Filed under: Uncategorized
Calling all footy fans…..
Former Manchester United player and celebrity TV star Lee Sharpe certainly made a striking impression at the Freedom Back Clinics launch earlier this month and got a few cheeky smiles from the ladies whilst he was at it…. Laura included!
He was at the new Manchesterback clinic to perform the official ribbon-cutting and spent his time working the room and chatting with the Manchester journalists.
It was a perfect celebrity partnership as Lee has suffered with back problems in the past. In fact, our local Freedom clinic in Leeds has helped iron out his niggles, both before and after Lee’s recent charity adventures.
A great day, with some great coverage in The Manchester Evening News, as well as new business publications. Well done to everyone who was involved – although we can’t say it was a chore for Laura!
Retired businessman, grandfather of two, Friday night drinking buddy and occasional Source health & safety officer, Robert Waterhouse is a man who likes to ride a bicycle.
Since an early age he and his bike have rarely been parted. There have been trips to the pub, the shops, the pub and the shops, and even one from John O’Groats to Land’s End. And what’s more, he’s quite good at it. He can do no hands without wobbling and hasn’t fallen off since 1967. In fact, the only thing that stopped him turning professional and winning the Tour de France was his refusal to wear Lycra.
Anyway, now Robert and his bicycle are getting set for their biggest adventure ever. One so big that it can rightly be called epic. You see, on April 29th Robert and his bicycle are off to America with the aim of following the TransAmerica Bicycle Trail from one side to the other. That’s 5,000miles and he’s planning to do it in 100 days, which works out at quite a lot of miles everyday.
As part of the trip Robert is aiming to raise a pound a mile, which for those without a calculator is £5,000, for the disaster relief charity, ShelterBox. You’ll be pleased to hear that not one penny of the money he raises will be going to fund the trip – he’s paid for all of that himself.
Being such nice folk we decided to give Robert’s fundraising a kick-start by trying to get his (and his bicycle’s) story into the press. As you can see it worked. Since issuing it at the end of last week he’s already appeared in the Yorkshire Post and Yorkshire Evening Post and, even more excitingly (for him at least) his headline was on the billboard outside his local newsagent yesterday morning.
Robert revels in the warm glow of fame
To follow Robert’s epic journey, and to help him on his way to that £5,000 target, make sure you visit his blog – a site you’ll also find invaluable if you ever wondered where to find a nice bit of cake in Yorkshire.
Filed under: Celebrity bandwagon, Good news, Impressive chest, The genius of Peter
You may recognise the person in the photograph below – after all he is one of the greatest British swimmers of all time.
No, not the one on the left, that’s just Peter. It’s the other one. The five times Olympian and standard bearer at the opening ceremony at the last Olympics, Mr Mark Foster.
Mark took time out from his busy schedule to launch Freedom Back Clinics in Canary Wharf and he certainly caused some waves – especially when we asked him to remove his shirt and have his photograph taken receiving a massage in the busy thoroughfare outside the clinic. Thankfully, the crowds that built up were quickly dispersed by the sight of Peter unbuttoning his shirt.
You’ll be pleased to hear that we didn’t just choose Mark because of his glittering career and willingness to remove his shirt. We chose him because his career was dogged by back problems, meaning he was the ideal person to demonstrate that such issues aren’t the sole domain of the elderly and unfit, but can have a major impact on the lives of even the fittest of professional sportsmen.
All the key Canary Wharf journalists lined up to interview Mark at the launch and the client was delighted with the coverage we achieved.
The new clinic, with its flexible opening hours, has got off to a flying start and is proving to be extremely popular. To find out more visit www.freedombackclincics.com
With more state-of-the-art clinics opening throughout the UK we are already planning our next launch, so watch this space.
Here’s just some of the coverage: The Docklands, The Wharf, The Business Desk
Filed under: Uncategorized
Regular visitors to our site may have noticed an exciting addition to our BOO page – yes, there’s a new person popping up to scare you.
Laura Blanco-Medina joined us late last year and has settled into her new role extremely well. She’s working across a range of growing and new accounts, including Freedom Back Clinics, Bupa Care Homes, Principal Hayley, Bradford Training Association Limited (BTAL) and Ecurie25 and has delivered some impressive results already – including getting our favourite supercar club into the Mail on Sunday just before Christmas.
