Page 4 – Gorkana

60 Seconds with the NFL’s David Tossell

October 10, 2018/in Interviews /by Alister Houghton

David Tossell, NFL director of public affairs (UK and Europe), talks about how the sport has grown in the UK and his ever-changing role ahead of the the NFL’s London fixtures.

David Tossell

You’ve been working with the NFL for over 20 years, what made you move from journalism into what was a PR role for a fairly niche sport in the UK?

Having been a fan for many years, a small part of my job at the Today newspaper was covering the NFL and so I got to know various people in the New York office.

From that, they asked me to head up their PR in Europe – which happened to be at the exact time when my colleagues on the paper were being told they were working on the last-ever edition. It was great timing – for me, anyway!

How much has your role changed following the demise of the NFL’s Europe league and the rise of the International Series?

It’s very different. It has gone from trying to figure out how to get a few thousand into the old White Hart Lane to watch the London Monarchs – and wondering whether signing William ‘The Refrigerator’ Perry was the answer – to helping to manage multiple sold-out regular-season games and being a part of the brand new Tottenham stadium project.

The other big change, of course, is the vastly different media world in which we operate compared to 1995, when I joined the NFL. (Internet? What’s that?!)

When the first London game was announced, did you envision how much the International Series and popularity of the sport in general would grow in the UK over the next 11 years?

We always felt confident that if enough people were exposed to the sport then popularity would grow. The speed of it has been very exciting – for example, our hope was that if the first London game went well, we might be able to do it again three or four years later.

Amongst the NFL’s promotional activity is its regular takeover of areas such as Regent Street, Oxford Street and Trafalgar Square. How much effort and coordination goes into executing such events?

For those involved more directly than I am in the planning of those events, it is a massive undertaking. Simply getting the relevant people open to the idea of closing down those iconic areas for an NFL event was an achievement in the first place.

The NFL prides itself on the quality and professionalism of such events, so an immense amount of planning goes into the promotion and execution of them. They are a great way for us to broaden out our activities beyond the games themselves.

Recently, British players have been making an impact in the sport, how important is that from a PR and promotional aspect in the UK?

You only had to look at the newspapers on the day after the Philadelphia Eagles won the Super Bowl in February to see the impact. To have a London-born running back, Jay Ajayi, celebrating on the field draped in the Union Jack (handed to him by our NFL UK photographer) was a massive moment for us. As has been the recent impact of Efe Obada at the Carolina Panthers.

Those stories help us create media cut-through, as well as being an inspiration for young people who might be thinking about playing the game here.

How do you look to measure your PR output?

There is still value in the traditional measurements, i.e. number and reach of articles, but increasingly – especially as we work with non-traditional platforms – we look closely at the quality of the engagement we are able to create, especially within the areas we are targeting for fan growth.

Finally, what is your long-term comms plan for the sport in the UK?

We will continue to tell the many great stories we believe the NFL has to offer and create as many access points to the league and our players as possible.

Increasingly, we are looking at non-traditional platforms, such as digital influencers, as an opportunity to introduce more people to the NFL, but as an old print guy I would like to think that the traditional print and broadcast outlets will continue to be an important part of our strategy.

Meet the Journalist: Index on Censorship’s Jemimah Steinfeld

October 9, 2018/in Interviews /by Alister Houghton

Jemimah Steinfeld, deputy editor at Index on Censorship magazine, talks about the magazine’s recent award win, freedom of speech and how the title likes to work with PRs.

Jemimah Steinfeld

Congratulations on your recent APEX award! How important is it for you to be recognised by awards judges for the work you produce?

It’s really important for us to be recognised and we were thrilled to get this award. As a small publication, we benefit from the added exposure that awards such as these bring.

Part of the ethos at Index on Censorship is to amplify voices and raise the profile of issues, with awards really helping. We also work with a lot of journalists, photojournalists and writers who struggle under very difficult circumstances.

For example, a journalist, cameraman and filmmaker from Yemen, Abdulaziz Muhammad al-Sabri, who has been abducted and tortured for the work he does, talked to Index on Censorship about his experiences. Recognition coming from an award like this means a lot to people like al-Sabri, who risk their lives daily in the name of free speech.

What sort of content can be found in the magazine? Does it have any regular sections or features?

We look at global issues through the lens of censorship and free speech. To this end, we are fairly broad, writing about anything from the rise of safe spaces across US and UK university campuses to laws against bloggers in Tanzania.

