Staying Fresh and Top of Mind in a Fast-Paced Business World

Full Transcript

Note: the following transcript was generated by AI and therefore may contain some errors and omissions.

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because sometimes also people don’t know how to tell their story. It’s actually quite hard to tell your own story. Me sitting here is actually, you know, it’s quite, you don’t talk about yourself that often. So, you know, we help people be able to go, oh, actually that’s not really a newsworthy angle, but this, this is great.

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G’day and welcome back to the Coast and Commerce podcast. I’m Ben from Innovate Media and this is the show where we bring stories, insight and inspiration from business leaders across the Sunshine Coast and beyond. And one of those business leaders I’m joined by today is Helen Perry from Fresh PR and Marketing. Helen, welcome to the show. Hello, thank you for having me. Well, it’s great to have you here as one of our first guests on the Coast and Commerce podcast. But for those that haven’t come across Fresh PR and Marketing or yourself and your…

amazing team of freshies as you guys call yourself. We do call ourselves freshies. Can you tell us a little bit about who are you and what do you guys do? Okay, well Fresh has actually been around for 20 years next year. So we’ve been around for a little while on the Sunshine Coast. Have you been with them the whole time? No, I actually joined probably 12, 13, 14 years ago. Yeah, so but Mai started. Mai started. Yeah, so my business partner Mai Gurrie and I have Fresh and we’ve got a team of

another six people as well. And yeah, we’re a PR and marketing company. So pretty much a full suite boutique agency that works from the Sunshine Coast, but we’ve got clients all over the country. So yeah. Fantastic. Are there any specific industries that you guys kind of focus on working with? No, not really. I mean, there’s particularly industries we like, but being on the Sunshine

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just uncovering those. But we’ve got some big clients as well, so, and they have national audiences. So yeah, we’ve got a real, every day is different. And that’s what I love, you know, like every day we’ve got, you know, we’ve got a meteor up down, you know, maybe down here at Stockland, or we’ve got, you know, an opening, you know, where we’ve done a lot of marketing collateral with a new development or something. And then we’re working with smaller businesses that, you know, just

need our help with newsletters and some copy. So yeah. Awesome, cool. So tell me your story, Helen, before joining Fresh and kicking off that PR and marketing journey. Like what was your background? What got you into this world that you’re in now? It wasn’t straightforward. It never is. So I didn’t go to uni and then just fall into marketing. It was a bit of a more crooked path than that. But my first degree is actually a Bachelor of Fine Art. Oh right, okay. What was your specialty? What were you majoring in?

Okay. So yeah, I was always planning to be a designer, but I wasn’t particularly good. So I actually ended up being I worked out I was much better at communicating with written words than pictures. But it actually formed a basis of a really strong, good understanding of branding and design work and all of the principles that we work with every day. So it’s kind of unique to have that background.

but I love it. I’ve got a not so secret passion for the arts. So, and actually run another business called Australian Wearable Art Festival as well. So, yeah. Yeah, awesome. But I think that creativity really impacts on the work I do every day. Yeah. You know, being able to be a creative problem solver, you know, so. Yeah. Well, that actually makes me think. So how important do you think design is in a brand?

Like I think a lot of people think of brand and they think of design straight away. They think, oh, branding means logos and business cards and letterheads, right? But how important is design in the essence of a brand? That’s probably a better way to put it. And I think what Fresh do, we actually work with the design, but also the written word, you know, we’re storytellers. So it’s really important to have the visual elements convey a brand’s personality. So I’m a big believer that you need to work out.

