Grayling wins Women in Rail comms brief

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Grayling has been chosen to deliver a wide-ranging integrated communications brief for Women in Rail, following a four-way pitch.

Over the next two years, the agency will showcase the positive impact made by women railway workers. Its partnerships with Virgin Trains, CrossCountry and Angel Trains will help Women in Rail drive change within the industry.

Grayling will also help Women in Rail enhance its reputation within Whitehall, including at the Department for Transport and Department for Education.

“Women in Rail are as much champions for the rail industry, as they are challengers to the industry,” said Craig Ling, head of Southern Region at Grayling. “Our tone will very much be one of positivity – channelling and publicising the great work being done by both men and women, creating a platform to attract the next generation of talent into rail.”

Adeline Ginn, founder of Women in Rail, added: “We are delighted to be working with the team at Grayling. Its ideas and counsel will play an important role in shaping how we evolve the organisation.”

Online GP surgery Push Doctor appoints Hotwire

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Europe’s largest online doctor consultation service, Push Doctor, selected Hotwire as its integrated comms agency yesterday, following a six-way pitch.

Hotwire will raise awareness of the brand through strategic creative campaigns. According to Push Doctor’s CEO, the team impressed it with key market insights informing a highly strategic approach.

“When we met Hotwire, we knew instantly that they had the energy and passion we need,” said Eren Ozagir, CEO of Push Doctor. “Hotwire showed a deep understanding of not just Push Doctor but our industry, and put together a team of specialists, each handpicked with the right skills to do a fantastic job.”

Emma Hazan, consumer MD at Hotwire, said: “The team is delighted to be working with Push Doctor – it’s an excellent opportunity for us to combine our expertise across our consumer and health tech practices.”

Travel PR wins Cinco Jotas brief

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Spanish jamón brand Cinco Jotas has appointed Travel PR to position it as the UK’s best producer of Spanish cured ham.

Travel PR will promote Cinco Jotas’ traditional cured hams

Virginia Webb, associate director, will lead the account with support from account manager Rebecca Milne and the agency will work with Cinco Jotas’ in-house communications team to develop an integrated UK campaign.

It will organise UK tastings and media visits to Jabugo, leverage the brand’s presence at consumer and trade events and collaborate with brand ambassador, José Pizarro, the acclaimed Spanish chef.

The team will also liaise with Bannigan Communications as part of a larger global PR campaign spanning France and the US.

Sue Ockwell, managing director and founder of Travel PR, said: “Food and travel go hand in hand and our team has extensive experience both of niche luxury brands as well as fine food campaigns. Virginia and Rebecca look forward to applying their experience and energy to building awareness of Cinco Jotas.”

London Marriott Hotel County Hall appoints Smarts

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London Marriott Hotel County Hall has appointed Smarts Communicate as its PR and content agency on Tuesday (June 6), following a four-way pitch.

Smarts will deliver integrated communications campaigns, influencer outreach and media relations to position the five-star venue as the luxury option on London’s South Bank, following its renovation in 2016.

“We wanted a fearless agency to help us re-energise and show off one of the best located hotels in London,” said Govert Deketh, London Marriott Hotel County Hall’s general manager. “Smarts’ fresh, creative vision really brought to life our ambition to be the luxury option on the South Bank.”

Helen Rainford, Smarts Communicate managing partner, added: “Our work is set to reflect Marriott Hotel’s wider brand transformation and we can’t wait to be a part of it. We love coming up with brave campaigns for well-loved brands, so watch this space.”

Hotwire gets "phygital"

Hotwire explains why digital brands are “going physical”

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Why are so many digital brands falling over themselves to create offline, physical experiences for their customers? That’s the question Hotwire tried to answer recently at its second Trends event in London.

A panel of industry experts from Pinterest, Tempur Sealy International, TouchNote and Startupbootcamp gathered at the Hotwire office on Thursday, June 1, to explore how the digital and physical realms are becoming increasingly intertwined.

Anastasia Emmanuel, a consumer tech brand consultant, argued that customers increasingly want to see and feel the products they find online. She said that “fundamentally” experiencing a product enables the consumer to understand its value.

She quipped: “Grown men behave like children when you put a tech product, like a drone, into their hands – nothing beats that feeling, and nothing can sell products faster.”

Julie Rigby, head of brand marketing at Tempur Sealy International, said her brand is looking to fuse its online and offline stores because its customers are increasingly time-poor and frustrated with the shopping experience.

“We recognise that we need a connected process for our customers,” she said. “We want to see virtual reality communicating with customers in-store rather than pushy sales assistants, creating an experience the consumer buys into rather than pushing a sale.”

Michelle Kramer, head of international communications at Pinterest, echoed this sentiment. She described how the brand is developing physical applications for its social network to help people design their lives.

“Consumers are discovering ideas online and going offline to try out the experience,” she said. “We don’t expect our users to be on the platform all day, nor do we want them to be. We believe great online experiences lead to even better offline experiences.”

