Helio saying that some people were having challenges getting their staff back to work. And I think that part of the conversation that we need to have as entrepreneurs and leaders is how we encourage and motivate people back to work. And Dr. Atherton illustrated that beautifully by showing that even just a small personal sacrifice, but which is on message and is in keeping with the overall goals for the organization, which are all driven towards caring for those customers, which in this case our patients, can be very well received not only within their own organization but generally. So is there anything that you can do to make a difference, to make your customers and your team smile? Doesn't have to cost anything, just a razor. And maybe you've got something else that you can do that you can deliver, which will get some publicity and some branding, but will also more importantly show that you and your organization are Covid ready. Thank you for listening today. I I do hope that you've found some of these insights useful. They're all some simple insights with some free tools that you can use that will help you to be profitable, to be sustainable and to help you keep communicating. Thank you once again for listening. Sa. Sam.