Throwing different-sized content blades from a variety of release points is all well and good for day-to-day image maintenance, but even the best one-day story doesn’t elevate your profile to enough height with enough longevity unless it’s accompanied with a series of full-scale campaigns that are fully wrapped around it.

‘The Campaign’ evokes a sense of urgency, purpose and legitimacy for any image building, putting your persona on a particular trajectile.

It also glides through all the sometimes tangential, sporadic press opportunities you might have landed by joining up all the dots.

It also visibly draws in and namechecks many of your associates without the process looking in any way forced.

The right campaign disguises all of your mechanics. Like in a good film, you stop seeing the edits, you stop noticing the music, you just fall into the world you’re viewing.

The Campaign creates that immersive experience for your persona.

Jamie Oliver is a phenomenon in the world of food. He is well-known as one of the world’s best-loved television chefs and restaurateurs.

But Jamie isn’t just a Master chef, he’s also a Master image builder, deliberately using Campaigns that he leads consistently over his career to turbo boost his persona and ‘household name’ status.

He’s now launched a global campaign to tackle the child obesity epidemic through better food education in schools. To that end he wants to halve childhood obesity in the UK by 2030.

The campaign to do just that is entilted ‘Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution’. The Food Revolution is positioned as ‘beyond a campaign’, but instead a ‘movement’ to reach the goal of halving childhood obesity in the UK by 2030.

He’s doing this alongside the young activists at Bite Back 2030. This is a youth-led charity Jamie Oliver launched in 2019. With this charity vehicle he’s campaigning for a fairer food system so that ‘every child has access to decent, nutritious food, no matter where they live’.

In May this year, Oliver organised a protest outside Downing Street following then Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s obesity U-Turn. He got members of the public to turn up with desserts to rally against the government’s delay to ban the buy-one-get-one-free deals for unhealthy food products. He made one giant Eton mess for a photocall, as a way of taking a direct pot shot at Eton educated Boris Johnson.

In 2017, Jamie Oliver did a similar obesity-centric campaign called ‘Love Letter To London’ where he told Sadiq Khan to end junk food ads across Transport for London. As a result, London households bought 1,000 fewer calories from less healthy products every week.

Jamie’s School Dinners in 2015 gathered considerable momentum, gaining increasing public support, with Oliver approaching members of the government, to campaign for increased funding for ingredients and staff wages in school canteens.

In 2005, he opened a campaign, Feed Me Better, to introduce schoolchildren to healthier foods, which was later backed by the government. He was then became the owner of the restaurant chain, Jamie Oliver Restaurant Group, which opened its first restaurant, Jamie’s Italian, in Oxford in 2008. All helped with a social responsibility, campaigning message.

All of these campaigns have essentially been the rocket fuel for Jamie Oliver to be positioned as the saviour of the nation and remain that way for years and years.

Campaigns can be political, or philanthropic, or even environmental – drawing out all the other likeminded souls around a specific purpose.

When I used to do PR for Dame Vivienne Westwood’s Julian Assange campaigns and Fracking, it gave her the positioning of being ‘punk with purpose’ and made the clothes she sells mean more than just looking good. They jumped off the coat hanger with attitude and meaning.

Of course, some campaigns can elevate you so high you don’t ever come back down again. Bob Geldof, the Boomtown Rat and entrepreneur, got so defined by Live Aid, that despite all efforts, he’s now Mr. Charity and ‘Saint Bob’.

The Campaign is a total overrider from the standard blade-throwing process of content.

It stimulates and legitimises all the aspects of your persona.

Some campaigns can be long running, others can be short. Some personalities attach themselves to a multiude of campaigns.

When we take a look at four of the Top 10 advertising campaigns for brands worldwide, we can see
how simple yet powerful a campaign slogan can be.

Nike Just Do It. Launched in 1998 featuring amateur and professional athletes alike. An 80-year-old marathoner Walt Stack who runs 17 miles every morning was featured.

Attach yourself to that.

Its totally no nonsense and attitudinal to the core. But when launched it essentially manifested the idea into an active campaign.

Dove’s ‘Real Beauty’ campaign from 2004. Research showed only 2% of women considered themselves beautiful. Real women replaced models for the campaign. This formed real dramatic reality.

Coca Cola’s ‘Share a Coke’ campaign. They printed different people’s names across Coke bottles. Again, this used ‘real life’ to make people feel closer and more entwined with the brand.

Apple’s ‘Creativity Goes On’ campaign launched as a reaction to Lockdowns. Despite the restriction, creativity was flourishing. And now Apple is celebrating that.

This is not the same as the Single-minded proposition of the individual persona, but instead the slogan for a campaign which in these cases is for a brand. But equally they could be campaigns for ideas and thoughts.

Leading a campaign will always give you more brand building qualities that if you’re just part of the chorus line. Perhaps you lead one, and join in and support two or three others.

Read more:
Your persona achieves acceleration and lift off when you attach it to a Cause-related ‘Campaign’ – Jamie Oliver Is A Master At This

Phones4U Billionaire John Caudwell knows all about creating massive cut-through by throwing his content daggers at the media from well-positioned, multiple release points.

If it’s just you, or your PA, pitching yourself to a TV booker then that’s all well and good for a one-day story.

But it all becomes very predictable if the same person is pitching stories about the same personality over and over again.

Also, its impossible to cover enough bases.

These days just emailing out press releases into the abyss so often misses. The bespoke, handcrafted calling and leaving messages approach is vital.

Achieving a three-dimensional effect for your persona and real image magnitude like a large landscape painting in the sky, means utilising multiple release points.

You need plants everywhere to send in your daggers.

Eventually, with enough plants, you circle the cowboy with all the Indians positioned from down low and also up on high. Everyone appears to be talking about you.

For his personal PR, which of course mentions his John Caudwell personal brand all the way, he has hired Claire Powell from The CAN Group, who used to represent Katie Price and Peter Andre. So a proper celebrity agent/PR as opposed to a financial or corporate PR specialist.

But then for his just-released autobiography, Love, Pain and Money: The Making of a Billionaire, the press relations will be led by publicists at the publisher, Mirror Books, which is part of Reach Plc, who also own the Daily and Sunday Express, Daily Star and Daily Star Sunday and OK! Magazine. The press unit of Mirror Books would have constructed their own release about John Caudwell’s book and issued it to the media. Technically both The CAN Goup and the publicists at Mirror Books and Reach Plc could have both been pitching the media simultaneously.

There’s been situations where I have represented an individual business person, then the production company of a particular programme they have starred in has been pitching their own press release as well, then the publicist on the TV network the programme has been playing has also been at it.

You can have a rugby scrum of PRs working the same sort of content about one particular individual up into a frenzy.

Caudwell’s charity, Caudwell Children, which receives all the proceeds of the sale of his autobiography, will have it’s own communications team as well – totally separate to the book publisher, separate to The CAN Group. The common element here is of course the personal image of ‘John Caudwell’.

John Caudwell’s image collateral goes through the roof as more and more agencies handle their own communications but with ‘John Caudwell’ at the centre of it all.

When Caudwell owned Phones4U, well before he sold his majority stake for $2.8 Billion in 2011, and then unloaded the remaining 25% for a nifty $272 million, and arguably Phones4U’s competitors conspired to put it out of business, an entirely separate communications team would have handled the press releases but so often quoting John Caudwell.

As well as a PR entourage around your various business interests, there are plenty of other ‘agents’ that can be engaged to further disguise your mechanics.

Freelance journalists are vastly underestimated. They sit somewhat in a grey area between PR and journalism. Because they’re not fully ‘on staff’, they can be more persuaded to ‘come up with a story about you’ and pitch it to a national media outlet as if they have discovered a story.

News and picture agencies also create a perception of impartiality. If they write it up, they will put their story up on an approved news wire which is regarded way up the food chain in terms of its credibility rather than a bog standard press release which smacks of being from a vested interest.

But then you can open up a treasure trove of potential release points if you were to write an article for a Think Tank that has it’s own communications unit. Or a University Alumni with its own communications unit. Or a members club or association with its own communications unit. In these instances, your name might be part of a list of high profile business people, but regardless it’s getting your name out there and creating texture and depth to your persona.

The only thing binding everything together is the news index date which brings all the various communications strands together around an anniversary day, or report release date.

Everyone working on various communications can always slap the same Embargo date on their press releases. That way it aligns everything around a particular date so there are not loads of different campfires being lit.

Having said that there’s always ‘fire bursts’ going off randomly. Depending on the type of media outlet that runs, various media outlets can copycat the story that’s just run, writing their own variations of it.

One thing about the media, nothing is linear.

As long as a story has been reported in a particular media outlet, the same story can be presented as news up to 6 months late.

When Chase Vodka won the World’s Best Vodka award at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition in May 2010, I had BBC Breakfast go up to William Chases’ farm in Hereford right away, film as story and put the story on air. Then Fox News did the same three months later. CNN did it 3 months after Fox. All reported ‘Chase wins world’s best vodka’ like it was a breaking story.

Read more:
The assault on the media by throwing multiple daggers is best handled by orchestrating multiple release points – Phones4U Billionaire John Caudwell knows all about this

When you’re throwing a multitude of blades from velvet sheaths at the media, you don’t want to be in any way predictable in your approach.

With on average 200 press releases arriving in inboxes each day, journalists are swimming in content.

Nothing really registers and gets any traction if it’s just the same old same old. A stack of similar size daggers thrown in the same way, at the same speed, all looking identical makes a content-worn journalist inevitably glaze over.

Daggers instead need to be thrown in with a variety of hand actions. Some thrown lightning fast. Others silent but violent.

The sizes can vary greatly as well in order to mix it up. In Mediaeval times the length of daggers ranged from 6 – 20 inches. Many were so long that they were often viewed as short swords. Your story content should be large and small as well.

And many of the daggers of old were very elaborately decorated and made from Gold, Ebony, Brass. Some even had diamonds encrusted on them.

Your story content needs to be the same. Some of the daggers arrive as a short emailed ‘tip off’. Others are a bunch of pictures and videos emailed over with just picture captions accompanying them. Others are 1,500-word feature-length stories where it’s written in the third-person and you’re written about alongside other experts as if you’re part of a feature. A bulk of your content are straight 500-700 word press releases labeled ‘Press release’ with a boilerplate at the bottom providing more information about a particular subject. A boilerplate is American PR slang for the boilerplate, or bumper of a car. The boilerplate is much like an abbreviated Wikipedia entry.

Sir James Dyson, the man, and Dyson, the business, are completely intertwined with this elaborate content-producing system to be fired at the media.

Dyson, the company, is well known for its innovative vacuum cleaners and ‘air-blade’ hand dryers. James Dyson as the founder is like the ‘Japeto’ that burns the midnight oil every night coming up it all.

What his team like him talking about in the media are a suite of set-piece stories around entrepreneurship, nostalgic memories of his upbringing, innovation awards winners that Dyson sponsor, new inventions from James himself, dividend payouts etc.

500-700 word news releases are self-written and produced around these repeating themes which have updates poured into the mould.
-Dyson Promises Power With $1500 Cordless Vacuum (Channel News)
-James Dyson is right to urge us back to the office (The Spectator)
-‘Sir James Dyson speaks about growing up in North Northfolk (North Norfolk News)
-West Country’s Sir James Dyson now second wealthiest in the UK (ITV Hub)
-Kiwi student inventions make Dyson’s shortlist for $59k prize. (Stuff.co.nz)
-Sir James Dyson’s UK business pays out £460m dividend.