Hotwire predicts this trend will transform the British high street in 2017 which matches one of the predictions made by The Future Laboratory’s Chris Sanderson at the Cision World Tour in London on Tuesday.

Sanderson believes trends like this will usher in a new era of PR creativity, and used his keynote speech to examine the opportunities trends, such as the growth of the attention economy, are creating for communicators. Click here now for the full story.

Grayling launches digital comms title predicting “rise of the robots”

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Grayling has predicted the “rise of the robots”, and how communicators might be affected, in Me, Myself and AI, its new digital magazine examining the risks and opportunities being created by advances in AI technology.

The publication brings together AI and PR specialists to explore the communications challenges companies face when incorporating AI and automation into their business and business processes.

Given the rapid emergence of AI and robotics across many sectors, Grayling argues, the way we live, work and are governed is set to transform in the coming years.

Jon Meakin

Jon Meakin, Grayling’s global head of strategic services, said this shift is opening up a myriad of opportunities for communicators, but it is also creating risks.

He said: “While we as communications specialists are making no claims to be experts in the field of AI, it is our job to understand the potential advantages that may accrue from the effective communication of such advancements – and the risks.”

Sarah Scholefield, CEO of Grayling UK and Ireland, added: “AI and its possible impact has become a recurring theme among the companies with whom we speak and across multiple industry sectors, prompting us to explore further the communications risks and opportunities associated with it.

Me, Myself and AI is part of Grayling’s Advantage Series, an insights programme set up to address the reputational, regulatory and communication challenges facing businesses today.

Cision World Tour panel event

3 essential PR insights from #CisionWorldTour London

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The lively debate surrounding yesterday’s Cision World Tour event extended far beyond the packed auditorium at London’s Ham Yard Hotel.

Members of the audience took to Twitter to share their thoughts using #CisionWorldTour.

Here are three of the most important PR insights explored at the event – from the future of influencer marketing to why it’s essential to measure the performance of your campaigns.

The shifting media landscape has transformed PR

As Cision CMO Chris Lynch said, the secret to crafting great PR campaigns comes down to three core storytelling principles: be human, be emotive and be original.

Originality is the hardest of these to achieve, but innovations such as competitor insights and social listening tools give communicators ways to differentiate themselves from the competition.

Dove put this approach to great use in its #RealBeauty campaign. The company used the Cision Communications Cloud to discover what people were saying about women’s body image and crafted a campaign that really resonated.

“Dove really gets at a lot of difficult issues about body image,” said Lynch. “The latest part of the campaign, which we supported, was around a creative content study. If you know this campaign, it has all the pillars of creative campaigns that we have been talking about.”

Measuring the impact of communications has never been more vital

The importance of measuring the performance of PR campaigns so communicators can demonstrate their business impact came up time and again throughout the event.

“Getting in a top tier outlet is great, but what does that mean for the business?” Lynch queried. “That’s a question that’s getting asked more and more.”

Although 81 percent of senior marketers believe earned media is more effective than paid media, marketing budgets are still skewed towards paid. This is an opportunity for communicators and PR pros to ask for meaningful metrics so that they can more accurately prove the business impact of their work.

The way people engage with content is changing

The Future Laboratory co-founder Chris Sanderson used his keynote speech to highlight the way technology is transforming how people engage with content. Consumers live in a state of total distraction, he said, and are constantly bombarded with technology.

“How is it we’ve lost the ability to do just one thing and do one thing well?” he asked. “The average human attention span has fallen, it’s estimated, from about 12 seconds in 2000 to just eight seconds by 2015.”

He concluded that technology is creating fantastic opportunities for PR professionals. But the industry needs to innovate and take full advantage of the latest innovations in order to create bold campaigns that capture the imagination of consumers.

  • The Cision World Tour is a series of events exploring the future of communications with leaders and influencers in the industry. The next event takes place tomorrow (June 8) in Paris. You can follow the debate on Twitter via #CisionWorldTour.
Kevin Akeroyd

Cision World Tour emphasises innovation’s role in the future of comms

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A stellar line up of the industry’s leaders and influencers spoke to a packed audience of PR and comms professionals as Cision’s World Tour event series came to London yesterday.

Following events in Chicago, San Francisco and New York, the London conference saw CIPR president Jason MacKenzie, The Future Laboratory co-founder Chris Sanderson, Mischief head of influence Lucy Hart, and more, discuss the future of PR and communications.

Cision CEO Kevin Akeroyd kicked off the debate by discussing how the time is right for earned media – including PR and media relations – to take its rightful place in the marketing mix and get its rightful share of marketing budgets.

Cision CMO, Chris Lynch

Cision CMO, Chris Lynch

Chris Lynch, CMO at Cision, explained how brands, including Dove, are combining great storytelling with data science. This is helping them uncover the right influencers to share their stories, craft great content and, ultimately, link coverage with customer behaviour.

“Consumers love trusted third parties, so that recognition that businesses have under-invested in earned media is happening now,” Akeroyd said. “We’ve got a great opportunity right now, but we can’t keep doing the same thing.”

