Clarion Communications

ShopMums

Debbie Jackson, head of new business, Clarion Communications

Have my shopping habits as a mother changed over the past 12 months? I can say a resounding 'yes'. In fact I am responsible for most of the purchasing decisions in my household (with the recent exception of car tyres) - so what does that mean for brands trying to reach me and my family?

Nicola Carroll, account executive, Clarion Communications

Recently I have been helping out with new Clarion client, The Healing Foundation - a UK charity that supports research into all aspects of disfigurement, scarring and reconstructive surgery, so a really worthwhile cause.

Maddalena Pinto, account manager, Clarion Communications

The world of PR is ever evolving with both journalists and PRs constantly changing their ways of workings, best practices and preferences. So is face-to-face time with journalists still the most effective way to achieve results for clients - or do the telephone and email work just as well, while being more cost-effective?

Laura Jones, associate director, Clarion Communications

With all budgets under the microscope these days it’s essential that any marketing discipline can prove return on investment to survive. But while Media Buyers have ‘opportunities to see', and Digital Marketers have clicks, likes and retweets, showing the true value of PR over and above advertising value equivalent (AVE) and number of cuts can be difficult.

Alexandra Gerolami, senior account manager, Clarion Communications

I started my first internship in PR at 14 - and preparing a catwalk show was at the time the most exciting thing I had ever done, even though the experience was far from glamorous. I spent most of my time in an archive room organising dusty press books and franking mail (and there are a lot of envelopes to mail out when preparing a catwalk show) but the excitement and the non-stop buzz - and the fact that I was backstage at the show - got me hooked straight away.

Isobel Postins, senior account director, Clarion Communications

We all know this PR dream: check the papers first thing to find blanket coverage for a picture-led story dreamt up in a brainstorm months ago. Everyone’s happy, especially the client.

Gary Freemantle, CEO, Clarion Communications

So since mid-April, BBC Breakfast has been broadcasting from MediaCityUK in Salford. BBC Children’s, Sport and Radio 5 Live are also - or soon will be - at the shiny new offices, which along with other departments will bring numbers of BBC staff at the site to a massive 2,300.

Philippa Wynn-Green, board director, Clarion Communications

Announcing his resignation in a letter to The New York Times recently, an employee of Goldman Sachs accused the bank of acting only in its own interests - and referring to clients as ‘muppets’. The media, lapping up another negative banking story, gave this masses of space - and Goldman Sachs, usually accustomed to positive stories about its success, felt the full force of negative public opinion and saw its value drop by billions.

Niall Hughes, senior account manager, Clarion Communications, part of the WPP group

The sun is shining and the metaphorical mercury is rising, which can only mean the onset of the summer silly season. Every year PRs plot wackier and zanier picture stunts and surveys to coincide with this most bizarre of seasons - but what are they up against?

Barbara Normile, account director, Clarion Communications, part of the WPP group

Despite the huge advances in the way we’ve communicated throughout history - from speech to writing and carrier pigeons to telephones, Morse code and the internet - the disparity of communication standards and the accessibility of modern methods in the world still astounds me.

Cat Cambridge, senior account executive, Clarion Communication, part of the WPP group

Compared with TV ads, viral videos are more likely to be recalled not just generally but by brand and message too. So when it works, viral marketing is definitely worth investing in for any campaign. But it’s certainly a challenge, for with every successful viral video, a hundred more go unseen.

Alice Stanes, PR assistant, Clarion Communications, part of the WPP Group

With the first hazy summer days in sight, festival season is well and truly on the horizon - and what better way to kick off our festival countdown than to embrace social media and join the conversation.

Amanda Meyrick, managing director, Clarion Communications, part of the WPP group

How many meetings have you sat through that drone on and on and on? Speaking succinctly is an art - and the more concisely you speak, the more people will listen and remember what you say. The king of one-liners, Mark Twain, describes a sound bite as "a minimum of sound to a maximum of sense". Sound bites are small but powerful groups of words - and whether facts, anecdotes, one-liners or stories, they all make what you have to say memorable and therefore worth passing on. But how to create them as they don't always flow naturally? Here’s some borrowed advice from the experts:

Katy Jameson, senior account executive, Clarion Communications, part of the WPP group

News is on a constant cycle - and in our fast-paced world, where we have access to both real-time updates online, as well as daily newspapers, and weekly and monthly magazines, I think it's almost irrefutable that every PR story has been done before.

