Tag: Yorkshire

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

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

Yesterday, I went to the first ever open air concert staged in the Great Yorkshire Show Grounds in Harrogate. My wife and I went to see Elton John, he was brilliant, performing more than two hours of his back catalogue including the majority of his biggest hits and some of his other more select album choices. I wasn’t sure about attending the event as I like his music but I didn’t know what to expect really – I am more of a dance music fan. As it was the first concert of its size in Harrogate, I was interested to ... Read more

Last week I joined a panel debate at the University of York for its Careers Service in front of several hundred students to discuss jobs in the creative sector. It was a fascinating debate with people from across the country spanning several different specialisms. There were representatives from consumer insight , advertising, PR and social media marketing companies. There were people from Ogilvy, The Labour Party and Aviva and it made for an interesting discussion. I went with my Prohibition hat on to explain what students can do for jobs in this sector and in this region. I think we ... Read more

We attended the Yorkshire Business Market yesterday and it was interesting to take a new view on how things in the business and marketing world are changing and have evolved over the last six years. When I started blogging, many years and moons ago, there weren’t many people talking about social media apart from the geeks and bloggers of course. In fact, when my team and I used to pitch way back in 2008 for as we called it then “Word of Mouth Marketing Briefs” we were often doing so non-competitively and this was for a number of global brands. ... Read more

This week I have been doing quite a bit of analysis and research into bloggers and online influencers. This has become part of my day job reading, researching and engaging and I am often asked by other PR professionals to give recommendations on some of the tools that I use. So I thought a quick post on a few might help. To make this test fair I have used a local theme park that my family and I like to visit called Flamingo Land as I thought it would be a bit more fun that the usual corporate stuff. 1. ... Read more

If you follow me on Twitter, you will have no doubt been seeing my recent tweets about the charity pub quiz I organise for the regional committee of the CIPR. I hate plugging things too much but the pub quiz was to raise money for a charitable cause that was deeply close to my heart. A journalist friend of mine called Nigel Scott sadly died of cancer in 2009 and so collectively we decided to hold a fun event last year to honour him and to try and raise some money for the charities that helped him in his final ... Read more

I don’t normally post about day’s out but I thought this was worth a quick mention. Yesterday, my wife and I wanted to take my little boy for a day out and we decided on the York Maze. I don’t know what I expected but I was pleasantly surprised. The York Maze is only really open during the summer months as it is growing the crop for the maze the rest of the year.  It is based on a farm on the outskirts of york. It was big but not too big and perfect for kids of any ages but ... Read more