Year: 2012

If you read my blog regularly you will probably know I live in Harrogate, North Yorkshire and with the weather getting colder and us all heading towards winter my wife and I are constantly looking for ways to keep the kids and ourselves entertained. So yesterday we took the family out into the Yorkshire Dales to a rather different place called The Forbidden corner which is about 20 miles out of Harrogate in North Yorkshire near Masham. I don’t write a lot about my days out but this really was rather special as it was unlike anything I have ever ... Read more

Here is a clever little PR stunt by Ibis hotels. The hotel chain has developed a robot that creates an artistic imagery from how you sleep and from the video – it’s actually rather stunning. From the question, “What does your sleep look like?” it creates a picture of your movement during sleep. The video clip below has been watched more than 33,000 times already and the story has received international coverage all over the place. Hotels all across its Europe network are getting involved in the experiment with 40 lucky people being selected from the Facebook page through an ... Read more

I have just stumbled across this brilliant PR Stunt video on the Two Four Seven blog which I thought was rather clever and well executed. The PR team and agency of Irish bookmaker Paddy Power managed to ambush The Ryder Cup by posting the world’s first ever ‘sky tweets’. It is basically a guerrilla marketing campaign that was designed to encourage people to share their messages of support to our golfers from #TeamEurope. Never one to shy away from a risky campaign Paddy Power’s team hired five stunt planes to fly at 10,000ft above the golf course to tweet the ... Read more

It’s that special magical moment we are all looking for, brilliantly written content that people actually like, love and share. Content that goes viral across the globe on its own and content that makes you or your client’s website stand out from the competition. I have been writing on my own Dead Dinosaur blog for more than six years now, and the main problem with being a blogger or community manager is deciding what to write about and comment on. You sit there scratching your head sometimes thinking what is it that makes our readers chat online? What do they ... Read more

Sorry for the outrageous bit of self promotion in this post but I had to share this one with you guys.  A few months ago my colleagues and I at Lucre had a discussion/brainstorm/thought shower for one of our client’s Ultralase, one of the UK’s leading laser eye surgery brands, on what we could do to raise awareness of National Eye Health Week which runs from 17th-23rd September. We discussed several fun ideas around changing the face of British institutions, to make people stop and think, and then one of my colleagues suggested we blur out the infamous Page 3 ... Read more

Yes unbelievably it’s that time again and it’s hard to believe that it’s been almost a year, but somehow I have managed to organise our annual charity CIPR Pub Quiz, in the memory of my old friend and former YEP journalist Nigel Scott. I am hoping to get this event packed out again with people from all across the Yorkshire media sector. If I am honest I am quite proud to say that this is the third year we have done and each year it has been completely sold out, so we have a lot to live up to. Recession ... Read more

There has been a lot of chatter around lately about the development of a Facebook “I want” button. This new button is being heralded as a step further into social commerce. The opportunity for the button is that it will allow people to clearly see who wants what rather than simply liking something. Many are describing it as the first virtual wish list. I would imagine it will also tie nicely into it’s advertising algorithm, which is if I am honest rather basic when compared with Google’s. For instance, just because you like a page doesn’t necessarily mean we like ... Read more

The Olympics has had some brilliant PR moments and stunts. For instance, the PR person that said in a brainstorm “Why don’t we turn the local athlete’s post box gold when they win a medal?” deserves all the plaudits they get. It’s sometimes the simplest ideas that work the best. Add that to the beauty and honour of sharing a stamp with the queen and I think we can all agree that Royal Mail got it right for London 2012. So here is my random PR stunt of the week, I think the idea of tweeting from your shoes could ... Read more

I have just returned from a lovely family holiday in Majorca and whilst out there I heard about a campaign that really tugged at my heart strings which I wanted to share in order to raise further awareness of it. The family of a British lady left with a serious brain injury has started a campaign to get justice for her. Natalie Creane, 33 a HR executive that worked for a Dubai firm was celebrating her engagement back in 2008 when she was apparently knocked out by a heavy wooden section of wardrobe in her five star hotel. She was ... Read more

Unless you have been hidden under a rock for the last fortnight, you can’t have failed to miss the Wimbledon Tennis tournament taking place in the capital. I don’t watch as much tennis as I should but I do try to catch some of the best matches when it takes place. British hopeful Andy Murray became the first Briton in 74 years to get to the men’s final and the pressure was on him to deliver that first elusive title since Fred Perry. There is no doubt Andy is a great talent and being ranked 4th in the world clearly ... Read more