FITZWILLIAM INSTITUTE

Wagamama hits the masses in a mini kind of way

As part of a nationwide campaign, Asian-inspired noodle restaurant, Wagamama, has given 2 lucky entrants their very own set of Wagamama mini wheels. A mammoth 10,000 entries were received for the ‘Wagamama Win a Mini for a Year’ summer promotion in Wagamama’s Cork and Dublin restaurants.

Wagamama teamed up with Keary’s garage in Cork, to customise and create two branded Wagamama minis. The campaign was recently launched with a Wagamama World Record Attempt whereby a 19-strong Wagamama troupe attempted to break the world record for the greatest number of people to fit into a Mini. In 2000, 18 people squeezed into a Mini Cooper in Birmingham to set the world record, the Wagamama crew in Dublin managed a tight squeeze with 16.

Chris Chung, Marketing Manager, Wagamama said “Response to the ‘Wagamama win a mini for a year’ campaign exceeded expectations by far, reaching over 10,000 Wagamama fans in Ireland. The branded Wagamama mini’s will serve as delicious reminders to Dublin and Cork noodle-fans, and keep the 2 lucky winners on the road for a year!”

The winners were treated to a mouth-watering party with friends and family to celebrate the mini addition. Wagamama celebrates postivie eating + positive living and has been voted as a ‘cool brand’ by the coolbrands council in 2002, 2003, 2005, 2006.

Developing Public Relations Campaigns: Top PR Experts on Implementing a PR Plan, Benchmarking Success, and Achieving Client Goals (Inside the Minds)

Developing Public Relations Campaigns is an authoritative, insiders perspective on the key strategies for creating, implementing, and benchmarking successful public relations campaigns. Featuring Presidents and CEOs representing some of the nations leading PR firms, this book provides a broad, yet comprehensive overview of the key steps and considerations involved in planning and launching a public relations program. Discussing the optimal campaign development process as well as the role and responsibilities of the CEO in these matters, the authors articulate the finer points of an industry focused on reaching and engaging the consumer. From the importance of hiring the right people and understanding clients goals to the benefits of utilizing new media and training campaign spokespeople, these authorities offer practical and adaptable strategies for providing excellent client service and building a reputation in the market. The different niches represented and the breadth of perspectives presented enable readers to get inside some of the great strategic minds of today, as experts offer an insiders glimpse into this fascinating industry.

Inside the Minds provides readers with proven business intelligence from C-Level executives (Chairman, CEO, CFO, CMO, Partner) from the worlds most respected companies nation-wide, rather than third-party accounts from unknown authors and analysts. Each chapter is comparable to an essay/thought leadership piece and is a future-oriented look at where an industry, profession, or topic is headed and the most important issues for the future. Through an exhaustive selection process, each author was hand-picked by the Inside the Minds editorial board to author a chapter. Full Article

The future is digital and live events; Madgex partners with EIA

The Events Industry Alliance (EIA) is delighted to announce that Madgex, the provider of Backnetwork.com, the online event networking service, has become its latest strategic partner. This partnership will go a long way to help EIA confirm and deliver its mantra: the media future is digital and live events!

Madgex has been delivering effective online tools to media companies since 2000. As well as the Backnetwork.com functionality for events, they are specialists in job board software and community websites.

Madgex will work with EIA on two levels, firstly, demonstrating their impressive products to the event community and, secondly, to show the wider media/marketing community the synergies between the digital and events world in developing marketing solutions. Brands and marketers need to be able to achieve interactivity and engagement via ‘permission’ marketing channels. It is the mix of digital channels and live events that create communities, which can engage via conversation! This partnership will demonstrate the power of the combined digital and live environments.