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what is the personality of the brand, what’s actually going to emotionally connect you with a brand. And once you’ve worked that out, then it’s a combination equally as important the written word and the design. So yeah, so we partner, we’ve got a great design partner in Horsham Water, and we work with them all the time creating brands. We did the…

the Caloundra, the new Caloundra brand just recently. So, and that was a real process of engaging with the community and understanding, you know, what the community needed, taking them on a journey. And that’s a really hard one to get right because there’s so many stakeholders, but yeah, the low, it was more than just a logo. You know, a brand is much more than just a logo. It’s about, yeah, trying to encapsulate the…

the essence of that business or product or community. So yeah. Yeah. So you do work with a lot of Sunshine Coast based businesses and also wider field as well. But when you think about businesses on the Sunshine Coast, obviously there’s a lot of small micro, small businesses, but there’s also some businesses kicking well above their weight. Kicking above their weight, is that the right term? Kicking goals, I don’t know. They’re kicking goals and they’re…

playing above their weight. That sounds right. Yeah, let’s go with that. Okay, so anyway, you know where I’m going with that, right? So we’ve got a range of businesses here on the coast. Yeah. You know, what do you think is kind of, you know, when you think about the coast business ecosystem, what do you think is the thing that brings us all together as businesses, the kind of underlying story behind businesses, is there one? Wow, it’s a really good question. I mean, a lot of us have,

We’ve either been drawn to the Sunshine Coast or we’ve stayed on the Sunshine Coast for the lifestyle and that work-life balance and stuff. But I think that generally speaking, businesses on the coast are quite entrepreneurial or innovative in their approach. They’ve made their base the Sunshine Coast, which essentially is still a regional part of Australia. And we find that.

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Yes, working with more and more businesses outside this region, because I think, you know, there’s a uniqueness of being based here and having that grassroots kind of approach. And lots of businesses, you know, they have done the hard yards, you know, and I think they understand they’ve done lots of work on their business to be able to understand the growth principles. So, so yeah, so I think it’s

Maybe there’s a narrative of sort of more grassroots approach of businesses working on the coast. But yeah, look, I think more and more metro businesses are looking to regional areas to be supported by, because it’s a very genuine, authentic kind of messaging, you know, like, and way of working. Like, I think we’re all pretty, we’re not relaxed.

I don’t think we’re relaxed. You know, we’re not all sitting around in our bodies, you know, on the beach all day. But I think, you know, we definitely have a genuine way of communicating and some of those more metro areas, it’s a bit cookie cutter, you know, like so. And I think we don’t do that on the coast. We’re definitely not cookie cutter up here, so yeah. Yeah, no, I totally agree with that. And I did throw that question at you a little bit out of the blue. But I actually really align well with what you’re saying there, because I think.

more or less, and this is a generalisation, but we choose, businesses choose to be on the coast. Either they choose to move here and set up base here, or they choose to start something here and stay here. And that’s a choice, right? Because maybe in certain industries, there might be easier paths to market in capital cities. Although that’s changing on the coast, I think, you know, definitely as a regional area where we’re punching above our weight. Punching above our weight. That’s it, you got it. There we go. You know, definitely that’s changing.

I agree. And you know, I think that the growth across the economy, the business economy on the Sunshine Coast has been like, over 4% year on year as a stat that I had recently for many years. So we’re a growing region for sure. But you know, I think we choose to be here. And I think that comes with it some, you know, some stories behind that. And potentially, it’s a really supportive environment for business as well, because we are all in the same kind of boat.

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you know, just recently went to the business wards and, you know, a lot of my competitors, if you like, were there and we’re all friends and we’re all talking about the market and the environment that, you know, that we’re currently operating in and I just go, you’d never get that in a metro area, you know. I think it’s amazing that we can, I mean, we’ve been around for a while on the coast, so we know a lot of people, but, you know, I think it’s testament to the culture of the coast that we are all, you know,

great, you know, we all communicate with one another and have each other’s back, you know, and I think that’s really, really lovely and really attractive to business, so. Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, I think we can talk about the unicorns and rainbows of being on the Sunshine Coast, but there is challenges as well, right? You know, I think that what, so I’m interested to explore with you, Helen, what are some of the common challenges that you see either small or whatever scale of business come up against when it comes to getting their

their messaging, getting their marketing, getting their business heard on the Sunshine Coast being based here. I think originally when we first started out, people didn’t even know what PR was. So there was a bit of education around, actually it’s not advertising. Everyone thinks that PR, well, they did. And I think we’ve come a long way in the last 20 years. Lots of people understand the importance of PR now. But-

