Our chums over in Fishburn Hedges launched the advertising awareness campaign - Know Your Limits.
Ever the helpful bunch, Caroline agreed to act as a case study for the BBC News Online piece on the campaign. Apparently, she was "like, woah, that is a lot" when she found out that she had knocked back over 30 units - the recommended weekly amount being 14.
We're proud of our lass, so we are.
We do some consultancy work for PHD Network - the media planning and buying group and our sister company within the empire that is Omincom - to get them out of the trades and into the national media.
Spotting the rumours of a Microsoft/Facebook tie-up as a comment opportunity, we scored this piece for one of their managing partners on this mornings CNBC Squawk Box programme. A spot of opportunistic media relations that hit the mark, it seems.
Our work for the Ideal Home Show has seen a host of campaigns - from re-inventing the Good Wife Guide to creating "Innovation Nation" (which scored three pieces on BBC's The One Show) to updating the house of the future. Just some of the highlights ...
LYCOS scored a hit this week with a spot of blatant news hi-jacking.
Carla Bruni's visit prompted us to start wondering whether blokes preferred a brunette lady on their arms these days ... an old story, but Carla sort of gave it a new twist (not to mention the host of former-blondes who have gone brunette).
So, a swift survey of the consorts of the world's most powerful men (actually, the world's 100 richest chaps) showed that over 60% were brunette - just 22% blonde.
A swift release in the name of top dating channel, Love@LYCOS later and we were in the Metro, Daily Express, Marie Claire, The Times and a handful of odd blogs (Newslite and ScarlettLetters amongst them.
Just a brief note to say that we have been asked to contribute to the follow-up to the Age of Conversation - Age of Conversation: Why don't people get it? The Spinning Around team will be one of 275 writers contributing articles to the book. Looking forward. For a list of the authors, see Drew McLellan's site.
The Hotels.com team has been having a bit of a week of it as we launched the latest installment of the Hotels.com Hotels Price Index.
Having spent the last couple of weeks writing and producing (thanks to the FHG Studio team) reports for the UK, Ireland, France, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Norway, we launched the latest batch of stories across the continent. See the UK report here.
The HPI gives us a host of launch stories, along with fantastic features fodder. But as - if not more - importantly, it cements Hotels.com's expertise with the media themselves. We find that the report data is used months after launch and creates great relationships with the journalists who find it an invaluable resource.
Back to the launch, though, in the UK, we kicked off with a press conference attended by all the major trades, along with The Sun and Independent.
Announcing a raft of around ten different stories - from global analysis to reports on individual UK cities and from serious economic analysis to consumer-focused advice and information, meant it was all hands to the pumps.
So far, it's been a helluva haul. The nationals (both news and travel pages) have loved the story, with pieces in The Guardian er ... twice, Daily Express, Daily Mirror, Daily Telegraph er ... twice, The Sun er ... twice, The Times. There was also a full page "big question" op-ed in the Independent.
Broadcast news coverage came from Channel 4 News and SKY News.
Other national pieces came from regionalised pieces across the UK - Edinburgh News, The Scotsman, Western Mail er ... twice and Belfast News, amongst ten other pieces that aren't online.
Further afield, we've scored a clean-sweep across the Irish national papers, with pieces secured across the Irish Independent er ... twice, Galway News and Irish Times, amongst others.
As you would expect, the regional papers have lapped the story up with pieces across the York Press er ... twice, icCoventry, Birmingham Post and around 30 others to date - again, couldn't find the fellas online.
Across the continent, our European partner agencies (Marco de
Communicacion, i&e Consultants and PublicLink) have been knocking
in some great coverage of their own.
In Spain, Terra.es, El Economista, Preferente, EuropaPress, DiarioSur.es, Las Provicias, Publico.es, HostelTur and elcorreogallego.es, all covered the story. In France coverage came through leading newswire RelaxNews, Ctendance.com, LeQuotidienDuTourisme.com, Tourmag.com and LaRep.com, with more to come.
