Time travelling PR queen!

Whilst it’s not even Halloween yet, in PR land we’re almost done with Christmas indulgences and onto New Year detoxes! I sometimes feel I have a split personality, dealing with current news looking for instant opportunities as well as planning several months ahead for the magazines and periodicals. It’s just the same for the journalists I’m talking to so we’re all quite happy in our multifaceted world, living both in the moment and for the future – and never in the past!

Work at PR towers is frenetic at the moment – I’m so pleased to be working with several new clients on an ongoing as well as project basis, several of which have some stunning products ideal for Christmas, all ethically and environmentally conscious of course!

Since its relaunch, Boutiko is making the most of the festive season to plug some truly lovely items for women and home, including jewellery, home furnishings and stationery, all recycled, handmade or fairly traded and so unusual but with several items under £10 or £15 – perfect for the Credit Crunch hungry press who are going crazy for bargain busting xmas pressie
ideas at the moment. I’ve bought so many items from the site that I can vouch for their gorgeousness on a personal level!


The same goes for client buyOrganics - I recently splurged on a whole range of the John Masters Organics skincare which the site stocks (along with the more well-known hair care range) and my skin is certainly responding very well! I’m particularly crazy about the anti-ageing Rose & Apricot antioxidant day cream, which not only smells lovely but I feel like I’ve had a mini facelift!! It’s quite difficult promoting the products on the site because as branded products they have a PR approach which more often than not directs the writer and the customer back to the product rather than the stockists which sell it, but I’m working hard to get the fab Sonia’s website into the forefront as a one stop shop for luxury organic and natural lifestyle products.

Having bought items from soap, shampoo, clothing, skincare and even organic bleach-free sanitary products (a good choice for women not wanting to pollute their bodies with the chemicals in regular items – particularly important for pubescent and developing teenage girls, in fact) – I can once again vouch for the site personally – something that is important to me.

I use all my clients’ products and services myself, in order that my writing is genuine and my experiences real. Whilst the image of a PR is often rather unsavoury, I’m proud of my ethics in as much as I won’t promote anything I don’t believe in myself.

Which brings me to my latest new client – Animal Days Out.com Having been a vegetarian for over half my lifetime, some of those years vegan (I have lapsed recently unfortunately due to a shameful cheese addiction of which I’m not proud) my feet have always been firmly in the animal protection camp which has in the past included campaigning against various issues in person as well as in print, and having an argument a few years ago with the head keeper at Santa Barbara Zoo about their quite clearly depressed male gorilla and their giraffe with a bent neck…. But I digress! What I mean to say is, animal related attractions, theme parks and water zoos have always been a bit of a thorny subject for my family – the children desperate to visit these places but wrestling with my own conscience about the conditions and ethics of these very venues.

Animal Days Out is a website with a difference – a one stop searchable portal for UK wide animal and nature based attractions, not only does the site make it very easy for anyone to find an event or venue close to their home or where they’re holidaying, but the owners’ own personal commitment to animal welfare means that they carefully monitor which attractions they place on the site for their individual conservation and welfare ethics.

We’re currently promoting Halloween and half term events across the UK so if you fancy a day out or place to visit in the next couple of weeks then do check the site out, there are some amazing things going on at parks and attractions all over Britain and Ireland.

I’m also jolly chuffed to be working with Daisy Green Magazine.co.uk and Daisy Green Events, currently swishing their way around the UK on a monthly basis with their fantastic clothes swapping parties, and the magazine itself having recently celebrated a year in business with the launch of a new Travel section.

Talking of travel …. I have also been retained for a further 12 months by natural anti-insect product line incognito, currently building on their recent Dragon’s Den success and working on a new formulation, new products and lots of exciting news and facts about mosquitoes, insects and the dangers of DEET.

Natural Empathy are also working on Christmas related PR at the moment, with two of their bestselling products containing festive sounding myrrh and frankincense – a PR dream in terms of selling a story but the products themselves really are heaven on earth! Containing British-grown rapeseed oil, which is more potent than olive oil and naturally anti-ageing, the Natural Empathy range has increased in popularity significantly since its exclusive launch in Selfridges this summer, and is currently offering free postage and packing in the UK, so get online and order some for pressies now!

