How Chris Norton Connects Storytelling with PR Strategy

[00:00:00] Hector: Hello and welcome to another episode of the how to scale a business podcast. My name is Hector Santia Esteban and I'm your host for today your guide. But really, I'm just going to try and stay out of the way as much as possible because I have a special guest today, Mr. Chris Norton. He is founder of Prohibition.

[00:00:15] Hector: They're a PR agency and also the host of the newly launched Socially Unacceptable podcast, which is topping the charts right now the UK. congrats on that, Chris,

[00:00:24] Chris: Yeah, thanks for the introduction. I wish I was professional as you as your podcast. I mean, I'm brand new to it. I feel like I'm a baby, but it's like I've just been saying to you before this call. I found it unbelievable medium to speak to people and fact that people take the time out to listen to you.

[00:00:39] Chris: And if you sat in the gym, drive the car on the subway. I find the relationship between you and the listener amazing. So thanks for having me on the show.

[00:00:47] Hector: Yeah, it's really cool. what I also think is nice about podcast specifically is who knows when someone is listening to this? Someone might be catching this and the year 2033, I don't know it's a really cool medium that kind of stands the test of time. So take us back though, wherever as far back as you think is relevant, you've been doing PR for, I believe now.

[00:01:06] Hector: A couple of decades, if I'm not mistaken, but it's been something that you've got quite a world of experience and take us back to as far, back as that journey began and then catch us up a little bit now on, on what you're doing with some of your clients.

[00:01:16] Chris: Okay. I've been in I did a degree at university in public relations. So I chose to do public relations. The, at the time there was two degrees in the UK one in Leeds, which is near where I'm from. give you a feel for that. I know the UK is tiny compared to the US, it's about an hour away from where I live is where I could go to do my degree.

[00:01:33] Chris: So I did a degree in public relations which was a four year degree. And then I did a year placement in house on a nuclear power station on the other side of the UK which was an interesting job that was as an internal communications person. And then I moved to went to work in London the big bright lights of London.

[00:01:50] Chris: I worked in consumer tech PR. And weirdly, I joined, and my second day, we had an experience day, which included tank driving and paintballing. And I thought, wow, this is amazing. This is what the industry of public relations is. I love this. I was only like 20. This is brilliant. But it was because of the dot com boom.

[00:02:07] Chris: There was this thing called the dot com boom and the internet was going to be amazing. The internet's amazing. Everybody, all the investors suddenly wanted to throw all their money into public relations and marketing. This new thing called digital marketing. They wanted to throw their money into it because if you build a website, 70 billion people are going to come to it and they're going to find it and they're going to go on your shop.

[00:02:26] Chris: So we had eBay competitors and all sorts of things. Anyway. About a year later, the world realized that you don't just build a website and everybody in the entire planet lands on it. We always did think that was a bit strange, there was a dot com crash. So I moved into healthcare public relations which was consumer healthcare, working for GlaxoSmithKline, again for an agency in London out near Heathrow Airport, actually, a beautiful part of the world. worked there for a couple of years, working on some mental health drugs and all sorts of things. Zyvirax, you might know. if you have that brand in the U. S. For cold sores. Diarrhea brand, which was very glamorous for the girls in the office that like to come over and talk to me all about it. Then, yes, I did a few years there, I decided that I wanted to move back to where I live, where I come from, which is the north of the UK, near Leeds, a place called Harrogate.I decided to move back, *got a job up here, worked for a couple of agencies, and Yeah, it* was consumer PR really doing lots of media relations, getting people to be aware of different products.

[00:03:21] Chris: I worked on the National Lottery for the UK, which was a big thing at the time and still is obviously and then, yeah, I decided to basically I was doing some research. And I saw that there was this new thing out coming out called word of mouth marketing in America. It was, you guys tend to have things break over there before over in the UK and

[00:03:37] Chris: I was really interested in word of mouth marketing and blogs were becoming a thing. And everybody was saying at work, why have you started a blog? Nobody will ever read blogs. Who's interested in a web blog? I actually got ridiculed. It was quite amusing. Now, if you think about it and, there was this thing called word of mouth marketing that we now know as social media.

