Smartphone brand BQ hires apple tree

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BQ, a European producer of smartphones, robotics and 3D printers, has appointed global brand comms agency apple tree, as it prepares to launch in the UK.

Launched in Madrid five years ago, BQ operates across eight territories, with its products available in more than 50 countries. The business has a turnover of £151.1 million and produces education tools for schools across Spain and plans to launch similar initiatives in the UK.

Following a three-way pitch, BQ has chosen apple tree as its retained agency in the UK. The agency, which has offices in Barcelona, Madrid and Bogota, as well as London, has been handling BQ’s comms activity in Spain since early 2015.

Oriol Fernandez, PR and marketing coordinator for the UK, said: “We’re confident that BQ’s high quality devices fill a real gap in the UK smartphone market, and we’re looking forward to continuing our successful relationship with apple tree, whose knowledge of the UK landscape will be invaluable.”

Ian Noble, MD of apple tree London, said: “BQ’s pan-European growth has been phenomenal in just five years and we’re excited to continue to support the brand’s development as it enters a new market.”

apple tree’s clients also include Google, Nike and Spotify.

Candriam hires global corporate comms head

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Candriam Investors Group, the European asset manager with some €91bn (£71bn) in AUM, has hired Marion Leblanc-Wohrer as global head of corporate comms.

Reporting into Candriam CEO Naïm Abou-Jaoudé, Leblanc-Wohrer will split her time between Candriam’s offices in London, France and Benelux.

Abou-Jaoudé said: “It is with great pleasure that we welcome Marion Leblanc-Wohrer to Candriam. She is a highly experienced media professional who also shares our convictions and our values. Marion will help drive and sustain our growth momentum – as reflected in the 40% increase in our AUM over the past two years – and to promote Candriam’s development in Europe and further afield.”

She was most recently editorial director at L’Agefi Hebdo, a weekly French financial magazine, where she has worked since 2007. Prior to that she edited a number of titles – including Banque et Informatique – and was assistant editor at Thomson Reuters in London. She started her career at KPMG before moving to the World Bank as an analyst.

Leblanc-Wohrer said: “I am delighted to be joining Candriam, an asset manager driven by strong convictions and renowned for its innovative products and solid performance. A huge driver was also its 20 year heritage in responsible investing, which I believe is an important part of the investment landscape.”

 

 

PR Lions names John Clinton as jury president

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Edelman Canada chair John Clinton has been named as the jury president for this year’s PR Lions at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.

Clinton leads a team of more than 250 people across Canada. In addition, he is also North American head of creative and content.PR Lions

With a career spanning more than 20 years, Clinton has led several national and global accounts, including Pepsi, Tim Hortons, Kraft and Kellogg’s.

Before joining Edelman, he was senior vice president, digital solutions and new media at Transcontinental Media, one of Canada’s largest print and digital media companies, and headed advertising firms Grey Worldwide Canada and J Walter Thomson.

In an interview with AdAge yesterday, Clinton said of his appointment: “I’ve never been the president of a jury before, but I think the biggest challenge is keeping things on the rails. You have 21 jurors and over 2,000 pieces of work, so you have a lot of work to get through and you have to be able to discuss everything and give everything a fair chance and be able to make sure that you come to the proper conclusions.”

Clinton’s appointment follows last month’s news that AMEC, the International Association for Measurement and Evaluation of Communication, has linked up with Cannes Lions to launch an advisory service for the Research and Measurement categories of the PR Lions awards.

This year’s Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity takes place in June from 18 to 25 June.

Lansons

Lansons hires Dowling for public affairs boost

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Lansons has appointed James Dowling to a newly-created head of public policy role, to strengthen the consultancy’s capability in the public affairs, policy and government relations space.

Dowling was most recently director in FleishmanHillard Fishburn’s corporate team which he joined in 2011. Prior to that, he spent five years at HM Treasury running the Finance Bill team, before becoming head of the insurance sector policy division.

He will lead the existing policy specialists at Lansons, reporting into director Ralph Jackson.

