Healthtech comms. Communicate your impact

SomX (00:00)
If rather than going treating marketing like a tick box, which is again, a pitfall that people fall into of going like, I need to put three posts out of out this week for the algorithm. I need to put five posts out this week for the algorithm, the algorithm, the algorithm, the algorithm. like, then they, the algorithm is literally.

humans and their behavior at the other end, by the way, because the algorithm is just going to put posts in front of people that are doing well. So basically just put posts out that people are most likely to find value from. That's going to take care of most of what you think the algorithm is looking for. Trust me. And again, that's, that's definitely missed by a lot of people.

It's about focusing on that value for content. It's not about arbitrarily thinking about what an algorithm is or what an algorithm does or like blah, blah, blah.

I think this is more a commentary on human nature than it is on anything else.

Shubhanan Upadhyay (00:50)
Welcome, welcome, welcome to the Global Perspectives on Digital Health podcast. Today we are talking about communication. We have got one of the biggest names in health tech comms representing clients from big tech to life sciences companies. It's really, really a privilege to have Dr. James Somauroo on the podcast.

He's one of the founders of SomX a healthcare media and communications agency. Why are we talking about this on the podcast? We've talked a lot about policy, regulation, implementation, trust in communities, and a big enabler of making sure all of this work.

that we're doing doesn't fall flat on its face is good communication. It's super, super important that people connect with your vision, your message, the impact that you've created. And so getting this right is, I think, it's not given enough credit, I feel. I've worked in comms for a period of time as well.

And yeah, making sure you get this right and get the balance right between telling your story and kind of sharing that in a credible way that resonates with people is a massive unlock for any of the work that we're doing, whether it's in policy, whether you're a founder, whether you're a product team. So it's really a privilege to have someone who has unlocked this for some huge, huge organizations around the world.

I think it's especially important for people who are trying to create impact with underserved communities to be able to do this well. And it can be the difference between, you know, whether you get trust with the community, whether you get that impact investing, whether you get working with that health system. So

really huge value add to go from, yes, we've got the substance and we've built the right thing, but how do you make sure you communicate that with the right people in the right way? Super, super important. If you find the global perspectives on digital health podcasts useful, please comment, please share.

please spread the word about it. It really, really helps reach people who are trying to build with communities who are underserved with digital health and help them with some of the challenges that they're facing. Thank you. Let's speak to James.

Shubhanan Upadhyay (03:11)
James Somauroo of SomX I'm so thrilled to have you on the podcast. Thank you for

taking time out of your very, very busy schedule to join us. I think it's going to be so valuable for people to get your insights having built SomX and having worked with some of the biggest names in digital health, biotech, life sciences, to talk to people who are creating impact in the global South and some of the things you've learned along the way. You've had such a varied and fulfilling career

We're going to learn a lot from you about this topic that I think is just so important and underrated in terms of criteria of importance for people often, especially in this space. James.

Tell us about you and your story and how you've created like one of the biggest health comms agencies globally right now.

SomX (03:57)
Yeah. Well, well, thank you. it's funny cause in the intro, you know, taking time out of the busy schedule and stuff, it's funny because one of the things that I try very hard to do is actually not be busy. I think as a, as a, as a leader, as a CEO, as someone that's trying to build a company and especially go from, you know, where I am now to the next bit, I actually need to keep myself not very busy.

So that I can do two things, which is to capitalize on opportunities and solve big problems. And essentially that's where I see my role right now, because growing a company is hard, man. mean, you're not startups like you've seen and been in and like done and like all this sort of stuff, like, you know how hard it is. And actually if you get caught up in the day to day, you can be firefighting all day, all day, every day. I could easily be firefighting, but at some point you have to cancel that meeting. You have to let.

people solve it themselves. You have to let one fire or a few fires burn. You have to juggle 20 things knowing that 10 of them are going to drop. You know, all these things ring true that, you know, my job now is I try and not keep myself busy so that I can, keep one eye on opportunities and the other eye on.

biggest problems to solve. in terms of me, so I'm a doctor by background, so anaesthetics and intensive care, practiced clinically for five years. I've done lots of different things in leadership policy, innovation in the NHS and wider commercial health sector. So I've worked at NHS England. I've worked at health education, England. I've worked at the BMJ. I doing lots of kind of policy stuff. and then I ran a couple of different health tech accelerators. So helping startups anywhere between sort of seed and enterprise basically.

Um, but the other side of my life was always media. So I used to write for Forbes on health tech as a contributor. Um, I still have the login and can do, although it seems a bit of a busman's holiday to try and do that now that I've got a comms agency, but, um, and health tech pigeon list, but yeah. So I write for, I used to write for Forbes. That was great for journalistic experience and knowing how difficult it is to write good articles and write good copy and do good research and gave me an appreciation for true journalism and you know, the source and the search.

for truth, I should say, which is what journalism really is. And that skill is certainly one that I respect greatly from my time doing that. But yeah, as I say, other media stuff, so I run the Health Tech podcast. So we've got listeners around the world, interview entrepreneurs and leaders across healthcare and technology. So over 400 episodes of that.

and yeah, health tech pigeon biotech dodo. Those are our news brands. So they are newsletters and health tech pigeon has a podcast as well. they go out to thousands of people across health tech and biotech and they round up the news and give commentary on the news. But the main show in town for me is that I'm co-founder CEO of SomX and SomX is a comms and creative agency for health tech, biotech and pharma companies. and we support those companies with everything under the comms and marketing umbrella. So.

