BAND & BROWN LAUNCHES NATIONAL SAFETY CHARITY LV= STREETWISE

Band & Brown this week launched the nationwide roll out of LV= Streetwise, a charity that educates children about safety, by offering a group of pupils at St Dominic's primary school in Harpenden the chance to premier its unique mobile safety centre, which will be touring the UK this summer.

To coincide with the launch, LV= Streetwise, which aims to reduce the number of accidents among children, revealed research showing that close to a quarter of children aged 15 and under are not allowed to sleep over at a friend's house, in comparison to just 4% of their parents, while six in ten (60%) modern children are forbidden to use public transport.

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The LV= Streetwise road show is the first national roll out of LV='s CSR  initiative, which has been running locally in Bournemouth for the last 12 years offering safety education to over 13,000 children every year.

The campaign set the news agenda for the day with over fifty broadcast outlets covering the story, including discussion on GM:TV, This Morning, Radio Five Live and ITV News as well as blanket print and online coverage.

Commenting on the launch, Suzie Barrett, Group Account Director, Band & Brown Communications said: “Child safety remains an important and current issue and initiatives such as Streetwise play a vital role in improving child safety education in the UK. LV= has a long standing commitment to helping more young people to become safety-literate and we’re extremely proud to be involved in promoting their efforts.”

A THIRD OF BRITS STILL HAVEN'T TALKED ABOUT THE ELECTION

With just nine days until the polling booths open, one in three (36 per cent) Brits failed to have a single conversation about the general election in the last week, according to new statistics.

It appears the impact of screening the second leaders’ debate primarily on cable and satellite channels has dampened the public’s discussion of the election, with conversations falling from 68 per cent in the week of the first leader’s debate to 64 per cent last week.

Meanwhile, Nick Clegg’s ‘positive conversation’ index has also fallen with 30 per cent of the British population having a positive conversation about the Lib Dem leader in the last week (-9 on the week before).

However, positive “talkability” around Clegg is still way ahead of his political rivals.

Positive conversations about David Cameron recorded a small week on week increase (17 per cent, +1) and similar conversations about Gordon Brown have increased for the fourth week running to 15 per cent (+2 on previous week, +6 on w/e 04.04)

The figures are taken from TalkingPoint, a new tool developed by Band & Brown Communications to track conversations about brands, products and people. Weekly polling of more than 2,000 people is conducted by ICM.

Commenting on the data, Fiona Longhurst, Planning Director at Band & Brown, said:
"The results just underline the impact of the first TV debate, but it must be a concern for politicians that they have been unable to capitalise on this impact and continue to engage the public in the general election campaign."

“We believe conversation has a massive role to play in the decisions people make and so we have developed TalkingPoint to track conversations and gauge the nation’s everyday concerns and discussions. While the news focus is on brands Clegg, Cameron and Brown right now, we will be making the Talking Point monitor available to our clients in the near future.”

For further information, contact Mark Lowe on 020 7419 7341 / mark@bbpr.com / twitter.com/@metzger49

CLEGG HAS THE X-FACTOR AS POLITICAL LEADERS MORE TALKED ABOUT THAN CHERYL COLE

Brits were four times more likely to have a positive conversation about Nick Clegg than Cheryl Cole in the last week, according to new research.

More than a third (39 per cent) of the British population had a positive conversation about the Lib Dem leader, while 16 per cent had a similar conversation about David Cameron and 13 per cent about Gordon Brown.

Less than one in ten Brits has a conversation about Cheryl Cole in the same time period.

The figures are taken from TalkingPoint, a new tool developed by Band & Brown Communications to track conversations about brands, products and people. Weekly polling of more than 2,000 people is conducted by ICM.

In recent weeks, TalkingPoint has shown that Brown and Clegg's positive conversation ratings have been climbing since the start of the election campaign, while Cameron's have hardly shifted.

Fiona Longhurst, Planning Director at Band & Brown, commented:
"It’s become vital in our business to understand how conversations are started and sustained. This is why we have developed TalkingPoint, which will become a vital tracking tool for our clients.

"The results just underline the impact of Clegg's performance on ITV and it will be interesting to see if our pub, school gate and dinner talk continue these trends as the election approaches."

Martin Boon of ICM said:
“As brand experts, Band & Brown know better than most the value of word-of-mouth in engaging consumers with products. It’s a happy knack that the Clegg team appear to have picked up since the leaders debate.” 

THE STUDENT ROOM

Band & Brown sets Twitter trend
Band & Brown scored a real coup on Twitter last week, turning comments made on a client website by Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg about the controversial Digital Economy Act into a Twitter trending topic.

B&B client The Student Room (@studentroom), the country's largest student-only social network, is holding general election Q&A sessions between its members and the main party leaders. More than 400 questions were received, which B&B sieved for the most newsworthy to put to the leaders, before PR-ing the responses.

Nick Clegg, whose star was already riding high following Thursday night's ITV debate, called for parts of the controversial Digital Economy Act (#deact) to be repealed. B&B's release was picked up and tweeted by the likes of TechRadar, whose followers, and followers' followers, re-tweeted. From there, the campaign snowballed, with other online media picking up the story from Twitter, leading to yet more online coverage for The Student Room and retweets.

The story became the seventh biggest trending topic on Friday, with tweets including links to online news coverage - all of which then linked back to The Student Room, showing how socia media can be used to drive serious traffic.

BAND & BROWN APPOINTS NEW DIRECTORS

Band & Brown has appointed Head of Public Sector, Simon Francis and Associate director, Mark Lowe to its board.

Francis will continue to shape the agency’s voluntary and government practice whilst Lowe will focus on driving growth in the commercial sector.

Commenting on the appointments CEO Gill Brown said: “Both Mark and Simon have been integral to Band & Brown’s growth in recent years.  I’m delighted to have them on our board as we enter this exciting stage in the agency’s development.”

Meanwhile, Andy Robinson has been promoted to Creative Director responsible for the agency’s design work and helping MD Graz Belli to shape the agency’s creative positioning.

The announcements follow Melanie Howard’s appointment last month as a non-executive director.  Howard co-founder of consumer think-tank, the Future Foundation will advise on a number of corporate and strategic projects.