Insights from a year’s walk around England and Wales: #2 Quirkiness helps outreach

What’s the human resource in shortest (and shrinking) supply? Attention span!

What helps others notice the ideas we’re advocating? Quirkiness. That’s how I ended up walking in shorts through the winter.

I was three months in, sitting at a café, telling a friend I needed to raise the profile of my walk. I learned that a man began swimming around Great Britain the same month I started. He was in the papers (and the sea!) every day, with news about his astonishing feat. How could walking compare with that?

My friend Sara Clancy 's response was blunt. Stop complaining. Find someone to help with outreach. Over a mug of tea, we cobbled TOR together on a napkin. A publicist, Jackie Barber saw the advert and started working immediately. Within a week, a local journalist published the story. This was the first of many, which gave me a new appreciation for local radio and newspapers.

But Jackie wasn’t done with me. Gotta work on your personal brand, she said. You need to be weird or funny. Hmm, I struggled. I had been called many things, but weird or funny was not among them. She found the answer after looking at a photo.

“Why are you wearing shorts in October? And in the rain.”

I liked the air around my legs, I answered. She asked if I would wear shorts through the winter; I said yes. After muttering “Crazy” under her breath, she said:

?“Perfect, we’ll brand you as ‘Man in Shorts’.”

Now there was no escape. As the winter closed in, and the rain became sleet, every interview turned to my dubious taste in clothing. The story gained traction. Quirkiness worked!

In 2018-19 I walked 4,300 miles around the coast of England and Wales. To raise awareness that cervical cancer can be eliminated in a generation. I’ll share insights every Thursday. See From Grief to Love: Walking Around England and Wales for more about the inspiring people I met.

A longer version of this post can be found here .