Not one to miss out on having his say, Peter said: “We’d been planning to appoint someone for some time to help support the growth of current clients and assist in new business development, but were waiting for the ideal candidate to come along.
“Laura, with her PR degree and valuable agency experience, was just what we wanted. She’s fitted into the team brilliantly and is still new enough to feel she needs to laugh at all of my jokes.”
By the way, you can now follow, befriend and hook up with us on Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin – just click on any of the links.
Filed under: Good news
A recent last minute job on behalf of our client Legrand brought praise from the most unexpected of directions – a journalist.
No, you haven’t read that first paragraph incorrectly. We (a PR consultancy) received glowing praise from a journalist (traditional PR basher) for stepping into the breach and delivering an in-depth technical article at the very last moment.
Ben Cronin, the editor of Electrical Times, said: “Now that’s what I call PR! Thanks,” after we filled a page of his November issue with a piece on the demise of traditional switches and sockets.
Admittedly, he added: “You’ve gone from being the bane of my life to my favourite person,” but that kind of deflects from the wholesome praise aspect of this story so isn’t really worth dwelling on.
Our thanks go to Ben for taking the time to express his gratitude for our efforts, because there’s nothing that warms the cockles of our Source e-hearts on a chilly October day than someone being nice about us.
It’s always nice to receive positive feedback from a client, but when the feedback entails your work cropping up in an important new business meeting on the other side of the world then it moves from the “nice, like a good cup of tea” category into one entitled “blimey, we’re pretty good at this PR thing, let’s hit the town to celebrate”.
The client who sent us spinning dizzily towards late night intoxication was none other than Ellis Patents – the global leader in cable cleats. The exotic location of the meeting was Hong Kong – a former colonial outpost that is now part of China, but still likes its cricket. The new business meeting was apparently highly confidential, but if you put the words “Hong, “Electric” and “Kong” in the right order you should be somewhere near the mark.
Anyway to cut a fairly concise story even shorter, here’s what happened in one easily digestible sentence… Client walks into a meeting in Hong Kong with the intention of winning the company’s business by underscoring the importance of properly tested cable cleats in electrical installations only to be confronted by his own face beaming out from a magazine article all about the importance of properly tested cable cleats in electrical installations.(actually that was quite a long sentence – sorry).
Anyway, Richard Shaw, he of the aforementioned beaming face and managing director of Ellis Patents, takes up the story: “Going into a new business meeting anywhere I like to think that myself and my colleagues are prepared for every eventuality, but to walk into a meeting nearly 6,000miles away from home and see my face staring back at me from a magazine on the boardroom table was absolutely staggering.”
“I’ve always been a big advocate of the benefits of PR and this episode clearly shows just how powerful a tool it can be.”
A cable cleat and Richard Shaw
Ellis Patents subsequently secured the deal with HK Electric, although we feel this probably had more to do with the skills and experience of Richard and his export sales manager, Tony Conroy, than the global appeal of our article – although it’s nice to know it helped.
Filed under: Awards
It’s award time again for Source Marketing Communications, as we helped Bupa Care Services win a top prize at the Marketing Society Northern Awards 2010 for work in helping care home residents connect with the community.
If you scroll down a little further, you’ll see that one of the campaigns – “Communi-tea Week” – has already scooped up an award, but this time we decided to enter some more of the “Big Twelve” events, which stretch across the year to provide an active calendar jam- packed with activities for residents living in Bupa’s care homes across the UK.
An impressive panel of judges from Saatchi and Saatchi, eBay, Barnardos and The Marketing Society picked the campaign as being particularly impressive, with almost 2000 external guests attending the care home events and impressive customer satisfaction results reflecting their popularity with relatives and residents.
Of course, last but not least, there were some fantastic media campaigns which generated heaps of coverage for the care homes.
You can see the team below collecting the award, clutching the rather-spangly glass trophy.
The super Bupa team
So you see, we like to win PR and Marketing awards, just to show exactly how mutli-talented we are…
You know what they say about celebrities, there’s never one around when you need one and then suddenly three turn up at once…
What do you mean that’s buses? Really?
… anyway, not to worry. Let’s get back to those celebrities, all of whom turned up on our doorstep like a fleet of First Leeds’ finest over the course of the last few weeks.
First up was umpiring legend, Dickie Bird who did nothing more than lift his famous finger to signal the commencement of this year’s Bupa Communi-tea Week.
