B&B GIVES EDUCATION RED CARPET TREATMENT

Band & Brown brought together the worlds of film and education for a red carpet launch of landmark documentary ‘We Are The People We’ve Been Waiting For’. Inspired and guided by Oscar-winning producer Lord Puttnam and supported by independent education foundation Edge, the film explores whether the current education system provides young people with the opportunity to develop their talents properly.

Following the lives of five Swindon-based teenagers and the challenges they face during their education, the film highlights how many young people are being allowed to ‘slip through the cracks’, struggling through a school life that, in many ways, hasn’t changed significantly since the Victorian era.
Band & Brown worked with sister agencies Brando and Elvis, and film production company New Moon, to co-ordinate the Leicester Square premiere of the film. Attended by legendary contributor Henry Winkler (a.k.a The Fonz), the screening was followed by a Q&A chaired by Lord Puttnam.
B&B generated interest in the run up to the launch with a news story quantifying the number of Briton’s who don’t realise their talents until after leaving school. Using celebrities such as Stephen Fry and Sir Philip Green to illustrate the point, B&B secured widespread media coverage.
On the day of the premiere B&B recreated a Victorian classroom, complete with traditional playground games, in Liverpool Street station to highlight the outdated education system and the need to transform the way young people learn. Media partner The Guardian hosted a round table debating the issues raised in the film, resulting in a double page spread on launch day and a ‘We Are The People We’ve Been Waiting For’ DVD give away in the following Saturday’s paper.
B&B secured over 330 pieces of editorial coverage, including Sky News, The Independent, TES, and The London Evening Standard, resulting in over 300 requests for the film.
View the trailer here

B&B RESPONDS TO COI CONSULTATION

Band & Brown has responded to the Central Office of Information’s (COI) consultation on standardising evaluation across the PR industry.
Industry reports confirm that one of the key recommendations from the consultation is that the advertising value equivalent (AVE) not be included as part of mandatory metrics and is replaced by a cost per impact model.
Simon Francis, head of public sector at Band & Brown, said:
“We welcome the COI’s review of evaluation and the attempts to find a core set of measures to showcase the importance and the impact of public relations.
“AVEs are an outdated, inaccurate measure for public relations that are not based on any sound methodology and no longer reflect the true breadth of agency work. We have been advising clients for some years that evaluation should move away from AVEs and become more based on tracking research and other measures.
“The proposed cost per impact approach is an interesting model which better reflects the media climate we are currently operating in. We would also be interested in exploring whether this model could be expanded to include non-media campaigns as well.
“However, while we look forward to seeing the final standards, we will continue to offer all our clients a full programme of evaluation measures and metrics to demonstrate campaign impact on business or policy objectives. These are defined and measured through message delivery, audience understanding and engagement or behaviour.”
For more information on Band & Brown’s response to the consultation, email coi@bbpr.com or call 020 7419 7000.

UK BORDERS AGENCY

Online animation guides students through visa process
Applying for a visa has traditionally been a seen as a complex and lengthy process. In April 2009 the UK Border Agency implemented Tier 4 of the new Points-Based System, streamlining the visa process for potential international students looking to study in the UK.
Band & Brown brought these changes to life, creating an animated step-by-step guide to the new process. The animation, which was translated into eight different languages, was then seeded to thousands of web-savvy students online.
To date it has been viewed over 70,000 times in just three months, smashing the campaign target of 10,000. The seeding campaign has ensured the animation was not just seen, but importantly seen by those to whom it matters most, with the majority of the viewers living in countries such as Nigeria, India and Pakistan. The results have been impressive and it has proved a YouTube hit with an average viewer rating of 4.5/5.

BAND & BROWN SCOOPS HIGHLY COMMENDED AT PR WEEK AWARDS

Band & Brown Communications beat off competition from hundreds of campaigns to be ‘Highly Commended’ at this year’s PR Week Awards for the launch of the London Historical Records, 1500s-1900s on family history website Ancestry.co.uk – narrowly missing out on the ‘best use of research’ top prize to the eventual campaign of the year.

The campaign proved that indeed all roads do lead to London – with over 165 million people worldwide having an ancestral connection to our capital, including half of the British population. One of the unlikely people highlighted with a London connection was Britney Spears, whose great-grandparents’ marriage in Tottenham features in the collection.

The campaign achieved widespread national coverage and led directly to a 30 per cent increase in traffic on Ancestry.co.uk and a 57 per cent uplift in new subscriptions over the two weeks following launch, generating more than £100,000 in subscription revenue for a campaign spend of under £20,000.

ING DIRECT

Spreading the kindness offensive
Every day Londoners defy the moody and unhelpful stereotype.  So we brought this to life for ‘feel good’ savings provider ING Direct by partnering with The Kindness Offensive to show the capital’s kind hearted side. Stooges posing as struggling pregnant women and lost tourists were placed around the city – with those deciding to help being rewarded with a surprise party of champagne, balloons and cheers of ‘for he’s a jolly good fellow!’ The stunts were captured on film and seeded across the web, and widely reported in London and national media.