O.TV

For the past four years we have been the PR partners to Design Event – the region’s annual festival that celebrates design in all its forms.

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.

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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.

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As the renaming of St James’ Park still continues to cause a stir in the media (back pages and front) the uproar with the general North East public makes us question and analyse the importance of a ‘name’.

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)

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I have been on a work placement at OPR for two weeks now and can honestly say it’s the best PR placement I’ve been on. I’ve been doing work experience at different places on and off since I graduated in English Literature last year and have done a wide variety of placements; long and short, the good and the bad.

 I knew I wanted to go into PR and that my degree had given me some pretty useful skills. I also knew however that there were not that many jobs out there, let alone entry-level ones which said they wanted at least a year or two’s experience!

 I had limited experience of working in any sort of working environment outside the library, so along with a part-time bar job to tide me over (as most placements are unpaid) I set about arranging placements that I hoped would help me get a job.

I learnt many skills at other placements that have really helped me and the connections that you get from working at different agencies give invaluable contacts.

 At OPR you are really given the opportunity and encouragement to pursue the areas you find most interesting or useful. You feel like you’re really using the skills you have and it’s not all making cups of tea, although they do come in useful.

 The office is really fast-paced and no two days are the same. It’s a small team so you feel as if you are really helping people with their clients. 

I have really enjoyed the writing side and am excited to see the coverage for clients I have worked on.

I was keen to perfect my press release writing as I hadn’t had much training on this before. At OPR you don’t just write a draft and never see it again, you get told what you need to change and make the changes yourself until its right, or they will make changes and talk you through it if they’re on a deadline.

Hopefully the job will come soon, but in the meantime doing work experience is helping me advance my skills and is definitely worth doing, especially if you find an agency like OPR.

Selina Young

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In my Twitter stream I’m beginning to see an increase in the amount of frustration people are currently venting about Google+.  The buzz from the launch has now slowed and people are beginning to ask, what’s next?

At the same time, Facebook 8 looks likely to become a trending topic after Mark Zuckerberg’s keynote at the F8 conference yesterday to launch the latest version of Facebook.

The changes are profound and easily the biggest since the day we woke up one morning in September 2006 to live news feeds of our friend’s lives.

Unless the search giant has a surprise trick up its sleeve, it’s set for a heavy fall as Facebook introduces five powerful changes to its website.

 The first major change is the introduction of the Timeline, which acts essentially as a scrapbook of your life. Upon discovering this I thought of the recent Dear Hollie Google Chrome Advert. This shows how Google’s online tools can act as a lifelong scrap book – a brilliantly crafted advert which evokes an emotional response every time.

The timeline is part of a complete overhaul of a user’s profile page and provides a stream of information about you – the photos you’ve posted, your status updates and even the places you’ve visited.

This information streams all the way back to your birth date, allowing you to reflect on your entire life by the click of a mouse.

The second change is a small one but will certainly improve user Facebook experience. You’re no longer limited to ‘liking’ something now, Facebook has launched Facebook Gestures, which enables people to use any verb or noun in place of the ‘like’ button.

Also, Facebook apps now only need to ask permission once to share information about you on your profile but previously they had to ask every time. Facebook has also created something called a Ticker to free up your profile from “the lightweight” information like who planted what in Farmville.

Another vast change is that it is now possible to watch TV and movies, listen to music and read news all with your friends on Facebook. The new Ticker tool will show you what your friends are watching, listening to or reading in real-time.

The new changes continue down the same online footpath Facebook has been hurdling down since its inception – providing more tools for users to document their otherwise moderately private lives in full view online.

By Stephen Johnson – PR Assistant

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Enjoy watching what the team has been up to in our monthly video for August.

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On August 18 the team at O travelled down in full force to the CIPR’s North East Summer Social.

A well attended event in which Speed PR managing director and frequent conference speaker, Stephen Waddington, talked to guests about how to get ahead in social media.

Stephen’s presentation focused on how the media landscape is changing to how individuals can build their own online reputation and get ahead of the competition online.

It also discussed how recent developments in technology have enabled PR practitioners to talk directly to their audience without using a third party.

Some local examples of companies who do this particularly well include Tyneside Cinema, who has a strong Twitter presence, and Tyne and Wear Metro who regularly use Facebook to communicate directly to their customers.

After the talk the team at O walked away with some new insights into social media and individual ideas to how they can strengthen and monitor their presence and influence online.

One of the most significant questions raised at the event was how media organisations will successfully manage to recoup up revenues lost through declining newspaper sales and the growth of direct to consumer communications through social media. 

It is very much a space we will be watching…

To  see Stephen’s full slideshow presentation and discover some great free tools that test your online reputation click here.

Stephen can also be followed on Twitter via @Wadds

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