[00:03:54] Chris: So it was when the Facebook was out, everybody was trying to figure out how to use MySpace. So I went to work for the first social media agency in the UK, and we set up and we just went. Nuclear, like we were winning awards. We were so small talking about scaling, which is what this is about. We were so smallWe started at four and then we grew to about 15 people and we were working for us also clients like Sony and stuff like that, and it just blew up. And I decided to go freelance and I worked for myself for a bit for a few years. And then, yeah, then I decided to go proper on my own.

[00:04:26] Chris: So I started a company in my garage which is gara How do you say it in America? Garage? Yeah, in the garage, converted the garage, had an office. I sat at one end, my wife sat at the other, and Prohibition was born. and 13, 12, 13 years later, here we are. So that's a whistle stop tour to what I've done.

[00:04:44] Chris: And there's a lot of bits in between that I'm sure we're going to get into. But yeah that's basically what happened.

[00:04:48] Hector: I want to get into, there's a few things, but I want to double click on this prohibition. It means something different in the U S than over there, perhaps, but I'm curious where's the, obviously you have the PR at the beginning but can you explain why the name and how that came about?

[00:05:02] Chris: yeah, I can. Yeah, that's a great question. And a slightly delicate one. We were originally, my blog, if it was Huge at the time. It was the top 10. Huge, not, it's not like a buzzfeed or anything. It was but it was like in the PR space, it was in the top 10 in the UK. Top 10 PR blogs and social media, it was big at the time.

[00:05:19] Chris: my blog was called dead dinosaur. And I was known as the dinosaur. PR person. So I launched a company called Dinosaur. But unfortunately there was somebody else with a similar name. So we had to change the name of the company to be more suitable. So to do that, I didn't want to set up a cut.

[00:05:34] Chris: I wanted a brand name that could be copywritten and wouldn't be offensive. So we started Googling every. Brand name you've ever thought of. you're sat there thinking, come up with things like zest and, like exciting words that were just cool. There's some really cool PR agencies out.

[00:05:48] Chris: There's one called man bites dog, which is a great name. And now we're just trying to come up with names and we came up with about, I think about 25 that weren't. On Google already, then we run that through company's house, then we checked if we could copyright it, and we had 10 in the end, and what we did was, I surveyed the employees and said what do we think we prefer, and the where the prohibition came from to answer the actual question, which you're quite like, did you ever watch Boardwalk Empire?

[00:06:14] Hector: Yes. Yeah, sure.

[00:06:15] Chris: okay, so my business partner, Will he said he was talking about Boardwalk Empire, and we went, during the prohibition. That's a cool word. Yeah. And that is, the post restaurantisation I can give you is that it's just a word that was cool, and then we put it into the other ones, and actually people liked it.

[00:06:31] Chris: But it was very weird having a different company name day. But within two weeks... A company name. People, founders out there that are worried about company names, stop worrying about it. It's once it's your name, it's your name. You see what I mean? It does not matter. We spent ages worrying about it. And for what you've just done there, which is post rationalization.

[00:06:49] Chris: And actually I was like it doesn't really matter. We started off with all the graphics were all black and white 1920s, but now they're all Trendy and modern, so we've moved away from that. So that gives you an idea. It did mean the same thing. The prohibition of alcohol, prohibition of nuclear weapons, the prohibition of...

[00:07:04] Chris: Yeah just a cool word, really. I wish I had something better for you, but that's all I've got.

[00:07:08] Hector: I love this post rationalization because you go with something and then now all of a sudden we can attach this oh, maybe they're rogue. Maybe they're like, going against the grain or like counter, like it has all these other associations with it that you can attach on, which is nice.