In Germany, meantime, they've had a bit of a headstart as the HPI launched a couple of weeks early at tour show, ITB. Amazing stuff across the trades and major regionals includes DPA, n-tv, ADAC-Reisen, Schweizertouristik, Pressetext.at, ahgz, Frankfurter Neue Presse, Berliner Morgenpost, Der Standart, Business-Travel, Kölner Stadtanzeiger, Aachener Zeitung, Saarbrücker Zeitung and Kölnische Rundschau.
Fantastic stuff from the whole team.
It's been three in a row for the Ideal Home Show this week. Following the team's stories on the "home of the future" and the launch of "Innovation Nation" (which has got over 300 entries by the way, shortlist announced shortly), more coverage for the UK's favourite show ...
The creation of the "Good Wife Guide" for the Show - an update of the 1950s guide by the same name, has swept the nationals and has been widely picked up in both the news pages and by the comment writers.
The research - which showed that men want a "great cook, who argues" was released to the world (and its wife) as a Sunday-for-Monday this week.
Already in the bag are news pieces in the Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph and Metro. Lots of regional coverage followed - this pieces in the Aberdeen P&J and the Yorkie Post give a taste - as well as online, like this piece on MarieClaire.co.uk.
Following the news, Bryony Gordon in the Telegraph and Simon Mills in the Daily Mail followed-up on the research in their columns. And very nice it is to see them do so, too - particularly given that they mentioned the source of the work.
UPDATE: Ideal Home Show pieces following-up today in the Daily Telegraph (from our "home of the future") and the Independent (from the Good Wife Guide story above). Lovely!
Some piccies from Jess' wedding featuring the Seventy Seven crowd in all their glory. Hmmm ...
As regular readers will be aware, we've just finished a spot of work for Hotels.com celebrating the London cabbie. Thought that we really ought to pop a quick showreel together to show off our work in all its glory. As well as to show some of the work generated by our European partner agencies.
One final thing for the week ... the Business Superbrands showreel that we created to show off the fine work at the launch event last night.
More about the campaign here.
I just finished reading Paul Allen's excellent book.
One of his suggestions is that you share all the ideas that you have with other people - rather than keeping them to yourself.
Taking that one up, we thought that we would share some of the ideas that have been conjured up at various points for clients that we don't work with, but would really like to.
See, from time-to-time, we do the odd "Wednesday Wisdom" session. We troop down the pub and we choose a couple of businesses and see what we can come up with. Sometimes we come up with something, sometimes, we don't.
Now, when it comes down to it, if we don't share the ideas that we come up with and get them out into the big wide world, they are never likely to happen. And, who knows, maybe someone will like our thinking and we will get to bring some of it to life.
That's why, when we had to create our first ever advert (which will appear in the brochure for the latest Superbrands event), we wanted it to be about some of the ideas that we came up with for some of the brands that are going to be at the event.
But, more important than any of that (and as Paul says), if we don't share the ideas that we have then it's a little bit harder to come up with new ones. Whereas, if we've shared these, we have to come up with some new thinking, rather than rest on our laurels.
SO ... we have no idea whether the businesses concerned would like the ideas that we have come up with for them. We don't know if they are on-strategy for them. But we do think that they would generate some cracking coverage and some real talkability.
But, what's more, we really enjoyed the process of coming up with them and we think that in doing so, we think we will come up with better stuff for the people that we DO work with.
BTW, if you do know someone who works for Walls or Ryman or OU, or any of the others, please ask them to take a look and let us have some feedback.
And if you do work for any of the organisations above, please do let us know what you think of the stuff we came up with. Tell us how to make it better so that we can improve.
Meantime, we will be in the pub, happily coming up with some new ideas ...
As you may by now know, we do some work with leading international branding consultancy, Wolff Olins (they of the Olympic logo, (RED), orange and a multitude besides).
