No, we did not. An omission there.
Anyway, cracking news as we've found out that we are once again up for a wee package of awards as the 2011 season finally starts to win itself down.
First (and most pressingly), we're up for Best Travel Campaign at the Blades for our holiday autos work. Particularly gratifying because these awards are judged solely on creativity and against the best campaigns from across the whole marketing world. Amazing.
Meantime, our social media work has seen us right at the Dadis with shortlisted work for holiday autos again and for mflow.
So now we're just waiting on the Social Buzz awards and the MiAwards ... oh, and the PRCA Awards are announced later this month, so we shall see how we fare there too ...
Nice work to both and all the teams involved ...
Dr. Strangeglove is the latest Moshi Monster to hit the Simon Growl school of talent management (following Lady Goo Goo's now 2.2 million view hit and the infamous "Moshi Moshi Moshi") and has come up with this little gem. Viral number three from the House of Moshi ...!
Great news (as reported by PR Week and BrandRepublic, no less) that we've bagged the Showroom Prive UK launch account.
For those who don't know it, Showroom Prive is a hot-as-hell European (French-based) online fashion sales site which has pioneered (alongside the likes of Vente Prive, Gilt, Cocosa and a handful of others), designer fire-sales.
Or, as PR Week puts it ...
"Showroom Privé is one of Europe’s largest private member e-commerce websites, selling heavily discounted designer fashion and homewares to members across Europe. In August last year Accel Partners, the Silicon-valley based venture capital fund, invested €37m into the brand."
Each day, you get an email listing the sales of the day.
The sales start at a specific time.
When it's gone ... it's gone. Or the sale comes to an end after a day or three.
It's going to be big.
And we are really looking forward to creating a media relations and social media programme for them here in the UK to see if we can't get British fashionistas (or recessionistas, as the case may be) turned on to the concept and to Showroom Prive especially.
They are currently growing at a rate of over 200,000 new users per month. We plan to contribute to growing that number.
Nice work indeed from Chris, James, Claire and others to bring the account home.
Finally back from holiday and it felt like a good day (while things are peaceful) to pop together a Peroni "Masters of Style" exhibition showreel ... So here it is ...
Couple of sweet pieces (from Crane and Telegraph Fashion) that show off our work with Peroni on the "Masters of Style" exhibition in a lot (if not all) of its glory ...
The office has been transformed into the greenest of gardens by our Nature Valley team, as they've created 50 miniature gardens to plant around London and green up the city on Wednesday 13th July.
This burst of horticultural creativity is the culmination of Nature Valley's 'Gardens to Go' campaign, which saw hundreds of Facebook fans designing their ultimate gardens - the best of which have now been created in miniature, to be given away during the Nature Valley Treasure Hunt on 13th July.
Here's Imogen, Fi, Lexi and Aimee with one of the amazing Nature Valley tube signs, created by designer Anna Garforth - perhaps hinting to one of the secret garden locations...
Join in the Nature Valley Treasure Hunt on Twitter by following @NatureValleyUK and keeping an eye on #grabagarden.
Some snaps from our Peroni Nastro Azzurro Masters of Style launch night ...
There are going to be a host of posts on our latest work with the lovely folk of Peroni (isn't it always the way?!).
But first up, we simply thought that we would recommend that at some stage you head yourselves down to take a good look at a quite remarkable exhibition of Italian Style.
And we thought that we should say that it was all made by us. Well, mostly. We worked with Peroni (our lovely client), Somerset House and the legedary Colin McDowell to create "Masters of Style," a 90-image strong show that sets out to explore the many voices in Italian style.
Across six pavillions (beautifully designed by Carmody Groarke, who we commissioned to create the architecture of the show), Giorgio Armani, Dolce & Gabbana, Salvatore Ferragamo, Gucci, Missoni and Prada personally chose their favourite 15 shots from their archives.
Remarkable first of all that they would even think of working with us and with Peroni. Even more amazing that they were willing to work with each other.
Anyway, we managed to talk Somerset House - the home of British fashion - into hosting the event. They really liked it. Which was good news indeed.
From there, we've managed to sign off and approve over 90 images with over 60 photographers (including Testino, Mert & Marcus, Meisel, Fallai, Klein and heaps of others besides) and something in the region of 180 models and other hangers-on.