Over the next few months I’m also going to be working on the launch of environmentally-themed children’s book Hope & The Super Green Highway, by eco-poet Helen Moore – this magically written and beautifully illustrated story is the sequel to Helen’s equally as fantastic Hope & The Magic Martian – both books having been read and given the all-important seal of approval and thumbs up by my own eco-warring literature loving children!

My other main project is the Miss Earth Girls contest – a beauty pageant with a difference, searching for girls who are not only naturally stunning and intelligent but who share a common interest – love for the planet – and the main theme being that during the contest between January and August next year all the contestants around the country will be taking part in voluntary activities with an environmental theme such as beach clean-ups, awareness raising campaigns and street litter pickups. With beauty such an issue in the media these days, particularly when it comes to how we perceive beauty and how the media can often distort the reality of beauty to fit in with an often unattainable image, the Miss Earth Girls contest brings this reality back to our wonderful mother earth with a gorgeous bump and a powerful message.

For sponsorship opportunities for the Miss Earth Girls pageant please contact me for details as Eurydice PR is working not only on promotion for the event but also organisation.

Well with all that hard work waiting to be done, I had better stop blogging and get on with some proper work! Thank you for reading and please do share your thoughts and comments with me!

Journalists – for product information and samples do get in touch lisajackson@eurydicepr.co.uk

Thanks to Hilary at HKS Design for redesigning my blog as well, I'm so pleased with my new look and branding!

School’s out for summer – but it’s still busy in the PR world!

Another early Sunday morning catch up with the blog – how some people find time to blog all the time I’ll never know! It’s been such a hectic roller-coaster at PR HQ this month and although probably one of my most successful periods also the busiest and most exhausting.

Firstly, my website www.eurydicepr.co.uk has had a much-needed facelift and now looks stunning, thanks to Hilary at HKS Design. I'm now including all links and cuttings on a special press page so I can boast from the hilltops about all the press coverage that's been occurring!


Caroline Duffy Miss Earth England on the Natural Empathy Selfridges stand

Photograph courtesy of Albert Constantin





On 2nd July we had the exclusive Selfridges launch for natural skincare range Natural Empathy, complete with an appearance from gorgeous Miss Earth England Caroline Duffy, styled ethically by the magnificent Lupe Castro and make up by Lucy Friend – this really made the event come alive! We had some great press response who love the family background and rapeseed oil story. The hero ingredient in this British-formulated range is Northumberland grown cold-pressed – by hand! – rapeseed oil, which is in fact much richer than Mediterranean olive oil and has incredible anti-ageing properties. Just spending one day in the store under those bright lights and among the bustle was hard enough (especially in heels!), but the Natural Empathy team spent two intensive weeks on the stand in the main beauty hall, generating sales and customers, and a great deal of interest from other shops keen to stock the range. The range is now on sale in the Living Beauty section of the store until at least October and hopefully beyond. Apparently Princesses came away with the whole range and the management of Selfridges themselves requested the products for their suites where they entertain the rich and famous – not surprising considering the authentic Britishness of the products and the beauty of the packaging.
















It’s also been a very successful month for natural anti-insect products incognito, who launched their new after sun moisturiser recently and who are appearing on this week’s Dragon’s Den (29 July 09) BBC2 at 9pm – certainly worth a watch! Coverage for the products has appeared in several mainstream titles this month including Best, Prima, the Daily Mail, Kindred Spirit, Healthy magazine and Lifescape. I’m certainly finding my subscription to response source alerts paying off and despite the size of the investment and the huge amount of extra work monitoring up to 50 detailed alerts per day, the benefit is certainly worth the bloodshot eyes and tetchy personality!















Now it’s the school holidays I was hoping to scale down a bit but the pressure is now on with the Daisy Green London press launch, including the launch of the Enamore Daisy bra, to take place on 15 September. I’m delighted to now be on board helping with PR for this fab online magazine - see www.daisygreenmagazine.co.uk and looking forward to doing what I do best – organising a party!!!

I’ve also been working with the inspirational Sarah Dawnay, who has just set up a fantastic website for working parents – juggling home and family with an ethical business. Mothers of Innovation www.moixx.com is a great resource for families looking for ethical and ingenious solutions to all sorts of child-related problems and already has a following amongst a few famous mums including Amanda Holden and Melanie C (never underestimate the power of a celebrity endorsement!)