When James Dyson did his big GQ Magazine interview in December 2021, the stylised photography and subject matter of the article is as rehearsed and regimented as the news stories. His headline for the article is selling the brand with ‘Sir James Dyson: Most focus groups are wrong’.

But the look, feel, shape of this carefully crafted content is ‘Lifestyle’ as opposed to ‘News’.

All of the imagery used by Dyson the man and Dyson the business will generally be shot and supplied by Dyson themselves – or they would only ever be permit photographers to be commissioned that have been screened first, and they would have approval rights on the images used in the magazine.

The press content is as carefully managed as the use of logos might be managed by marketing managers through the issuing of brand guidelines.

Dyson is ultra-protective of its reputation, particularly because the man James Dyson and the Dyson business are so synonymous. If James Dyson the man went down, so too could the Dyson business run into trouble.

To that end, James Dyson, the man, is currently suing Channel 4 for libel over a news report on the 10th of February 2022 that he personally was complicit in abuse and exploitation at his Malaysian factory, a former supplier for his firm.

This is the same Sir James Dyson that just got named second on this year’s Sunday Times Rich List worth £23 Bn.

His lawyers called the news report “remarkably defamatory” and that “The main theme of the broadcast is the difference between ‘Dyson’s image’ which his firm seeks to project and protect, and the reality of abuse and exploitation which Channel 4 discloses.”

Channel 4 allege, via interviews with former workers, that they “suffered abuse, inhuman work conditions, and in one case, even torture while they were helping make Dyson products”.

James Dyson had to act decisively on this with his own legal action because if he just left it, the rot can set in and eat away the reputation of the entire business like a cancer.

This is left field, and totally not in the script written by Dyson communications people, that want to paint him as a brilliant inventor and entrepreneur.

When you’re not reacting to a reputational crisis, there’s about 20-30 story ‘shells’’ that make up the various shapes and sizes of daggers that you can slot your content into to throw it in at the media. Variety is the spice of life.
All of these ‘varieties’ are utilised by the comms team at Dyson.

The more ‘oven warm’ your story content is the more readily the journalist will cook it and serve it. I often describe it like a Hello Fresh box where all the content ingredients you supply are separated, washed and ready to combine into an Easy-meal, cooked by the journalist.

Wrapped around each dagger – or cutting-edge story – like a message on a string, is a news date which indexes what ‘happening’ sits behind the story that is being thrown at the media.

This gives the story a raison d’etre, or reason for being.

An interesting, repurposed, recognisable yarn is all well and good, but if it doesn’t have embedded a ‘happening’ or news date, then its simply superfluous fluff rather than falling into the category of ‘in the public interest’.

Often a manufactured and controlled ‘supporting event’ can be created. I was promoting a low-cost security camera a few years ago in a flooded market. I sent an email to the Department for Education, asking if they would support a trial of the product in schools. Even though the product was totally unknown, they sent back an email stating that in principle they would indeed support the use of this device in schools that protected children. I certainly gave them a leading question.

This ‘supporting event’ – with the documental evidence or an email replied to – acts to further authenticate a story. So not only is the story interesting, you are now also providing evidence of something actually ‘happening’ such as a potential Department for Education trial.

Adjoin that with a news index date such as ‘World Safety Day’ which just happens to be the same day that you want the release to run, and you’ve created your own perfect storm.

Its a story. Its a happening. Its a relevant news index date. A Holy Trinity.
These three combine to make the dagger extra potent, almost creating a poision tip.

When the story strikes – with the extra components – it becomes so much more penetrative, seductive and deadly.

Read more:
Blades thrown at the media must be a wide variety of shapes, sizes and colours to penetrate the shields – James Dyson Is The Master Of This

All CEO’s, Founders or Chairmen that get the concept of using their image to promote their business interests get their comms people to regularly push themselves onto TV, onto radio, into newspapers and magazines so they essentially become the personification of the business.

Elon Musk, 51 years, is well adept at using a sharp blade when it comes to cutting into the media – via social or traditional media avenues.

It’s his constant throwing of daggers from velvet sheaths that has elevated his profile with earned media – which means media you don’t have to pay for in the form of ads or paid-editorial.

From arriving in North America with US$2,000 in his pocket at 17 years of age from his homeland of South Africa, the tech titan is now worth US$230 Billion courtesy of SpaceX, OpenAI, The Boring Company and Neuralink Inc and Tesla.

He arrived on the U.S. business and media scene in 1996 with his venture Zip2, which brought the internet to companies like the New York Times, Hearst and Knight-Ridder. Compaq acquired Zip2 in 1999 for US$340 million.

Rather than settling for standard stories about new hires or annual results that show growth, Musk has been fully engaged with content generation by sending daggers at targets creating a multitude of reportable ‘mini-deaths’ or stories for years.

As NDTV reported in May 2022 about Musk, ‘Elon Musk Gives Many Headlines In a 40-Minute Interview’.

Essentially, he is a living, breathing, walking, talking headline generating machine.

On Twitter, which he joined in June 2009, he now has 105 million followers.
Musk fires a daily diet of daggers, some missing the target, but many hitting and creating viral traction. All with a sharpened blade.

Apart from his hard-hitting, no-nonsense opinions that make great tweets and subsequently headlines, his pronouncements characteristically strike hard and ring alarm bells.

He’s the epitome of a disruptive entrepreneur – and in so being – is disruptive of narrative norms.

He unsettles and explodes common held beliefs and perceptions or the status quo, often playing devil’s advocate to get a reaction – and ‘get the buffalo on the run’.

Just a quick glance at some of Elon Musk’s headlines and tweets show the constant flurry of daggers flying about all over the place.

‘Elon Musk’s SpaceX delivers Russian, Native American women to station’ (Independent Oct 7, 2022).

‘Elon Musk claims ‘bot attack’ ruined his Ukraine-Russia war solution’ (Independent Oct 5, 2022)

‘War is the ultimate Supreme Court’ (Tweet on Oct 6, 2022)

‘This would be my daily life if I were a lawyer’ (Tweet on Sep 26, 2022)

‘Will Musk turn Twitter into a ‘supercharged engine of radicalisation’?’ (Independent Oct 6, 2022)

‘Elon Musk suggests making Taiwan a ‘special administrative zone’ similar to Hong Kong (The Guardian, Oct 8, 2022)

‘Elon Musk blames hatred of rich people for daughter’s estrangement’ (Business Insider, Oct 7, 2022)

‘Elon Musk is totally wrong about population collapse’ (Wired, Oct 6, 2022)

For media savvy companies who want more bang for their buck than just a results announcement they also focus attention around the CEO, like Tim Cook at Apple, Reed Hasting at Netflix or Marc Benioff at Salesforce to ‘star’ in columns, articles and broadcast appearances.

But other companies deliberately choose the entire C-suite of CFO’s, CMO’s even CTO’s to share the limelight with the CEO, Founder or Chairman.

The Board often prefer a pantheon of faces – rather than singular ‘Elon Musk’ so that no one person becomes too powerful in the organisation.

Imagine if a high profile CEO, without any shares in the company, becomes synonymous with the company, but then is tempted away with a better financial offer made by a rival – or worse still, is suddenly hit by a bus.

The simple technique for business personalities penetrating either social or traditional media – is firing largely pre-created and scheduled content via a plethora of daggers, which are stored in velvet sheaths.

A good 85-90% of the content you release can be planned this way, leaving 15% for on-the-day-spontaneity.

A dagger with a sheath covered in green velvet was first spotted in India around 1850, and has cropped up in English Literature as description for what women should aspire to be like.

Just like there are rules for engagement in war, so is there an etiquette in the process of disguising your media dagger in a velvet sheath, only for the poison tip, when thrown at a media target, to be particularly deadly.

The business personalities that get the most media traction, seriously punching, or in this case – cutting – above their weight, are the ones unafraid to use a sharpened instrument, and all of the time, although it’s deadliness is always well hidden by the velvet sheath.

Following are all the types of ‘cutting edge storylines’ and news-linked, opinionated comment that various CEO’s have been prepared to engage in on The Ian King Show on Sky News over the last year.

Strong predictions, statements, revelations and conjecture.

Ivan Menezes, CEO of Diageo – ‘Diageo boss warns of Scottish water shortage’

Mike Regnier, CEO, Santander UK – ‘Young people are in debt after not getting enough education about finances’

Ben van Beurden, CEO, Shell – ‘Governments may need to tax energy firms to help the poor’

Hiroshi Mikitani, Chairman & CEO, Rakuten – ‘Rakuten CEO Mikitani to donate 1 billion yen to Ukraine’

Severin Schwan, CEO, Roche – ‘Roche admits to losing money in Russia’

Dolf van den Brink, CEO, Heineken – ‘Heineken chief warns cost inflation is ‘off the charts’’

Peter Simpson, CEO Anglian Water – ‘Make more effort to reach net zero goals, Anglian Water CEO tell Truss’

Octavio Marenzi, CEO, Opimas – ‘Hold cash, sit on your hands, and wait for central banks to pivot before you reinvest’

Alastair Douglas, CEO of Totally Money –‘Brits blowing £17m a month on credit card cash fees’

Nigel Pocklington, CEO, Good Energy –‘Fifteen years of anaemic growth cannot be repeated’

Mark Tanzer, CEO, ABTA – ‘Scrap Covid tests for most travellers’

Mike Fairman, CEO of Checkatrade –‘Top DIY jobs homeowners use to transform their houses without paying up big revealed’

Michael Ward, CEO, Harrods – ‘Threat to London’s Cultural Status’

Raj Krishnamurthy, CEO, Freespace – ‘In a hybrid world, office downsizings are coming’

Martin Daum, CEO, Daimler Trucks –‘German bureaucracy preventing reduced gas use’

Sebastian Siemiatkowski, Co-Founder and CEO Klarna – ‘No short term solutions to inflation’

Victor Lugger – Chief Executive, The Big Mamma Restaurants – ‘Companies that pivot are best placed to prosper’

Graham Clemett, CEO, Workspace Group – ‘London’s SME’s are leading the way back to the office’

Fani Titi, CEO, Investec – ‘Investec CEO urges government to take more courageous decisions’

Chuck Robbins, CEO, Cisco – ‘When we make changes, we make them together’

Anders Danielsson, CEO, Skanska – ‘We probably have the best balance sheet in the industry’.

George Dymond, CEO, Planet Organic – ‘Can Planet Organic beat the cost-of-living squeeze?’

Aaron Skonnard, Co-Founder and CEO, Pluralsight – ‘Why companies must transform from consumers of talent to creators of talent’

Brian Gilvary, Chairman, INEOS Energy – ‘Would we be investing in wind or solar right now? The answer is no’.

All of these CEO’s stand themselves in good stead to get repeatable media coverage, because they’re prepared to stick their neck out and fire daggers at targets.

Like the magicians of old who threw daggers as part of their magic act, you now need to prepare a stream of blades to be thrown, all deadly daggers with poison tips – all with the sole goal of creating a constant series of ‘mini deaths’ or newsworthy happenings.