Each issue always has a theme, with at least half of the magazine devoted to it. The most recent issue, Trouble in Paradise, looked at the free speech realities behind some of the world’s most popular holiday destinations. Meanwhile, the award-winning issue looked at how protest is under attack across the globe, to tie in with the 50th anniversary of the Prague Spring.

We do also have regular sections, with several columnists and cartoonists we work with in each issue. For example, the Guardian cartoonist Martin Rowson always creates an illustration for us.

And finally, we have a culture section, where we publish exclusive short stories, poems, plays and book extracts. We often work with some of the biggest names in global literature, such as Ariel Dorfman.

How big is the team and who does what?

The magazine is part of a wider organisation, but the team itself is pretty small. We are just two-and-a-half full-time members of staff and between us – the editor Rachael Jolley, myself (deputy editor) and the editorial assistant Danyaal Yasin – we conceptualise, commission, edit and compile the whole magazine.

We also have contributing editors in Argentina, USA, Turkey, Iraq and Yemen, and we work with regular correspondents, though we are always on the hunt for new ones (looking for writers who are based in a certain country to write on that country).

These people aside, we work with many other writers per issue, as well as sub-editors, illustrators and designers, our publishers, Sage, an editorial advisory board and our in-house Index on Censorship digital team.

Describe a typical Index on Censorship magazine reader.

We are read by a very varied bunch. Margaret Atwood, for example, is an avid reader of ours. Equally we’re popular with students across the globe.

Index on Censorship appeals to people with a general interest in politics, culture and human rights. We are published by Sage, an academic publisher, so we have a high following amongst more academic audiences, who are looking for something meaty.

If anything ties these people together it would probably be a passion to find out more about the world, to support the important issue of free speech, and to enjoy high quality writing and journalism.

Do you think that free speech is becoming increasingly censored globally, or are a few high profile examples obscuring the overall picture?

Sadly the overall picture is not positive right now. The rise of the so-called “strong men” – Trump, Putin, Erdogan, Xi Jinping, Shinzo Abe, Rodrigo Duterte etc – has been terrible for free speech.

In their countries, we have seen significant and growing attacks on various pillars of free speech, such as the media and activism. And since these men operate in countries that often set agendas, we’ve seen other places follow suit and a deterioration in respect for reporters and free speech values more broadly.

We also have other issues to contend with, such as the current debate around social media and its role in our society. While it’s unclear right now as to how that might fully play out, several countries have passed laws against the spread of “fake news” and others are debating them at present (including the UK). These laws are incredibly concerning as they could be arbitrarily applied at best, and are often used to further control and shut down critical voices.

That is not to say there aren’t triumphs from time to time. And indeed the winning issue on protest highlighted certain areas where people have effectively campaigned for greater freedoms, such as in the case of Argentina and the grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, who are part of the world’s longest protest and have managed to find lots of their granddaughters, part of their key aims, in the process.

In another issue, our Radio issue from last autumn, we show how radio is actually opening up a lot of conversations and podcasts are circumventing censorship. But sadly the trend does seem to be more away from free speech across the globe than towards it.

What is your relationship like with PRs? What’s the best way for them to work with you?

We are always happy for PRs to email us with relevant book launches, film premieres, author talks and the like. As a quarterly magazine we work quite far ahead and so it’s best to give us some decent lead-in time.

Finally, do you have a favourite article or speech defending freedom of expression?

Tricky to answer as between fictional works like The Handmaid’s Tale and 1984, and non-fiction from great thinkers such as John Stuart Mill, there is a lot of good literature on free speech.

From a personal perspective I always think about “First they came” from Martin Niemöller, the prominent Protestant pastor who was as an outspoken critic of Adolf Hitler and spent the last seven years of Nazi rule in concentration camps.

His words show the relevance of exercising your free speech while you have it. A lot of people take this fundamental right for granted. And yet this right – which has been hard fought for – is incredibly easy to lose and when we lose it, the end results can be devastating.

Opinion: Why we need to break the “Gender Say Gap”

October 8, 2018/in News Analysis /by Guest Contributor

Abbie Sampson, director of external affairs at Energy UK and Women in PR committee member, outlines why the group has created a female speaker directory to encourage event organisers to have more women speak at events and close as the “Gender Say Gap” between men and women.

