How our PR team used the impact of caged eggs on Salmonella to win coverage on Channel News Asia for this NGO in Singapore

Hello, welcome to this episode of Speak PR. My name is Jim James. And today I'd like to talk to you about chickens and eggs, and not counting all your chickens before those eggs have hatched. This is a project that we have done this week for a group called Equitas. I want to share with you how we managed to turn around a press release that was considered to be libelous and to be unfit for publishing. And making that into news that went on to the Channel News Asia website, because it included information about a listed company from Hong Kong. So I want to share with you what we've done because if you are facing issues with getting noticed, it could be that how you write your press release could make all the difference. Now we're working for a company called Equitas, they won't mind if I mentioned their name, they are an international group dedicated to animal welfare and food safety. And they have been pursuing good causes around the world, including the issue of battery hens. And the people at Equitas have been making the case that retail shops should not be having on their shelves, what they call caged eggs. In other words, eggs that were laid by hens that in unsanitary and hygienic conditions, because the evidence is that it can increase the incidence of salmonella by 25%. Now the strategy that the client had sent across was about really trying to highlight the name of the retailer, in this case Giant and Cold Storage, which is all owned by the dairy farm group out of Hong Kong, and putting their name in the headline. And so the headline that we were sent was investigation into egg supplier to Giant and Cold storage leads to complaint with Singapore food or authority. Now the issue there, of course was that we then went to send this press release through to the Newswire in the press release. We talked about the fact that Giant and Cold Storage are still buying battery caged eggs from a Singapore egg producer called Choo Choose Agriculture. Now the press release goes on to quote Bonnie Tang who then says that dairy farm needs to get up to speed with the general trend, which is to not buy caged eggs. But when we sent this press release out to the Newswire, the response that we got was this, that they would not run the story because it was potentially involving libelous accusations against a specific company. It had unsubstantiated video material, and raise the specter of illegal filming. And that it was subjective, due to the nature of the source company, in other words, an animal advocacy group versus a food production conglomerate. And they said if we would like to resubmit the release, they would suggest a rewrite. Instead of accusing a specific company, the release can point to major health risks in the current food industry, a shift of the awareness amongst the public on food safety, and more attribution to Equitas group and to use the Equitas group name in the headline. Now, that's all good and dandy. But actually, that wouldn't achieve the goal of the Equitas people, because they want to call out the suppliers and the names of the retailers that are actually selling these eggs that are laid in battery farm conditions. So what I then did was to look online and reposition this in terms of the Singapore regulations. Now it turns out that in Singapore, there is the Singapore quality egg scheme, and it's managed by the agri food and veterinary authority the AVA. So what I did was I turned the press release from an assault on the dairy farm group into a piece where we say that the Singapore government attempt to develop homegrown agricultural products. The Singapore quality egg scheme managed by the Agrifood and Veterinary Authority under the Singapore food authority was introduced in 1999. Now, you may wonder about how many eggs there are, if you're interested. There are 528 million hen eggs laid in Singapore, at least that was as of 2019. So the Singapore quality egg standard is actually quite a big deal. So what I did was I restructured the press release from being an attack on a large company which the news wires didn't want to run because these companies would sue them for libel. But also because these companies are advertisers, and made it into a headline, which is international consumer protection organization fast complaint against local farm for producing caged eggs. And the complaint was that the local farm company choose is making the production of eggs in a way that contravenes the Singapore standard, and that that company is therefore putting at risk the customers of the dairy farm outlet. So what we've done then is to call on the dairy farm group to explain why it's buying these eggs. And the dairy farm people, then we're going to be called out for buy eggs from a company that was obviously not conforming to the Singapore quality standards. Now, when we first issued this press release, no one really wanted to run it. Because of course, it was not popular with their news wires, because we're going against Singapore's largest egg production company, but also against a Hong Kong's large dairy farm group. And all in all, not a popular case. But by making it into a case about a local company not conformed to Singapore standards, it became something that the media were interested