Stories, or mini-deaths or collisions, always follow a rule system of being delivered with eloquence, often a bit of alliteration and rhythm and what journalists so often call “pithiness”, in terms of the way they gently jack-hammer points across in a silky, calm-but-frenetic, somewhat wild-but-poetic way.

Ten years ago the content approach, whether in the form of press releases, or brief notes, or feature-length articles was known as ‘Associated Press-style’ or ‘AP-style’. Associated Press is a global news agency. This style is somewhat factual and informative whilst very professional.

But now, thanks to evermore rapid delivery of news via social media and the 24/7 news cycle, it’s more like a ‘Mail Online style’. A bit screamy. Drenched with facts. Almost a nail bomb, blasting the attention of the reader, who could so easily click off the story and onto something else. Heaven forbid!

Every story is chasing the rankings of ‘Most Read’ story and hopefully getting shared across social media platforms which demands a much edgier, full throttle approach.

Women’s magazines have operated like this for years, having a sort of ‘line up’ on a magazine shelf where every single front cover tries to jump off the shelf and into the shopping trolley in terms of the sheer alarm it generates, demanding to be purchased and consumed or the reader’s life is so almost definitely over.

Each of these story daggers – or arrows – are packed with poison.

All these daggers are aiming at the target, constantly being thrown, always looking for penetration.

Read more:
Multitude of daggers from velvet sheaths are thrown at media to build personal profile

Whether you go into it kicking and screaming, the elephant in the room of any robust media profile, is, dare I say it, social media.

React to the news agenda, or alternatively push out your own practive content, using both traditional media and social media is fast becoming a given.

The Berlin Wall that divided the country from 1961 to 1989 eventually came crashing down. And so too will the wall that still divides traditional media and social media.

As King Soloman, who reigned Israel from 970 to 931 BCE, once said: “This Too Shall Pass”.

Traditional media outlets that publish by both analogue and digital is one thing. Like The Guardian, who back in 2011, announced their adoption of a ‘digital first’ strategy. That’s still traditional media as far as I’m concerned.

But instead I’m talking about equally harnessing social media in all it’s various guises – as well as pushing your profile into traditional media outlets like TV, radio, newspapers and magazines and their online equivalents.

No mean feat.

TikTok, once for pre-pubescent kids to sing into hair brushes – is now used by the World Economic Forum.

Wakelet.

YouTube.

Twitter.

SnapChat.

Instagram.

Linkedin.

The works….

In terms of reverse-engineering a mainstream media profile, there’s no one as formidable as KSI, which stands for ‘Knowledge Strength Integrity’.

KSI’s real name is Olajide Olayinka Williams “JJ” Olatunji.

Born in 1993 in Watford, it all started out in 2008 when KSI started providing gaming commentary videos of the FIFA video game series.

As of September 2022, he had over 40,000,000 subscribers and over 8 billion views across his three YouTube channels. 88.6% of KSI’s followers are young males.

Who would think, one individual whose harnessed social media – namely YouTube – would have more media reach today than the BBC, ITV, GB News and TalkTV?

In May 2020, The Guardian sat up and took notice with the headline ‘KSI: Money Gravitates Towards Me’ stating ‘KSI is as recognisable to teenagers as Tom Hanks is to the rest of us’.

Today he owns ten properties around England worth over £10 million.

The Sunday Times estimates he makes over £12,000,000 per year. In 2020. The Times rank KSI as Britain’s biggest influencer.

This is the same man that used referred to girls as ‘sluts ’in his content. He was widely criticised for his self-described ‘rape face’ in 2012 and 2013.

Microsoft even cut ties with him and he was banned from Eurogamer events after third party allegations of sexual harassment of female staff.

But today, a more grown up KSI is both a social media and traditional media crossover Superstar.

And he’s pretty much the CEO of all of businesses that he’s leveraged off his profile.

Becoming a Professional Boxer generated $8.5 million from pay per view and $3.5 million for ticket sales.

In 2015, he published his biography titled KSI: I Am A Bellend.

His solo album Dissimulation was released on 22nd May 2020 debuting at No. 2 on the charts. His second album went straight in at No. 1. He owns his own music company called ‘The Online Takeover’ and has been signed to BMG, Atlantic Records and MORE.

He’s also a comedy actor, featuring in the British comedy film, Laid in America (2016).

The Sidemen are like his family business. They own their own food company called ‘Sides’.

Prime Hydration is a drink company created with his boxing rival Logan Paul and they are official sponsors of Arsenal Football Club.

The Sidemen who he is a part of also own XIX Vodka and a restaurant chain known as Sides.

But most interestingly, he’s now properly crossed over into traditional media. – even though he’s totally born of YouTube.

He did The Great Stand Up To Cancer Bake Off. He appeared on an episode of BBC’s Blue Peter in July 2021. He was on Channel 4’s Celebrity Gogglebox from 2020-21.

Then there’s the one and only British YouTube fitness sensation, Joe Wicks, The Body Coach.

The Lockdown was good to Joe where he have us his daily diet of remote-fitness classes via YouTube. His Twitter is now 428,100 followers. YouTube is 2.81 Million subscribers. Instagram is 4.5 Million Followers. Facebook is 4.5 Million Followers.

Joe Wicks MBE became ‘Dr Joe’ at a Graduation Ceremony at St Mary’s University, Twickenham in July 2022, receiving an honorary doctorate in Sport and Exercise Science. He’s now as much a darling of traditional media as Jamie Oliver – becoming a true household name.

Another entrepreneur whose stepped from the social world and embraced the traditional media world is Steven Bartlett. Steven Bartlett’s Twitter is at 212,000 followers. Linkedin is 847,258 followers. YouTube is 482,000 subscribers. He founded Social Chain. Now he’s on BBC Dragons’ Den is an investor.

Social media is exposing and hanging out to dry some of the pre-internet icons – or at least showing they’re somewhat ‘challenged’ by the social media world.

Some winners and some losers. A quick audit.

Lord Sugar has used his mainstream TV profile to build a big fan base on Twitter and delivers them his brand of nonsense witticisms. On Instagram he’s less prolific.

Twitter
@Lord_Sugar
Chairman of Amshold Group, owner of @Amscreen and Amsprop.
Born March 24 Joined June 2010
3,110 Following
5.2M Followers

Instagram
# lord_sugar
Verified
803 posts
176K followers
869 following
Alan Sugar
Chairman of Amshold Group. Owner of @Amscreen and Amsprop. Host of The BBC Apprentice. amsvest.co.uk

Robert De Niro, one of the biggest stars in the world had one brief foray with social media. Below is his first and last tweet, which was on May 16, 2014.

Robert De Niro
@Rob_D_Niro
Official Twitter Account of Robert DeNiro / Actor, director, producer, voice actor & father.
Joined May 2014
0 Following
10.9K Followers

May 16, 2014
Hello Twitter! Unfortantly its official and I’ve given into the blue bird! #myfirstTweet #RobertDeNiro #official #sharethenews

Rupert Murdoch, the most powerful media tycoon in the world had a burst on Twitter, but then was never to be seen or heard from again since March 2016.

@rupertmurdoch
Joined December 2011
125 Following
670.5K Followers

3:31 PM · Mar 4, 2016·Twitter for iPad
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The most daunting aspect of starting out on social media is the sheer scale of content production and distribution that is required.

Production of content. Then scheduling. The ask is enormous.

It’s the modern equivalent to making the film, Ben Hur.

President Barack Obama may look like he’s getting idea popping into his head and posting it on social media.

But its actually a team of around 50 people handling his personal social media posts.

Back in 2009, Barack Obama was one of the first people to truly embrace the power of social media properly. Back then he had 115,000 Twitter followers and used 14 social media channels. Today, he has 133 million Twitter followers.

Canva simplifies the process of designing beautiful posts and then resizing them for all the different size requirements.

Then there’s a flood of AI tools that now author a multitude of pithy posts en masse, all spell checked, nothing plagarised that could upset Google’s algorithms.

So rather than a team of 50 to keep up with Obama on social media, you can keep up much easier with AI augmentation. ‘Yes you can’.

The key when unleashing ‘augmentation’ of your social media activity, is to still give it your own defined style and feel.

Everyone, armed with AI tools is starting to look and sound very much the same even though their supposed ‘high quality content’ is prolific.

There’s a soup of samey ‘high quality’ well-designed social media content out there.

Remember to always adhere to the single minded proposition and your ‘sales objectives’ when planning.

But particularly for social media, there should be around 30 themes or hubs with all the content falling within it– whether it’s article links, videos, retweets falling in a repeating fashion into each of these hubs.

Wakelet is the world’s best tool for organising all the these content pillars and storing online all the tweets, PDFs, PJpegs, MP4s you find and want to push out across all your social channels later.

Well timed out and scheduled regularity builds an organised pattern and slowly but surely pushes the single-minded proposition which sits behind it all.

Read more:
The dividing wall between social and traditional media is fast coming down – Love or hate social media, ignore it at your peril

The equal and opposite action of reacting to trending news and then coat tail riding the story of the day with your expert opinions – is the seeded or placed story. This is where you set your own news agenda in the form of a bespoke narrative.

News reaction through parasitic means and its opposite, News procreation, really do work together in harmony to steadily build and maintain media profile.

They go together like a hand in a glove. Or a hammer and anvil, the military technique involving the use of two primary forces, one to pin down an enemy, and the other to smash the opponent.

You certainly don’t want one without the other in terms of the long-term building of a robust profile.

You see a number of faces on ITV This Morning or GB News that appear as experts regularly whether it’s Medical or to do with the Construction Industry. But then that’s the only place you ever see or hear about them. They’re not outputting any of their own native content into the public domain whatsoever. Just take take take in the form of grabbing an existing story breaking in the news and having a strong opinion about it, on either side of the narrative divide.

Former Channel 4 Chairman and CEO of Risk Capital, Luke Johnson, is an example of someone who has got a healthy mix of news reaction and news procreation in terms of his public persona. With his regular ‘The Maverick’ columns over the years for the Sunday Telegraph, these all got turned into a book, The Maverick: Dispatches From An Unrepentant Capitalist. Now he’s in the Sunday Times with a weekly column, only paused briefly in 2019 when Patisserie Valerie, which he chaired, went down, to let the dust settle. His new book Start It Up: Why Running Your Own Business Is Easier Than You Think has put him back in the author stakes. Twitter acts as one big news reaction opportunity for Johnson, where he risks his own reputation for what he believes in with regards to his extremely strong views about the wiping out of our freedoms. On the back of this, bookers from news channels cherry-pick what he’s saying about Covid, Climate, our fundamental freedoms and the Economy and book him regularly to discuss his views on breaking stories.

Toby Young, head of the Free Speech Union, keeps working the two techniques. He’ll write books like How To Win Friends And Alienate People but also regularly stands up for Freedom of Expression rights of people right across the political spectrum and attacks trending stories in this space as an expert.

While parasiting is a ‘quick hit’, the procreation bit can often be a bit more involved, just like it is in real life!

No matter how well-intentioned and thought through your proactive grand announcement might be, backed up with tonnes of field research, the paid-for PR Newswire release to 100,000 or 1,000,000 contacts can so often go into a vacuum. Often with no rhyme or reason. It just misses completely. You send out your wonderful communication and the world seemingly falls into total silence.

Any journalist will tell you that press releases so often miss the fundamentals of narrative.