Gender discrimination has been high on the news and political agenda in 2018. From new ground-breaking mandatory gender pay gap reporting in April to the 100th anniversary of some women getting the vote and the groundswell of global momentum behind the #metoo movement – gender, diversity and inclusion are issues that can no longer be ignore, and they’re issues the best organisations are actually embracing.

The PR industry is two thirds (66%) women so we should be ahead of the game on gender balance, right? Wrong.

The CIPR State of the Profession 2018 report found a gender pay gap of over £6,5000 in the PR industry and new research by Opinium, on behalf of Women in PR, revealed a stark gap in public visibility between men and women in the industry, with just a quarter (24%) of female PR professionals (PROs) having ever spoken at an industry event and half (53%) having experienced events with all male speakers and panels.

This phenomenon – called the ‘Gender Say Gap’ – is a concept first recognised by PR agency Man Bites Dog, which has conducted extensive research and campaigned on the issue.

The excuses given for male-dominated events are – ironically – diverse. From the passively naïve (“well, we did invite some women”) to the downright lazy (“we didn’t know who else to ask”), but often it seems to boil down to fact it can be seen as easy thing to do, relying on the same (often white, male) faces.

The absence of women, and other diverse groups, as spokespeople and speakers in a sector teeming with such talent and expertise is just not acceptable – and Women in PR has decided to do something about it.

Women in PR has partnered with the PRCA to launch a female speaker directory. We hope that, with this free directory, we can ensure women are more fairly represented at industry events and help event organisers recruit more diverse speakers.

So, we are calling on women in the PR sector – of all ethnicities and backgrounds – who are open to speaking opportunities, to please put themselves forward and sign up, and together we can start to close the Gender Say Gap.

Visit the Women in PR website for further details and to sign up.

Picture credit: Paparazzi VIP

PR news round-up (1-5 October)

October 4, 2018/in Industry News /by Alister Houghton

Here’s a round-up of the week’s top PR news, featuring crisis comms analysis from Cision’s Megan Taylor and account wins for Ready10, Milk & Honey and AprilSix Proof.

The four steps to building a foolproof crisis comms response

Megan Taylor, senior client insights manager at Cision, provides examples from the Insights team illustrating the need for speed when a crisis situation hits.

Interview

Ian Hood, CEO and co-founder of Babel PR, explains why he started the agency, talks about working internationally and being on the end of a rant from Kelvin MacKenzie.

Account wins

Destination Star Trek, the biggest Star Trek convention in Europe, has appointed to Ready10 to handle PR and comms around the show later this month. The agency will provide pre-show support, creative consultancy and handle all press around the event, while also overseeing event PR for the 40+ Star Trek cast who will be present, including William Shatner and Jason Isaacs.

The Elf on the Shelf has appointed Mason Williams Communications to handle its PR and events programme.

Milk & Honey will handle PR for broadcast specialist markettiers4DC, where it will build the brand’s position as leaders in their sector.

Future Publishing has appointed Storm to manage an integrated PR and social campaign for its The Photography Show and The Video Show events.

The Royal Institution has appointed Riot Communications to promote its annual Christmas Lectures.

Marriott International has selected Smarts Communicate to deliver a tailored comms campaign to drive publicity around the hotel chain’s Distinctive Select Brands portfolio in Europe.

Professional services data platform Intapp has appointed AprilSix Proof to lead its UK PR and influencer brief. The agency will execute a strategy to promote the platform to the professional services sector through media relations, influencer engagement and thought leadership.

Drinkable hangover supplement producer HangZing has appointed Palm PR to manage its UK launch through an integrated campaign.

Fitness app creator Freeletics has hired Blueprint Sports to handle its global PR and influencer marketing strategy.

Responsibly-sourced gemstone supplier Gemfields Group has appointed Maria Boyle Communications to handle consumer PR for both its Gemfields and Faberge brands.

Health and wellness channel FMTV has selected WHITEHAIR.CO to handle all press and publicity around its new docuseries TRANSCENDENCE.

Technology company Improbable has appointed Dynamo PR to support its strategic comms and promote its cloud-based game development platform SpatialOS.

Workwear brand Scruffs has appointed Tank to raise awareness of its products to tradespeople through targeted trade press activity.

Medical and health technology company Atlantic Therapeutics has appointed ROAD to provide PR support for its INNOVO product.

Digital retailer Studio has selected Havas PR as its retained influencer outreach agency. Havas is tasked with instigating and managing multiple influencer ambassador partnerships to promote the company’s wares.