Yeah, look, that’s a challenge for us to actually be able to, you know, convey the difference between all the different types of marketing, you know, platforms that we have now. I think, you know, people are really time poor, you know, when you’re running a smaller business, you just don’t have time to be able to, you know, focus and give the appropriate, you know, sort of space.

for growth, you know, we don’t tend, and we do that too, you know, we actually made a very concerted effort last year to go actually, we wanna grow and we’re gonna actually put our big girl panties on it and we’re actually gonna put the staff on and put things in place for that. And I see a lot of smaller businesses that they’re a bit restricted. It’s stuck in the weeds sometimes, don’t you? Yeah, absolutely. On the day to day. Yeah, and people, you know, you can go, oh, look, I don’t have the budget or whatever, but I’m…

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a big believer, no matter what your budget, it’s about just getting the message right and being able to directly communicate with that target audience. So it doesn’t necessarily mean a lot of dollars, you know, to get quick wins, often it’s talking to fans that already know you. So, you know, like, yeah, that can be a bit, you know, prohibitive, people kind of go, I haven’t got any money and I, or I haven’t got it, I don’t think I have enough money, you know, and actually, well, it doesn’t need to be.

thousands and thousands. So yeah. Yeah. So you said that the perception of PR or the, the misconception of PR has been around for a while. But we just drink cocktails all day. I’m just look, I’m actually going to throw it at you though. But what is PR though, because you know, I might have a misconception of what is PR or public relations. So what do you think it actually is though? Like, how would you summarize that for someone?

And this is what we’ve built our business on. PR is definitely what we started with. We have sort of diversified over the years, but PR is definitely our core base. So, I mean, essentially it’s about communicating your story to your target audience, you know, and usually, traditionally that has been through, you know, media. So we, you know, do media ops, we write media releases and send that out to sometimes national, international audiences.

And it’s really about crafting a story that has a newsworthy angle. So if people come to us and they go, oh, you know, I’ve got this product or whatever, how’s it different? How’s it unique? Why would someone actually wanna read about your story? It does need, you think of yourself on a Saturday morning when you’re reading the paper, if anyone does that anymore, but yes. You wanna read newsworthy stories. You wanna connect with those stories. You wanna…

feel like, oh, I really understand what that person was going through. So what we do is we kind of tap into that and unlock that for people. So because sometimes also people don’t know how to tell their story. It’s actually quite hard to tell your own story. Me sitting here is actually, you know, it’s quite, you don’t talk about yourself that often. So, you know, we help people be able to go, oh, actually, that’s not really a newsworthy angle. But this, this is great, you know. So.

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I get a lot of satisfaction out of doing that, you know, and being able to kind of widen that network, raise awareness for people. But yeah, PR is, it’s about events as well. It’s about connecting. So, you know, that can be in all shapes and forms. We’re content creators now, you know, like we will write a media release for someone and then that could be leveraged across a whole lot of social media platforms or newsletters or whatever way on your website, whatever you need. So.

Yeah. Well, I mean, I guess you, you know, traditionally PR and media opportunities used to be about leveraging those existing media channels that were out of your control. Yeah. But now for so many businesses, they are their own media company, right? They can, they can control and create and publish their own media so easily. And that’s, I think a good way to think about it. Your social media and your content creation, whether it be creating your own podcast or

or writing a blog article or posting a thread on Instagram. All of that is media. It’s putting a message out into the world and hopefully it’s relevant and engaging for someone to read, so it’s probably gonna fail, right? I think we’re in a really unique position now. It definitely has changed, you’re right. Traditionally you didn’t have control and people were actually really afraid of media.

You know, like, yeah, they’re gonna, they’re gonna take my story and run it in a completely negative way. So there’s a lot of people that we’ve worked with, you know, we do media training and stuff and people are really scared of media. And I think that’s really changed over the last few years because more of our clients are taking control of the message. And I suppose that’s why you engage a PR agency because you, you are able to craft.

that story and be able to deliver it. They just, you know, media will just love that, make it easier for media to be able to go, oh, that’s a great new story, I’m gonna run that. But even more so, you know, media are really finding every week, it’s harder and harder to create that content. And anything that we can do in terms of providing great video, you know.

