Congratulations!
Justin Green, Marketing and Public Relations Director of MCD Productions, was elected President of the PRII at last week’s AGM at the National Concert Hall. He succeeds Pat Montague, who held the position for the past two years.
Justin is the first President to hold the PRII’s Diploma in Public Relations, which he completed with The Fitzwilliam Institute. He has been a member of the Institute since 1999 and has held a number of key positions on National Council including Honorary Treasurer, Chair of Education and, most recently, Vice-President.
One of the most experienced PR and marketing executives on the Irish entertainment scene, Justin’s role at MCD has brought him into contact with some of the biggest names in the music, theatre and entertainment worlds – including Madonna, U2, Britney Spears, the Rolling Stones, Robbie Williams, Eminem and Neil Diamond – and seen him involved in major national and international events such as the Slane Castle concerts and the MTV Music Awards.
In addition, he has acted as consultant and co-ordinator for a number of TV specials for leading acts and played a significant role in organising promotional and sponsorship initiatives with brands that include Guinness, Coca Cola and Tesco. He also played a key role in organising both the Irish Government’s millennium celebrations and the opening and closing ceremonies for the 2003 Special Olympics.
Speaking about his appointment, Justin stated: “I am deeply honoured by the enormous vote of confidence members of the PRII have shown in me by electing me as their President and intend rewarding that support throughout my term of office. A key objective of my presidency will be to ensure that professional standards are maintained to the highest level, that services to members continue to be enhanced, and that our international links are improved.”
“In particular, however,” he continued, “ I want to achieve greater understanding of the role of PR in the business, political and cultural life of Ireland and will do all in my power to ensure that our profession receives the recognition it deserves amongst our peers.”
Smart is safe
A funny ad for Smart with an unexpected product benefit.
Meanwhile this year’s London to Brighton took place from the brand new Mercedes-Benz World at Brooklands. Doors opened from 7.30am with the first cars setting off for Brighton Racecourse at 10am.
Those lucky enough to get there early even had the chance to drive round the new track! Undeterred by the bad weather the colourful convoy of smarts made their way from Brooklands to Brighton racecourse.
In total nearly 800 cars were at the start line at Brooklands, whilst many more were waiting at Brighton racecourse.
Dolce Vita is back with style
La Dolce Vita, the star-studded charity event whose fate was sealed with the demise of its former parent company Elevation Events, has been reborn under the stewardship of its original owner.
On 11 December, Old Billingsgate will host the £800-a-ticket ball to raise money for children’s charities Clic Sargent and Deborah. Confirmed performers include Will Young, Beverly Knight and the London Philharmonic Concert Orchestra, and guests will include the charities’ patrons Eddie Jordan and Philip Green.
Charlie Feather sold his company Event Vision to Elevation chairman Ray Pierce and chief executive Ric Yerbury in May 2005 as part of a deal worth £1.7m. Pierce and Yerbury acquired several other event-related companies under the guise of Monkleigh and then Elevation from July 2004 until earlier this year.
They were finally forced to call in the administrators with debts totalling £3.25m in July, following the poor financial performance of a series of global La Dolce Vita parties and hospitality events (Event, July/August).
“It has been frustrating watching the brand suffer at the hands of a PLC. They bought it for all the wrong reasons and threw away money in all the wrong directions,” said Feather. “I’m delighted to have bought it back from the administrator and I have personally paid some of the supplier debts to ensure we can rebuild this prestigious brand.”
The last La Dolce Vita event in the UK was run by Feather in December 2004. It raised £1m for UNICEF via a charity auction, in which a yoga session with Sting sold twice over to Elle Macpherson and Rod Stewart’s wife, Penny Lancaster.
Times Sq. Ads Spread Via Tourists’ Cameras
Advertisers have long been drawn to Times Square as a valuable place to reach consumers, paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for space on billboards and blazing video screens.
But recently they have discovered that down on the ground, new technology has given low cost, face-to-face marketing campaigns something of a cutting edge as consumers spread their messages on the Internet.