Sandra Tortajada, PR assistant, Clarion Communications, part of the WPP group

In this day and age where everything is at a click of a button, leaving your computer screen is becoming less necessary by the day. From contacting friends and family to giving the world a news update by sharing a photo in seconds, it’s no wonder that we are being tricked into feeling like we are being ever more sociable.

Jonathan Smith, associate director, Clarion Communications, part of the WPP group

Minimum pricing on booze, plain packs on fags, VAT on a Greggs pasty…the Government obviously thinks legislation rather than education is the way to go to alter the way society behaves.

However, changing attitudes and social engineering with a Big Brother approach is less likely to work - after all it's not in human nature to trust what is so overtly put upon us. The Government should also be wary that embarking on centralised legislative measures that have not been tried before are likely to have unintended consequences…

Maybe therefore the Government should consider adopting a more PR led approach to educate society. After all, by generating more trusted content and word of mouth, PR is much more likely to engineer social change.

Is PR Speak necessary?

Poppy Mason-Watts, senior account executive, Clarion Communications, part of the WPP group.

I recently spoke with some blogger friends and asked them what the most annoying thing about PRs is. Their first response made me laugh: PR speak.

Louisa Jarvis, account director, Clarion Communications, part of the WPP Group

Not since the advent of text messages, which encouraged the mass abandonment of punctuation and replacement of vowels with numbers (gr8!), has such a stir been caused around the near-sacrosanct topic of English Grammar. For Waterstone's - that high street hotbed of learning and literature - has given up on its humble apostrophe.

Habib Amir, head of digital, Clarion Communications, part of the WPP Group

Too often, brands pro-actively ask their audience to share a branded video with their friends in the hope it will go viral. And if this has to be requested by the brand, it usually means the video doesn’t have the potential to go viral. In fact, if a brand is sure about the quality of the video, it can even afford to ask its audience the opposite.

Shelley Wyatt, Board Director, Clarion Communications, part of the WPP Group

Browsing the papers today, one survey story caught my eye... ‘we’re at our happiest when we’re 33’. Reading on I saw the survey was commissioned to relaunch one of the UK’s first social networks - Friends Reunited. Hold. The. Page. Surely the bigger story here is: ‘Can Friends Reunited make a Comeback?’

Vikki Chowney, News Editor, Econsultancy.com

Following our discussion about the value of QR codes and acceptable levels of engagement, it seems that Condé Nast's Glamour magazine has found real success by placing them among its printed pages.

In fact, a trial within its 'social edition' from September produced 512,339 engagements among a circulation of 2m readers – just over 25%.

Google + Brands + Customers / 2012

Google+ will become the natural home for brands and their customers in 2012

Habib Amir, head of digital, Clarion Communications, part of the WPP group

Google+ is set to become the fastest growing online medium in 2012. In this think piece, I will make two predictions based on the trends observed in the past few years.

Products before brands
 Prediction 1: ‘Search’ will become more specific, more contextual, more social and therefore highly relevant to purchase journeys

By Poppy Mason-Watts, account executive, Clarion Communications, part of the WPP Group.

"Blogging about the minutiae of family life to offer a no-holds-barred account of life with children” (Lee & Curcic, 2010) - that’s an ideal description of a mummy blog, although they certainly aren’t restricted to child-related subjects and can include a wide array of topics.

So what is their importance in the PR world?

By Niall Hughes, Account Manager, Clarion Communications, part of the WPP Group

It’s not that long ago that price comparison sites were the next big thing for anyone keen to shop around online - but fast forward to Winter 2011 and it’s difficult to turn anywhere in the media (traditional or social) without being confronted by opera singers, meerkats or personal finance experts extolling the virtues of comparing domestic prices.

By Gary Freemantle, CEO, Clarion Communications, part of the WPP Group.

Winner of Consumer PR Agency of the Year and Highly Commended Business/Trade Advertising Agency of the Year at the The Grocer Marketing, Advertising & PR Awards.

I'm proud to say Clarion was awarded Consumer PR Agency of the Year at last night's The Grocer Marketing, Advertising & PR Awards which recognises creativity and business excellence in the FMCG industry. We were also awarded Highly Commended as Business/Trade Advertising Agency, which demonstrates our breadth of skills.