My new Sika dresses have arrived – handmade and ethical, Lupe Castro personally picked out the best designs and colours and I can honestly say that I feel a true diva when wearing them! Lupe also recently styled myself and my daughter for a photo shoot with Good Housekeeping magazine, which not only was a fun experience for us all but was fantastic for Lupe to introduce mainstream stylists to a few new designers and items which they may not have seen before – we can turn the world ethical bit by bit if we all work together!

As we enter August and that notorious journalistic Silly Season where even the dullest product and uncreative PR can get a few column inches somewhere, it’s all systems go preparing PR stories and coverage for autumn/winter issues and dare I say the word – Christmas! Yes magazines are already putting together wish lists and product reviews for their Christmas issues and it’s time for me to start thinking about placing my clients’ products according to autumnal colour schemes, winter skin products, warm clothing and festive gifts, when really all I want to do is put on a bikini and soak up the rays in my back garden while the children have a splash in the paddling pool!

Have a lovely summer everybody!

Don’t forget to watch incognito on Dragon’s Den this Wednesday 29th July at 9pm on BBC2 or watch it again on BBC iplayer.

Doing all the running

Things have been so busy here at Ethical PR Towers lately that the blogging has taken a bit of a back seat, but thanks to an insomniacal nature I’ve managed to carve out a bit of time on an early, sunny Sunday morning to get back into action! And what a hectic time it’s been as well … despite having a lengthy corporate career in PR in the past, I have recently been finding out that going it alone is proving the most intensive learning experience of my entire life! I’m discovering new skills, tricks, talents and ways of doing things that would have taken me an age, if not at all, stuck at a desk in someone else’s office all those years ago.

One of the things I’ve been doing lately is being my own PR runner… despite being “the boss” of my own business, being a loner means I have to do it all from making the tea, opening the post and of course writing and distributing press releases, right up to making quite difficult management decisions that often involve money and have serious implications for the direction of the business.

In addition, I’m also landed with the usually thankless task of PR runner, which is basically where the most junior member of the team has to lug a box of samples and press releases round the relevant press contacts. The job involves blisters, aching arms, long waits in shiny receptions, plenty of rebuffs and an encyclopaedic road knowledge of London most cabbies would be proud of!

To be honest, I actually enjoy “doing the running”, especially as it involves for me a much needed day away from slogging bloodshot-eyed at the computer, and the chance to combine a bit of product distribution with client meetings in lovely places far removed from my cluttered home-based desk. I never used to have the time for PR running but it really is a key part of the package for product based clients – it’s not enough to just bang out an email press release and hope the responses come flooding back; posting samples is better but if I had a pound for every time one goes “missing” en route I’d be living on a yacht by now –no, the real answer is to get the product into the hands of the journalist you want to write about it – along with a quick verbal summary of its key selling factors of course and a printed (on recycled paper, please!) press pack.

All this is useless though unless you carve some time out for following this up with a call or email for some feedback – writers are usually such busy people and inundated with PR’s flinging products at them that it really is usually a case of out of sight out of mind… and on that note I’ll just pop my trainers on because I’m actually going out for a proper run now as it’s such a gorgeous morning!

This is a copy of my recent column which appeared in the latest issue of Sustained magazine.... http://www.sustainedmagazine.com/


Lisa Loves... Real Life Big Carbon Debates

Carbon! We hear that word bandied around these days like nobody’s business ...we’re meant to save it, offset it, think about how much of it we use, it’s the basis of life, we’re made from it and if we don’t start taking it a bit more seriously then soon it will all be gone and the world will explode – or something? Well, I’ll give it a whirl, but in between the school run, running a business, keeping up with the mortgage, dealing with the modern middle class nightmare that is homework and making sure there’s enough wine (organic of course) in the fridge (A++ rated) to last the week, I’m afraid my carbon footprint is the least of my worries.

Still, politicians and the media wag their fingers at us as though we’re teenagers - walk instead of drive, use low energy light bulbs (mercury-laden by the way), turn the thermostat down and put on a sweater. Okay, I’m happy to do this in the name of energy conservation and the future of the planet, but what I, and most of the rest of the population would really love to know is, is it really going to make a difference? And why should I be so worried about it anyway? Surely one person can’t be responsible for the entire world going to pot – isn’t that the plot of a Superman film? All I know about carbon is that it’s a natural element trapped in vegetation, coal, the earth, oil etc, and that releasing it into the atmosphere causes the greenhouse effect which is why we should drive a Reliant Robin rather than a Range Rover Vogue monster. Why doesn’t someone tell us more about this stuff? I’m sure people would be a lot more willing to give saving it a go if we knew why and, more to the point, that we were being supported. But sitting shivering in our living rooms watching TV by the light of a candle seems a tad masochistic when, if you take a trip to London at any time of the day or night, half the city is lit up like Las Vegas with only five people actually using the light, heat, computers etc. How much carbon would be saved if the Gherkin building was to please switch off the lights at home time?

