Spearheading Feeding Families With Simon Wood

Campaigning, media relations and digital.

We are working with MasterChef champion Simon Wood to help families in need with the launch of a brand new website to house his easy and nutritious recipes.

Having recognised the need for a campaign to raise awareness of the many issues surrounding free school lunches we are leading the communications and digital activity for the #FeedingFamiliesFor30 initiative. 

We started with the purpose of showcasing what £30 worth of food from a supermarket should look like, compared to the free school meal parcels provided by the government. Complimented by Simon Wood creating a series of quick and tasty recipes using dried goods and tinned produce which he would syndicate on his social channels, to offer inspiration to families when cooking at home. 

The recipes were so well received, especially for those who have seen their income cut due to the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, that we shifted our focus here entirely and created a website to house them. 

The Feeding Families With Simon Wood website was created, offering a space where individuals and families can seek inspiration and resources to create quick and easy meals using cupboard essentials. 

Alongside the website, we have been running a busy press office, and also partnered with experienced media specialists, Monster Outdoor, to take the recipes to the streets with a special branded Simon Wood ad van.  The website stats have been amazing - especially with the kind support of some of Simon’s TV friends…

Coverage so far has included

We are continuing to grow the initiative further, working directly with food banks to create bespoke recipes on whatever stock they have surplus of - one told us they had 21k celeriac this week!

Inspired by the incredible work of footballer, Marcus Rashford, we really want to provide real solutions for real people who want to eat well but on a strict budget. 

For more information and to access Simon Wood’s recipes, please visit: https://www.feedingfamilieswithsimonwood.co.uk/ 

The Diva Of Gins!

Product Launch

Celebrity endorsements and collaborations have been PR gold since the beginning of time and nobody does it better than the GC.

When reality TV star extraordinaire Gemma Collins puts her name to a product the world goes wild. As a team we have been keen to pair the Diva (with a capital D) with Zymurgorium for some time.

At Zymurgorium there is a team of wizards that create never-seen before gins and liqueurs in their sleep and they had a brilliant time creating Gemma’s first ever gin liqueur, the FlaGINgo Gemma Collins.

We were responsible for the campaign from conception, to doing a deal with Gemma’s team to delivering the content and PR and social campaigns. We even managed to hold a socially distanced, safe shoot in London - thanks Blame Gloria. You should check the venue out when hospitality reopens, it’s fab.

Launched officially onto shelves on Monday 23rd November, FlaGINgo Gemma Collins is a kiwi and lime premium gin liqueur, an exotic blend of juniper, refreshing kiwi and feisty lime zest, all with a touching hint of forest fruits. It’s got a striking bottle design, complete with Essex inspired flamingos on a red carpet, and sparkles to create a show-stopping glittering gin liqueur.

The product was stocked in B&M (retail exclusive), Studio, Prezzybox, Masters of Malt and Amber Taverns, as well as being available on the Zymurgorium website. We worked closely with the retailers to integrate the launch across as many channels as possible and announce the product with a bang.

The campaign reached xxx eyeballs with coverage in xxx national titles including…

On social it reached xxxx users who all loved it!

And more importantly the products have been racing off shelves everywhere.

Domestic Abuse At Christmas

Raising Awareness With Media Relations.

According to UK government figures from 2012, assault and domestic murders increase 25 per cent during the festive period and incidents go up by a third on Christmas Day itself, with the current restrictions in place, this is expected to raise this year. 

Safer Wednesday’s is just one of the many programmes which is facilitated by Seetec Justice and provides sessions every Wednesday for victims of domestic abuse who need support.

We worked with Seetec to raise awareness of the fantastic work that Seetec Justice does to help victims and perpetrators of domestic abuse with a targeted and informed media relations campaign.

A subject like this doesn’t warrant a glitzy stunt or create campaign, our job was just to pull together a compelling story with statistics, information about the relevant services and case studies who could speak openly and honestly.

The campaign reached 20,400,000 eyeballs with coverage highlights including I News.

Tanks A Lot!

Creative customer engagement.

Our client, the national pan-Asian group behind Chopstix Noodle Bars, wanted to reach students across the UK by feeding them and putting a smile on their faces so we looked to the students of Manchester who were all isolating in their halls.