Well, our latest project for them has been to do some media work around a space that they created in their London HQ of the brands of the future - BrandNext.
We aren't going to waffle on here about the idea behind the exhbition because you can read more about it over on Spinning Around - our sister blog.
But we are deeply chuffed with this piece from the Independent that appears in the paper today about the thinking behind the show. Sweet work from Seventy Seven's very own Alan Twigg.
The Superbrands team - charged with making the latest "Business Superbrands" list (and the brands on it) famous - have been hard at it over the past couple of days.
The latest top-500 brands in the UK, as selected by a panel of 1,300 leading business experts, along with a consumer panel, chose the country's biggest corporate and b2b brands.
Topping the list this time around was Google, which knocked the BBC, Microsoft and BA out of their previously held (and cherished) top spots.
That news provided the lead-in news angle that secured pieces in the Financial Times (and a separate piece on FT.com), Daily Telegraph, The Guardian (and Guardian PDA), BBC News Online (as well as a piece on Breakfast, to follow) and Business Week. Not a bad national haul for the story.
The trade titles - Marketing Week, Brand Republic, New Media Age, and Design Week - all picked up the story, an important part of establishing Superbrands as a credible membership organisation and restoring its reputation amongst the industry.
As you would rather hope from an agency that used to work on the likes of eBay and still works for Hotels.com and LYCOS, the obvious technology story was not to be neglected, scoring coverage across BizReport. Women in Technology, Web User, IT Pro, PCAdvisor, ZDNet, MacWorld, Silicon, Digital Lifestyles and Digital Trends.
The next task is sorting out the sector-stories and hitting the main trade titles across the markets that the report focusses on - which means that there should be plenty more to come ...
Hotels.com has been having a week in the news with our work that showed conclusively that London cabs ARE the best in the world.
The background to the story was the brand insight (Lambie Nairn's, not ours), that your holiday starts at the very moment that you start booking it - actually, at the moment that you start discussing and researching it.
So, when we discovered that taxis are the most popular form of transport for leisure and business travellers from airport to hotel (and when getting around town on holiday), the fit seemed a natural one.
Surveying a sample of over 3,000 international travellers established that London's very own black cabs are the finest in the world has led to blanket coverage for the brand - most important, with all the key messages included.
Pieces included Channel 4 News, the Daily Express, Daily Telegraph, Daily Star, Metro, Evening Standard, The Scotsman, theLondonPaper, GMTV (piece to follow), MSN, Yahoo!, The Irish Examiner.
Seventy Seven: Hotels.com on GMTV from Seventy Seven PR on Vimeo.
Regionals including Liverpool Daily Post, Liverpool Echo, Wales Daily Post, Newcastle Chronicle, Newcastle Journal, Sheffield Star, Yorkshire Evening Post and the Northumberland Gazette, the ThisIs ... network, and the icNetwork (including Liverpool, Newcastle, Scotland, Wales and Coventry). Also on ViewLondon, New Yorker in London and Travel Weekly.
With more to follow with the Hotels.com Hotel Price Index due for release in mid-March, it's been a busy month in the world of hotels.
We haven't been able to tell anyone until today ... that Seventy Seven has won the much-coveted Hamleys PR account. Needless to say, we're absolutely cock-a-hoop about the news (which also appears in PR Week today).
Working across their brand PR, product media relations and running a press office for them, we're really looking forward to getting stuck into the work - which we've already been doing behind the scenes pushing their Easter range of plush.
Coming on the back of wins including Fat Face and Stanley Casinos, along with past experience on eBay (not to mention our team having worked on M&S, Waterstone's and others), the Hamley's win firmly cements our retail offer and forms a cracking base from which to continue to grow.
Lovely work from the whole pitch team - and a great opportunity to work with the lovely Charlotte Chisnall, who used to freelance with us and now heads-up the store's PR.