We do communication strategy. do multimedia content. We do press and PR. We do branding and design. We do events and community as a service, quite a new offering. And we also do media production as well. So your videos, your animations, all that sort of stuff and true creative down on that side. And we bundle all of that together into retainers and projects and essentially do whatever companies need.

purpose built for the space. actually never wanted to start SomX by the way. was a very strange way that it came into existence. Um, that I used two PR companies myself and had a very underwhelming experience. Wasn't their fault, but health tech was very new as an industry. And you know, one of the things that we'll probably come on to talk about is when you're giving communications advice, you need to be telling your clients how to communicate. so in a brand new industry, which was health tech,

for a generalist PR firm at the time, you one part of communications PR, but, you know, I ended up rewriting the press releases, like redoing the science redoing the clinical medicine, but redoing the technology stuff like that, And as I say, not the fault of any PR agency that tried their hand at it, but health is very binary.

health tech, even more specific, you know, biotech, pharma These are all, you know, niche areas with specific audiences and specific messages, specific value propositions, specific jobs of people with specific pain points. All of these things build up a very complex picture. and so having had that underwhelming experience and realizing, I've got a podcast. I've got a newsletter. I'm pretty good on LinkedIn.

I could do content for health tech startups incredibly easy. I've run an accelerator. They've all got the same problem, which is marketing. and you know, as luck would have it, my wife, Jessica, was, director of Fleishman Hill, a big global PR firm. so she, her, clients are big medical devices, big pharma companies. And so, yeah, it was pretty straightforward. She knows how to build an agency and to run an agency and I knew the clinical medicine and the content. So.

Yeah, she did PR, I did content. started with one client and started from the bottom. Now we're here, et cetera.

Shubhanan Upadhyay (09:04)
Super, what a journey. And just to say, you mentioned your podcast that you've got to 400 episodes, which is like absolutely phenomenal. And you know, great. You know, I think this is gonna be like number 15 or 16 or something like that. So we've got a long way to go, but you know, you've been a great advisor to me over the years.

James: (09:10)
Yeah.

Nice.

Hehe.

Shubhanan Upadhyay (09:23)
And

actually, I think in one of your double figures number podcasts, when I was working at Ada, I had the privilege of like being on the other side with you talking on the HealthTech podcast as well. So I'm also thrilled to be able to like, you know, turn the tables and chat to you as well.

SomX (09:29)
Mmm.

No return the favor. No, absolutely not. Well,

yeah, as I say, return the favor, dude. Nice. was absolutely pleasure. It's funny. Yeah. The podcast is it's a labor of love sometimes and to get to 400 episodes isn't easy. I say the learning that I've done, like interviewing that many people about so many different health tech businesses and personalities and, you know, roots into entrepreneurship or how they became a leader and, you know, all this sort of stuff, because I tend to focus on

themes around careers, leadership, entrepreneurship. That's generally the first half. And then the second half I'm drilling down into more of the health tech topic and the health technician. So yeah, honestly, man, the amount that I've learned just doing that, I, say to people like, I'd interviewed 300 people about starting a business before I started a business. And actually that's a remarkably privileged position to be in because you've already learned that it's, know, you shouldn't get distracted. You should focus. You should.

Shubhanan Upadhyay (10:28)
100%.

SomX (10:32)
you know, do this, you should get a solid shareholders agreement, even if it is your wife, you should get through this. And we still haven't done that by the way, but yeah, there's a lot that you pick up.

but also you got to add value to the space. And I think, I think this is the thing. And this, you know, is a communications theme as well. You know, people think, people often think communications and marketing is about look at me, look at me, look at me, look at my product, look at my product, buy my product, buy my product. And, you know, it's, it's really, you know, we tend to say to people that 80 % of the content you put out should be either educating, entertaining, inspiring.

Shubhanan Upadhyay (10:43)
Yeah.

SomX (11:06)
or doing all three to your audiences. Because actually that's the way that you gain trust. That's the way that you become a trusted advisor to them. Because if you're talking about their pain points, if you're talking about the things that they're interested in and you're explaining things and themes that can help them in that, you know, they're going to look to you for a different reason. They're going to follow you for a different reason. You're a trusted authority.

Shubhanan Upadhyay (11:07)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

SomX (11:31)
which then when you turn around and say, Hey, I'm selling this thing. It's sort of like in a macro way, what I did in my whole career, you know, 12 years to, know, then just, just putting good stuff out into the space and favors and replying to every DM and having every coffee and inviting, you know, getting people on the podcast, which obviously had two way value, but like doing all that stuff. then eventually I started a business where I had something to sell. And yeah, to your point, you know, having that network at the time.

We launched with four clients pretty much. We've got the first four clients within four weeks, which was incredibly easy to do because I had the podcast and because, you know, I recorded someone and then say, Hey, what, you know, what, what are you doing for your marketing? They're like, Oh, it's actually a problem. And I'm like, well, I'm doing this thing and blah, blah, blah. So, I mean, that's what the podcast was. was a, it was a, it was essentially like a marketing lever really. It's just a.

Shubhanan Upadhyay (12:24)
Yeah, yeah.

SomX (12:26)
grows a few different heads over time.

Shubhanan Upadhyay (12:29)
I love that pillar of putting out things that are value to people. so, and that for me is, maybe I'll just backtrack a bit then because that for me is like a piece of advice that would be really, really great for people to take on board and I'm sure you have lots more. I'd love to like zoom out a little bit. So, you you talked about your newsletters.

SomX (12:44)
You

Shubhanan Upadhyay (12:49)
HealthTechPigeon, BiotechDodo. So I want through that your bird's eye view, if you like, of I guess like the state of comms in the industry over the last few years, generally in digital health. Because obviously the people who, you know, our listeners here, our people watching generally might either be within Europe or US or the UK.

SomX (12:54)
Nice.

Mm.

Shubhanan Upadhyay (13:12)
but there'll be lots of people who are in other contexts as well. a lot of the content that we see in digital health right now is very UK, US and Europe focused. I'd love your view on the state of the industry? Where are we at now?

SomX (13:28)
no. I totally get where you're coming from. so people talk about healthcare being behind quite a lot in various things. You know, we still use fax machines, blah, blah, blah. Like the technology being behind it, you know, it's sort of been true, I guess, of communications broadly, I would argue. It's taken a while for the space to be big enough, I think, to have any sort of

Shubhanan Upadhyay (13:36)
Mm-hmm.