A Bird in the hand...
He was followed down the Source walk of fame by none other than Dancing on Ice winner and former Coronation Street star, Gaynor Faye. Not only did she help us to launch Calendar Check, but she bravely agreed to be driven the 140-miles from Leeds to Scarborough and back by Peter – not that we’re questioning Peter’s driving skills, but the poor girl’s ear was well and truly bent by the time she was dropped off at home in the early evening.
Gaynor Faye gets to meet star of one stage and several dancefloors, Peter Downey
And if that wasn’t enough, former Arsenal, Manchester United and Republic of Ireland legend, Frank Stapleton rather aptly stepped in to deliver our hat-trick of celebrities when he visited legal client, Lupton Fawcett to announce the launch of SIM – a new sports agency that himself and his son, Scott have set up alongside the firm’s Sports and Media Department.
Steve foolishly bets Frank he can beat him at keepie uppies
As you’ll have seen from the pictures the only person not to jump on the Source celebrity bandwagon was Daniel, although he didn’t miss out entirely due to his very own brush with fame – an appearance on Radcliffe and Maconie’s BBC Radio 2 show on St Patricks day. Not only did his Pogues link earn him the 1,648th link in the show’s Chain, but his dulcet tones led to him being described as ‘radio aural therapy’ by DJ Mark Radcliffe.
Filed under: Power of the internet and media, The genius of Peter | Tags: Source Twitter
Everyone seems to be at it at the moment.
And no, I’m not talking about Tiger Woods, Ashley Cole, Vernon Kaye or John Terry.
I’m talking about Twittering, Tweeting, Twa… Heck, call it what you like, everyone seems to be doing it, everyone appears to be talking about it, but how good is it?
I’ve been a fully-paid up Twit for nearly a year. I Tweet on a daily (or near daily) basis and as a PR bod I realise I should be squawking on about how great it is, how it’s a wonderful communication tool and how sliced bread has nothing in comparison. But the jury is still out.
I have likened it to CB radios. Back in the 1980s people were holed up in their bedrooms talking to random people they had never met. Thirty years on and could it be that Twitter is nothing more than the cyberspace version of that long forgotten, must-have, next-big-thing technology?
If you’re a Stephen Fry or a Richard Bacon with a million plus followers you can argue that Twitter has the potential to be a ‘powerful voice of the masses’ enabling them to set the news agenda. But for the ordinary Joe Blogs (i.e. you, me and pretty much everyone else out there), this voice is nothing more than a barely audible whisper.
Take for example a guy who heads up an award-winning social media consultancy in Leeds. He’s been a Twit from day one and yet has less than 3,000 followers. And when you take a look at who his followers are, the vast majority appear to have little or no relevance to him, his business or his clients.
And that’s the crux of the problem. Many Tweets I receive appear to be inane, boring or irrelevant, such as what someone’s had for lunch, what music they are listening to or how the weather’s improving. All of which provides further proof (if it was really needed) as to why it’s called ‘social’ media – although if that’s the way the average conversation went over your average pint in your average pub, I’d bet most people would be grabbing their coats and heading, rather unsociably, for the door.
Having said that I can see how Twitter can work well for some businesses in specific areas, such as leisure. But not every company should leap on the bandwagon and start Tweeting. A lot of the content is boring enough without an engineering company posting a Tweet about its latest widget.
In my opinion Twitter still has to go some to be anywhere near as influential as the traditional media, whether it is broadcast, printed or online. Many of the ‘interesting’ Tweets I receive are linked to breaking news reported in mainstream media.
For the sake of my clients, I will persevere as the office Twit, but only so that I can offer an honest and informed opinion when questioned about it and its possible use in PR campaigns. For the right type of client, of course.
I still need to be convinced however that it is not like the Emperor’s new clothes – all talk and no trousers.
You can follow the Source Twit at Twitter.com/peter_source
Filed under: Festive frolicks
IT’S SNOW FUN AT SOURCE!
Taking aim...
...Direct hit!
...Who hit the photographer?!
(first correct answer wins a bottle of champagne!!)
Merry Christmas
and
Happy New Year
from
Rachel, Peter, Daniel and Steve
P.S. As this email greeting has saved us from splashing out on
cards and festive stamps, we are making a donation to charity instead.
This year, we’ve chosen Cancer Research