Jackson said: “We are delighted to have recruited James; he brings both political insight and advice with a deep understanding of public policy.  He will be an excellent addition to the team, with his experience at the Treasury in particular an invaluable asset to our existing clients and to aid business development.”

Dowling added: “I am thrilled to have joined Lansons. It’s a great time to be joining a growing consultancy and an excellent established team.  I was attracted to the firm because it has a very clear vision for the future and strong values.  I’m pleased to be able to work with their existing clients, and look forward to helping to the grow business further.”

Case Study: Stick Tennis Tour Launch

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When readers of The Sun opened the paper last Friday, they were met with a challenge to take on games editor Lee Price in a game of Stick Tennis Tour 2.0 that day. Behind the scenes, Stick Sports had briefed PR and marketing agency Dimoso to publicise the launch of its newest game by partnering up with a major press partner. The results? A 666% increase in iOS downloads on the day and 78% of users beat Lee Price at the game.

Campaign: Stick Tennis Tour Launch
Client: Stick Sports
PR Team: Dimoso
Timing: Friday 12 February 2016
Budget:  £2000

Overview

Stick Sports Ltd is an independent games developer and publisher, producing online and mobile sports games. Combining simplistic graphics and fast gameplay, its sports game, Stick Cricket, has gone on to record more than 1 billion plays from 100 million players.

Objectives

Last week, Dimoso was called in to launch Stick Sports’s newest game on mobile: Stick Tennis Tour 2.0.

The brief required the agency to:

  • Publicise the game.
  • Create a partnership with a major press outlet.
  • Increase players during launch period.

Strategy

Stick Sports Tour tasked Dimoso to drive players and work with a major press partner. With that in mind, Dimoso secured a great opportunity with The Sun and The Sun Online.

Working with games editor Lee Price, Stick created a Sun-branded court (complete with courtside fans reading the paper in the stands) with a character created to represent Lee, who the public where challenged, over a 24 hour period, to play and beat.

The initiative launched on Friday 12 February at midnight, to suit the global audience that Stick Sports attracts. The Sun also agreed to place Stick Tennis Tour as the lead story on 12 February. The piece also ran in The Sun newspaper, landing on people’s breakfast tables first thing in the morning. The challenge was well and truly set.

Around 9am Stick Sports began running the story on its social media channels, with a reach of around 18,000 followers on Twitter and 141,000 followers on Facebook.

The Sun then posted the challenge onto its Twitter account, reaching another 1 million followers.

Throughout the day the event gathered momentum as players began reading the piece in the paper and online, then challenging Lee in the game and showing their scores on Twitter.

Stick Sports had no paid campaigns running in the UK on Friday, so the uplift in downloads would be solely down to The Sun and associated social media activity.

Results

  • Android – 107% increase in daily downloads in the UK.
  • iOS – 666% increase in daily downloads in the UK.
  • The game jumped 194 places in the UK iOS Sports Games charts, peaking at 60.
  • Of the users who have downloaded the app, Friday was the best day for retention rates since Stick Tennis Tour 2.0 launched.
  • Most importantly, 78% of users taking part managed to beat Lee Price!

Got a cracking campaign – with impressive results – that you’d like to showcase? If so, please email [email protected].

Pair of account wins for FleishmanHillard Fishburn

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FleishmanHillard Fishburn‘s brand marketing and corporate teams have picked up briefs to work with gardening equipment business Gardena and the non-profit Global Innovation Fund.

The agency’s brand marketing unit will raise awareness of Gardena in the UK. It will position the brand as experts in garden maintenance and ‘must have’ products for British gardens, tapping into both rural and urban gardener communities. Fleishman will drive an integrated comms programme across a mix of traditional and digital channels.

Fleishman’s UK team will work with its German counterparts to run complementary programmes across both markets.

London-headquartered Global Innovation Fund has appointed Fleishman to grow its global voice. The fund invests in “social innovations” that aim to improve lives in developing countries; it has, so far, backed companies working in neonatal care (Newborn Foundation, pictured), road safety and pay-as-you-go energy models.