SomX (13:53)
ecosystem, I would say. I guess I'm talking specifically about like health tech and less so biotech maybe, although again, there's arguments there, but, in the, in the health tech world, particularly it's not really existed for that long. And so it was only within my career lifetime, like 10 years ago ish that we were calling it healthcare IT or health IT and informatics, health informatics and all this sorts of stuff. so.

It needed to do like a comms job on itself, to be perfectly honest. It needed a bit of a rebrand and a rebrand it got when digital started to come along and people started calling it digital health. And that was interesting because that brought a lot of attention as much as it, you know, needing that rebrand because of the attention. So digital health then started becoming a thing and we started seeing that's like telemedicine and all the rest of it. And then what I think what happened is because of the sort of the Silicon Valley boom.

And all of that stuff re started to reach healthcare. It then took on health tech because there was FinTech, there was InsureTech, there was AgriTech, there was this tech, that tech, the other tech. And that's when, you know, health space tech or health dash tech started. And then when one word healthtech finally came along. So it's been a kind of maturing along those lines, I would say. I think now we're pretty much sold on it.

being called healthtech, And that's nice. And I think it gives us, you know, a unified umbrella and an identity to come under. I think that what's happened is You've gone from a world broadly.

where big trade events, big trade publications and nationally broadsheets and tabloids basically held the ring on communicating to all of your audiences. So if you wanted to get a message out to any of your audiences as a business, you had to go to one of those things. You had to get a space at a trade show and have a stall because you got footfall and you got human beings passing you because there's no internet, there's no

way, there's no way of getting to those people. And similarly with the newspapers, newspapers go everywhere. So you're at the, you're beholden to an editor who you have to sell to that editor, why your piece would be interesting to their listeners. And so you had this like very gated and guarded, like only a few points of entry to these big communities where you could

you know, get your messages out. That's PR. That was the skill of PR. That was the whole Fleet Street world of like building relationships and getting in with the editors and like, because that was the way you had to do it because they owned your, they owned the distribution to your audiences. Now fast forward to now today, what's happened is we've truly democratized the ability to build an audience. And so what it now is from a PR standpoint, IE

getting your message on other people's channels is a basic definition of that. It's nuanced, but there are more channels to go to. You can go to those big trade magazines, those big broadsheets and nationals. can get an article in the Telegraph and the Times, etcetera. But no longer really is that to get your message to those audiences. That's about authority and credibility because those are actually, they're still gated.

But it means that if you get past that, you've got through the science editor of the times and actually then it means something. It still means something to be in the times, even if you're a B2B business that is not really going to get bought by any of their readers. So that's changed. The other thing that's changed is there are also now newsletters. are...

smaller creators, I influences basically anyone or anything with a distribution. You can now sort of sell into people with big newsletters, get sold into all the time. We get sold into for health tech pigeon all the time. you, you know, we're, know, 7,000 readers or whatever is on health tech pigeon, but that's 7,000 people that might actually buy something because all of them pretty much a health tech startups. And so actually that's an incredibly good audience to go to. Yeah, no, absolutely. We've concentrated that by their same, same for biotech, you know, biotech's a very

Shubhanan Upadhyay (17:48)
concentrated, yeah, your audience.

SomX (17:55)
disparate audience with it's very difficult to reach all of biotech because biotech doesn't really centralize anywhere. They centralize around disease areas. So the cell and gene therapy ecosystem is the cell and gene therapy ecosystem. Why on earth would they care at all about the gut microbiome ecosystem or the tech bio in blah, blah, blah ecosystem? It just doesn't matter. the liver disease drug discovery. They're not going to centralize in the same place. So again, that's what we've managed to do.

Shubhanan Upadhyay (18:20)
Mm.

SomX (18:21)
There are these ways and means that that happens and stuff. So, so it's changed and social media then changed it again, really, or at the same time, because now you don't only have to sell into those people with audiences. Now, literally anyone can have a social media platform, including you as a company. And so now what's changed in communications is that basically every company should become its own production company. Every company should be building audience because rather than needing

to buy the airwaves of others that are distributing into your community of customers and partners and blah, blah, should build that audience yourself because you get the authority, you get the credibility, you get the trust, then you own the audience. There's something that if listeners wanna look it up called the PESO model of communications, paid, earned, shared, owned. And there are different channels, there are different ways of doing that. did an article on that a few months ago.

Shubhanan Upadhyay (19:11)
Yep. Yeah, very good.

SomX (19:16)
that we sort of base the way that we do things on, but it's broadly what I've talked about there. in the, can pay to get your message to other people, put it on other people's channels, but pay them. You can earn it by doing the same thing, but you can also own it. You can build a podcast that becomes your owned media and you, you own that. can own newsletter. That's your owned media. You own that newsletter. You own the email and then shared, obviously shared on social media because you're renting that platform off of either Google, Microsoft.

Spotify, whatever it is, but you're renting the channels and you're at the mercy of those people switching it off. So you should always be spreading your bets amongst those things, or at least in the early days, getting owned and shared and then moving up to the others later.

Shubhanan Upadhyay (20:00)
That's really great. And so you've given us a good perspective on how, I guess, distribution channels has evolved. And if I maybe just draw parallel to, underserved communities, low- middle-income countries, in terms of the rebranding you talked about of like, before it was Health IT, one of the big ways that it was talked about in the late 2000s was also like mHealth.

SomX (20:18)
Hm.

Shubhanan Upadhyay (20:27)
⁓ within India and Africa, et cetera. And that's also changed as well. And somehow also I observe a rebranding towards like, there's the global health space, which I wonder if it also needs a rebranding because global health kind of is somehow into interconnected with like colonization that, kind of mindset and how.

SomX (20:27)
Yeah, it's very true.