Does Gordon Brown give Sarah a hard time for using the Downing Street washing machine more than once a day? Is Barack Obama going to refuse Air Force One and switch to video conferencing in the hope we’ll all choose Dorset over Benidorm for our summer holiday? I doubt that very much. And we’ve all seen David Cameron publicly shunning cars but I bet he tucks into his Sunday roast every week – the global livestock industry reportedly uses just as much energy as transport. And how many times have I heard disinterested friends or family say to me, ‘Well Lisa, I’d readily swap my Trojan Warrior Trailblaster for a moped if I thought that those factories in China would stop throwing out smoke and fumes like there’s no tomorrow.’ (which by the way, there won’t be at this rate!). These are the very same people whose demand for iPods, supermarket clothing and Nikes is the reason for the factories in the first place!

It’s all very well for the Government to put the onus on the homeowner to use less energy and transport, and fine us for having too much rubbish but I can’t help feeling that’s like using a pneumatic drill to open a pistachio. What about ticking off the car companies, heavy industry, the supermarket chains and most of Canary Wharf?

I’m on my children’s Eco-schools Council and it makes me smile right down to my toes to see such passion and commitment about saving energy and doing good for the environment from children as young as seven, who this planet, after all, belongs to. But it also breaks my heart to think that unless everyone from individuals, business owners, governments and multinational organizations, pulls together and takes responsibility for cutting carbon usage then, it seems to me, the earth will surely be doomed.

Confused as Lisa? You can find out more and have your say at http://tinyurl.com/CO2debate

Thanks to the lovely (and I quote "exquisite"!) David North, Sustained Editor, for allowing me to reproduce this piece on my blog. If you want a copy of the magazine please get in touch with me.

It's Show Time!

Well my feet are still aching and my head spinning, but the full impact of the two shows I’ve recently attended is still to be realised…. Exhibitions are such hard work, long hours on your feet, a sore throat from talking all day long, aching cheeks (facial ones!) from perpetually smiling… not to mention the expense, hours of preparation beforehand and the usually hideous carpeting in the show halls. But weighing up all this seeming negativity against the pure gold opportunities to come face to face with potential clients and customers.. forging relationships that will last into the next few months and hopefully years.... it really is a no-brainer!

The first show I went to this month was the Natural & Organic Products Show at Olympia’s grand hall. I went along in my capacity as PR for my client Manfred Techentin of Energise Your Life, who had bravely booked a stand. We spent hours on set-up day lugging, lifting and arranging (well, he did most of the lugging and lifting, if I’m brutally honest, but I feel I surpassed myself in the arranging department!) and two days spending hours developing varicose veins from standing all day long (sitting down on a show stand is really not a great plan unless your product needs to be demoed from the comfort of a chair and table), drinking rather nice tea blends from the fabulous Dragonfly Café and chatting to the most amazing array of people from health food store owners to raw food enthusiasts and sprouting junkies!!

At the end of the show, my own personal knowledge of the fabulous array of juicers, sprouters and water purification systems Energise Your Life distributes had increased exponentially, and thanks to the recent acquisition of a Samson juicer for my very own kitchen, felt very confident recommending this King of the Juicers to all and sundry… although some of the more hard-core juicing fanatics couldn’t keep their healthy hands off the Gold Star juicers on display, the real Rolls-Royces of the juicing world. Yes, we did actually have people come up to the machines simply to gaze longingly and stroke them on occasion (must have been the free organic pomegranate wine
samples from one of the neighbouring stands?)

We even had a visit from the famous Sproutman himself, whose books were on display on our shelves, and despite the rather dodgy barcode reading gadget Manfred had forked out an arm and a leg for, managed to generate a host of leads for further contact and hopefully business.

