Brand Communication Best Strategies & Common Blunders With Francis Bea

Yeah, so actually, this is one of the things we spend a lot of time on—educating our clients—because it is quite different for them. For instance, when we’re doing PR, they come from the point of view that they can just write whatever they want and ship it off to the journalists, and they’ll just cover it or copy and paste what you do. That approach might work in some markets like China, but obviously in the States, you come from a very different point of view. As a journalist, ex-journalist, or blogger like myself, you want the best stories. Sure, that also helps your personal career, but for us, we spend quite a bit of time because many of the companies we work with—whether they’re in AI, robotics, blockchain, or even apps—tend to have a very similar story. They say, “We have the best technology,” and then throw a bunch of jargon at you, like “We have the best slam algorithm” or “We use federated learning in a way no one else does.” But at the end of the day, what does that mean for a normal person, the end user? People are usually scared of things they don’t understand.

Even the journalists, who are supposed to be objective, often need to be educated on the details. That’s where we come in—we distill that information by focusing on specific details we believe will actually be applicable to journalists, whether it’s for society at large or for their writing aimed at normal people like you and me.

So essentially, we help our clients by approaching it like a Trojan Horse. Oftentimes, even if you have all this technology and your CEO thinks it’s really exciting, we find that it isn’t as exciting as they think. We try to approach it from a more human level. I always ask my clients, “How does this help society?” It’s a legitimate question that forces them to think beyond just the technical details. Even if you have a great team, how do you defend that? Are you backed by the big names like Baidu, Ali, Tencent, or by the likes of Facebook, Amazon, Google? Are you backed by major VCs like Sequoia Capital? What’s your background? For example, in the blockchain space, 100% of the companies we talk to always lead with their team. But if you’re listening as a journalist, you’re thinking, “So what?” They get dozens or hundreds of emails a day from blockchain companies saying the exact same thing. That’s the problem you have to solve, and you can’t just pay your way out of it.

So yeah, we really try to help craft, hone, and distill that message. I always tell my clients that no matter how good of a friend you are with a journalist—I do have some great friends at major publications—there are plenty of times when they’ll say, “Unfortunately, for XYZ reasons, it’s not a good fit.” Just because you’re friends with them doesn’t guarantee they’ll get the story you want.

Does that make sense?

Yeah. So, like, you know, going back to the Trojan horse example: brands want to talk about a lot of different technologies they can offer, but how does it affect me? For example, with federated learning—the ability to analyze data sets without actually seeing the data—it’s like what I call “line data.” There’s a way to submit data where the central location can’t see exactly what it is. Maybe it has to do with people’s private data; obviously, you don’t want that revealed to random parties, even if they’re a potential part of the process. But if you just say “federated learning,” people are like, “What?” So you have to make sure it’s applied directly to the end user in a way they can understand.

To be honest, that is a major mistake I often see. Brands always want to talk about, “I can do X, Y, Z,” but in reality, using the Trojan horse example, you need to communicate it in a way that’s applicable to the end user or to things happening in society today. That way, you can get your foot in the door with journalists. And once you’re in an interview, you can always unload the rest of the details that you really want to talk about.

Yeah, I mean, to be honest, it’s easier said than done. It sounds basic, but when you ask those questions, you often see CEOs just sit there and think about, “Really, how is this helping people?” A lot of them—especially CEOs with an engineering background—tend to just want to solve a problem. And that problem is not necessarily a societal one; it’s more about their personal intrigue and solving a really hard technical challenge. And that’s actually really, really cool.

I’ll say about 50. You know, I’m sure. Maybe 100, maybe 200, maybe 300?

I mean, I’ve had companies wanting to talk about their product. For example, a company I spoke to recently wanted to launch a wireless battery charger—they thought it was the next best thing since sliced bread, even though it’s just a charger. At the same time, nobody has actually heard of the company because they haven’t put any effort into building their corporate brand. Also, their Kickstarter didn’t raise much, even though the company is actually rather large and well-known locally. Outside of their local market, they’re kind of a ghost. And so, having these conversations, people say, “Oh, this is an amazing product.” And I’m just thinking, “It’s a battery charger.”

Yeah, exactly. It’s like, you know, then they’re like, “Oh, you know, we want this in the New York Times, or we want this in CNET and other publications.” But the problem is they have to understand the step-by-step process of distilling that message in a way that resonates—simply saying, “Oh, we have this great battery charger” just isn’t going to do it. It doesn’t sound sexy enough for journalists.

One of the things we do is integrate both the product and the corporate side. We actually did this for Castbox, for example. We launched their product in conjunction with their fundraising and the founder story—positioning the CEO as someone who came from not much to where they are now. Those are the elements we implemented to ensure that you get a really great message in the beginning that makes an impact and gets decent coverage, which then helps propel things in the future. If you’re always relying on a crutch, you’re always going to be on a crutch.

Yeah, one of the clients—we actually have a few. There’s one called Cobo Wallet. They’re one of the most popular wallets in the crypto space. It’s kind of boring, actually. In addition to that, we’ve worked with a company called ForwardX. They had a product—a suitcase that would follow you around. They weren’t the first, but we had to do quite a bit of repositioning and rethinking how that product works and how it’s useful at the time it was launched.

Then, actually, the most popular one recently for us has been Unreal. Unreal is their augmented reality—or, actually, I should call it mixed reality—glasses, similar to what you might find from Magic Leap or Microsoft HoloLens. We’ve been working with them for almost two years. Initially, we also had to do quite a bit of work with them, helping them understand the value that the product offers. Originally, the executive wanted to keep it open-ended—not necessarily consumer-facing mixed reality glasses—and keep the doors open for potential business opportunities on the enterprise side.

But you know, we looked at the form factor for that device. It’s very compact, and it even looks like sunglasses. We realized we could really hone in and craft that message for a more consumer-facing story, because at the end of the day, the enterprise market is still always there if you have a really hot product. At CES, you find a lot of enterprise companies just approaching you. To a large degree, it’s a low-hanging fruit. It seems obvious now, but back then, it wasn’t so obvious—you just kind of handed it over to us and said, “What should we do with it?”

Now, after building and helping them build that brand over the course of nearly two years, when people talk about mixed reality glasses, they talk about Unreal in the same category as Magic Leap and HoloLens.

Honestly, we’ve worked with companies like—we have worked with larger companies like, there’s obviously the largest—well, actually before TikTok came around—but there’s a company called Quite Show. They’re also a live streaming company and they’ve been around for a while. And then we’ve also worked with Oppo, which is some work we’re doing right now as well. They’re one of the larger smartphone brands in the world. We’ve worked with Alibaba as well, and we do some work with TikTok right now. But yeah, I mean, when you deal with larger companies, frankly speaking, you’re just one vendor out of several dozens you’re working with. And then it’s a lot more complicated because you’re working on a really small piece of the bigger picture. For me personally, it’s great. Obviously, you’re working with larger brands, but to some degree it’s not as fulfilling, personally. At the same time, with startups—a lot of startups where we work with their VC back—they have great backgrounds, but they’re not necessarily marketing-minded, or they may be, but they don’t really know how to execute. But actually it’s a really good problem to have, because when you’re starting off from scratch, you’re going from nothing. You can craft their story in a way that, based on your professional experience, would help them stand out without any baggage. When you’re dealing with these larger companies, there’s a lot of baggage. You’re dealing with the politics of it all as well, and the impact that you have, frankly speaking, is really minimal.