REBECCA JOHNSTON JOINS BAND & BROWN

Business communications specialist Rebecca Johnston has joined Band & Brown Communications from PR firm Golley Slater. Rebecca’s experience includes campaigns for Hoover, Lloyds TSB Commercial Finance, the Asset Based Finance Association and the Hydrogen Group.
She also has extensive experience in public sector to business communications, including work for A4e (UK’s largest welfare to work provider). At Band & Brown, Rebecca's clients will include Business in Schools, life assistance company CPP and intelligent assessment specialist Cognisco.
Prior to arriving in the UK in 2001, Rebecca also worked for Western Australia’s Department for Community Development as a campaign manager, also providing support on policy development.

BAND & BROWN HEAD TO PARTY CONFERENCES

Band & Brown Communications are supporting the work of Edge - the independent education foundation - at this year's party conferences. At the recent Edge and New Statesman-sponsored opening party of the Labour Conference at Manchester Town Hall, Band & Brown worked closely with Edge's inhouse public affairs manager to co-ordinate activity and branding.
National Learner Panel member Lynette Wieland and notgoingtouni.co.uk founder Tom Mursell were also in attendance with Edge to greet the politicians on arrival. Among the guests were Foreign Secretary David Miliband, Health Secretary Alan Johnson, Secretary for Innovation, University and Skills John Denham and Minister of State for Children, Schools and Families Jim Knight. Ed Miliband, the Cabinet Office Minister gave the keynote speech.
Commenting on the event, Chief Executive of Edge Andy Powell said;
“It’s essential that everyone from Cabinet Ministers downwards understand the need for young people to have the opportunity to develop all their talents and abilities. By speaking to key Government decision makers here tonight, hopefully we can work together to ensure a better future for all the UK’s young people.”
The Manchester event is part of a full programme of Edge events at all three major party conferences with Channel 4 filming an Edge fringe debate at the Labour Conference. For more information, visit www.edge.co.uk.

DCFS

Try life in another language
What do rock bands, gigs and reality TV have in to do with learning a second language? Everything.
As part of its campaign to encourage more 11-14 year olds to learn a foreign language at GCSE level, Department of Children Schools and Families funded 'Je Suis Un Rock Star' a reality TV documentary on Channel 4's T4.
The programme charted a group of 12 lucky youngsters competing to become the three “fixers” of Liverpudlian band The Wombats on a tour around Europe.
In order to generate maximum exposure for the show and build a teen audience, we seeded the programme on the band’s official fan site, on MySpace and Facebook groups and Digital Spy. We also used media relations to help to attract an average of 188,000 viewers per episode and 70,000 visitors to the campaign hub – which resulted in 15,000 downloading content such as adverts, episodes or behind the scenes footage.
www.channel4.com/rockstar
www.trylifeinanotherlanguage.com

VQ DAY EVALUATION PUBLISHED

Independent tracking research to gauge the effectiveness of the first ever VQ Day in July 2008 has revealed that over half of people (51 per cent) now agree that vocational qualifications are as important as GCSEs and A-levels - up from 44 per cent before VQ Day was launched in April 2008.
The evaluation report into the day, published today, also reveals that one in five adults in the UK heard one of the VQ Day-related news stories and one in ten have heard of the day itself.
Over 50 events were held across the UK to celebrate the day, including national events in London - attended by senior politicians from all three parties and hosted by Alesha Dixon - and at the Royal Welsh Show.
Led by independent education foundation Edge, on behalf of a steering group representing the vocational qualifications community, the implementation of the nationwide celebrations were delivered by Band & Brown Communications, working with it's sister agencies Thirst (design) and Brando (event management). The website - www.vqday.org - was delivered by digital agency PublicZone and national print advertising brought by Phd.
Writing in the report, Andy Powell, Chief Executive of Edge, commented:
"There are many paths to success, but every year we only see A-level and GCSE students celebrating their results in the TV news pictures and there has never before been one national day of celebration for the millions of people who gain vocational qualifications each year. In February 2008, the VQ Day steering group met for the first time with the aim of creating such a celebration. In just six months, the VQ Day steering group - led by Edge - has succeeded in laying a marker in the sand for future years to build on."
For more details, download the evaluation report or email vqday@bbpr.com

BOROUGH MARKET

Borough Market - Rebrand
Europe’s biggest outdoor food market needed a new identity and collateral. Thirst worked closely with the trustees to rebrand the historic site across signage, stationery, website and publications.
www.boroughmarket.org.uk

HESTER BRAY JOINS BAND & BROWN

Hester Bray has joined Band & Brown Communications from PR agency Manning Selvage and Lee where she worked in the corporate department, with clients from the IT, financial and business sector including GMAC UK, global IT services company Atos Origin, Affinion International and online banking service Ivobank.
Hester has consumer, B2B and European campaign experience, having previously worked in Paris for both WeberShandwick and GCI-Grey. There she helped manage the British Airways press office team, not only for crisis and issues but also for proactive campaigns on a regional and a national scale.
At Band & Brown Hester is working on client campaigns for Zurich Insurance, the Children’s Workforce Development Council and life assistance company CPP.

B&B SAIL INTO BRITISH WATERWAYS

British Waterways has brought Band & Brown Communications on board to refresh its consumer PR activities and promote Britain's waterways to a wider audience.
BW is the guardian of the UK's 200-year-old, 2000 mile network of canals and rivers and has retained the agency - based a stone's throw from Camden's stretch of the Regent's Canal - for six months.
Working in tandem with an existing marketing campaign - 'Yours to Enjoy' - Band & Brown will be responsible for reviewing and developing British Waterways' consumer communications strategy with the aim of encouraging unfamiliar audiences to visit their local canal and British Waterways' consumer website waterscape.com.
A secondee from the agency will deliver a programme of national, regional and locally targeted campaigns including a celebration of 40 years of leisure on the canals, a national wildlife survey and promotions of canal side pubs and attractions.
Ed Fox, British Waterways' Head of Communications, said: "Our waterways are today used and enjoyed by more people and for a wider variety of uses than at any other time in their history.
"As the network approaches its 250th anniversary we have a great opportunity to raise awareness of the value of waterways to local communities and to the nation as a whole. I am delighted to have Band&Brown on board with the energy, enthusiasm and new ideas they have injected into the campaign."

GUEST HOTELS

Upstaging the hotel business
The white tuxedoed pianist is normally what you think of when talking about hotel entertainment. But this is exactly the image Band & Brown was tasked with banishing when unveiling the world’s first arts club hotel.
To launch Guest Hotels, the new hotel collection transforming its five hotels into hotbeds for emerging talent from London’s creative arts scene, we hosted a cultural extravaganza for media featuring electro pop band Heartbreak and work from the internationally acclaimed installation artist Maria Marshall.
More than 80 journalists attended from a range of media including consumer glossies like Wallpaper and Vogue and high end travel broadcast such as CNN Business Traveller.
www.guesthotels.com

GROWING UP IN WEB 2.0

Facebook and Myspace now serve as the playgrounds of kids across the planet, and in the process young people are faced with a whole host of new risks to their safety and security.
Working with online identity experts, Garlik, Band & Brown Communications recently launched a campaign to raise awareness of these risks. Our news stories revealed that there are one million young UK bullies in cyberspace and that 750,000 underage kids are using social networking sites everyday.
Both stories achieved outstanding media cut-through securing over 200 pieces of coverage in total across leading publications in 21 countries including the UK, France, Norway, Canada, India and Brazil.
For more information contact Marsha D'Angelo marsha@bbpr.com