Something which hit home to me as I spent time with the visitors – all wonderful, happy, vibrant people with such excitement and enthusiasm for the show, which was a joy considering it was a trade show and in the “real world” would have had a very business-like atmosphere – was the number of medical practitioners keen to learn more about juicing for their patients… and I don’t mean just naturopaths and homeopaths, but NHS nurses and doctors, who had come to the show to find nature’s answer to alleviating problems they were involved with such as allergies and even cancer. In fact, several people we spoke to discussed how they used juicing and sprouting to help protect or cure their own or loved ones’ cancers. At one point I had to fight back tears as one gentleman specifically came to our stand to enquire about the best machine to make vibrant juices for his very sick wife who was at home in bed ill with cancer - eye opening really, considering that I hadn't really fully appreciated that as well as using the show to gain new clients, the products actually do really help people.



Of course, I always try and eat, sleep, breathe and live my clients’ products as much as possible, so I even lost my wheatgrass juice cherry that weekend – in fact much to the amazement of virtually everyone I loved the taste and couldn’t wait for more! This incredible stuff contains virtually every enzyme, element and vitamin in existence (apparently) and a couple of shots a day should see me well into old age, if any of the super healthy looking juicing pros I spoke to are anything to go by!








Champagne? nah - pass me the wheatgrass dahhling!
The show itself was amazing and Ethical PR Girl’s dream world… every single exhibitor with delicious tasting, smelling or feeling products which are all completely natural, organic, pure or in some way beneficial to the environment. Instead of an atmosphere filled with pungent artificial fragrances, we were treated to constant wafts of essential oils, organic spices and herbs as all the exhibitors demonstrated their amazing ranges of food, clothing and beauty products, not to mention some of the tasting experiences (my route to the cloakroom somehow always seemed to coincide with pinching segments of truffles from the Booja Booja stand!)

The best show I’ve ever been to took place just last week – UK Aware at Olympia 2… what an atmosphere! I can honestly say that I’ve never felt such an intensely positive vibration at any exhibition I’ve attended, instead of desperately sloping off the minute the doors closed, virtually everyone straggled even at the exhibitor party, where the organic wine and wonderful people carried the buoyant mood well into the evening. I particularly liked the fact the seminars were held in the open centre of the show hall where passers by could stop and listen in for as long as they liked as well as stay the distance. And top marks to the wonderful Nicola from Daisy Green who together with ethical stylist Lupe Castro, tirelessly swished their way through the event with the help of their gorgeous models, swapping clothes and accessories at a rate of knots and recycling the leftover items as well.



I must confess to buying some great items too from Onya bags and sandwich packers to some lovely underwear from Pants to Poverty, and found it a great opportunity to catch up with new clients Natural Empathy, whose new range of luxurious organic skincare products had plenty of people ooohing and aahing on their stand as well as in the relaxing area where MD Beverley kindly furnished pooped punters with a generous squirt of handcream as they chatted over tea and coffee. (In fact the Swish models actually came to the stand to get some face cleanser to remove their makeup before whizzing off to their "day" jobs")



Swish Pic courtesy of Nico Dattani














My personal highlight was the ten minute head, back and shoulder massage though… although nearly falling asleep in the middle of a crowded, noisy room probably wouldn’t be classed as one of my most professional moments!

The main impression I came away with from UK Aware was immense optimism and hope at how many businesses are out there fearlessly braving the current financial stormy weather, protesting about the government, capitalism, climate change and the rest of the turgid messiness we’re all in at the moment, but in such innovative, positive and change-making ways… they are all surely being that much needed change in the world that Gandhi spoke of.

Best face forward

It’s been a busy few weeks here in my little bustling office … I’m so delighted to welcome new clients on board: incognito, Pure Nuff Stuff, Eco Hotels of the World and Devidoll, as well as having some great response from new press campaigns for buyOrganics and Natural Spa Supplies, who both this week offered journalists super challenges – to turn themselves and their men organic, and to swap a week of regular showering for a good old strip wash, in a bid to save hundreds of litres of water. Both slightly off-beat concepts but we had a fabulous response, and it’s so heartening to see the press taking up the challenge and supporting ways we can all try to make our lives that little bit more sustainable and less toxic for our fabulous planet.

In the same vein, I am also really pleased to be on board as a keen supporter for the Green Party, particularly in supporting Rupert Read, who is running for MEP for the East of England. I am even contemplating a foray into the world of green politics myself, so more on that when it’s all finalised!