[00:07:21] Hector: One of the things that I'm curious about, though, is you like a lot of our listeners, you developed an expertise and then set off on your own to start your own thing. And I think a lot of people do that and they're good at what they do. They're great chefs or they're great bakers or they're great bricklayers.

[00:07:38] Hector: But then all of a sudden the transition from laying actual bricks to running a bricklaying business,Therein lies the confusion or therein lies the challenge because they tend to be, different animals. So what was that? Was that easy? You and your wife sitting in your garage and then all of a sudden you've got employees that, the next moment or was that like, take us through that process and if there were any iterations or things that you went through, developing that.

[00:08:03] Chris: What? No, is the first answer to that. No, it's not easy. I wouldn't say it's easy to, everybody out there that's struggling with things like that swapping from being the person, the skilled craftsman that does the job. Because I got into public relations because I'm good at creative.

[00:08:19] Chris: I'm good at ideas. I've done award winning campaigns. I'm good at that. I wasn't good at, people that are great at campaigns aren't great at accounting and aren't great at the human resources movie as, as much I didn't know all about human resources law. And suddenly when your own business, you scaling up, you have to wear so many different hats and you just expected to know the answers to all the questions. So I do feel people's pain. We've got so much HR legislation and things like that. I think what happened was I got to when you start out, you have to Google things, figure out a way of working. You start everything on a shoestring, right? you might do everything on a shoestring. But once you get going You start to adjust and learn, which skills you need to get ahead. I would say that one of the hardest things that I found was, because when you're small, or you start out, you know what you're good at. And you start off you hire people that you want to work with who are really great.

[00:09:10] Chris: And become like friends. It's like a friend business. And then morph into this. Bigger business. And then there's people now, and you can't be like, just friends. It's and then you get bigger than that. And it goes through phases. And you suddenly realized that you have to make difficult decisions in difficult times and You can't be everyone's friend.

[00:09:29] Chris: I'm a football fan or a soccer fan in the UK. And you can clock is the manager of Liverpool football club. And he said I'm the player's friend, but I'm not their best friend. And that's, I think is a great way of talking about being a manager or an owner manager is you have to do, you have to make.

[00:09:45] Chris: You can't be everyone's best friend, but you can be a good, a good boss that cares for people and looks after them. And, we've got people that have been with us from the outset.I think that's key. You've got to look after your people, but the shift.

[00:09:56] Chris: You're right. The shift is quite a challenge because I don't do as half as much PR now. I'm doing this podcast. I do podcasts. I do on the business meetings. We do new business. I do a lot of client stuff. That's Day to day I was used to be on the phones. I'd be crafting social media campaigns. it's slightly different it's challenging and I can understand why some people, and you'll find this with a lot of owners, will start, they want to earn all this money and they want to grow a big company and be in charge of something with a big vision. And then they get a year or two in and they realized that a lot of it could be political and difficult. It's challenging. And that's why I think a lot of businesses fold and people just say, do you know what? I should be an employee. It's easier because the politics and all of that sort of stuff.

[00:10:35] Chris: I've tried to steer away from that with my company though. We're a political org, we're not super political. We look after people, all the things that you should do. And that's quite. With a creative agency, it tends to be, if you've got a good culture, you'll stand the test of time, really.

[00:10:50] Hector: Yeah, when we get back from break, Chris, I want to talk about this. PR to me is like this black box that I've danced around and have never been able to crack. And hopefully you can help me to crack that. Maybe we've got a lock pick or maybe we'll just smash it through with a sledgehammer.

[00:11:04] Hector: We'll see, but we're going to get into that right after this quick break. How are you doing?

[00:11:08] Chris: Yeah. It's all right. It's interesting. this is only the second one where I've talked about the company. So it's quite interesting because I never really think about it. I just get on with it.

[00:11:16] Chris: I talk vision to the staff and what we're doing about where we're going, I don't really do like public things like this.

[00:11:22] Chris: It's quite interesting. Being on the other side of media interviews.

