Imagine obtaining the credibility that the media have, without being a publisher. You can do this by partnering in ways that I will explain on this podcast. I talk about a current proposal that I am working on for an Awards with 2 Chinese media groups for domestic and international exposure. The principles apply no matter where you are. Listen to find out how you can do this for your company.
Jim James is the Founder and Managing Director of the EASTWEST Public Relations Group. He recently returned to the UK after 25 years in Asia where he was an entrepreneur. Whilst running EASTWEST PR, he was the Vice-Chairmanof the British Chamber of Commerce in China, he also he introduced Morgansports cars to China, WAKE Drinks, founded the British Business Awards, The British Motorsport Festival, EO Beijing, and was the interim CEO of Lotus cars
In return, I will continue to bring massive value with two weekly shows, up to 3 hours per month of brilliant conversations and insights.
Monthly subscriptions start at $3 per month. At $1 per hour, that's much less than the minimum wage, but we'll take what we can at this stage of the business.
Of course, this is still free, but as an entrepreneur, the actual test of anything is if people are willing to pay for it.
If I'm adding value to you, please support me by clicking the link now.
Imagine obtaining the credibility that the media have, without being a publisher. You can do this by partnering in ways that I will explain on this podcast. I talk about a current proposal that I am working on for an Awards with 2 Chinese media groups for domestic and international exposure. The principles apply no matter where you are. Listen to find out how you can do this for your company.
Jim James is the Founder and Managing Director of the EASTWEST Public Relations Group. He recently returned to the UK after 25 years in Asia where he was an entrepreneur. Whilst running EASTWEST PR, he was the Vice-Chairmanof the British Chamber of Commerce in China, he also he introduced Morgansports cars to China, WAKE Drinks, founded the British Business Awards, The British Motorsport Festival, EO Beijing, and was the interim CEO of Lotus cars
In return, I will continue to bring massive value with two weekly shows, up to 3 hours per month of brilliant conversations and insights.
Monthly subscriptions start at $3 per month. At $1 per hour, that's much less than the minimum wage, but we'll take what we can at this stage of the business.
Of course, this is still free, but as an entrepreneur, the actual test of anything is if people are willing to pay for it.
If I'm adding value to you, please support me by clicking the link now.
Today, I'm going to share with you some thoughts about working with the media. So often, as a PR agency, we are asked to get clients into publications, and that's only one way that we can work with the media. Another way is to find out what the media is organizing and have a conversation with them about what we might want them to organize in order to have a partnership. Especially during these COVID times, publishers are really keen to find ways to generate revenue. Remember that the traditional ways that journalists and media make money is to write articles and sell that publication as a subscription or as an advert. Those are the two general business models of publishers. Now, publishers are getting creative by doing things like organizing awards, for example, which are a great way for companies to work with the media to enter, compete, and win awards so that you can use that in your marketing. We're working with a potential client from the Middle East who wants to promote awards in Southeast Asia and China. My team in China had a conversation with Chinese publishers to discuss how we can leverage an award to make the Chinese media, Chinese audiences, non-government organizations, government organizations, and people who are innovating around water technology hear about these awards and take part. We've spoken to two large national media groups, and we've done that because we want to work with media that have got both English and Chinese content, so even the foreigners living in China may become aware of it too. The first lesson of the day when working with the media is media selection, and finding out which audience you're appealing to is, of course, the first part of that. In this case, we want to talk to people who are innovating, both foreigners and Chinese natives, so we want to select 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. We want to talk to groups that may not enter the awards, but are interested in it, because these people can h lp spread the word more broadly. With that criteria, we've chos n to reach out to Global Times a d ChinaNe First of all, I'd like to share with you a little background about the two media to give us some context. Global Times was established back in 2007 under the approval of the State Council Information Office, and it has the investment from People and Global Times. People was the magazine and newspaper media group of the Chinese Communist Party. The international reach, though, of Global Times has extended significantly over the last decade. It's now being sent to over 150 countries and territories. This is part of China's push to take China's side of the story overseas in English language for those people that are interested in China, those considering 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. When we spoke with Global Times, they came up with a great scope of work for us, and that is that they are going to create a display pavilion for our client. This is the proposal, and they are willing to present information within a pavilion attached to their large website and under a subsection of the technology department. They will then list it as an award and include our news updates and relevant information about the participants, the judges, and the criteria. They'll showcase information about the previous awards that took place. They're also going to help get registrations by distributing short video clips related to the award to their followers. They've got followers on all the media platforms in China, including Douyin, Kuaishou, Yoku, Weibo, and WeChat. So by partnering with an established media company, we'll be able to piggyback off of their distribution infrastructure using our content. They're also willing to work with us on the information as we get closer to the awards, like who's registered, sharing information on the awards evening itself, and doing interviews with the winners. Working with Global Times 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. 