Is your company being heard? Lessons schools are teaching us, which high street brands failing, and your "so that."

Welcome to the speak PR podcast. My name is Jim James, thank you for listening. I am the founder of East West public relations, and I've been an entrepreneur for over 25 years. This podcast is made for entrepreneurs who want to get noticed for what they do, but don't have the bandwidth or the budget to hire an agency. So what I want to do on this podcast is to share with you some of the tools and the tips that I've learned, that I use with big companies that you can use yourself that are free. So I wanted to talk today about school, and I've been really impressed with how the school that my daughter's go to here in the UK, has really managed to pivot. It's a school that's over 130 years old originally was Founded for the children of English servicemen when they went overseas to fight hinda in wars like the Boer War, can you believe at the turn of the century? And so the school actually looks like Harry Potter's school and in fact was approached to be Hogwarts. But the the school owners, the girls Day School trust turned down the opportunity to be the set for Harry Potter because they didn't want boys on the on the school grounds. Can you believe it? Anyway, so that was before it all got famous, I suppose. But the school got off to a bit of a rocky start when it came to the kids coming back from school and being at home and there was quite a lot of disquiet amongst the parents on WhatsApp and on email whether the school was really doing its job properly and it was a little bit came I think in fairness, and everyone would accept that, but the school reached out very proactively. And now we're into, I guess, sort of week six and seven of my two daughters being at home and we have one in grade five, and one in grade seven. And I've been really impressed how the girls Day School Trust has turned itself around. It's a non profit group with 25 girls schools in the UK. And they have managed in the last month to turn themselves from being, you know, pedagogical, location based institution into being a much more online and real time learning facility. But I think that's that's one part of it. What is also interested in intrigued me is that they seem to now have realised quite quickly that inspiring the children is more important than simply educating them. The curriculum for the girls is much more around choosing units of inquiry activities that they might enjoy and and getting the girls to pursue those things. And I think that's really fantastic because actually this is a bit like the the IB programme that my children did in, in China. And it's it's much more around what are people interested in? What are the children interested in within a framework and getting those children to start to work towards that things. So the older one today had a full day of online inspiration with some 7000 girls from across the different schools, all logging in and watching women who are inspiring and as I'm online first thing in the morning with Paul Dunn, who is, you know, an author and a TEDx speaker talking about be one, give one, which is a charitable organisation. I'm having my fill of motivation and Amity, my older daughter is having her fill of motivation. Now, one of the benefits of the children being at home and things relaxing a little bit is that we can go to make some essential purchases and, and we needed to go to the high street today to get some medical service medical prescriptions. So went to the high street. And I was quite interested to see how different shops have managed different ways of perceiving themselves during the crisis. So I took some photographs, which I'll put out later, but we saw NatWest which had a post it note for a heart. Sorry now, we had Barclays had post it note for hearts in the window and NatWest had some quite good written, branded information on the windows and so on. COSTA just had some brown paper over the windows. Many shops were looking just as though they've been abandoned, not just furloughed, Marks and Spencers now open advertising a sale and also with big rainbow hearts, full height of the windows. And with the doors open, showing that they are open for business. I couldn't help but have a look at the websites when I got home. Because I thought I would just see whether these brands are really just being left idle on the high street or also being left idle online as well. And interestingly, the NatWest website is is almost straight away about the Coronavirus getting us and getting the customers through it. I'm not myself in that worst customer but very much familial tone around it. The Barclays website was a bit slow to load, and it has a COVID page and you can click on that takes you through, but it still ask you to go to another page to get more information. So it's like three pages away before you actually get the information about openings, loans, financial management and so on. None of them are mentioning the business bounce back alone, though, for example, the h&m website, which I couldn't help but have a look at, because the door says both were open and were closed at the same time on the on the building, because they're open because of the air conditioning. Saying that they're open. They've got the doors closed, but on the a4 white piece of paper says we're closed. Hmm, looks like an abandoned store. And if you go online, interestingly enough, the the website didn't even pick up that my browser's in the UK to get to the global website. Once it found the uk website, I went to their website and found that it seems to be oblivious to the fact that there are, you know, billions of people right now, having to stay home and avoid going out and doing social distancing. So these companies are showing us to some degree from a public relations point of view, really, about how much they care about their customers. Because these, these websites are really giving almost sort of tacit acknowledgment, there's a difference to business but not really helping. By and large customers get through it. And I was interested because I had been on Call this morning with Paul done talking about this, this programme that they have in, in Singapore where companies can use this application developed to donate money directly to great activities and causes. And Paul done was asking us on the call to articulate why we get up in the morning. And we'd say things like, so I can help entrepreneurs to unlock