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Ultimate Products, the owner, manager, designer and developer of a range of value-focused consumer goods brands, has appointed Powerscourt as its UK financial and corporate PR agency.
Rob Greening, the agency’s co-head of consumer industries, will lead the Powerscourt team with support from Nick Brown and Nick Dibden.
The company, which floated on the main market of the London Stock Exchange last month, sells its products to over 300 retailers across 38 countries.
It has six product categories: Audio; Heating and Cooling; Housewares; Laundry; Luggage; and Small Domestic Appliances.
Brands include Beldray (laundry, floor care, heating and cooling), intempo (audio), Salter (kitchenware), Constellation (luggage), and Progress (cookware and bakeware). Major customers include Action, Aldi, Amazon, Argos, Asda, B&M, Matalan, Morrisons, Original Factory Shop, Robert Dyas, Sainsbury’s, Tesco and The Range.
Andrew Gossage, managing director of Ultimate Products, said: “Powerscourt impressed us with its experience, knowledge, and enthusiasm for our sector. We wanted an agency that could provide us with comprehensive financial and corporate PR support, as well as being able to provide strategic communications counsel as we transition to life as a listed company. We are delighted to have them on board, and look forward to working with them as we carry out our ambitious growth strategy.”
Chameleon’s founder, Helen Holland, has sold the PR firm she founded in 1998 to CEO Tom Berry and MD Tom Buttle.
From left to right: Berry, Holland, Buttle
Holland, who most recently served as chair of the company, will remain with Chameleon for six months in a consultancy role.
Together, the trio have overseen three years of record growth for the agency and a refocus of its business towards a broad mix of communications, consulting and content.
Both Berry and Buttle worked at FleishmanHillard before joining Chameleon in 2013. Berry also worked with Bite, while Buttle worked at Catalysis.
Berry said: “Chameleon is a great example of how the biggest brands don’t need the biggest agencies, just the biggest ideas. Our clients are fast-growing and market-defining, which, I guess, is marketing speak for really rather good. This approach – and the brilliant people we work with and for – has contributed to our last three years of double-digit, year-on-year growth and record client and employee satisfaction levels. I want to thank Helen for giving us the opportunity to carry on this great work under our ownership.”
Buttle added: “From the first day that I met Helen, it was clear life at Chameleon would be buzzy and exciting. It’s been that and then some. Today we’re delivering a wide range of services, working with disruptive brands and performing superbly as a business. So in terms of the decision to pursue the MBO – it just made sense. We can’t wait to get stuck into this next phase of the Chameleon story.”
Holland concluded: “The last three years have been some of the most enjoyable and also stimulating in Chameleon’s history. We haven’t just achieved exceptional growth – we’ve built a team and a service portfolio that we’re genuinely passionate about. It’s not often that the founder of a business can say that they’re handing the reins on to people who care as much as they do. But the Toms have already put their hearts and souls into Chameleon, and will continue to do so in this next era of the company’s success.”
Emma Hazan, MD of consumer at Hotwire PR, on the creative idea and why it’s the research and insight behind it which dictates campaign success.
Emma Hazan
Author and storyteller Carmine Gallo says: “Ideas are the currency of the 21st Century and stories facilitate the exchange of that currency”. Wise words indeed.
Except, we tend to forget one can’t work without the other, and in fact neither work without a grounding in reality.
Where does that grounding in reality come from? Research. Research on what your audience cares about, what the brand you’re pitching for represents and then identifying the sweet spot where the two meet. This is your insight – which in turn informs the strategy you need to take.
At Hotwire, we’ve imposed a blanket ban on thinking about strategy or creative until the research phase is complete. To make this work, we’ve invested in a specialist team with access to the right tools. And crucially, we give them the time they need to do good work. Far too often agencies give their team a matter of hours to research the brief and usually only do it once they’ve already had an idea. Madness!
Trying to force fit an idea will either lose you the pitch – or worse, it will have your other mates in PR laughing behind your back when it falls flat on its face.
That’s not to say human instinct has no place in the research process. Far from it – the best ideas are borne out of a combination of the right data and the experience and instinct to realise what this means. Data may tell us what people are thinking, but experience tells us how to act on it. Combining the two – and understanding what the data doesn’t tell you – is the secret to developing memorable campaigns.
Only then can you start thinking about the stories that need crafting – ones that are both genuine and convey emotion.
It’s easy to get caught up in the excitement of a new business brief and go straight to the big idea. But creativity with no insights or actual story behind it is pointless.
The campaigns that really make an impact are the ones with a strong story to tell – take REI’s #OptOutside campaign that won big at Cannes this year. The creative path itself wasn’t ground-breaking, but it was the story of a big retailer paying its staff not to work but play (outside) on Black Friday that captured people’s, and then other retailers’, imagination.
This is a big story. A story that was true to the brand and inspiring enough to get others to buy into it and re-tell that story themselves. But that story didn’t just happen overnight.