Take the recent display of public toilets set up by Charmin bathroom tissue: Used by thousands in Times Square and viewed by 7,400 Web users on one site alone. Or Nascar’s recent display of racecars; videos of the event have been viewed on YouTube more than 1,800 times. More than 60 people wrote about the event on their blogs and 60 more spread the word — and pictures — on the Flickr Web site.
“The great thing about the digital world is you can capture these events,” said Christian McMahan, brand director for Smirnoff Ice, owned by Diageo. “People can see them whether they were there that day or 3,000 miles away.”
As a result of the growing popularity of consumer-generated pictures, videos and e-mail messages on Internet sites like YouTube and Myspace, advertisers are getting consumers to essentially do their jobs for them.
When Target, the discount store operator, suspended the magician David Blaine above Times Square for two days during the week of Thanksgiving, videos shot by viewers were posted on YouTube and viewed more than 19,300 times.
“Times Square is becoming, in a way, a publishing platform,” said Peter Stabler, director of communication strategy for Goodby, Silverstein and Partners, an advertising agency that is part of the Omnicom Group. “What happens in Times Square is no longer strictly the province of location. You can experience things that are happening there, even if you’re not there.”
On sites like YouTube, Flickr and MySpace, an army of tourists and residents are spreading advertisers’ messages well beyond Manhattan, using their cell phones and video cameras as they walk through the marketing crossroads of the world.
Consumer brand companies are taking advantage of that by hosting elaborate events, fully aware that those events are great fodder for footage. Hosting events in Times Square, advertisers said, is like buying product placement in a TV show or a movie — except the cameras are held by consumers and the placement is on the Internet.
Experiential marketing, as the ad industry calls such campaigns, is intended to give people something they can tryout and photograph. Companies are holding such events in cities around the world, but advertisers said Times Square was unparalleled in its reach. People around the world recognize Times Square in photos and videos online and are more likely to view them, marketers said.
Charmin’s bathrooms, which opened on Broadway near West 46th Street on Nov. 20, generated traditional coverage with more than 100 articles published about the fancy toilets. But consumer videos posted on YouTube alone have been viewed more than 7,400 times.
Hundreds of other people each week post photos and videos on their blogs and MySpace pages. One blog post last week, “Der New York Trip Part II”, written in German, shows a young couple posing with the Charmin bear. Charmin is a brand of Procter & Gamble.
Another post about the Charmin toilets last week on a Web design blog wondered, “Could this be too much marketing?” Christian Montoya, the site’s author, videotaped the bathrooms when he visited Times Square on Thanksgiving so that he could post the footage online for his roughly 700 daily readers. Though Mr. Montoya, a senior at Cornell University, said he was skeptical of marketing but thought the Charmin bathrooms were effective.
“It was more than a billboard because you could actually try the product,” Mr. Montoya said.
It is difficult to count exactly how many people pass through Times Square each day, but foot traffic by some measures has nearly doubled. In 1997, the Times Square Business Improvement District counted 8,702 people an hour passing through the most crowded parts of Times Square during the busiest times of year. This year, the Times Square Alliance found that nearly double that amount — about 15,000 people — passed the Virgin Megastore on Broadway during busy hours.
But, advocates of experiential marketing say headcounts in Times Square underestimate the district’s impact. Face-to-face interaction with customers is more powerful than traditional ads, they say.
“What people do is geometrically more powerful than what they are told,” said Brian Collins, chief creative officer of Ogilvy and Mather Brand Innovation Group, a part of the WPP Group. “Feeling something, picking it up in your hands, walking into an environment is a far more powerful brand promise than anything you are simply told through traditional media alone.”
On the day after Thanksgiving, Diageo’s Smirnoff Ice brand held a tongue-in-cheek rally featuring about 30 paid actors as “core protestors.” The theme was “save the mistletoe,” a slogan for a holiday campaign for Smirnoff Ice. Smirnoff estimates that 60,000 people passed by its four-hour rally.
“When you go into an arena that is so iconic like Times Square, people are looking to be entertained,” said Christian McMahan, brand director for Smirnoff Ice. “And they’re looking to be part of it.”
In April, General Electric rented nine digital billboards in Times Square and displayed photos of people passing by. People on the street photographed themselves standing below the billboards when their images appeared. Soon, those images were circulating online.