When they’re sent out, so often all the juice has been drained from them, in a diluted, bland form. A shadow of their former selves after edit after edit by a committee.

Journalists field between 300 and 1,000 press releases every day.

That’s an awful lot of well-thought-through releases wanting to fertilise a very finite number of eggs.

There is a very finite quota of stories pertaining to a particular Subject area in any media outlet including radio and television just like there is in a national newspaper.

This breaks down into National news subdivided up into Crime, Health, Environment, Consumer etc. Lifestyle which includes wellbeing, fashion and cooking. International news. Local news. Opinion. Features. Entertainment such as TV, cinema and travel. Business. Sport.

There’s only a quota of 2 or 3 stories in each of the categories that will ever see the light of day each day. The rest will fall by the wayside.

All the releases swimming like sperm have to not only prove to be the strongest, but also pass a full MOT test.

Is there evidence provided for the claims made in the story? If not, it makes the media outlet liable to be sued. Does the story fit a typical preordained story-genre that journalists are familiar with so they recognise it as a story in the first place?

But then ironically, does the outer edge of the story seemingly explode and shatter pre-held beliefs or norms?

The fresh, breaking story is generally the collision of two fundamental opposites – a hostile act – to create a new.

A newspaper is full of hundreds of these ‘mini deaths’.

The French call an orgasm la petite mort. This means “the brief loss or weakening of consciousness” but most importantly, “the sensation post orgasm as likened to a mini death”.

Stories that get across the line are essentially the collision of opposities, or ‘deaths’ which creates the new realisation.

Interestingly, if you take a look at a Thesaurus, the definitions of ‘Collision’ and ‘Creation’ are antonymous, having the opposite meaning. The Collision Noun means the forceful coming together of two things.

But importantly, it’s through the Collison or Destruction, that comes the new Creation.

But fundamentally, it needs the Collision first.

That is the whole basis of the news agenda, and how and why your proactive content can form a part of it.

The leveraging, placing or seeding of the story so often occurs with just one particular journalist ‘taking the punt’.

In the spirit of the news being a ‘mini death’ and hostile act, placement often requires a bit of force, persuasion and a ‘firm handshake’ which might sometimes turn into an arm wrestle – never a brawl!

Always be polite. Have a sense of humour. But also be firm.

You’re in the process of casting off hundreds of other me-too similar stories that all seem rather similar. But in your case you’re proving yours wins in the Survival of the Fittest Hunger Games.

The placement with a single journalist can then be followed up, when the story finally breaks in The Guardian, Daily Mail or Sunday Times, with a mass send out to a BCC or personalised Mail-merged list of thousands of journalists who might then pile in with their own versions of the same story – because now it has currency in the form of the story running somewhere else.

I’ve done this the other way round quite often as well. A general wire out of the story has gone out to a broad list of contacts first, but where seemingly no one is biting.

In actual fact, no one wanted to be first off the block and were simply waiting and watching who else would go first and break the news.

As soon as just one outlet ran the story, with a bit of manual prompting and pushing in by me, the entire global media was ablaze writing the same story.

This is what happened when, during the 40th anniversary year of the Sex Pistols single Anarchy in the UK being released, I said that the son of Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren, the late manager of the Sex Pistols, was going to burn his £5,000,000 punk memorabilia collection in protest about the way that the corporate world had appropriated punk. There was a Virgin Punk credit card. McDonalds had done punk McNuggets.

So this was widely released first. Single placement second.

Generally, its single placement first, then wider release second.

Read more:
PR advice: Seeding a story is equally important to news reaction

In your quest for media traction you’ve now worked out your identity and inherent personality through your God-given face, you’ve handpicked, culled and pruned your associates, you’ve established and weighted the hierarchy of your ‘doing selves’, and expertly blended a potpourri of gestures, intonations and visual queues into a unique ‘cartoon-self’.

Read more:
Its time to inject yourself into the thick vein of the ever coursing whitewater rapid ride of the media

This week we must pause and reflect upon the death of the greatest personal brand of them all, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.

She is the most famous, trusted face on the planet.

Last year, The Express reported that the Queen’s brand is “greater than Nike, Ferrari and Pepsi” according to polling by TV producer Nick Bullen for a programme about the Royal Family and whether they are ‘worth it’ to the tax payer. Only tech titans like Apple, Amazon Google and Facebook had their heads in the clouds up there with Her Majesty. The Queen, according to his research, is 23 times bigger than the Beckhams and three times bigger than the Obamas when considering brand recognition and favourability.

The Netflix series The Crown fortunately and befittingly cast her in the most positive light and kept her legacy intact, for an even wider global audience.

In January 2020, a total of 73 million households worldwide had watched The Crown since it began in 2016.

The Crown Series four, infact, had 600,000 more viewers in its first week than Prince Charles and Princess Diana’s real wedding had in 1981 as 29 million globally tuned in.

Ted Sarandos, the chief content officer of Netflix said: “The Crown’s popularity grows with each new season”. It’s part of a “global cultural zeitgeist” he says.

The image of Queen Elizabeth II was mostly favourable throughout her years as a reigning monarch. Conservative in dress, she was well known for her solid-colour overcoats and matching hats, which allowed her to be seen easily in a crowd. A beacon. Our lighthouse.

She certainly called to me in New Zealand as a child, with her face emblazoned on all of the dollar notes, and stories of the Royal Family appearing in all of the women’s magazines all of the time.

Her steadfastness and constancy was an assurance for us all.

She united the polarising opposites of Britain as a nation like no other.

“Her Majesty is a pretty nice girl but she doesn’t have a lot to say,” said Sir Paul McCartney, who wrote this line in his Abbey Road album.

That was the mark of The Queen’s ability to remain a unifier and mother of the nation. She was near yet so far. She was aloof yet at our bedside reading a nighttime story.

As John Sergeant just pointed out, The Queen was never actually interviewed. Not even once.

And that ‘known unknowness’ was what allowed us all to project all of our emotions onto her.

This is a quality of the greatest, most enduring personalities.

She also punctuated her reign with a fine sense of humour. Notably the sketch with Paddington Bear for her Jubilee celebrations or a stint with James Bond for the London Olympics.

The clever mix was exquisite.

Always measured and always balanced.

She remained steadfastly non-partisan, but at pivotal moments in history, she gave us a clue as to where we should steer the ship. On Brexit. On the Scottish Independence Referendum she subtly, oh so subtly gave us guidance or a nudge.

Britishness is the ultimate soft power, well ahead of even China. Even with the waning of the Empire, Britain’s influence across the world is everywhere.

Apart from Language, England of course gave us Time. The Steam Engine. The Electric Motor. Roads. Cricket. The World Wide Web.

The English language reigns supreme with over 1.5 billion speakers. 15% of the global population, pipping at the post Mandarin Chinese, Hindi, Spanish and French.

Tourism in England contributes £100 Billion to the British economy and supports 2 million jobs.

Brand Britain, with Her Majesty at the helm is the driver of exports including Gold, Cars, Turbo-jets, Medical mixes, Crude oil, Platinum, Aircrafts, Processed petroleum oils, Alcohol, Blood fractions and Automobile parts.

Names like AstraZeneca and GlaxoSmithKline for pharamceuticals; Smith & Nephew for medical equipment; BP for oil and gas; Mondi Group for paper; Rio Tino for mining; SAB Miller for beverages have all benefited from Her Majesty’s warm glow and occasional subtle interventions.

The Queen not just personified but was Britishness.

Words that describe Her Majesty, The Queen, according to commentators include:

Great.

Mother.

Rock.

Reign.

Supreme.

Stable.

Strength.

Spirit.

Dignity.

Grace.

Humility.

Duty.

Loved.

Admired.

Inspiration.

Legacy.

Devotion.

She covered all bases. On the 40th anniversary of the Sex Pistols releasing Anarchy in the UK, on the 26th November 2016, I ‘shockingly’ organised a £5 million punk memorabilia burn to signify how the corporate world had misappropriated punk for the likes of Virgin punk credit cards McDonald’s Punk McNuggets.

The Times ran on page 3 an image that I organised, taken in front of Buckingham Palace, where the son of Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood, burnt his original 1977 shirt of ‘God Save The Queen’ which had a picture of The Queen with a safety pin through her nose, created by Dame Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren.

This was a disrespect. But respect.

Despite all the anti-establishment Sex Pistols era, in 2006, Vivienne Westwood, proudly accepted her damehood for services to fashion.

Vivienne Westwood, albeit, wearing no knickers, visited the Palace to collect her title.

Earlier, after receiving her OBE from the Queen in 1992, Vivienne Westwood took a twirl around one of the courtyards of Buckingham Palace in front of a crowd of paparazzi and was famously snapped in all her commando glory.

At 96, The Queen remained determined to carry out her duties as she appointed Liz Truss as her 15th Prime Minister. A coronation itself of sorts.

Her reign of 70 years and 214 days was the longest of any British monarch and the second-longest recorded of any monarch of a sovereign country. At the time of her death, Elizabeth was Queen of fourteen Commonwealth realms in addition to the UK, all part of the Commonwealth, a 54-member group of former British colonies.

She was, and will always be, Elizabeth The Great.

Read more:
Time to pause and reflect upon greatest personal brand of them all, Her Majesty The Queen

The one-line single minded proposition is your ticket to drive on the media motorway.

Get it right and you get green lights all the way, and infact you can confidently accelerate, almost like you’re in a jet stream. Get it wrong and you can be stopped by every single red traffic light, traffic jammed for miles crawling along at a snail’s pace or remaining totally stationary altogether.

If the single-minded proposition is your tree anchored by the roots of your back story, all your content in the form of subsequent stories are the branches that stem from it.

It’s what William Chase, the founder of Tyrrells Crisps and Chase Vodka calls ‘The Magic’.

Literally, it’s like Ali-Baba And The Flying Magic Carpet. Get on and you effortlessly take off, seemingly without a care in the world, riding high across the Arabian night sky.

I first worked with William Chase ‘making the magic’ around the exit stage of Tyrrells crisps in 2008 which he sold for £40 million. This sale overlapped the early growth phase of Chase Vodka, which sold for an estimated £80 million to Diageo in 2021.

I came up with and deployed the narratives about Chase ‘selling vodka to the Russians’ around the time of the Football World Cup after Chase won the San Francisco World Spirits Competition for ‘world’s best vodka’ knocking P Diddy endorsed Ciroc rock off its perch.

Chase is now fully focused on his ‘third coming’, Willy’s Apple Cider Vinegar, getting people hooked on a daily dose of Willy’s to keep the doctor away and boost immunity. In this ‘virus world’, that’s certainly ‘of its time’.

He’s pondering how to best position and reignite his back story so it breathes life into Willy’s Apple Cider vinegar.

Chase’s personal story as a farming entrepreneur has always cross-fertilised first his potato crisps business followed by the potato vodka business – selling the provenance and craftsmanship of the brands.

William Chase positioned himself as an Everyman anti-hero. A fighter. An overcomer of obstacles.

But that’s only part of the single-minded positioning.

The other part, which creates ‘The Magic’, is the strap-on, change-out component, the ‘campaign’ that adjusts the single-minded proposition to the media market – the mood and temperature of the time, but more importantly, allows you to fill a position not already owned by someone else.