Hmm.

Shubhanan Upadhyay (20:50)
you know, that now there's this opportunity to like also decolonize global health, like, you know, development funding has been cut and now there's this opportunity to make decisions and like let things change on the ground. But around this, right, is this communication layer of like, how is it, how do we change how we talk about it? So I just reflect some parallels with what, with what you talked about. Yeah.

SomX (21:00)
Mmm

Hmm.

Well, yeah, because listen, like words matter. Words absolutely

matter. And there's a two way relationship. We know this between language, emotion, perception, and you know, you'll perceive reality differently because you know, there's a word for something in the same way that, mean, you'll know this, like if you, if for those with Parkinson's disease that unfortunately can't reflect their emotion, if Parkinson's, if a patient with Parkinson's disease,

can't smile, it makes them unhappy. And it's that two way relationship between expression and feeling. And it's the same thing, you know, if you give something a name, it will embody that it will take that on it will, it will change in its perception. And we know that and that's why we take these things so seriously. Because if you're gonna, if you're gonna give a sector

Shubhanan Upadhyay (21:58)
Mm-hmm.

SomX (22:02)
a name like digital health, it's going to influence people as to how they interact with that sector and what they expect from that sector. And, you know, a venture capitalist will come along and say, well, why haven't we got a digital health fund? Because there's loads of things in digital health. And then all of sudden a VC fund pops up just because it's now got a collective of people using the same terminology that have united under that umbrella. And these things, these things do matter. And, you know, we've seen this over time, like in global health, it's incredibly important as well, because

Shubhanan Upadhyay (22:25)
Yeah.

SomX (22:31)
People have a perception, don't they? People have a perception of certain countries and certain ways that they live. And the way that you can influence that with language and with educating people on how they should talk about things in the right way in order to enact a change. All of this is incredibly important.

Shubhanan Upadhyay (22:49)
Yeah, absolutely. And to me, that's a good segue into, you know, you're talking, know, our big picture of talking about the state of the industry, you talk about channels. And then part of it is like the words matter into the actual content of the industry. And I think historically what I've observed in the evolution of the industry is, you know, we've moved from thinking about marketing and comms as a way to, you know, like you said at beginning, look at me, look at me, look at the amazing things that we're doing.

SomX (23:00)
Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Shubhanan Upadhyay (23:17)
and marketing being seen as fueling hype in health tech and digital AI. I mean, there are still lots of examples of that. So I see this continuum with like hype and substance. And so in terms of like the actual content that we see, do you have anything to say about like the state of the industry in terms of the actual content? How maybe things are evolved? Where are we at now, especially with generative AI?

SomX (23:20)
Mmm.

Hmm.

Mm.

Yeah, I mean, I think people are at various stages of maturity on that, I would say. So on the gen AI point, I think this is really fascinating because people have talked about, and I've even talked about, know, the LinkedIn is flooded with AI posts. The barrier to entry is now so low that people can sort of post anything and blah, My personal content has never performed better.

So there are more posts out there to cut through, but my posts are doing, as I say, better than ever. And it's interesting because someone put a comment on one of my LinkedIn posts the other day. And honestly, this has stuck with me. This person said something along the lines of,

this post actually stopped me scrolling because it's someone documenting something that they've actually done in the real world, not just talking about some theme. And I think that's the thing is like marketing in some way, if you want to get cut through is about differentiation and you can cut through if you're different. And so there's

I'm a contrarian by nature. don't like going where everyone else goes. So I've always liked to stand out a little bit, which has obviously got me into a lot of good and a lot of bad situations. but in this, but in this it's good because if I see, if I see people doing something, particularly when it's the path of least resistance, I don't think I'm alone in spotting that. I think most people can spot that. Most people can spot a post that

hasn't taken very long to do because it's either, you know, lightly edited after chat GPT or not. And so if I give you an example of someone like Derrick Khor if you've seen Derrick Khor's posts, how long do you think Derrick Khor spends on one of those infographics?

Shubhanan Upadhyay (25:35)
So I know that he spends a long time because...

SomX (25:37)
Right, right. And that's all you need to say. And that's

all you need to say. You know that so much time and effort has gone into those and so does everyone else. So those posts, I would say, are incredibly likable in inverted commas because you're actually just giving that person a like out of respect, knowing that your like will boost their post and get it seen by more people, knowing that it will help the ecosystem. So that is a post of real value that in a very human way,

If rather than going treating marketing like a tick box, which is again, a pitfall that people fall into of going like, I need to put three posts out of out this week for the algorithm. I need to put five posts out this week for the algorithm, the algorithm, the algorithm, the algorithm. like, then they, the algorithm is literally.

humans and their behavior at the other end, by the way, because the algorithm is just going to put posts in front of people that are doing well. So basically just put posts out that people are most likely to find value from. That's going to take care of most of what you think the algorithm is looking for. Trust me. And again, that's, that's definitely missed by a lot of people.

It's about focusing on that value for content. It's not about arbitrarily thinking about what an algorithm is or what an algorithm does or like blah, blah, blah. And of course, like we create content at such a volume that, you know, for clients and ourselves and the rest of it, that that stuff does start to creep in of like, okay, we can AB test something. We can optimize for something like, hey, actually when we put, you know, clients and their founders faces on the posts, they do better. And it's like, yeah.

But it's more reflection of human nature, I think, than it is a reflection on what the LinkedIn algorithm wants, because I don't think I might be wrong, but I don't think the LinkedIn algorithm is doing image analysis and seeing what's on the image and then boosting certain posts based on what's in the, I just don't think it works that way. I think this is more a commentary on human nature than it is on anything else.

And so with the generative AI posts to sort of conclude my point and, and heard these cats back in, I think, yes, there's a lot more posts.