Gary Freemantle, CEO, Clarion Communications, A WPP PR Agency

Winner of 'Campaign of the Year' & 'Live PR Event' at PR Week Awards 2011

I am proud to say that Clarion won the top award at last night's PR Week Awards, the PR industry's 'Oscars'. In front of 1,200 of our peers we collected the Campaign Of The Year Award, presented by host Alastair Campbell, former No10 comms director. Commenting on the winning campaign 'Lakeside's Living Christmas Fairy' the chairman of the judges DJ Collins, VP public policy and comms at Google, said "The best ideas are the simplest ones and this was a great example of how an idea reduced down to its core will shine".

By Howard Bowden, Head of News, Clarion Communications

In this ever-changing world of online PR strategies and social media campaigns, the humble national newspaper is still of great importance to PROs. Particularly as so many clients still put positive national print coverage above all other campaign objectives. This is why it’s vital for every PR professional to know what makes news in the nationals. But how is the digital age affecting the nationals’ news agenda? And how has it changed over recent years? Clarion Communications compared national newspapers from 2011 with their 1986 equivalents.

By Habib Amir, Head of Digital, Clarion Communications, part of the WPP Group.

There is more to converting audience into loyal consumers then simply being on Twitter and Facebook.

Majority of the brands continue to dictate their messages via Social Media and fail to get them across. Is it time to ask why? 

The overnight growth of social media has provided a unique platform with a multitude of options to engage with a local and global audience in real-time – and what this means for the “audience” is that they are now more than just spectators. As social media platforms facilitate a reciprocal conversation, audiences expect to participate, present and shape the world around them. And managing such expectations without a coherent strategy is not easy. So many of the biggest brands in the world choose to either ignore social media completely or adopt it blindly – with a “if it worked for them, it must work for us” mindset.

Simon Wakeman, Head of Communications and Marketing at Medway Council

Social media policies may not seem the most exciting aspect of driving forward adoption of new technologies as part of the communications and marketing mix.

Debbie Jackson, Head of New Business, Clarion Communications

TV programmes, online forums and newspaper editorials are just some of the places mums turn to for recommendations about products or services - but nothing beats a recommendation from a friend. And as a mum of two boys, Lucas and Henry, I know how true that is.

Sandra Tortajada, PR Assistant, Clarion Communications  

I've always wanted to be in the papers, and since working at Clarion, it’s become a reality – but I never thought I’d find out while on a crammed Tube on the way to work reading Metro.  

Habib Amir, Head of Digital, Clarion Communications

Stream 2011 delegates agree 'Not every post needs to be about selling'

Brands need to campaign less and instead become more sociable when it comes to social media – one of my conclusions from Stream 2011, the three-day global ‘unconference’ organised by WPP Digital.

Katy Jameson, Account Executive, Clarion Communications

This is my fourth week at Clarion and I’m really enjoying myself. I’ve joined the agency after spending over a year in technology and B2B PR – previously, I worked in-house at a large supermarket chain but decided to try tech to broaden my experience and industry knowledge.

Maddalena Pinto, Account Manager, Clarion Communications

It’s six months since I joined Clarion, and the big event everyone seems to be talking about is the annual Macmillan De’Longhi Art Auction happening later this month (27 September).

Gary Freemantle, CEO, Clarion Communications

Imagine the scene: an all-agency meeting with the client to discuss the next steps for Brand X. The client is edgy – the economic climate is dire and he, or she, is under increased pressure to deliver on sales targets. Each agency is being pressed harder than ever to defend their territory and prove that their discipline will make a real impact on sales…

Beth Yarwood-Smith, Intern, Clarion Communications

Just recently, I entered the Clarion offices for two weeks’ work experience. Five weeks earlier, I’d attended an interview - or, as it turned out, ‘just a meet-up to check you haven’t got three heads or something’. That test confidently passed, I waited for the lift and got a 10-second glimpse of my first PR agency and thought: that’s a lot of magazines.

Kathryn Platt, Account Executive, Clarion Communications

So it’s a lovely, hot sunny day and I’m stood outside Marco Pierre White’s restaurant in central London with a box of Christmas decorations.

Crystal Cansdale, Intern, Clarion Communications

I’m writing this during my third week of work experience at Clarion Communications – where so far I’ve actually had things to do and only made tea two or three times. Probably shouldn’t have said that, they’ll be queuing up now.

