Five top tips from Jo Fairley – the co-founder of Green & Black’s chocolate
By Eleanor McGillie
Green & Black’s chocolate. Delicious right? A world’s first.
This afternoon we listened in on a live webinar with Jo Fairley, the co-founder of Green & Black’s.
As one of the UK’s leading entrepreneurs, Jo spoke to an audience about product development, branding, traditional media, social media and much more.
Having spent years working as a journalist Jo knew, that once she had established the brand in the way she wanted, that she ready to tell a very good story.
So she used her skills as an award winning journalist to tell the story of Green & Blacks. And it’s a story which resonates with all of us.
Now approaching a £100million brand worldwide, Jo certainly told her story well. She used her skills to influence the influencers, she had co-founded a world’s first and she basically adopted a brand journalism approach to building the Green & Black’s brand into the global success it is today.
For those of you who were not taking part in the webinar, and have a brand to build, we have jotted down a few points which Jo shared during her presentation.
- Establish your brand essence and make sure everyone working in your social channels are Tweeting from the same song sheet.
- If your brand is visual – use Instagram. If you want to build a community, go to Facebook.
- If you have a good short story – share it as 92 per cent of people want storytelling – use characters and a storyline – but the best stories are values driven.
- Monitor what’s being said about you and your brand. Keep your eyes and ears open in cyberspace and know what’s being said.
- Everyone needs a Rapid Response unit for when things go wrong. But don’t rush in – your fans and customers will often do the repair work for you. If you have a really strong sense of your brand then your job is much easier. Have strong values.
Everyone who knows MGMPR knows that we are the first PR agency in Northern Ireland to introduce a brand journalism approach to PR. Listening to Jo today shows too that Green & Black’s is a perfect example of brand journalism.
Media and marketing are converging. Brands are moving away from traditional PR and are embracing publishing operations. Brands, as highlighted by Jo today, are recognising that storytelling is a powerful way to connect and build brands and reputations.
In 2012, Coca Cola unveiled its own brand journalism website. It set its own deadline for when Press Releases would no longer exist in Coca Cola. The New York Times covered the Coca Cola Journey debut and focused on the company’s shift to brand journalism and its significance in the world of marketing and PR. It focused on how the company was switching its attention to an editorially led approach and the importance of content creation.
It’s not only Coca-Cola though which embraces brand journalism. Companies such as Red Bull, Dell, IBM, HSBC, Intel and Adobe are others.
Our clients too – they get it. They totally embrace the value of having a media law trained team of journalists manage their brands, their reputations and their profiling.
MGMPR Ltd is a multi-media PR agency which uses brand journalism as a powerful communication tool. We are a team of media law trained professionals who have the storytelling skills to deliver your company’s key messages across multiple publishing platforms. By ‘Telling Your Story’ we are building on your success. To contact MGMPR, call 028 3756 9569 or email Eleanor directly on eleanor@mgmpr.co.uk – Brand journalism is a key approach to PR in Northern Ireland