I think, yes, there's a lot more to cut through, but I think if you approach your content with authenticity and you appeal to other human beings by either documenting what you're up to, sharing some genuine learning or going out of your way to really research a topic and actually add some value that way

of work. Like it is. And the people liking it are rewarding that. So it's that thing that people say, man, like people are jealous of where you are, they're not jealous of how you got there. Well, they're jealous of what you got, but they're not jealous of how you got it.

Shubhanan Upadhyay (28:10)
And just to kind of paraphrase what you say, I think what I take away from this is, know, we're in this attention economy, right? Everyone's like, look at me, look at me, look at me. And people think there's some kind of recipe to, if I do these, tick these boxes, I'll craft my content strategy in a way.

SomX (28:28)
Yeah.

Shubhanan Upadhyay (28:30)
And actually you could just step back and think, okay, what you really need to be able to, like you said, is differentiate. So while other people are zigging, you zag. How do you zag? Like just do, share what you've learned and actually done in the world and share that, right? And that's what people appreciate. And I really like, I take away, yeah, that if you think about the algorithm and as, mean, human behavior is kind of a black box as well.

SomX (28:49)
Yeah, 100%.

Shubhanan Upadhyay (28:57)
And so if you, but it's a black box that we all kind of can relate to more than some kind of unseen, like technical LinkedIn algorithm. Well, what's useful for people? What do people, what resonates with people? And so I liked that message. Yeah.

SomX (29:10)
Yeah, definitely.

And human behavior is still a massive black box as well. I've been listening to lot of Rory Sutherland stuff and I'm reading his book as well. And so, you know, the opposite, the opposite of a good idea is also a good idea, like that sort of stuff. Like, and it's right, you know, human behavior, human psychology, and he's fascinating. So he was, I think, head of the behavior. I think he started the behavioral insights division of Ogilvy. So massive, massive, massive global communications agency.

Shubhanan Upadhyay (29:17)
Yes, I'm listening to it as well, it's so good.

For sure.

Yes. Yeah.

SomX (29:39)
yeah, absolutely fascinating stuff that, I think if you like psychology is also marketing or marketing is also psychology as well. And so a lot of those themes definitely play in.

Shubhanan Upadhyay (29:45)
Yes.

I really like it because I'm reading his book at the moment called Alchemy. And I think there's something that he says that is just so relevant for this audience. In terms of like academic rigor, we talk about the data that we want to have, how do we share our impact? know, that's what I want to talk to you about. And what he talks about is we hyperfixate on like the logical steps that we need to take when actually people don't actually work like that. People, should also be thinking about

SomX (29:54)
⁓ yeah, that's one I'm reading.

Mmm.

Shubhanan Upadhyay (30:19)
the psychological steps that we should be taking, the psychological argument, which is often very different to the approach you would take if you were taking a purely logical, hey, we've got our objective data, that's what's gonna present and convince people, we create our product, build the product and people will come. And actually there's so much more to it as well, right? And so, let's take that, let's go into this rabbit hole then. Cause I think one thing that...

I see and when I talk to people who are building in global health and you know anyone in digital health I think you know we're so especially in medicine we talk a lot about how we need evidence right we need good we need to the evidence of effectiveness of this and I think people skew that to that means I need to show this I need to do this clinical study that shows that I move this metric to this and the p-value is this and therefore it's

statistically significant and therefore that's gonna tick the box for me and now, why are people not buying this? Why are people not funding this more? What have I done, what have I missed in changing people's minds about this? Or why have people not like actually adopted this? Can you speak about that?

SomX (31:23)
Hmm. Hmm.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, the answer is emotion. So it's interesting. And again, the answer is because we're human and really emotions are what drives us. Someone said to me once, you only want to exit your company because of how you think it will make you feel. And I was like, ⁓ that's, that's interesting. because perception is reality as well.

Shubhanan Upadhyay (31:48)
Hehehe.

SomX (31:53)
And so really everything is just emotions and feelings. it's just that you think you'll feel a certain way when you achieve certain goals and that's the reason you chase them. But anyway, to, to, give some context on that. So if you think about an academic journal, right. And a scientific, let's say Nature, right. or any like biology, chemistry, physics, any scientific academic journal by definition, by definition.

What is in there is the most innovative stuff in existence right now. Fact. It's the most innovative and yet it is presented in the most boring way possible. So I follow, a, well, I actually follow a few now, like astrophysicists on TikTok, right? So anyone that says that TikTok is just like for dancing or the rest of it, bear in mind, TikTok is empty pipes and you can fill them with whatever you want.

You have to be very aggressive when you press and hold down and say not interested. You have to do that quite a lot to get it where you want. However, these astrophysicists are fantastic because they'll pull up a horrendously dull and boring, academic journal presented in P values and like sine waves and all this sort of stuff. They'll put that in the green screen themselves, put that in the background. And then they'll just talk like this about like, Hey,

some amazing new thing has happened. This massive star, like really close to us, has just exploded. And actually we've learned loads about what a black hole actually is, which is like a wormhole loop where you deform space and time and bend a wormhole into a wormhole and create a portal and like blah, and this is actual site. But they just present it in a story as a human on the screen telling a story. And it is captivating.

If you're even vaguely interested and who the heck is not interested in like portals to other dimensions, which by the way is actual, it's actual science when the fabric of space time folds on itself and puts to it's it's unbelievable. It's unbelievable that that actually exists in real life. And yet it does. The only reason I know that is because a human being has translated a very boring journal into a tick tock channel and actually, and they just explain whatever that whatever papers come out in that journal, they just explain it in all terms. And so.

Shubhanan Upadhyay (33:46)
Definitely gonna check that out.

SomX (34:11)
That is partly the answer, storytelling, in that we can do these things and that scientific rigour is incredibly necessary. But that lives in that journal and nowhere else, unless it's communicated externally. And that now is a comms plan because those scientists that have done that experiment research, whatever it is, want to have impact.

