Samsung UK hires M&C Saatchi Sport & Entertainment

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Samsung Electronics UK has handed a PR brief to M&C Saatchi Sport & Entertainment to work across key sporting campaigns, including a revival of the Samsung School of Rugby campaign featuring Jack Whitehall.

The agency, which won the account following a competitive pitch, will provide strategic consultation and activation support, covering Samsung’s global Olympic and Paralympic partnerships in the UK, as well as the brand’s official partnership of the England Rugby team, Team GB, and its ambassadors.

Activity will start with M&C Saatchi S&E delivering a Samsung Gear VR consumer experience across the RBS 6 Nations at Twickenham Stadium.

Supporters will be able to challenge Jack Whitehall and the Samsung School of Rugby team in an “immersive Samsung Gear VR experience”.

Located in the West Fan Village, fans can compete for the chance to win a private dinner with each of Samsung’s England Rugby ambassadors: Jonathan Joseph, George Ford and Joe Launchbury.

Russell Taylor, CMO at Samsung, said: “Connecting with consumers via their passions is one of Samsung’s key objectives for 2016. Our rich heritage in sport and entertainment offers a fantastic way to do this and we feel that M&C Saatchi Sport & Entertainment is perfectly placed to help us achieve this goal in a truly compelling, integrated way.”

Steve Martin, Global CEO of M&C Saatchi S&E, added: “Samsung is a fantastic brand with a clear and progressive marketing and sponsorship strategy for 2016. We are thrilled by the opportunity for us to apply our unique expertise across both sport and entertainment to help them achieve this and take them on to the next level. We are already completely immersed in the Samsung business and extremely excited to begin our work with the team.”

Marriott hands European brief to Bacchus

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Marriott International has appointed Bacchus as the UK consumer and trade PR agency for five of its luxury lifestyle brands, following a competitive pitch process.

Activity will focus on JW Marriott Hotels & Resorts, Autograph Collection Hotels, Renaissance Hotels, AC Hotels and Moxy Hotels.

In addition to traditional media relations, Bacchus will develop brand campaigns and support all new hotel openings in Europe.

The agency’s content and digital arm, Bacchus Social, will also assist with digital and social media campaigns.

Anouschka Menzies, Bacchus’ founding director, will lead the account, supported by head of travel Holly Adcock and account manager Alexandra Stone.

Belinda Pote, chief sales and marketing officer at Marriott International, said: “Marriott International is expanding rapidly in Europe and our luxury lifestyle brands are a key area of development. We welcome Bacchus’ expertise in this market and look forward to a successful working relationship.”

Menzies added: “Marriott International is one of the most significant travel companies in the world and we are delighted to be adding this diverse brand portfolio to our expanding Travel Division at Bacchus which includes some of the world’s most captivating hotels.”

Frank wins brief from theatre ticket app TodayTix

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TodayTix, a free mobile app for purchasing theatre tickets, has brought in Frank to handle its PR in the UK.

Established in 2013, TodayTix was co-founded by Broadway and West End producers Merritt Baer and Brian Fenty to offer an easy way to obtain theatre tickets.

With a presence in both “homes of theatre” – Broadway and the West End – users can book tickets from a week ahead up to an hour before performances to select theatres.

Frank will handle TodayTix’s PR and work to increase the brand’s awareness in the UK market, while also supporting global campaigns.

Fiona Sellick, UK marketing manager for TodayTix, said: “We are thrilled to be working with Frank. Its passion for the industry, combined with its in-depth knowledge of the brand, really inspired us and we are looking forward to an exciting year ahead.”

Manifest supports male suicide prevention charity

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Manifest London is providing pro bono PR support for CALM (Campaign Against Living Miserably), a charity dedicated to preventing male suicide, around its 10th anniversary this year.

Founded in 2006 CALM, which counts Professor Green among its Manifestpatrons, seeks to prevent suicide by providing a service for men who are down, or are in crisis. It wants to create cultural change so that any man considering suicide feels he can seek help.