No, not Nicki Akers (although she can take the credit for this particular tale of Seventy Seven PR-ing) ... the Southend Echo.
Charged with making Genting Stanley's Maxim's Casino "big in Southend," we worked with newly appointed consultant chef, Jean Christophe Novelli to create the perfect Valentine's Day meal for locals.
The first coverage to come out after the big night is this front-page belter featuring our JC and mention of Maxim's writ-large in the piece.
And what's more, there will be further coverage to follow, with a feature in the Southend Echo hot on the heels of this news piece and a feature on the changing face of the modern casino in the Evening Standard.
Nice work, the Stanley team and Nicki in particular.
Seventy Seven has worked with the RSPCA's Good Business Awards for the past three years now. They seek to promote ethical treatment of animals in the health and beauty, fashion, grocery and restaurant industries.
Year-by-year, the awards have been growing in their popularity - more, better entrants and more, better coverage for the issues that the awards raise.
As a spin-off from our work on the awards, this week has seen us working with the RSPCA and designers Wildlife Works to promote a brand new dress (detail above, with RSPCA paw-print logo) created especially for the charity.
So far, some great coverage for the dress amidst the hurly burly of London Fashion week. Vogue.com, The Guardian, The Daily Mail, theLondonPaper, Drapers, New Consumer, GreenGuide and SmartPlanet have run pieces and pics - all of them mentioning the RSPCA link.
Lovely work from Amanda and Amy securing some great coverage for a very happy client.
Seventy Seven's very own Michelle Saxby features in this week's PR Week (again) comenting on Saga Magazine and offering some insider tips on how PRs can score coverage in the magazine.
She came up with some belting quotes while delivering her usual media insight ... read all about it here (if you have a subscription to the website, that is).
Our favourite ... "I thought it would be all health remedies for knee problems but it's not like that ...".
A mention for "honourable services to generating stunning coverage" goes to the Daily Mail Ideal Home Show team - the second in the space of a week.
Celebrating the centenary of the Show, the team came up with the stunningly simple (but beautifully effective) idea of putting out a list (with pics) of the predictions that were made fifty years ago. Cue reports of gamma-ray preserved food, everyone wearing space suits and infra-red grills.
And the coverage has rolled in nicely. The Daily Mail (who rarely give coverage to the Show, believe it or not) put together a full-page piece, as did Metro. The Glasgow Herald and The Scotsman also delivered stunners. Oh, and the story is also up on Mirror.co.uk and Female First.
Apparently, there's more to come ... but it would be fair to stay the coverage has been pretty pleasing so far ...
PR Week online has popped up a story on our Rupert Bear win. And a jolly nice piece it is too - it even made the lead story on their homepage.
The piece is here.
However, given that they don't let you read the article unless you have a paid-subscription, we have taken out the edited highlights below (we hope they won't mind) ...
Rupert Bear to be kids' green ambassador
12 February 2008Rupert Bear is to become an environmental ambassador for pre-school children, as part of a PR campaign devised by licensing company Entertainment Rights.
"There is currently no pre-school brand championing environmental issues in the UK and we plan to make Rupert Bear an eco ambassador, firmly planting green matters on the radar of families and preschoolers," said head of group communications Simon Avis.
Seventy Seven PR has been hired to spearhead the activity, after a four-way pitch involving Launch Group, Mantra PR, Noble PR.
Avis added that activity will include working with charity the Woodland Trust to support its "Ancient Tree initiative". Entertainment Rights is also in talks with a number of public sector organisations about eco awareness campaigns.
Nice ...
From self-cleaning kitchens to egg boiling machines - inventions of all shapes and sizes have been flooding into Seventy Seven over the past two weeks. This follows the launch of our "Innovation Nation" competition for the Ideal Home Show.
The centenary Ideal Home Show opens its doors on 14th March, and, to celebrate 100 years of home innovation, we joined forces with TV scientist and invention enthusiast Adam Hart-Davis to launch "Innovation Nation," a nationwide search for the home invention of the year.