[00:11:26] Chris: Which is what this is. I've taught clients to do it, but I just don't really do it. you're like the person but not on camera. You're a person off camera. I've been on loads of things when there's TV, national TV, filming.

[00:11:36] Chris: And I'm stood at the side, But anyway, all good. How do you think? Anything you want me to cover that would be good and useful, just fire away,

[00:11:43] Hector: you all my real questions here for about PR, but I think the journey is great for people to get context I think there's some great lessons there. So yeah, this is great. We'll do quick ad read and then we'll hop back in. Hey y'all, thanks for tuning in.

[00:11:54] Hector: Today's episode is brought to you by Amplify Media and we are a podcast and content production company. We like to think of ourselves as genius makers because chances are, if you're listening to this, you have a passion, a purpose, a mission, a message, some sort of product. That you want to get out to the world, but maybe you don't have the time, the team, or the tech skills to be able to do it.

[00:12:10] Hector: We can help go to amplify media. com. That's a m p l a f y media. com. You can also check the show notes for info. And with that, let's get back to today's episode.

[00:12:20] Hector: All right, chris. You have the hard challenge of trying to explain PR to somebody who has tried over and over again to learn how to do PR and has thrown my hands up and said, maybe I'm doing it. But when you're trying to explain, what PR is to a business owner who goes, Chris, why do I need that?

[00:12:37] Hector: good. We're running ads right now. We've got referrals. We've got our part, How do you help them to see that the value in it or need if there is one?

[00:12:45] Chris: first thing is, I would say the PR professional needs to sit in your C suite at your director's table. The reason being is because PR is reputation management, and the one thing that you've spent all your time building up is your reputation, and it can be ruined in, it can be ruined in one video, one clip, one podcast, it can be ruined and who do you call?

[00:13:03] Chris: It's not Ghostbusters, if the proverbial hits the fan, it's actually a PR professional or a crisis management person it'd be somebody like me that you'll. Pick the phone up to and we've say we've had some negative news or we've got a crisis problem, the national TV channel want to speak to me about this problem.

[00:13:18] Chris: What? How do I deal with it? And actually, I've been involved in lots of things that I'm NDA to by the way, where you can't talk about the specifics, but you where a chairman or a CEO suddenly. PR becomes the one most important thing, because if you get it wrong, you're over, you're finished, you're done. All the positive side of it, marketing, advertising, you pay for it. As soon as you stop paying for it, you've got no adverts. Marketing, yes, it creates a need, it creates the desire, but public relations is The reputation, the management of your organization. If you want people to see your ad for your podcast, for instance, your podcast service, they might hear your ad.

[00:13:53] Chris: Great. But then if I do a story with a case study representing about how great your podcasts are, and suddenly it goes in the Washington post, I don't know why it would be if you're from the West coast, you get The gist talking about what a great job you've done and how your podcast has gone from zero to 10 million views in 10 million downloads in two months.

[00:14:11] Chris: And here's two or three customers as case studies. that's the proactive side of PR, but they've also got the reactive side, which is where if something bad happens. That is when suddenly the communications professional will be pulled into the boardroom and we'll be sat there and we have to help out crafting the messaging, whether that's on social media, public relations.

[00:14:29] Chris: And sometimes I've had to manage the whole marketing team has to just step aside, right? And we say, right now, stop all marketing, because if you put anything out, you're going to start people up. Not happy. I hope that sort of explains it.

[00:14:40] Hector: yeah, I'd love to go into that because I think that even our listeners, they may not have, CNN or, these big national. Things coming to their door, but I think that we all can experience some sort of crisis, even if it's, kind of client sort of things. And so when you're thinking through that crisis management, what are some kind of foundations or pillars that people can maybe bring into those situations?

