As a PR agency consisting solely of women, we think it’s important that women get the recognition they deserve, which is why this year we’ve become an official sponsor of the Venus Awards.
The Venus Awards were founded by Tara Howard to celebrate the achievements of working women just like us. Tara held the first ever Venus Awards in 2009 in Dorset and has now expanded into a total of eight regions around the UK, with the inaugural London ceremony launching at the prestigious Waldorf Hotel this December.
Our close relationship with the Venus Awards began when our founder, Sunny herself, won two Venus Awards in 2009 - Entrepreneur of the Year and PR Excellence - and became a finalist in the Media, Marketing and PR category in 2015, a pivotal moment which helped support the growth of Sunny Bird PR as an agency.
Like Tara Howard, we know that there are women out there achieving so much in their field and yet not always being recognised for what they do. So, this year, we’ve introduced the PR Excellence Award for both London and Dorset, for women who have produced outstanding PR results for their organisations.
Not only are we sponsoring our own category, but we’re also working closely with the Venus team on the PR for the London and Dorset awards. As a newcomer to the London scene, the Venus team faced the challenge of how to raise their profile where the awards and Tara herself weren’t well known.
The solution was to make the Venus Awards newsworthy, which we did through a ‘Working Women’ survey. Sunny Bird PR worked with the Venus team to compile a survey on the working lives of over 2,000 women, revealing shocking statistics around the gender pay gap, working parents and women in leadership. Using the newsworthy stats from the survey and hooking onto current topics in the media, this resulted in multiple pieces of coverage in key HR and business titles such as Employee Benefits, HR Director and NatWest.
Aside from the survey, we also worked closely with the Venus team, nominees, winners and ambassadors to collate a bank of case studies highlighting the success stories within Venus – women who had overcome sexism, health problems, parenting and childcare issues and even stalking to become high achievers in their field. The quality of the case studies and their compelling stories resulted in the team securing 12 pieces of coverage including a fantastic piece on the Telegraph Online!
Having successfully raised the profile of the Venus Awards, the team then worked their PR magic on its founder. Using Tara’s expertise as a business woman and a voice of authority for women in business, the team pitched Tara to broadcast resulting in Tara featuring in a coveted slot on This Morning.
To date, extensive media coverage has reached over 100 million people successfully raising the profile of both Tara and the Venus Awards in the London area. This led to the Sunny Bird PR team securing a media partner for the London awards with the Time and Leisure Group, a huge achievement for the team that guarantees fantastic coverage and builds brand awareness in a new region for the Venus Awards, as well as multiple sponsors for each of the award categories.
Increasing Venus’ brand awareness will help them expand into more regions around the UK, bringing ‘the working women’s Oscars’ to more women. With a strong media partnership, we’re expecting to see businesses queuing up to sponsor next year’s Venus Awards.