How PR Founder Simon Huck Leans Into Optimism With Emergency Preparedness Kit, Judy

When you’re creating an emergency preparedness kit brand geared towards helping people handle crises, your instinct might be to leverage ‘doom and gloom’ and scare tactics as part of your communications strategy.

Not for the cofounders of emergency preparedness kit brand Judy — Simon Huck and Joshua Udashkin — who lean into optimism rather than fear.

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“I don’t like to think about things that are scary, and that was one of the grand decisions around Judy,” CEO Huck explains.

“There’s a reason why Judy is bright, optimistic and orange. A lot of the physical products that existed in the emergency preparedness category were tactical and almost a bit military. They didn’t evoke the feeling of ‘family’ and ‘empowerment’. We believe there really needed to be an optimistic brand in this category for people to take it seriously and to actually go ahead and make their emergency plan.”

Judy’s mission is to make safety simple. Huck and Udashkin created smartly-designed, highly intuitive emergency preparedness kits to help families through big and small emergencies. In the ultimate unplanned happenstance for any retail brand, Judy first launched in January 2020, on the heels of the wildfires in Australia, and right before the pandemic hit. (The first Judy kits included MD95 masks, at a time when as a collective, we never would have predicted that the masks would become so ubiquitous.)

Despite being a brand geared towards disasters, they’ve emerged as a safety success story.

Huck, who is also the president of Command Entertainment Group, and Udashkin, created Judy because there was a clear whitespace for an emergency preparedness kit that was focused on the “preparedness” aspect.

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“I think there are two big reasons why people don’t prepare for emergencies. And as a side note, I was the least prepared person before starting Judy!”

Huck continues: “A lot of people — mistakenly — believe there’s nothing they can do to prevent the disaster or emergency from happening. So they think, why even do anything? That it’s kind of in fate’s hands. That’s just one of the hindrances — the other hindrance is the psychological anxiety around, I don’t want to think about something that’s scary.”

Huck and Udashkin are flipping the script on emergency preparedness by leaning into optimism and the notion that it’s never too late to have a proper plan in place. The truth is, we can all be in control.

“Now three years into this journey, we speak to people who have been in emergencies every day, and they’re so happy that they had Judy. We say this all the time — the most important thing that anyone can do to actually survive an emergency is to make an emergency plan with your family. It’s the act of doing what we call ‘a dress rehearsal’. Whether it’s talking to your family members or roommates about how to evacuate your home in the event of a fire, or knowing what to do when there’s smoke coming out of your kitchen. In the actual face of a disaster or an emergency, a lot of people go into analysis paralysis, where they’re not really able to make the right or any decision. So the dress rehearsal is critical.”

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The magic is in the opportunity for conversation that Judy creates.

“We’re seeing that when Judy arrives at one’s doorstep, the family unboxes it and suddenly they’re having this conversation, with Judy as the centerpiece of their emergency preparedness plan. They’re saying things like, ‘What’s this hand crank radio for? How is it going to help me? How does this emergency kit make sense for my emergency plan?’ So that’s really the point of it.”

The concept of a dress rehearsal is familiar to Huck, whose nearly 20-year background in public relations includes everything from celebrity endorsements, global talent acquisition, branded entertainment partnerships, and entertainment publicity services.

While his publicity background is more about glitz and glam, there’s an element of the expression ‘wherever you go, there you are’ when it comes to Huck’s career: he applies the same skill set and shows up as the same person, whatever the product or industry.

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In Judy’s case, this meant disrupting a category that had always been known as tactical, cold and more military-esque, and giving it an image built on empathy, emotion and storytelling.

Judy has had the equivalent of its red carpet moments: it was one of Oprah’s “Favorite Things” in December 2020 and again in 2022 (with its Emergency Pack Bundle). Judy was also featured in London’s Design Museum’s Beazley Designs of the Year 2020 exhibition.

Last year saw the launch of Judy Power: a portable power station that’s more affordable and environmentally friendly than a gas generator, marking a big step for the company from safety kits into emergency prep tech. Judy also launched its rechargeable light source called “Judy Lantern.”

And on the topic of bringing collaborations and storytelling to life, Judy teamed up with the series A Kids Book About for a family-friendly book on safety, as well as shoe brand Birdies for a special pair designed to boost awareness and improve preparedness (one of the most common mistakes during evacuations is forgetting to put on shoes).

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