We are challenging people of all ages and abilities to come up with ingenious solutions to everyday household frustrations or bug-bears - the more off-the-wall the better, as far as we are concerned. Ten lucky finalists will have their designs at the Show. The shortlist will be voted on by visitors (both those who go to the Show and its website) with the winner receiving a £2,000 cash prize.
Launch day for the campaign started bright and early at Radio 4's Today Programme, where Adam lightened the mood in the studio with tales of home inventions in between news stories of economic recession and road accidents ... who said PR stories aren't an essential part of the news agenda ...?
By midday we were back in central London where Adam completed over 15 regional radio interviews for us including BBC Bristol, BBC Kent. He rounded off with a pre-rec for BBC Radio Five Live Drivetime.
For the afternoon perfomrnace, we headed back to Seventy Seven in Kingsway where Adam enlightened PA multimedia about our home invention search, and even demonstrated a few of his favourite home inventions.
Leaving the best to last, the team raced back to BBC TV centre where our launch day was completed with a slot on BBC's The One Show. Adam did a great job of not allowing Carole Vorderman to steal the limelight by sporting a day glow stripy jumper and giving viewers an entertaining run down of his favourite inventions of all time.
Our home invention search to date has been a great success - as a result of all the coverage, entries have been flooding in by the truckload. We have even had a call from "inventorLink" who have said they will support our winner for a year, and give them the guidance and assistance needed to successfully launch their invention.
For all those who still want to enter Innovation Nation, you still have time! Entries are open until February 8th - just go to www.idealhomeshow.co.uk for details.
You will next hear from us when our highly acclaimed panel of judges have chosen our ten finalists - all of which will be displayed at the Show in March. Watch this space for more ...
One of our most recent new clients, Wolff Olins, has just got a stunning piece in Creative Review magazine, leading journal of all things creative, graphic and branding.
While there is a full-on four-page profile belter of the business in the magazine, they have also (rather thoughtfully) popped the piece up for anyone to read on the CRBlog. Have a read as the journalist who went in to see them had some pre-conceptions challenged ...
We've just launched a new campaign for the Ideal Home Show - Innovation Nation - of which more soon.
Inventor and broadcaster, Adam Hart-Davies has popped out a story saying how impressed he was with the approach that we took to investors' intellectual property rights when running these sorts of competitions, which was nice of him.
It was picked by Creative Match, the creative industry's favourite portal.
We heard today that we have won Rupert Bear. What a cracking way to end the year ... we're more pleased than we can say. Coming on the back of a new business run that includes Kinder Kids, Stanley Casinos, SuperBrands, Sing Up and Fat Face, it's brilliant news.
Just to mention that the Superbrands win was covered in PR Week (subscription only) for those who might be interested in a scoot through the news of the day.
And finally in a trio of PR Week stories - they seem to have gone to town on Seventy Seven in their first issue of the year - is a report on our Kinder win.
For those who are interested in a quick read (and have the password required to read stories on their website, of course), the piece is here ...
Amanda Mills appears in PR Week commenting on how to get into grown-up women's title, Psychologies. Well worth a read for her advice on cracking a magazine that stands-alone in the market for its focus on issues rather than pure celebrity and gossip.
Alan's predictions for 2008 appear in PR Week today. Apparently, the economy is going to cause agency discounting.
However, far more siginificant, Gordon Brown will be forced to make a Northern Rock-style rescue bid for GMTV when it is threatened by insolvency. He will find, though, that he is let down in his efforts by presenter, Fiona Philips, who will shift her allegiances to the Tories over the small matter of a corporate identity.
She will be seduced (according to Alan) by "that nice blue that they use, so much more flattering than Labour red, it can be so harsh and unflattering in these dark winter months".
Since we have picked up the PR for Superbrands - the membership organisation for the world's top brands - we thought that we would pop up a piece or two on our own favourites. We'll likely pop these up on a roughly monthly basis.