“It’s much more interactive,” said Judy Hu, the global executive director for advertising and branding at G.E. “You’ve got people who are e-mailing, sending messages, they’re involved with your brand personally as opposed to just viewing it.”
G.E. and other companies that hosted recent events would not divulge their costs, but they said the total came out surprisingly low compared with other forms of marketing.
The mayor’s office said permits to use Times Square areas started at $25,000 but often cost $50,000 or more for a day, and that 112 marketers had paid for permits this year Advertisers.
The amount of marketers in Times Square has soared this year in large part because three traffic islands there were made available on a regular basis this year for the first time as part of Mayor Bloomberg’s broader initiative to attract more tourists to New York City.
In February, Walt Disney World sent Hans Florine, the X-games gold medal climber, scaling up a billboard to promote Expedition Everest, a new Animal Kingdom park ride. Mickey Mouse was also there, but he stayed on the ground.
In early December, MasterCard carolers sang holiday songs and passed out hot chocolate; street vendors sold coffee in Ann Taylor Loft paper cups; and a Sovereign Bank team rode red Segways passing out shopping bags and subway maps.
But some advertising executives wonder if it might be reaching the saturation point.
“It is now getting to the point,” said Lori Robinson, senior vice president of Hill and Knowlton, the WPP Group agency that helped produce one event, “where there just might be a little too much going on in Times Square.”
Five tips for becoming a great PR consultant
According to Piaras Kelly
“Stephen Davies recently posted ‘Five Tips for being a great PR consultant’ and asked me what my five tips would be. I think the title of the post doesn’t necessarily do it justice, I think 5 tips for becoming a great PR consultant would be more suitable. Here’s my 2 cents:
Stay calm. We work in a deadline driven industry and when something pops up at last minute or you can’t get hold of a spokesperson, there’s no point losing your head over it. Take a deep breath and get on with it. Running around like a chicken that’s lost its head is inefficient and affects your colleagues also.
Everyone makes mistakes, it’s how you deal with them that counts. Let’s lookspecifically at events, something always goes wrong. A supplier could be late or you might forget something in the office. By staying calm and thinking things through, you’ll come up with a solution. It’s the MacGyvers amongst us who come up with solutions instead of wasting precious time placing blame.
Keep track of what’s going on. Working in a consultancy means that you could be dealing with around half a dozen clients at any one time. Activity should constantly be tracked otherwise something risks falling between the tracks. I keep lots of notes on what I’m doing for every client and we also have documents tracking activity, deadlines and responsibilities to make sure that everyone is in the loop.
Don’t be afraid to get your hands dirty. There’s always something that you’re putting on the long finger in a bid to avoid doing it. These are the types of tasks that should be done first. If you’re knocked back, then dust yourself and move on. Unfortunately in PR you’re always going to come across people whose detest you can sense on the other end of the phone. Avoiding the problem will just end up making a mountain out of a molehill.
Take the time to understand your client’s business.Most service providers are more interested in ticking boxes and saying job done than creating long term relationships. By taking the time to understand client’s business and the pressures they are under will make your job much easier and ultimately make sure that your services are retained in the future. Change your definition of CRM from Customer Relationship Management to Creating Relationship Magic!”
J – Lo and Victoria ’to launch lingerie line’
Tom and Katie’s wedding seemed to be a good socializing ground for celebrities, with some even talking business
Katie Holmes’ wedding dress wasn’t the only fashion talk going on at the showbiz nuptials of TomKat on Saturday.
Self-styled fashion professional Victoria Beckham was seen deep in conversation with singer and film star Jennifer Lopez, which has prompted talk of a joint excursion into the fashion design world.
Apparently a lingerie line from the duo is in development and the Jennifer is reportedly "very excited" about working with Rock & Republic designer Victoria.
"They talked about the film industry and then their shared love of fashion," a source told the Daily Star newspaper.
"Jennifer thinks the pair could be capable of developing a seriously sexy range."
Jennifer already runs two fashion brands with one selling velour tracksuits and casual wear, the other, called Sweetface, sells more upmarket women’s wear.
Meanwhile Victoria has previously spent her efforts on fashion writing and this month launched her first book That Extra Half an Inch.