Madgex’s Backnetwork functionality will power the AEO conference 2007 - The Attention Seekers (Manchester Central, 6 September), a service designed specifically for events. Backnetwork’s functionality delivers an online meeting place for communication and networking through the delegate’s profiled relationship links before, during and after the conference. With this online social networking service, delegates will network and chat online, providing reviews, blogs and uploading photos for the AEO conference. The Backnetwork functionality will extend the footprint of the conference, capturing the feedback from delegates and enabling EIA and the delegates to communicate and network.
EIA’s Group Chief Executive, Trevor Foley said, “We are incredibly excited about partnering with Madgex’s online event service. Our business is based on effective networking and communication. To be able to provide a service that delivers this function online can only benefit our industry and further fuel the rise of digital and live events as the future marketing mediums for brands.”
Steve Evans from Madgex comments: “We are delighted with this partnership. Madgex’s Backnetwork functionality can revolutionise events; our links with EIA will demonstrate how technology will benefit and advance the events industry.”

Proving Your Worth: What Does Success Look Like?

It’s the bane of any public relations professional’s existence. How do you make clients and superiors – or the decision makers who hold the purse strings – understand the value of public relations?

In the world of public relations, we’ve all tried many different approaches. Ultimately what made our agency sit up and take notice was the last downturn in 2001 after the dot-com implosion. Following the last recession and 9-11, every industry – technology-based or not – began watching its pennies. And the first place every bean counter cut those pennies was public relations. Why? Not because we as PR professionals hadn’t done a good job. But isn’t it a little bit like the cobbler’s shoes? What we hadn’t done is do a good job communicating the value of our work to those with the budgetary decision-making power. This was a wake up call. From that point forward, we devised a tailor-made system to educate clients about the value of PR, copyrighted it, and called it Promised Results©.

What exactly is Promised Results©?

The concept is easy, but the execution, quite frankly, is not. Here’s the simple answer: it’s based on asking clients upfront the most important question. That question is: What will success look like? If you can define success with a client upfront and be clear about goals, then you can develop a tangible metric that reflects the success that is of value to the client (or your own boss if you’re internal). Clients then see the tangible value of your services — even the ones with the purse strings. We’re happy to define success for others, but that seldom helps clients see value. What really matters is how client define their own business success. Only then can we tailor a program to support that business objective.

Here’s an example. A high-end boutique hotel in San Francisco was having trouble getting “heads in beds” with leisure travellers on the weekend. So, we came up with a program of creative hotel packages that helped drive leisure travellers to the hotel on weekends. We only promoted these packages through public relations efforts (not advertising) – and then we took credit for every package that was sold. We were able to prove that we brought half a million dollars in new business to that hotel property in one year. Not a bad return on investment – but it was the right return that the client identified, and it helped engineer the result that supported the client’s identified business goal upfront.

Another example: a software client was mainly interested in trade press that would drive sales. The trouble was that the specific trade press identified didn’t accept advertising. So getting a hard and fast evaluation of the identified coverage was not possible. What to do? We devised a rating system that included the following:

Did the campaign reach the identified media targets? Did the article include the competition or not? Did it include a photo? Was it on message? Etc.

We tallied the ratings for each category and came up with a metric that equalled poor, fair, good, very good or excellent. With this summary, we were able tangibly to demonstrate that the coverage reached the exact targets this client was seeking and we additionally showed that the quality of the coverage supported the overall messaging and business objectives.

What about business leads? For another consumer product client, business leads were the most important evaluation tool. So, in conjunction with other metrics identified above, we made sure to track business leads and whether or not they turned into true sales. That gave us a great metric to hand back to the client, as well as a clear return-on-investment.

For another client, the identified metric was reaching 20 specific U.S. markets with their campaign. Our campaign reached 18 of the 20 markets – well, actually, the writer in Los Angeles didn’t like the product and we talked him out of running his article in the LA Times – so we considered that an additional win!

Another way to measure success is through the quality of the message and message retention. For the same client that identified the 20 U.S. markets, we analyzed the coverage with an eye towards this and gave the coverage an overall quality rating.

There are always the tried and true methods as well. For some clients, these measurement tools work: everything from gross impressions to advertising equivalency to the indomitable clip book.

