Katherine Keddie: The solutions we need to save the planet from climate and biodiversity crises are here, but they won't make a difference unless they are adopted at scale. We are Matt Jaworski and Katherine Keddie, and we have focused our careers on ensuring that this happens in time. Back in 2021, we started Adopter, Europe's first marketing company working exclusively with scaling green innovation. Since then, we've supported organisations from pre-seed start-ups and Earthshot Prize finalists to international unicorns and global NGOs. We've worked with green technology solutions across fintech, construction, food systems, nature and finance, and more. We also mentor on some of the world's leading venture builders. We are on a mission to support 100 high-integrity green innovation solutions by the end of 2025. and 1000 by 2030. This podcast is the next step on that journey.
So welcome back to the Scaling Green Tech podcast with me, Katherine Keddie and Matt Jaworski. We are here with Abi and James from Harpswood, who are a brilliant PR agency with lots of experience in climate tech. They were a big part of Octopus Energy journey from an early stage to what they are now, which is a global unicorn. And in today's episodes, we will be discussing the basic tips for climate tech startups trying to get into PR. some experiences and lessons learned along the way, and some things to avoid. So hello, Abi and James. Great to see you. To kick us off, I'm going to start us with a surprisingly challenging question. How would you explain what you do to a five-year-old?
James Clench: How would you explain hearts to a five year old? That's a great question in the sense that we always think about simple language. And that's one of the things that we tell clients. And we talked about this in the office yesterday, came up with two separate, two people came up with separate ideas on it and came out with exactly the same thing, which is we work with good companies who are trying to tell their stories to people, essentially. That's essentially what we do. We want to work with good companies who are getting their messages across.
Katherine Keddie: Fantastic. Okay. I think that's a good description to get us started, but maybe for the ones who are not a five-year-old, but maybe, you know, Climatech founders, people that you work with, tell us a bit more about what you do.
James Clench: Do you want to pick that up?
Abigail Smith: Yeah, sure. So we work with purpose-driven businesses and we help to raise their profile, making sure that we tell their story to the audiences that they're trying to reach. So everyone from businesses that are starting out, so those early stage companies, you know, perhaps around the seed stage through to scaling up series A, B and beyond, and then establishing. So Octopus Energy is one of our longstanding clients and they are firmly in the establishing category. So we now help them across different countries, really help to tell their story in terms of where they need it to be heard.
Katherine Keddie: Okay and starting with Octopus I think is really exciting because they've been such a major part of your journey to date but I would love to hear what your journey has been both as a company but also as individuals and what's brought you to lead you to focus on this particular area of work.
James Clench: I mean, I think if we go chronologically, unfortunately, I'm gonna have to start first by some number of years. So, I mean, 40 odd years ago, I know that I want to be a journalist and that was kind of all I'd ever wanted to do from the age of about 10 onwards. And I had this love of words, a love of reading, and then latterly a love of news. And then, don't worry, it doesn't go from 10 until like year by year. I'll fast forward a little bit through, get to about, 21, 22, been out of university, go travelling, come back, get a job on my local paper. and do that for about a year, yeah, just over a year. The Sun launched a graduate training scheme and I applied for that and I got on it. And that was a real life-changing moment for me because suddenly I was on a national newspaper. And part of that training scheme was that they put you through City University, which was the top journalism course in the country. So some of the people who were on that course, and it was only 30 people, it was a postgraduate diploma, Faisal Islam, who's now the BBC's economics editor. Pippa Krira, who's the Guardian's political editor. Leo Lewis, who's the FT's Asia editor, I think. He's certainly out in Japan. Marina Hyde sort of dropped in a few times. She was working on a newspaper at the time, but she would come in and do shorthand law. So there were some real stars of the future on that course, and it was a brilliant, brilliant scheme. Also on it with me on the Sun training scheme was Martel Maxwell, who now presents homes under the hammer and has gone on to have her own sort of amazing career. So some really brilliant people. After that course, which the Sun had funded, I then went on to the paper and I undergo training with them. And I stayed on the paper for 15 years as a junior reporter, junior news desk person. Then a more senior reporter who was traveling the world. I think I went to about 35 countries covering various stories from conflict in the Middle East. So 2006, I was out in Lebanon. Virginia Tech massacre out in the States in 2008, I think it was. Live 8, I went to Sudan with Fran Healy from the band Travis, kind of covering those sorts of things. Then I went on the news desk and became head of news. And you just get this amazing understanding of how news operates and how the media works and how you're in it. And you've got all these PR agencies sending stories into you and you understand why some cut through and why some don't. I think clearly people have their views on the media and certainly on tabloid newspapers, and I don't shy away from that. I think The Sun gave me an ability to write very well, and some brilliant writers have come out of that newspaper. So people who've gone on to write speeches for Bill and Melinda Gates, people who've gone to write speeches for prime ministers in this country, so many of those people have come out of newspapers and tabloid newspapers as well. And I think the brilliance of great writing is around, and Philip Collins says this in his book, to be clear, and Philip Collins, again, wrote speeches for Tony Blair, and also a journalist, and the things that he says you should strive for are absolutely for clarity, and the three things that bring you to that clarity are simplicity, precision, and brevity, which is something that we're always trying to tell our clients. And obsessive words. And obsessive words, and keep things really brief, get to the point, keep things absolutely precise. 2015, I leave the sun largely for kind of family balance reasons. I had a couple of young children and we moved out of London. I moved into PR and I joined a PR agency called PHA, which was run by a former newspaper editor, Phil Hall, absolutely brilliant individual, fantastic agency. And shortly after joining there, I took over a team called the Entrepreneurs and Business Team. And there was a young woman called Abi Smith who was working on that team. And Abi, tell us what it, well, I would suggest now's a good time to hand over to you as I've been talking for a long time.
Abigail Smith: Scary, it's almost 10 years ago now actually that we first met. So yeah, it's flown. So I'd actually had a slightly different start to my PR career. I studied English literature, always loved reading, obsessed with books for as long as I could remember. And I hadn't actually had a, I didn't really have a super clear vision of where I was going to go career wise. And I remember someone saying to me once, you're quite good at talking to people. I think you might be quite good at PR. And I looked into it in a bit more detail and I actually started out in fashion PR. I think I thought it might be like ABFAB, but I was a bit too late really to party there. So I did that for a couple of years, and it was a real baptism of fire. I was always the kind of person that stuck my hand up and said, give me opportunity, throw it at me. Yes, I'll help you organise this, and was doing all sorts of stuff that really was way above my pay grade, to be honest with you. But after a couple of years, I sort of felt a bit disconnected from the world around me. And a recruiter got in touch and said, have you considered business PR? And it wasn't until I was prepping for that interview with my dad, actually, who had his own business and who I'd grown up around that business my whole life. And I'd actually worked in pretty much every department of that company by the time I went to uni. And it was really through then taking that job, which was at PHA, going into the entrepreneurs and business team and spending much more time with founders and entrepreneurs that I thought, Oh yeah, hang on, this is what I'm meant to be doing. I love speaking to them to find out what makes them tick. What's the interesting angle? How can I take that angle and set this founder apart? You know, so many people are pitching journalists for a profile interview. How can you get to know a client? How can you dig under? things a little bit more and unearth a bit of a special story. So I carved out a bit of a niche, I guess, doing that there. And obviously met James. We got on really well. I progressed quite quickly in that agency, loved broadcast, loved getting clients on TV and onto radio. I think I really liked how fast paced it was. And I actually ended up going to sort of spread my wings and go and explore a couple of other agencies. And I went to a tech agency for a little bit, and then I was actually at a big global agency called MSL, which is part of Publicis Group, so who owns Sarchi and Sarchi, Leo Burnett, quite a big noise. And I was there for a couple of years, and I learned a lot working on big budget campaigns, working with FTSE 100 clients. But in all honesty, I missed being close to the action like I was at PHA.
James Clench: You don't get the CEO.
Abigail Smith: 100%, exactly. And we had clients there like James Reid of Reid Recruitment. And I, you know, we would put out the Reid Jobs Index every single month and get brilliant coverage. And I loved actually that Monday morning call with James where we'd come prepared with some ideas to talk through and think, okay, what are we going to newsjack this week? Whereas at MSL, because you're working with much bigger clients, there'd be about seven layers of approval to get anything through. And I'm the kind of person that, you know, I need things to happen more quickly than that, basically. So it was the summer of 2020 that James made the phone call to me.