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interviews or anything like that, then we put them in a package for media that is really easily accessible and really easy for them to utilise. So more and more of clients creating their own content is happening. Well, I mean, you would probably know this more than me, but I believe that those media companies now…

they need to publish so much content and so, you know, frequently update things and have fresh new content. So the easier that a business can make it to make that job easier for the publishers of the content, the better, the more likely they’re gonna run with your story. And we’re a trusted partner with media as well. So I suppose, you know, we provide a really unbiased, you know, sort of story. So we’re kind of…

doing the media’s work for them in some ways. You know, we try and just assist them as best we can. But we are that in between kind of conduits between the clients and the media, just because the media, yeah, are really appreciative when we can do that. So, yeah. So what would you say to that small business owner who is thinking that they haven’t got a media story to tell? You know, like, I think there’s a bit of a challenge for businesses of thinking, well,

I just want to sell my stuff. You know, the only message I want to get out there is, is buy my stuff, you know, or I’ve got great stuff better than the other guys you should buy from me, more or less, right? But how do you spin that into a media story that actually, that media cares about and the ultimately the readers care or the consumers care about? What you’re talking about is if you, the sales message is often the what, you know, I have X amount of widgets by my stuff. That’s, that’s what it is.

But what we’re really wanting to do is engage people on the why. Why would I wanna buy this over anything else? And that’s a big difference. I mean, I’m always giving the advice to people if they’re doing any kind of marketing, between 80%, 90%, it shouldn’t be the sales message. Sales message should only really be 10%.

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because the content that you’ve created about the why convinces people on what they would actually want to buy, the widgets. It actually connects people to a genuine and authentic story. And it’s proven that if you read editorial and then you’ve got the advertisement, people are gonna believe the editorial way more than they will.

the advertisement. The advertisement is always great, always got a place. You know, if you’re running an event, you want to have all the details really clear of the when, what, why, how. But yeah, from a PR perspective and to I feel like that genuine authentic content is 80 to 90% of your messaging. That’s it’s really important. And how do you help those business owners who think they don’t really have a why?

You know, they’re just selling a widget, they’re selling a thing, right? Everyone has a why. And you know, you asked me straight away at the beginning, well, you know, who’s Helen? Why, you know, why have you ended up in this spot? You know, everyone has a why. It’s how much you want to tap into that. You know, some people don’t feel comfortable tapping into their why too much. You know, I’m very successfully selling my widgets and I don’t particularly want to talk about my why, you know. But then there’s other people.

I would dare say the more successful businesses that have tapped into that and they’ve gone, I see real value in sharing my story because that’s how people are gonna connect with me and my widgets, you know, so yeah. So sharing your story as the founder or the business owner is one angle there. I guess the other why angle that you could lean into is why your product matters as well, right? Like why your solution matters to people

making that relevant to the reader or the viewer or the person today. And I think any business can find some way that makes their product or service relevant to an issue or a challenge that society is going through or their audience is going through. It’s about matching that product or service with the correct audience though. Yeah. You know, so I think it’s really important that you don’t, you don’t go into a marketing

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campaign thinking I’m going to talk to everyone. You know, like that’s just too broad and too general and you might connect with a really small percentage of the population but you’ll be off message because you’re trying to talk to everyone. It’s way better to go who’s really going to value what I’m doing here and what do they look like, where are they and how can I actually target my message to suit that. That’s where the real gold happens when you’re actually matching.

you know, the need with the product or the service. Yeah, it’s running it through that filter of the old idea of it’s not about you, it’s about them. It’s about the people that you serve in your business. And for media, it’s about the reader of that piece of content or the viewer of that piece of content. Why would this matter to them? You know, so. And I love looking at the psychographics of that person. That’s, you know, are they reading?