Get it right, and it means you can personify and fill a market gap and get lift off because there’s space for you to occupy.

So the single-minded proposition isn’t so single-minded after all – but instead a single-minded proposition, adjusted to the market at any given time through a ‘subplot’ or ‘campaign’.

Diet Coke is a brand with grounded, solidified somewhat static brand values. So the ‘Kate Moss for Diet Coke’ is the sub-plot or campaign which has a short life span and is changed out.

If your personal brand is Harrods, then the subplot or ‘campaigns’ are the ever-rotating dazzling window displays that create interest and maintain freshness.

So the two, the X and Y chromosome are one. The X is the anchor. The Y is the market adjustment and filler of a gap.

It can become a bit like a chess game played with a suck it and see attitude.
Market testing can take a while before something finally gels. The agar growing on the jelly.

William Chase found the gap in terms of his single minded-proposition but adjusted to the market mood, as the antithesis of the BBC Dragons’ Den multimillionaires all showing off about their wealth in documentaries with them jumping out of helicopters in Monte Carlo and magazine interviews showing off their car collections back in 2006 and 2007.

Chase was raw and real and quite literally ‘down to earth’ and ‘down on the farm’.

He cut to the chase, revealing how he had filed for bankruptcy at the age of 32 when he had problems harvesting the potato crops. He was happy to be this real and honest and gritty to anyone that would listen.

Rather than keeping his bankruptcy a guilty, hidden secret, Chase zeroed in on it as his subplot or ‘campaign’ and created a positioning – sharply in contrast with the multi-millionaire Dragons.

He wasn’t a ‘me too’ entrepreneur like the Channel 4 Secret Millionaires chasing the coat tails of the Dragons but positioned as the antidote to the gratuitous, showy-offy displays of personal wealth. Yes, James Caan had not one but two Rolls Royce Phantoms in his garage! Will Chase was happy on his tractor.

It worked.

His story truly took off and subsequently the food and drink sections of all the national newspapers followed suit by filling their pages with product PR for Chase Distillery and the features sections with personal profiles on William Chase, the hardworking Hereford farmer.

When you get it right, rather than simply putting out, you get a lot of requests back the other way from journalists trying to keep up. It all starts to build like stoking a roaring fire in winter.

In the same way The Rolling Stones were the antidote to the clean-cut Beatles, Chase was the antidote to the multimillionaire BBC Dragons.

Hertz got famous with the slogan. ‘We’re only Number 2, but we try harder’. They fully accepted that Avis were number 1, admitted it, and then found the gap with their ‘service with a smile’, showing they try harder. That penetrated the media curtain. That positioned them for take-off.

The famous 2011 book of inspiration by M&C Saatchi is called ‘The Brutal Simplicity of Truth: How It Changed The World’.

One particular story in there sums up the importance of positioning in terms of making things fly for either products or people.

It says:

‘Every day, a blind man sat on the pavement in Central Park. He had his hat in front of him, begging for money. The sign read:

I am blind

Passers-by ignored him.

One day, an advertising man saw his plight. He altered the wording on his sign and the cash started pouring into the hat. What had he done?

He had changed the sign to read:

‘It is Spring and I am blind’.

Your personal brand is much the same. Just being blind is only one aspect.

The missing component is market adjustment and qualifier. In this case ‘it being Spring’ was the vital component for the blind man to get traction with his audience.

Each subplot, campaign or ‘cartridge’ has a lifespan and then needs to be swapped out at some point once it’s run its course.

Chase can’t create ‘The Magic’ for Willy’s Apple Cider Vinegar by telling the bankruptcy story all over again. It’s been done to death. That subplot in terms of his positioning is over.

Meghan Markle is currently struggling for relevance in the USA as she tries to recycle her victim status at the hands of the ‘nasty racist royals’.

People aren’t wearing it. Not because she’s not presenting it in a believable, emotion-fuelled way, but because she’s exhausted the positioning of being a victim at the hands of the Royal family. It’s run its course and she’s done it to death. She needs something new like the US Presidency to set her sights on.

The change-out subplots can be rapid-burn or slow-burn depending on market forces.

For Las Vegas based Entrepreneur Krista Waddell I had a truly golden period when she brought to Britain Ounces2Pounds at the onset of the financial crash of 2007-2008. Reverse tupperware-style parties were ‘of their time’. They had started in Canada and the USA. Krista was the first to bring them to Britain. I had Krista interviewed on BBC business shows as an innovator. Loads of Me too copycats launched and started getting press traction eventually – generally as spin-offs from various pawn brokers. But Ounces2Pounds were in first, and maxed out the press. I had them on BBC Breakfast, CNN, The Sun, The Telegraph you name it. Krista eventully melted down £2 million worth of junk jewellery made up of single cufflinks and single gold earrings in Birmingham before leaving the country again. The financial crash was her ‘campaign’ which, bolted on, created her positioning.

You’ll know when its time to develop and deploy something new as your bounce seems to be becoming a little flat.

Madonna has had more media lives than I’ve had hot dinners because she has expertly repositioned her personal brand time and time again with ‘Great resets’ while never removing or eroding the essence of what makes her tick.

The two-pronged ‘single-minded proposition is the key to unlocking the door of media coverage gold. Once you get this right you can proliferate your content and start to push it out into the media marketplace.

Read more:
The single-minded proposition for your media persona isn’t as single minded as you think

We’re now at the last stop in terms of preparing your media persona for take-off from the cliff edge, soaring into the sky on your hang glider.

You’ve identified your inherent facial archetype; conjured and curated all of your associates and carefully defined the hierarchy of your doing selves.

Now is the ‘Aha’ moment, where you become a beacon of recognisability in a crowded room.

Like Charlie venturing through the Chocolate factory, you’ve now entered the Costume department.

There’s no place here for shrinking violets. Its not the time and place to be shy about coming forward and to quote Enterprise UK, ‘Make Your Mark’.

Back on the 4th February, 2004, Mark Zuckerberg launched Facebook as a way to connect Harvard university students with one another.

The business was highly disruptive of everything we know, and it was communicated to the masses largely using the persona of its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, who was very much playing the part of a disruptive teenager ready to throw the biggest party ever in his parents’ house while they’re away on holiday.

Zuckerberg and his friends wanted to follow the American dream in acquiring riches and glory – but they wanted it on their own terms – and they certainly weren’t going to wear any restrictive, stuffy, constraining corporate uniforms.

Zuckerberg’s business card said “I’m CEO…Bitch”.

He famously took a meeting with top venture capital firm blue-chip Sequoia Capital in his pyjamas listing his pyjamas-wearing on a Powerpoint presentation as one of “The Top Ten Reasons You Should Not Invest” and let everyone know about it.

Magazines and newspapers poured over the Zuck-inspired blue bathrobe which he used to wear as he wandered about Harvard University campus. He wanted everyone to see his dress-down approach to everything. That’s what allowed him to so successfully promote Facebook.

He became a sort of anti-corporate rock star.

By 2011, Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook was finally confirmed by GQ Magazine as ‘The worst dressed man in Silicon Valley’.

Do, you think Zuckerberg was trying to win a style award? No, quite the opposite.

His business model and his dress sense were all about tipping the tables on their heads.

April 2018 was a landmark day, not because it was the first time Mark Zuckerberg was hauled in front of Congress over the data sharing scandal along with Jack Dorsey, then CEO of Twitter and Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google – but the first time anyone had ever seen Zuckerberg in a suit and tie.

Zuckerberg’s Laissez Faire attitude towards getting dressed for the office caught on like wildfire and then became almost a uniform for tech entrepreneurs.

Suddenly, if you weren’t in jeans and a T-shirt in the office, you weren’t a serious player.

Mark Zuckerberg, and his blue bathrobe, fuelled the tech revolution.

In terms of fashioning your unique identity, the simpler, and the more broad brush stroke, the better.

If you could be drawn as a line drawing or cartoon, all the better.

People should be able to recognise you across the world in one second, even in a darkened room, even from just a sketch.

When I represented the PR for former Dragons’ Den panelist and founder of Yo! Sushi, Simon Woodroffe, I went to a fancy dress party around the theme of ‘Famous Rock Couples’ on his Houseboat on the river Thames in Chelsea, which was Woodroffe tipping his hat to his idol Richard Branson, who also famously lived on a Houseboat on the Thames.

At Woodroffe’s party there was Bob Geldof, who I pitched do his PR, as my wife Lois knew him from old. Her and I had a narrow escape because we had originally intended to go as Michael Hutchence and Paula Yates. I don’t think that would have gone down very well. Manchester-based property developer Tom Bloxham MBE who famously wears his trilby hats was also there and Karan Bilimoria, founder of Cobra Beer.

I had dressed up as Pete Doherty with my wife Lois, as Kate Moss. I still had my beard-on but I was visibly recognisable as Pete Doherty purely because of wearing his iconic quintessential, like Tom Bloxham, Indie Trilby hat.

Doherty also made his look a series of skin-tight Hedi Slimane-Era suits, which I had to bypass for my roomier Hugo Boss suits.

Early on in my PR career, I adopted the R M Williams Australian outback hat. This was partly coming from a place of Last King of Scotland-Style appropriation of rather than Scottish iconography as adopted by the former Ugandan President Idi Amin, instead Australian Crocodile-Dundee-style iconography, a cheeky move for a New Zealander. But then it was also partly the fun and adventure aspect of Indiana Jones from Raiders of the Lost Ark.

This look certainly suited my profession.

I remember being at the GQ Man of the Year Awards and was talking to Hollywood Actress Alicia Silverstone and announced myself as a publicist. She flirtatiously grabbed hold of my hat and tipped it saying: ‘You don’t say’!

It was befitting for what I did to adopt this iconography.

I remember visiting former client Nick Wheeler, founder and Chairman of Charles Tyrwhitt Shirts, and I had forgotten to bring my hat. He was quite perturbed and spent the first 10 minutes or so of my visit asking why I didn’t have my hat with me. ‘Why haven’t you got your hat? You’ve got to wear it’.

I had a sort of face-off which Wilfred Emmanuel-Jones, known as The Black Farmer, when I worked with him two years ago to promote his campaign for Black History Month.

He was respectful, but perhaps a little uncomfortable with me sitting there in my tan-coloured Abubra hat while he was looking back wearing his black hat.

The 1990 book High Visibility: The Manufacturing and Marketing of Celebrities by Philip Kotler points out that whilst utilising indivividual ‘markers’ any media persona – whether business people, entertainers, lawyers, doctors or athletes, also need to follow ‘rules’ for each category.

If you want to be noticed as a film mogul, but you’re missing a chauffeur-driven limousine or multiple diamond rings on your fingers then you’re not ‘following the rules’.

Importantly, once you’ve nailed your look, you need to stick with it through thick and thin, never deviating.

Chef and Food entrepreneur Jamie Oliver since the early days as sous-chef at the River Café and then The Naked Chef, has dressed in lumberjack style shirts. He’s a big fan of plaid, wearing a lot of white and brown pocketed button-up shirts. Fans recognise Jamie Oliver because of this style of shirts. If he stopped wearing them now, then he would disconnect with his fan base. Its now engrained and a major part of his image,

When I organised for Heston Blumenthal to make a documentary for Channel 4 to turn around Little Chef with his fine dining menu, he contrasted sharply from Jamie Oliver by wearing his chef whites to turn around Britain’s most famous greasy spoon restaurants.

