Nationwide hires Tanya Joseph as director of external affairs

Nationwide hires Tanya Joseph as director of external affairs

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Tanya Joseph, architect of the award-winning This Girl Can campaign, has joined Nationwide Building Society as director of external relations.

Having started her career as a journalist, Joseph then joined the civil service and spent five years as Tony Blair’s press secretary.

She has held senior comms positions at organisations including Grayling and Sport England – and has provided strategic counsel to organisations including Tesco, Mars, Heinz, the Nuffield Trust and the Royal Mint.

Joseph also won Marketer of the Year at the Masters of Marketing Awards 2015 for her work on This Girl Can.

She is chair of The Pool, an online platform aimed at women, vice-chair of the Fawcett Society and a trustee of the Thomson Foundation – a charity dedicated to raising standards of journalism in developing countries.

Joe Garner, Nationwide’s CEO, said: “I’m delighted that Tanya is joining the Society. Her breadth of experience will support Nationwide’s ambition and contribute to our core purpose of ‘building society, nationwide’, engaging and collaborating with a wide range of policy makers and influencers.

“The success Tanya achieved with the This Girl Can campaign is another demonstration of why she is a great fit for Nationwide, as we look to advance on our campaigning work tackling important national issues such as housing.”

Joseph added: “I am particularly excited about supporting the Society’s focus on housing. As an institution with a history of more than 130 years, it is uniquely placed to take a leadership role in addressing this long-term social issue.”

Meet the Journalist: The Hook's Mike Burton

Meet the Journalist: The Hook’s Mike Burton

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Mike Burton, head of content at social publisher The Hook, explains the content it looks to create, the importance of working with celebrities and how PRs can work with the title.

How would you describe The Hook?

Mike Burton

Launched in 2014 by Andy Fidler and Gordon Bennell, The Hook has rapidly grown into one of the largest youth entertainment and comedy publishers on social media, entertaining 10 million fans and growing. We make our fans laugh and let them know about the stuff that’s important to them.

I’m echoing our co-founder Andy Fidler here but in the same way that the Vice brand has become known for quality, edgy news and documentaries, we want The Hook to be known for standout original entertainment and comedy for a core millennial and Gen Z audience. Our voice is always tongue-in-cheek, except where inappropriate.

Our focus has always been on building a genuinely engaged fanbase. One of our core values is to be brave when creating original content. We constantly test and learn what works and what doesn’t on social. This means that we can provide better results for the brands and PRs we work with.

Who are your audience and what sort of content do you produce?

While some social publishers have chosen to lead with 3rd party content, we’ve built our 52% male and 48% female 18-35 (18-24 core) audience on original content, utilising our in-house production and script writing teams to cover key passion points of popular culture – movies, music, comedy, gaming and trending topics.

You’ve created a number of comedy features, how do these come about?

We’ve built an amazing internal creative team in front of and behind the camera that understands how to entertain and make people laugh. This includes The Hook’s head of video Theo Marlow and in-house comedian, performer and scriptwriter Adam Woollard. The guys are supremely talented and have a great back story. Together, they were previously UK battle rap champions and a comedy sketch duo known as Shuffle T & Marlo.

Comedy strategist Jonathan Davenport, formerly head of digital at Hat Trick Productions, with current clients including BBC Studios Comedy, continues to shape and guide The Hook’s comedy output.

We champion original comedy and The Hook provides a platform where up and coming comedians and stars are given creative freedom to develop shows and series, working with our in-house experts.

People like Richard Gadd, who since winning the Edinburgh Festival Fringe comedy award in 2016 and has gone on to star in a BBC series, well-known television and radio presenter Maya Jama and Jahanna James, an up-and-coming comedian, actor and presenter with a big social following, have all played a part in The Hook’s journey.

Others include names like Jayde Adams, Maddy Anholt, Ken Cheng, Mo Omar, Huge Davies, Helen Bauer, Patrick Spicer, Huw Joseph, Simon Lomas, Mikill Pane and Adam Rowe.

