How can I create a media hero?

We're a small PR firm that just started. We're passionate about people and we think we can deliver something different than other orthodox PR agencies and we're pretty confident that we have our own exclusive approach. We landed our second client (hurray for us) and it's a little bit challenging: he needs us to market his upcoming book that deals with some personal struggles of his and people he knew. The problem is: this is his first product. It's his first book. He has never worked before in marketing or tried to deliver a public message to his audience through social media. The guy has no audience tbh (I don't know what you call 70 followers on Twitter but I'm pretty sure that's not an audience) So yeah, I mean, we're also starting to learn, and the guy is awesome and everything, but there's no ground to build on. Consequently, we started to embark on a different approach: Let's create something that makes him a hero. Let's find something that makes some people instantly fall in love with him. It'd be amazing to hear from you on the possibility of making someone a media hero/loveable person and how media giants do it in terms of strategy. Thanks!