We thought what better way to deliver hot steaming noodles to starving (slight exaggeration) than in a vintage WW2 tank - and Noodle Aid was born. Well it was after we had sourced said tank, which obviously is much easier said than done. It would pay for PR agencies to have someone in all brainstorms to remind you of this!

So Chopstix donated 400 meals to students under self-isolation, looking to spread cheer and goodwill during testing times.

How did we do? The brief was - national coverage, consumer engagement with students, drive trial and create some really great content. Mission accomplished. The tank was on Metro first thing the next day with other coverage on Yahoo News, Manchester Evening News and Capital, alongside international coverage on The West (Aus) and Play Stuff (NZ). We made 400 students smile as they tucked into their free noodles and the content reached 93,301,424 people across media and social channels.

Want to know more about Chopstix? Chopstix is focused on delivering a faster, fresher, tastier alternative to the high street. Wok master chefs deliver nourishing noodles, wholesome chicken, beautiful beef and perfect prawns with fresh vegetables and superb sauces to make Chopstix the ‘go to guys’ for boxed fresh flavour. You can find Chopstix in over 60 locations throughout the UK.

MMU Student Life Welcome Event

Virtual Events.

We were really honoured to be able to work with the team at MMU to create an event to welcome the 2020/21 students to our amazing city.

As the students were to be robbed of real life freshers events and all the other great stuff that comes with the first few weeks of uni, the university wanted to create an experience that engaged and informed the students about the different services available across the school for them.

They tasked us with creating a series of webinars that would bring together the vast array of content that they had created in an engaging format.

We produced the event using Webinar Jam and recruited Manchester babe and TV and radio presenter, Hattie Pearson, to host and bring together the content together in true Mancunian style.

The 90 minute shows combined live content, quizzes and pre-recorded video content to educate students about Manchester, the university's student services and more. This was a fantastic way for the uni to deliver a lot of information in an engaging format and it proved popular with students and staff alike.

Thousands of students attended the six webinars where they were introduced to departments, services and support staff. Vital conversations around living in the city, getting a job and finding support with any issues began at these events helping the new freshers to settle in in unsettling times.

Alternative Manchester Pride Festival

Event and Charity PR

We have worked with LGBTQ+ charity Manchester Pride since 2014.

Our role is to both promote and sell tickets to events and work with the team behind the charity to achieve its vision of a world where LGBTQ+ people are free to live and love without prejudice and improving the lives of LGBTQ+ people in Greater Manchester and beyond.

Every year we handle a content office promoting the world class Manchester Pride Festival in August. We host over 300 national journalists, work with bodies like Marketing Manchester to bring influencers from across the world, organise interviews and photography with artists and work with a whole host of journalists and photographers to generate regional, national and international coverage to raise awareness of the amazing work the organisation does.

In 2020 we worked closely with the Manchester Pride team to take its flagship event online.

We generated an ROI of £1: 1,115,333, meaning that for every £1 spent we reached 1,115,333 people.

In August alone we generated 112 pieces of coverage with a reach of 123 million and an estimated 3m online views.

This included blanket regional BBC and commercial radio coverage, print and online regionally and nationally.

We don’t just promote the event, we promote the city, the charity and the people involved. This helps us tell the story of this vital work completely.

Manchester School Of Art, Class of 2020

Virtual Event Management.

Students at Manchester's School Of Art may have missed out on their end of year show in real life but they were treated to an amazing series of events by the school to give them a glimpse of what they might experience next.

We were thrilled to be able to get involved to help deliver a five of these events.

First was an 'in conversation' between Manchester arts and culture consultant Katie Popperwell and School of Art alumni and artist Ryan Gander.

Using a series of live and filmed content, we created a series of events which were held on Zoom for students and streamed on YouTube for a wider audience to learn more about the brilliant work carried out at the world-leading school.

Launching Six By Nico Manchester & Liverpool

Restaurant Launch.

The brief was to launch the first Six by Nico restaurant in England, to get the people of Manchester excited about the new offering and to drive loyalty to the brand.

Then in quick succession, launch Liverpool!

We delivered a campaign using a combination of media relations and influencer engagement to build maximum excitement for this exciting new concept.