The charity has asked Manifest London to help it raise awareness around the issue of suicide in young men.

Manifest will publicise the charity’s anniversary fundraiser, which takes place in East London on Friday March 26. The event is being organised and produced in collaboration with music event organiser and promoter Enjoy Yourself, and supported by men’s lifestyle website UNILAD and Jamal Edwards, founder of youth platform SBTV (Production support is being provided by Secret Garden party and Tropical Tea Party.

The agency also aims to promote the success of CALM’s campaigns over the last ten years, and how it has established itself as a leader in raising awareness among young men.

Jane Powell, CALM CEO,  said: “The team at Manifest understands how vital our work is, raising awareness amongst communities across the UK. As 2016 is our ten year anniversary, we want to share our successes and our plans for the future, as well as celebrate with everyone who has helped us thus far with a fundraiser organised by Enjoy Yourself.

“When we began almost a decade ago suicide was the biggest killer of males under-45 but there was little or no awareness of this. Now, ten years later, almost 40% of men in London recognise this as a fact. This is testament to the hard work of our volunteers, partners and patrons. We’re looking forward to the next ten years to continue our fantastic work.”

Alex Myers, group CEO at Manifest, added: “CALM’s journey from a fledgling pilot project to a leading charitable organisation is a truly inspiring story. The team works hard to raise awareness around male suicide, and we hope our campaign with Enjoy Yourself helps men to talk more openly and honestly about the issue.  At Manifest we’re passionate about projects that strive to make a difference; CALM is exactly that.”

Pictured: The team at Manifest

FWD Group directors complete MBO

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FWD Group has been acquired by two of its existing directors, Gug Kyriacou and Elliot Lane, from founder Michael Gaughan, who remains as a consultant with the business. The details of the transaction haven’t been disclosed.

Kyriacou and Lane joined the group, which includes research division FWD Research and investor content service business First Quartile, in 2013 and 2012, respectively. Kyriacou has some 20 years’ financial services comms experience from in-house and agency roles, while Lane spent two decades in journalism and PR with organisations such as Lloyd’s of London.

Joint MD, Kyriacou, said: “Supported by the fantastic team we have here within FWD Group and our strong and loyal client base, Elliot and I have some exciting ideas for developing the business further and look forward to rolling these out over the coming months.”

Lane added: “Building on strong foundations, I am confident that the team will continue to open doors for FWD in new sectors offering corporate communication strategies. Our core skill sets, will ensure that existing and potential clients continue to benefit from value-enhancing PR counsel and content generation.”

 

Kaizo

Kaizo wins network provider Brocade

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Network solutions provider Brocade has appointed Kaizo as its EMEA PR agency as part of a global overhaul of its comms strategy.

Kaizo will lead Brocade’s EMEA comms strategy, working closely with newly-appointed Ogilvy PR in the US and Havas Worldwide Siren in the APAC region (Asia-Pacific).

The agency’s remit includes an EMEA content and co-ordination role, in addition to providing retained in-country PR teams across Europe, Middle East and Africa. Director Steph MacLeod leads the brief, reporting into Brocade’s EMEA corporate comms manager Abigail Watts.

Kaizo’s campaign will target business decision makers and will focus on positioning Brocade at the centre of the tech industry’s ‘New IP’ effort, which is encouraging businesses to be open and innovation-driven and so improve business services and customer experiences.

Watts said: “We were looking for a partner who really understood the business implications of the New IP and what it delivers beyond the usual ‘speeds and feeds’ approach. Kaizo came to the table with a clear understanding of this, as well as a series of creative campaigns that position the New IP as the business game-changer we know it to be.”

MacLeod added: “The impact of the New IP and way it will help businesses to truly embrace digital transformation is significant – it is the right platform at exactly the right time for fast growth and agility.”

Gridstore picks Spreckley for EMEA PR brief

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Digital storage provider Gridstore has hired Spreckley as its retained PR agency in the UK and Europe.