TicketCo, the events payment software firm, has appointed Fortitude Communications as its retained UK strategic comms agency.

Blockchain-based art platform CryptoNumiz has appointed Jargon PR to generate media awareness and raise the profile of the platform.

People news

Brands2Life has appointed Kinda Jackson as managing director of its digital practice. She will sit on the agency’s board and manage its digital and social team.

Digital financial adviser company Wealth Wizards has appointed Elizabeth Basten as CMO. Basten will have oversight of the firm’s PR and comms function.

TALK.GLOBAL has appointed Suzy Socker to its leadership team as board director.

Liz Lean PR has hired Claire Hardy as a director. She will work alongside managing director Liz Willingham to enhance the agency’s product and service offering.

Tom Parker, chairman of PR and public policy agency Cambre, has been named president of the British Chamber of Commerce EU and Belgium.

Agency news

Good Relations North MD Jo Leah and Good Relations CEO Richard Moss

Good Relations has acquired The Little Big Agency, founded by Jo Leah. The agency will be renamed to Good Relations North, with Leah to become managing director of the northern office and join Good Relations’ executive team.

Consumer PR agency Escapade has launched a sister brand, Elevation Marketing, to support SMEs operating in the food and drink industry.

Legal PR specialists Byfield Consultancy and Eliott & Markus, have formed a strategic alliance to work together on international legal sector clients requiring European and wider EMEA PR representation and support.

Awards news

The Creative Shootout has opened entries for its 2019 edition. Agencies from across marketing disciplines are invited to create a campaign for A Plastic Planet, a non-profit which looks to highlight the effect of plastic pollution and look to dramatically reduce the amount of plastic packaging used in food and drink.

Agencies must enter their submissions by 30 November. More details can be found at www.creativeshootout.com.

Cision Insights: Why speed is of the essence in a crisis

October 4, 2018/in Features /by Guest Contributor

Megan Taylor, senior client insights manager at Cision, provides examples from the Cision Insights team illustrating the need for speed when a crisis situation hits.

In order to mitigate the potential negative impact on its reputation, the speed to which an organisation deals with a crisis is critical.

To illustrate this point, Cision Insights have compared two real crisis responses from a tech company and a retail company following problems with their products.

The retail organisation chose to immediately release an official statement concerning the product issue, and to recall affected products at once. As a result, unfavourable coverage peaked early, but the organisation’s management of the crisis was subsequently praised in the media.

As for the tech company, unfavourable coverage aggregated before the company issued any official statement on the matter – and once this was deemed inadequate, negative discussion continued meaning two subsequent statements were also required.

Only after the product recall seven weeks later did negative mentions gradually die down.

The implication of the retail organisation’s spokespeople successfully mitigated the negative impact of the crisis on the organisation’s reputation. Some 13 local representatives delivered the company’s messages in the first week of the crisis, demonstrating the brand’s willingness to resolve the issue globally, and in a timely manner.

This resulted in almost one in three articles on the subject containing the spokesperson’s message which therefore resulted in positive messaging which was widely distributed.

The tech company, on the other hand, only achieved 8% spokesperson penetration overall, despite issuing three statements over the crisis period. This meant that the negative conversation rumbled on for nine weeks in total, whereas the retail company’s crisis was over in just two weeks and having a one global statement approach was therefore not effective in mitigating the issue.

It can also benefit an organisation to have a unified approach with marketing. The recent lack of chicken at KFC caused panic across the country and one hell of a busy week at head office.

A unified approach

The decision to place a full page ad in The Sun and The Metro meant that their bold apology became the story for a while, instead of the still prominent lack of chicken.

This meant that an action from the marketing team could then be used by the PR team to spread the message further, with further statements and updates released on social media.

Huffington Post went as far as to say the firm had demonstrated a “masterclass in PR crisis management”.

As examples demonstrate, decisive swift action with all parts of the business working together can limit the time a crisis continues to dominate the news cycle.

To find out more about the steps you can take to ensure your crisis comms plan will mitigate damage to your organisation, download our white paper The four steps to creating a foolproof crisis comms response by filling in the form below.

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60 Seconds with Babel PR’s Ian Hood

October 1, 2018/in Interviews /by Alister Houghton

Ian Hood, CEO and co-founder of Babel PR, explains why he started the agency, talks about working internationally and being on the end of a rant from Kelvin MacKenzie.

What made you found Babel PR?