the value in their business through communication. And he said, Yeah, but Jim, but so what, you know, answer the next question, what's the so that what are you trying to do? So then I had to go back and say, Well, I'm trying to help entrepreneurs and businesses to unlock value in their companies through communication so that they can help generate more income and create more jobs, and create more wealth and solve problems that exist in the world, which is what these business Is our clients are doing, and these entrepreneurs are doing. And if they solve more problems, there'll be less problems in the world, and people will be healthier, and they'll be happier. And we'll have less conflict. So I was interested in that. When we go online, and we look at what these companies are doing, and I thought, so that this company is showing me what about how it exists. So when we're looking at our own businesses, if you're looking at your business and your website and your communication, are you answering the reason why your business is open, or going to be open, and so that you can do what? Now, interestingly enough, I was talking about AI yesterday and about my wife's excitement because the Chinese app WeChat has launched one called we read and it's an AI Reading books. So it's perfectly fluent Mandarin reader. And then this morning, we issued a cease West public relations press release, and it got picked up in Vietnam for one of our clients, and I watched the looked at the website on my mobile phone. And there's an AI reader, which will read to me in Vietnamese, the the press release, as it appears in Vietnamese on this website on my mobile phone. So having you know, we're seeing now although as companies we send out print, the magazines, even relatively small ones, although the the tech times in Vietnam is, is a leading technology publications are by no means a very wealthy publication. They're using AI to engage their readers or listeners. So it wasn't So interested that on all of the websites I visited today, not one of them had anything for the visually impaired or for the sight impaired. Okay, so I did a quick look, there are some 285 million people around the world who are visually impaired. That's 39 million of blind and 246 million have low vision. Now 90% of those people are in developing countries, that's, that's for sure places like India, and 65% of the people who are visually impaired and 82% who are blind over 50 Okay. But in the UK, there are over 2 million people who are living with sight loss. So there are 2 million people in the UK who are bank customers, fashion, needing clothing and eating food. And if they were to go online, they would be lost. So, I asked myself from a public relations point of view, in this era of COVID 19, where people can't physically go down like I could today with my daughters and pick up what we needed from boots. There'll be customers out there who are isolated from the information, because companies bind, maybe yours may not be serving fully, because we haven't answered Paul, Dan's question, which is our businesses existing so that we can solve this problem. So we often get tied up with public relations about how we sound whether we've solved the crisis, whether we look good, whether we sound better than the competition, but public relations is also about meeting the needs of other people. stakeholders, I talked about three different stakeholders in our speak PR course. I talked about the internal and the allies and the external. Now, interestingly coming back to the school, I'm having letters from three different groups. The the head office, which runs 25 Schools has written to me today talking about the strategy for getting the girls back to school and about the long term vision and the financial stability of this charitable group. The school itself has written about the facilities and about cleanliness and about the availability of classes for care workers and for grade for reception and for grade six girls and also for grade 12 girls. Very specific details and in my mindset taught wrote about COVID being compassionate, optimistic, values based informative and digital, I would say that the school is doing that really well. And then I have another letter which is from my class teacher. And they're reassuring me that my daughters will be in and around girls that are also safe and healthy, and have been keeping up with their schoolwork. And that also no girl will be left behind. That the anxieties that parents may have about their children missing some weeks or months of schooling will be will be dealt with on a one by one that each child will have an analysis done of their learning in the last eight weeks, and they'll build a recovery plan. So as we look at our model and pull downs question about so that this this school is plainly saying, you know, we have a school so that your children are cared for. We have a school so that your children will succeed in their education. And of course, that's what I pay for. That's what I interest them for. So, as I look at my own business, East West PR, I need to start to ask that question. I'm getting out of bed to help people like you the listening, hopefully to this podcast and finding it useful, insightful. It's not it's not just for me, right? I must have that purpose, which is if I do this, if I get up every day and share what I've learned, and what I've seen, I'm doing it so that you can get benefits so that you could solve a problem that otherwise was in your way so that you can be free to unlock the value in your business or service. So that you can create whatever the value is for you, for your family, for the people around you, the community and society that sustains your business. So as we go forward, I hope that this idea that we have a PR story, it's not just the external one. But it's the entire way that our company behaves towards not only our best clients, but also some of the most vulnerable clients. And it's only those brands that are doing that now properly, that will truly survive. Post COVID. And I truly hope and pray that your company is one of those ones that will see it through. Thank you so much for listening to my thoughts today. And if you like it, please do send a message for this to a friend or a colleague or anyone else that you know, any other entrepreneurs or people that are seeking to get noticed for what they do. My name is Jim James, thank you very much. Stay healthy, stay profitable and keep communicating.