I assume, and that's the reason that they've done that research is to forward humanity by making sure the world knows about it. Now, so that so they have they have their message that they want to put out. Now, what they need to do is think about where they put that message. And the way to do that is to think about who is my audience? So who do I want to get this message to? So if it's the public broadly, and it is of

broad importance. Hey, we've unlocked this portal to this dimension and there's some aliens that are waving at us. Cool. You go to broadsheet nationals that are definitely going to cover this because it has massive implications for absolutely everybody. Who's the audience of absolutely everybody? The Times, the Telegraph, the Mirror, the da da da. Like they obviously care about that stuff because it's of national importance. So

You would go, they would go to them and you see it, you see every now and again, the BBC will present something that's come out in an academic journal. It's not that common, but they do, you know, once a month, maybe I see it on BBC news, something academic that they've translated. But actually for those people, if it's something more niche that has an audience either in a certain country or certain demographic in a country or in a certain field.

Then you've got to think, okay, where do those people absorb information? They'll follow certain people on certain social platforms. They'll read certain publications. They'll watch certain news channels. They'll watch certain things on their phone. And so once you then figure out where your target audiences absorbs information, you now know where to put your information in order to get it seen, heard and known, and therefore create your impact.

And so again, you can then pay for it to be there. You can earn the right for it to be there. You can own your own distribution to those channels by building it, or you can share it, IE, social platforms, blah, blah, blah. So my point is you then, you then, once you, once you know your target audience, you've got your message, then great, you know where to put it and you can either pay for it or earn it basically.

Shubhanan Upadhyay (36:55)
And on the, so we've got these good principles on how to do this right. You've talked about storytelling and getting it and doing that translational piece so that people are like, wow, do you have some principles on how to do the what? So, cause you've said you've done the who, we've done the where, the what, how do you do the what? How do you tell that story?

SomX (37:04)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, great, great, great question. I actually saw a really great talk from Vernon at Havas about this, at one of their events. If you look up storytelling, there are a few, you'll have heard of story arcs, right? So there's like, you'll have heard of something called the redemption arc, where, you know, the protagonist will have a good time, then a bad time, then a good time again.

Shubhanan Upadhyay (37:15)
any principles.

SomX (37:43)
like they'll go through their redemption. Exactly. Others will be different shapes of good and bad of what your protagonist will do. And those are all ways of telling a story. So if you point to any fictional story book, they will generally follow one of these four story arcs of a way to tell a story. The interesting thing is though, beyond that, there's actually no fixed way. And we talk about this all the time in something as simple as a pitch deck.

Shubhanan Upadhyay (37:45)
The hero's journey.

SomX (38:12)
So a lot of people will come to me and say, can you look at my investor deck? And they'll go, I followed the Sequoia version, the 10 problem solution, market size, competitors, that I followed, got their template and followed that. I people go, I chose this one or this one or this one. The interesting thing is.

If you followed one of those templates, okay, fine. It will be, it will be good to like, you know, 60, 70 % most likely might be a hundred, might be zero, but chances are it's around 60, 70 % right. Generally the feedback that I give and bearing in mind, like Jess and I have done our first angel investment now I've run accelerators for years, like pitch decks. just, I've seen hundreds, if not thousands of them, in, a critiquing mentality. The advice that I give on pitch decks is like, forget an order.

Get the order of the slides out the window. Tell me the story. Imagine I'm an investor sat here right now. Tell me a story exactly how you would tell it about what your company is up to and why I should invest in you. every single person will start somewhere different. Some people will start with, I grew up on a farm and when I was three, my dad had a stroke. Other people will say, I was doing this incredibly specific research at university.

And I discovered blah. Other people will say, I had four opportunities, each were great. And this one struck me because people are going to tell this story loads of different. That is the, that is the order that your story should be in. That is the order that your pitch deck should be in. It's never a good idea. I don't think apart from first draft, maybe to do that kind of what's the problem, what's the solution, what's the market size, the

best pitch decks are ones that just tell your story because you can't kid me that the same 10 things in that order is the best way to tell everyone's investment story. If we accept that isn't the case, then we accept that there is an optimal way to tell your story through a pitch deck because, and again, to add some more flesh to the bones here, some elements of what you do in your story will be stronger than others that you'll want to place upfront. spoke to someone last week, one of our clients in fact.

that it took until slide four to say that they had traction with a UK hospital group and a hospital group from a different country. And what they were doing was pretty similar to what loads of people are doing that haven't got any contracts. It's just one of the sort of, know, standard ideas inverted commas done very specifically in their way. the point that their differentiator was these two massive contracts.

It's like, okay, get that, get that on slide one, slide two maximum, like open with that. Yeah, because actually what's their different back to back to marketing being differentiation to some degree, you know, Hey, we're an XYZ company, but we got two contracts. You're like, now I'm listening because I'm used to XYZ companies having zero contracts and telling me they're going to get contracts in five years.

Shubhanan Upadhyay (40:50)
Bury the lead, is it? Don't bury the lead.

Yeah.

Got a memorandum of understanding,

da da da. Yeah.

SomX (41:11)
Exactly. I've

got a letter of intent. I've got blah, blah. No, no, no. We've got two signed contracts and money in the bank from two big hospital groups. right. Okay. That definitely needs to come up front because as the investor, I'm already assuming that 98 of my hundred decks I'm going to review that day are terrible. And if I say a hundred percent are terrible, I'm only wrong twice and I can deal with that. So basically an investor's default is this is terrible and 98 % of time they'd be right, which is a fantastic place to be.

Shubhanan Upadhyay (41:14)
Yeah

SomX (41:39)
Which is why investors don't care about saying no. They just don't care about saying no. You've got to be exceptionally good for them to say yes. And yeah, they've got dry powder that they need to invest at some point, but so they can be more lenient in those times. But basically, yeah, you're battling against the no. So you want to tell that story as optimally as possible. And frankly, 100%, 100 %

Shubhanan Upadhyay (41:59)
You need to light up their amygdala, right? In terms of like, if you're looking at 100,

like what are the things that need to stand out? I love it, yeah.

