Ketchum and Weber Shandwick win big at PR Week Global Awards

Ketchum and Weber Shandwick win big at PR Week Global Awards

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Ketchum and Weber Shandwick were the big winners at the PR Week Global Awards as they took home four and three awards respectively.

Weber Shandwick celebrated winning the prestigious Global Agency of the Year gong, as well as taking home prizes for working on the Best Global Integration and Best Public Sector campaigns.

Ketchum meanwhile won awards for the Best Product Brand Development and for its work alongside other agencies on the Best Influencer Marketing Campaign and Best Campaign in LATAM. Ketchum-owned Interfuse Communications also secured the Best Corporate Branding prize.

Mastercard was awarded the Best Campaign of the Year prize for its Girls4Tech: Making a difference one girl at a time campaign, with the company also securing the Best Global Citizenship prize for the campaign.

Save the Children International’s Kirsten Walkom was named In-house Global Professional of the Year, while Text100’s Aedhmar Hynes won the agency equivalent.

The ceremony also saw wins for Bayer, AniCom, Jaguar Land Rover, Air New Zealand and Instinctif Partners. A full list of winners can be found here.

  • Picture credit: PRWeek
Peregrine swoops to make senior hire

Peregrine swoops to make senior hire

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Specialist financial services agency Peregrine Communications has appointed Danny Calogero as a director in its London office.

Calogero will be responsible for overseeing UK client service and for growing the London office. He joins from Headland, where he worked with the likes of UBS Wealth Management, Natixis Investment Managers, Cardano and eToro.

The agency has also made a number of internal appointments, with Alan O’Sullivan appointed MD, client services, Max Hilton promoted to MD, international business development and Graham Golding joins as chief financial officer.

Regarding Calogero’s hire, O’Sullivan said: “We are very pleased to welcome Danny into our growing international team. His combination of marketing expertise and investment knowledge will further bolster our offer as we aim to become the agency of choice for financial services clients seeking integrated marketing communications.”

Anthony Payne, Peregrine’s CEO, added: “Alan’s role is central to ensuring that our clients benefit from the combined strengths of our international client services team wherever they may be based, and Max’s promotion reflects the progress of our business internationally.

“I am also delighted that Graham Golding has joined us as chief financial officer, Graham is an extremely seasoned CFO in the agency world and brings a business-mindedness to our financial function.”

  • Pictured: Danny Calogero
60 Seconds with Burgess Furniture's Celine Mallet

60 Seconds with Burgess Furniture’s Celine Mallet

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Celine Mallet, head of marketing at Burgess Furniture, elaborates on why she joined the company, its new comms plan and how she intends to develop the Burgess brand.

You’ve just joined Burgess Furniture as head of marketing, what was it that attracted you to the role?

I have worked for various large corporations over the past decade, marketing to banks and retailers. When the opportunity at Burgess Furniture arose, I saw it as a great way to test myself, and apply everything I have learnt to a much smaller business, which had very little in place in terms of comms.

My dad is a furniture designer and so I’ve always had a soft spot for this industry. I also saw the role as a chance to apply ‘what good looks like’ to a smaller business model – and that’s exactly what I am busy doing!

Which aspects of PR and comms do you oversee as part of your role?

One of the first things I wanted to do was to on-board a PR agency to feed great quality content into our different channels and keep momentum going whilst also gaining coverage within the industry. This ensures that Burgess reaches an engaged architecture and design audience. Collaborating with an agency adds support to the activity of our in-house marketing team, becoming a natural extension.

As the head of marketing for Burgess I oversee everything we work on with our PR agency, Boomerang, relaying it to the business and the sales team while making sure my main campaigns and strategic pushes are aligned with the content produced and the target audience it’s placed in front of.

In terms of comms, we do a lot ourselves internally – from sales support to social campaigns – we manage it all in-house. The comms side is more than half of my role at Burgess and it is not only external comms support but also internal. There is never a quiet moment in the marketing office.

What are the key opportunities and challenges you expect to face?

Changing a brand’s perception within a given market is a slow and repetitive exercise, with results evolving over time. The main opportunity I personally see for Burgess is in promoting its strong heritage and solid reputation as a well-respected brand.

