How Top Gear came to Belfast

The Twingo is lowered into the Belfast Sewer

Last night Top Gear screened  a road test of the new Renault Twingo which was filmed in Belfast this summer.  

Stephen McGrath, the long man of Weber Shandwick Belfast, can take full credit for enticing Mr Clarkson et al here. It all started about a year ago when we were chatting about how to mark the end of the Belfast Sewer’s construction in an interesting way. Before we knew it the Italian Job was blaring from Youtube on the office computers and a plan was hatched to pitch the idea of a small car in the Belfast sewer to Top Gear.

Stephen fired off an email to the Top Gear team and to our surprise they were interested. Many meetings, safety briefings and site inspections later the green light came through. The teams’ at Atkins and Northern Ireland Water embraced the opportunity to facilitate Top Gear when the idea was put to them.

From a public relations point of view the story was a great success. Great PR for the city and prime time exposure for one of Europe’s largest engineeringprojects. It has also generated a acre of press coverage since the story first leaked last July.

Project team members and Mr C

As for our Stephen. He says he met the stig, but we don’t believe him.

33 & A Third RPM

Double gold for Weber Shandwick

Weber Shandwick won two golds last night at the Northern Ireland PRide Awards.

Our campaign to increase voter registration for the Electoral Commission won gold in media relations. Our Uganda Schools Project for Rushmere shopping Centre also took the top prize in CSR.

Woooo Hoooo!

This is a bit of trumpet blowing but it is great to work for a company at the top of its game.

Last night the UK Public Relations Consultants Association named Weber Shandwick International Agency of the Year and Weber Shandwick Technology as Specialist Consultancy of the Year. Weber Shandwick Financial won the PRCA’s Best Financial PR Campaign award.  

Just a fortnight ago PR Week named us International Agency of the Year – a double whammy that is a first for us or any other agency in our business.

Chris Brown makes PR Week rising stars list

Chris Brown, the head of our public affairs practice in Belfast, has been named one of the top 29 under 29 by PR Week. He is the only Irish based practitioner to make this year’s listing.

From this weeks PR week:

Every year PRWeek identifies the brightest young talent in the UK PR industry. Nominations are invited from agencies and comms teams, then put to a panel of independent judges to choose their favourites. The result is the PRWeek 29 under 29, the ultimate showcase of the industry’s rising stars who are aged under 29 years old on 30 May 2009.

This year PRWeek was swamped with nominations, but as you will see from these pages, the 29 young PR professionals selected encompass the energy, creativity and drive needed to shine in a very competitive field.

Its a great recognition for Chris and I am very glad to have nominated him. He is a great colleague and a good friend. It’s a recognition of quality of Northern PR agencies and the home grown talent we have working in our region and across the island. I’m just not looking forward to next years pay negotiations!

Cleantech opportunity being missed

Poor quality communication from suppliers is impeding the growth of the European cleantech market, according to a study conducted by Weber Shandwick with KRC Research.

Despite finding that eight out of ten large organisations in Europe have specific cleantech purchasing policies in place, the research highlights a lack of information from suppliers to help customers rationalise making cleantech choices.

High quality information that enables customers to properly evaluate cleantech products and services is critical, as half of the organisations surveyed perceive cost to be a barrier to making cleantech investments. Of 400 senior purchasing decision-makers surveyed across France, Germany, Spain and the UK nearly a third currently receive no information at all from cleantech companies (29 per cent). An additional quarter of respondents (26 per cent) say that they don’t get enough information from suppliers, while one in ten (11 per cent) feel the information they do receive is too complicated. Significant opportunities exist however for companies that can deliver effective communications to cleantech buyers.

The Weber Shandwick report shows that 60 per cent of European organisations are placing the same level of importance on green procurement as they did before the economic downturn. In fact 25 per cent expect to put more emphasis on green procurement, with only 14 per cent planning to make it a lower priority.

The research highlights significant differences between key European markets around clean and green products and services: • Nearly three-quarters of organisations in Germany have cleantech policies in place, compared to little more than half of UK respondents

• Two-thirds of respondents in France see cost as the key barrier to cleantech adoption – less than 40 per cent of Germans feel the same
• Less than a third of French respondents feel that they receive enough information about suppliers’ green credentials – by contrast, half of the German respondents we spoke to were happy with the amount of information available to them
• 83 per cent of German and Spanish organisations measure the environmental credentials of suppliers. Less than 50 per cent of French organisations do so
• As a result of the recession, Spain and France expect to place more importance on green procurement in the future (37 per cent and 28 per cent); the UK and Germany the least (17 per cent and 16 per cent).

 Full details of the research are available in Weber Shandwick’s Come Clean report, available at: http://www.webershandwick.co.uk/cleantech.

The report includes specific recommendations for communications professionals to use to help shape their strategic plans. Weber Shandwick has built a specialist team of cleantech experts across Europe and works with clients ranging from the biggest corporations through to the newest start-ups. The team’s experience spans a huge variety of specific industries including energy efficiency, clean energy, biofuels, green IT, smart building and advanced transportation.

Jody Powell RIP

Jody Powell, founder of Weber Shandwick’s most prestigious public affairs company, Powell-Tate and former Press Secretary to President Jimmy Carter died  suddenly yesterday. I never met him but we exchanged emails occasionally. He would ask me about Ireland and I would ask him about Obama, Clinton and a new beginning for America. I know who had the better side of the deal!.

Ar dheis De go raibh an aman

Blogtalk NI is launched!

Blogtalk NI was launched on an unsuspecting Internet the other day. Brian Crowe, Alan Meban and myself were first on the hotseats.

More to follow!

Blogtalk NI from Northern Visions on Vimeo.

Weber Shandwick tops global agency rankings

Weber Shandwick has won gold in the first PRWeek Global Agency Report Card 2009.

The report tracks performance over the last 12 months for 24 global agency networks against four key criteria: business development, people, network initiatives and cohesion, and external recognition. Weber Shandwick was recognized in particular for its strong 12-month performance, impressive new business record across multiple markets, and its innovative and award-winning work for clients.

The Good Book of Badvocacy

Last week quite a discussion took place about the concept of advocacy in modern communications. It followed a talk I gave in Dublin.

On that occasion much of it centred on the way in which communications professionals engage with bloggers and other online writers. Many important points were made the most important of which is that we should all remember that bloggers are people and that we should treat them with the same respect we would any flesh and bone person. Here , here say I.  As a blogger and a person I enjoy the freedom of debate which takes place online but sometimes am taken aback by the lack of human respect shown for real people in cyberspace. 

What we did not get the chance to debate are the changes taking place and the fact that we now have a body of data available to help us better understand the nature of conversations that are taking place online.

The digital and social networking revolution is impacting greatly on our profession and marketing and public relations professionals need to adapt to this new environment. We need to move from broadcast to conversation.

Advocacy offers a useful prism through which to understand this. In a world made up of free thinking individuals we are likely to spend as much time disagreeing with each other as we do in agreement. In fact disagreement is the grit at the heart of good conversation. Understanding how people express disagreement online and how companies and organistaions can better manage their reputation in a world of perpetual conservation is one of the reasons Weber Shandwick has written the Good Book of Badvocacy. It’s designed to help companies and organisations spot badvocacy but also to see it as an opportunity and not simply a threat.