Spreckley will build Gridstore’s media profile in the UK Victoria Greyamong IT and other relevant trade media. It will also develop an analyst relations programme in the HyperConverged infrastructure (software-defined storage) and virtualisation (a category of data storage) market.

The PR programme should expand in 2016 and there are plans to move into mainland Europe, particularly the Nordic and DACH regions.

Victoria Grey (pictured), CMO of Gridstore, said: “The UK holds the biggest potential for us in terms of growth and gaining market share. We are already seeing a major uplift in sales in the UK and the time was now right to engage Spreckley on a retained basis to leverage our HyperConverged Infrastructure message.

“The brief we handed to Spreckley was not just about educating the market on Gridstore and our technology stack, but the business benefits that are afforded to those enterprises that migrate to the solution.”

Richard Merrin, Spreckley MD, added: “We had the privilege of launching Gridstore in the UK two years ago to great success. It is with open arms we welcome them back as a retained client undergoing rapid growth in the region, adding to our long, historic roster of successful US storage companies launching in the UK.”

Helen Jackson HitSearch

Four essential components to building an outreach strategy

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Written by Helen Jackson, Content Marketing Executive, HitSearch

On face value, it can seem as though building a successful outreach strategy is simple. You just email a few websites here and there, write a generic blog post and hope for a link back, right?

Actually, there’s more to outreach than might first meet the eye. Creating a piece of content specifically for the industry website’s target audience, keeping them engaged and interested, can be a tall order.

Hit Search

Here are 4 essential components to building a successful outreach strategy from Hit Search…

1. Your primary objective shouldn’t be to obtain a link
If you approach any third party website with the aim of gaining a link, this objective will inevitably come across in both the piece you’re wanting to share and the content of your initial email. You need to change your entire outlook on outreach if this is your main objective.

The more naturally written pieces that aim to genuinely interest and engage the website’s audience, should be your new objective. There’s a higher chance if you create something worth sharing, your company can obtain natural backlinks. Surely educating the audience about your brand’s knowledge without over-promoting your brand, is much more valuable than a link within a generic blog post?

2. Utilise a solid outreach platform
There are so many outreach platforms out there for your brand to take advantage of, but why bother, there’s Google, right? Google – or any search engine for that matter – can only give you so much. Who has the team resources to whittle the hours away manually searching time after time for new opportunities, when there are platforms that are designed for that purpose alone?

Not only can you group contacts together so you can send a targeted press release, but you can also search by industry and make sure your team know exactly who is contacting which publications or bloggers.

3. Make sure outreach isn’t an afterthought
Once you’ve got your content strategy in place, you need to start sourcing new content outreach opportunities. Approaching bloggers with pre-written content is a big no, no and shows you don’t really care about their audience enough to write a unique and tailored piece of content.

Therefore, including the blogger in the decision of the topic or angle of the piece is a must! If it doesn’t fit in with their blog you shouldn’t try and make it fit – in this case, it’s not meant to be so move along!

4. Make your approach stand out
In research conducted by Econsultancy, it was reported that over 65% of bloggers surveyed reported that they were contacted several times a week and – furthermore – a massive 52% of bloggers prefer to be contacted by email over any other form of communication. This highlights the significance and importance of your chosen communication tactics, and the impact it can have on your chances of working with a particular blogger.

What makes your business special? You need to highlight the benefits of your content and how your content would perfectly engaged the blogger or website’s audience.

Brexit debate calls for clearer comms

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The Brexit debate in the UK is gaining momentum now David Cameron has announced the referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU will take place on June 23 this year. But, while politicians, economists and business leaders have aired views from different sides of the debate, more detail will be needed if rival factions want to mount convincing arguments, according to opinion-formers at the Daily Mail, the FT and the Press Association.

Businesses and brands had remained fairly quiet on the topic until last Saturday (20 February) when David Cameron – after hours of negotiation with EU leaders – announced the official date for the referendum. Since then hundreds of business, including 36 of the FTSE 100 brands, have publicly endorsed the movement to remain in the EU.