Steph Bailey, Fleishman’s head of corporate, will lead the team in London, and take responsibility for introducing the organisation to key audiences across government, international development and social innovation. In Johannesburg, director Mimi Kalinda will lead a team to develop engaging content, profiling some of the organisations and innovators already benefiting from investment, to help demonstrate the impact of the Fund’s work.

Jim Donaldson, CEO of FleishmanHillard Fishburn, talking about the recent wins, said: “We’re definitely in a new era. We’re not just a top ten agency, we’re a better agency with more  expertise, better solutions, fresh perspectives and amazing ideas. Clients and prospective clients have felt this and they want to do business with us.”

NetBooster

NetBooster hands corporate brief to Rostrum

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Independent European marketing agency NetBooster has hired Rostrum to raise awareness of the agency’s profile in the UK market, targeting sectors including retail, travel, automotive and telecoms.

Rostrum will work with the digital marketing agency‘s international PR teams to support the creation of new messaging to boost NetBooster’s profile.

Rostrum will position the company as a “go-to commentator on issues” within the digital marketing industry through targeted media relations, and an ongoing content marketing campaign.

Jens Nielsen (pictured), head of Nordics & UK at NetBooster, said: “We needed a PR agency that could support our ambitious growth plans or the UK market. Rostrum’s experience and creative ideas convinced us that they were the right partner to help us with this challenge.”

Mark Houlding, CEO of Rostrum, added: “NetBooster is a great addition to our client portfolio and we are confident that a creative PR and thought leadership campaign, supported by original content marketing, will help to enhance NetBooster’s profile in the UK media.”

NetBooster appointed Rostrum through the PRCA’s Find A PR Agency (FAPRA) service, that matches a company’s needs to a consultancy’s capabilities.

Hope&Glory expands newly-created board

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Hope&Glory has brought in Portas’ former head of comms, Seb Dilleyston, and Good Relations’ former consumer director, Anna Terrell, to join its newly-created board.

Dilleyston has more than 15 years’ experience, having worked at agencies including Freud Communications and Mischief PR before he worked freelance with Hope&Glory.

He joined retail and fashion specialist Portas as head of comms and worked with Mercedes on its London Fashion Week sponsorship, as well as with footwear brand Clarks and shopping centre operator Westfield.

Terrell has worked at various agencies including Golin and most recently Good Relations, where she served as consumer director.

During her time at Good Relations she worked with B&Q on its press office and with Royal Caribbean on the launch of its ship Harmony of the Seas.

Hope&Glory has also created a new board made up of founders Jo Carr and James Gordon-MacIntosh, partners Gavin Lewis and Adrian Chitty, as well as Dilleyston and Terrell.

Gordon-MacIntosh said: “Hope&Glory is now a 48-strong team with a growing portfolio of clients. The creation of a board means we can continue to bring in senior consultants to ensure those clients are receiving senior counsel and the team is working with the best in the industry to support its development.”

Behind the Headlines with Telegraph Hill’s Barry Pilling

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Barry Pilling, founder and creative director at Telegraph Hill, on why he was once known as ‘Lightning’, having to dress up for a pitch and why the new way of doing things may not fit with traditional PR.

Before I reach the office in the morning, I’ve already…
Listened to a podcast. I am obsessed with people, their experiences and the things that make them tick. We’re all so complex and individual, yet we have this common set of human emotions – fear, joy, love, etc. My job is to tap into those audience emotions every day, so I find podcasts are the best way to absorb that full spectrum of understanding.

You’ll mostly find emails about…in my inbox.

My inbox is split – on the one hand it’s all about creative ideas and how we can make the audience’s jaws drop with every project. On the other hand it’s about being a company founder – investment, business plans and oh-so-glamorous tax discussions! It’s quite a dichotomy, but it stops me being one of those self-obsessed creative wankers that no-one can stand.

I know I’ve had a good day if…


Clients are selling our work for us. By that I mean they’re shouting about our work within their organisation, either to get sign off for a great idea or to get attention for compelling results. If the work speaks for itself the clients will be proud to get behind it vocally.