Harold Tilman, the former Chair of the British Fashion Council and head of Jaegar and Aquascutum made wearing bow ties his thing.

Haircuts are equally iconographic unique markers. Adam Neumann, formerly of WeWork, is now back with Flow, and instantly recognisable with his shoulder-length hair. It makes him visible as a swash-buckling entrepreneur.

Image isn’t just what you can see, it’s also the intonation of your voice as well. The late Stephen Hawking didn’t want to drop the tinny voice whatsoever even though technology would allow a totally natural sounding voice. It was part of the distinguishing kit set.

Think also about posture. Boris Johnson has lifted much of his image kitset from Winston Churchill, but swapping out the hair for his own iconic shaggy white mop.

Boris Johnson’s book The Churchill Factor, was basically an effort to link himself to the Churchill legacy and iconography.

Boris Johnson has this right down to mimicking the posture of the great war leader, adopting the same hunch and style of walking.

Think Sir David Attenborough for the whispy voice. Not many people hearing this voice would not be clear who it belonged to.

You can draw all of these iconographic markers together – utilising sight, sound, touch and smell – and make them unique to you.

Draw some from famous faces across history, which gives depth to your persona. Play with it.

And once it works for you, stick with it through thick and thin.

Read more:
The last stop before you’re ready for media take-off is the Costume Department

If you don’t intimately understand your major ‘doing self’ along with minor ‘doing selves’ you can come across like marbles scattered across the floor

One of the true experts in harnessing personal image for business success is former BBC Dragon James Caan CBE. A sharp-suited, no nonsense operator.

I spent 7 years representing his PR and worked with Caan again recently on one of his projects.

There’s a clear dividing line right at the summit of Caan’s media persona, which he instinctively knows how to curate and deliver.

He has Hamilton Bradshaw, the private equity and investment company as a corporate brand – which he is the CEO of. That’s one side of the dividing line.

But then he also has The Office of James Caan CBE staffed up and totally separate. And its this division that handles appearances, endorsements, and speaking engagements.

He injects his personal profile across a plethora of businesses – not just Hamilton Bradshaw at the very top, but a whole host of investments.

Below is the short biography and description of James Caan published on the website of The World Economic Forum:

‘James Caan is a Serial Entrepreneur. He is CEO of Hamilton Bradshaw Group, a private equity firm that focuses on buyouts and development capital and special situations, including turnarounds. He is CEO of ‘Recruitment Entrepreneur’ a seed capital investment company, and Investor at Spacious’.

Arguably the ‘James Caan CBE’ personal brand is the ultimate definition of the serial entrepreneur having stakeholdings in everything from dog treadmill, Fit Fur Life, on Dragon’s Den through to recruitment companies.
But you can’t get anywhere in the media jungle by simply taking a ‘scattered marbles across the floor’ approach with 100 different companies who you somehow personify and endorse.

It’s not a dog treadmill, but would be a dog’s dinner.

What is Caan ultimately known for doing? What does he actually do, in simple speak?

You must adopt the academic structure of an American University, in fleshing out your ‘doing selves’.

In these universities, students Major in one particular subject.

You must do this no matter how much you hate being ‘pinned down’ or ‘restricted’ and ‘defined’.

Then you can have a myriad of Minor subjects. Lots of other subjects can make up your portfolio.

Caan instinctively subdivides all of his interests into hubs and applies communications emphasis and weighting to the different areas.

At the top he’s the ‘People’s Dragon’ and TV Entrepreneur, forever defined by the status his BBC Dragons’ Den stint between 2007 and 2010. ‘The Chairman of the Board’ is his catch-all persona. His publicity pictures are often shot at a Board room table with him looking like he’s approachable but seriously means business.

When I organised for Caan’s electronic book rights to be given to Reach Plc to offer them as a giveaway to their readers in November 2020, the value from James was millions for their readers who love him as ‘The People’s Dragon’. He did a Facebook interview with Fleet Street Fox for the Mirror. But all the Reach Plc national newspapers ran the promotion from the Daily Record, the Daily Star to the Daily Express. All the Reach Plc regionals from the Birmingham Post, to the Manchester Evening News also ran the promotion, some on their front page. The joint reach of Reach Plc is 45,000,000 eye balls. This is very hearts and minds sell and was linked to Caan helping people out during the crisis of Lockdown with Caan positioned as the ‘People’s Dragon’.

I helped drive and define his role as the Chairman of the UK Government’s Start Up Loans scheme in May 2012 when David Cameron appointed him to the role. Again this tapped into him being ‘The People’s Dragon’.

It’s a very ‘catch-all’ ‘emotional’ sell.

This might represent roughly 50% of Caan’s communications output.

Its interesting how many high-profile personalities aspire to the definition of being seen first and foremost as a serial entrepreneur – but ultiomately they can’t.

Rapper Kanye West is very much defined as a rapper first and entrepreneur second. His business Yeezy, was valued at US$3 Billion by Bank of America in 2019. Infact the bulk of his US$1.8 Billion fortune comes from this sneaker brand. Yet, nonetheless, Kanye West is still defined as first and foremost, a rapper.

TV mogul Simon Cowell is not just a TV boss, which is his Major but also commonly listed as an entrepreneur. JK Rowling is also considered an entrepreneur by many entrepreneurial Top 10 or Top 50 lists. But people would clearly describe her as first and foremost an author. That’s her Major.
Its decision time, in terms of your bold approach at glory.

What are you going to Major in?

Is ‘Serial entrepreneur’ becoming the masthead of your boat to power forward into the oceans?

In terms of his suite of Minors, leaks break it right down in terms of James Caan.

Caan’s very much a Property entrepreneur, respected by property journalists specifically in this vertical. Property Week did a big feature on him when I represented Mailbox REIT. They know he’s got credibility in the property sector as he has a vast property portfolio and wanted to hear his views.

This might represent 10% of his communications output.

But he’s particularly big on being ‘The Recruitment Entrepreneur’ also. So much so he’s even created sub-brand called ‘The Recruitment Entrepeneneur’, to harness and power forward his image into at least 30 different recruitment agencies which he has a financial interest in.

He’s well respected by recruitment sector journalists.

He’s got to be careful the tail doesn’t wag the dog in this recruitment sector vertical because of the sheer enormous back story he has in this having founded both Alexander Mann and Humana International, today with joint turnovers of over US$1 Billion between them.

It would be particularly easy for Caan to become ‘lead’ by Recruitment.

Certainly, lots of his media requests automatically come in for Caan to talk about workplace satisfaction, the Furlough scheme during Lockdown, the four-day working week. Journalists often see him as ‘Mr Recruitment’.

But that’s not what he wants to ultimately define him. So a careful balance has to be maintained.

This would represent up to 20% of his communications output.

The Asian ethic minorities champion is something I helped developed as a high profile Pakistani national living in Britain. He was Chairman of the British Muslim Association. He invested in a Sharia fund. He encourages young people from Asian backgrounds to excel in business.

This would be a 10% focus.
The Philanthropist is the fifth strand to his communications matrix. When the Pakistan Floods struck in 2010, it was natural for me to help James speak to Britons about digging deep financially for his home country which was in crisis. He flew with ITV to Pakistan. He paid to build the Abdul Kashid Khan Campus, via the James Caan Foundation, for 400 underprivileged young people in a rural village in Pakistan just outside Lahore.

For a time, he essentially became the Pakistani Bob Geldof as I had him across BBC Breakfast, Good Morning Britain and everywhere else calling out for Brits to help out in Pakistan’s hour of need.

I also steered him towards becoming Chairman of The Big Issue for a time, the magazine which helps the homeless, which underlined his Philanthropic credentials well and truly.

This philanthropic aspect would be about 10% of his focus and communications output.

So, that’s 1 Major and 4 Minors that make up James Caan’s communications mix.

The sixth hub is less glamorous and one that is not emphasised whatsoever, although interestingly, it was picked up on by the World Economic Forum in them touching on him as specialising in ‘turnarounds’.

That’s essentially the acquisition of distressed assets. Caan often invests in companies that have gone bust and literally phoenixes them from the ashes. But this is not so glamorous and therefore Caan has consciously chosen to not focus on this aspect of his business dealings in the media whatsoever.

So the weighting here is 0%.

With this all worked out, you then need to weigh it all up in terms of the emphasis you place on them in terms of the quantity of content you create around each of the ‘themes’ and the effort you place on getting traction in the media against each of them.

Once you’ve defined what you, be careful not to step outside the grid.

One of the biggest blowups I’ve ever seen in my time as PR was the time in 2010 that I happened to be representing, for a time, the PR for both former Dragons’ Den star Duncan Bannatyne and James Caan simultaneously, but handled very separately.

The competitiveness amongst the Dragons’ was very fierce, and even though Bannatyne was ok with it on the surface, the fact Caan hired his PR, Richard Hillgrove, probably didn’t go down too well.

Bannatyne finally had a meltdown when Caan ‘got totally on Bannatyne’s turf’, from Bannatyne’s perspective, in terms of him owning the health club space.

Caan acquired Nuyuu, a health club, which he sold to Energie group in 2010.

Banntyne’s main business was and still is Bannatyne Fitness.

This off-brand ‘hostile act’ by Caan was enough for Bannatyne to refuse to talk to Caan ever again, quite literally, and he started sending dossiers to national newspapers to try to destroy Caan.

The last series of Dragons’ Den they were on together, Bannatyne refused to look at Caan or talk to him even once.

All their previous investments together – including ChocBox – were all thrown into chaos, as Bannatyne caused there to always be two separate Board meetings – one with Bannatyne present, and another one with Caan present. It got ridiculous.

Bannatyne took umbrage to Caan stepping off his verticals and into his health club space.

So define what you do and don’t deviate.

At all times, every aspect can be tweaked and updated as we gather more data and feedback.

Read more:
Precisely, What is the point of you? What do you do, exactly?

You might not be able to choose your family, but you can Pick n’ Mix the best media personalities to associate your image with – It’s who you hang out with that vitally defines who you are

As they say, ‘You are what you eat’, whether you devour caviar, lobster, kebabs, pies or cakes. Do you have large gargantuan meals or tiny portions on your plate? Are you all about rich or bland food? How about it being hot and spicy? All of this intake becomes you.

It’s not the 490,600 people who follow him you need to be concerned about. Who are the 711 people Theo Paphitis is currently following on Twitter, who also follow him back? Brand Theo is connected to Duncan Bannatyne, Peter Jones, Tej Lalvani, Kelly Hoppen CBE, Jacqueline Gold CBE the Executive chair of Ann Summers, Conservative politician Rory Stewart, Footballer Peter Crouch, Boris Johnson, Dominic Raab, Sir Tom Jones, Simon Jordan, Karen Millen OBE, Millwall Football Club, Lord Michael Dobbs, creator of the ‘House of Cards’ and June Sarpong OBE.

If it wasn’t who Theo follows on Twitter, who would Theo put on his invite list for the launch of his book, Enter The Dragon, by Theo Paphitis?

Brand Greta Thunberg has lots of interconnecting personalities that all intersect with it. These personalities are what her brand ultimately consumes. It’s like an interwoven busy Los Angeles Freeway with Greta as a traffic island at the very centre.