However, journalists from Daily Mail, the Press Association and Financial Times who spoke to Gorkana on the subject believe that, as a whole, communication from the groups seeking to influence needs to be clearer for the general public to make an educated decision.

Arguments lack convincing detail

Alex Brummer, City editor of the Daily Mail, believes it’s been hard for Cameron to deliver effective messages about the EU referendum because it’s often ‘technical’ and material on EU membership is often ‘phrased in convoluted terms’.

“It’s the bigger picture arguments I’d like to see more argued about. For example, that the EU is a very divided continent and that Schengen (travel zone) is in big trouble, Greece is in economic  trouble and the tensions between France and Germany. There are huge divisions and I don’t think that any of this is reflected (in the debate),” he said.

Brummer added that business issues are also not well portrayed in campaigns for both sides as there’s often a lot of ‘generalisation’ and few  talk about the true impact of being in or out of the EU and how it’s going to help the problem.

“I get big email traffic from almost every corner of the forest about every aspect of this debate, the amount of information is quite large, and when you actually look at it you think about how informative it all actually is,” he explained.

Clarity will help you cut through

Pete Clifton, editor-in-chief at Press Association, explained to Gorkana that clear and succinct PR is more important than ever to get through the noise.

“It is going to be a long-haul, and the public could easily be deafened by all the noise and confused by all the claims and counter-claims. Our job is to reflect the different shades from each day of the campaign, and complement that coverage with clear, easy to digest explainers around the key-issues – and always looking for fresh approaches whether that is through data journalism, graphics, video, or great words and pictures.

Clifton added: “We receive hundreds of calls and emails from PRs and campaign groups every day. If it is new information, clearly and succinctly outlined, with decent people available to comment if required, there’s a better chance.”

Strong examples and case studies are in demand

Duncan Robinson, Brussels Correspondent at Financial Times, attends many summits surrounding EU issues. Although, he believes it’s still too early to tell if campaigns on either side of the Brexit debate are doing a good job of communicating their ideas in the press, there is something that he has spotted that newsrooms are missing.

“A constant plea from editors is for clear case studies: examples of people or companies who have benefited from the EU, or been hindered by an ill-thought out piece of legislation stemming from Brussels. Relevant, original examples are always welcome – with an emphasis on the relevant and original.”

UK Coffee Week appoints Diffusion

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Diffusion has been appointed by Allegra-owned UK Coffee Week and The London Coffee Festival to boost their brand awareness this year.

UK Coffee Week, which takes place from 11 to 17 April 2016, is a nationwide celebration of coffee that brings together thousands of coffee shops, including Starbucks, Costa and Debenhams, as well as independents across the UK, to raise funds for projects in coffee growing countries.

Various activities carried out by coffee shops across the UK raise funds for the UK Coffee Week charity, Project Waterfall, which provides clean drinking water and sanitation to those that make coffee across the world. To date, five years since its launch, Project Waterfall has raised over £325,000 for communities in Tanzania, Rwanda and Ethiopia.

Diffusion has been briefed to promote UK Coffee Week, managing media relations, brand profiling and positioning the event as a leading celebration for coffee lovers and retailers.

Launched in 2010, London Coffee Festival (taking place from 7 to 10 April this year) has increased in size by more than 30% and Diffusion has been brought in to increase awareness across a variety of food, beverage, lifestyle and trade media, as well as highlight the festival’s positioning as a key event in the food calendar.

Remy Le Fevre, head of consumer at Diffusion, said: “Coffee is one of the most exciting cultural trends of 2016 and is becoming an important lifestyle driver. The team at Allegra have been at the forefront of driving this phenomena, with a mission to broaden the reach of coffee quality and innovation to an even wider audience.

“There is a great opportunity for Diffusion to work with influencers to help accelerate and shape this trend to ensure The London Coffee Festival and UK Coffee Week both have their most successful year to date.”