As the restaurant only has one menu at a time it posed both a challenge and an opportunity as we had a steady stream of stories but we needed to ensure that customers new exactly what they were getting. This is where media and influencer content were crucial.

We engaged all of the key media titles for each city, resulting in a total of 118 pieces of coverage about the launch of the new restaurants.

Liverpool reach: 29,414,253

Manchester reach: 55,077,907

Six by Nico Manchester had 3,000 reservations before the restaurant opened, and in Liverpool almost 5,000.

During launch weekend we filled every seat with press, influencers and VIPS!

The Caterer and Restaurant Magazine both came from London to meet Nico and try the food.

Six By Nico is one of the most popular restaurants in both cities. Often booked up for months - no we can’t squeeze you in sorry! We did squeeze Graham Norton in once though… we had to really!

Simon Wood Saves Lockdown

Driving Content With Media Relations

As we entered Lockdown 1:0 in March we had no idea what was to come. Many of our travel, hospitality and retail clients were making arrangements to close their doors and we got to thinking about what we could do to support them.

Simon Wood, who never seems to sit still, had a lot of time on his hands as the announcement was made that even KFC and McDonald’s would shut…. so we thought, Simon could keep himself and his restaurant front of mind and fill the gaping hole that this would leave.

Simon created a Big Mac sauce recipe which he put out across social at 7pm as the nation’s fast food restaurants all closed. At the same time our team sent it out to media to drive the content further.

The Big Mac sauce has been in the Daily Mail, Daily Star and Daily Express plus OK mag and more.

This lead to a whole series of recipes from salt and pepper chips to KFC style gravy and hot wings.

Overall the campaign reached xxx eyeballs with over xxx pieces of coverage.

Freeport Fleetwood was an outlet centre the Fylde Coast had fallen out of love with.

So we gave the people of Fleetwood a reason to come back, and the centre had its best year in 11.

Local faces, big events and a press office that never stopped, for a marina-side outlet eight miles from Blackpool.

The highlights

Best year

In 11 years for the centre, in 2016

Fully let

For the first time in seven years

Up 6%

Record footfall, up nearly 6% on the year before

Winner

Retail Business of the Year, Red Rose Awards

We worked across Realm’s portfolio of outlet and shopping centres, and Freeport Fleetwood is where the results stood out. The outlet centre sits on the marina at Fleetwood, anchored at the time by M&S, Next and Gap alongside more than 40 other outlet brands. When Realm took over, its local shoppers were still coming but less often, lapsed customers had stopped coming at all, and the store line-up had not changed in a while. Being outdoors and eight miles north of Blackpool, footfall rose and fell with the seasons and the weather, and almost every tenant was on a turnover lease, so every extra sale mattered to everyone.

We started by finding out why people had stopped coming. Focus groups with regular and lapsed customers, social media analysis, store sales, footfall data, tenant feedback and a brand values session gave us a new strategy for the centre and one tone of voice for everything it said.

Then we built the campaign around the people of Fleetwood. Local people modelled in our fashion shoots, a partnership with the local paper put new-season fashion in front of its readers every quarter, and the Best of British weekend kept footfall high after the school holidays ended. Busking on the bus to promote the Lytham Festival, a Blue Monday hunt for blue hearts and two animatronic T. rexes loose around the centre at Halloween, live with BBC Radio Lancashire, gave the press a reason to keep coming back. We kept every retailer in the loop so they could make the most of each moment, and we wrote the award entries too.

Sales in 2015 were 5% ahead of 2014, total turnover was the highest in ten years, and footfall reached almost 1.3 million, up for the second year running. 2016 went further. From Black Friday the centre saw an 18% increase in sales and a 25% increase in footfall, Christmas week footfall was up 32%, and Sports Direct, Bonmarché and The Body Shop opened, so the centre traded Christmas fully let for the first time in seven years. The Blackpool Gazette reported it as the centre’s best year in 11.

Along the way the centre was named Retail Business of the Year at the Red Rose Awards, won the Large Retailer award at the Radio Wave Culture and Lifestyle Awards, which the public votes for, picked up a Marketing Lancashire award and was shortlisted for the Retail Experience Award at the Lancashire Tourism Awards.