SomX (42:07)
Yeah. Yeah. And frankly, you just need feedback. You just need feedback from people. Honest, good, good, honest feedback from people as to how to tell this better. And you'll all know a good storyteller in your network and they'll be very natural at it. They'll be very good. There'll be the people that always at the dinner party or, you know, the father, the bride speech, or, you know, at any wedding, they'll get, you know, they'll captivate everybody with their stories or whatever. It's that person. You want to get feedback from that person.

Shubhanan Upadhyay (42:10)
Feedback, constant feedback.

SomX (42:34)
because that people, no matter what industry they're in, will know how to spin a yarn and they will know, they, will automatically do those story arcs without even thinking about it because they've just got an internal alarm that goes off before anyone else, which says, this is boring. need to make it more exciting. It's just that their alarm goes off before yours. So, ⁓ yeah.

Shubhanan Upadhyay (42:53)
Very good.

I really like that. And that's such great actionable stuff that people who are kind of living these problems will be able to take away, you know, impact investors, funders, foundations, you know, they will also be responding in a similar way, I think, to you would be. I think another thing that people struggle with is in this space as well is in terms of the story is, hey, we've got this evidence that

SomX (43:09)
Hmm.

Shubhanan Upadhyay (43:19)
we either have been generating or intend to generate about the value that we are trying to create in this health system or for patients. And they're trying to approach then, yeah, how do I communicate that evidence? maybe not so much as a pitch deck, but as a story, how do I make this resonate with either some, like a health system that I wanna work with or...

you know, people that are clinicians that I want to convince to adopt this technology or a community to build trust with them of like, hey, and turning that from this, this like dry thing of like, hey, this has created this clinical outcome and this has done this, hasn't it been fantastic to kind of more towards what you're saying? How might people approach that?

SomX (43:53)
Hehe.

Hmm.

So the first thing that I would say is that whilst you might think certain metrics are boring, like reduces clinical outcomes or improves clinical safety by blah, There is a metric that the person you care about cares about most. Whatever that metric is will be exciting to them. End of story. So if it's the finance director, they care about in-year savings. They care about ROI in-year.

or in the first two years or whatever it is, first few months ideally. So really it's back to knowing your audience, knowing the situation, knowing what you need to present and presenting that in the right way, in the right story that ticks their boxes. That's the first thing that I would say. But the other thing that I would say, if you are going for more broad appeal or it's a presentation or a date that's got loads of people in the audience or whatever, is to...

think about, well, who cares about attention also as a proxy? And that's media broadly. So what would media do? What would, and who's very good at this, like the Daily Mail, what would the Daily Mail do? So if you take that evidence or that statistic or whatever it is, what does the Daily Mail do?

They attach a story and they attach a narrative to it and they try and incite some emotion. Not, they don't use their powers for good very often, unfortunately, but they are very good at it in that they will think about the second order, third order consequences of this. And again, thinking of that in a very positive way, there's a fantastic

advert that McDonald's did, which is a full page ad in a newspaper. And it's a, it's a picture of a blue sky with a couple of clouds on it. And you can see in the corners that it's a car sun roof. And it's just, it's got loads of seagulls that are stood on the roof peering over and they're looking at you. You're, you're the vision from inside the car.

And it's just got the, it's just got the McDonald's M, the golden arches. Now that is a fantastic example of what are the second order consequences or what are the third order consequences to ordering a McDonald's because it's delicious and you're sat in a car. What's going to happen is the seagulls are going to want to come and eat it. And that's going to cause you a problem. And that's funny. That's good use of humor. You've told a story, but then an image. But that's the thing about second and third order stuff. Obviously in media, they'll do it.

bit more obviously like, Oh, this thing has happened, which might lead to this and it's probably going to lead to this. And they'll create that story in that narrative from B can do that in a very positive way in the, you know, by increasing clinical outcomes, like you might, your, your headline might be, Hey, your, your clinical nurse specialist in diabetes is about to get really bored or you know, your clinical nurse specialists in diabetes are now going to have the time to do loads of other stuff. And then because of this, or what, like you, can think about interesting ways to present that.

that go beyond just the statistic because yeah, that clinical outcomes will improve money and it will reduce litigation and the risk of that. therefore, and all these things are true. And so you're one person that cares about that stuff specifically that is going to chime, but in a very human way, that person will still relate if you're opening with, you your clinicians are out to get quite blah because of blah. so there's, there's, there's interesting ways to present that. Exactly. Exactly.

Shubhanan Upadhyay (47:39)
It's like, so what? So what to me, right? Yeah,

yeah. I really like that. And just riffing off that then as well. So recently I was in Geneva for a digital health conference and we did something that's unusual. We told stories about failure. We told stories about things that had gone wrong. And that was by far the most engaging part.

SomX (47:42)
Exactly.

Hmm.

Shubhanan Upadhyay (48:04)
thing that I've been to for a while. I've been to a lot of conferences and we got lots of good feedback that that was the thing that really resonated with people. And I wanted to put this to you because people don't talk about this in our industry, really. They might talk about it internally within their organisations, but there isn't really space in comms to talk about things that have gone wrong because of because I guess we're just set up to be

SomX (48:05)
Hmm. Hmm.

Hmm.

Mm.

Shubhanan Upadhyay (48:31)
hey, we need to talk about these metrics that we've hit or these things are what resonate with people. When actually, when you're doing the hard yards and if you're talking about doing and that thing that you talked about that person who stopped scrolling because this was a thing about that actually happened that they can relate to. Most of the things that actually happen are things that are challenges or went wrong, I would say. And so how do we, have you got to take on a way to communicate that that makes it okay?

SomX (48:34)
Hmm. Hmm.

Yeah.

