HAYLEY DOUGLAS JOINS BAND & BROWN

Account director Hayley Douglas has joined the Band & Brown Communications team. Clocking up a total of five years PR experience, Hayley brings strong commercial experience, having worked across a number of high-profile global brands. During her career she’s managed campaigns for the likes of Vodafone, Sony Ericsson, Microsoft, Gillette and Nestle.
Since moving to the UK from New Zealand in 2008 Hayley has gained a mix of in-house and agency experience, including a role as media relations consultant at Lloyds TSB.
At Band & Brown, Hayley’s clients will include NCSL (National College for School Leadership) and DWP (Department for Work and Pensions).

BAND & BROWN WINS SPECIFIC MEDIA

Global technology and online media company Specific Media has appointed Band & Brown Communications as its UK PR agency. Band & Brown will develop a strategic campaign to build brand awareness of the company among the marketing, advertising and media planning communities, specifically within the retail, travel, financial services and automotive sectors.

The contract will include a brand awareness campaign, corporate and trade media relations and an industry analyst programme. Band & Brown secured the account following a four-way pitch. Reporting to Specific Media’s head of European marketing, Pippa Halstead, the five-strong Band & Brown team will be headed up by board director Valerie Weisenreder and group account director Ellie Bennett. "Band & Brown showed a great understanding of our brand and where we want to go as a company, which made them the natural choice in the selection process” said Pippa Halstead, European Marketing Manager, Specific Media. “Moreover, there was real synergy and great chemistry during the pitch, which is very important to us. We’re really looking forward to working with the team.”

“Specific Media is now a recognised brand in the US and we are looking forward to helping them reach their goal to become the number one advertising network here in Europe,” said Valerie Weisenreder. “We believe we can truly bring the agency’s full breadth of expertise in media and stakeholder relations, design and digital to build a solid presence for Specific Media in the UK. We are absolutely thrilled to have won this account and are looking forward to working with Pippa and her team.”

BAND & BROWN SCORES BIG WIN FOR ING DIRECT

First ever premiership ‘value league’ creates media storm
Band & Brown has crunched football league stats and polled fans to produce the first ever Premiership ‘Value League’ for savings bank ING Direct, showing that Wigan Athletic, not Manchester United delivers the goods when it comes to points for your pound.
The story was a huge hit on the airwaves and online, securing spokesperson interviews on Five Live, BBC Breakfast, the Today Programme, the BBC News Channel and over 50 regional stations. A Sky Sports News interview with ING Direct spokesperson Martin Rutland has also proved a big hit on YouTube.

B&B BOLSTERS PUBLIC SECTOR AND NEWS SERVICES

Brown Communications has made two major appointments in a restructure of senior staff designed to bolster its client services.

Simon Francis becomes the new Head of Public Sector Practice – reporting into Managing Director, Graz Belli. Francis will continue to expand Band & Brown’s public and voluntary sector client base, which already includes DCSF, DWP, National College for School Leadership, Children’s Workforce Development Council and independent education foundation, Edge. Associate Director Mel Garfield is appointed as Band & Brown’s first Head of News with responsibility to steer news programme development for the agency’s key accounts.

Simon Francis said: “The public and voluntary sector is currently the fastest growing area of marketing and communications. With the new COI roster in place, clients expecting more converged communications and the devolution of responsibilities from the centre to both local authorities and the third sector, we’re gearing up to increase our client base in this area.” In recent months, Band & Brown Communications has won campaigns for DWP and leading savings bank, ING Direct.

CHILDCARE - A JOB FOR THE BOYS

Just two per cent of the childcare workforce is male. To help the Children’s Workforce Development Council (CWDC) tackle this imbalance, Band & Brown developed a campaign championing the role of men in the early years sector – which more than punched its weight against no less an historic story as Barack Obama’s presidential inauguration.
With careers in nurseries simply not on men’s radars, we needed to achieve real media cut-through for the issue, shine the spotlight on men already working in the sector to reveal the rewards and enjoyability of the job – and also offer crucial reassurance that men are wanted in nurseries. The campaign certainly did the trick.
We commissioned research that revealed that many parents – and lone mothers in particular – wanted to see more men working with nursery-aged children because of the benefits they bring. The resulting news story received widespread broadcast coverage, appearing on The Today Programme, Wake Up to Wogan, BBC Breakfast, GMTV, The Jeremy Vine Show, BBC News 24, BBC One O’Clock News and Five News, as well as a wide range of regional television and radio stations. It was also covered in The Guardian, Daily Telegraph, Daily Express and TES, with Times journalist Hugo Rifkind shadowing two male early years workers for an in-depth feature in T2, timed to land on the day of launch. The story has gone on to have a life in sector press, a secondary audience, through a series of Band & Brown-penned thought-leadership pieces.
In total, more than 150 pieces of coverage were generated, resulting in over 89 million opportunities to see. The combined editorial value of £1.9 million was a return on investment of more than 200:1. No less importantly, there was also a 13 per cent lift in hits to CWDC’s website and a 30 per cent increase in call volumes to its recruitment hotline.