"2015 has been a fantastic year for us at Freeport Fleetwood. I am delighted that we have continued to grow in all areas of the business, building on the success of 2014 to generate our highest turnover for the last ten years."
John Magee, Centre Manager, Freeport Fleetwood (Realm)

Running a centre your locals have stopped visiting?

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Services used: PR, Social, Content, Events

LEGOLAND® Discovery Centre Manchester needed families across the North to keep it on their list.

So we made LEGO® part of whatever the North was talking about.

A MINILAND model for every headline, from the Corrie fire to This Morning.

The highlights

Gold

Freshest Media Relations Campaign, Fresh Awards 2013

100M

Mums and LEGO® fans reached

National TV

This Morning and The Paul O’Grady Show

Nearly 16k

Facebook fans

LEGOLAND® Discovery Centre Manchester is an indoor LEGO® attraction at the Trafford Centre, and the brief was to win as much coverage as possible across the hour and a half to two hours its visitors travel from. Titles in Preston, Chester and Bolton want stories their own readers care about, so news about the attraction alone was never going to fill them.

MINILAND, the attraction’s LEGO® version of landmarks from across the North, gave us the canvas. With marketing manager Shaun Rhodes, master model builder Alex Bidolak and photographer Carl Sukonik, we turned whatever the North was talking about into a model and a picture: the Coronation Street fire, the Race for Life, a life-size LEGO® Premier League trophy for Sir Alex Ferguson’s retirement, two stormtroopers on the roof of the Trafford Centre, a LEGO® Oscar selfie and a "Taxi for Moyes" outside the LEGO® Old Trafford the day David Moyes left.

The Oscar #miniselfie ran in The Sun, the Daily Star, Mail Online, Heat, E! Online and Mashable, and the Moyes picture was shared by ITV.com and Metro and talked about by Simon Mayo on BBC Radio 2. When This Morning marked its 25th anniversary from the Albert Dock, Alex rebuilt the original set in LEGO®. Eamonn Holmes tweeted it to almost 600,000 followers, Alex was interviewed on the show, then on BBC Radio Manchester, Heart and Granada Reports, and Richard and Judy asked to take the model home.

The campaign won Gold for Freshest Media Relations Campaign at the Fresh Awards in 2013, the first award we ever entered. Across the year it reached 100 million mums and LEGO® fans, with national TV on This Morning and The Paul O’Grady Show, two appearances on Granada Reports, a steady run of national and regional coverage and Facebook fans grown to nearly 16k, while online ticket sales tracked closely with the PR.

Running an attraction that needs a reason to be in the news every week?

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Services used: PR, Social, Content

SEA LIFE Manchester was opening a brand new aquarium, and families across the North West needed to know what was inside.

So we made its animals the story, and the launch smashed its sales targets.

Sharks, a sprout-eating turtle and a waltz in the Sea TREK tank on Strictly.

The highlights

20%+

Pre-bookings beat the business target

11m

Viewers saw Strictly Come Dancing waltz in the Sea TREK tank

Newsround

Just before launch

Mirror

Double-page spread the day before opening

SEA LIFE Manchester opened at the Trafford Centre in 2013, and a family deciding where to spend a day out wants to know what they will see before they buy a ticket. The animals were the clearest way to tell them, so every arrival, feed and weigh-in became a story.

We worked the arrival of the sharks and of Ernie, the giant ocean turtle, who then ate ASDA out of sprouts and later went on a diet when his curator found 4kg of fat around his flippers. Ernie made The Guardian, Metro, the Daily Star, Mail Online and the Manchester Evening News, and SEA LIFE’s own brand team called The Guardian piece one of the most on-brand pieces of coverage they had seen.

Sea TREK, a European first that lets visitors walk along the floor of the tank, got a Mirror double-page spread the day before opening and a Granada Reports piece that our team helped film underwater. Newsround covered the attraction just before launch. Then a celebrity couple from Strictly Come Dancing waltzed in the Sea TREK tank, and we worked with the BBC press office to put it across the national press on the morning of the show, so the biggest spot on national TV came with a wave of coverage behind it.

Pre-bookings beat the business target by over 20%, so SEA LIFE Manchester opened and smashed its sales targets.

Opening an attraction and need families to know what’s inside before they book?

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Services used: PR, Content