We also managed to write copy for each and every image, researching, co-writing, proofing, cleaning up and generally make gorgeous the captions. We then went on to get personal statements from each of the designers about the pictures and their approach more generally.
Oh. And then we made a book. And a film.
Of course, we also did some media relations. But more of that anon (it's been good and there's more).
Anyway, to launch the exhibition, we held the private view media day on 30 June followed by one of the capital's hot ticket events with over 450 people through the doors and most of the world's top arts and fashion media all along for the ride.
Amazing work.
Hats off to Alex, Rach, James, Georgia, Emily, Lexi, Chery and Georgia.
Here are just some of the images that appear in the show ...
As part of an ongoing partnership between Sony and UNICEF, the annual EYE SEE photography project for children was held this year in Mali, under the expert guidance of UNICEF photographer Giacomo Pirozzi.
We were asked to raise awareness of the project and were really pleased to secure some great galleries of the children’s photos on Guardian.co.uk Global Development, Telegraph.co.uk, PhotographyBlog.com and ThirdSector.co.uk. All these sites also featured the pictures on their home pages, attracting maximum exposure for the project.
To give a bit of background detail, EYE SEE is an informal education project for vulnerable children in the developing world, allowing them to express themselves and have fun with photography. Provided with Sony cameras and laptop computers, the group of 20 Malian children worked with Pirozzi to create an amazing collection of photographs, depicting their lives – from the extremes of poverty and child labour to family and friendship.
Our coverage ran on 16th June, to coincide with the Day of the African Child. Throughout the day, the campaign was supported across Twitter and Facebook, where we targeted key development, news and photography influencers to direct traffic to the official gallery and video content, hosted on Sony’s website and YouTube channels.
Click here for more information on EYE SEE and to view the photos.
Click here to view the EYE SEE video.
Georgia and Lexi have been treading the highways and by-ways of the country of late as we hooked up with the lovely folk of Esquire Magazine to help their search for Britain's Best Dressed Real Man.
So it has been that, for what feels like weeks, team Peroni has been touring the UK in the hunt for the nation's most stylish men.
We've scoured the streets in search of dapper men by hosting a series of special style events in Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow, Edinburgh and London.
In each of the cities, guests were treated to complimentary Peroni Nastro Azzuro from the Peroni Pop-Up Bar - served by the gorgeous Peroni girls.
Photographers were on hand to snap the best dressed men and a host of regional media attended the event, securing coverage in the party pages for the brand that is our charge ...
This is the first of what will in the end be several posts about The Balvenie.
We've been reasonably quiet about this campaign on the blog to date. But basically, it's been a massive integrated piece of work that we created with the whisky makers and have worked on tirelessly with their team for the last six or nine months.
More of that shortly.
In summary ... we've worked editorially with the Daily Telegraph to find the country's best exponents of handcrafts - whether in stone, textiles, wood and six other materials. As part of the work, we sent Nick, our photographer, across the country to shoot our shortlisted craftspeople and our eventual winners.
Here are some of the finest shots ...
Bit of an update on the awards that we’ve been up to of late.
Regular followers might know that we’ve been to The Drum Awards and then onto the Marketing Week Engage Awards. We’ve been touting our Jersey Tourism, mflow and Holiday Autos campaigns around the place.
To be perfectly honest, it’s been a bit of a fallow patch for those pieces of work in all honesty. We bagged a Highly Commended at The Drum Marketing Awards for best launch strategy, which was nice. But that’s been it of late ...
... Except it isn’t. Our (a combination team from Brew and Seventy Seven Social) work for SONY Europe has scooped up a gong greater than either of those.
The SONY Open Planet Ideas work that we’ve been doing (alongside a bunch of other nice piece, we can only lay claim to the social media and online work) bagged the Communicating Sustainability at the Guardian Sustainable Business Awards.
Amazing work from the team of Chris, Naomi, Russ, Kevin and Dan, all of whom have been working hard on the campaign for the last nine months or so. There’ll be a case study on its way shortly with a bit of an update on what the work has involved.
Meantime, we’re now also up for the Corp Comms Digi Awards and nma Effectiveness Awards with Holiday Autos and for the CIPR Awards with the Jersey work. So we’ll see how that goes shortly.