Shubhanan Upadhyay (49:00)
for shareholders and the CEO to be okay with talking about. I this kind of, I guess like broader, more real conversation that needs to happen in our industry.

SomX (49:11)
Yeah. So I think the answer to that is, is smaller community and more behind closed doors stuff. So, less behind closed doors. makes it sound a bit, a bit too private. I don't necessarily mean that, but I think you can, I think it's incredibly necessary these days to set, set up spaces. and I don't mean literally, I mean, sort of figuratively there, just set up spaces where you can be honest. One of the, one of the, this is one of the best moves I ever made without

really knowing it was at the time that when, before COVID I started doing these little, these little events at the health foundry, which was like a digital healthcare working space in Waterloo super nice, just little, little tiny space, like 30 people, 20 people that came to these things. And I called them health tech talks. And basically I used to interview a founder and they used to be, they just, I just used to say like, look, this isn't for online. This is just like,

We're going to be honest here. We're just going to talk about like the things that happened and like blah, blah. And I can remember Mike, one of the guys that came, he ran an ENT device startup and he was, he was just so unbelievably honest and raw, um, about the difficulties and the things that they got wrong and like just loads of stuff in manufacturing and contracting and like all this sort of stuff that mistakes that you made super honest. like, it's very cathartic for people because they could, they just felt like they could ask really good questions and, and all that sort of stuff.

And that was fantastic in that space. and was so unbelievably necessary. And they, and eventually two people from Google came and said, can we do these in Google? And then the same, philosophy applied there of like, Hey, this is, this is a closed shop here. Like we're going to let these people be honest on stage. And of course you're a bit more when it's 250 people rather than 20, you're a bit, a bit less kind of free to say that sort of stuff. But the point is, is that

Shubhanan Upadhyay (50:40)
guess.

SomX (50:55)
community is becoming so unbelievably important. And here's the thing, which is going to be news to some people, not everything needs to go on social media. Not everything needs to go on LinkedIn. You can get, you can get your therapy. can get whatever it is you need. Like you already do these things. You'll see a therapist. You'll get your mental health sorted by someone. You don't put that on LinkedIn. There's no need to, you don't need to put your failures on LinkedIn in order to get the catharsis of actually like figuring that out. It's just that

Shubhanan Upadhyay (50:58)
Yeah.

Hehehe.

SomX (51:22)
really what you should be seeking, I think is a safe space to do so. This I think is the, yeah, a hundred percent. And this is the big opportunity. This is a big opportunity. I think broadly in marketing now for, for corporate marketing companies, startups, for individuals and personal brands, think owning, owning a community around something that is in and around your space and not thinking first and foremost about the commercial value to it. Just knowing.

Shubhanan Upadhyay (51:26)
think that's psychological safety, yeah, absolutely.

SomX (51:50)
that if you set up a community of value, it's going to benefit you in some way. I think that that is the biggest move you should be making in 2025.

Shubhanan Upadhyay (51:57)
You're absolutely right. That's a really such so many good lessons there. James, we're coming towards the end But if I can, I'd love to ask you about a few quick tips or quick fire questions if that's all right.

What are some of the biggest traps, anti-patterns to avoid in your comms strategy or execution?

SomX (52:20)
focusing on selling and not focusing on giving value.

Shubhanan Upadhyay (52:24)
amazing. Do you have any advice on how a founder can get to a unique value proposition that really resonates?

SomX (52:32)
feedback, feedback, feedback, find those people and ask them the exact person that that value proposition should chime with.

Shubhanan Upadhyay (52:34)
And from whom? From whom the feedback?

Yeah, great. ⁓

SomX (52:43)
And if you

ask for advice, you'll get money. If you ask for money, you'll get advice. So do with that what you will.

Shubhanan Upadhyay (52:47)
Very good, yeah, I like that, I like that. What signs can you look out for in your comms that is kind of off or not resonating with people and that you need to change things?

SomX (52:57)
It's not performing well. It's not meeting your business goals.

Shubhanan Upadhyay (52:59)
Yeah. ⁓

⁓

SomX (53:04)
End of story.

Shubhanan Upadhyay (53:06)
What's the biggest lesson in comms that you've learned in your journey?

SomX (53:10)
If you give without the expectation of receiving, everything will get better.

Shubhanan Upadhyay (53:18)
Amazing. And final thing is that we've mentioned one book with Rory Sutherland, any other articles or books on this topic or other resources that could help people with their comms strategy, wrestling with this stuff.

SomX (53:24)
Hmm

I would say an interesting book to read would be this one, Emotion by Design. Emotion by Design. is by the chief or ex chief marketing officer of Nike.

Shubhanan Upadhyay (53:35)
can't see it, hold on, hold on. Emotion by design, you've got it there, okay, amazing.

Super, okay. I'm definitely putting that on my list. James, what a pleasure and a privilege it has been to hear about your journey, hear about some of your key pillars of what you've learned building a comms agency. So much great kind of stuff to take away if you're founding, if you're in policy of how to reach people, how to get your message to resonate. And I love your message at the end of like giving, you know, that's what it's all about.

giving to people, creating value for people and the rest kind of comes around that. So if you can get into that mindset and that approach, then good things happen. And the other thing I want to say, know, SomX and James have been connected to this space. I will put a link to the work that you guys have done with CHIC with the community health.

Impact Coalition with community health workers actually propagating the voice of community health workers and the impact that they're having. It's a super awesome series. So I'm going to connect that because that's, that's a really, really good example again of great storytelling in this space. So if you're really thinking about how, you know, whether, how James and his work has walked the talk on this for the global health community, that's a place to look at it. So yeah.

SomX (54:48)
Thanks man.

Hehehe.

Shubhanan Upadhyay (55:00)
James, thank you so much for taking the time to share your insights. It's been really, really great having you on this podcast. Thank you.

SomX (55:07)
been pleasure, thank you very much.

Shubhanan Upadhyay (55:09)
Thanks.