Analysis of Thunberg’s social media interconnections on Twitter and Instagram shows she’s connected to Michael Mann, ID Magazine, Arnold Schwarzenegger, IMG Models, Ravi Singh, Megan Domani, Maiko Haann, Johnoy Danao, Bullet Dumas, Narine Simonyan, Ali Abbas Zafar, Mehdi Hasan and Steve J. This is the patchwork of who Greta Thunberg is.

Proof of the pudding is in the eating, and these are the people that Greta has chosen to nibble on.

In terms of your persona, it’s very much made up, not in isolation, but who you associate with – both friends and enemies, what you read, the films you watch, the books you read, the walks and holidays you take, the clubs you join, the educational courses you complete.

In your image hill climb, you need to make conscious decisions about who you hang out with and what you spend your time immersed doing.

And to properly image climb you need to associate with, far less than the comfortable Z list in terms of influence. Instead, you need to go for the A list, which allows you to be dragged up.

As you go forward this builds and builds, ever-expanding, but always interconnected, with all joining lines leading back to you at the very epicentre.

With an atom, subatomic particles make each one up in the form of protons, neutrons and electrons. Critically there are a multitude of electrons, known as quarks.

This is where you get to have a smorgasbord of ‘friends on Facebook’ – or quarks – all forming an invisible hierarchy as they make up your atomic structure – or become part of your royal court.

Oliver Luckett and Michael Casey’s groundbreaking book, The Social Organism: A Radical Understanding of Social Media to Transform Your Business and Life, shows to an astonishing degree that social media influence mimics the rules and functions of biological life.  So embrace and work on your social DNA.

I argue its exactly the same DNA set-up with traditional media, you just can’t track it quite the same as on Facebook with notifications, likes and shares – instead only press cuttings.

Growth of your matrix of associations is much like Robin Hood collecting his band of Merry men on his travels. Little John, Friar Tuck, Will Scarlett, the Miller’s Son, Allan-a-Dale. Then of course there’s Maid Marion.

What ultimately made Robin, ‘Robin Hood’, was the inter-connected, expanding system of his band of Merry men and of course, Marion.

Make your proactive, conscious decisions on your associates wisely.

And be a good butcher constantly clearing the path so more positive associations can come through and connect with you at the very centre.

I remember coaching Duncan Bannatyne over a coffee outside at the Charlotte Street Hotel in 2006. It seemed trivial at the time, but it was a ‘Sliding Doors’ moment for Bannatyne at the time in terms of his growing influence on Prime Minister level.

Duncan announced to me over that coffee that he was going to publicly back then leader of the Opposition David Cameron.

I told him in no uncertain terms, “No you don’t support David Cameron, you’re supporting Gordon Brown, whose going to become the next Prime Minister”. Brown was still the Chancellor at the time before succeeding Tony Blair.

“Should I?” he said.

“Yes, that’s where you’re going to get the media traction – and credibility – because Brown’s on the rise”.

“Ok then,” he said.

In 2008, Duncan Bannatyne defended embattled Prime Minister Gordon Brown and dismissed the MPs who have called for his removal as “treacherous”.

In 2010, Duncan Bannatyne helped Gordon Brown unveil his ‘seaside manifesto’ being named by Brown as his ‘Seaside Czar’.

Bannatyne’s New Statesman interview in April 2010 laid it all out. “Gordon Brown is the best person to run the country, and I hope he stays in power,” he said.

In 2011, Bannatyne announced: ‘I’m supporting the Gordon Brown’s vision for growth’.

If you look at Sir Richard Branson, he works his associations at the very highest level. The King of Thailand, Queens, President Barack Obama. So, Branson chose his Democrat political affiliation carefully. But then his patchwork of associates is particularly eclectic. A visitor to his private Virgin Islands was Kate Winslett. So, its not just politicians and business celebrities, but Hollywood royalty as well.

I remember winging my way into the Sunday Times Business Christmas party with Duncan Bannatyne in 2006 at Claridges Hotel. Bannatyne was the only guest wearing a Hawaiian shirt and jeans with everyone else pretty much in suits.

I must have been the only PR in the room. This was a very exclusive business event. My former employer, Richard Desmond, then owner of the Daily Express, Daily Star and OK! Magazine, who I left for the world of PR in 2004, was there. He ducked and dived so he didn’t have to do small talk shielding me from coming over and chatting with Rupert and James Murdoch who he was there talking to. It was a wave from Desmond and then he turned away.

Days later I got an angry call out of the blue from him about his friend Sir Philip Green, who famously did all his own publicity, and I had been pitching to do his personal publicity referencing to my time working for Richard Desmond at Northern & Shell.

Green was keen to get someone who could place stories on him in the media so it wasn’t always him doing his own heavy lifting.

My wife had just recently cornered him at Swarovski Fashion Rocks in Monte Carlo in 2007 and explained I used to work for Desmond. The assumption was conveniently made that I was Desmond’s personal publicist as opposed to simply a ‘less relevant’ role.of being the Ad Controller for Regional and International.

So I got a dressing down on the phone.

When I bumped into Richard Desmond out for a walk in Hampstead one evening, I got the Sugar-style hairdryer treatment yet again. “Don’t f×£€ing use my name”!

I certainly made the most of my association with being a former employee of Northern & Shell and used not just Desmond’s name but also the galaxy of celebrities – business and otherwise – I interacted during my time there.

Like the time when David and Victoria Beckham wandered past my desk after hours, made some small talk, and slunk into Desmond’s office to sign a £1 million deal for the photo rights for an OK! Magazine exclusive.

At the Fashion Rocks event, my wife Lois reminded Victoria Beckham she’d met me, when introducing property magnate David Burke, who she was there at the event with and getting a group picture including Victoria Beckham. Victoria was very polite and obliging indeed.

Having worked at Northern & Shell was indeed currency in terms of making me hireable by all the Dragons and other business celebrities, it had real rub off.

The associations were worth their weight in gold.

The Dragons are a particular breed of business people who wanted access to celebrity culture not just the City of London – and the association with Desmond and my time at Northern & Shell was clearly a big part of it.

The hussle for associates can be the begging letter or the sheer implied association through the inclusion of various well-known names in all your press releases.

Drawing people to you is ultimately the best way around.

Growth is very much an even balance of both traditional and social media exposure working in parallel.

Remember, you can always fake it until you make it.

As Oscar Wilde says, ‘Life imitates art’.

If you create the benchmark, then eventually people will indeed play catch up and rise to your occasion.

The best planning method is reverse engineering. Take a high profile personality you respect, and then work backwards in terms of everyone that’s following them.

With social media pinpointing and logging everything its much easier than you think to become inspired by the address book of someone you wish to emulate and ultimately overtake one day like a James Dyson or Tim Martin from Wetherspoons.

Read more:
Why picking the best media personalities to associate your image with defines you

Building your persona and then later down the track your narrative structure first means stripping all the component parts of your image totally back to Ground Zero.

As Pablo Picasso would have demanded before he worked up The Old Guitarist in his Blue Period or The Boy With A Pipe from his Pink Rose Pink Period – a completely blank canvas.

First off the starting block has got to be a focus on your face. What does it automatically say to the world before you attach any Saint George and The Dragon heroic tale to it whatsoever?

Bill Gates knows his facial archetype as ‘The Super Nerd’ and expertly self-deprecates around it. The 1984 film Revenge Of The Nerds was a celebration of the nerd archetype. And of course the ‘The Nerd’ always tends to wear glasses. The flipside of Superman was Clark Kent, tipping his hat to Nerd-dom with the oversized glasses as his ‘disguise’.

Gates, like the nerd in the playground, always gets ‘tricks played on him’ and is misunderstood because he’s so off-the-Richter-scale bright, so much so, he’s almost ‘outer worldly’.

Gates hams up this nerd status when playing to the crowd.

In his recent damage control interviews around links to Epstein but also his modus operandi behind Covid vaccines and permanent pandemic prepardeness he geeks it up being a complete ‘open book’ about how so many people push and poke him.

“Me putting chips in arms, doesn’t make sense to me – why would I want to do that?” he told The Guardian.

Gates joked with the BBC in May, that “Only recently I’ve been out in public and some people yell at me that I’m tracking them.”

‘Yes I’m the most hated man in the world,’ he basically admits.  ‘People throw rocks at me’ is what he’s openly saying.

That’s what happens to ‘The Nerd’.

The Nerd doesn’t have any social skills around self. It tells everyone how misunderstood they are. The Nerd doesn’t hold back.

The upside is that, at the same time, the nerd facial archetype also embodies Super High IQ levels. So that’s where he gets all the ‘Despite my awkwardness, listen to me, I really do know what I’m talking about’.

That’s all in ‘The Nerd’ facial archetype.

My former client Mark Sait, the co-founder of SaveMoneyCutCarbon.com is a perfect example of understanding the facial archetype when promoting yourself in the media, in his instance as ‘The Super Nerd’ as well.

I convinced BBC Radio 4 MoneyBox to have him on to talk to their millions of listeners, got a full page in the Mail on Sunday to its 3,000,000 readers with Sait positioned as an ‘Eco Warrior’, I had him simulcast on both BBC News Channel and BBC World Business show reaching an accumulated 50,000,000 viewers discussing how the BBC could save money and cut carbon by installing more eco-friendly bulbs in their green room, full page Government-funded ‘How to guide’ style ads on how to safely return to work post Covid featuring Sait and his electric car, the list goes on – yes because the URL SaveMoneyCutCarbon was ‘of its time’ because of all the mad stampede towards Net-Zero, but largely because of the amplification of Mark Sait, the CEO’s, Bill Gates-esque ‘geek’ qualities.

I upped the ‘superintelligent’ nerd qualities of Sait, personally carrying the ‘Nerd’ message by Messenger-pigeon with his face.

Sait’s brother even works for Microsoft, I said!

To build SaveMoneyCutCarbon’s online widget that automatically links online sales of their sustainable products to an ESG score for company compliance, he hired Cornwall-based tech gurus, The Geeks. That says it all!

Let’s get down to the basics.

If your face was frozen, cropped just above the forehead and around the face, just so the forehead, eyes, nose mouth and chin were in view – what does that, without you uttering one single word – without anyone knowing your back story – or where you’ve been to University, what private members club (in Sait’s case, its the Home Grown club in London for entrepreneurs) you’re a member of – says about you?

Where does your frozen face then lie on a chart of frozen emotion?

My client, the former BBC Dragon James Caan CBE’s face resonates as a swathe ‘Omar Sharif’, much more so than his namesake, the late Hollywood legendary actor, James Caan. Omar is the Caan, the Dragons’ inherent facial archetype.

John Cleese wrote all about it in his 2001 book with Brian Bates called ‘The Human Face’.

“There are 6 Billion human faces and yet we instantly recognise faces that we don’t know,” he said. “How is it that this small part of us can be such an immediate and effective way to define who we are?”

And “How do we hide our true feelings when they are written on our faces without even knowing?”

Cleese expertly argues that there are just 7 universally recognised facial expressions: anger, fear, happiness, sadness, disgust, surprise and contempt.

But in between these are 7,000 discreet expressions.

In my opinion, these 7,000 ‘frozen facial emotions’ can all be laid out on a grid in the form of Emojis from sad/angry right across to happy/ecstatic.