We, like most of the UK's PR industry, have been having fun doing our very own spot of Royal wedding crashing.
lastminute.com has been leading the way (with more to come tomorrow, we hope and weather allowing).
But SPAR got in on the act as Kate's local store became the star of the show in this clip-ette from today's This Morning.
Hats off to the team of Nicki and Aimee who sorted it all out. GORGEOUS.
Following a stunning performance at the Travel Marketing Awards two weeks ago, team Seventy Seven (with Abi picking up the mantle of representing FH) were out in their glad rags once again last night for the Marketing magazine Revolution Awards.
To say it was a good night would be an understatement.
We're now the proud holders of three awards … for Best Travel & Leisure Campaign (Holiday Autos), for Best Consumer Electronics Campaign (Nintendo) and for Best Viral Campaign (Nintendo). We were also highly commended in the Best Use of Online PR campaign (for Nintendo again).
That means we picked something up in all four categories for which we were shortlisted and, for the only PR agency/Group on the lists, that’s a pretty stunning achievement, we think.
Amazing work from all of the people who were involved in these crackers. They include Abi, Simon M, Jason, Alan, Lucy, Alice, James G, Rach M, me (and Lambo back in the day) on Nintendo teams past and present and Alex K, Alice, Jo C, Lex, Aimee, Chris, Naomi and me on Holiday Autos.
An amazing result and a fantastic recognition of the teams who delivered these stand-out pieces of work for the clients we’re really incredibly proud of. Thank you.
Get. It. In.
We're working with Moshi Monsters.
Publicists to the hottest bunch of monsters on the interweb, that's us.
As will no doubt find its way around the industry before too long, news is out that we have picked up a PR brief for Mind Candy and Moshi Monsters, the 38 million-strong social network for kids.
This is a great win for us and we're going to be working with them on a massive range of stuff, from kids tea parties in Shoreditch to an event or two at Hamleys to promotion of some of their new product lines, alongside promotion of the brand and the online presence itself.
Credit for this one goes to James, Alice and Cheryl, who brought this little baby home.
We are chuffed to bits that we’ve picked up lots of new work from US homewares giant Jarden – we’re going to be putting together a media programme for their Villaware brand, their Crockpot range and their Bionaire products.
As was reported in PR Week, as it goes ...
Really exciting and fun stuff, we hope, with a bunch of new work rolling out over the course of the next year or so – including (as you might expect in homewares), lots of social media outreach to the foodie and mummy bloggers, as well as to some new and slightly more unexpected places.
Alongside that, we'll be hitting the media with a host of product placement activity and some hard-working press office work to make sure that their products are being talked about and seen about all the right places
We’re also taking on the management of their social media channels and the plans are to turn Villaware into a “food blogger” of sorts … making sure that we’re out there and engaging with all that it is being chatted about online when it comes to food.
Amazing work from all concerned … who include Alan, Jenna, Izzy, Kevin, Chris, Naomi and Aimee.
We’ve just wrapped up our first social media campaign for Peroni Nastro Azzurro, helping to support an exhibition series (The Peroni Collection: Italian Style on the Silver Screen) through social media. The work has been pretty straightforward stuff, however, we did manage to bag some bells and whistles that really brought the whole thing to life.
Anyway, the shows went on display in Edinburgh during February and the series finally wrapped up in Bristol during early-April.
Our activity included creating a new landing tab for the PeroniUK Facebook page that gave information about the exhibition and telling people all about the shows in their local areas. We also then created a series of Events pages that we could use for outreach.
That included approaching culture, film and fashion Facebook groups across the social networking site to share information about the shows and to get them to highlight links to the events on their walls (as well as to come along of course).
Alongside out outreach programme, we also ensured that Peroni’s Facebook page and Twitter stream were kept regularly up-to-date with event information, reminders, sample pictures from the shows and photography of people attending the exhibitions’ opening nights.
We also went on to create a Facebook Gallery App for the images from the show, basically taking the exhibition catalogue social, so that the event could live beyond the event and so that people coming to the page could get a premium sense of its content. Alongside these elements, we created a short video of our London show featuring an interview with curator Anna Battista.
