Tag: PR

NEW BUSINESS: BCAS Biomed

After a competitive pitch we are really excited to announce that we’ll be working with BCAS Biomed as their marketing agency … we’ve some great ideas including Direct Mail, Content Generation, PR and E-DM and can’t wait to get cracking …

 

 

Working with the local press - our top tips!

Not every retailer has the budget to implement a marketing plan, and two critical factors in making sure you succeed are, firstly, ensuring your customer service is the best that it can be in order to ensure repeat business, loyalty and recommendation, and secondly, to make sure you’re doing enough to publicise your offering.

No matter how great your service is, you can’t expect your business to flourish by word of mouth alone, you need to tell people about it to raise awareness and encourage people to cross your threshold and find out more about you. What’s the point in investing so much time and effort into your outlet and not blowing your own trumpet?

While posters and flyers are a great way of promoting sales and one-day discounts, if you’re doing something with the ‘wow’ factor, the best way to engage with customers is to win the support of the local press, who can help promote your business.

While simply opening your doors every morning or holding a sale isn’t enough to interest the press, there are countless opportunities for every business to promote itself through PR and reach a wider audience of potential customers – from opening a new premises, unveiling a refurbishment, recruiting new staff, becoming a champion for the local community or supporting a local charity.

Over the past 10 years, we’ve worked with both high street brands and independent retailers to help raise awareness, enhance reputation and get them noticed for all the right reasons. And we’re sharing our top ten tips to help start-ups and independent retailers feel more confident about approaching the press to promote their business.

  1. Find a hook that would interest you as a potential customer, rather than a retailer – something that will attract interest from existing and new customers and lead to them coming to investigate. Whether it’s the chance to witness a world record attempt or take advantage of a butcher’s advice on how best to prep the Christmas turkey, offer them something different!
  2. Tap into the local community – if you support a local charity, or you’re taking part in an initiative to support one, be it sitting in a bath of baked beans or running a marathon, shout about it and call upon others to sponsor you or join you in raising awareness and funds
  3. Be sure to give the press enough time – don’t tell them the day before your event. Give them advance notice, a couple of weeks if you can. If the paper comes out every Thursday, aim to contact them on a Thursday, after that week’s deadlines have gone – that gives them the biggest time frame to consider it for the following week. If it’s an evening paper, share your story after 1pm, as the newsroom will be less frantic
  4. Buy or borrow a copy of the newspapers you’re hoping to reach, and decide who is the best person to send your story to. Is there a specific reporter for your area? Is there a reporter who focuses on retail issues? If you can’t find a named contact, call and ask, or get a general newsroom email address where you can send your story to. Make sure that you’ve got it right, with dots, dashes and underscores in the right place.
  5. If you’re sending an email, keep it to the point. A good subject line generates interest, so avoid ‘Press Release’ and instead, cite the story itself: e.g. Bradford bakery aims to bake the world’s largest loaf / Cannock boutique set to host charity summer fashion show. Keep the body of the email short and sweet, use the journalist’s name if you’re writing to a specific person and refer to the publication you’re targeting – let them know you’re not just sending a blanket email to every paper in the county
  6. If possible, send a photograph with your story to capture readers’ imaginations. Never assume that a press photographer will have nothing better to do than come and take your picture. Aim to use a digital camera rather than a mobile phone – cameras offer a consistently good quality picture, whereas cameras can vary in quality and size
  7. About that picture: Ensure everyone is looking the right way, that their eyes are open, and that they look the part – overalls/aprons if applicable, or that collars, ties and hems are straight. Double check there are no peculiar additions, such as road signs growing out of the subjects’ heads, and where possible, try to get your business signage into the picture
  8. Include your picture caption on the press release, with the people and their title labelled left-right
  9. Before you send anything off, spell check it and check for typos, and make sure that you’ve included your telephone number and email address should the recipient want more details
  10. When it comes to following up with the press, continue to be mindful of the time you call, and be polite and courteous. While the story is important to you, it is one of many to them
Chocolate that demands respect

Bahlsen have finally officially launched PiCK UP! to the UK market – the chicken/egg team just love these biscuits and they’ve become a staple now at any brainstorm meeting!

It was great fun to have been involved in the pitching process for the TV commercial and although our ‘tea lady’ didn’t make the final cut we have to agree that BMB’s Ninja Chihuahua has universal appeal!

Working closely with BMB, MediaCom and the Bahlsen team we managed the launch PR and Social Media activity which saw a 6ft Ninja Chihuahua hit the streets of London in our #NinjaSelfChi campaign plus the NC also photobombed Ellen’s now famous Oscar Selfie …

A great start to the 2014 campaign!

Ninja Chihuahua at the Oscars

Sweet taste of success

The chicken/egg team is celebrating this week after a PR stunt staged on behalf of our client Bahlsen Biscuits proved a huge success.

It was months in the making, but all eyes were on gorgeous Made In Chelsea star Cheska yesterday as she wore an exclusive hat to Ladies Day at Royal Ascot.

The idea has been in the pipeline since January. What better way to raise awareness of the Bahlsen brand, we asked ourselves when we started working with the exclusive German biscuit manufacturer, than to have an eye-catching bespoke hat adorn the head of one of the hottest names around on the biggest day in the fashion calendar?

And so it began… we commissioned the talented milliner Sally Harper-Kenn of Sharper Millinery to create the hat, and bag designer Bryony Longden of Smug Bags to create the bespoke clutch.

We approached the Made In Chelsea favourite to ask if she’d like to be our sartorial muse for the day, and we were over the moon when, not only did she accept, but immediately enlisted the support of co-star, flatmate and best friend Ollie Locke, to join us.

And what a response we got! Cheska’s outfit – sourced from Diva Catwalk and Dune – and splendid accessories featured everywhere from the Mirror to OK!

Cheska shows off the bespoke Bahlsen Choco Leibniz hat and clutch

Cheska shows off the bespoke Bahlsen Choco Leibniz hat and clutch

Cheska was an absolute joy to work with, a real pro, and not only did she bring Ollie along, but also two more pals to keep us entertained during the day – Now celebrity columnist Sam Dowler and man-about-town Freddie Elliott.

These charming gents shared racing tips with us, while Cheska and Ollie filled the chicken/egg and Bahlsen teams in on all the behind-the-scenes goss from the set of Made In Chelsea – but we’re not telling…

 

 

 

 

 

New Client: Bahlsen update

Since we announced last year that we’d picked up our first project with Bahlsen things have snowballed … we’re now Bahslen’s integrated agency and we’re managing all their PR, social media and design across their core product range!

We’ve also helped write their marketing strategy for 2014 onwards and we’re very excited to be helping them kick-off new advertising, PR and social media campaigns for Hit, Choco Leibniz and Messino this year to lead into the future positioning we’ve helped develop.

We’ll keep you posted as we’ve some exciting things happening in the next few months …