First up, Michelle tells us why she loves ... Chanel ...
Chanel is the timeless, stylish, classic brand and my absolute favourite. I think this is largely due to seeing my older sister with Chanel products when I was younger - I was desperate to get my hands on the items in the shiny black packaging.
And that's the point: it has such heritage that you can always rely on its judgement, if it’s by Chanel, then it is defacto stylish.
I can never imagine a time when Chanel is considered anything other than the very best. Chanel No 5, the quilted fabric, the boxy suits – it’s the stuff of pure, unadulterated class. From cosmetics to sunglasses and handbags to perfumes, I want it all.
Chanel No 5 has been the hero product since 1921 and it is probably the most famous perfume in the world. The "film" advert, starring Nicole Kidman as the most famous woman in the world, has all the glamour of a Hollywood blockbuster and was considered a creative first when it was first screened in 2004.
There was a media frenzy, journalists were invited to a secret screening and even had to sign a confidentiality agreement. The first TV showing was billed in TV listings as a "premiere" and at the time it was also one of the most expensive adverts ever made.
In 1954 Marilyn Monroe famously said she wore only "a few drops of Chanel No 5" to bed which has to be the best celebrity endorsement there has ever been. It also established their connection with Hollywood glamour which has endured ever since.
I love the new Coco Mademoiselle website too – it takes you on a tour of the apartment used in the Keira Knightly advert where she appears as Coco herself. You hover over objects in Coco Chanel’s apartment and get an explanation for each item. It’s a nice example of a classic brand appealing to a younger, net-savvy audience.
This Christmas I gave my younger sister her first Chanel item – the compact mirror complete with velvet pouch. I wonder if I will have started an addiction as powerful as mine?
January brought with it the distant sound of wedding bells this New Year, as belle of the ball Amy Freeman returned from the Christmas break betrothed.
Hats off to boyfriend Julian, who managed to combine a surprise birthday trip to Brussels with a romantic proposal in the festive setting of the Grand Place. Lucky for him, who popped the question on bended knee, Amy was, of course, delighted to accept.
But it didn’t stop there - he then whisked the lucky lady off to Antwerp, diamond capital of Europe, to pick her dream ring. The news was met with much whooping and hollering in the office. With plans shaping up for a 2009 wedding, it’s congratulations and best wishes to Amy from all at Seventy Seven ...
We have just heard that we've been appointed to handle the PR for leading brands organisation, Superbrands.
The team - made up of Alan, Gareth and Nicki - will be supporting the launches of the next two league tables (and books) for Business Superbrands and Consumer Superbrands over the course of the next six months or so.
A great win for the agency and - alongside work for Wolff Olins and our sister-agency, PHD - another media and marketing sector brand to add to the roster.
We're just delighted and looking forward to working with them.
Prompted by the win, we thought that we would pop up a piece or two on our own favourites. We'll likely pop these up on a roughly monthly basis. First up, Michelle tells us why she loves ... Chanel ... here.
While the rest of the world appears to be enjoying a well-earned break, Seventy Seven has knocked in another win ... this one from Visit Scotland. The PR will support a new burst of advertising and will promote Scotland as an adventure destination. Fantastic stuff.
It was Christmas cheer across the Fishburn Hedges Group today as kids young and old have been up to all manner of festive high jinx. Happy Crimbo, all ...
Archie Twigg joined us in the agency this afternoon.
What a sweetie - and nice to see that he was getting stuck into his dad's work while Alan ponced off to drink booze and have fun at the FH Group Christmas do ... of which more (and pictures, if you're lucky) in the morning ...
We heard today (well, Alan heard today, in truth), that we have been appointed as Wolff Olins' retained PR agency.
Fantastic news - we'll be supporting one of the the world's best and most controversial branding and design agencies to build their reputation as global thought-leaders through media relations.