the article in the newspaper on the Saturday morning, or are they reading it online, at work? I love the psychology behind that. And that actually means that you speak to those people in a different voice. And a personality like you and I, we’ve got lots of different facets to our personality, and we react differently when we…

where we work, colleagues or friends or family or whatever. And a brand or a company’s brand should be the same. I’m a big believer that you should have multi-layered, like there’s different target audiences maybe, like definitely for us, we’ve worked with bigger businesses, smaller businesses. So I think you can alter the voice slightly or the messaging slightly to address those different.

different audiences and to actually show different sides of your personality, which I think is people I mean are so savvy these days, you know, like we’re all we’ve been sold to so much, you know, and people understand when they’re being sold to. Yeah. I think that’s the key, you know, don’t ever try and do that, you know, it’s very much about just yeah, keeping it real. So you know,

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getting that relevance to the audiences is important. But then, you know, I think for some businesses, particularly if they’re a product or a service or a business or brand that’s been around for a long time, it’s also about staying fresh, right? Fresh, PR. Good word. Yeah. You know, I think that that’s a challenge for people too, right? They’re like, you know, people heard this story before. Like people know why they need to buy, you know, this type of product, you know, like how can I make that fresh and relevant? And

and a newsworthy in inverted commas story today to both suit my benefits as a business, but also actually get the message out there. So how do you help people navigate that? Yeah, and we’ve got a few clients, I mean, having been in business for a while, we’ve got clients that we’ve had for 15, 17, like number of years, delivering the same product every year, I’m thinking of some events that we’ve done that with, and every year you’ve got to come up with, well, what’s the story that’s actually gonna…

capture the hearts of people this year. So it is about being able to tap into maybe slightly different audiences. We’ve always been targeting a slightly older demographic. Maybe we’ll tap into the family market. Maybe we’ve got some room to grow into a new market here. It’s kind of just getting some perspective. I think…

you know, we all work in our business and, you know, very rarely hop out and get that perspective. But that’s, you know, I kind of go, well, that’s what we do. You know, we offer people that perspective and an opportunity to look at things from different angles. But yeah, I mean, it helps when you talk to someone, I think, you know? If you’re working quite solitary, you know, it always helps to kind of talk to someone. And you,

then you’ll see maybe a different angle that you haven’t seen before. I think that’s actually the real benefit of working with people like us. I kind of go, it’s a different person that’s not working in your everyday business. It’s not there just churning, churning. We work with a whole lot of other different businesses. We might’ve seen something over here working with one business that could really work well for this business over here.

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maybe even collaborate, you know, like say, I’m a big collaborator, I feel like, you know, and connector, you know, I like connecting people because I think that, you know, that’s where you can actually get a bit of a fresh take on things, so yeah. Yeah, there’s this idea of the curse of knowledge, you know, you might be familiar with, or, you know, I’m sure our viewers and listeners have come across this idea, whether they’ve heard it referred to as that or not, but the idea of the curse of knowledge is, you know, you know something so intensely and so personally.

which you do when you’re in business, whether you’re an employee or you’re the owner of a business, that often having that outside perspective allows you to see things in a new light, right? Another saying I use quite a bit is the idea of you can’t read the label from inside the bottle, so having a company like Fresh PR to come in, just to hear your story first, like I’m sure with your initial client, you would just hear their story and I’m sure you’d immediately bounce back to them, things that they’re like, oh, never really.

I’ve thought of that way. Oh, that’s nice to hear it from your perspective, you know, because we do this all the time. So, you know, having that outside perspective is critical, I think. But the other thing I just wanna touch on that you talked about there is the idea of looking for collaborations and partnerships and opening up new opportunities in your business. Because again, when you have one thing that’s potentially you’ve just been doing the same thing for so long, bring that into another context or a new audience or a, you know, combine it with something and it becomes a whole new.

possibility. Absolutely. And that actually works for startups as well, particularly for startups, you know, whenever I speak to someone that is just, you know, just, just open the door, I go, Okay, so who are some people that are like minded, maybe already, you know, established, not necessarily a competitor, but people that you can work with to actually build your brand recognition within their networks, you know, and

So that’s a really good one because through that like-minded kind of approach, they’re going to just naturally attract, you know, like attracts like. So, you know, that’s a, that’s, and yeah, I’m a big believer that, that kind of open collaborative approach is, you know, whatever you give comes back, you know? So, so yes. So I, it works for, for really established businesses that need to just shake it up a bit or people that are just starting out. So, yeah.