You have a number of product launches coming up across the year, what is your plan to promote them?

We have a very exciting year ahead of us at Burgess! We have two key campaigns around bedroom and casual seating under which most of our innovations fall.

Both integrated campaigns will fit under the ‘re-birth of Burgess’ angle, each offering their own flavours; whether for the specialised press, through our targeted direct marketing campaigns, at the hand-picked events we will attend, via our social media platforms, through our website or relayed in our sales support.

Who are you looking to target your campaigns at? And what are the challenges of promoting Burgess to this sector?

Our primary target audience is the operational side of the hospitality industry, with our secondary target being the architecture and design community.

The challenge we have is that both audiences are completely different with separate interests. So from a marketing perspective we have to find a balance. Our success relies on this.

The company is keen to promote its heritage, yet must also display its innovation to stay ahead of competitors. How difficult is it as a communicator to combine these two things into one brand message?

Rich heritage makes Burgess the business that it is. However, the main focus from a marketing point of view will be to project our innovations, ensuring we’re recognised for our cutting-edge products and latest out-of-the-box creations.

Finally, what’s the best campaign you’ve been involved with throughout your career?

It was during my early years in the financial service industry with SunGard when I learnt about the importance of implementing aligned and integrated campaigns – something I’ve utilised ever since.

Pagefield launches sport division and hires specialist partner

Perez-Barbadillo to support new Pagefield sport division

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Pagefield has launched Pagefield Sport and appointed Benito Perez-Barbadillo as a specialist partner to support the new sport division.

Pagefield Sport will allow the agency to provide insight, commitment and dedication to its sporting clients, which include the Rafa Nadal Academy by Movistar and Paula Radcliffe. Liam Parker and Oliver Foster, Pagefield’s partner and chief executive respectively, will lead the team.

Perez-Barbadillo will combine his current role as head of comms for tennis player Rafael Nadal with his new position at the agency.

He was previously director of public relations and communications for the Association of Tennis Professionals. He is also the former spokesman for tennis stars Novak Djokovic and Victoria Azarenka and footballers Alessandro del Piero and Esteban Cambiasso.

Foster said: “2018 is another exciting year for the Pagefield family with the creation of our new division, Pagefield Sport. We are already proudly working with some of the biggest names in sport and we’re looking forward to announcing several more in the coming months.”

Perez-Barbadillo added: “When you work with one of the greatest tennis players of all time you expect results and want to work with the best. I am proud to be working with the impressive talent at Pagefield Sport. I am looking forward to working with a range of talented athletes and businesses across the sporting world and working with Pagefield to support Rafa’s academy.”

  • Pictured: Rafael Nadal
Opinion: Confidence levels reveal opportunities for communicators

Opinion: C-suite confidence levels reveal opportunities for communicators

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Rhodri Harries, managing director at Kaizo, outlines the results of the Worldcom Confidence Index and what its findings mean for comms professionals.

Confidence is often a key indicator to future success. Will the product perform? Will the team excel? Will the campaign beat all its expectations?

How confident global CEOs and CMOs are about their businesses therefore provides useful insights into future challenges and opportunities that are relevant to all comms professionals.

That’s why Worldcom, an international network of independently owned public relations firms, has created the Worldcom Confidence Index – a new global study exploring key issues that impact the confidence levels of business leaders across 18 demographic categories. These include business roles, age, gender, business size, geographic presence and more.

It is based on 600 interviews with CMOs and CEOs in China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK, Eastern Europe and the USA.

The results reveal that British leaders are significantly less confident that they have the corporate image and brand reputation to achieve their objectives than their international counterparts. And they are half as confident as US company execs in their ability to protect their brand in a crisis.

However, they seem to be more confident than their peers around the globe when it comes to outperforming competitors, retaining talent and getting access to the technology and technical resources they need to achieve their objectives. This reveals clear opportunities for communicators to show their value in terms of proactive campaigns and “preparedness assignments”.

What company execs will be focussing on this year

Surprisingly, given the media attention they command, influencers were ranked in the study as the audience that will receive the second lowest attention in the UK in 2018. And UK companies aren’t positive about the media environment, either.