Julia Coles, Senior Account Manager, Clarion Communications

PR is as busy as it is varied and it’s not very often that I take stock of the experiences I’ve had and the amount of random stuff I have had to learn. I’ve experienced sponsoring London Fashion Week shows and seeing what it’s like behind the scenes, as well as putting on a fashion show for Fearne Cotton when she launched her own label on very.co.uk, which were both very glamorous.

Ashley Westgate, PR Assistant, Clarion Communications

A few months ago I took voluntary redundancy in order to kick start a new career for myself – and not having worked in PR before I didn’t really know what to expect when I first walked into the Clarion offices. One thing’s for sure, I didn’t expect to be launching my own social media platform…but here we are, six weeks later, and I have a little community in the making.

Matt Stokoe, Associate Director, Clarion Communications

Celebrities. Like timesheets, status reports and early morning photo calls, working with celebs is one of the many joys that everyone who works in PR will have experienced – most tend to be pleasurable and memorable encounters, though there are some ‘sleb’ partnerships which end up being quite the opposite and are rarely spoken about ever again (we all know who the culprits are...).

A taste of Africa comes to Surrey to launch Chessington World of Adventures' African restaurant Zafari, with 260 local schoolchildren, er, beating the Guinness World Record for the world's largest drumming lesson

Louisa Jarvis, Junior Account Director, Clarion Communications

As the old adage goes – and as every PR in their right mind knows – you should never work with children or animals.

Tim Hayhurst, Senior Account Executive, Clarion Communications

“I see drawings and pictures in the poorest of huts and the dirtiest of corners” – Vincent Van Gough

Whether we’re talking inflatable pigs over Battersea Power Station or celebrities on top of Christmas trees – like our very own Lakeside stunt with Chantelle Houghton last Christmas (above) - like it or not there’s nothing that makes an impact quite like a brilliant picture story.

Cat Cambridge, Senior Account Executive, Clarion Communications

THANK YOU & GOODBYE – that was the final and poignant splash from the News of the World on its last ever edition earlier this month.

The end of an era? Good riddance? Wherever you stand on this celebrated and now infamous tabloid, there’s no doubt that events leading up to Sunday 10 July will be etched in the memory of journalists, media professionals and PRs for many years to come.

By Niall Hughes, Account Manager, Clarion Communications

There aren’t many workplaces I can think of where you can sit at your desk, having spoken with a TT Motorcycle racer about his upcoming documentary film, and then find yourself opening a package containing a SpongeBob SquarePants designer wall mural…while being surrounded by Christmas decorations in July. But then I’m sure there aren’t many desks quite like mine.

By Alison Crowley, Senior Account Executive, Clarion Communications

Dia dhaoibh. Or ‘hello’.

Understanding the language, interests and what makes people tick in the market you’re selling to has to be the fundamental cornerstone to every good PR campaign. And that’s been my challenge for the past six months since moving to London from Ireland to work at Clarion as the new and only ‘paddy’ on the team.

By Howard Bowden, Head of News, Clarion Communications

Later this year, Clarion celebrates its 25^th anniversary – so to commemorate our birthday, here are 25 things from the past quarter of a century which have helped shape PR as we know and love it…

1. Bizarre in The Sun

The Beatles’ break-up didn’t make a single National splash – and it was only when The Sun introduced the first daily newspaper pop page in the mid-80s that the media’s modern day love affair with Celeb Culture began.

By Lucy Meadmore, Account Manager, Clarion Communications

At some point over the next two weeks, my friends and I will be packing our picnic rugs and heading off to Wimbledon, home of the All England Lawn Tennis Club, ready to set up camp on Henman Hill – I refuse to call it Murray Mount – while eating strawberries and drinking Pimm’s in the quintessential English fashion.

By Shelley Wyatt, Board Director, Clarion Communications

Earlier this week, it was reported that an American PR firm had been sacked by their biggest client because of angry Twitter comments – the tweet came from the agency’s founder, no less.

At exactly the same time on this side of the Atlantic, every PR professional felt a chill run up and down his or her spine while muttering something along the lines of ‘There but for the grace of God…’ under their breath.

Barbara Normile, Senior Account Manager, Clarion Communications

Any PR will tell you no two days are ever the same. So when Clarion floated the idea to our client De’Longhi to get involved with the first ever UK Coffee Week by taking freshly brewed coffee to radio DJs across London, I thought nothing of it.