When i first found out i was going to Austin Texas i’ll admit to being a tad ill informed about the area (I know, Essex Boy in cultural ignorance shocker). I’d heard that Texans were all right wing, gun-toting nut jobs so It was to my surprise and delight that i was proven wrong.
Austin has some of the nicest, easy going people i’ve ever met, yeah some of them smell funny and some walk down the street wearing nothing but a Stetson and a smile, but they’re liberal, open-minded, music-loving folk.
One morning we were on the bus, all frantically checking our phones for the day’s schedule using the SXSW app (lifesaver). Suddenly a dishevelled looking man screamed at us:
“I used to have a job tellin y’all where to go!... now y’all just look at your phones.” :-(
The human cost of tech i guess. We slowly slid our phones back in our pockets and listened to him, he turned out to be a lovely guy called Freddie who just wanted to talk. We figured out our schedule later and Freddie talked on everything from Rodeos to Racism. He spoke with passion and positivity. Maybe that day’s #Keynote was on the number 10 bus...
At first glance David looks like your standard PR Guru Douchebag, slick back hair, buzzword patter, the sort of guy you wouldn’t be too surprised to see flogging a Ponzi scheme somewhere. But in fairness to him i liked what he had to say and thought maybe it might be useful when a negligible media budget has been allocated to a project.
Main learnings
The 2nd Paragraph (or follow up story)
Journalists have breaking stories to write all the time, the first paragraph writes itself, but they need an interesting related story to help them elaborate.
The Newsjack
Give them an idea for their second paragraph by being creative with your product/service.
Some good examples he gave were:
The London Fire Brigade:
During a fire at Richard Branson’s holiday home Kate Winslet was said to have saved Branson’s nan from the flames: Paragraph 1. The London Fire Brigade then offered free training to Kate Winslet to make her an honourary graduate: Paragraph 2.
Presidant Obama’s Crocodile:
During a planned state visit to Australia a local insurance company, TIO, offered him free life insurance for if he got eaten by a crocodile. This quirky offer got TIO mentioned with every bit of news covering the state visit.
Its obviously easier to come up with a bespoke Newsjack than to try and find a link between your project and the story, but you may get lucky sometimes so you need to be prepared to act fast and potentially give away a free service.
Jeffery was doing an acting workshop at SXSW which basically just involved him constantly dropping the f-bomb. I’m not sure why he was dropping so many f-bombs. Maybe he wanted to stir people into a rousing performance. Or maybe he was just having a breakdown. Either way, it was fucking funny.
This guy basically smashes it constantly. When he’s not hob-nobbing with ex-presidents he’s coming up with loads of ideas to make the world a better place.
Some of his inventions: -
The portable dialysis machine
The insulin pump
The Segway
The iBot - (a gyroscopic wheelchair that can climb stairs)
Robotic arms for war veterans.
The Slingshot - a water purification machine for the 3rd world
Each one of these things is amazing and you could write entire books on each of them, but i’m going to focus on the water purification machine because it was the most ambitious and i liked the way he got it ‘sold in’.
Dean is obsessed with providing the 3rd world with clean drinking water and electricity. Traditional infrastructure for this is too expensive to implement on a large scale, but small, localised nodes are more feasible. Dean wanted to localise electricity and water production per village somehow. So he had the idea of providing them with “vending machines”.
After exploring this idea he then realised how difficult it will be. Generating power takes a lot of heat and energy and so does purifying water. To do it inside something the size of a small vending machine is incredibly ambitious.
Suddenly he has a breakthrough. He figures out that if he compressed the steam the whole process becomes far more efficient. So then he actually makes a working prototype called The Slingshot. Put its hose into anything wet and it will suck it up and turn it into pure drinking water.
So, how will he sell this great idea to a brand when it isn’t going to make them any money? Well, a business transaction takes place.
Dean convinces Coca-cola to invest in his project by giving them his time.
“There’s no such thing as free time. Time is the most precious commodity we have.” he says.
He uses his time to do what he’s good at, coming up with ideas. He shows them how to make their manufacturing processes more cost efficient and environmentally friendly. In exchange they then allow him to pitch to their global heads. The idea gets bought.
Coca-cola brand his vending machines and use their vast distribution network to get them to places that need them most.
I think selling ideas to any large corporate client is a very difficult task that needs both patience and tenacity. Dean showed that it is important to talk to the people that make the decisions. He got in to see them by being creative and charismatic, but ultimately he did it by being business savvy. It was, after all, a simple trade of services that got his foot in the door.