Sheer arrogance. No, seriously, I’d worked a number of years in-house with a large public company and it was all becoming just a little bit boring and the only real challenge was having to deal with the communications impact of yet another new CEO (six in six years!).

I struck out on my own for a period, which was lucrative but isolating at the same time, so I decided to mix things up and move to my first position with an agency. I soon realised that having in-house experience meant that I had a better understanding of what clients are looking for.

That experience, something I think all agency people would find useful, allows you to take account of a variety of factors that aren’t always obvious and can make the difference between winning and losing new business.

I enjoyed working for an agency but the reality is that I didn’t always agree with the agency principals and if that’s the case, you only have two choices – stay, or go and do it your own way.

Fortunately, I’d also met someone who was thinking in the same way, and who had complimentary skills – my now-business partner Narelle Morrison. The decision to start Babel PR happened quickly and it’s one I’ve never regretted.

Why did you choose to have Babel PR specialise in the tech sector?

The obvious answer would be to say our combined experience. Between Narelle and I, we’d built up a considerable amount of campaign experience, in terms of design and implementation, across a wide variety of technology sectors, from mobile and television to enterprise and digital media environments.

More importantly though, the last 20 years or so have been defined by technological developments enabling new business models across every sector, from healthcare and education, to retail, travel and manufacturing.

Tech seemed like – and still is – a huge growth opportunity, but because of its inherent complexity, there’s a limited number of people who can get their heads around it, especially in the B2B world. You need to understand the complexity but also have the skills and experience to translate that complexity into something mere mortals can understand.

What would you say is the biggest change in the sector since you founded Babel PR?

The rise of alternative media (including social) along with the corresponding decline in the traditional media and the inevitable pressure placed on journalists today.

When I started in the business, social media didn’t exist, we still used the fax regularly (hideous technology) and if I was going to leak a story the details may well have been delivered anonymously in an unmarked brown paper envelope.

I have fond memories of being called by former Sun editor, Kelvin MacKenzie, who was running a cable TV channel at the time, with him saying: “I know it was you that put that story out you f***er, I’ll f***ing crucify you, you bastard!”

I personally think it’s a tragedy that it’s becoming more and more difficult to make high quality journalism pay, but unfortunately, we have to accept that it’s now a very different environment in terms of the channels we operate in and the skills we need to deliver great work.

Fortunately, one thing hasn’t changed – great PR is still all about being able to identify or create a great story. If you get that right you are 90% of the way to success.

Why did you decide to expand the agency internationally and what opportunities does this bring?

Pretty much all of our clients operate in multiple geographies, and each of them have different communications requirements. A presence on the ground is needed to support this demand, so it’s important to make sure we’ve either employed individuals working in specific locations, or are working with like-minded regional agencies.

Coupled with this, there are some companies that will only consider an agency which has multiple market representations, even though a network of specialists may be able to support them more effectively. That forces you think about international expansion so that you don’t miss out on the opportunities you know you can deliver on.

The trick is to select your markets carefully to avoid overstretching your management resources – I’ve seen far too many good agencies do exactly that and fail miserably.

What are the challenges of working across multiple regions and time-zones?

The obvious thing is the time zones themselves but there are ways to deal with that effectively and let’s face it, PR has never been a nine to five job.

Less obvious are the cultural differences, and that doesn’t just mean the customs and social behaviour of the society in question – the PR industries in every country have their own distinct micro-cultures and you need to understand those.

The relationships, expectations and ways of doing things can all be very different. If you don’t get to grips with the differences you’ll find yourself always saying things like: “Why on earth can’t PRs in [insert country] ever do [insert task]?”

How do you look to measure your PR output at Babel PR?

I believe there are two fundamental measures of campaign success when it comes to PR: firstly, brand awareness, and secondly, the contribution of PR to overall sales performance.

Internally we measure PR campaigns in multiple ways – the volume, quality, placement, sentiment, message delivery, relationships built; the list goes on – but ultimately it comes down to brand awareness and/or sales performance, and PRs should not lose sight of this.

What is your most memorable moment from your time in PR?

Being taught the difference between ‘off the record’ and ‘not for publication.’

Early in my PR career I was working in-house and talking to a journalist who was writing for a well-known national publication about one of my clients, a FTSE 100 company, and a particularly thorny issue.

I gave said journalist a thorough briefing including some (very) sensitive ‘off the record’ comments. I got a terrible shock the next morning when I discovered my ‘off the record’ comments had made it to the front page of the national publication.