James Clench: Is it worth, just to complete the story, yeah. So during the time at PHA, I mean, it was a very small team of entrepreneurs and businesses when we started out, and then it grew as we won business. And I guess that for me was the test from moving to journalism and PR. PR, you know, you've got a lot more commercial responsibilities than you ever really feel as a journalist. And part of those responsibilities was to win new business and to try and generate clients for the agency. And Abi mentioned Reid, which was it was a big win at the time. That was one that I'd brought in. And then probably early 2017, I'm in classic, boring middle aged dad mode and changing my energy supplier. And, you know, you're watching household bills and you're making sure that you're on top of everything. And I've gone through one of the switching sites and just spotted that there were dozens of energy companies that I just hadn't heard of before. And because of what I've been doing at The Sun, both as reporter and news editor, we've been writing a lot of stories about how the big six energy companies were not treating customers particularly well. So they were charging them a lot of money. It wasn't great customer service. They didn't really seem to care that much. It was a kind of transactional, you sort of have to go with one of the big six. I think at the time it was something like, 95 or even 99% of people in the country with the big six energy companies. So there was a choice between these six and then not much else. Suddenly you have deregulation, suddenly lots more new businesses on the market, 70 or 80. I went into work that Monday and said look there's all these new energy supplies you know some of them are going to need PR to differentiate themselves and made the point that you know some of them will differentiate on price some of them will probably differentiate on sustainability you know there will be all these angles that they will be looking at, and suggested that we put some feelers out and see if people were interested. Octopus came back very quickly and probably within about a day of the email being sent out, and I think it was Greg who responded to the email, and it just so happened that PHA's offices were on Wardle Street, Octopus at that time were on Broadwick Street just around the corner in Soho, and we went round there. Usually in these sort of pitch meetings, I would be the person going in and doing the hard sell. And I got in there and the meeting was with me and Greg Jackson, the CEO of Octopus, and Rebecca Dibb-Simkin, who's the head of marketing and product chief, I think. And I mean, Greg was selling to me. He was just telling me what an amazing business Octopus was, and he was just all arms, hugely demonstrative, took me around the office, would get people saying, Pete, tell James what an amazing business Octopus is. Tell him what you've been doing. And I've seen him do this subsequently. He does it to prime ministers and journalists. And I think probably in an hour's meeting, I probably got about five words in. I said, well, we'd love to work with you. I'll put a proposal together. And I'd say within two weeks we were working together. And the PHA team were very good, and we had him on the Today program, I think, within about a month or six weeks. And they had some very defined things that they want to talk about. And sustainability was certainly an element of that, but probably the bigger element, I think, was pricing. And they felt that there was a very unfair system of pricing in the UK in the energy market, which I think actually Greg had done an interview with a BBC journalist and it was the BBC journalist who had coined this term of tease and squeeze. So energy companies would tease you in with a low price and then you would take your eye off the ball and drift out of contract after a year and then suddenly they're squeezing you with very high standard variable tariff. And that was a lot of the work that we did at PHA at the time with Octopus. Around about summer 2019, I decided that I quite fancied giving PR, setting up an agency myself. I handed in my notice towards the end of 2019. Stayed on for a little bit at PHA on a notice period, and then coming left at the end of February 2020, straight into the pandemic, which was an interesting time to launch an agency. But I should, by that time, certainly around February, March time, Octopus had said to me that they wanted to come over to the new agency, which was an amazing thing because already by that time they were a successful business. You know, I think when we started, when we first engaged with them in 2017, they had about 50,000 customers. And already by 2020, I think they had a million customers or a million plus customers. So they were a very successful business. It was a great start for the agency. And actually the minute that we had that contract signed, I rang Abi up and said, do you want to come over and help me run this agency?
Abigail Smith: Absolutely. And it was really funny. We'd always stayed in touch. And I remember getting this message from James. I knew that he'd started on his own and I got this message from him saying, are you free for a call tomorrow? And I remember saying to a friend, I'm going to get off at a job tomorrow. And, and James was a, you know, classic, once a journalist, always a journalist, right. Let me talk and talk. And, you know, the pandemic was challenging, I think for a lot of people. working from home and all of those things. And I think I'd been feeling a bit itchy feet anyway, for all the reasons I mentioned earlier, you know, the frustration with those big clients of things not happening at the pace in which I wanted them to happen. And James's sell to me was really simple. He basically said, look, I've started on my own. Octopus are following me over. I want to win more clients like them. I want to do great work with great people. And that's what we do, right? You know, four and a half years later, it's been an absolutely amazing ride. And, you know, I had quite a long notice period that I had to work out. And I remember the week between leaving the old company and joining Harpswood, I logged on for my first day and we'd won our second client already, hadn't we? Yeah
James Clench: Yeah. And I think with the, I mean, obviously with, you know, this is a sustainability podcast, I think it's important, clearly important that we talk about that. The experience, like my own background in sort of views on sustainability and engagement with it, I think I'd probably been a sort of fairly typical person in the UK where, I mean, I'd followed the news and I was aware of climate disasters and very aware of them, but also busy and distracted and leading my own life. And while engaging with it and doing the basic things that people will do like recycling or, you know, things that you sort of think you do, I wasn't tremendously engaged with it. And then I think getting Octopus as a client and actually some of the first kind of immersion sessions that we did with them and hearing, I mean, Greg is a brilliant communicator and that's nothing to do with us. He is independent, absolutely brilliant communicator. And he, as we were having this session with him and he's talking about renewable energy and he just made this point that I probably knew in the background, but it never really landed with me that, you know, the world, the energy transition in the world of renewable energy. This is not about wearing a hair shirt. This is not about turning all the lights off at night. This is we've got abundant sunshine and abundant wind, and it's about finding a system that can deal with intermittency and work all that out. But this is a world of He said at the time, this is a world where we could be paying people to use energy. Three years later, they were. It's like we've got an abundance of energy on the grid, we'll pay you to do it. This is not about having a worse experience, this is about having a better experience and decarbonizing while you do it. When that renewable light bulb went off, You just thought, you know, God, this is an amazing business to be working with. It's absolutely the right thing to be doing. You know that, you know, if you're not doing that, if you're, if there is a choice between driving an electric car and a petrol or diesel car, it's like, you know, you should, if you can, if you're going to, you should make the decision to drive, I think the electric car, you know, it has to fit your lifestyle up to a point, but for most people it will. But the technology is better anyway. It's a better drive. And it's about, you know, the products that are on offer are better. So you can do the right thing and have a better customer experience. And I think that when that penny drops, that was for me, it was like, these are the organizations that I want to work with. This is, you know, the world is moving in this way and I should use the communication skills that I've got to try and help move it along.
Abigail Smith: And I think to communicate to the masses as well, right, which is so key. And I think that second client that I mentioned, so they are called New Automotive. And I think probably quite a lot of people listening to this may well be familiar with their Electric Car Count. Which is, it looks at sales of new electric cars and they put it out each month. And when they came to us, they were really in their infancy. So it was around the time that the 2030 ban on electric and diesel cars was announced. Obviously as time of recording, things are being rolled back slightly, which is problematic in itself, but there we are. And so one of the first things we did for them was a joined up campaign actually with Electric Vehicle Association England, Octopus Electric Vehicles and New Automotive. And a lot of the work that we did around that November, December of 2020 was taking ordinary people's stories who drove electric cars, like this young guy, Harrison from Brighton, who was 17 and he'd vowed he would never drive a non-electric car. And he'd saved up from his part-time job in a supermarket, got this car and just had such pride about it and really wanted to communicate the benefits to everyone as well. And so we were doing things for them, like, you know, telling those stories of those, um, everyday people to try and convince and educate and persuade, which is so much of what PR is all about. And then of course, working with the team at New Automotive, who had brilliant data, their chief exec, Ben Nelmes, former policy guy, so really clued in in terms of what needed to happen, what needed to happen to shift policy and to get things moving in the right direction. And then really from there and through Guy Fernando was how that sort of ended up taking on more climate tech clients, wasn't it?
James Clench: That's right. That's right. We took on Suback, who Guy was involved with, along with Baroness Bryony Worthington, the original authors of the Climate Change Act. And Suback essentially is a kind of climate tech accelerator. And, you know, suddenly we're dealing with people like Jack Kelly at Open Climate Fix. So smart. He's from Google DeepMind. And you're like, wow, how can we live with this guy? You know, what can we tell? But actually, He understands brilliantly what he does, but the skill that we can offer is how do you communicate that. So how would we describe what they do? Essentially it's around cloud movement and what happens in the last half an hour, I think, of cloud movement and how that's going to affect solar output. And they were very ahead of the game using AI, machine learning.