Are there any types of content you’re looking to produce more of?

As well as comedy sketches, our current focus is on launching our podcast and developing light-entertainment series.

We’re looking at progressing an idea around celebrity fitness routines and working with the stars to get an insight into how they get into shape for a certain role. We’ve got a dating show in the works, which has a very unique angle and should be a lot of fun. We’re also working with a very talented disabled comedian on a mini-doc series that explores sex for disabled people. It’s a topic that he is very passionate about getting out there and discussing.

The big focus for us at the moment is series content and we’ve got lots of ideas in the pipeline.

How important is working with celebrities?

Very important. We’ve got a young audience and they all have celebrities that they admire and who inspire them. What we really aim to do is to explore a celebrity’s personality, to get a glimpse of what they’re really like.

We’re taking that to the next level with our podcast. That will be all about how the celebrity ‘made it’ in their chosen career. We want to hear about the hard times as well as the good times, we want to inspire our audience as well as make them laugh.

What’s your relationship with PRs? How can they best work with The Hook?

We’ve worked a lot with PRs especially in music and film. The best thing to do is just send me an email, we’re always keen to work with talent and we have lots of creative ideas coming out of our team.

We’re actively looking for guests on our podcast at the moment. It’s a great PR opportunity because the celeb will be able to talk in great depth about their latest project and it’s a platform that’s proven to have a big impact on audiences.

But generally speaking the door is always open at The Hook, and we’re pretty easy to work with.

Finally, what’s the weirdest feature you think you’ve produced in your time at The Hook?

That’s a tough one, there’s been quite a few to be honest. We once tried to fry an egg on the street during a heatwave which we broadcast live and was crazy popular. We’ve actually got a whole series we’re producing at the moment about weird phobias. People love weird stuff on social media, it gets people talking.

  • Pictured: Taron Egerton and Hugh Jackman
60 Seconds with PrettyGreen's Paddy Hobbs

60 Seconds with PrettyGreen’s Paddy Hobbs

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Paddy Hobbs, head of sport at PrettyGreen, explains how he ended up working in PR, how to promote combat sports and his most memorable campaign.

How did you first get into PR?

I originally wanted to be a joiner when I was 18, I loved it, but a few months in I realised I was useless at the actual skill set needed for it and also terrified climbing up ladders.

So I packed that in and asked my old school headteacher for a better letter of recommendation to get into university.

I had no real desire to get into PR as I didn’t know what it was. But I needed a job after university and somebody knew somebody that worked at freuds (the awesome Liz Derham) and got me in there to do work experience. I was very fortunate that when I got there, there where a lot of good people that looked after me and helped me find my way.

 

What range of sports is PrettyGreen involved with?

It’s fairly broad but where we ultimately like to operate is within the ‘sweet spot’ that merges our entertainment experience with sport and take clients into a more mainstream consumer audience.

Whether that’s looking after Audible’s Marathon sponsorship with Mo Farah, launching Channel 5’s rugby sponsorship, to producing a content series with Manchester City or repositioning the strategic approach of Maximuscle.

Everything we do has to have an actual impact on our client’s business – from driving downloads, to increasing views, to growing sales.

What opportunities and challenges does PRing combat sport present?

Combat sports are all based around hype. Hyping fights, hyping shows and hyping individuals to gain cut-through in an incredibly competitive market.

The challenge comes when you look to continue momentum away from the bright lights of box-office fights, creating a compelling narrative without the aid of global superstars and changing some of the niggling negative perceptions general consumers have that are perhaps prohibiting them from fully engaging with the sport on an ongoing basis.

Combat sport, and in particular the UFC, doesn’t get anywhere near the credit it deserves for the role it’s played in promoting female athletes, for example. Either because people don’t want to hear it or it’s not a story that’s being told as well as it could be.

What’s the most memorable campaign you’ve produced in your time at PrettyGreen?

