Today marked the completion of a recent journey we’ve taken to bring our client Benfield together with a local legend, Run Geordie Run. We had a vision for bringing the North’s biggest motor retail group together with the social media sensation and it has finally taken shape.

Today marks the start of Mark Allison, aka Run Geordie Run’s, journey across Australia in autumn 2013 – as Benfield is the first sponsor to get behind this exciting journey of 2600 miles in the searing heat of down under.

Without the support of commercial partners to get him there, Mark won’t be able to achieve his dream of running from Perth to Sydney in 70 days.

No one who is on Twitter can have failed to notice @rungeordierun and follow his amazing journey last year running across the USA. He became a local hero as he blogged every step of the way, and attracted an army of supporters on Facebook and in the media, inspired by his tenacity to raise money for St Benedict’s Hospice and the Children’s Foundation.

When I met Mark I knew instantly he was a perfect match for family motor group Benfield; a company passionate about its local communities, sport and charity. Benfield is also a frontrunner in social media, and intends to share Mark’s journey with its own army of followers.

Benfield’s strapline and Twitter hashtag ♯EnjoytheJourney is quite symbolic of Mark’s run, which is set to be a physical and emotional challenge even greater than the USA run due to the heat and terrain.

Good luck Mark, and well done Benfield for seeing the potential of being part of his amazing journey.

Mark needs more sponsors to get him to Australia. If you can help, contact him on sponsorship@rungeordierun.com

It all began with an introductory meeting and a chat about my PR experience to date; I was given a list of tasks to complete and guidelines to follow over the next few days.

I’m coming to the end of my MA degree and coupled with my previous work experience I’m quite confident in writing press releases, compiling media lists and conducting research, but what I’ve never had experience of is having ‘free-reign’ of these tasks, being able to input my own creativity,  and organising my own diary.

Look at any job advertisement on PRWeek or the CIPR Jobs’ website and you’ll see one of the main skills mentioned time and time again is time management and the ability to prioritise tasks.

Having the opportunity to practice writing press releases, compiling media lists and conducting research in a real-life office environment has been absolutely invaluable.

During my time at OPR, new tasks have been added and other tasks removed from my to-do list reflecting the ever changing and extremely fast paced environment of agency-based PR – a skill you’ll never learn in the lecture theatre.  As my list changed, so did my priorities in order to meet deadlines and more importantly, to not let the team down!

If I had a problem or didn’t understand something, I could ask and a member of the OPR team, who would be more than happy to help me.  Not only would they point me in the right direction, they would also explain why it was the right direction.

I would strongly recommend any student or aspiring PR pro do a work experience placement here – it’s a fantastic company with an extremely talented team. Sacrificing a week or two of your time is worth its weight in gold with the practical experience you’ll gain at OPR.

Anne-Marie Bailey

Blog:                         www.raisingtheprofile.wordpress.com

Twitter:                                    @AM_Bailey

LinkedIn:               http://uk.linkedin.com/pub/anne-marie-bailey/39/342/987

Angela, Antonia & Fran

OPR has appointed three new faces to its team.

With over 20 years working as a marketing consultant in leading communications agencies, such as London based Fitch & Co and Tayburn in Edinburgh, newly appointed business development director Angela Lynch joins the O team to further its growth as it speeds into 2012.

Frances Winn, 28 from Jesmond, has been appointed as a PR Account Manager and will be responsible for heading up the corporate PR services, working with its business-to-business client portfolio.

Antonia Edwards, 21 from Morpeth, joins the team as PR assistant following a period of work experience carried out with the agency in 2011, after recently graduating with a 2.1 degree in Communications and PR fromNorthumbriaUniversity.

Kari Owers, chief executive of OPR, said: “All three new appointments add a new dimension to our agency services, and its exciting to be entering 2012 with three new faces around the table. We intend to recruit throughout 2012, as we develop our digital PR services especially.”

Instead of hanging traditional baubles on our tree, we have hand-written Christmas gift wish tags from children who will be spending Christmas in protective refuge accommodation.

Leaving home at a time of crisis can be traumatic at any time, let alone at Christmas and some families who come to stay at the refuge arrive distressed and with very little personal belongings.

Newcastle Women’s Aid provides support services to women and their children who are experiencing domestic violence and abuse by providing 24 hour direct access to refuge accommodation, an outreach service and a designated children’s service. The charity provides both practical and emotional support to victims in order for them to make changes and have a life free from abuse.

The generosity and support of everyone who bought gifts last year really made a huge difference to the children who spent Christmas at the refuge so we hope that this year we can bring some more Christmas magic to the fantastic staff, volunteers and the families.

The baubles have been filled out with each child’s Christmas gift wish to Santa and hung on the branches of our little tree.

If you would like to help make a child’s gift wish come true, please feel free to come in to see us and take a bauble or drop chrissie@opr.co.uk an email to be sent your wish – then just include the little gift in with your Christmas shopping.  All you need to do is wrap it, and return it to us by Monday 19th December with the child’s name on to be delivered in time for Christmas.  By buying just one extra gift this year, you could help make a disadvantaged child’s Christmas the special magical time that it should be.

Working in partnership with Different Advertising, OPR created and managed the ‘Benfield Charity Drive,’ a unique campaign which saw three small local charities each take a share of £10,000.

Benfield’s Charitable Trust donates 5% of its profits every year to worthy causes, and charity drive put the power in the hands of their Facebook fans to nominate smaller local charities it might never have heard of.