My first job was…

I worked in ASDA in Bolton and I’ve worked in plenty of pubs. But my first media job was on Tower FM, the town’s local radio station. They nicknamed me ‘Lightning’ because I was so slow…I’ve sharpened up a bit since then.

I can tell a campaign is succeeding when…
We’re building a true partnership with a client. The spirit of productive partnership (as opposed to a destructive blame culture) is incredibly important. It must go beyond a single project client / supplier relationship if you really want to break new ground, especially in something as fundamentally changeable as marketing is right now.

There needs to be time to experiment, to change processes and to set a new vision for what teams are trying to create. It’s true that the client / agency relationship is like a marriage. Trust, honesty and respect are the fundamentals, then there needs to be a will to analyse and improve to get through the ups and downs if it’s going to work long-term. When we do that with clients we get incredible results and everybody wins.

I eat… when nobody is watching.
Pasties are my weakness. And pudding, chips and gravy. It’s a northern thing.

The first time I pitched to a journalist…
I love pitching, but my first big pitch was when I worked in television. We’d developed a show about celebrities becoming boy Scouts for BBC 1, and the development producer made us all dress up for the pitch. It’s always hard being rejected, but being rejected whilst wearing shorts and a woggle is truly humiliating.

The worst thing anyone has said to me is…
That I was creative, so therefore I couldn’t be strategic. I laughed. Many traditional agencies keep their ‘creatives’ in a bubble far away from actual business results. Those agencies don’t get the kind of results we do.

The last book I read was…
Holy Island, a detective novel set on Lindisfarne. You show me a flawed cop who’s addicted to the job and lives by nobody’s rules but his own and I am putty in your hands.

I’ve never really understood why…
People who work for brands don’t see themselves as the target audience. It’s as though audiences are some ‘other’ kind of person. It’s dangerous for brands, because it ends up with the audience being treated as dumb, requiring over-simplification and repetition. And modern audiences hate it, turning to ad blocking as a result. It’s time for a new way of doing things, and that requires a new kind of agency that may not fit in the traditional creative / PR / media agency box.

If I could go back and talk to my 10-year-old self, I’d say…
I know you don’t believe this right now, but one day you’ll live in London. Yes, proper London. The one off Danger Mouse. Also, nice guys finish first, so keep it up.

This time next year, I’ll be…
Trying to work out how to fit more staff in our expanding office… and find a London chippy that serves gravy.

Fancy featuring in a Behind the Headlines interview? Please email [email protected].

Diffusion briefed to promote The View from The Shard

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The View from The Shard has appointed Diffusion as its retained PR agency, following a competitive pitch.

The View from The Shard launched in February 2013 and, at a height of up to 800ft (244 metres), offers visitors 360 degree views over London for up to 40 miles. The attraction is almost twice as high as any other vantage point in the city.

Diffusion has been briefed to increase the profile of the attraction and promote a series of special installations to visitors during 2016.

The campaign will start with the launch of The View from The Shard’s Summer Botanical Garden, through a series of creative activations across national, consumer lifestyle and travel trade media.

Diffusion’s brief also includes the development of social campaigns and online influencer engagement.

Stacey Wright, PR and social media manager at The View from The Shard, said: “We were searching for an agency that could give us the best of both worlds, deep travel and attractions experience alongside the creativity to help The View from The Shard really standout. Diffusion delivered on both fronts.

“The team impressed us with their clear understanding of our audiences and the most appropriate media and channel strategy to reach them. Diffusion really showcased how their creative campaign ideas would generate the buzz and excitement we need drive visitor numbers for an extremely exciting year ahead.”

Karl Webster, head of travel and leisure at Diffusion, added: “The View from The Shard has quickly become an icon and ‘must do’ item on the list of every visitor to London.  The attraction is continuing to push the boundaries of what you can experience at 800ft, through ground-breaking creative installations and innovative brand partnerships.

“We see a huge opportunity to use Diffusion’s expertise in the attractions and leisure space to ensure that The View from The Shard continues to appeal to as wide and audience as possible, both within London and beyond.”