For those who don't already know them, in their own words ...
Wolff Olins is the world’s most influential brand business. We have 180 people in London and New York. We started in 1965, and we’re now part of Omnicom. In a world of caution and conservatism, we’re ambitious for clients. In a time of anxiety and cynicism, we’re optimistic for the world.
A great client win ... we're delighted, as you can imagine.
Amy, one of our fine consultants, works with our chums at Fishburn Hedges on Hiscox - the high net worth insurance business.
Now we all want to work with them ... because they sent the team these lovely cakes ... yum!
Thank you Hiscox - we didn't get to eat them, but they looked good in the office for a bit! And there are a few more of us who would be delighted to be doing your PR.
1. Cracking photo this - probably my favourite of the year. It's for Guinness World Records Day and features Bobo and Gibson. Part of a cracking PR campaign for them - of which more here.
2. The Atomic Bonsai. Just a tenner from Magma bookstore - probably the finest small store in London. I've never managed to keep plants alive. This one doesn't have the same issues.
3. The nice people at ad agency, SHOP, came up with Glowbs. Their very own environmentally friendly lightbulb, the packaging is splendid and - when you've finished with the bulb - they will replace it for you by post.
4. The innocent hats are so terribly cute, really, aren't they? They also happen to fit perfectly on the heads of Baby Qee - Hong Kong vinyl toys that no self-respecting urban male should be without.
5. Muji pens. For some reason, it's now got to the stage that I won't write with anything other than the 0.38 black Muji pen. Some may call it OCD. I would be inclined to agree.
6. LYCOS mouse mat ... it's such a shame that brands don't make nearly so many mouse mats as they used to. A fad that has passed, it would appear.
7. The champagne bucket that contains my pom-poms and a hat. Seventy Seven is such a nice agency that we give gifts for those who win pitches ... champagne was one of the highlights. Singing animals, a desk hoover and a Postman Pat drinking mug have also brightened our days.
8. And finally ... a plug. The most excellent "Advertising is Dead, Long Live Advertising" is well worth a read. Inspiration for tired minds looking for fresh ideas and a sideways take on the world of brand marketing.
The merry band that is the Stanley Casinos team have had a busy week of it this week. With the launch of Maxims in Southend on Thursday and then the launch of Circus in Liverpool on Saturday, it's been a bit hectic.
Coverage came across local print, radio and TV - including an interview on the local BBC news programmes in both towns. The team were also to be found shepherding a somewhat worse-for-wear Johnny Vegas (who was reckoned to be drunk by 6.15 pm and managed to get a "s*!t" and a "f&*k" into his speech) around Liverpool.
All the fun of the fair ... and a week's work for the agency.
"Always up for a decent lunch" ... if ever Seventy Seven dies, that would work as a collective epitaph, we figured.
How appropriate, then, that Amy Freeman should find herself the latest contributor to PR Week's "Let's Meet At ..." restaurant review column.
Now, Amy has some serious form on the food front, having worked in the past for Perrier and San Pelligrino (Nestle Waters' on-trade brands), she knows a thing or two about the business.
Her endorsement will no doubt be the latest feather in the restaunrant's cap. Who needs a positive write-up from AA Gill when you have Amy on your side?
32 Great Queen Street has become something of a local favourite for the folks in the agency. At risk of sharing a good thing, the only thing that we can offer by way of further assistance is a link to a map. The eatery only just got a sign painted, so it's a bit tough to find.
The Hotels.com team has found itself in Berlin for the annual European all-agency planning session.
A bloody cold couple of days saw us work our way through plans for the existing eight-country programme (we work across UK and Ireland, Germany, Switzerland and Austria, France and Spain and Portugal at present). We also agreed that we'd be joined by agencies across the Scandics this time next year, so exciting times there too.
The planning and presentations were supplemented by plenty of time to hang out with our colleagues and counterparts from across the network that we manage for the brand. So a really good mix of work and play for us as a team ... And the promise of Paris next year.