Abigail Smith: Absolutely. And Jack had actually left Google DeepMind to start this new venture, Open Climate Fix, and incredibly smart guy. And I remember quite early on into this project that we were working with them on, setting up an interview for him with Wyatt. And I'm there briefing Dr. Jack Kelly, formerly of DeepMind, and I'm thinking, wow, you are so smart. There's so much you know. But of course, there's so much that founders and people who are in the weeds of these really technical businesses don't know about communication. And I think that's where we try to be the bridge. between what they're trying to say. And sometimes, you know, we see that they're too technical and they try and delve in too deeply. And so we try and bring them back up to a level where, you know, it's that sort of, would a smart 12 year old understand this?
James Clench: Yeah, it goes back to your original question. It's like, you know, how do you explain it in simple terms?
Abigail Smith: Exactly. And so, you know, I remember briefing Jack ahead of that Wired interview, sitting in on it, and it turned into this amazing 1,500 word piece in Wired all about their technology and everything they were doing. And they'd actually come to us off the back of, um, they'd won a Google award and had some funding. And, um, we got to work quite quickly sort of saying, well, actually that's really interesting. And I can understand why you're so excited about that. But this is a theme that we often see with clients where, you you can sometimes become a little bit clouded by your own agenda rather than thinking, what is a journalist going to want? Whereas the journalists were super fascinated. Who leaves Google DeepMind for a start because you want to be challenged more, you want to have more personal impact on climate. which was the story that he told us. And then, of course, what exactly are you doing? How could this technology transform people's lives? So that was a really good early example. And it was only 2021. The business had been going, what, probably about six months or so at that point. Sorry, I cut it from when I joined, don't I, Classic? But we were in our infancy. We were in our infancy and I remember having this sit down lunch with Matt Reynolds from Wired and I PR'd all sorts over the years. I'd never managed to get a journalist from Wired to sit down with me. And we had like three or four clients at this point. I remember thinking, this is so exciting. We're really on the right side of things here. And I think a bit like James, I didn't consciously think I'm going to work in climate tech. You know, it's the way that things happened and having PR all sorts of things over the years, you know, truly from launching swimming pools at Butlins to you name it. It's been so exciting to actually wake up each day and now to have a team who are so motivated to work on the clients that we work with. And I think for us, it's about how can we help them accelerate that impact through the work we do.
James Clench: Totally. Totally.
Katherine Keddie: OK, fantastic. I think, you know, that's a really exciting, comprehensive look at what you do. But I think what lots of people will be very curious to know is going through your experience, both in and out of climate tech. And then I'll be seeing that kind of traction that came through working in climate tech and working with those founders. And what I'm hearing is potentially there are stories that are more interesting to journalists than in other areas. And what can other kind of scaling climate tech startups learn from the experiences that you've had? What do journalists want to actually hear from them?
What climate tech founders get wrong about messaging
Abigail Smith: That's a great question. And of course, it's something we talk to our clients about a lot. I think in the earlier stages, it's, you know, when you're running a startup, you're wearing so many hats, right? And you're working so hard to get investment or to deal with your early customers and to hire the right team. We would always say to people, think about your messaging, think about who your audience is really from the beginning and then connected to that, what's your elevator pitch? You know, you meet someone in the lift or someone at a party, you want to have those few lines really, really down and to make sure they're consistent as well. You know, we do a lot of media training with clients. Yeah, we do a lot of media training with clients and one of the first interactive exercises that we get them to do, especially if there's two people from the same company in the room, is we'll ask them the open-ended question.
James Clench: Tell us about your business.
Abigail Smith: Absolutely. And so often what you get back is totally different. And I think that's really interesting. So trying to really nail that down early on. Think about your origin story. We talk about this a lot and I mentioned it earlier, I think I'm just quite nosy, right? But I always like to… to understand where's that light bulb moment come from? Why did you create this? How did you solve that problem? And again, it's trying to make it personal as well because, you know, it's human interest stories. We're all people at the end of the day and we care about other people, right? So if you can say something that's going to lodge in someone's mind, you would then are more likely to remember it. And then Kat, I remember one of the first times we met was at that round table that I hosted with Juliet from the founder of Climate Connection. And that was an intro to PR and public speaking, right, for early stage climate tech startups. And I remember sitting in that room talking to people from such interesting companies and coming home that night and messaging James and sort of saying, oh my gosh, there's so much we need to do to help the community because to us, the basics are so simple. Now, simple doesn't always mean easy, right James? In terms of nailing messaging and getting things done in a concise way. But, you know, we often say, have you got the right images? You know, journalists want strong, memorable images.
Why strong images matter
James Clench: It just makes such a difference. And I think particularly if you are and a lot of the organizations that we work with will end up in the often being the business pages rather than the news pages. You know, if it's around a fundraiser or things like that and, you know, business pages, whether in Obviously things aren't so much in print now, but largely in digital, but wherever they are, there aren't many great images around business. You know, it's like often lots of men in suits or, you know, should be more women and, but, but make an interesting picture, you know, find something that isn't just you signing a document or standing there with a headshot or, and, and you do that and you will, you know, you will cut through that. That will make a massive difference.
Abigail Smith: And we've seen that, I think, with some of our clients. So Packfleet, all electric van delivery company, and Steve, who's in our team, another former journalist, he's got a brilliant eye for strong images and what makes a good story. And quite early on into working with them, he looked at their photos and thought, hang on a minute, you're based in London. You're wanting to attract more merchants of small businesses to come and use us so that you know, so that Packfleet would deliver their products. Why have we not got photos of Packfleet vans in eye-catching London locations?
James Clench: The whole thing was about them being electric vans, you know, that was the differentiator.
Abigail Smith: Yeah, and so we helped them organize a photo shoot and we had, you know, the Packfleet van in Chinatown with the London Eye behind it in all really sort of eye-catching locations and then any stories we put out for them time and time again, you'd get those visuals in. Andc is another quite
James Clench: Oh, Yo-Go was amazing. So we did some work with so it's essentially a kind of like golf buggies that they're using in Hammersmith and Fulham as kind of, you know, short, short little travel options. And they're bright yellow. They look amazing. The photos look fantastic. And the work that we did with them, I think we ended up on BBC, Times, Telegraph, Guardian. I mean, it was like mainstream national. It was incredible. And it was because of those images. You know, that's absolutely what cut through.
Abigail Smith: 100%. And then I think we often say to clients or prospective clients, make sure you've got your facts and figures in order as well. You know, you don't need to overdo it. You don't want to bamboozle people that you're talking to with stats and stats and stats, but one or two well-placed stats, one or two well-placed illustrations or examples of, you know, our first customer was so-and-so and we helped them by doing this. And they've said to us, they've seen a reduction in their costs or their energy savings. And just make it, again, relevant and memorable, I think.
James Clench: Think about the message. Think about the example. And you're absolutely right on stats. It's like, one or two is absolutely fine. But you can, if you hear, you'll hear someone on the Today program, and they come out with seven or eight stats, even if you're paying attention, you're lost. And most people aren't paying attention. I think one other thing I'd say is that some, And it's perfectly natural. Some clients that will advise will sort of say, you know, we've landed that message, we've done that. And it's like, actually, you need to be a little bit like politicians where you are sick of hearing the message, you know, you have to repeat and repeat and repeat. Because, you know, as we said, we've had a client this morning, as we record on BBC Breakfast. Now, you know, they've talked about a particular issue, it will have raised their profile a bit. But some people will have been watching that, will have noticed, vast majority of people will be making their breakfast, eating their porridge, doing whatever they're doing, and they'll sort of be flitting in and flitting out of it. So you need to keep going. It has to be this steady, steady profile raising, message landing, and don't be afraid to repeat those messages time and time again.