Just to cap things off, we convinced Vogue UK to create a Facebook gallery showing our exhibition images and to link through to our landing tab to drive awareness. We also offered them 20 images that their Facebook fans could comment on to win from Peroni. This piece of activity alone generated 100,000 impacts across Facebook and was shared by over 350 people.
All in, the eight weeks’ activity deliver 150,000 post views for PeroniUK, 303 pieces of feedback over the campaign period (an increase of 339% for Peroni). We secured over 23,419 active visitors on the Peroni page and the campaign as a whole has been one of the most effective the brand has ever undertaken in social media.
Glad rags on once again as we're off to the CIPR Excellence Awards 2011.
Our work with Jersey Tourism (appropriately - see the post below) has been shortlisted as the best Consumer Relations Campaign and the Best Media Relations Campaign by the fine folk of the CIPR.
DJs dusted down and cocktail dresses prepared to swish, we shall see folk there ...
Good news from last week as we heard that both Jersey Tourism and Holiday Autos (hot off the back of winning at the CIM's Travel Marketing Awards) have both been nominated for the Marketing Week Engage Awards.
We're up for "Best PR Campaign" and for "Best Travel and Leisure Campaign".
It's a bit of a bloody long wait to hear whether either have triumphed (and looking at the list of agencies and brands that are up for awards the competition for this one is bloody stiff). But our fingers are crossed nevertheless.
More fun and games with the wacky world of Farmville ...
That's nice work ... the School of Comedy (Seventy Seven Salon's first client) featured on today's BBC LDN Breakfast Show with JoAnne Good and Simon Lederman ...
As of last night, the Chartered Institute of Marketing is lighter two GCSE Craft, Design and Technology-quality lumps of blue Perspex and those very items now adorn our awards shelf.
The reason behind this liberation lies in the fact that the Jersey Tourism and Holiday Autos teams were both victorious in the CIM Awards last night as Seventy Seven scooped three silvers and two category wins – a great haul for our night out.
The Jersey Tourism “Put Jersey on the (weather) map” campaign bagged Best Travel PR Campaign (with Holiday Autos picking up a silver and runner-up award in the same category).
However, team Holiday Autos went one better with their “Comedy Road Trip” in the Best Social Media Campaign and bagged a win for the combined Seventy Seven and Brew team.
Congrats go to Alex K and Alice (who worked on both campaigns), Aimee (who can take the lion’s share of the plaudits for making the Road Trip happen), Sarah Edwards, Jo Carr, Chris, Naomi, me and Anthony (who picks up a gong for “best editing” on HA).
News today (as hinted at here) of our most recent development in Seventy Seven ... Seventy Seven Salon ...
The idea of Seventy Seven Salon is that we will all get to work on some smaller clients that might not be able to afford our services as an agency, but which have a great story to tell and which, we think, we can help to become big enough to be able to retain us full-time (however modestly).
As this piece says ...
Seventy Seven Salon is designed to take on projects for small brands across a range of sectors and offer them senior counsel and media relations support for launches and new products or services.
First client for us on this front has been the lovely people at the School of Comedy ... the after-school comedy clubs so good that they gave it its own Channel 4 show (which is re-running from this week, if you're interested).
We've also agreed to support a brand-spanking new menswear show called "...matter" which there will be more news on in the not-too-distant future we can assure you ...
The idea of the Salon is that it'll take us into some interesting new areas (where we have skills and contacts but not clients), it'll mean that we can do some work that might not be commercially sensible but which gives us some real fulfilment and a chance to make a difference ... and it gives some of the younger members of the team the chance to learn and grow their skills.
All in all, we think that it's a good thing and we're looking forward to making sure that it continues to develop and flourish ...
Another quick mention for some Facebook-related work that we've been up to here in Seventy Seven and in Seventy Seven Social.
For the past eighteen months or so we've been running social media for lastminute.com-owned car hire brand, Holiday Autos.
We took them on a Comedy Road Trip last year and we launched their Twitter channel - in the process setting up internally to populate it, make sure that deals were being posted, creating engagement tweets, working with their customer service team to sort out issues and doing a fair amount of out-reach.
Lots of fun.
Well now we've launched their Facebook page.
This is all very much phase one at the moment - a basic page, content calendar set up and ready to go, that sort of stuff. A week in and we're chuffed that we've hit the 100 fans mark and seem to be heading north of that at a reasonable old pace.