Ideas without stories lack authenticity and fail to derive any emotion from your audience. In an industry where the majority of what we’re trying to do is build emotional connections between a brand and its audience you’d think this was pretty obvious. And yet that’s not always the way is it?
Why? For a start there’s time, or lack of it. Add a handful of clients, team reviews, the weather, the commute and in my case, whether my kids have been up in the night, or in my husband’s case if Arsenal just lost – which therefore adversely affects me too – and it doesn’t always make for the best recipe for doing what we ought to do.
But, if you want to win big at Cannes – or even win that next pitch – you need to stop jumping straight to the big idea, or even the big story, and take a big step back.
Take your time finding and analysing the data that’s out there. Invest in a research team and ensure they have the relevant tools to help them and your ideas will get better. As will the results.
Emma Hazan is Hotwire’s MD of Consumer. She responsible for the creative direction and growth of its consumer work across all Hotwire’s offices. She has more than 15 years of experience in the PR industry across technology and consumer lifestyle sectors, working on brands as diverse as BlackBerry, Paramount Home Entertainment and Heinz through to O2, Shazam and Vodafone.
VTech, the electronic learning toys company, has brought in Threepipe to handle the PR and social campaign activity for its VTech and LeapFrog brands in the UK.
Clive Richardson, marketing director at VTech, said: “We were keen to work with the Threepipe team that clearly has a great understanding of the LeapFrog brand, our market and our audience.
“We are looking forward to working with them to bring some fantastic new products to market as well as to continue to support brand building activity in 2017.”
Jim Hawker, co-founder of Threepipe, added: “We have long admired the VTech business and so it’s great to be able to continue working with the LeapFrog brand and now widen that scope of work to include VTech.”
Borkowski has been appointed to create an influential campaign for UK music brand NOW That’s What I Call Music!, the biggest series compilation albums in the country.
NOW That’s What I Call Music! 96
Since launching in 1983, NOW That’s What I Call Music!has become a “British cultural icon” in popular music spanning a wide breadth of genres and eras. NOW is on its 96th release and described as an “expert insight into current trends and a time capsule of musical history”.
Borkowski has been briefed to increase awareness of the streaming service NOW+ and devise and deliver a creative comms strategy as the brand approaches N0W 100.
Peter Duckworth and Steve Pritchard, NOW’s co-MDs, said: “Borkowski ‘s extensive network, experience, and insight will be invaluable as we build the NOW+ streaming service alongside the core releases and gear up to NOW 100 with a whole series of celebratory events in 2018.”
Dee McCourt, Borkowski ‘s head of entertainment, added: “As a team of music lovers NOW albums were a huge part of growing up for us and NOW 100 is going to be yet another totem of British musical history. It’s brilliant to be helping to tell the story of this unique and enduring music brand at such a landmark time.”
Travel commerce platform Travelport has appointed former Sky communications director Julian Eccles as vice president for PR and corporate communications.
Julian Eccles
Eccles replaces Kate Aldridge who will leave the company ‘later in the year’.
Julian’s previous roles include VP corporate communications at the international telecoms and media company Millicom and communications director positions at the European broadcaster Sky, the UK Communications regulator Ofcom, The English Football Association as well as Special Adviser at the UK Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
He began his PR career working at the PR agency Hill + Knowlton working with a variety of global clients.
Gordon Wilson, CEO at Travelport, said: “I am delighted Julian will be joining the Travelport team. His background in promoting rapidly-changing companies combined with an exceptional breadth of experience will help us tell our growth and transformation story in even more compelling ways.
“I would also like to pay tribute to the fantastic work done by Kate in her time at Travelport. She has been a major contributor to the company’s reputation globally and was pivotal in the communications element of our successful IPO in September 2014.”
Eccles said: “Travelport operates in a highly competitive and fast-moving environment so I relish the opportunity of joining the team and engaging new audiences with the company.”
Angus Energy has hired Abchurch as its retained financial and corporate communications adviser.
Tim Thompson
Senior partner Tim Thompson will lead the Abchurch team.
Angus listed on AIM in November 2016. It is an independent onshore oil and gas development company focused on leveraging its expertise to advance its portfolio of UK assets as well as acquire, manage and monetise select projects.
Angus Energy owns the majority interest and operates conventional oil production fields in Brockham (PL 235) and Lidsey (PL 241) in the South East UK.
MHP Communications has enhanced its crisis comms offer with the appointment of Barnaby Fry as head of crisis.
Barnaby Fry
Fry, currently an MD at MHP, has 20 years’ experience in corporate and financial comms, advising the boards of large international businesses on a range of crises and issues management scenarios.
In his new role, Fry will lead MHP’s crisis team, which has more than 20 crisis experts across the business, drawn from various disciplines of comms including consumer PR, corporate affairs and financial comms.
Alex Bigg, CEO of MHP, said: The appointment of Barnaby allows us to formalise and grow our offer to include a full suite of crisis preparedness products, coupled with some of the very best of our senior consultants.