[00:15:02] Chris: Okay. That's a great question. First thing is, honesty is key, but controlling the situation is key as well. So if you've got somebody that you can work with to first thing is what's happened. So you need to get to the bottom of what's happened. And if you're managing a team of three, 5 20. You need to get to the bottom of what's happened and the press, the media, whether it's broadcast or digital or They want a response. They want to know what you're doing about it. you might want to craft a Response saying, we're aware of the situation. This is what's happened. We're looking into it, we will issue a statement at four o'clock then four o'clock comes.

[00:15:36] Chris: And if you still haven't got to the bottom of it, because it's such a complicated matter, you can say, we're aware of the situation. We're now investigating further. There'll be another statement. Do you see what I'm doing here? We've taken control of the situation. You'd be amazed at how much that stops people from ringing your phones and sending you emails and demanding that you have to comment and things like that.

[00:15:53] Chris: Yeah, it's taking. control of the situation, being honest. I suppose bringing some sort of human element and treating the story don't just try and cover it up basically, which some people do and the other response is often people just they send out a press statement if it's a video. then answer it with a video. If it happened in a, Domino's, for instance, there's loads of examples of where Domino's people have touched pizzas and the employees working there, outbreak three or four years ago, a video that went viral, and it took a while for them to respond, and they were criticized for that because the CEO, and then they did the response in front of the Domino's background, and they did the response to what had happened.

[00:16:30] Chris: So my point is, speed Accuracy, honesty, but take control of the situation is what you should do in a crisis. I'm hoping that not everybody on this, podcast will, ever be in a crisis and will want to be in a crisis either.

[00:16:41] Hector: tHose points, though, I mean, we deal service based agency, and we've got a lot of clients and a lot of moving pieces and there are degrees of crisis ease. But sometimes, a client will be unhappy with a deliverable or an asset or whatever it is. And I think that those same things can be brought to that situation.

[00:16:57] Hector: Honesty, speed, those things, whereas the opposite Closing words. Not communicating in those instances, not doing those things can be detrimental to, the client relationship. And so I think that what you're talking about is beneficial and effective the macro is, of macros.

[00:17:11] Hector: And then also, on an individual situation where you are not perhaps out of control, but where something went, not according to plan And that you are now responsible for or to so definitely applicable. You mentioned this idea of responding back in the way that it happened.

[00:17:29] Chris: why is that so important?We used to say that if you want to see a crisis before a crisis happens just put a Twitter wall in your press room. So if you've got a marketing it's a good answer. But to respond. What I'm talking about is if, I deal with social media crises and as well as media crises, it's better to respond where the problem is so it doesn't spread to other channels. For instance, if you've got a problem on Twitter, which, let's face it, can be quite vociferous if something breaks on Twitter and you deal with it on Twitter, That can be good enough. Sometimes, not always. I'm not giving you the definitive answer to crisis management, but if you've got a video that breaks on YouTube and it's on TikTok, for instance, then responding the place where sometimes it's even better to respond to the comments of the actual original thing, because that's where the conversation is taking place and it shows that you're involved in the conversation.

[00:18:14] Chris: Yeah. Some brands would say don't take it to other channels because then you're bringing more of an awareness to the crisis itself. However, I've seen crises where it takes over every channel and it's out of your control and you have to actually change your website and everything to a holding website that is all about the crisis, which happened with BP, of course.

[00:18:32] Hector: there's any case studies, whether it's you or, your own clients or things that you've seen that, we might be able to learn. Because I think that part of the challenge is this. It could be abstract unless people have something to directly apply it to. So is there any, you mentioned BP, maybe you can expand on that.

[00:18:47] Hector: Or if there are other more illustrative examples of how someone might be able to, navigate these crises? Yeah. Yeah. Specifically, maybe with social media, since that's what you do.

[00:18:56] Chris: The BP example, the oil spill off Florida, something horizon, which I can never remember the first word of it. Do you remember what it was?

[00:19:03] Hector: But I remember the event.

