Must Have PR
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The Schweppes team joined Hugo Burnand at The Royal Naval College for Daybreak’s Jubilee Jamboree this morning!
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Here at MHP Brand HQ we’re not just excited about the four day weekend but also about the Jubilee celebrations happening up and down the country! Here are our well-wishes to Her Majesty:
- Girv: Congratulations on this historic milestone Your Majesty!
- Pipage: Here’s to 60 years Ma’am! Hope you enjoy all the celebrations!
- Hutch: Our Liz, one classy lady, here’s to another decade of your cool calm and collected self and all those wonderful matching hat/dress combos
- Slates: While she reigns, we pour… lots of Pimms and lemonade! Looking forward to toasting you this weekend Ma’am – Congratulations!
- Hitch: Congratulations on 60 years and thanks for the extra day off, cheers Ma’am!
- Duffers: Congratulations on steering this country through 60 years and for giving us the perfect excuse for a celebration
- Shania Twain: Congratulations Ma’am, here’s to many more! And let’s not forget, happy birthday Coronation chicken – we salute you
- Alicat: Congratulations Ma’am, let’s all raise our glasses to a fantastic 60 years. And may there be many more to come!
And…if you’re in London this weekend, check out the nation’s messages to the Queen and the national anthem sing-a-long (midday on Sunday) displayed on the Coca-Cola sign at Piccadilly Circus, courtesy of Schweppes :-)
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With the Jubilee this weekend and the Olympics looming, it’s no surprise that, as with the Royal Wedding last year, brands everywhere are piggybacking on the sense of British pride with their own Jubilee or Union Jack themed products.
Here at MHP Brand HQ we have Union Jack tissues, loo roll, watches and Jubilee lemonade and mixers and that’s only four brands! Over the last few weeks I’ve seen Ma’amite, Union Jack dry shampoo, red white and blue false eyelashes “God save the Queen!” jam… the list is endless!
Will we tire of it? I don’t think so. Brits love an excuse to show how patriotic they are and this year we have two reasons to celebrate and don the red, white and blue! In my opinion the more the merrier, after all, these events don’t come around often. I will certainly be toasting the Queen with a gin and Schweppes limited edition Jubilee tonic in hand!
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As the sun shone across London yesterday, some of the Brandies were enjoying the company of some seriously cool tastemakers at an exclusive fashion event showcasing the latest in Timex watch design (our super-duper new client).
What made it so special for me personally was that I physically saw an objective come to life: we set out wanting to change the perception of Timex - perhaps a bit dusty and old-fashioned - amongst some of the most influential fashion bloggers in the UK. In front of my very eyes, I saw these uber-glam and uber-lovely bloggers bewitched by the stylish Timex pieces.
Asked to pick a favourite (tricky for a few of them as they loved so many!), stylist, photographer and Timex ambassador Jackie Dixon took them out onto the streets of central London to snap some street style photography, the results of which just epitomise cool and will be appearing on tumblr.
And our blogger guests with all their social media know-how were quick to tell everyone on Twitter, Facebook, their blogs, Tumblr….
So the word is out, Timex does style, in style!
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Today the Andrex team were thrilled to recieve a wonderful letter from the rather fabulous Joanna Lumley in response to a tactical send out of a new loo roll!
The power of relevance, engaging the right people at the right time, with the right product has never been so true, engaging Joanna, an eco warrior with the launch of the new Andrex Eco sustainable toilet tissue ‘thrilled her to bits’.
She writes we are ‘clever and wonderful to know how much she approves of this sensational product’ and needless to say the team and client think it is ‘Absolutely fabulous’ to have Joanna’s support!
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Tesco Mobile, one of the UK’s fastest growing mobile networks, has appointed Engine partners Jam as its social media and mobile agency and MHP as its PR agency.
Jam will develop a UK social media strategy for Tesco Mobile and manage the network’s online communities. The scope of work for Jam encompasses the Tesco Mobile network, the Tesco Phone Shop retailer and Tesco Direct online sales portal.
The Brand team at MHP, headed by Deputy Head Jo Slatem, will handle press office and consumer facing campaign activity for Tesco Mobile.
Jo Slatem, Deputy Head of Brand at MHP says, “This is an exciting opportunity for Tesco Mobile to bring PR and social media together to deliver more effective communication to consumers and drive engagement with the brand.”
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Queuing. A British art form, a means to an end, and the oldest PR stunt in the book. There’s nothing like a queue (traffic jams aside) to conjure one single consumer outtake: ‘what’s going on in there?’ followed by ‘and why aren’t I invited?’Queues signal exclusivity, inside knowledge and create intrigue and excitement. But most importantly, they get people talking. Hence queues, it would appear, are back in vogue - just ask the people at Meat Liqour, whose round the block queues on a Tuesday night have the remarkable effect of making it the ‘must visit’ restaurant this spring. And it’s not just restaurants. Recent queues, campers even, outside Nike Town and Apple stores have had a similar effect.
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I’ve just been through a week of grad interviews and am now out the other side… feeling a mixture of pride, excitement and bewilderment.
You hear every day how hard it is for graduates to get jobs and you see it too when you’re interviewing… grads from three years ago, desperate to get off the paid internship schemes and get cracking with their careers.
So why are we still seeing intelligent young graduates come to an interview with a top ten PR agency totally unprepared (apart from well stocked supply of cockiness that they have a degree?)
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It’s not every weekend that a new national newspaper gets launched, so the Brand at MHP team all had a gander at the new Sun on Sunday. These were our thoughts:
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We were fascinated to read The Drum’s insider story on the secrets behind MailOnline’s huge 100 million readership in January. The relevance to US audiences and that sidebar; that much we knew. It was the approach to SEO techniques that is really interesting.
Having worked with Yahoo! to launch omg! in the UK, we know all about using search trends in conjunction with online celeb news, and the latest Comscore figures showed omg! to be the second biggest celebrity news site in the UK, only behind the Mail. But the extent to which MailOnline keep on top of trends is intriguing, looking at traffic on an almost hourly basis and actually making publishing decisions based on what they see in the up to the minute search trends.
I’ve made my opinions on SEO and journalism fairly clear, but this takes it to another level. Of course you could argue that it makes complete sense, Paul Dacre’s mantra is always ‘we give the readers what they want’ and what better way of serving what your audience exactly what they want than publishing what you can see they’re searching for?
It also begs the question, should we be pitching stories on subjects we can see for ourselves are on the rise in order to increase the likelihood of publication? Next time we’ve got a celebrity interview to offer the MailOnline, we may just wait until we can see their search stats climbing.