But in amongst all the success, thrills and excitement, I’ve had a stonking cold, and having had to cancel meetings and glue myself to my desk for the past few days, I’d started to feel very skanky and slummy indeed. Managing to bung on some old trackies and pop on a pair of shades and hide behind the steering wheel for the school run, my haggard, red-nosed, bloodshot-eyed appearance is a far cry from the usual well-heeled, pouting PR goddess that I prefer to be known as…. particularly embarrassing in view of the fact that a good proportion of my clients and journalist contacts are key movers and shakers in the beauty and fashion world!! So this morning I finally decided as my tired, pale face looked out at me from the mirror, enough is enough!!!

But what to do? How do you go about perking yourself up when you feel like, well, to put it mildy, a bag of (insert your own derogatory expletive here!), without resorting to an entire pot of coffee, cans of Red Bull and the occasional dose of Rescue Remedy?

Of course, the answer is makeup. Yes, a rendezvous with your cosmetic bag really is the answer! When you look good, you feel good, and putting on a new, fresh face using cosmetic products can have a huge influence on the way you feel inside. But of course, there’s a flip side to this. What you put onto your skin can also affect your body in a different way – and now of course I’m talking about toxins in beauty products.

Regular, non-organic cosmetics, as with skincare products, usually contain a host of synthetic ingredients, mainly preservatives, which quite frankly aren’t all that wholesome when you consider how much of it gets slapped onto skin and sucked into all manner of pores and orifices. For example, the average woman will actually consume several kilos (yes, kilos!) of lipstick and lipgloss during her lifetime - yummy! - and considering the fact that most lip products contain parabens and phlalates as important preservatives, makes you wonder what the accumulative effect of all these chemical nasties could actually be?

Toxic overload has been implicated in several unwelcome health conditions – not only hormone-related cancers, but quite interestingly in ME sufferers, who sadly often find their only respite from their debilitating conditions is a complete swap to organic and natural foods, clothing, personal care products and household cleaning products. Already down in the dumps thanks to their illness, putting on makeup can be a welcome solution to cheer sufferers up, but with symptoms exacerbated by the hormones and manmade ingredients in skincare products and cosmetics, such a treat often falls by the wayside. Choosing organic, natural cosmetics can really be the answer; not only safer and gentler, but usually not tested on animals and often mainly vegan, ie. containing no animal products whatsoever (did you know that mascara and lipsticks for example, often contain ingredients derived from the byproducts of slaughtered animals), and with just as stunning results.

My favourite organic makeup brands – available from buyOrganics of course! (got to get a plug in – I’m shameless!)– are Nvey Eco and Inika. Inika in particular does a spectacular range of eyeshadows and gorgeous lip glosses, and having been a Clinique girl for many years until I finally saw the light, can honestly say the quality of the two are easily comparable. I love the Nvey foundation range, easily on a par with most mid-range department store brands and priced similarly. Perfect also for teenage girls and pregnant women, as well as chemotherapy and ME sufferers, due to the lack of toxins which may have more effect on these groups of people, organic makeup can not only make you look good on the outside but keep your entire body and immune system healthy as well.

Safe skincare and top quality cosmetics are available from buyOrganics, and Pure Nuff Stuff offers the most reasonably priced, safest and deliciously smelling and feeling range of organic skincare I’ve seen in a very long while.

So now although I’m still sneezing and coughing and wearing those old trackies, I feel so much better inside, with my lips gorgeously glossed and my skin flawless and glowing.... ready to face the world safely and beautifully!

The power of the blog

My latest bit of PR writing for one of my clients, http://www.buyorganics.co.uk/ has just come out... I thought I'd reproduce it here not only as an interesting blog on the subject of men's organic skincare and grooming, but also to highlight how PR isn't just about banging out press releases and doing the rounds of the magazines and newspapers.

Good meat and potatoes lead-generating publicity comes from writing, writing, writing - and getting those carefully crafted words out on the internet and into peoples' in-boxes and onto google searches! Blogging is not only interesting and fun but should play a very important part in your online PR schedule. Sonia at buyorganics is the Queen of Blogging - not only does she blog herself at least once if not twice a week, but I also contribute to her blog when I can. She'll be the first to tell you how her website traffic and sales is affected and driven by what we blog about and when.


This blog came as a result of Sonia's strategy for publicising her great ranges of men’s organic grooming products available on the website. As well as some more traditional PR in the form of press releases and targeted men's, grooming and fashion press, we also wanted to write a blog - and one with a difference! Here's the result! I'll update you on the sales in a week or two to show you the power of the blog....