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 that with their budget. We're talking about tens of thousands of US dollars instead of hundreds of thousands. But also from the perspective of time, we're looking at having something up and running within the Global Times network within weeks, not months. When I started the British Business Awards in China in 2008, I partnered with the China Daily which had English language only at the time. We worked with them to promote the awards, and it was a great way of establishing credibility, because we wanted the credibility that comes with media coverage or media exposure even if we didn't have enough content to get the media to cover it consistently over time. The announcement of the awards and the winners of it are interesting, of course, to us and our clients, but for the readership of Global Times, it's not significant enough to be given coverage everyday, but that's also what we want to have for our client. So, this is one option. If you've got anything happening, like awards, a launch, or a new initiative, you can partner with an existing media. Another option I mentioned that we're proposing to market and promote this awards is with ChinaNet, which is the key news website led by the State Council Information Office. It's managed by the China Foreign Languages Bureau, and it's published around the world in 11 versions, 10 languages, and in more than 200 countries. These awards provide opportunities for people from around the world to enter, and using the ChinaNet platform, which works across multiple language groups, will help us reach out to people around the globe. Actually, the Chinese media are probably more international in their language usage than, I would say, any other country. The British publications all take place in English; the Germans in German and English; the French in French and English, but the Chinese have really embraced multicultural and multilingual communications on the media. This is quite an interesting way of getting into markets like Africa, for example, and the Middle East, and even Latin America and certainly Southeast Asia, because the Chinese government, not individual publishers, are funding the information being shared on these platforms, and I can tell you that it's not all propaganda. Having lived and worked in China for 13 years, there is a genuine interest and passion within the Chinese editorial community to highlight and work with development causes and commerce, for instance. 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 topic, whether it's on automotives, science and technology, education, literature, and so on. ChinaNet has offered to run a live broadcast for us should we choose to partner with them. And in my opinion, China is leading the way when it comes to understanding and the deployment of streaming technologies. If we work with the guys at ChinaNet, they actually will create a separate channel for us with a water theme, and they will then broadcast both the awards information in advance and live stream the awards that will take place in Dubai to all their viewers. They'll subtitle it, of course, into Mandarin and other languages, and they're also going to include it on their video platforms, including, as I've mentioned, Douyin which is similar to Tiktok, Kuaishou, Station B, Weibo, and Yoku. With all these platforms, they will aggregate the content onto one of them, and then they will help to disseminate it. Now, this is a more expensive option. We're talking about over $100,000 to live broadcast, but what the client will be getting is not only the broadcast distribution, but the audience as well. If you were to go to CNN, CNBC, or BBC, they wouldn't even engage in this. Our problem definitely is getting the international TV companies to embrace this. Some of them would if the budget is big enough, and I know that CNBC has partnered over the years, as has CNN, with conferences, and they will be the official host and broadcaster of those conferences, and then they get exclusive rights to the content. But what we're looking at now is 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 and one community. And so as I said, the Chinese media are representing press ironically and are an interesting gateway into the worldwide audience without having to work with different media outlets in in Africa, the Middle East, the ASEAN, or Latin America. I raise this because credibility comes from media partnerships, and it comes because the media are considered gatekeepers of the content and its quality. We'd like to have our companies showcase themselves. We'd like to have our awards. We'd like to have our new products demonstrated on these channels. But of course, we have to be very careful so it's not conceived as masquerading advertising in the form of editorial. So, how do we get around that? Through partnerships with media outlets. In this case, we're suggesting two in China, but I've worked with media partnerships in Singapore, and we can do that also in any other country. The key driver now is that in COVID times, publishers need revenue. Traditional advertising revenue was already evaporating, due to the decline of print. The old days of $6,000-$7,000 worth of advertising per page when we would buy space for a trade press are gone. Now, the media are selling subscriptions to newsletters, which may be even only $50 or $60 a month, and the banner ads on websites no longer command the kinds of fees that they did when they were a full-page advert or a double-page spread before a trade show. As we can see, the media now are having to become much more entrepreneurial. They're using conferences, or at least they were, but with COVID, they've had that source of revenue taken away. So, the media bring an amazing amount of authority to any topic, and not only that, 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, 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 that even the media in China are looking at ways to make money by partnerships where we brin the content and the comm rce, and they bring the credibi ity and the distrib tion. While you may think otherwise, it is possible to find media that will work without even a budget, and they're willing to do that if you can introduce to them other forms of revenue. If you could be the content partner who introduces them to partners and vendors who will fund the event, then that's another way to work together. I wanted to raise today this idea of partnerships with publishers, as it's something I'm actively working on right now for a client. If you need any help, you're always welcome to email me at jim@eastwestpr.com, or you can find me on LinkedIn. So, think about what the media could deliver to you in terms of credibility and reach, and wha you can for them in terms of re enue and content, and struc ure a deal, just as you would with any partnership, becau e the media right now need us ju t as much as we need them. There s never been a better time to ge public relations coverage throu h partnerships with publi hers.