Abigail Smith: And I think, don't be afraid to test them out as well, right? And we've actually been looking this year at what other services we can offer to clients and earlier stage companies. Because so often, as we've spoken about, when something's very technical or you've got this amazing deep engineering expertise or whatever it is you specialize in, of course you're not going to be able to write as well as James, who spent how many decades doing it? You know, it's like, that would be crazy. And so I think, you know, look to people who can give you good advice, know that even the most brilliant communicators didn't become brilliant overnight, right? It takes work, it takes effort, it takes the ability to say, okay, I'm gonna watch that interview back, how could I have improved it? And to constantly be learning and evolving, I think that's so key. And so for us, I think I mentioned earlier, we've recently become a community partner to Climate Connection. So they're an amazing organization, of course, and you'll know you're a community partner too. And they are so fantastic and what Juliet's created to bring the community together, really with the idea of how can we help each other? You know, at the flagship events on the last Wednesday of the month, when you have to talk to someone you've not met before and you say, what's your current challenge and how can I help you? I think that really speaks to the heart of everything, right, that we're all trying to achieve. And part of our work with them is running office hours, so where startups can come and meet us, chat to us. It was like sort of rapid fire PR questions, wasn't it, last time you did it? It was brilliant. Pretty intensive. Yeah, exactly. It was great, but it's really good to be challenged in that way. And off the back of that and through talking to their team, We've created a bunch of different workshops. So everything from mastering your messages through to founder focus, what's that unusual founder story that you can then use to tell your story, whether it's on LinkedIn or when you're speaking to journalists and also running things like DIY PR as well. So helping companies to get some of these basics that we've been mentioning. So your boilerplate, which is your short paragraph with your key stats and facts and figures about the business. The fact sheet, we've got a Harpswood tried and tested fact sheet model that we roll out for clients, which just makes sure that you've got everything in order. You know, so often getting the basic PR elements is a bit of housekeeping, to be honest. You know, it doesn't always sound that glamorous, but it's actually really important because If a journalist comes to you and asks for some quite simple info about your business, but you're scrambling around trying to get it, and then you don't get it to them very quickly, that journalist probably isn't going to come back to you very quickly again, because they're time poor, they're juggling lots of things. So by getting these basics down, getting your PR foundations in order, joining some of our workshops, as I mentioned, all of that just means you set yourself up for success.
Katherine Keddie: And when it comes to, as a climate tech founder, when I'm deciding what is the right time for me to invest in PR, because obviously it's a big decision to make, it comes at a stage where you're going to get kind of a level of traction to it. How big were Octopus when you started working with them? And then what do you think is the right moment for a founder to decide now is the time to invest in my PR versus what I can do myself?
When to start investing in PR
James Clench: I mean, Octopus initially, I think they'd had 10 million pounds worth of funding. And I think at that scale, you clearly have some budget to invest in marketing, and you have things to say. I think if you are pre-seed, chances are you probably haven't got a product that's deliverable, or you haven't got a service that's necessarily ready to go. So I mean you probably are realistically looking at DIY stuff. I think at seed stage then again it depends on what the level of that seed round is. And I think it does depend a degree to what type of product and service it is. and also the type of audience that you are speaking to. And the founder is probably the best place to judge, you know, do I really need to, I mean, the vast majority of businesses do need to communicate to an audience, whether it's to raise more investment or whether it's around government policy or whether it's general profile raising. But we would say, I think generally between probably seed and series A is the general time that we see people starting.
Abigail Smith: Yeah, and I think to add to that, we were with a really fascinating business just last week and I can't say who they are because they've actually not put their head above the parapet yet, but they're doing incredible things. British manufacturing business could totally transform an industry if it goes in the direction we think it will. And they said, you know what, we've intentionally not done any PR. They've had some customers approach them and they've said, you know, we want to do press releases and they've made the decision not to. Well, fast forward to the point where they are now, where they're fundraising and investors are turning around to them and are saying, well, why have we not heard about you? And I think so often it's chicken and egg, right? Because of course, in the earlier stages, businesses are really concerned. What's the runway looking like? You know, they've got potential investors scrutinizing the books, all of that stuff. But I think equally, we know from experience that PR is about validation, third party validation, right? and the ability for an investor to do that checkbox exercise of a quick Google search. Have they been insifted? Can I see anything about them in TechCrunch? Have they been commenting on issues that are relevant to their business? Do they understand their industry and their position within it, right? And so actually it's so important. And I think at the earlier stage as well, businesses can be bolder and they can have a perhaps a stronger opinion than you can when you've got, you know, much, much broader range of investors, you know, sort of scrutinizing you. So I think the earlier the better. But equally we would never promise something that we didn't feel we could deliver. You know this is something we talk about quite a lot within the PR industry. I think there's quite a lot of people out there that like to promise the moon on a stick and don't always deliver. And we try to take quite the opposite approach to that.
Third-party validation and earned media
James Clench: Under promise and over deliver. I mean just to pick up on that third party validation point I think that you know that really is the key to PR. I think that you know some people some Very intelligent people, you know, their world is not marketing and advertising, social PR, it all kind of blends into one and that they all absolutely have their role. But I think if you land a great piece of PR, it can change things in a way that an advert and even a great social post probably can't. I did that you know a journalist is looked at your product or service they scrutinized it you know they wrestle with it they pulled you apart a bit to find it where the weaknesses in it and then they have concluded that actually this is an amazing product that could have a significant impact on the world whatever it is they concluded the end of this positive. has a tremendous amount of impact because it's not you saying it, it's the journalist who's saying it. It's what's being said about you after you've left the room. That's what PR is. And some of the results that we've seen, I think the acid test for us is when the founder comes on and says, I have my mum on the phone. She read the piece in the time. The minute that happens, you know that you've got that client forever. Totally.
Abigail Smith: Well, I think I remember Sarah from AimHi, right? So AimHi are a brilliant organization who deliver climate training online. And Sarah, one of the co-founders, was interviewed for The Times all around their funding. Now, they'd received one million in funding, which to them huge amount of money really exciting but to a journalist not a huge figure.
James Clench: Certainly a journalist who's dealing with lots of funding stories.
Abigail Smith: Absolutely and the way that we package it up was to talk more about the business build out that wider narrative around it and talk about the you know the companies that they've worked with and just to sort of make it a bit bigger than that figure itself. And it resulted in this really fantastic piece in The Times. And Sarah let one of our team know that in her family WhatsApp chat, the whole thing was just absolutely popping off because her brother had been in a coffee shop, saw someone reading The Times, looked over and thought, That's my sister and like a half page huge photo of her. But it's that sort of thing that we hear about time and time again. Or, you know, you get a client on TV and, you know, again, someone that they know, people they've worked with or even their customers and things like that see them. It's a big deal, isn't it?
James Clench: Yeah. I mean, Abhi had an amazing result with Desert Island Disc, which, you know, I think is the absolute. It's the zenith of me, you know, once you're on Desert Island Discs, you are very much, you know, you are part of you've made it, I think. And yeah. a conversation with the producer led to Greg Jackson going on there. And it was, you know, it just feels like something that is is just it makes a difference. It really makes a difference in terms of how you're perceived, how where you're standing is, I guess, and your authority.
Abigail Smith: Absolutely. And I think for other companies that we've worked with, so Naked Energy are a longstanding client of ours. They're a solar thermal business and we've worked with them for three years now and we've supported them through their series B fundraise and everything was gearing up actually to a big landmark project that they'd been working on with the British library. And, um, that was quite a complicated one in that there was a lot of people involved. Um, it required sort of quite careful consideration for how we presented it. And, um, it was such an exciting moment actually for our team to get the results that we wanted on that. So, and I think it was quite a good example of where PR doesn't always go in the way that you think it might, but how, when you've got the expertise, you can navigate it. So we'd agreed an exclusive with the times and, um, and then we'd managed to get a broadcast exclusive away with BBC London and with the times, you know, the client was really happy. And they were quite keen to have a print exclusive. We discussed online targets and things, but they really wanted that outlet. And in the end, it actually got edited down quite considerably and the piece was much smaller than we'd all been hoping for. The team found out very quickly, actually on a Sunday ahead of it due to go out on the Monday. They knew that a journalist that we know quite well at Bloomberg was probably going to be quite interested in it. Got to work, arranged an interview for the CEO with that Bloomberg journalist. And actually we ended up getting a little bit in the times and a big Bloomberg piece. And then we also managed to get the story on BBC London for this huge broadcast piece where they went down, filmed, interviewed the CEO. And I think that is just such a good example of, you know, the contacts that we have within the agency and being able to make sure that, you know, we can never guarantee. I think that's the thing with PR that sometimes people that haven't had an experience of it don't always understand because We can't dictate to a journalist what they write. Our role is to facilitate between the two.
James Clench: To make them interested.