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Yeah, excellent. So, you know, being based on the Sunshine Coast, we’ve talked about the challenges that they have. We talk about the opportunities here as well, but things are moving pretty fast, right? I think anyone in business today, you know, whether they’re at the forefront of the technology in the industry, whatever, like they’re probably feeling like, how do I stay ahead of the competition? How do I stay ahead of the changes in my industry or my market? How importantly do I stay ahead of, you know,

marketing and not being forgotten about by my target audience or having some upstart competition coming and taking all my customers. You know, these are these very real problems people think about. So how does how does what you guys do in with PR and marketing? You know, how do you help people just stay ahead of the curve, so to speak? Yeah, look, I mean, consistency is key for me. I think that, you know, consistently.

speaking to your target audience, to your fans, you know. Don’t underestimate the value of your fans, but… Just when you say fans there, cause some people were thinking, I don’t have any fans, I’m not a pop star. What do you mean by that? Everyone has fans, like, you know, people that love you, love what you do, you know, the people that wave the flag for you, that are referring work to you, any of those types of people. Yeah.

We’ve got fresh fans that we love and we look after and deliver donuts too. And you know, like I kind of go, that is actually really important. So even the people that aren’t maybe a direct client for you, but love what you do, you know, they’re just as important if not, you know, more important to look after. So, but consistently communicating with clients, fans, you know, and the wider.

general public but I think yeah if you’re not can I think we get caught up in oh it’s got a you know we’ve got a we’ve got to be saying something new all the time actually you don’t have to always say something new but you do just need to be repeatedly seen you know and that’s 101 with branding right you know that visibility of a brand so you might be sending out a newsletter to people but you know and you get

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30% that’ll actually open the newsletter. But people have actually seen your brand, they’ve felt communicated with, even if they’ve not read the newsletter, it’s really valuable to keep that. Because one day they will open it and they’ll go right when I need it, I’ll open it. So the consistency is really important. Yeah, absolutely. And that’s what you guys do. That’s how you help people, right? So can you tell us for people that are…

Just coming across Fresh PR for the first time or haven’t met you before. Where’s the best place for people to come and get some help, maybe chat to you? Like how do you get new people into what you do? We don’t ever advertise, which is we’ve been very lucky or I don’t know why. I don’t know. Yeah, no, but people will be able to find everything they need to know on our website. So and you can see the whole team on there. So yeah, that’s just freshprm.com.au.

Yeah, and you know, that’s got all our contact details and stuff there. And we’re really happy to have a coffee or a chat with people and just, you know, just have a chat and see what they need. Often people come to us and they’ve got, I don’t know, I don’t know whether I need PR or I need advertising. I don’t know what I need. And that’s fine, you know, it’s actually just the starting point that you picked up the phone and you’ve gone, I think I need, I need some help. I need some outside eyes, you know. Yeah.

And as we’ve established today, getting those outside eyes, which is what these guys can do for you as well, is sometimes just what you need to see what you don’t see in your business when you’re stuck in the weeds. Helen, thanks for joining me on the Coast to Commerce podcast. This has been, it’s not Coast to Commerce, Coast and Commerce, whatever. It’s a new show, we’ll get there. Thanks for joining me on the Coast and Commerce podcast. This has been fun. Ah, it’s been a pleasure, thank you. And for you guys, if you are new to this show or you’ve watched a couple, but you haven’t yet subscribed.

Do that now. Hit subscribe on YouTube or on the podcast player that you’re listening to this on. And we’ll see you in the next episode. Bye.