It would have to be the work we did with Betsafe around their Conor McGregor sponsorship last summer before the Mayweather fight. A fantastic team effort by everyone here at PrettyGreen and Betsafe to execute this huge campaign, in what turned out to be four crazy and exhausting weeks – one private jet, 11,268 miles traveled, two epic nights in Vegas, 30 very happy passengers and over 150 pieces of coverage that smashed the client’s commercial targets.

While PR can seem glamorous, are there any horrible jobs you’ve had to do in your career?

Absolutely loads. You’re always going to do crap jobs, no matter what level you’re at.

But I used to get yelled at for carrying breeze blocks up ladders too slowly at 7am in the middle of winter. Once you’ve done that, most jobs don’t seem too bad.

Finally, if you could provide PR for one sporting event or brand/team, what would it be?

West Ham. Only because they’ve set the bar so ridiculously low you can’t not improve on it.

Jennifer Palmieri: “You don’t need to act as if you belong – you DO belong”

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On Wednesday 25th April, we had the privilege of a talk and Q&A session from Jennifer Palmieri as part of the Cision UK office’s Empower initiative.

Palmieri was the White House Director of Communications for President Barack Obama, and Communications Director for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, and she has recently published a book, “Dear Madam President: An Open Letter to the Women Who Will Run the World”, which shares lessons from her time in the White House and on the campaign trail for women who want to lead.

Speaking to a packed house, Palmieri spoke about what she thinks the future holds, and gave her thoughts on how women can succeed as leaders. Rather than feeling defeated after the 2016 election, Ms Palmieri stated that movements such as the Women’s March, #MeToo and the fact that more women than ever are running for public office in the US is giving her hope for the future; that women are “creating a new set of rules, making our own game”.

She said that it is “empowering to realise the challenge before you and realise that you do have the ability to change things”. The future is female, she noted, but “the past was too, it’s just that no one thought to write it down”.

Women need to own who and what they are, according to Ms Palmieri, rather than try to fit into a male idea of how women should be. Hillary Clinton was made to be a “female facsimile of the qualities we look for in a male president”, rather than being valued for the unique attributes she could bring to the role as a woman. Clinton was also more popular in a job role than she was when running for it, Ms Palmieri stated, as it was seemingly her ambition for a job (rather than her ability to actually perform) that people disliked.

Similarly, she talked about expressing emotion in the workplace – something typically frowned upon as a sign of weakness, and described the pressure on women to seem tough at all times, capable of absorbing anything. Instead, she has decided to “nod less, cry more”, noting that the passion and emotion she feels for her work is an advantage.

Giving us a window into her time in Obama’s White House, Palmieri spoke of how Obama would never end a meeting without asking the opinions of anyone who hadn’t previously spoken up – not to be polite or to make people feel included, but because he needed their views. “It was the people who didn’t look like everyone else in the room who gave the President the most insight. Women have held themselves back in the past by thinking that they don’t have anything important to say, but often our viewpoint is the one that needs to be shared”.

“People take their cue from you”, Ms Palmieri told us. “You don’t need to act as if you belong, you DO belong”. Empowering words, which inspired us all to walk a little taller.

Sylvia Laws TAG MD

Technical Publicity and Technical Advertising become TAG

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Technical Publicity and Technical Advertising have merged their offerings to become Technical Associates Group (TAG).

The new integrated communications agency will deliver six core services: strategy, insight, content, public relations, amplification and data analytics.

The new positioning is designed to ensure the agency will be better placed to provide solutions to B2B clients in the tech and engineering sectors.

TAG MD Sylvia Laws said: “For us, the approach formalises what we have become – a truly specialist B2B technical agency with digital and data at the core of everything we do.”

She added: “Over the last few years, the solutions we have provided to our clients have been less about vertical disciplines and more about a combination of disciplines to produce a measureable result. We see huge potential in our integrated approach and the new positioning allows us to maximise our effectiveness.”

  • Pictured: Sylvia Laws