I know many PR professionals who shy away from promising results – and I used to be one of them myself. The logic goes something like this: how can I promise something when in the world of public relations I don’t always have control? But here’s the reality: either you embrace quantifying such results – or those beyond the world of PR will not value your efforts and the result will be PR’s loss anyway.

The bottom line is this: clients – or if you’re internal, your superiors – may understand public relations but to really value its effectiveness, they need a tangible metric. Defining that metric upfront – by defining success upfront with the client or your superiors – is the way to guarantee your own public relations success.

For us, the proof has truly been in the pudding. With our current client base, we have been able to retain approximately 85% of our clients. And in 2006, we witnessed our second best year in business. Source

Motorola presents Dublin Fashion Week (MDFW)

“The Talks”; Open to the public.

Tickets: €5 and available at the door, on a first come, first served basis.

Fitzwilliam Suite (Lower Ground Floor), The Fitzwilliam Hotel, St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2

Since its inception, Dublin Fashion Week has brought key figures in the Irish and International fashion industries to Dublin to share with the public their thoughts and ideas for the progression of individuality, creativity and design.

This season is no exception with a selection of speakers that are sure to appeal to a wide range of interests. From marketing and business through to design, form and function, many topics will be covered.

As part of the events of MDFW we are delighted to announce the schedule of speakers

Monday 27^th August 2007; Ann Marie Scichili; Time 12.45

Ann Marie was born in Texas and for the last 15 years has been involved in what she defines as brand liaising from her base in Florence. After working on production throughout Asia for ten years she operated her own production company for high end luxury Italian labels. Ann Marie has been hugely influential in helping launch, develop, operate and promote the Value Retail Villages in 7 European countries working with names such as GUCCI, Prada, Ferragamo, RL Polo etc. She currently holds the position of Managing Director of Lucky Brand Jeans as they launch in Europe, organising Fashion Fairs, events, store openings throughout the continent.

Jonathan Kirby; Time 6pm

Creative Director of Levis Jonathan Kirby, so loves what he does he says he’ll be working for Levis for the rest of his life ….really can’t beat that! so join us to see and ask him what it is about Levis and the ever growing brand.” The title is ‘New Forms of Media’ this will incorporate how brands are reconnecting with the consumer through design, marketing and design product.

Tuesday 28^th August 2007; Philip Stephens; Time 12.45

Philip Stephens had worked in interior design, event management and club promotion before setting up Concrete, a fashion and lifestyle consultancy, PR and marketing outfit. The Concrete shop followed four years later stocking Philip’s own Unconditional collection exclusively. Today, Unconditional has over 100 international stockists in 18 countries. Philip will be talking about his own experiences within the fashion industry and how brand development is crucial to success.

Deirdre McQuillan “In Conversation with….”; Evening event TBC

The Fashion Editor of the Irish Times will sit down with an influential figure in the global fashion industry. Although yet to be confirmed, it is assured that it will be a big draw and early attention is recommended.

Wednesday 29^th August 2007; Gordon Richardson; Time 12.45

Since becoming the design director at Topman, Gordon has seen the label rise as one of the trendiest and most fashion forward on the high street. Gordon will be highlighting the importance of innovative design and his own creative approach to keeping fashion labels ahead of the game.

Dublin City Enterprise Board (DCEB); Time 6pm

This talk will be provided by the DCEB, one of the primary sponsors of Motorola Dublin Fashion Week, and it will cover the Irish fashion industry, in its past, present and future guises.

Motorola Dublin Fashion Week would like to thank our sponsors Motorola, Brown Thomas and DCEB for their continued support of the Irish fashion industry.

All details such as times etc, once confirmed, will be available to view on our website, please continue to check it for regular updates. www.dublinfashionweek.com

For further information on any aspect of the forthcoming season of Motorola Dublin Fashion Week, please do not hesitate to contact Sonia, Mary or Chris @ SRM

Tel: 00353 1 6432801; Email: sonia/mary/chris@srmpr.com