The thrills and spills of the Fishburn Hedges Group Christmas client party.
This year, the lovely backdrop that is Somerset House was the setting for an evening thoroughly enjoyed by all concerned.
By all accounts, the evening saw over 500 guests who (with our support), drank 228 bottles of champagne and 300 bottles of wine. A boozy-do all round, then.
PR Week on our latest campaign win (and launch) ...
Fun times in Seventy Seven this week as we launched "Sing Up," a brand new campaign to ensure that every primary school child in England gets the chance to sing in a group every day. A really great campaign to be involved with - especially working alongside our parent agency, AMV, on an integrated campaign.
The launch has been of Sing Up, which is an umbrella campaign supported with money from the Departments of Children, Schools and the Family and of Culture Media and Sport.
So it was that a joint-announcement of our campaign, alongside financial commitments for music instruments and teaching was made - with Seventy Seven apparently the co-organisers.
With all of the messages and campaigns to launch, we were delighted with the coverage. Bringing in diminutive pop princess, Jamelia and using singing ambassador (and composer), Howard Goodall, meant that we stormed the broadcast media.
Kicking off with BBC Breakfast and BBC Radio Five Live, we rolled into interviews with IRN, SKY Radio news, five lunchtime news and most of the major regionals down-the-line. The BBC broadcast pieces were followed by pieces online - hitting both the education news and Newsround newspages.
Morning and lunchtime news out of the way, the Sing Up bus set off with around 50 singing kids (who have benefitted from Sing Up money already). The bus crawled through London's streets, belting out tunes and raising awareness of the campaign as it went.
Singing bus on the road, we headed off for the highlight of the day - three schools being brought together at a photocall with teachers and pupils of three schools down in Lambeth. The performance was for Jamelia, Howard and two ministers.
So it was that (with Radio 1, PA multimedia, BBC Radio London, Teacher's TV, Rex Pictures, Alpha, UPPA and assorted others in attendance), that ministers Ed Balls, Andrew Adonis, Jamelia and Howard were to be found singing and dancing in a school hall in Kennington. If you wanted to see the fun and games in full technicolor, the Music Manifesto filmed the whole shebang here and here. Oh, and there are pictures here.
As you would hope, more coverage national and regional pieces were the result.
Print coverage came across the board with The Times going big on the story, pieces in the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph (twice) The Guardian, thelondonpaper, London Lite and the Daily Star, amongst others. So far, regional media has been coming in for the campaign: pieces in the Yorkshire Post, Newcastle Chronicle, Birmingham Post have already rolled in.
So far, the launch has been counted a huge success. Next up will be a focus on the education titles (building on pieces in the TES, Independent Education and Guardian Education) reaching teachers with the Sing Up message. Watch out for a podcast with The Guardian EducationUnlimited in a couple of weeks ...
Our humble sister-blog, Spinning Around, has been garnering all manner of nice comment from around the world. With pieces about it in Slovakia, Germany, and the Netherlands. Even the ever-so nice Neil MacIntosh over at GuardianUnlimited likes us, it seems.
Alan has been at it again ... getting himself into the pages of PR Week. This time commenting on the career of frank founder Graham Goodkind.
Seventy Seven PR director Alan Twigg says Goodkind is genuinely creative, with "youthful naughtiness". He adds: "The biggest thing is his hunger. The whole agency lives off it."
Or at least he said something like that. Read more here.
Seventy Seven's fifth win in as many weeks ... and one of the biggest and best yet, though we do say so ourselves. Stanley Casinos - which operates over 40 venues across the country under the Mint, Circus and Maxim brands - has appointed us as their consumer agency for their regional attractions.
We're no sooner on-board than we have two new casinos to launch for the business - one in Southend and another in Liverpool - before Christmas. Another fantastic brand to be working with and lovely to have a leisure and venues business on the books.
