Must Have PR
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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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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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I would like to say a thank you to H&M for cheering me up on this most baltic of mornings with a fine display of eye candy in the form of golden balls himself adorning the entire frontage of their Oxford Circus store in his smalls.
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Opening at the beginning of December, BoxPark in the heart of Shoreditch has captured the attention of the media, retailers and architects alike.
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French designer paid homeage to the late, great Amy Winehouse with a couture show inspired by her, featuring models with her famous beehive, beauty spot and some even smoking.
The collection has got all the fashion pack talking some positive some negative but tongues are certainly wagging.
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So, the third Monday of January is upon us - the day that has been branded the most depressing of the year, earning itself the title ‘Blue Monday’. Sky Travel ‘calculated’ the most gloomy day of the year as part of a publicity campaign, incorporating factors such as weather conditions, debt level, time since Christmas, time since failing our new year’s resolutions and low motivational levels.
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The grammar police have been up in arms this week about Waterstone’s (Or should I say Waterstones’) removal of the apostrophe from their name as part of their re-branding. The announcement has made national news headlines and was hotly debated on this morning’s BBC Breakfast, offering some much needed publicity for the troubled retailer lagging behind the online giants and suffering in the age of the kindle where e-book downloads are eclipsing printed book sales. So, was this a clever publicity stunt or an intended shuffle towards integrating into the digital world as MD James Daunt claims: “the amendment was a more versatile and practical spelling of the name for the digital world.” – but will it really make that much difference to web filtering? Sounds like a weak excuse to me.
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I have never been one for designer label clothes. I have been resistant to Instagram as its retro filters offend my ‘real photographer’ purist sensibilities – it makes good photography too easy.
Yet I love this tie up between Levis and the hyper trendy photo sharing app du jour. Partly because Levis is one of the only clothing brands I can see the appeal of, a heritage of achingly cool ads are probably the cause. And partly as I’ve really warmed to Instagram lately as, well, it makes good photography easy (on a recent trip to NYC I found my Instagram snaps were often better than the serious DSLR ones).
Levi’s using Instagram to recruit their new ad campaign stars, prospective models just upload their pictures and tag them #IAMLEVIS. It just seems the perfect tie up between brand and platform – both have the cool with more than a hint of retro. I have no doubt that the resultant advert will be cooler than Steve McQueen on an iceberg.
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Wool isn’t something I give a second thought to most of the time, but I found it hard to ignore last week. On the 5th September, Wool Week kicked off with a number of wool-themed events around the country. There were knitting parties, wool exhibitions, charity initiatives and even flocks of sheep marching through city centres. At the centre of the whole initiative was the Wool Modern exhibition at La Galleria in Pall Mall: a landmark fashion exhibition to promote the yarn, featuring designers including Vivienne Westwood and Alexander McQueen.
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The Century Club was this morning the venue for an exciting new launch of a facial cleansing range from Kleenex. Beauty bloggers and journalists all gathered to hear from skin and beauty therapist Nichola Joss about the fantastic cleansing wipes and cloths.
Facial cleansing wipes? Kleenex? Yep you read right….it may come as surprise to those of you not in the know, but Kleenex actually started life in beauty and has gone back to its roots to develop what we think - and now many bloggers and media - is a brilliant range of products.
With this being the fourth launch in a week, it’s certainly been a successful ‘start of term’ for the Brand team!