Only one in 25 leaders saw the media environment as a reason to be confident about achieving their goals – much less than the global average. Given the uncertainty around Brexit, the political environment is ranked as the second lowest source of optimism.

Globally, CEOs and CMOs cite government and legislative changes, lack of available talent and cyber crime as the top three threats to achieving their business objectives.

But there’s good news for employees, as the report indicates that a majority of organisations are planning to give most attention to their staff in 2018 – the only audience to see an increase in attention since 2017.

The study shows there are clear differences in confidence based on geography and also suggests there could be a surprising uplift in confidence during Trump’s presidency. Organisations headquartered in America sit atop the Confidence Index, ranking almost twice as confident as organisations headquartered in Asia.

Confidence may be a virtue, but it also just might be the metric that best measures future achievements, as it lets us know just how prepared brands are – and therefore what their chance of success is. We can be confident in that!

Case Study:The Christmas in July Festival

Case Study: The Christmas in July Festival

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The Christmas in July team created a collaborative event that enabled journalists and PRs to work efficiently together to launch the year’s Christmas gifts. 

Campaign: The Christmas in July Festival
PR team: Christmas in July
Timing: July 2017

Summary

The Christmas in July Festival provided a forum for brands and retailers to showcase top trends and products to press in one central location, supporting retail’s most profitable time of year.

The inaugural 2017 event attracted 965 media attendees and journalists dubbed it the ‘London Fashion Week’ of Christmas press launches. The festival was billed as a ‘must attend’ due to the collective appeal of the 70+ brands and retailers in attendance – including Crabtree & Evelyn, Menkind, Emma Bridgewater, JoJo Maman Bébé, Moonpig and The East India Company.

Objectives

Christmas In July wanted to create a collaborative platform that increased press exposure and reduced PR event budgets for brands and retailers, while saving time and resource versus hosting an individual Christmas press launch.

From a media perspective, the objective was to minimise journalists’ time out of the office, enabling them to meet leading retailers and emerging brands across all gift categories in one location. Simplicity and shared benefits through collaboration is what made the festival format so compelling.

Strategy and implementation

To achieve her aim of delivering greater ROI for press events, festival co-founder Courtney Rogers embarked on a research project with 314 journalists. The results revealed that the press attend less than 25% of the events they’re invited to.

Christmas in July Festival is designed as a responsive solution to this challenge. Just as being surrounded by other shops on the high street helps promote footfall and sales, the team surmised that launching products for Christmas alongside other brands would increase exposure and face-time with journalists.

The team’s media relations approach was to create a personalised and seamless experience for key journalists from all major publications to ensure their attendance.

It also took care to achieve the right balance of brands, journalists and experience partners to make it a win-win for all stakeholders. This included securing 17 experience partners providing complimentary transport, a goody bag home delivery service, cocktail bars, food offerings and pampering services. An area was also dedicated to new and emerging British brands, showcasing new trends and novel content.

The festival gave in-house PRs and agencies all-important face time with journalists to kick-start their campaigns in the lead up to Christmas.

Results

  • The festival received 965 media attendees over two days
  • 68% of guests were journalists or freelance journalists and 32% were bloggers or influencers with an average follower level of 22,000
  • 33% of attendees were from national publications
  • 12% of guests attended on both days

Client feedback

Daily and Sunday Express reporter Maisha Frost said: “100% recommended. I was not the only one to think the whole event – how it was conceived and executed – was inspiring.”

JoJo Maman Bébé said: “It was a great two days meeting new and existing press and showing our gorgeous Christmas collection to those compiling Christmas gift guides.”

Prezzybox said: “The Christmas in July Festival worked really well for our brand this year. Speaking with journalists, their priority was to target a large amount of interesting brands all in one go – and this was exactly the place to achieve this kind of collaboration.”

The Art Fund said: “The whole two-day event was fantastic and it was so great to be able to tell people about the National Art Pass and we made so many great contacts over the course of the event. It was great exposure for us.”

  • Picture credit: CPG Photography Ltd