Regardless of whether you’re sometimes angry, happy or sad, your normal ‘frozen face’ is automatically encoded with a dominant emotion – whether you’re feeling that emotion or not.

Like Sir Paul McCartney, he’s the deeply sad-eyed Beatle, whether he likes it or not as his dominant facial emotion. That’s whether he’s having a good or a bad day. He’s sad-eyed.

A&A is what I label the requirement at this stage. Acceptance and Amplification about your facial archetype.

Acceptance is about accepting you’re born with a particular facial archetype, but also only by acknowledging it can you unlock a galaxy of media opportunties.

This was the subject of my lecture a few years back to the Institute of Leadership Management. ‘Its your face. You’re stuck with it. Unless you alter it with cosmetic surgey, which I don’t recommend, you have to work with it. Accept that.’

So many entrepreneurs wanting to raise their profile try to position themselves as someone they’re not. They might want to be polo-necked wearing Steve Jobs as opposed to the geeky glasses wearing Bill Gates. But they can’t.

Recognising what’s already there and working with it is the key to unlocking the media treasure.

The second point is Amplification. Once you’ve worked out where your facial archetype sits on the Emoji chart, then you can amplify It, make it resonate. Like hitting a tuning fork.

You suddenly come into focus when the divining rod finds water underground with small movements suddenly becoming big movements.

Getting a handle on your inherent facial archetype is the doorway of the foyer of the mansion you just entered, opening up into the next room.

Read more:
To turbo boost your persona, you need to go back to ground zero: Your face is the starting point

When you first enter the business personality media jungle occupied by the likes of Lord Alan Sugar from The Apprentice or the panelists from The Dragons’ Den, you will probably feel a lot like a wide-eyed schoolchild on his or her first day at secondary school.

Your business might be starting to turn over a healthy amount, but meanwhile, you have another objective, cranking up the car of your media persona and venturing onto the open motorway, perhaps without a satnav and not much fuel.

At the very start when you enter the media playground, it can be rather daunting to say the least. There’s nowhere to turn. Nowhere to hide.

Like the line from the film Alien, ‘In space, no one can hear you scream’.

Read more:
Becoming king of the media jungle means starting at the bottom and working your way up by winning title fight after title fight

As part of handling the Personal publicity for former BBC Dragons’ Den star Duncan Bannatyne, part of my brief was to discreetly supply the Sunday Times Rich List researchers with evidence of his worth, press cuttings and the like, to ensure Bannatyne was billed well ahead of any of other Dragon – particularly Peter Jones in terms of his personal Net Worth.

Duncan was absolutely obsessed with being seen as the bigger standalone Dragon in terms of personal worth in the Sunday Times Rich List. Being at the top of that list was a badge of honour for Bannatyne. Far from running for cover and not wanting his personal worth known, Bannatyne was quite the opposite and couldn’t do enough for researchers via myself in terms of helping them build a robust picture of his net worth. He was gutted with the onset of Peter Jones vehicle on ITV, Tycoon (which fell somewhat flat in terms of ratings) and always wanted to find a way to outdo him.

In contrast, I also represented for a time the best man at Duncan’s wedding to Joanne McCue on the 11th November 2006, John Moreton, who was wholly the opposite to Bannatyne in terms of his outlook to personal publicity. Moreton founded the Southern Cross Nursing Home Group and had painstakingly had himself extracted from the Sunday Times Rich List. He begged to be taken out. He didn’t want to be a target for the thousands of individuals and groups that would target him for handouts.

Bannatyne, prior to entering the Dragons’ Den, already had his heart set on TV and Film stardom.

As a jobbing actor he was humiliatingly lining up at auditions for bit parts in films, winning some and losing some. One that landed was playing the non-speaking role of a dead guy in a pool for the BBC’s Sea of Souls. The non-action role involved him floating lifeless past the camera under water. Another part resulted in him paying £6,000 in a charity auction to appear very briefly on screen as ‘Derek’s Friend’ in the 2004 film ‘School of Seduction’ which saw him appear alongside Kelly Brook set in Newcastle. Then he played a bar owner in ITV’s Girls’ Club, also set in the North East of England.

A producer eventually said to him, ‘You might be in luck, Why don’t you audition for the BBC’s new series called Dragons’ Den, based on the American show ‘Shark Tank’?’

The timing was perfect. He got the part and the rest is history.

For Bannatyne, he was as much interested in propelling his persona into the national media, not just in order to promote Bannatyne Health Clubs or his Bannatyne Hotel in Darlington but to make himself the brand. He wanted to be the product people paid to consume.

He also understood the power of image in terms of selling your personal brand. Rather than just a flat monthly retainer for placing stories about him in the national media, he also handsomely bonused me for getting stories to run in the media that also were accompanied with a picture of him. He realised that a picture is indeed worth a thousand words. And so I did everything possible to get his image to run in stories. That was very much part of the brief.

He was single-minded and had a plan.

The books that followed authored by Bannatyne were one major product output of the Duncan Bannatyne brand. His first book was ‘Anyone Can Do It: My Story’ in 2006. This was to the horror of another one of my clients Sahar Hashemi, the co-founder of Coffee Republic whose bestselling autobiographical business book in 2004 was entitled, you guessed it, Anyone Can Do It: Building Coffee Republic from Our Kitchen Table’. Bannatyne would never let someone else getting in first stop him copy and pasting a good idea and running off with it.

With a team of ghost writers assisting, Bannatyne launched Wake Up And Change Your Life in 2008. Then ‘How To Be Smart With Your Money’ in 2009 followed by ‘How To Be Smart With Your Time’ in 2010.

His personal brand was riding high and making plenty of money.

Then came the speaking engagements. By having TV exposure, he could command up to £20,000 for a 40-minute talk to a Deloittes, JP Morgan or Ernst & Young. That fee continued to rise in parallel with his ascending TV stardom.

Again, Duncan Bannatyne was the product that people were paying to consume.

What took the flogging himself to the next level was why I probably secured a place at the top table of his wedding in 2006. I had already sold his engagement pictures for a five-figure sum to OK! Magazine. The plan was to go again with the wedding pictures which I was there principally to orchestrate.

I was on a coach with Deborah Meaden, Theo Paphitis and Duncan and others going from the Church to the reception held in a hall with eighties legend, the real Mark Almond performing.

All the Dragons got suspicious about the pictures I was carefully co-ordinating involving them all gathering in groups and smiling for the celebrity photographer, as opposed to standard wedding photographer.

It was Theo Paphitis that eventually spouted off “How much is Duncan getting for these pictures then?”

This is the juncture where you need to decide carefully and consciously what path you want to take with your own publicity.

Are you going to be the product and make money from your own personal brand? Or is your personal profile only there to help boost your various business interests?

Or are you a hybrid being both the product but also your profile boosting all of your other businesses?

There’s another option for the faint-hearted.

Perhaps you’ve decided, after much soul searching, that the limelight is in fact not for you after all and you’d rather let your businesses speak for themselves?

You don’t want the risk of ridicule on social media or journalists taking pot shots at you once they mood-swing.

Read on if you’re in the former categories. It will be a white-water ride. If you get it right, the rewards truly outweigh any negatives.

Read more:
The first decision you have to make is whether being in the limelight is for you

One of the biggest TV shows of the noughties was BBC Dragons’ Den.

Well before it was a niche show today, BBC Dragons’ Den stood tall as the major cross-over show – from business programming into mainstream entertainment – on national television.

Its what made business people jump out of the boardroom and into people’s living rooms.

I was the pioneer and instigator of the concept of the Celebrity Businessperson.

The Independent and The Times both published exposes on the phenomenon by namechecking Lord Alan Sugar and Sir Richard Branson – mentioning me, Richard Hillgrove along with the new-breed of telepreneur from Dragons’ Den that I instigated and fuelled.

Back in 2004, when I first left my role as Advertisement Controller – Regional and International for Express Newspapers, for the world of PR, Duncan Bannatyne was desperate to take matters into his own (guided by me) publicity hands and steer well clear of the ‘committee-approach’ and ‘winner shares all’ modus operandi of BBC’s internal publicity department.

All entrepreneurs were to be treated as equal as far as the Beeb was concerned – with no one standing out!

Bannatyne wasn’t haven’t any of it.

And so born was a new breed of celebrity business person.

As Simon Woodroffe, the founder of Yo! Sushi and BBC Dragon on Series 1, once told me prior to giving a speech to the Labour Party Conference in Manchester which I organised: ‘No one ever made a statue to a committee’.

It’s a single minded approach that’s required.

Elon Musk certainly doesn’t share the view he has to accommodate the agenda of a last committee in terms of key decision making about Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink and The Boring Company.

With the BBC back at the onset of Dragons’ Den in 2006, the rules were, any interviews with the Dragons would have to involve two or three panellists lumped together on a couch in a group chat with an interviewer – all sharing the limelight.

With the launch of The One Show for the first time in August 2006, I got Bannatyne the first standalone interview of any Dragon on mainstream television, a breakway from the confines of the BBC Publicity department’s ‘group approach’.

He discussed with Adrian Chiles his move from ice cream vans to his nursing homes empire and talked about throwing his former army sergeant into the drink. The One Show interview got candid, up close and personal with the firebreathing Dragon from Glasgow, Scotland for the first time, and on his own terms.

That’s why he got me as his personal publicist.

Because of me the concept of the celebrity Businessman was born.

I remember taking Duncan Bannatyne to the GQ Man of the Year Awards and Billie Piper came over and wanted an autograph from him.

There was a blitz of flashing bulbs when he arrived to his surprise but also absolute glee.

I put Duncan on Sport Relief and made him into a cross over star.

I got Bannatyne on Newsnight criticising Madonna for adopting 13-month old Baby David from Malawi on the basis that Jeremy Paxman would guarantee to namecheck his new book Anyone Can Do It: My Story.

Bannatyne would rush home after the interviews and say ‘book sales are trending on Amazon’.

Channel 4’s panel show 8 Out of 10 Cats starring Jimmy Carr got completely out of hand with Duncan namedropping his book title at least 10 times during an appearance that I organised for him to the absolute horror of some of the other panellists.

Why you should take any advice from me whatsoever?

I’ve been there, got the T-Shirt and lived to tell the tale.

Its this forensic inner workings of the media persona of the Celebrity businessman like the Dragons that ultimately had entrepreneurs clambering to understand the secrets of their success by buying up all their books.

People pouring through the pages of James Caan’s 2009 autobiography The Real Deal: My Story From Brick Lane To Dragons’ Den or his 2012 book Start Your Business in 7 Days, is largely an effort, in my opinion, to ‘crack the code’ of media and financial success.

What’s missing from these autographies is the DNA code of their personas projected through the media and how they can be so very easily turned up, turned down and flight paneled.

Having a robust media persona helps with everything in business, in the least expected ways.

When I first started working with James Caan CBE during his first series of Dragons’ Den, he told me how now being a Dragon changed everything for him in terms of a property deal.

When he bidded to purchase a property in Grosvenor Square, London, being on the television, suddenly ensured he was at the front of the queue of would-be buyers rather possibly floating at the back of any queue.

A media persona unlocks doors.

You will find out just how, in the coming weeks, by applying my techniques, you too can catapult your persona into the national and international media landscape, like the BBC Dragons and countless other higher profile entrepreneurs.

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Hungry to take matters into your own hands with a single minded approach to your own publicity