My phone rang off the hook that day with internal and external calls and when I’d finally managed to get hold of the journalist to ask him why on earth he’d published my comments, he calmly explained the difference between ‘off the record’ and ‘not for publication’.

Lesson learned and it’s safe to say, I’ve never made the same mistake again!

How to communicate about PR measurement

October 1, 2018/in Insights /by Guest Contributor

PR remains an obscure discipline from an outsider’s point of view. Therefore, it goes without saying that its measurement probably baffles more people than we think, including some from the media industry.

By Jennifer Sanchis, senior account executive, PRIME Research

Richard Bagnall, Chairman of AMEC, recently shared a Forbes article on Twitter titled: “How to measure the value of publicity”. The article itself highlights the importance of objective setting in the PR evaluation process but fails to condemn the use of AVEs, merely explaining that “the advertising equivalency approach is not specific enough”. As a vocal advocate for the ban of AVEs in PR measurement, Bagnall accused the author of the article to “confuse the market further”.

Being a PR measurement and media research analyst myself, I have witnessed the confusion that certain organisations face when it comes to measuring their input, output, out-takes and outcomes. AMEC has worked on an interactive evaluation framework to help measure their impact. The framework is accessible online to help those who wish to establish a plan, set targets and measure the impact of the PR efforts:

Industry bodies such as AMEC, the CIPR, PRCA and the UK’s Government Cabinet Office have done a great job at redefining measurement standards. Thanks to their initiative, the quality of organisations’ work in this regard have strengthened, but practitioners need to continue to advocate for reliable metrics and teach the true value of tangible and credible results.

With this in mind, here are four pieces of advice we can follow to better communicate about measurement best-practice and facilitate understanding with the organisations we work with:

Use the language our colleagues on the board speak. Do not dumb down the analysis. However, do use the concepts, metrics and salient aspects your colleagues live by to assess the success of their campaigns. “You can only have strategic, top-table conversations when you talk the [business’s] language and discuss your impact on sales, brand reputation, advocacy or adoption”, Giles Peddy, SVP EMEA operations & UK managing director at PR firm LEWIS, explained. In my experience, dashboards containing tailored metrics work quite well to share easy-to-digest and sizable but still actionable insights;
Acknowledge our audience isn’t always data and analysis savvy. We need to dedicate some time to train and explain what each metric and information in our evaluation process implies and means to our audience;
Highlight clear links between the initial business objectives and the desired outcomes. This way, our audience will be able to relate to our measurement study and our findings will have more impact;
Integrate our measurement analysis by speaking to the different departments of the organisation. For example, the marketing team could share insights on customer behaviour, the sales team on sales data and the digital team on web traffic. Identifying areas of collaboration will enable to not only understand where opportunities lie but also get a holistic picture of business performance.

The Forbes article also recommends “the tools available in Google Analytics to track results and measure ROI for companies”. The author rightly emphasises that “different types of business, with different goals, will track different performance indicators”.

However, we need to be careful with the latest (sometimes obscure) compound score that everyone is talking about as it might not always be tailored to our specific needs. For example, we have heard about index scores by Technorati, Klout or PeerIndex. The use of ‘valid metrics’ as universal validation metrics can be dangerous.

Every organisation has its own uniqueness so measurement shouldn’t be the mere collection of ‘starter KPIs’ deemed as ‘valid metrics’. Those indicators are useful only, and only if, we are able to understand its different compounds, what each number represents and check if those metrics are in line with our initial objectives.

Measurement is complex. It also plays an essential part in building the credibility of the profession which is why we need to be able to communicate about it in a simple way and pass on the knowledge.

PR news round-up (24-28 September)

September 27, 2018/in Industry News /by Alister Houghton

Here’s a round-up of the week’s top PR news, featuring PRWeek‘s influencer breakfast, Mark Weiner’s lifetime achievement award and wins for AprilSix Proof and TMG.

PRWeek ‘Making influencers work for you’ breakfast

Niki & Sammy: “We’ve had no long-term relationship with brands”

(L-R): Alex Hunter, Katie Hunter, Stephen Farrell, Alex Myers and Niki & Sammy

Influencer marketing in the UK is still transient and has not yet matured to the point where influencers and brands have long-term relationships, Radio One podcasters Niki and Sammy revealed at a Cision-sponsored PRWeek breakfast briefing.