Abigail Smith: Absolutely. And to present our clients in the best possible light and also to present in a way that's going to excite the journalist. Because I think sometimes founders and people within a business can be so obsessed with their business that they can get a bit lost for what is actually newsworthy or what a journalist is keen to receive. Um, and that BBC piece for Naked Energy was just such an amazing TV op. We were so determined because it was such a visual story, iconic British location, the biggest installation of solar thermal collectors in the UK, a listed building. So all the complications that come with that. Um, but we know how important it was for them to achieve that. And we know for the future projects, they've got a lot of exciting things coming up. You then build the momentum. for clients through landing pieces like that.
James Clench: So I think the other thing I'd say with that particular piece of coverage it really brought home to me how Harpswood developed as a business because we had Eva Lightfoot running it who's been with us for two years now, ex-BBC journalist, been at BBC for six years and she was down there advising the client on in the British Library when that was being filmed and you think you know we've really got great level of expertise now within the business where you know, she can advise them much better than I can advise. You know, I can advise well on written words and I can advise a bit on TV, but you know, the person who's got the TV expertise, that's fantastic to have. And I think that's the way we see the business developing.
Abigail Smith: Totally, 100%. And then I would just add on that question of How early is too early for clients? So we have also been doing PR for Juliet, the founder of Climate Connection. Now, they're an organization that hasn't taken funding, right? It's community-led, you know, it's been bootstrapped and it's really grown through word of mouth and through everything that they do. for the community. And that's a really exciting one for us because she has a great personal story to tell, but it's not that they're a business that's worth millions, right? It's more actually that they're doing something quite different and they're facilitating conversations that are interesting and topical to journalists. So really early on into working together, they let us know that they were doing an event on first of a kind funding, which is super topical, really, really interesting, and frankly, a huge problem, right? And so Pete from our team identified this as yes, this is something that could be interesting to a journalist and managed to get Freya from Sifted to go down to this event. She loved it because she got to listen in to all these really interesting conversations happening with investors and founders. and then ended up getting a little write up in the sifted newsletter, which for Juliet and Climate Connection is a big deal, right? Because that's exactly the type of outlet that their audience is trying to reach. So I think really for us, it's about understanding who is the business trying to reach? What is the business trying to do? Making sure that the PR objectives are really aligned to the business objectives, because our PR should help the business to scale. And there's nothing more than we love than being involved early on and taking part on that journey with them as they grow. It's so exciting.
Matt Jaworksi: It is. Something you touched on is the difference that good framing, good PR approach and understanding journalists makes in getting them interested in your story. I was wondering if you could share an example of, you know, sort of raw story that is great, but it's not going to appeal to journalists. And then a couple of examples on the difference, right? So having the PR experience can make to it.
James Clench: That's a really interesting question, Matt. I think often we have organizations and I've alluded to this before where, and this is a common trap to fall into, I think, where you're so wrapped up in your own organization. that what we're able to bring is that sense of perspective. And I think sometimes there is a great acid test for a client that, you know, if one of your competitor businesses was writing this story or if any other business in any other sector was writing this story, would you read it? Would you be interested? Are people interested in your company rebrand? I mean, maybe if you're a massive, if you're Apple, perhaps, but if you're a smaller startup, then probably not. I saw a really interesting post the other day on LinkedIn, actually, from Jane Hamilton, who's an ex-colleague of mine. She works on The Sun and she also works on The Times now. And she had said that, you know, journalists are busy and they haven't got time to be reading an intro in a press release that's talking about your sort of waffly company mission. You know, you've got to get to the point really, really quickly. So I'm just trying to think of a good example of where we have done that. You've got the intersecting sets and what we're always trying to find, I guess our whole role really, is you have the journalist on one side, you have the client on the other side, and we are trying to find that kind of intersecting set of what is interesting to the journalist and what is the right message for the client to get across.
Abigail Smith: In the media, there are regular profile slots. So you'll have read them and seen them. And there's one called BBC CEO Secrets that at the time was run by Dougal Shaw. Now, I knew Dougal quite well. I'd landed quite a few interviews in that slot with different clients previously at PHA. So from one who was a client who I'd discovered was into cave diving, and I'd used how he takes his approach of needing to be calm and really taking everything he learns from doing that to how he runs his business. And it's not that they want to hear about the business itself. He really wanted that anecdote, that secret that the audience would take away and be able to perhaps put into practice. And I remember hearing anecdotally in the early days of working with Octopus, that they didn't have a traditional HR department. And I remember thinking, that's so interesting. I've never really heard of that. At the time they were worth around 2 billion. And, uh, I remember saying to them, have you had Greg on BBC CEO secrets before? And they said, no, we haven't. So I pitched it. I led with the angle of my business had no HR department. And actually it worked. And I remember when the piece went out, it went a bit crazy, to be honest with you. It ended up being in the BBC News app that day. I think it went up to number two at one point, which was really exciting, wasn't it? And Greg, the founder of Octopus, his LinkedIn pretty much exploded. with people applying for jobs and getting in touch. And I think we actually had him do some global media off the back of it. And for quite a lot of interviews following that, people really wanted to know, well, how does it work? And of course they have people there looking after their teams and doing tons of things, but they just don't approach HR in a traditional way. And I reference that because I think it goes to show you have to understand what the journalist wants and give them the information in the right way. when it comes to dealing with journalists who are bombarded with information, you've got to give it to them in the right way. And we do a lot at Harpswood of having journalists into our office. We have a series called Harps Meets. And so we have brilliant journalists come in, sit down with the team, often will show us just how many hundreds, if not thousands of emails they have in their inbox every single day. and we say to them what works for you, what do you like and quite often we will work with a journalist on a story, you know when we know someone well enough it's often a phone call or it's a whatsapp.
James Clench: And that goes to that point actually that you know often a press release isn't the right approach, it's about a conversation with a journalist and you know just running a bit of the information past them. Does this sound like one for you, it feels like something that I don't know, The Sunday Times magazine might go for, you know, we've got some good pictures with it for online. We've got some great video for it. You know, you're looking more digital now and then they'll have a sensible conversation with us. And then I think rather than that, and we don't do this, but there's a lot of agencies I think still do that kind of spray and pray approach, whether you just send out loads of press releases and hope that something sticks. It's like, you know, be targeted, understand what the journalist wants, understand what the top line is in the story. I think another thing I think that my news background gives us this as an agency. is to understand nothing happens in isolation. Everything happens within the context of what is going on within the rolling news period. So, you know, one thing that we'll do as an agency is everyone reads online papers for half an hour every morning so that we understand what's going on. And then when you're working with a client, so perhaps let's say new automotive, for example, when they're coming out with a lot of data about what's been happening in the EV market, Over the last month or the last quarter, you understand the stories that are going on in the background, you understand what the different journalists are writing about. So if we were doing it now, you might take a look at what's happening with Jaguar Land Rover, because we know that they've just stopped exporting to the States, I think, because of the tariffs. You need to understand what is happening within the news sector to know what that top line is going to be and it might not necessarily be the line that the client always wants to get across but you have to get that balance right because we know you want to land this message but if you lead with that you might not get interest. So we might need to lead with this and then land the message secondarily and then we're satisfying what the journalist wants, the kind of hot news angle, but also satisfying what the client wants with getting that message across.
Abigail Smith: Absolutely. And I think as James said, you know, the Jane Hamilton example on LinkedIn is a great one. It's not just Jane out of all the journalists out there that are doing this. We hear it through conversations with them all the time of the amount of press releases or the amount of emails that journalists get from companies that just simply aren't news. And so I think it is really important that companies actually consider, you know, could I imagine this being written? You know, if I was on the BBC News app or I was getting my Sifted newsletter or TechCrunch newsletter, whatever it is you read in the morning, if I'm looking on business screen or on ED, could I imagine this story on the homepage? And if not, then perhaps that story is actually better as a blog. Perhaps it's better to use when you're next on a podcast. And yes, that award could be really amazing for you internally with your people and your team and you should be so proud of it. But does it really warrant a press release? You know, we'll sometimes say to clients, that's fantastic. That's a proof point. And actually what we are going to pitch is this because of X, Y, and Z. And we're going to put that line about your award win or about this new development. We'll let them know about it, but it's not going to be the top line. It's going to be a little bit lower.
Matt Jaworski: Totally. Something you touched on a few times, right, are press releases, how sometimes they're just sprayed to many journalists and someone is praying that someone might pick it up. I was wondering if you would like to elaborate a bit more on this topic. So what are some misconceptions and mistakes related to press releases and what would be some best practices relevant to them and what's their role and place in the PR mix of a company?