When it comes to men's organic skincare and grooming, Sonia and I quickly realized that this was going to be one area where we couldn’t actually try and test the products ourselves! And we certainly didn’t want to simply quote the blurb off the back of the bottles and jars, as we always test and trial things ourselves to make sure they do exactly what they say on the tin! So… what to do!
Of course, this is where I had the absolutely brilliant brainwave of dragging my poor unwitting husband into the equation. Not only skeptical about organic skincare products themselves, his usual grooming routine consists of a quick shower in the morning using all manner of cheap and nasty shower gels (bottles collected from hotel business trips or bought three for a pound in the super savers discount basket), an electric shave using talcum powder of all things! and a spray of supermarket deodorant (if I’m lucky).
Love him to bits as I do, all my pleas about using organic skincare and natural grooming products are met with raised eyebrows and shakes of his head, so over time I’ve just got used to having to wait at least half an hour before going upstairs after he’s used the cheap deodorant filled with pungent, eye-watering chemicals, in order to avoid being suffocated with noxious fumes! And vacuuming up the mess from the talcum powder can get annoying – “it helps smooth the skin before I shave”, he reasons, despite me telling him about the gender-bending chemicals and pore-clogging filling and caking agents which make up the talc!
So, I threw down the gauntlet – swap all his regular high street cheap grooming products for a week with the same items but from the buyOrganics range of organic, natural products, to see if he preferred them or not!Well of course, he was very happy to help me with my work, and being a typical alpha male, always likes a challenge, mainly the opportunity to prove me wrong! So he accepted the challenge with gusto and two weeks on, the Lynx has been relegated to the back of the bathroom cabinet and the words “Esselle” and “Green People” are tripping off his tongue like a pro!
So what did he use? Well he's really not a lover of too many products and in order to not complicate things I picked the bare essentials for him to start with – he usually likes to use a face wash and shower gel in the mornings and evenings, so I picked the Green People’s Organic Homme pre shave face wash, which claims to prevent breakouts, lifts the beard (whatever that means!) and cleanses without drying, as well as preventing spots. Well hubby’s a little old for acne but he certainly loves the facewash as it is gentle, as well as not having a scent, which he normally dislikes in a facewash. He was also really amazed that a little goes a long way with this product – of course I had to explain that most organic grooming products are naturally more concentrated, unlike high street cheaper brands which create a lot of froth and foam and need palm sized amounts to get the same clean, fresh feeling as a small blob of organic product. This pleased him, as despite loving the products, he was rather gobsmacked at the price compared with his usual pound shop varieties… however with them lasting several weeks rather than one or two, not only are the organic products still great value for money but dramatically cut down on packaging and therefore, waste.
He tried out the Ecosoapia hand and shower gels in the shower – this caused quite a bit of drama initially as the first one he used was the Peppermint flavoured one – still not used to the potency and efficacy of organic products, he used far too much and ended up yelling in shock as the zinginess of too much peppermint came into contact with his precious crown jewels… top tip for men, don’t use the peppermint one as a body wash! He also tried the lavender but again found the strength of the fragrance quite overpowering, and settled for the unfragranced version. We are using the peppermint and lavender to great effect as handwashes, antibacterial and smelling divine, they’re lovely for any cloakroom, kitchen sink or hand basin.
His absolute favourite product and “I will use this until the day I die” item was the Eselle Organic Aftershave ‘Razzamatazz’ – a discreetly fragranced rich oil, suitable as a pre- and post-shave oil to soften the beard before a visit from the razor, and afterwards to smooth and seal the skin. The small 30ml bottle is a great size for travelling too (and small enough for aircraft hand luggage!), and in two weeks just over a quarter of this tiny bottle has been used, making it extremely good value as well.
And the best find for me, was the Green People Organic Homme ‘stay fresh’ deodorant – quickly learning the organic less is more mantra, just a couple of sprays under each arm not only keeps my man smelling fresh and the house free from clouds of toxic fumes, but the important omission of aluminium in natural and organic deodorants, including this one, mean that his risk of contracting breast cancer is greatly reduced – men can also suffer from this disease, and aluminium has been identified as a very likely link between breast cancer, particularly of the nodes in the armpit and the side of the chest.So ladies, if you want to convert your man and turn him organic, give it a try – if I can do it, anyone can! Not only will you be happier, but you will have a healthy, fragrant and eco-friendly fella to be proud of!