Digital sales and marketing manager, Benfield Motor Group, Mark King: “We’re delighted with the amount of activity and involvement the campaign has generated online and offline. It shows how passionate people in the North East are about helping their chosen charities gain much needed funds.

“This is the first time we’ve used social media to help decide who we donate money to and it has been a real success which highlights how influential this type of innovative campaign can be.”

Benfield used a Facebook application on its Drive Benfield page to ask the general public to nominate and then vote for a local charity that they would like to see win a share of £10,000.

The campaign ran from the start of August up to October 30 and saw Benfield’s Facebook page increase its likes from just over 100 to well over 9000 fans.

The Charity Drive application allowed users to nominate a local charity by a set date, with the top ten most nominated charities then going to a public vote. Each nomination and vote was automatically posted on Benfield’s wall.

In the final month of the competition voting went to a different scale, with just under 10,000 votes cast. The winners were 4Louis, Metro Kids Africa and Sweet Dreams our Angels.

Kari Owers, OPR chief executive, said: “Benfield’s charity drive campaign has been very successful on a number of fronts. It has obviously increased the motor retail group’s reach on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, but more important than the numbers, it has created massive swell of engagement and two-way dialogue.

“It has spilled over into offline PR, with numerous media articles picking up the initiative. It has also had a viral effect with charities and their supporters posting on their own Facebook walls, and tweeting to their followers to increase reach even further.

“Benfield’s ‘enjoy the journey’ marketing campaign is all about lifestyle and appreciates customers don’t always want to talk just about cars. Cars are about freedom, journeys, experiences and daily life.

“By using this approach in the social media strategy, they have become the retailer of choice with Facebook and Twitter users across the North. We are now running the Enjoy Rewards weekly treats on Twitter, and planning for a series of new campaigns in 2012 that will continue to drive their online conversations with customers.”

We have seen this grow as a major annual event and this year’s theme of “Happiness” was a particularly great brief, as we all need a bit of cheering up these days.

Over the years our main objective has been to raise awareness of Design Event’s programme of activities to highlight the North East as a hot bed of design talent.

Our campaign has also been crafted to reach new visitors from outside the region, by using press and media and social outreach.

We believe in the economic value of design and its power to innovate, improve and solve business and social challenges. And yes, great design can make you happy.

To celebrate the Design Event Festival this year we made Happiness the theme of our quarterly Four Magazine. Read all about it here.

OPR picked up eight awards at this year’s North East PRide awards, held at the Hilton Gateshead November 18.

The team scooped the most awards given out on the evening, impressing judges with their creativity and beating off stiff competition to pick up the silver ‘Outstanding Agency of the Year’ award for the second year running.

Our pioneering street tactics for mental health campaign Time to Change picked up four awards including:

Best use of photography  (gold)

Best not for profit campaign (gold)

Best integrated campaign (silver)

Special judges’ (gold) award for best measurement & evaluation

Judges of the Time to Change award said: “This campaign displayed a real innovative treatment of a highly sensitive subject matter, utilising an impressive array of imaginative tactics.

“Using road shows, the striking ‘blue crew’, the poetry and student film competition alongside media relations ensured all members of the key audience were communicated with. The judges were particularly impressed with the creativity of the OPR team.”

The team also won awards for:

Corporate Communications (silver) for Quorum Business Park

Consumer Relations (silver) for the Tyne & Wear Metro Pop Card launch

Best Low Budget campaign (silver) for Trend Bible

We were also finalists in

Best use of Media Relations for Time to Change in the North East

Best use of Social Media for the Tyne & Wear Metro Pop Card launch

A big thanks our clients for their continuing support and faith in our creative ideas – and to all the OPR team for their hard work.

After 131 years of being known as St James’ Park from yesterday (November 10) the Newcastle based football ground will be known as the Sports Direct Arena. It would appear Shakespeare’s view ‘that it is substance and not a name which matters’ is redundant as the NUFC fans are describing it as ‘alienating’ and ‘damaging to cultural heritage’. 

The name St James’ Park has become synonymous with the NUFC football brand as well as the city – a team with whom Newcastle fans are fiercely protective and supportive of – therefore this change by Mike Ashley is not just altering a brand name, but the connotations of a long standing local landmark and public attitude towards it.

So why change such a strong brand image? In this instance the name change appears to be for money raising sponsorship reasons, however many companies such as Exxon (Standard Oil Co.) and Royal Mail (the Post Office) have successfully rebranded to cut ties with outdated images or negative press.                                                                 

When rebranding, or even establishing a new company brand, it is important to remember the intended target audience, consider all perceptions and connotations of the proposed name and be aware of the values you want your name to stand for with your customers.

Reputation and image is important for any business, and it is essential for customers to be able to establish a relationship with what the brand stands for. Brands grow and gain hard earned equity with their customers, and there’s no getting away from the fact that some brands are emotional – St James’ Park is one of them.

Mike Ashley might do well to remember that a brand identity can take a lifetime to build and only seconds to destroy. It speaks volumes that even the council won’t change the street signs in Newcastle, the St James Metro stop will remain the same and the London 2012 bosses will revert the name back to St James’ Park for the Olympic football.

Just as football fans will stand in the wind and rain when their team is losing, they are fiercely loyal to over 100 years of local heritage and emotions associated with the stadium. We are sure that no matter what it is called, it will forever remain in North East hearts as St James’ Park.

Antonia Edwards PR Assistant (and closet NUFC fan)