Press release mistakes and best practices
James Clench: I left The Sun 10 years ago. At that time, you know, there's still hundreds of thousands coming in every day into generic releases. You know, I say to the team whenever they start and to any client, you know, journalists will read the headline. They might read the intro, the first line of the press release. That's it. You know, they are not going to read more than that. So if you don't know that and you do what's called a sort of delayed drop intro where you kind of delay, delay, delay, and then get the point halfway down the press release. It's just not going to be read. I mean, it is just not going to be read. And unless you've got a contact who you know, who you can ring and say, I'm putting this out, but probably if you can't write a press release like that, you're probably not going to know that many people in the media. So I think it's about, you know, you have to, you are not writing stuff in chronological order. You are writing stuff in the order of importance. You know, it's the way that a new story is written. It's that, it was called the inverted triangle where the most important thing goes at the top. And then the less important lesson, there has to be a flow and you have to get your quotes in and things like that. But the most important bits got to go at the top. I think, you know, the golden rule at journalism college was that you couldn't write an intro that was over 30 words. And that's something that I tell the team again, you know, you have to keep words crunched down. There's something that was always thrown at the sun as an insult. It was this idea that, you know, people weren't allowed at the sun to write words longer than two syllables. And it was seen as this great funny joke. And I understood why. It wasn't true. But it also said a lot about the people making the joke. There's nothing wrong with simplicity. There is nothing wrong with brevity. You know, these are these are things that we should strive for. And you can hit great impact with the most economical of language. And that's where people go wrong. You know, the most common mistake is that people write press releases that go on and on and on. And, you know, they're just hundreds and hundreds of words. And it's just not going to be read. It's just a total waste of everyone's time. And I think something that is interesting to me is that… We're using AI within the business and, you know, all for that, you know, any way that we can make things efficient. Some of the AI generated press releases that I, you know, that I see, and you can tell pretty quickly which ones are, I think the ones at the moment, and I have no doubt that it will improve, but I think it's almost falling into the trap of, you know, we need long words, we need, and that's not what you need, you know, and, you know, obviously it's, rubbish in, rubbish out. So if you're asking the wrong questions or you're setting up the wrong filters, then that's what's going to come out of it. But I think you still need great writers and by great writers, I mean people who do keep things brief, keep things simple, keep things precise. And those are the mistakes.
Abigail Smith: 100%. And I think as well, it's not just that press releases. What are you doing with that press release once you've put it out? And again, I think there's a lot of agencies out there or, you know, there's even databases where you just put it in and it gets sent out. Right. Whereas for us, if we ever say to a client, we're selling in for you, right. So selling your story to the media, that is so much more than just sending a press release out on email. that is going through the agency's collective little black book. Who do we know? Who would be most interested? Who's been writing about it? Exactly. You know, actually, oh, that person at this title, they much prefer WhatsApp. I'm going to ping them a WhatsApp, see if they've got two minutes, jump on the phone. When you get on that phone call, the first 30 seconds of that conversation with the journalist is so important. What are you trying to say? You know, why should they listen? They're so time poor. There's increasingly less journalists out there and way more PRs, right? So you have to make it count. So I think that's really important. And going back to the language point, you know, we actually have a list of banned words at Harpswood. Utilise being one of them. Just say use. Just say use. Leverage, you know, strategic partnerships. When you see that in a press release and you think… Reach out. Exactly. You know, what are you trying to say? And I think it's sometimes a bit of a hangover from the university days where people have to use really flowery language to get a certain word count. To hit a word count, exactly. Exactly. And so for us, you know, we've got a team of really talented people in our organisation. However, I would say even the best writers, you come out of uni and there is a bit of an unlearning to be done if you go into the world in which we work.
James Clench: the sort of the swallowing of the thesaurus. We need to slightly undo that and just go back to simplicity.
Subject line strategy and pitching journalists
Abigail Smith: Exactly. And I think simplicity is a really good and useful point to make actually when we're talking about how to engage journalists because press releases absolutely have a role. You know I remember in my first PR job the person running it was sort of like Press releases are dead. No one wants them anymore. But equally, journalists are time poor. And if you've got a well-written press release that a journalist can lift and repurpose without having to rewrite it too much themselves, especially in more trade publications or in teams where they're a bit smaller, they will use that pretty much verbatim sometimes from what we've given to them. So it goes back to make it easy for the journalists so that they have more reasons to cover the story that you're trying to land. I would also say that sometimes it's not a press release, sometimes it's a really well written pitch and by that we mean a very short email. Often we love to have bullet points in there, get that key information really high up. keep it short, make it attention grabbing, make the subject line matter. Um, you know, I don't pitch as much now, obviously, because we're running the business and, you know, we're working more on our global expansion and things like that. But when I was pitching day in, day out, I loved a dramatic punchy subject line. I think that's probably what worked for me with Desert Island Discs. And in the end, I think it was something like heat pumps to heavy metal, um, is what I used for, for that, for Greg Jackson.
James Clench: I remember one for Sustainable Ventures. Sustainable Ventures, great business. They are a VC with Climate Tech, so they invest in Climate Tech. They also have their own workspace at County Hall, and a big workspaces business. All the workspaces made out of renewable materials. Part of our role with them was to try and get journalists to come along to the workspace and have a look at it and see all the different businesses work within there. And somebody who was quite junior who just started at Harpswood just sort of put together a pitch and it was quite wordy and the subject line was quite long. And it was kind of end of the day and I was looking at it and I was thinking, I know who I need to pitch this to who might be interested, but that subject line is all wrong. Sustainable Ventures are at County Hall, which is where Ken Livingstone used to operate from in the GLC in the 80s. And he was he was universally known as Red Ken because he was seen as being on the pretty far left wing. So I very quickly put together Redken to Green Den and sent that in the subject line. And it's suddenly you get a response straight away. You know, people are if you take the time and you can come up with something that's a bit punchy and a bit interesting and you know, it's not to everyone's taste, but it does grab the attention. Yeah, they matter. 100%.
Abigail Smith: And actually another Sustainable Ventures example that I love is someone from our team had read an article by a journalist at the FT where she'd referenced, I think it was George Orwell, wasn't it? And he's a prolific reader and so got this reference and then responded to her with a pitch about Sustainable Ventures. and referenced, I think, George Orwell in the subject line. And again, not only did she reply, but she ended up speaking to one of the co-founders at Sustainable Ventures. And it ended up in this amazing piece in the FT, where they'd drawn this image of County Hall, which is this new sustainable workspace with all these amazing climate tech companies working within it, with all these green leaves coming out of this amazing old building. And I think that just goes to show that attention to detail, doing your homework, Knowing who you're contacting is so important. I can understand why companies want to DIY PR in the early days sometimes. And I completely accept that sometimes that's what you need to do to get things moving. But being able to have the knowledge and the expertise to understand what's going to get a journalist to open that email is so key. And I think something else that we've not touched on, which when we were talking The other day we were talking about how sometimes people starting out can run the risk of contacting journalists that are way too senior for the story that they're sending, you know. When you pull a media list from online, making sure that it's not the overall editor of the paper that's on there that you're contacting, you know, go to the relevant person. And I think equally, you know, if you're pitching a broadcast story, You know, I know Tim Collins at the Jeremy Vine show of Radio 2 really well. Great guy. He's the editor there, has been there a long time. I would never call Tim just before the show was about to go live because he's going to be sorting out anything last minute. He's going to be prepping Jeremy with the guests that are coming on for the day. You know, you would never pitch a show that's about to air or while they're on air. You know, know the shift patterns, learn who you're trying to pitch, and then the right time of trying to get through to them as well is so key.
Katherine Keddie: We've had quite a few good to-dos and we've had some things to avoid. I want to go back a little bit to your list of banned words because something that we do when we're going through pitch decks or we're developing copy for websites is we go through and we try and pick out any kind of buzzwords. And I think, especially when you're early stage, you kind of, maybe you have a technology startup, it's quite easy to fall into that trap and particularly For a journalist, I would imagine simplicity is key, as you said. So looking at that banned word list, what else is on there for Harpswood?