[00:19:05] Chris: yeah, and it was an oil spill. It was a terrible thing. And there was a film made about it, wasn't for the media response, what they did was they published obviously they had a, what we call a dark site, which is a dark crisis site, which is where you've got a site ready, populated with all the positive work that you're doing if they had all the work that they were doing in terms of regeneration, sustainability, and that's what all the site was about and how they were dealing with that particular crisis. And it was all populated on this sort of. Dark site that came, it was plugged into Twitter and all the social networks X, sorry now. but cause of the budget that BP had, for instance, what they did with that is they clever very strategically and cleverly bought all the keywords on Google as well. For the search terms for the particular events, oil spill, Florida, et cetera, et cetera. And any keyword that you put in, then their site would pop up. Now that cost them a hell of a lot of money, a hell of a lot of dollars, but That's combining clever crisis strategy with advertising and the rest of the marketing.

[00:19:55] Chris: But there was no way you want to be doing anything positive marketing other than what you're doing to resolve the situation. So this is the work we're doing to clean the beaches. This is the work we're doing here. This is how this has been dealt with. So it is an interesting case. It's one of the things I was giving to my students. went through it of how they dealt with it, but obviously they had a big budget. I'm imagining people that want to scale their businesses don't have big budgets, but you can still do. Similar things. You can have statements ready just need to follow a process of being, making sure you get hold of the situation as clearly as you can or get somebody to help you out at the time.

[00:20:25] Chris: I suppose

[00:20:26] Hector: Yeah. This is been such a fascinating conversation and I'm always trying to

[00:20:31] Hector: get better at the things that I suck at, frankly, and PR has always been that mystery for me. So anytime I have the chance to have someone on with regards to that, try and take advantage as much as possible.

[00:20:40] Chris: Have you done PR for your podcast or not?

[00:20:42] Hector: Not in its traditional sense, right? I think the lines get so blurry between what is technically PR and what's not, is guesting is going on other shows is, we have our own community like a podcast AMA, we call it where it's a community of podcasters.

[00:20:58] Hector: So we're doing these things. Now someone might come in and look at it and go, Oh, that's PR. I've just never put it in that box.

[00:21:05] Chris: I would say media placements and things like that, if you're doing shows, if you're appearing as, from, as the host of X podcast on local news, that's definitely PR. That's what it is. I see it all the time. that's how you'll drive your numbers.

[00:21:16] Chris: If people want to drive their numbers to their business, you become an expert in what you're talking about. As the host of podcast then. Yeah.

[00:21:24] Hector: I love that this is so cool. And Chris has been such a fantastic conversation. We mentioned at the beginning that you have a new show. I think you're seven, eight episodes in and the charts are already responding. It's called socially unacceptable. I love the tagline. It says from fuck ups to fame.

[00:21:37] Hector: That's fantastic. They definitely can go there and I'd encourage them to go there. Is there anywhere else that people can go and get connected with you or things that they should do to go deeper in your world?

[00:21:44] Chris: Yeah. I'm on X or Twitter as we'd like to call it. I still can't get used to saying that. So it's at Chris underscore Norton. So at Chris underscore Norton on Twitter, you can find me there. But yeah, socially unacceptable is celebrating marketing fuck ups. So people that all the things you want to, you've just asked me about mistakes, errors, people, what people can learn From them. So that's the whole premise of our show is to celebrate the mistakes that people have made in their professional careers. And it is pretty funny. Some of the ones that we get. loving it. it's been fascinating to speak to you on a podcasting professional because you've taught me a bit about podcasting as well. It's been fascinating chat.

[00:22:18] Hector: I appreciate that. Hopefully you listeners well, I know if you stuck around, then you definitely got some value out of it. We would appreciate a rating, a review, wherever you get your podcasts. And if you know someone who's on this journey, starting a business, scaling a business, let's let's grow this community together.

[00:22:32] Hector: And so send them this episode. And even if they're not asking for it, just let them know that you thought about them. And I'm sure it'll go a long way. And as always, we appreciate you being here and being part of the tribe. We'll see on the next one. Later, y'all.