The peeps at Finn have been celebrating this week, both regionally and nationally! We’re very much in awards season, and we’ve had some great recognition for some of the campaigns we ran in 2012.

CIPR Awards

At last night’s CIPR Awards, we picked up three Gold awards – one in the Public Sector category for the Merseyside Winter Health Campaign as well as best use of social media & best digital campaign for lovetubs.

We also picked up two silver awards, one in the social media category for Morphy Richards Innovators and one in the digital campaign category for Fox’s Christmas Puddings. A particularly fruitful night for Finn Digital!

PRCA awards

Finn achieved a “highly commended” award in the category of small consultancy of the year at the prestigious national PRCA awards, held this week at London’s Park Lane Hilton. Hosted by the professional body that represents PR professionals, the award is particularly poignant for Finn, as the only agency outside of London to be recognised on the night.

The Grocer’s Marketing, Advertising and PR (MAP) Awards

Finn was also a finalist at the Grocer’s MAP awards, which recognises teams representing some of the nation’s most prominent food and drink businesses. Finn was nominated in the category of social media for its work for Fab Ice Lollies, creating a Facebook ‘Pass the Parcel’ application to celebrate the brand’s 45^th anniversary.

Thank you to all our clients and everyone who was involved. Roll on 2013!

Posted by Julia on November 16th, 2012

A couple of us attended the CIPR Northern Conference yesterday. Whilst it was a useful day with some interesting and insightful speakers, I’m not ashamed to admit that the main pull for me was the final keynote speaker, Max Clifford.

Ahead of his talk, we were inspired by Telefonica’s head of comms, Nicola Green, who told of the brand’s step change in PR and strategy for delivering PR which genuinely benefits the business and the board, and gained a useful insight into the rise of internet TV by a range of broadcast experts.

During the morning sessions, of course, the subject of PR’s own reputation came into debate and some of the conference delegates had clearly done their research on Max, citing him as the reason for PR’s sometimes less than squeaky clean reputation. They’d scoured the newspaper archives and let rip during his Q and A session, questioning his honesty, ethics and role in PR’s public and professional status.

Whilst Max has represented some controversial characters in his time, his answers showed him to be a generally good man, who stands up for what he believes in. Whilst he might charge celebrities and wannabes £20,000 per month for representation, he also represents ordinary people free of charge, who have taken a hammering in the press and he genuinely believes to be in need of help. And he’s got some of them out of some pretty tricky situations. Is it his fault that people want to read about Big Brother stars and footballers who are up to no good? I think he’s simply found himself a niche.

For me, the problem with PR does not lie with Max. Earlier on in the day, a panel session included BBC Look North’s political correspondent, Len Tingle. Len made a plea to gathered PRs, reminding them that he cannot do his job properly when his inbox is full of irrelevant stories, including news from Nottingham and interesting events which happened yesterday. Surely one of the problems with our reputation is this?

If we do our job to the highest possible standard and take on board Nicola’s advice about the reasons behind our campaigns and how to shape them, I think we’d be in a much better position. Let’s get the nuts and bolts of our day-to-day job right, before we start pointing the finger.

Posted by Julia on November 1st, 2012

Hitting the headlines

• Kent is set to get its own Disneyland paradise, as work begins on a £2bn, world-class theme park in Swanscombe (across the board)
• Retail sales are set to warm up, as a nippy start to the colder months explains a 1.5% rise in high street profits (across the board)
• Homeowners are being promised greater rights when defending their home against burglars, as Justice Secretary Chris Grayling assures taxpayers that he will strengthen the law in this area (across the board)
• Despite being told at school that his hopes of having a career in science were ‘quite ridiculous’, John Gurdon has gone on to win the Nobel Prize for his research into cell development (across the board)
• RBS has announced £1.5million of funding in an effort to help young entrepreneurs (Daily Mirror)

Picture perfect

• Britain’s Got Talent star Amanda Holden is pictured with her hands full, holding eight children as a part of a Picture A Better Future Campaign launch with Pampers and Unicef (Daily Express, Daily Mirror, Daily Mail, The Sun)
• The artist Shauna Richardson is pulling the wool over no one’s eyes as she poses with her woollen, wildlife creations – knitted animals otherwise known as ‘crochetdermy’! (Metro)
• Though 100 Devon residents have declared the statue by Damien Hirst as ‘obscene and disgusting’, the 70ft tall statue of a naked, pregnant woman holding aloft a sword will be installed this week in Ilfracombe (Independent, i, Daily Mail)

PR at work

• Why is a meal not complete without a glass of wine? Or a breakfast without a cup of tea? Research by food scientist Paul Breslin found that tastes at opposite ends of the spectrum please our mouths most (Daily Express, Daily Mail)
• A survey promoting the launch of the TV show ‘Modern Family’ picked out the classic characteristics of the average household. According to the research, the average modern family earns £39,223 a year, owns a blue Ford and is in bed by 10:23pm every weekday night (Daily Express, Daily Mail, The Sun)
• Pret a Manger proves to be better than sliced bread, as the British chain has won the Golden Retail Brand in Paris, nine months after it opened its first branch there (Metro)
• People are increasingly going to work when they are ill, according to The Chartered Institute of Personnel Development as a result of the threat of redundancies and worries over job security, highlighting a culture of ‘presenteeism’ (across the board)
• Yorkshire has been named Britain’s best holiday destination, with figures by Welcome to Yorkshire revealing that there has been a 12% increase in international tourists (Telegraph)

Posted by Julia on October 9th, 2012