Banned words and plain language
James Clench: utilizes, as we have said, that is an absolute verboten for us. Just just use use. And I think we will see it repeated and repeated throughout press releases. I think leverage or leverage, if you're American, you know, if you're using it strictly in the terms of leveraging money and investment, then fair enough. Otherwise, again, it's just use. Keep it simple. One of my pet hates is the use of going forward because time by nature is going forward. You don't have to specify it. Reaching out is one that I don't like. There's a brilliant meme out there which says, should I use reach out? And then there's a little flow chart and it says, are you a member of the four tops? Yes, you can use it. No, don't use it. And I love that. I think that's often telling the team that. What else have we got on there?
Abigail Smith: Circling back. I think that might be from when you were on the other side and you had too many PR people saying just circling back on this story.
James Clench: I think you sort of drift into business jargon as well and there's a lot of that that absolutely doesn't need to be used. One thing, it's not so much a banned word as a phrase that I always wince at when I was on the Sun News desk and you would do sometimes you would do a run of eight or nine days of 12 hour days then you get a chunk of time off at the end but you know you'd be in the middle of this and you'd get an email from a PR that you didn't know and say hey happy Friday and you're like I'm working for the next five days of it this is not a happy Friday trust me. So I think it's again it's kind of understanding how those you know that not everyone is having a long weekend off you know some people will be working through it so that's the knowledge thing I guess isn't it.
Abigail Smith: Absolutely. And I think beyond specific words from a style perspective, make sure it's active, you know, grab someone's attention, keep it short, keep it snappy, make every word count. You know, I'm not half as talented a writer as James is, right. You know, he is exceptional, however, I would say through spending so much time with him over the, you know, however many years it's been now.
James Clench: Rattling on about things.
Abigail Smith: Yeah, absolutely. That, you know, I now can look at something and, you know, it's funny even when we're hiring at Harpswood and I'll get a CV through and I'm like, oh God, they've used Utilise really high up in this CV, I better not show James. Because it's so funny that people do it so often.
James Clench: I think it comes down to university again. And I just think this idea of, you know, it's just become that this is how you write. This is good writing to use. And you see people coming into the industry and particularly into PR actually less so in journalism where they start to use this business language because they're copying other people. And I think actually there is a problem within probably agency life where You need to communicate in a way that people understand. I think often PR agencies can be guilty of using so much jargon themselves that clients don't fully understand it. What a terrible indictment of the industry that is. You've got to be talking in really clear and simple ways. When we launched Harpswood and put together the website, I interviewed three people who I thought were brilliant communicators. So one was Tom Fletcher. He was the year below me at school. He's now the UN's top humanitarian person. He's a brilliant communicator. He's written a book called The Naked Diplomat, which is all about communicating. He was Britain's youngest ambassador out in Lebanon. And I said to him, you know, what's the worst crime in writing? And he said, jargon, acronyms, you know, don't write an acronym. Don't, you know, if you, actually this goes back to something that I was told that the son never writes something that you can't explain. You know, if you've written a piece and someone says, well, what does that sentence mean? Well, I don't really know. It's like, why have you written it? You know, you have to understand what you've written. If you write an acronym and you don't know what it stands for, why have you written it? I interviewed Michael Lee, who's an ex-Sun journalist, who went on to write for Bill and Melinda Gates at their foundation. He would write speeches for them. And again, he said acronyms. Same with Jodie Ginsburg, who became CEO of Index on Censorship. Don't use jargon, don't use it. And good writers, really good communicators, they all know it's like, keep it really simple and don't use a word because it's longer or it's more flowery or you're not doing your English degree. You're trying to be as clear as you possibly can.
Abigail Smith: And I think how you communicate and, you know, there are mixed feelings about the PR industry. I think that's fair to say, you know, and I think we've definitely felt like that at times ourselves. And I think in running Harpswood and growing the agency, we always try to take. a different and hopefully better approach for both our clients and our team. And something that we both have a bit of a pet peeve with is we'll look to, you know, or, and it's like, what do you mean? You'll either do it or you won't. And just do it. And that forever blows our mind. You know, if you're going to do something, just say you're going to do it and then see it through. And I think probably the reason why we feel so passionate about that is our tagline for a long time was can do communications, right? And when we talk to our clients and, you know, we get them to share their experiences of other agencies versus what they found working with us, the thing that always comes back from them is that we will make things happen for them. And by that, I mean, you know, if a story's not landing, we will turn over every stone until we find the right journalist for that story. Or if, you know, we had an example of a client who we'd got them a piece of coverage and they needed a headshot. and he wasn't happy with his headshots. He was in Barcelona. Our team arranged a photographer to have his headshots taken at 9 a.m. the next morning. This was at like 4 p.m., I think, the day before. And, you know, look to and seek to make it happen.
James Clench: Don't caveat stuff, make stuff happen. We had, I mean, on that kind of can-do spirit, when we started working with Sustainable Ventures, we'd just signed the contract with them and they've made a sign in NDA, which is not unusual. And they said, oh, the reason for the NDA is that in three days time, we've got Prince William touring the office and we want you to help us plan it. And we were like, okay, we'll come in on that. Now, of all the jobs that I'd ever done at the paper, I never thought that I did a year as the royal correspondent. I thought that would probably be the least transferable and the least usable. And then suddenly it's like, oh, actually this is now really useful that I had this experience. So we knew that probably the most important thing with any story like that is going to be the pictures, you know, and if you get if the pictures make, then that's going to get the story and you'll land the messages that you want to land. So I think Abi and some others on the team did the tour before the Prince had arrived and sort of in the days up to it to make sure, you know, where are the good pictures going to be? And Sustainable Ventures is right opposite the Houses of Parliament. You've got a lovely window that kind of frames Parliament and Now, I'm sure Sustainable Ventures would have figured this on their own, but we were very clear that, you know, this has got to be your top priority to work out where these pictures are taken. And then at the other end of things, once the tour had been done, which is very successful, and the Prince of Wales met lots of these great startups. we knew that the most important thing was to get the permission from the palace that we could use certain pictures so that we could start getting press releases out on behalf of Sustainable Ventures with pictures that had been signed off. So we made sure that one of our team was right by the palace press office the whole time and as they left the building went through the pictures with them because otherwise they can disappear off and then you can't get them on the phone and then suddenly you've lost a day with getting these things out. So it's definitely the attitude of we can help, we can get started straight away, we know what we're doing, we've got the experience, and yeah, we're not going to look to do this, we're going to actually do it and we're going to help you and we're going to make things work.
Abigail Smith: Absolutely. I love that example. That was such an exciting day. We hadn't even had an immersion session with them yet, right? So I remember running around the building, moving plant pots and, you know, just being classic Abi Smith, basically, and rolling my sleeves up and doing what needed to be done. We had a whole heap of the team there, each of us on different roles, all of us scattered around the building so that we could monitor the tour, making sure that we were listening for any useful little bits of information that Prince William said when he was meeting the startups. And then not only did we have brilliant photos, which we made sure we got approved when the press team came back through ahead of leaving. We also got them to approve the copy to accompany the photos with references of Sustainable Ventures, our client in it. And that meant that between the brilliant press release that we drafted ahead of the tour, with the brilliant photos, with the captions, with the approval, as soon as the Prince was leaving the building, we were emailing out the press release and the photos, which meant coverage started to come in thick and fast on that day. And I think that's where, you know, when companies are thinking, do I need an agency? I think that's a really good example of like, James is rather unusual, you know, not everyone has worked as a real correspondent, but that experience was invaluable.
James Clench: I mean, I knew some of the people who were there on the day and could say to me, you know, what else is happening? And they were like, well, Kate's been out this morning so that might be the big royal story of the day and you've got to kind of factor that in but it's definitely a connections business in a lot of ways.
Abigail Smith: Absolutely and then speaking with the startups ahead of Prince William going around and meeting them making sure that they had that all-important elevator pitch down you know you might not have too long with someone like that just in the way that you don't have longer when you speak to a journalist to make that first interaction count. What have you got there to show him? I remember one of the startups had some prototypes of their product there. Again, brilliant because that meant he could pick it up, interact with it. It's a visual aid, which is so useful when you're speaking to either a journalist or a high profile visitor like that. I think that really is at the core of who Harpswood is, I think that story.
James Clench: Absolutely
Katherine Keddie: I think that example is also really interesting and relevant for a climate audience because of the Urshel Prize, which obviously Sustainable Ventures is a nominator. It's very relevant to our space.