He added: “We’ve got to invest in data, tech and measurement.”

MacKenzie chaired a Q&A session with Hart and Telefónica UK‘s director of corporate affairs Nicola Green which discussed how to establish a win-win relationship between your brand and the media. They delved into the best ways to re-imagine marketing and communications strategies in 2017.

Green said: “When we can deliver against our business objectives then, I can guarantee, that’s the one time a board sits up and listens. This is our opportunity – we’ve been waiting donkey’s years to get the board to realise how great comms is.”

Chris Sanderson, co-founder, The Future Laboratory

 

Finally, Chris Sanderson, co-founder of The Future Laboratory, made a series of bold predictions for the future of PR and predicted a new era of communications creativity in his well-received keynote speech at the end of the event, which was chaired by Cision’s Philip Smith.

Sanderson commented: “There’s an opportunity here for us to think about how we create stories and platforms where there’s real meaning and there’s a real opportunity to convey what we think is important about our brand or product. The challenge is to figure out how to blend story and brand.”

The Future Laboratory’s Chris Sanderson predicts a new era of PR creativity

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The Future Laboratory co-founder Chris Sanderson predicted a new era of PR creativity in his keynote speech at yesterday’s Cision World Tour summit in London.

To a packed room of leading PR and communications professionals, he made a series of bold predictions about the challenges consumer brands are facing and how technology will continue to shape the future of comms.

He argued that the way consumers engage with content is continually changing. Many people now prefer to consume content in silence, Sanderson said. The majority of videos in Facebook newsfeeds are viewed with the sound off and communicators must be aware of trends like this to create effective PR campaigns.

Similarly, he claimed virtual reality presents an unprecedented opportunity for immersive online or “augmented reality” shopping experiences – something he sees companies taking advantage of as these technologies are adopted by the public.

Consumers live in a state of total distraction, he said, with technology constantly bombarding them and vying for their attention. People use technology in an attempt to optimise their daily lives, but it generally has the opposite effect.

“How is it we’ve lost the ability to do just one thing and do one thing well?” he asked. “The average human attention span has fallen, it’s estimated, from about 12 seconds in 2000 to just eight seconds by 2015.”

He continued: “We live in a world of “skip culture” – but that can be countered with audacious, expressive advertising. Consider bold partnerships that blur the boundaries between genres.”

Despite the ways consumer behaviour is changing, he said long form content is not dead in the water. Data shows that long videos and articles attract the same number of viewers as short ones, but twice as many people get all the way to the end.

Sanderson said: “As Ben Jones from Google has said, a great story can still grab an audience, even with the ever-present ‘skip’ button. The challenge is to figure out how to blend story and brand.”

He concluded: “Again, there’s an opportunity here for us to think about how we create stories and platforms where there’s real meaning and there’s a real opportunity to convey what we think is important about our brand or product.”

A range of speakers, including Nicola Green, director of corporate affairs, Telefónica UK, Lucy Hart, head of influence, Mischief and Kevin Akeroyd, CEO, Cision, talked about the future of comms and a new era of modern communications at the Cision World Tour event in London.

  • The Cision World Tour is a series of events exploring the future of communications with leaders and influencers in the industry. The next event takes place tomorrow (June 8) in Paris. You can follow the debate on Twitter via #CisionWorldTour.

It’s time for PR to stand up and be counted says Telefónica UK’s comms chief

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Communicators finally have the opportunity to stand up and prove how great they are to company executives, Telefónica UK‘s director of corporate affairs Nicola Green said yesterday.

During a panel Q&A session at the London leg of the Cision World Tour, Green said new innovations mean PR professionals now have the opportunity to demonstrate the impact their work has on a company’s business objectives.

“When we can deliver against our business objectives then, I can guarantee, that’s the one time a board sits up and listens,” Green explained. “This is our opportunity – we’ve been waiting donkey’s years to get the board to realise how great comms is.”

Also, during the panel session, which Jason MacKenzie, CIPR president, chaired,  Lucy Hart, head of influence at Mischief, said she was seeing how clients were increasingly coming to the agency with bigger PR spend available as support for influencer marketing continued to rise.

She added that the role of communications is broadening to include elements of paid media.

“What I think probably needs to change is a little more flattening out of where those other disciplines belong,” said Hart. “We’ve started to do quite a lot of paid media as well to support the content we’re creating and I think more and more of that should be happening within the PR universe.”

She commented: “We have to loosen up a little bit and be willing to be more innovative and pushier and take our slice of the pie. Because what we do a brilliant job of is creating dialogue, conversations and creating content that people actually sit back and watch!”

MacKenzie agreed: “I think we need to stop being hung up on what we call what we do. You can call it influencer relations, you can call it PR, you can call it strategic communications. The client, or your boss, doesn’t care. They want results.”

  • The Cision World Tour is a series of events exploring the future of communications with leaders and influencers in the industry. The next event takes place tomorrow (June 8) in Paris. You can follow the debate on Twitter via #CisionWorldTour.