To follow we have an app that we've been developing and a load more campaign-based activity. So far, it's all going respectably well. Check it out, Like it and see what we've got up our sleeves for it as we enter phase two of its launch next week ...
Looks like we might be the proud bearers of yet more hangovers in Seventy Seven.
Hot on the heels of our nominations for the CIM Travel Marketing Awards and the Revolution Awards has come news that we are up for a couple of awards categories at The Drum Marketing Awards.
Our work for mflow has been shortlisted for the Best Social Media Campaign and Best Launch Strategy categores. We have to be honest, the competition is stiff so we're not wildly condfident that we'll be carrying off all that much silverware (if indeed that is what is on offer).
But it's nice to be on the list.
Er ... there's something in the water around here at the moment.
Hot on the heels of the last little crop of wins (Nature Valley, Peroni Nastro Azzurro, Warner Leisure Hotels), we heard that we've been picked as the lead strategic and creative global PR agency for William Grant's iconic blended whisky, Grant's.
The amazing thing is that the brand is still owned - five generations on - by the same family business that started the distillery in the 1800s. The story goes that brothers Willian and Charles Grant were blender and global salesman for the brand that is now number four worldwide.
We're going to be working on their strategic positioning, helping them to develop a distinctive brand voice around the world with their True Tales activity. And we're going to be bringing some fresh creative ideas we hope. It'll be fun ...
We're growing at the moment ...!
As part of that growth, we've decided to take Lexi on as Seventy Seven’s latest trainee.
She joined the agency as an assistant in September 2010 and has since cut her teeth on accounts including Peroni Nastro Azzurro (helping to create our The Peroni Collection: Italian Style on the Silver Screen exhibition), lastminute.com, holiday autos and Nature Valley.
We made her a fully fledged trainee when she announced that her heart really did lie in PR and since then she has become an active member of the client teams, pitching and flogging along with the best of them. A tenacious media hound and a fearless project manager (and fixer), she’s a joy to have around the place!
Not the world's (or indeed the agency's) biggest social media campaign this, but a lovely one for Peroni as the team in Seventy Seven has been working with the good folk of Brew to take our latest experiential campaign onto Facebook.
We are doing the community management, content creation and creative for their page as we promote "The Peroni Collection: Italian Style on the Silver Screen".
And very proud of it so far we are too - with this lovely opener tab the product of work from across the team - a lovely piece of creative, we hope that you will agree. We're working on a stunning gallery tab to showcase some of the pictures and we're starting off a pretty major engagement piece to go alongside it.
BTW, there will be a load more news on the exhibition in the not-too-distant future once it all launches - the London event and official opening is in early-March and we will share some of the lovely coverage that is coming through at the same time!
We're not holding back this time: we're fucking chuffed to bits to be working with Peroni Nastro Azzurro, which is owned by SABMiller and is the UK's finest premium lager.
It was in PR Week and everything, so it must be true ...
Anyway, it turns out that we've emerged from their pitch process triumphant and are going to be working with them to deliver a stunning sequence of shows through next year to celebrate all that is stylish about Italy.
We're also sorting out the events sponsorship and sampling campaigns for 2011, which means that we're off to some top events - we're particularly chuffed with the Fashion Week line-up.
It's going to be something of a busy but altogether pleasurable old week, that one.
Big ups on this occasion go to the collective team of ... James, Alan, Rach, Alex and Lucy.
Honest, we’re not awards-obsessed around here, but we do like to recognise good work for brave clients who back our work.
So it is that it turns out that the most-shortlisted agency at the Revolution Awards 2011 happens to be the team from Seventy Seven. A real result and a massive testament to two particularly strong campaigns – in Holiday Autos Comedy Roadtrip and Nintendo’s Flipping Out with Aardman.
We’re amazingly proud not just of the work – which generated acres of online buzz – but also of the company that we are keeping in the shortlisted agencies. There are all the usual suspects, but we’re also up against the likes of Saint@RKCR/Y&R, SapientNitro, our parent at AMV BBDO, AKQA, you name them, they’re all there.
An amazing result and a fantastic recognition of the teams who delivered these stand-out pieces of work for the clients we’re really incredibly proud of.
Thanks, everyone.