Abigail Smith: Absolutely. And on the day that Prince William went round and met a bunch of really interesting companies, one of them was Enso. who actually was a finalist for the Earthshot Prize and doing incredible work to try and decarbonize tires on vehicles. I think they've actually since partnered with Uber and are doing really brilliant work in the space. And I think it's amazing actually like awards like that to really shine a spotlight on all of the brilliant innovation that's happening globally. with climate tech and these incredible companies that we have the opportunity to work with. It's so exciting.
Katherine Keddie: And you guys work all over the world as well, which isn't something we've talked about. Where do you have offices? And also in those geographies, how does your approach to PR, particularly when it comes to climate tech, differ?
Harpswood's international expansion
Abigail Smith: Um, yeah, so as of 2023, we expanded internationally, which was such an exciting moment for us and, uh, in quite an unusual way, actually, that that came about. So we were actually asked to expand internationally by Octopus. Um, and so we made key hires in Houston, in Texas, because that's where Octopus are based in the U S and then also in Munich in Germany. Um, and that's been incredible. Um, since then, they've been so happy with that, that we actually expanded into Italy as well. So. We have a teammate who works in Milan. And I think there are both similarities and differences in each of the different countries. You know, a lot of the things that we do as an agency here in London, such as being regulars on the climate tech networking scene, our teammates do that as well. You know, as well as climate connections events that we go to on the last Wednesday of every month. We often go to Earthset, which is set up by Fiona Howarth, the CEO of Algebras Electric Vehicles. We also go to Climate Coffee, which Max Bray, one of the co-founders there, has set that up. And that's now rolling out rapidly all around the world. And so actually one of our newest team members, who's based in Berlin, will be at Climate Coffee in Berlin. We'll have Chiara at Climate Coffee in Milan. And then we'll be at the one in London, which is so exciting. And I think You know, making sure that we're in the right spaces, meeting other interesting startups, supporting our clients. There's sometimes journalists that attend these events as well, so making sure we're networking there is key. I think the Harpswood approach runs through all of the countries in which we operate, so you know, clear, concise comms, making sure that we're telling stories in the right way that's going to entice journalists. I think also what we're finding is that our teammates in different countries can learn from each other. You know, you can look at a story that's worked really well in one country and then go, how can we replicate that? and so we have a session once a week where our whole team joins and normally we bring one example so it could be that a client's got a story that we've been really trying to get away and it's not working for whatever reason so the whole team will jump on and help to troubleshoot it and get inspiration from each other which is really good to see.
James Clench: I was going to say, I guess, on the global side of things, you know, obviously clearly affected by geopolitics and very significant change in the US over the last few months. And I think that is something that Kelly in Houston for us, I mean, she is definitely seeing that, that it's a you have to think carefully about how things are positioned. And I think Texas is a particularly interesting state because, you know, it's obviously the tradition of oil and gas. And I'm old enough to have watched Dallas the show in the 80s about oil over there. But I think that It's also important that you remember that it's the biggest state for renewable energy because it's such a huge state. These things are not going to change. One president is not going to change the continuing journey of renewables. I think that's the thing that we keep in mind with Kelly in particular when we're talking to her in Houston.
Abigail Smith: A hundred percent. And I think actually when it came to the global expansion, we had some conversations between the two of us of, do we give that opportunity to one of the UK Harpswood team? They could go out to one of these countries and, and set up shop out there. And after quite careful consideration and discussion, we thought, hang on, we need media experts in these countries who have those contacts and who, you know, speak the lingo and understand how to cut through and connect with journalists because our clients come to us because they expect immediate results. Right. For us to now be able to offer work, we did a really brilliant European and US launch for an EV client quite recently. And it's so exciting for us to be able to offer global support. all in-house. I think a lot of agencies have partner agencies overseas and there's nothing wrong with that of course, but I think for us to be able to offer it so that they get the full Harpswood experience in different countries is really exciting.
James Clench: Very joined up.
Abigail Smith: But I mean, that said, when we were setting up in the US, I spent about six weeks in Houston over that summer interviewing candidates, getting to know the client. And I actually put out a press release myself whilst I was out there, rolling up my sleeves. I remember locking myself in a meeting room and thinking, I'm not getting out of this meeting room until I've managed to set up some interviews for the CEO. I think I managed just through a bit of stroke of luck and a bit of determination, probably thrown in for good measure, to get the new FT correspondent for Houston interested in a tour of the client's office. And that meant when our new hire started, I think I had two local journalists interested in tours. and this FT correspondent, and I lined them all up for her first week. So her first week with us was working with me and shadowing me to understand what I deem as a sort of Harpswood journalist tour and what our levels of expectations are like. So yes, there are differences and there are nuances in each country, but how we run Harpswood, our values, our work ethic, our attitude, how we engage with clients and the media and the respect that I think we have for the media, I think runs true for all of the countries in which we operate.
James Clench: Absolutely, and the types of clients that we want to work with, you know, this idea of people who are organisations that are having a positive impact on society.
Abigail Smith: 100% and I think it's so exciting. We all get together on a Friday, we have something called a weekender, which is where we all jump on a call and we share coverage that the team have achieved for the week, shout outs. We talk about any events that we've been at and any interesting companies that we've met along the way. I think there is a real mood within the team. One of the things that we talk about a lot is that we believe in the power of positive ideas and for all of our clients, really, that's where it all started. And we see our role as the people that facilitate sharing those ideas out there with the public, helping them to scale as they grow.
Katherine Keddie: And we're coming to the end now. So I want to ask, do you have anything that you want to flag up that's coming up for you that you want to ask our community, our listeners?
Abigail Smith: So James and I are actually running a masterclass quite soon, which is really exciting. And that's in partnership with Climate Connection and it's called Inside the Minds of the Media. And we'll probably be talking about some quite similar things with the group that we've spoken about today. Right. trying to share our collective experience and, and trying to help demystify things, um, a little bit as well. Um, so that those people considering DIY PR, they've got a bit more of informed knowledge. Um, I think really to the wider audiences, do you know someone at an interesting company who you think has got a brilliant story to tell, but perhaps they're not yet communicating it, uh, widely enough, or you feel it's a bit complicated and they need some help in distilling the message. and really cutting through. If so, send them our way. We're a really friendly bunch. We're based in Shoreditch. We're always happy to meet people for a coffee, to have a chat. So do get in touch. Give us a follow also on LinkedIn. We often post about events that we're attending. Like I said, we're regulars on the London climate tech networking scene. Our team in Berlin, Milan, and Houston are often out and about meeting people as well in various countries. So if you know anyone in those places, again, do get in touch because we're always happy to meet. and have a chat. And then I think the final thing that I would add is we have been looking at over the last year or so at how we're shifting from the sort of more traditional PR retainer model to offering a wider variety of services for clients. So we've got some really exciting workshops that we've created. So everything from media training which of course does what it says on the 10 you know if you know a great if you know someone with a great story but perhaps i'm not the most natural polish communicator send them to us and we'll spend a half day with them, doing interview scenarios and it's amazing the difference of someone that walks in in the morning by the time they leave at lunchtime after they've had former journalist grilling them critiquing them sharing advice, how much more confident and articulate they are and how much better they are at communicating their story by the time they leave is brilliant. We do lots of sessions around how to master your messages, how to get into your founder focus. But equally, I think if a company is listening to this thinking, I've got this specific comms problem and I don't know where to start, don't be afraid to get in touch. We're not adverse to creating something bespoke for someone if there's a need for it.
James Clench: Yeah, I think, I mean, your question earlier about, you know, At what point is it a good time for a company to start looking at PR? Clearly, it's going to come down to budgets. We can be super flexible. We're always looking at people. We want to have impact on this community. We want to help. We want to share our advice. Clearly, we're a business as well, but we can see that businesses grow. We will, as Abi mentioned, media training has been tremendously useful for a lot of organizations that we've worked with. It's been a good way actually for them to dip a toe into the water of the kind of things that we offer. And, you know, we want to help as many organizations as we can. And we understand that there are, you know, everyone has budgets to work to, and we love to grow with businesses.
Katherine Keddie: Okay, fantastic. We will have all of the relevant links in the description for this episode. So if you want to get in touch with Harpswood, you know where to go. And I think it's very exciting that you have all of these new masterclasses coming up. And as I said, you can probably meet them at pretty much any London Climate Tech event. We're there. They will be there. So thank you so much for your time, guys. It was really, really useful. And if you want to catch more from these guys, you can follow the links. We'll also be discussing the whole world of scaling green technology with more guests in the coming weeks.
Matt Jaworski: Thanks so much for having us. Thank you very much for joining us. Thank you.
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