He continued: “There is an increasing expectation among clients for advisors who are both specialists, but who can also seamlessly communicate to every stakeholder. Barnaby and our crisis team across MHP are in the perfect position to meet that demand.”
Find out how new consumer PR agency MUNCH took on the challenge to raise the profile of Youtube sensation Daisy Clark, push her into the mainstream music market and, ultimately, knock Ed Sheeran off the #1 spot in the iTunes charts.
Campaign: Knocking Ed Sheeran off the #1 Spot Client: Music Crowns – Daisy Clark PR Team: MUNCH Timing: February – March 2017
Objectives
Music Crowns, a global promotion platform for unsigned, newly signed and independent music artists, launched a new management arm and wanted to give its first artist’s release – Daisy Clark – a PR push. MUNCH got the call up just three weeks before the track “dropped”.
Music Crowns wanted to generate coverage that would drive online streams of the song Hopelessly Devoted to You on Spotify from 14 February onwards. MUNCH was briefed to raise the profile of Daisy Clark as an upcoming musician and ultimately increase awareness of Music Crowns as a platform for rising talent.
Strategy
With limited time, MUNCH focused solely on achieving results that would have a real impact on Daisy Clark’s future career and the Music Crowns brand, by finding where our audience was and targeting those opportunities as a priority.
Our strategy was to strengthen Daisy Clark’s story as much as possible – “talented young person strives for fame” would not be strong enough.
“Talented young person with viral success and industry interest” was better, but knowing what worked in the media, we sought out an additional human interest element to add to the narrative, giving us the best chance of being featured by the titles we wanted.
Daisy Clark
We focused our efforts online for the click through and immediate streaming potential, as well as broadcast for mass awareness and ‘fame’. We hyper-targeted the audiences that were either passionate about new music or young potential Daisy Clark fans of the future – the people most likely to listen to the new release at launch.
Immediately, we ran two intensive media training sessions with Daisy Clark to identify her rags-to-riches story: a local girl who had barely left Cornwall, now tipped for international success – and to ensure she was prepared for live TV and confident to talk about the Music Crowns brand.
With her original viral video already viewed six million times, we needed new content that hadn’t been seen before, so we instigated the filming of an official music video to accompany the track announcement.
We placed pre-recorded and embargoed interviews with Daisy Clark in the run up to launch, working with local agency SWNS to champion her story and announce it far and wide the day the track dropped.
Results
In just three weeks from initial briefing, the MUNCH team created a global buzz around Daisy Clark reaching 12 counties across the world, driving traffic to Music Crowns’ website, building an ever-growing Spotify audience for the artist and even knocking one of the most famous musicians off his perch:
Daisy Clark’s Hopelessly Devoted to You knocked Ed Sheeran off the #1 spot in the iTunes singer songwriter charts, and charted on the mainstream music chart
We helped to cultivate a monthly Spotify audience of 35k
Music Crowns was name checked as a platform which breaks new artists in all media coverage, doubling web traffic to the platform
Views of Daisy Clark’s original viral video almost doubled, from six to 11 million views
Blanket coverage – 80+ pieces across Daily Mail, Mail Online (top story), BBC News Online (top story), Sun Online (twice), Daily Star, Daily Star Online, Express.co.uk, Mirror Online, Maximum Pop, Ok.co.uk, Square Mile Online, MSN and more
Six TV interviews and performances – Lorraine, 5 News, CBBC’s Blue Peter, ITV’s Scrambled, BBCSpotlight, ITV South West
Five radio interviews and performances – Virgin Radio, Heart FM, BBC Radio, Pirate FM, Coast FM
Story picked up in 12 countries around the world including Russia, New Zealand, China, Bosnia, South Africa, Italy, Slovakia, France, Germany
And a happy client.
Adrian Smith, founder and CEO of Music Crowns, said: “I can’t speak highly enough of MUNCH, they are truly a joy to work with. The enthusiasm they brought to the project was infectious; their work ethic and attention to detail from pre to post campaign was unlike any other agency we have worked with in the past.
“The positive effects we experienced as a result of the national, international and prime time TV coverage they generated was truly magnificent and surpassed our expectations. They really are focused on getting results for their clients and we recommend them to everyone.”
Quill PR has been appointed by the £977 million British Empire Trust PLC as its retained media relations consultancy with immediate effect.
Fiona Harris
As part of its brief, Quill will devise and manage an ongoing PR programme targeting the UK financial and investment press.
Fiona Harris, chairman at Quill, said: “At Quill we work in close partnership with our clients, raising their brand awareness through the media and most importantly, working with the asset management community to support and help clients realise their business objectives. We are very pleased to be working with the team at British Empire Trust as it seeks to increase its media profile.”
Strone Macpherson, chairman of British Empire Trust, added: “Given its experience and knowledge of the investment trust sector, we look forward to working with Quill to help us achieve success in the UK media. Effective communication with investors and the media is paramount as we look to broaden further our investor base. Our clearly defined investment process with its focus on bottom up, value investing are key messages that we wish to convey to a wider audience.”