in, especially as something else I'd found was that salmonella is an infection that has experienced increasing infections from 4.7 people per 100,000 of the population in 2003, to nearly 36, in 2015, and it appears to be trending upwards. In fact, just recently, in December of last year, three children aged six were hospitalized due to cases at a preschool. So what I've done is I have taken the issue which is calling out this company, dairy farm. And this is the target of Equitas because they want to stop dairy farm buying eggs from choose and from other caged egg battery farms, and changed it from being a story about a dairy farm buying eggs from these places and made it into a Singapore health story. Now, this meant that the Singapore Citizen Gazette picked up the story, and we had to pitch this one on one because the news wires frankly, still didn't want to run the story. But the citizen in Singapore is an independent publication, they picked it up. And as a result, Singapore news live picked it up. And as a result, Channel News Asia picked it up. And that's like the main stream. Now what I've also done was to select just a couple of hero shots of the chickens in boxes, and under their worst conditions. And then within two days, we have the CNA headline saying no food safety issues found at local egg farm following complaint about poor poultry welfare. So we've got a headline that when read already talks about what we wanted to do, which is establish in the mind of the consumer that there was a problem with eggs. Now then what's happened is that the company choose within contacted and they even said that they have had a new facility. But choose acknowledged that there were aspects of its farms, animal handling practices, which it could improve on and said it's constantly making progress. So what we've managed to do is to set the agenda of dairy farm buying from a company called Choose Agriculture by reframing the press release from being an attack directly on dairy farm to being a questioning of whether the Singapore citizens, the Singapore buyers of eggs at the cold storage outlets in Singapore are actually healthy to eat. Then dairy farms spokesperson was still quote and they talked about their commitment to develop their own brand of cage-free eggs in 2021. But that's only a small percentage of their overall sales. So actually made dairy farm look as though they're making efforts. But we also counted that with the fact that other big retailers have already gone cage-free. So they looked as though they're being laggard. So taking a release, the in one week was considered unpublishable, and we've made it into a release that got picked up in the end by Singapore's National news and television station, Channel News Asia. And as a result of that, it went online onto Facebook, and got a fairly heavy amount of traffic on Facebook talking about Choose and about eggs and about dairy farm and about the need for animal welfare, and about buying caged eggs. So I'm sharing this because if you are working on a press release, and you're finding you're not getting any pickup for it, just take a view on the way that it's positioned, we often position press releases from our own perspective, which is I want to tell people about this. But actually, we need to look at the context. In our Speak PR program, we talk about engaging content, being simple, new and context sensitive. So I have made the information about the egg business, about the welfare of Singapore citizens, not about the greed of a Hong Kong company, not because the greed of Hong Kong company is not wrong, but because no one wants to write that. But what they do want to write about is the welfare of the average man and woman and child on the street. All this information was available online, I just did some research. And so I encourage you if you're going to have a press release, find some facts and figures. For example, I found out about egg production, I found about the number of children that have recently been struck by salmonella and the statistics from the Singapore government, Ministry of Health because that gave the story, some substance. So if you're going to write a press release about your own business, paragraphs, three, four and five, need to be about how you're addressing the context. And Bonnie Tang, the erstwhile Equitas spokesperson is embedded in the article now speaking alongside the dairy farm spokesperson and two farms. So that's great context for our client Equitas. If you'd like some help with writing any press release, you can call me write to me jim@eastwestpr.com. If you need help getting your information out into Asia or around the world, let me know. We're specialists in international marketing, especially in Asia north and south. Thank you for listening. If you're interested in signing up to our newsletter to get more of these tips and tools come to wastwestpr.com. And if you'd like to talk to us about a mastermind, so that you can learn how to use these tools to create content and amplify your message. Come to speakpr.co. Thank you so much for listening until we meet again, I wish you the best of health, a sustainable business. And if you're writing a press release, think about the context. Think about the news. And hopefully you can get to share your views like we have done and if you can have some for breakfast next time you have some eggs.